Pravachan 3 : Introduction to Spirituality (Part 3)

Even though each one of us is struggling for happiness, our lives are filled with challenges and stress. To lead a stress free and happy life, one has to practice spirituality which means that Spiritual practice is necessary.

Chanting and spiritual practice not only hastens our spiritual progress and gives peace of mind but it also has a good impact on our daily lives. Spiritual practice helps a person to develop an ideal personality, hence today many of Multi-National Companies (MNCs) are giving importance to spiritual quotient along with Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ). Therefore, spirituality is given a lot of importance worldwide, hence we all should look into it too.

 

1. Spirituality is science of action/ implementation.

In Spirituality, only 2% importance is given to theory, while 98% importance is given to implementation of theoretical learning. Let us understand a story about the same.

Once upon a time a scholar was crossing a river in a boat. There were only two people on the boat, the scholar and the boatman. The scholar gave references of various books and asked the boatman whether he had read them. The boatman answered with a ‘no’. The scholar replied saying, ‘You have wasted your life by not studying these books’. As they were discussing, suddenly the water started gushing in the boat. Noticing this, the boatman asked the scholar, ‘Sir, can you swim? Our boat is about to sink’. To this, the scholar replied, ‘I have read and gained knowledge from many books but I do not know to swim’. In such a case, the scholar’s bookish knowledge was of no use. Similarly, to sail in boat of life across this infinite ocean we must not limit ourselves to theoretical knowledge, but put it into practice.

While chanting some of them had good experience and some had experienced distress. The reason behind this is God gives experience according to an individual’s faith in God, destiny and need of spiritual experience. It is necessary that, we should practice chanting regularly. Some may get spiritual experiences very early while it may be delayed for some.

As per spiritual science, chants are not mere formation of words but along with words it has roop (form), rasa (taste / flavor), gandha (smell/ fragrance) etc., example, when we call out name of a person we recall the face of that person. When we think about a dish, we recall its taste and memories connected to it. When we say the word ‘fire (Agni)’, we remember the flames of fire, we also remember the light and heat coming from it. In the same way, when we chant the name of God with immense faith, then we imbibe virtues of God and develop love towards Him.

 

2. Benefits of chanting God’s name

2 a. Restriction-free spiritual practice of chanting God’s name

The greatest benefit of chanting God’s name is that this spiritual practice has no restrictions related to place and time and ritualistic purity (bathing, shaucha-ashaucha, sovale-ovale). The rules of rituals (Karmakand) are not applicable to chanting because it is simply an act of remembering God (Ishwar). Chanting God’s name is a spiritual practice according to the path of devotion (Bhakti Yoga).

2 b. Destiny becoming bearable due to chanting God’s name

The severity of destiny reduces and becomes bearable due to chanting God’s name.

2 c. Increases concentration

One can please God with chanting. It also increases our concentration. Hence students should chant for a while before sitting for studies.

2 d. Gaining a Sadguru by chanting God’s name

An individual needs Guru’s Grace for making spiritual progress in his life. In today’s society, one can see many people ‘making a Guru’ for themselves, that is, they themselves decide that a particular Saint is their Guru. However, saying or assuming such a thing has no significance. From the spiritual perspective, it should be the Guru who accepts a person as his disciple (Shishya) and not the other way around. The most important benefit of chanting God’s name is that one can gain a Sadguru automatically. It is good to get the chant (Guru mantra) from the Sadguru Himself, but even if one doesn’t meet a Sadguru, one can continue chanting because that is what brings a Sadguru into one’s life.

2 e. Attaining rapid spiritual progress due to chanting God’s name

There are various paths for attaining liberation (Moksha). Spiritual science says: ‘Each individual has a unique nature and so there are as many spiritual paths towards liberation as there are people in this world.’ Spiritual progress can be made rapidly by chanting God’s name.

2 f. Liberation (Sadgati) due to chanting while on deathbed

It is said that a person attains liberation if he chants while he is on his deathbed. However, if a person has never chanted throughout his life, how will he remember God’s name while on his deathbed? If one has to remember God’s name during one’s final moments, one has to chant God’s name during his lifetime.

2 g. Chanting God’s name converts action (Karma) to non-action (Akarma)

Good deeds result in acquiring merits whereas bad deeds result in demerits. If one has to make spiritual progress, one has to go beyond merits and demerits. For going beyond merits and demerits, one’s actions have to become non-actions. For a deed to become Akarma-Karma, one has to chant God’s name continuously while performing the deed. Chanting God’s name destroys the demerits acquired due to bad deeds that are performed unknowingly.

There is a saying that ‘God’s name has the capacity to destroy infinite amounts of sins. There is no sin that can be committed by man in this world that cannot be destroyed by chanting God’s name.’ If we chant His name with complete faith, will God not uplift us?

 

3. How does chanting work?

We discussed about the benefits of chanting at various levels. Now, let us try to understand how exactly chanting works.

3 a. Subtle body (Lingadeha)

According to the science of spirituality, a human being is made up of a gross body and a subtle body. Gross body is our physical body. The subtle body is made up of the soul and the covering that it develops due to the Great Illusion (Maya). Everything in nature – both living and non-living is created by God. We may be knowing this in theory but may not be constantly relating to it.

3 b. The four fold antahkaran

The subtle body comprises of 4 parts – Mind, subconscious mind, intellect and ego. Let us try to understand the functions of these.

b 1. Mind

What does the mind do? “Sankalpa Vikalpakatmakam manaha |”. Mind is tuned to think. The thought process includes positive thoughts, negative thoughts, desires, feelings and emotions. The mind is very undecisive. It keeps on contemplating about whether it should do a particular task or not or to switch to something else, but is not able to make a decision.

b 2. Intellect

The intellect deals with the decision making process. ‘Nischayatmika Budhihi’: The intellect is able to differentiate between what is good and bad and then take a decision. The controlling entity for driving the thoughts into action is the intellect. For example, at times we find ourselves caught in two minds on whether to do a particular thing. The intellect is the body which makes the decision here.

b.3. Chitta (Sub conscious mind)

This is a storehouse of lot of memories. All the actions related to our body, sense organs, mind, intellect and ego and the repercussions & memories associated with them are saved in the subconscious mind.

b 4. Ego

The part of the mind which attributes to ‘I’ness is ego. The feeling that something happened because of ‘ME’ is ego. I was able to do something good, or others are not able to do some task as good as I can etc are all examples of ego.

3 c. Parts of mind as per modern science

As per modern science, mind has two parts – the conscious mind which is generally referred to as mind, and the subconscious mind which we call as ‘Chitta’. Our mind is active all the time. We would have noticed that our mind is constantly occupied with thoughts even if we are idly seated at a place doing nothing at all. The conscious mind constitutes 10% of our mind while the subconscious mind constitutes 90% of the mind.

As the name suggests, our conscious mind is conscious at all times. Our normal thoughts and emotions are linked to the conscious mind. The inner mind or subconscious mind is named as ‘Chitta’ in spiritual terms.

The inner mind is a godown of all thoughts and emotions. It is a storehouse of all experiences, emotions, thoughts and desires. The inner mind also has 2 parts. The upper part is the subconscious mind where all the actions related to our body, sense organs, mind, intellect and ego and the repercussions & memories associated with them are saved in various centers. These centers are the origin of various thoughts in our mind. Based on the needs, these thoughts surface and spring up into the conscious mind.

The other part of the inner mind is the unconscious mind. This is the storehouse of all memories and incidents. Since this is stored deeply within the mind, we often tend to forget about these incidents and we cannot get these thoughts to surface in the conscious mind at our will. When specific incidents occur, these thoughts could spring up and surface into the conscious mind.

3 d. Impressions of subconscious mind

There are various impressions and centers in subconscious mind.

In the subconscious mind, the desire center has persons desires, wants-aspirations, expectation collected there. In the like – dislike center, there are impressions related to a persons likes and dislikes. In the temperament center, persons qualities like honesty, promptness and defects like anger, laziness are stored. Talent center has impression of art, sports and impressions related to such kind of interests.

Normally the meaning of ‘sanskars’ (values) means good behaviour, thoughts and actions. In spirituality, ‘sanskars’ means the impressions of our attitude and actions in our unconscious mind. Impressions can be both good and bad. For example, impressions can be that of chanting God’s name and also that of abusing.

If a thought or action is repeated again and again, its impression get stronger and settles down in our subconscious mind (chitta). Impressions of not only this birth but that of many previous births are deeply stored in our subconscious mind. Every impression entraps one into the cycle of birth and death.

3 e. The benefits of making the impression of chanting stronger

By chanting continuously, the center of chanting (devotion center) gets stronger and other centers become weaker.

When impression of chanting starts becoming stronger, all unnecessary and unwanted thoughts start reducing. We feel like chanting more instead of being engaged in such thoughts. By this, one saves energy of mind from these unnecessary thoughts and mind begins to concentrate.

When mind starts engaging in chanting that is, remembering God, thoughts of worldly pleasures start reducing. Excessive wants also reduce. Due to the interest in chanting, the impression of like-dislike gets reduced and so the thoughts associated with it decrease too.

Later, when chanting takes place along with breathing a person starts to live in the present. Due to this impressions of past life events, preconceived notion, thoughts of future all get abolished and the person starts to live in the present and engages promptly in fulfilling his duties too.

In this way, as the impressions of chanting become stronger in the mind a good transformation is seen in that person. This is the way how chanting works at the mind level.

 

4. Importance of weekly spiritual discourse (satsang)

Chanting is the primary and important step in spiritual practice, but only doing chanting is not enough for rapid spiritual progress.

Sat means Truth that is God. Sang means company. Company means being with. Hence, Satsang means company of the Absolute Truth. Singing prayers and going for spiritual lectures, visiting temples, living in holy places, reading spiritual texts written by saints, keeping in touch with other seekers, visiting Saints or Guru, are examples of satsang.

In spiritual practice, chanting done with effort has 5%.importance. Being in the company of Saints and Satsang (Holy company) has 30% importance. One important benefit of satsang is that after all doubts are answered in satsang the spiritual practice is hastened. Misconceptions about spiritual practice if any, get cleared. We get spiritual experiences due to satsang. So the faith in spiritual practice increases. Chanting which normally needs to be done with effort, starts happening with ease in satsang. Positivity (satva guna) of a person increases in satsang.

In this satsang, practical aspects of spiritual practice will be taught. In short, guidance on how to overcome the obstacles in spiritual practice, how to control our mind, how to increase concentration of mind, how to implement spiritual practice in our daily lives, how to put in daily efforts for spiritual progress, all these will be taken in the satsangs. Our scriptures say that, human birth is the rarest among the 84 lakh births. Therefore human birth is meant for God realisation. By doing spiritual practice, we can get liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Individual guidance for becoming a good seeker and how to progress spiritually will be given in the satsang. Clarification of doubts, guidance on how to remove obstacles in spiritual practice, all such queries can be clarified in the satsang.