Clinging to the Light Within
Many years ago, during the spring at our Mountain Desert Monastery, a young man wrote to me saying that he intended to give up the world and become a Hindu monk. Here is a letter that I wrote in response and an inspired talk I sent to him to ponder, entitled “On the Brink of the Absolute.”
“Namaste! Your lovely letter arrived just as I returned to the monastery today from our India Odyssey pilgrimage to my āśrama in Alaveddy, Sri Lanka, and eight other countries. That good timing indicates that you are on an inner beam, no doubt from the efforts already expended in your spiritual quest. From your letter, it is certain that you have exhausted the many dead-end trails on the path. Your decision to be a renunciate monastic is a good one. It is a big step and I know you have thought it over well. Times are changing. Dedicated souls like yourself are needed as helpers on the path in our monastic orders to stabilize and teach those who are seeking. It is time now for the Western mind to rediscover the vast teachings of Śaiva Siddhānta Hinduism.
“I am going to give you the first of many challenges we may share together in this life. It is to meditate deeply every day for one full month on a talk I once gave to a small gathering of maṭhavāsis, monks, at the San Francisco Temple. In fact, it was August 28, 1960. Like you, they were beginning to experience the blissful and peaceful areas of their inner being, and we spoke of enlightened insights one has on the very brink of the Absolute. You will be challenged by this assignment. Remember, the rewards are more than worth the effort required.
“It is my duty as your spiritual teacher to assure you that there will be trials. The sannyāsin’s life is not easy. It will demand of you more than you ever thought possible. You will surely be asked to serve when tired, to inspire when you feel a little irritated, to give when it seems there is nothing left to offer. To drop out of this great ministry would not be good for you or for those who will learn to depend on you. A Hindu monastic order is not a place to get away from the world. You must teach us and yourself to depend on you, so that twenty or thirty years from now others will find strength in you as you fulfill your karmic destiny as a spiritual leader in this life.
“Therefore, read carefully these words. Weigh your life and consider well where you wish to devote your energies. The goal, of course, is Self Realization. That will come naturally. A foundation is needed first, a foundation nurtured through slow and arduous study, through sādhana performed and the demands placed by the guru upon the aspirant.
“This is a wonderful crossroad in your life. Do not hurry into it. Do this assignment and should you wish a more disciplined and intense training, do sādhana. Settle your affairs of the world. Then we can sit together.”
ON THE BRINK OF THE ABSOLUTE: The higher states of consciousness very few people are familiar with, having never experienced them. They are very pleasant to learn of, and yet out of our grasp until we have that direct experience of a higher state of expanded consciousness. The mind, in its density, keeps us from the knowledge of the Self. And then we attain a little knowledge of the existence of the Self as a result of the mind freeing itself from desires and cravings, hates and fears and the various and varied things of the mind. I say “things” because if you could see hate, you would see it as a thing that lives with one as a companion. If you could see fear, you’d see it as a thing, and as understanding comes, that thing called fear walks away down the road, never to return.
As you unfold spiritually, it is difficult to explain what you find that you know. At first you feel light shining within, and that light you think you have created with your mind, and yet you will find that, as you quiet your mind, you can see that light again and again, and it becomes brighter and brighter, and then you begin to wonder what is in the center of that light. “If it is the light of my True Being, why does it not quiet the mind?”
Then, as you live the so-called “good life,” a life that treats your conscience right, that light does get brighter and brighter, and as you contemplate it, you pierce through into the center of that light, and you begin to see the various beautiful forms, forms more beautiful than the physical world has to offer, beautiful colors, in that fourth-dimensional realm, more beautiful than this material world has to offer. And then you say to yourself, “Why forms? Why color, when the scriptures tell me that I am timeless, causeless and formless?” And you seek only for the colorless color and the formless form. But the mind in its various and varied happenings, like a perpetual cinema play, pulls you down and keeps you hidden within its ramifications.