Discourse on Yoga Vasishtha
Day 50, September 8
Jaya Guru Datta
Sri Ganesaya Namaha
Sri Saraswatyai Namaha
Sripada Vallabha
Narasimha Saraswati
Sri Guru Dattatreyaya Namaha
Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Sadgurubhyo Namaha
asato ma sadgamaya
tamaso ma jyotirgamaya
mrityor ma amrtam gamaya
Om Santissantissantihi
Please lead me from untruth to Truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. May there be peace.
Guru Dhyanam: Gurur Brahmaa, Sri Bhooyuta.. , Ajnana .. Akhanda, Dehe …, Akhandam ..
Yoga Vasishtha Dhyana Slokas:
yatassarvāṇi bhūtāni pratibhānti sthitāni ca
yatraivōpaśamaṁ yānti tasmai satyātmanē namaḥ || 1
jñātā jñānaṁ tathā jñēyaṁ draṣṭādarśana dr̥śyabhūḥ
kartā hētuḥ kriyā yasmāt tasmai jñaptyātmanē namaḥ || 2
sphuranti sīkarā yasmāt ānanandasyāṁbarē vanau
sarvēṣām jīvanam tasmai brahmānandātmanē namaḥ || 3
Brahmanandam, Sri Vasishtham Namami, Ramaya, Aapadaamapahartaaram, Om Purnamadah,
Om Santissantissantihi
Yesterday in the Yoga Vasishtha, Deva Durvilasam was discussed. How we should understand the tricky play of Time and why we should turn our attention to God was learned by us. In a blink, how God creates and destroys this Creation was talked about. How all the 14 worlds with all types of objects and creatures dissolve into God, was learned. God is invisible and unperceivable. By using our faculty of listening as an instrument of learning, each of us must experience God within ourselves. We cannot explain or show God to another.
In all the three worlds, there is nothing that remains forever. Big Crunch, they call it, the final complete annihilation. He/Paramatma alone survives all. He has been, He is, and He will be, at all times. Everything has to merge in Him eventually. Such is the principle of God. It is not the idea of the Upanishads to make each one of us feel very insignificant and small. It is the idea of the Upanishads to make us gain the wisdom to realize our oneness with God. We are indeed as great as God because we are not separate from Him once we realize our true nature.
It is ignorance to feel that we know everything already. Unless there is a pillar to give us support, we cannot climb higher. Such pillars are our sacred scriptures. Those who wish to rise in the air without taking any support, reject the Vedas and the knowledge that they give. Such knowledge as what is contained in the Vedas is available elsewhere in other scriptures also. Many such people who reject the established theories decide to think differently from everyone else. They do not like to follow tradition. They like to arrive at their own individual conclusions. Such people often mislead others. They like to do everything in a contrary manner.
Some spies informed such a king about the goings on in his enemies’ kingdoms. O king, we wish to inform you of some important things. The king rejected their words. He behaved as if he knew everything. The spies returned after a while and said: The enemies have occupied your entire kingdom. If you wish to think differently, you will not remain alive to think even. You must act at once. The king drew his sword to show his power. Only the handle was there, no sword. The minister said: you wished to be different. So I have converted your sword to be different. How can such a king defend himself against his enemies?
Sadguru tells us that we are Paramatma. It is the greatest energy booster. We are not the body. Our strength is not limited to our body’s strength. Like Hanuman, we must cross the ocean of life and approach Mother Sankari in Lanka. We go there not to see Ravana, but to see the Paramatma Shakti. Jambavan praised Hanuman and reminded him of his immense power and assured him that he could leap across the ocean effortlessly. Sadguru does the same for us.
We boast that we have reached the moon. Hanuman reached even the Sun. Every living being has the power to do as Hanuman did. But instead of rising higher, we are traveling downward. We must rise high. We must grow to reach the Paramatma. Do not get discouraged with the thought that when everything and everyone is merging in Paramatma, I too will perish, and I have no hope; why should I strive to rise? Use devotion, Yoga, or Veda, and rise higher.
Whatever path you may choose, when you relax after your immense effort, then you will feel the revelation of God. With that experience you realize your true nature. It is not reaching somewhere. It is realizing the truth. There is only one Truth. Different sciences and Sastras are merely aids to guide us in our path. Logically we must proceed in the direction of God, following Sadguru’s instructions. We are not having the correct perception.
Vedanta clears our perception. It shows us the right way to proceed.
Unmesha nimishotpanna vipanna bhuvanavalihi …
Within the blink of an eyelid, Creation and Destruction take place by God’s will. God’s eyes are so big. How long does it take for Him to open His eyes? How long does it take for Him to close His eyes? We have no time calculations to measure that.
We begin the discussion with Creation that merges in God. It is again re-created. The cycle repeats. The process of Creation is now explained.
God willed that there should be the sun and the moon. As God resolved, the Sun came into existence. God willed that the Sun should rise. Diva is light or day; Divakara means one who gives knowledge of God. Nisha is night. Sun is the greatest entity that we can see. NASA sometimes sends us good pictures. When you approach the Sun and take a picture of the earth, the earth appears as a tiny speck. The sun will be amused at our antics. He will look at us with compassionate pity at our feelings of self-importance.
Creation begins with the Sun. The rays of the sun travel towards us without any effort on his part. Without his knowledge, like water that flows down the slopes of a mountain, or like boulders that roll down the sloping hills without their effort, similarly, the sun radiates light without any effort on his part. Spreading light is beyond his control. He merely follows the will of God. It just happens. Surya’s duty is to give us light rays. It is by the law of God that the sun shines.
A person, who opens his eyes with awareness, recognizes the sun. One, who does not do so, does not know and will not recognize the sun. Trillions and zillions of years or beyond Time’s capacity for calculation, God made a will or a resolve that there should be light. Swamiji resolves not to feed us for a day or two, but for an unlimited time; he wills that we also should get Jnana. The vision of great souls far exceeds our imagination.
Our solar system is what is visible to us. But there are countless such solar systems in Creation. Creation does not occur from God’s ignorance. It is His will and resolve, to bring this Creation into existence. He has created the living creatures and has given this process called birth, growth and maturity that leads from birth to death. Everything takes time. But our time scales are different. Some people shoot an entire movie in 24 hours.
We speak about this huge egg – guddu (in Telugu) – like in good morning. There are many such eggs. This egg is covered. Akrot is a nut, a walnut which has a hard shell with a nut inside that looks like the brain. It is hard outside but a soft nice edible nut is inside. The huge sphere here is this Brahmanda/great egg. We are only concerned about our home, our universe with the 14 worlds in it. There are countless such Brahmandas in Creation. Beyond them all is Paramatma.
Aneka koti brahmanda Janani – Mother of the Universe which contains countless Brahmandas – a descriptive name of Mother Goddess in the Lalita Sahasranama.
The entire Creation by God is beyond the scope of our understanding. So, we confine ourselves here to our solar system and the earth. Like a walnut it is. It is a Jyotischakram/wheel of light. It is the abode of the gods, celestials, demons, and also all other objects and living creatures. This universe/Brahmanda is now being talked about by Sri Rama.
Kalpitaha kalpamatrena – In this Creation that occurred simply by the imagination of God, in the celestial land are the deities; on earth are the humans and other creatures; underground in Patala are the reptiles like snakes. God’s imagination is responsible for our existence. This illusion is God’s imagination. We are the puppets in his play. We are not all separate from Him. He becomes everyone. But he does not draw us back into Him on His own. It is up to us to strive to go back to Him.
Anugraham – if you have the desire to capture Him, then He will shower His grace. Only those who approach Sadguru will be blessed by him. Swamiji decided that only those who desire to reach Him will receive His guidance and grace. When He began giving His grace freely to everyone in the early days, His grace was not valued by the recipients. Only if you show the initiative, you will gain His grace.
God made this creation. He created the stages of life from birth to old age to death. If there is Jnana, it is understood that only the body disintegrates. One is not the body. One does not die.
In the Deha Jugupsa sarga, Sri Rama had explained that the body is unreliable. The body will desert us. It shows no gratitude for all the care that it has receives from us. All those whose bodies have left them, are still with us. Not as ghosts as some might imagine wrongly, but as the all-pervasive eternal soul that blesses us all the time. That is the difference between negative and positive thinking. The departed souls remain with us as the all-pervasive soul, protecting us.
If this order or sequence were not there, Creation would have become chaotic. If the body were to always remain strong, we would become arrogant. That is what happened to King Kartaveeryarjuna in spite of all the great teachings that he received from Lord Dattatreya. His body was ever strong and fit. It got to his head and he misbehaved. That is why Parasurama came to destroy his ego.
The battle against us takes place with the five arrows of Manmatha, which keep attacking our five sense organs. We have to fight against this god of desire. Hatha yoga or Jnana? Which of the two is more effective to fight against desire? What Matsyendranatha, the first incarnation of Dattatreya, the Adi Guru said on the subject, we do not know. We have lost his teachings. Gorakhnath has declared in the work Gorakh Samhita, that Jnana is more effective than Hatha Yoga in overcoming desires. With Jnana, our victory is sustained. We do not lose our control again and again.
Manmatha’s attacks are not straightforward and direct. His battle against us is not carried out in a dharma marga/righteous way. It is crooked and devious. Each arrow of his attacks each of our sense organs.
With us, there is an excessive obsession with the world. That is the source of our troubles. Our Kama/desires have overtaken us. Without lust and desires, there is no continuance of this creation. Kama with his arrows is battling against us. Before we have even realized that we are being attacked and that we going to lose, we have already fallen to the ground. In Soundarya Lahari, his team and his manner of attack are fully described. Siva destroyed Manmatha, this god of desire, and Mother Goddess revived him.
Kama sanjeevanaushadhihi – is how Mother Goddess is described in the Lalita Sahasranama.
Manmatha/one, who troubles the mind, is ever defeating us in his battle against us. His attack is unjust. He stabs us from the back. We must be alert and aware to guard ourselves against this attack.
Some smells like chloroform make us lose consciousness. Such powerful smells are sent towards us by Manmatha. We fall from our wisdom. Our mind, body, and life should be healthy and happy. We should continuously be journeying towards enlightenment. Manmatha prevents us from doing so.
Springtime is Manmatha’s accomplice. Spring is personified here like an intoxicated elephant. It rains flowers and the environment becomes fragrant. We forget ourselves with the intoxicating smells of springtime. Some types of smoke make us dizzy. More than the smokers, the secondary inhalers of smoke suffer more. The smell is powerful. No need to eat or drink anything else. We fall into delusion, fear, and infatuation. The mind will not be in our control any longer. We succumb to ignorance. Vasanta/spring pervades the atmosphere and makes us lose control of our minds. That is how Creation began and that is how it continues.
Even those with discretion suffer from the attacks of Manmatha. Even great souls become his targets and victims. Is the mind healthy? Only Kriya Yoga keeps the mind healthy and strong with Pranayama. Body’s age becomes unimportant. Yoga keeps the body healthy.
By God’s resolve we have come. We must utilize this opportunity to know Him and merge back into Him. By God’s grace Kama acquired the strength to battle against us without openly declaring war.
This tree called body should be kept healthy. The mind, which is the seed, must be kept healthy and well protected. The tree is supported by the earth. The earth should be healthy and well fertilized. Otherwise the tree will be attacked by pests and will get destroyed. Mind has no age. It does not grow old. One must have compassion towards others. One must have the desire to serve others. Such a one makes progress in attaining peace.
Buddha is remembered by Sri Rama. Not Gautama Buddha. This Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu that took place in the Krita Yuga. Once, Vishnu incarnated as Buddha to distract the demons from their pursuit of wisdom to use it for wrong purposes. Jina is also mentioned as one who has controlled the senses. Great souls incarnate. They do not take birth. They descend for our sake, and come down to our level. Buddha alone is the happy one, because he is in control of his mind. He is a Jnani. He is blissful in his Self-realization. If we chase after strain, we get more exhausted. Only with Jnana we will gain rest.
One unfortunate thing about Gautama Buddha is that no disciple of Buddha has received full Jnana. Their scripture is incomplete. The scripture that is available is not satisfactory to our understanding. It is incomplete and not accepted by Vedanta, especially their Sunya Vada/argument supporting Void. Their religious scriptures remain incomplete. Buddha’s teaching is not complete. Buddha’s penance and his enlightenment are acknowledged. His method of ahimsa is accepted and acclaimed. But His philosophy has not been adequately explained. His training of his four main disciples has remained unfinished.
These words of Sri Rama are spoken just before he was to become the crown prince. His wealth is unimaginable. He is not speaking from depression. Despite possessing the greatest wealth, he is teaching us that bliss does not come from possessions. He is speaking words of wisdom for our benefit.
Creation was mentioned; then, the mischief of Manmatha was described; and now in the proper sequence, he is explaining about how to attain bliss.
Man does not hesitate even to stoop to murder to gain personal worldly happiness. We keep exhausting our life span chasing after sinful pursuits.
If we take an overview, we began with the discussion of Deva Durvilasa. Can even a computer calculate the waves of the ocean or the flames of the fire of Time of Deva Durvilasa? No. No one can measure these. Only some can be counted. There is no end to the examples of the evil acts of time. It is better to concentrate on the good things in creation, and the right path to find Truth. Reconcile that the waves cannot be counted. Just acknowledge the presence of the ocean with its countless waves. Search for the truth rather than counting the faults in creation and the acts of time. But Sri Rama is deviating from the subject.
Greed and avarice are like a wild shrub in which we are caught in the net like animals in a jungle. A countless series of our lifetimes are wasted.
The Bhagavad Gita mentions ‘urdhva moolam’ – the tree of life which grows upside down, with its roots up above and the branches spreading downwards. The creepers are like the ropes which are used for us to get strangled. We keep committing sins that do not yield any desirable fruits. Even the wise become trapped. We keep wasting our lives preoccupied with our futile relationships in life. Without paying any attention to Sadguru’s words, without practicing any faith or devotion, we waste our lives. If this is not Deva Durvilasa, the unfair game of Time, then, what is?
Whoever is seeking to know the Truth, will attain Liberation. Today it is spring; today it is a different season, the rainy season; merely being engrossed thus in the external illusion and the falsehood, the whole world is perishing, except for a few. The entire creation is headed the wrong way. It should not be that way, says Sri Rama.
27th sarga is Nissreyasa virodhibhava – That which is preventing liberation.
That which is preventing our success, is leading us towards what is transient and fleeting. We should be friends with what will lead us towards the eternal truth and not what draws us away from it. After reviewing all that went before, Sri Rama proceeds ahead with the next important topic.
For this Chaturmasya, we conclude with this. Whatever we have been able to learn and cover, we will utilize this knowledge. Haste is useless here. This is only a comma, not a full stop. This is just a brief interval.
All the 8 yogas, and the 4 sadhana methods cannot be all completed in haste. If this introduction can be retained in our minds, we will put it to use later. After the tour is completed, we will resume these discourses. After the completion of the Chaturmasya, a Vijaya Yatra, a victory tour is going to be undertaken. Several places will be visited.
Yogasangeeta viewers are watching. Madhu Gopinath and Hira Duvvuri are giving translations in English. It is a Sadhana and an Upasana. I pray for Sadguru’s blessings upon them. It is tough to do such translations. They are giving almost 90% of the content. I did not realize that they were doing this service until someone informed me. I checked their writings and am happy about it. It will be nice to publish the English translation.
May Sadguru bless me to continue teaching this and bless you to learn more by listening. I am very happy to be giving these discourses. This is a very tough undertaking. It is like keeping the hand in the snake pit. It was daring to begin it.
This complete text of Yoga Vasishtha has come to me as a gift from by grandfather Sri Narahari Teertha Swami, by the grace of Sri Jayalakshmi Mata, Sadguru Sri Swamiji, and Sri Rama’s grace. Sri Narasimha Sastry, my grandfather had read this in 1973. He had studied it even earlier in his youth with Sri Dasambhotlu. He made some important notes with tick/check marks. This work is Amrita. Every drop of it is nectar.
Do not come here out of any sense of compulsion. Many have willingly come to listen. Those who initially forced themselves to come have begun to enjoy listening to these teachings. Many have expressed their joy at listening to these lectures. I am very happy. It is a very favorite work of Sadguru.
We must not leave the source. We must closely adhere to the original work. The Vairagya Prakarana was not completed. There are 33 sargas. We are now at the 27th. With Appaji’s blessings, I would like to continue this discourse. May all who have been listening attain siddhi/thorough grasp, in this knowledge. We must not get distracted with doubts and questions while listening. Listen with full concentration. Any questions you have, you note down and ask me at the very end. It is most likely that by then you will not have remaining doubts. We will try to resolve the doubts if any are left. Since we have been blessed with this source material which is very valuable, the Sadguru has shown us the way to proceed along with it. Why not follow this smooth path? Why tread the thorny path? Once the knowledge is gained, all doubts will be dispelled. All three Vidyas/lines of highest spiritual study, Atma Vidya, Maha Vidya, and Sri Vidya are one and the same. They are like milk, sugar and coffee decoction. Mix all the three to make coffee. All the three are merged here in this work.
Today is Ananta Padmanabha Vratam. If it is in the family tradition, please do continue. Do not give up the tradition. Find out from the family elders. It removes all Sarpa Doshas/serpent curses. In Kerala, the wealth of Ananta Padmanabha Swami was revealed recently when they opened some secret chambers. He became a richer deity than Tirupati’s Lord Venkateshwara. That event has made this Vratam even more famous.
Mekedatu has a good program in progress. Navaratri is approaching. All those who can come, please come and have darshan.
O purnamadah purnamidam purnat purnamudacyate
Purnasya purnamadaya purnamevavasishyate
Om Santissantissantihi
Sri Krishnarpanamastu
Sri Guru charanaravindarpanamastu
Sri Guru Datta