The Tree of Life -3.8: Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, 26 Jan 2024 07:25.

Discourse 3: Severing the Root of this Tree of Life - 8.

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The thought of God is the real axe that strikes at the very root of this tree of phenomenal experience. We cannot find any other axe to cut at the root of this tree. Axes made of steel or iron will not be able to cut this tree. Because this tree is not physical, a physical axe will not work here. It is a cosmic tree. It is a tree that is spread out everywhere, and perhaps its roots are also everywhere. Inasmuch as this is the situation, the weapon that we have to employ in laying low this tree of life should also be equally powerful.

It is not possible to overcome this illusion of phenomen. It is impossible of crossing and impossible of handling. With the furthest stretch of imagination and the greatest of effort conceivable, it is beyond us. But, mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te: The resort of the mind to God is the positive step which will at once annul all movement of the mind in the direction of objects of sense. The love of God engulfs the loves for everything else in the world.

How does the love of God swallow every other love? This is another problem for seekers of Truth. There have been complaints and complaints that even after meditation on God one has not been able to sever oneself from affection to things. It is our daily experience that when we think of God, our mind goes to a shop, to a bazaar. It goes to a club. It goes to anything. Why does it go like this? Because we have, unfortunately, limited God-thought to an object-thought. For us, God also is an object like any other object. Maybe He is a larger object, but nevertheless He is some kind of existence somewhere, to concentrate upon which we have to exert much. And the mind, being aware that there are also other things external to the ideal of God on which we are trying to meditate, seeks immediate satisfaction. The mind wants immediate satisfaction; it is not satisfied with remote promises. The immediate hunger of the mind is its prominent concern just at this moment. We have been told many a time that religion cannot be taught to hungry stomachs, and this psychology applies here. The mind is hungry, and we cannot fill its stomach with a remote God-thought which is religion.

The thought of God or the love of God can engulf all other loves only if it is as vast as everything, like the ocean itself. The ocean swallows up all the drops, but one drop cannot engulf another drop. If the mind persists in its notion that God is also one of the objects, a content in the universe, then it will not be possible to withdraw the mind from the thought of objects.

Love for things in the world can melt in the menstruum of God-experience only when God-thought is inclusive of all other affections. The affection or love for God is not a love that is different from other loves, but it is a transcendent love which includes all other loves, just as the values of the dream world are included in the values of the waking world. When we wake up from dream, we do not have a feeling of loss. The mind does not run towards the treasures which it might have had in dream. Is a beggar in the waking state sorry that he has lost the kingdom he had in dream? A beggar on the road might have dreamt yesterday night that he was an emperor, but when he woke up into the consciousness of a beggar he was not grieved. He was not sorry because the beggarhood of waking is superior to the kinghood of dream. Though it is true that the beggar is not happier than the king, the consciousness is what matters. It is not the content of consciousness, but the nature of consciousness itself.

Likewise, if our thought of God or our love for God or devotion to God can assume the nature of a higher degree and a greater vastness than the thought which is moving towards external objects, then the mind will be happy at the very thought of God. But there is a subtle suspicion in the mind that it has lost something in the world when it is moving towards the idea of God. We may not be consciously, deliberately feeling that it is so, but we have deeper levels of the psyche. The heart has a reason which the reason does not know. Our feelings inside will speak a different language from the operations of the reason working in the waking condition. Our real friends are in the subconscious and unconscious levels. Our waking friends are not real friends, and they will whisper into our ears that we are making a mistake, that these dacoits are our brothers and we belong to that group while we appear to be friends with the waking world of things, which is far from the truth.

To be continued

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