Insisting On Sādhana
Many gurus and swāmīs don’t insist on continued disciplines and sādhanas after a few inner accomplishments have been made. The beginning is the end of the course to them. These gurus and swāmīs are modern, and often take an easy approach of not putting excessive demands upon themselves or their devotees. Traditional Sanātana Dharma, however, insists on daily sādhana for the enlightened one who desires a greater on-going transformation and for the unenlightened who has little or no anticipation of becoming enlightened.
Pūjā bells are heard ringing before sunrise throughout the homes of India in every city. In these early morning hours, men and women are priests and priestesses in their own home. Children learn ślokas; haṭha yoga is a daily exercise; prāṇāyāma is done for maintaining a healthy mind and body. Discipline is the criterion of being a good citizen. In Hinduism it happens to be a religious discipline. The effects of abandoning the earlier yogas upon reaching a certain stage of spiritual unfoldment for gurus and swāmīs is reflected in the lives of their students. When they began to teach, they would not be inclined to take their devotees through the beginning stages; they would not impart the practices of the first two mārgas—charyā and kriyā. They would be more inclined to start the beginners out at the upper stages, where they themselves are now, and abandon the beginning stages. This would be, and is, a mistake, one which many gurus and swāmīs have lived to regret when their own disciples began to compete with them or turned sour when unable to attain the expected results. Traditionally, the character has to be built within the devotee as a first and foremost platform before even the hint of an initiation into inner teaching is given. This purifying preparation involves repentance, confession and reconcilation through traditional prāyaśchitta, penance, to mitigate kukarmas. This crucial work often takes years to accomplish.
Once some level of enlightenment has been attained, this is the time to intensify the sādhana, not to let up. When we let up on ourselves, the instinctive mind takes over. We are still living in a physical body. Therefore, one foot must always be kept firmly on the head of the snake of the instinctive-intellectual nature. The higher we go, the lower we can fall if precaution is not taken. Therefore, we must prepare devotees for a sudden or slow fall as well. They should land on the soft pillows of consistent daily sādhana, worship of God, Gods and guru, and the basic religious practices of karma yoga and bhakti yoga. Without these as a platform, they may slide down in consciousness, below the mūlādhāra, into the chakras of fear, anger, doubt and depression.
The scriptures are filled with stories of certain ṛishis who reached high levels, but had given up all their bhakti and japa. When difficult personal karma came, each fell deep into the lower nature, way below the mūlādhāra, to become demon-like to society rather than a holy seer and a guiding force.
The whole idea that bhakti is for beginners is a modern expedient. It was created by modern people who do not want to do the daily sādhanas, who do not believe the Gods really exist and who are so bound in their individual personality that they do not accept the reality that God is in and within everything. This nonbelief, lack of faith, changes their values very slowly at first, but changes them nonetheless into those that cry, “Personal freedom is what is sought, making the little ego big, and then bigger.” Traditional disciplines and the spiritual teachers who know them so well nowadays come under the purview of these “free thinkers,” later to regret it. This is similar to children being the head of the house, telling their parents what they will do, and what they will not do.
Only the strongest and bravest souls can succeed in enlightenment and maintain and develop it until true wisdom comes as a boon. Therefore, we reaffirm, having attained a small degree of enlightenment, or a fuller enlightenment, stay enlightened, because mukti, the transference from the physical body through the top of the head at the point of death, has not yet occurred. And only after that happens are we enlightened forever. This is the beginning of the ultimate merging with Śiva in a physical body! Thereafter follows viśvagrāsa, the final, final, final merger whence there is no return, where jīva has in reality become Śiva, as a bowl of water poured into the ocean becomes the ocean. There is no difference and no return.