Namaste to the SRV friends and devotees, and to all the smiling heads that encircle Mother Kali’s beautiful neck. May Her Munda Mala always aid and inspire.
As the unforgettable Summer of 2013 ends, leading into Autumn, we all are preparing for and looking forward to the October retreat at Windwood Waters and all that it has to offer us. There, many deep teachings of the Divine Mother of the Universe will be expressed, all in the intensely sweet atmosphere of Her wisdom songs and stotrams.
Songs from the heart imbued with wisdom, teachings in the rarefied precincts of holy company — how can we be fully ready for such gifts so as to render them perfectly effective in our lives. It is through qualification, so dear and essential to the core of all darshanas, whatever their religion or philosophy. Just as a torn or clogged filter will not render water pure and fit to drink, similarly will the unqualified mind fail to remove the unwanted sediment of negative and ignorant thoughts that pass, on a daily basis, through the human mental apparatus. The subtle digestive process in this regard will labor, even fail, leaving the aspirant lacking in spiritual nutrition, his/her sadhana devoid of any substantial progress.
Recent SRV teachings have settled, in part, on the tendency in people -– worldly and spiritually minded – to seek after ongoing experiences. This is understandable, given that, for the worldly, they are seeking pleasure and striving to avoid pain, and for the devotees, they are encouraged to get and have spiritual experiences. But the painful observation that merely going through experiences, one after another, does not make for advancement, and does not accrue the desired-for qualities such as contentment, peace of mind, and equanimity, only shows up glaringly in the end. This is rather like the poor farmer who, after going through all the efforts of plowing, fertilizing, and seeding the ground, only gazes sorrowfully at his lands at harvest time, wondering why no crops came forth.
To glean the essence from one’s experiences in life, then, is not a matter of merely having experiences. Of course, the quality of the experience has something to do with all this, but even then, bliss passes, enjoyment of wisdom passes, meditation passes — all things must pass. The teaching goes, then, that the focus must be shifted from having the experiences to being the Experiencer. In brief, experiences do not come from the outside; they all occur within you. You only need to stop seeking and start seeing, i.e., Holy Mother’s profound utterance, “Do not seek god, see God.”
Such spiritual stability is the qualification that transforms the passage of time and the presence of space into a single divine moment lived in the Land of Nondual Awareness. As Gaudapada has told us, you cannot produce anything. If you declare that you are producing a thing, then you are automatically admitting that it was unproduced before. How can something that is unproduced by nature, ever become produced? It must be a show, a “sleight of hand.” This same criteria for higher reason and clarity applies to the Soul, You. You are never “produced,” so how can your experiences be produced? They only rise and fall within you. Nature may be the external ground for them, but you are the Experiencer.
So, accomplish this crucial shift of perspective, make the move to Atmic abidance. Come out of the labyrinth of appearances. As Mother Kali’s Wisdom songs declare, “Dreamer awake; You must! You must!”
Peace, Peace, Peace.