The Ideal Way to Get Really Close to God

Feb 9, 2004, 12.00am IST
Swami Sadyojat Shankarashram.

Once upon a time, a musk deer went searching for musk. Round and round the forest she went, month after month, quite unaware that the heady fragrance, so desperately sought by her, lay beneath her own belly button. Many times, we humans, too, behave like the musk deer. We search for self-realisation outside, blissfully unaware that it lies within us, all the while untapped.


To experience this bliss , however, the seeker has to put in a different sort of effort with regularity and devotion. One way lies through the world of forms, through the path of bhakti, where the seeker concentrates on any of the manifest forms of the Ultimate. The other more arduous way of knowledge involves seeking the truth as the Unmanifest, without any attributes. The former is called saguna upasana and the latter, nirguna upasana, of no-attributes.


“Of the two, which is superior?” the Pandava prince Arjuna asks Sri Krishna, his divine charioteer, in Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita. While both paths lead to the same goal, the way of no-forms is not an easy journey for ordinary mortals, the Lord replies. How do you grasp That, which lies beyond all epithets and qualities even as you control your senses and keep searching for the truth with absolute even-mindedness?
Much as you may want to do so, you just cannot reject maya or illusion overnight. You cannot suddenly deny all that your senses are taking in as unreal or non-existent. You can only pray to the Lord to part the curtains. This then is saguna upasana, where the seeker takes sole refuge with the Lord with unswerving faith or bhakti. And the Lord, in turn, assures the bhakta that He will indeed redeem him swiftly from the ocean of transmigratory existence, over which the shadow of death hovers permanently. To earn such grace, however, the devotee has to consecrate all his actions, offer all that he is, or does, to the god he worships. The devotee does not stop performing his duty, he only does what he has to do with constant awareness of his ultimate objective.


The best way to get immediate and everlasting peace, Krishna finally tells Arjuna, is through the renunciation of the fruit of all action. This means doing your duty with the full faith that the fruit, whatever it may be, is the prasad or blessing gifted by the Lord. Seeing this from the reverse perspective makes renunciation of the fruit of action the first step in the ladder to ultimate realisation. If you can be completely honest to yourself and truly act without clamouring for the fruit of your action, positive energy will be released. This will automatically lead you to higher levels of awareness. However, one also needs to guard against complacency as well as feverishness if one is to progress on this path of abhyasa.


“He who has schooled himself to rise above any rigidity; one who uses his judgment to accommodate change; he who is free from ego, envy, fear and anxiety; he who remains unaffected by all pairs of opposites such as praise or censure, joy or sorrow; he who is clean and compassionate, selfless and detached, and most important, one who feels, nay, exults in the knowledge that he is working through Me alone — such a devotee is extremely dear to me”, Krishna assures Arjuna. One who is thus enlightened relates to the world out of his own fullness and not out of any calculated need to seek anything from anyone.

(The writer is the 11th Mathadhipati of the Shri Chitrapur Saraswat Math. He will deliver a discourse at Kamani Auditorium in Delhi on February 11 at 6.30 p.m. Website: www.chitrapurmath.net)