Burst Forty Seven (For Youth):
Holding Truth Tightly
The diagnosis of the terrible state of affairs of human life can be summed up in one phrase, “departure from truth”. Lack of peace, tremendous amount of psychological turmoil and finding our existence itself meaningless are all the result of our losing our hold on truth, which happened at some time with or without our noticing it. So the old prayer goes, “O Lord, lead me from the false to the true.
The voice of traditional religion puts it, “Hold God tightly”.Sri Ramakrishna, the sage of Dakshineshwar, appealed, “Hold God with the second hand when one of your hands is at work; when the work gets over, hold Him with both the hands.” Those saintly thinkers who made no room for God in their philosophy (like the Buddha or J Krishnamurti) highlighted the importance of “staying aware” all the time. The Vedanta declared awareness (Consciousness) to be the supreme truth. The Upanishads pointed out the limitations of thought and word, and insisted that the truth is not any verbal or mental concept.
It is easier to recognize slipping from truth than it is to know that we are staying with truth. Disorder of many kinds results, when we move away from truth. Our actual life gets filled with dullness or aggressiveness and all our scholarship just cannot help us touch the ground of true peace. Our knowledge and our various skills fill our stomachs only (bhuktaye, na tu muktaye3) and fail in bestowing upon us real cheerfulness. We succeed in laughing loudly during our public appearances while our private life bleeds with countless personal wounds.
Falsehood becomes an entanglement which keeps us continuously and endlessly busy. Our conscience whispers here and there but we ignore its words of caution. We say to ourselves, “Just a little more time; I shall set this one more matter right; then I am fully available to truth.” Alas, the web of deception keeps us trapped in it. All our notions of gradually coming out of it—step by step—remain just soothing concepts which hold no water really.
We just step aside, once for all. Let us go for truth right away. (Put God first, here and now.) Let us wake up from our slumber in one instant, walk forth and not look back at the bed again. There are no steps to awareness; we just have to stand apart from thoughts and stay firm. There is no use hunting for the causes of various problems in our (mental) life. all analysis with our limited intellect, also can lead us nowhere. We cannot reach the timeless truth through the corridors of time. It is by totally negating time (cause and effect) that we discover the ground of no time.
The endless theories of this world about gaining self-perfection are only the pleasurable occupation of a clever mind. Through such modes of self-development, the mind (the self, the ego) sustains itself. All these paths and ways of self-improvement are as though funded by Falsehood Inc. The show goes on. One rare soul smells something fishy about the whole thing and question it all.She then holds truth itself (and not the well-conceived system / path to truth).
As long as we imagine a going, our journey never ends. We must go through life without thinking about the process of going. Thinking binds us. The thought, “ I have come quite far; now I have just a little more to go,” keeps the “I” strong and steady.When there is no thought and therefore no judging, the truth shines forth on its own. The thought, “ I have wasted my life in worldly pursuits,” is known to be bondage; even the thought, “ I have worked hard for my liberation, I have left no stone unturned,” is also equally bondage. True freedom is freedom from thought itself. The silent mind is the seat of this freedom.
Swami Chidananda
Varanasi, October 11, 2006
End notes:
1 asato maa sad-gamaya (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajurveda)
2. prajnanam brahma- Aitareya Upanishad, Rigveda
3. viveka-Choodamani: verse 60