Be What You Are Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha -4

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Be What You Are

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha




Most revered Gurudev,
With a heavy, sorrowful heart, I am writing this letter. I have just lost my saintly father. He was conscious till the last. Just before departing, he chanted the Holy Name of God, counted His Holy Name on his fingers. Before his sad demise I was the son of a learned, considerate father; now I am a fatherless, unfortunate son. My sorrow knows no bound. It is quite impossible for me to express in words how much my father meant to me.
My only consolation is that before his last breath he blessed me and wished my all-round peace and happiness. He has gone, but I am here. I am now like a boatman in an angry sea. I am puzzled, bewildered.
In the absence of my father, you are my father. So please console your helpless unfortunate son, bless him. At this moment you are the only support. You alone can help me in continuing my family life. I always pray to God for His blessings. Please pray for my departed father so that his soul may rest in peace.
At this painful stage of my life I am requesting you for one thing. I do not know the contents of your book "Quietitude of the Mind." I believe this book may give me peace in this painful and critical state of my life. So I most fervently pray to you to send me a copy of the book before my father's funeral rites are over. Just consider my appeal and do what is best for me. But I demand from you something this time – whatever it may be – even if it is a flower consecrated by you, it is invaluable to me.
No more today. Please send me a copy of the book "Quietitude of the Mind" and respond to my letter which will give me peace. With regards.
Your unfortunate son,

Dear and blessed son,
Harih Om Tat Sat. Your letter of the 12th came here yesterday. I am writing to you straightway. The book you asked for has been mailed already. It must reach you in time. From that book you will imbibe the lesson of immortality, and your own life from now on will enable you to actualize this lesson. The fulfillment lies in learning the truth in time and then in realizing it by a dedicated pursuit.
I understand your trouble and what the mind misses. But dear son, your father has fulfilled his role as a father in finally shedding this body, governed by the laws of the same Nature which at one time caused the event of his body's birth. Nature is full and carries her harmony in everything and at every time. Sometimes her course is queer. For queerness also has a place in her infinite variety. Should it not? Think well.
By continuing to live indefinitely, no purpose is served. In living and then in dying, in that alone, rests the wholesome purpose and duty of any human being. Does it strike as cruel or strange to you? Even then let me give you a bit of it, as perhaps your natural father has given! Will you resent it?
Let me ask: You are a father now to your children as your father was to you. Will you avoid later in life the fate which your father you say has caused to you now? Can you forestall your own death, and the resultant loss to your children? Why then construe unnecessary misery in what, through your father's death, has befallen your lot? Better wisdom lies in assimilating the event, understanding it in its own place, and developing a larger, deeper and higher mind and emotions. Nature is determined to breathe into us a full range of emotions with the one aim of making our perception comprehensive,
all-embracing. She has designed love, resentment, compassion, pain, grief, agony and what not, to be enjoyed or suffered from time to time. Every emotion has its own gift or curse appended to it. And through each the mind is destined to grow more and more mature and seasoned. The ultimate abode for the mind is the one called Shanti and Tripti (peace and contentment). In Shanti, Tripti is natural and effortless in attainment. Shanti is also an emotion, a very refined one, subtle, but extremely powerful. No human soul will find its equipoise, freedom or release except on reaching this subtle state of Shanti.
The grief which you are put to now is welcome in that it compels you to seek clarity and contentment through wisdom and realization. I have often said that in many cases the living relations are not able to teach the full import of life. Only the dead give the more valuable and lasting lessons to the living. Do not resent or refuse grief at any time. Let the mind, fed by it, bred by it, grow deeper and subtler. Let it rise to the more lofty dimensions, until at last it comes face to face with fulfillment in the blazing grace of pure wisdom, bringing with it the assurance of immortality.
About your father : I am happy he was saintly, and left the world as a saintly one to his son. It is a very rare privilege to be so. Generally a saint is never taken to be so by his blood relations. Even after death, the fact of blood-relationship eclipses the nobler reflections in the minds of the survivors. But in your case there is a definite difference. It is welcome in all ways.
As a son of his, you have a lot of benefits and gains. The thought that your father was so noble a soul is itself elevating. That will bless you more than it did while he was alive. What your father wished you to be in life and in spiritual evolution, try to be wholeheartedly. This must please your father, if he were by your side, and will be an ample
reward for yourself. Even by 'death', the saintly do teach the living. Learn that lesson too, and be guided by it.
Surely such a saintly one's soul must ever rest peacefully. The thought of God is itself the medicine for peace. One who has left his mortal frame upon this earth with God on the lips and in the heart is the most blessed. Let many more have this rare blessing.
I don't see you as unfortunate. You are one of the most fortunate. Maybe, it will take some time for you to realize this truth.
Should I say anything more? Words are said, heard or read. The better part lies in rumination, which must lead to the next step of feeling and experience. Until you overcome the grief on account of death, this 'father' will be ringing in your ears:
Dear son, will you be able to avoid what your father has done? Then, why suffer beyond measure? By grieving like this, you will be saddening your father, if he were to come before you. As for me, though it pains me, yet I shall allow you to grieve and sob, a little every time, until you gradually become sublimated by the very process. And then, you must tell me: “Ah, I am all right. The release has come to me. I am fulfilled.”
Until then, let me withdraw, giving you my love and Sivasis.
Yours
Swamiji 1978

My dear Swamiji,
Namaskar. In response to the appeal in Vicharasetu of Sept. '78, 3rd cover page, I am sending three gift subscriptions for one year starting from Dec. '78 issue:...........
Recently I experienced an intense grief the like of which I never had in memory. It was and is due to the unexpected sudden passing away, within a few hours, of a dear one, Dr. A. K. S., leaving behind three children and wife. He was 36 years, son of my wife's eldest sister, and had just returned after getting M.R.C.P. from London following five years of service in U.K. He was devoted to serving the sick and poor even at his own expense, very compassionate, always smiling and in perfect health a day before death. On the morning of 15th Dec. '78, he had severe stomach pain and discharge of blood with stool. In the night he died at Willingdon Hospital, New Delhi.
I feel that the "Brahmavidya Abhyasa" and the "Quietitude of Mind" vanished then and specially in the spells of tears. Probably it has exposed the long distance ahead to the goal of perfection of fulfillment. When will I reach it? Nine years are over. How long will it take? The body by nature is becoming weak. Much before it falls, the mind must become the Supreme Self. For hastening the process, your compassion is essentially needed-"Moksha moolam Guroh kripaa" (the cause for moksha is the grace of the Teacher).
With prostrations,
Yours
...
Dear and blessed....,
Harih Om Tat Sat. Your letter of the 10th Jan. '79 to hand....
I have noted and accepted the feelings and prayers you have expressed about the bereavement you suffered recently. After sharing with you what you have experienced, I have a definite message to give you on this. Take it with all the sraddha and piety you can.
The sudden death of a close one, especially like the young Dr. S you have mentioned, will surely afflict the mind of any one. For his relations, the affliction is no doubt all the more. The reasons are two. We fondly expect only the very old to die and the young to live. Even in wars, when young healthy fighters meet each other only to die or cause death, where deaths are considered normal and inevitable, the afflictions caused are untold. What to speak then of a premature death befalling a member of the family, wherein neither the profession nor the age and other factors imply such a sudden fate?
Another factor which magnifies the grief for the relatives is the thought and concern for those who suffer the bereavement, and whom the bereavement unsettles in various ways.
Our mind is generally used to meet the departure of elders, when they have grown sufficiently old. Well, that is an inevitable course of our life in this world. But no human mind can normally take in the untimely death of a young one. The mind is given to operate on the plane of dvandvas. In being so, there is nothing wrong or unusual too. Naturally the death of a young relative will unleash its sorrowful plight in the minds of the near relations. Do you say this should not be so? Not to feel sorrow on such moving and dejecting situations will be an abnormal trait of your mind as of any others. No abnormality is on any ground welcome, all the more so for a genuine seeker who seeks to achieve the fullness of mind and heart.
You may now wonder as to what does spirituality aim at if not the redressal of sorrows whenever they try to assail the mind. It is this question that I want you, and all others, to raise and persist in seeking a clear answer to!
Dear soul, our mind is a complex product evolved by Nature. Before you can think of your mind's formation and birth, it is there already with you. Far from being inert the mind is sentient in every way, generating in us a large variety of emotions, sentiments, feelings and responses. If it were not doing so, it would not have been the thing which Nature intends it to be! The first part of viveka consists in understanding the mind like this. The next part lies in trying to refine and sublimate the complexity of the mind on spiritual lines, thereby enabling us to remain hopeful and stable as long as we remain embodied in the world, that is till the body falls by itself.
What is the course of refinement I am speaking of? Certainly it is not a process of denial, mutilation or annihilation. Whatever is there in the mind should be recognized, understood first. Then a process of gradual sublimation and building up must be attempted.
In building up the mind healthily there is a great role for the emotions to play constantly. To love, to be resentful, to fear – these are the primary and consistent urges of the mind. The absence of any of these will mean the inoperativeness or inertness of the mind to that extent. In other words, the measure of absence (of these primary urges) will imply a corresponding measure of death, or at least stuntedness for the mind. I will not approve of any such absence or dearth to breed in the matter of building up the mind spiritually. What is then the true purpose before us?
A fully healthy mind must be able to react to joyful situations in joyous manner, frightening situations in a fearful manner and
saddening situations in a sorrowful manner. If it is able to do so every time a situation arises, with that also will flow enrichment proportionately. Enrichment is as much by loving and joy, as by disapprovals and resentment, as by sorrowing and sympathy. Joy, sorrow and fear, all these are equally the creations and bounties of Nature. They alike form the full gift of the Creator to mankind. You should first and last know that all these together constitute mind's enrichment, and then with such knowledge give vent to the emotions whenever each of them is evoked from time to time, instance to instance.
If we draw a line between any one and others, or one and its opposite, thereby knowingly or unknowingly struggling hard to foster one emotion (say joy) and eliminate another, or the other two (say sadness and fear), it will be to cause a grave error. The mind which reacts to the joyous with joy must also react with sadness to the sorrowful. Where lies refinement then, you may ask.
Refinement's role is thus in enabling the mind to give vent to each emotion whenever it is called for and yet remain composed and collected. Beneath the surface of emotions, you must find the depth of composure to which your wisdom can be grounded.
The difference between the process of denial and the process of sublimation through the wise course of guarded expression (knowingly giving vent to the emotions, seeking enrichment in the process) is subtle, no doubt, but it is extremely great.
When a man is rowing a boat, does he try to stop the waves coming on the surface of the water? He glides through them skillfully with pleasure by rowing properly. Once you grasp this basic truth, suggestion, it must instantly give you a clue to the solution of the problem you have raised.
May be, until now you never had to face a bereavement of this nature. Naturally the impact will be intense too. It only bespeaks how severe has been the cause and how distressing the consequences of it are. Certainly the young doctor, by his sudden and untimely departure, has caused a marked fissure in all the minds around him.
Psychologically it generates grief and despair; physically it brings in a continuing vacuum which will be very difficult to fill for any one. Are these not considerable enough to make even a sober, elderly man like you to be moved by?
Grieve knowingly and well, perhaps for a half-hour every day, then every other day, once a week later, and less frequently still later, until at last your mind, the bio-psychic system assimilates the reaction, feels satisfied that it has shed enough of it, and then is able to outlive the impact for ever. Even then the objective consequences of his absence in the family will continue to linger. That can be redressed by the objective, external efforts like helping, guiding and befriending the bereaved as long as they need for one reason or the other.
So dear....., do you now get the import? I would like you to bring the event to your mind now and then, as I have explained it and then give vent to the grief that naturally follows. That will then be a more refining sadhana, a complement and booster. The mind becomes noble only when it is able to feel grief on account of those to whom it is not related, as it would for the related.
Of all the emotions, sorrow or grief is the most educative and beneficial. But the seeker should know that this is so and get enriched by the instance of grief. There will be a time when the illumined mind will reflect sorrow on the emotional plane when such is the occasion and equally so reflect the Truth, the Self, on the intelligential plane. The emotional responsiveness is not in conflict with the intelligential
response.
On the bodily plane allow hunger and thirst to be, then their appeasement too, equally so the other bodily features and responses. On the mental plane, allow the alternate emotions to be, the happiness-misery dvandva to be. On the intelligential plane, let abide the intellectual conditions like knowledge, ignorance and the like. Being in the company of all these, one following the other in the respective planes, be also in the Self-level, graced marvellously by the neutral, impartial, immortal, unaffected Supreme Truth. Thus, dear seeker, it is a question of expansion taking place every time, of deepening up constantly – all a process of widening and expanding. Never is it to be one of negation, suppression or rigidity.
Weepingly be joyous, joyously be weeping, neutrally be either, one after the other. Such a state is the most reassuring one, the real one, consoling to the mind and fulfilling to the heart, blessed indeed for the human individual.
Rather than exposing the long distance lying ahead to reach the goal you have set before yourself, as you put it, I feel this instance reveals to you the hidden truth about the genuine sadhana that should grace the seeker. As for Brahma- vidya and its fullness, nine years are not an insignificant period, but certainly they do not constitute the full length we have in mind. You have therefore lost nothing, gained instead a great deal too. You are progressing, and will also be henceforward. Only bring about the slight moderation or correction in your approach, assessment.
I don't know whether spiritual wisdom and insight are interpreted and understood in this manner. However, this is the spiritual insight I stand for and I wish to reveal to the seekers who come to me. Spiritual pursuit must be ornamenting our personality at all levels,
never meaning any kind of denial or destruction. Perhaps I may be showing a way quite different from the so-called customary one, but that is what I am for.
Carry on with assurance and hope. Do not leave the world before you have equalled in your mind the place for death with that for birth, the place for sorrow with that for joy, the place for the body with the place for the Soul, also the place for mortality with that for immortality. Console and help the distressed in time, to the extent desirable and possible. Console yourself too, and find your fulfillment in that very pursuit itself.
You have the good wishes and blessings from here as ever. Love and Sivasis.
Yours truly,
Swamiji 1979

Beloved Swamiji,
Salutations and prostrations.
It is over seven years since I took initiation from you. Initially my progress was remarkable but after some time, especially after my marriage, it has received a setback. The reason is obvious. Besides, pre-occupation with my work and the disturbance caused by frequent travels are there. So, I have taken to a sadhana: to recite the Mantra one crore times. I have started doing it, to start with 5000 times daily and I propose to carry it on wherever I go. I seek Swamiji's blessings to complete the sadhana.
For quite a few months now, I am confronted with query, especially during meditation. I am enclosing a detailed review thereon and would request your comments.
Who am I :
The enquiry 'who am I' is suggested in any Vedantic sadhana to find out the nature of the Self. It is used as a tool for Self-realisation. The great sage Ramana Maharshi used to advocate this enquiry to one and all, which, according to him, will lead to the awareness – Koham, deham, naham, soham. Our Swamiji also emphasises the importance of this enquiry.
I have also taken up this enquiry during meditation. Gradually, this query is proving to be of special significance and relevance to me. Right from my birth or at least from the days I remember, only this subjective personality 'I' has been known to me all these years. All the experience has been only with myself as the centre of experience. But, the indulgence in the objective experience is so much that the identity of the experiencer is lost in the experience. A thought is therefore gaining force that in the whole universe I stand alone as the subject of all experience and everything is the object. In
other words, the world as is known to me, is only my experience of it. There is no world apart from me. I am reminded of the saying. "As you are in the world, the world is in you." Hence, I have to draw the conclusion that what is called the world is only my experience of it.
As the next step in the enquiry, I am led to think that one day I have to face death, which is inevitable. As I have come to this world only by way of birth, similarly I have to leave the world only through death. After my death what will happen to the so-called world? The world may continue to exist, but who will be there to experience it, as I am doing now? Before my birth, who was experiencing it? Somehow I am led to think that there should have been a continuity in the experience, if not by this personality, by some other experiencer. Then what is the relationship between the earlier experiencers and the present one? Or is it that I have always been existing and experiencing the world, though I am not aware of it? This also leads to another aspect of the enquiry: Maya. What is its nature? Whatever be the theoretical explanation given to it, I find that the forces of nature work with unfailing regularity. Because I forget their existence, electricity or heat does not spare me even once. Is the world called Maya because my perception of it is not complete or, is it really illusory or is it that the experience of the world cannot be had without my awareness?
It appears that this mystery if unravelled would reveal to me all other secrets, including God-realisation.
Yours
...
Dear and Blessed...,
Harih Om Tat Sat. Your letter of 17th June, is still unreplied. I wanted quite some time to pass before replying you. For, your new sadhana of
a crore japa and with that a further channelization of your thought process would have brought some more clarity and insight. Has it been really so?
Your para (2): Think well, delve deeply into the question: The moment you say 'object' or 'objective existence', the 'subject', 'subjective existence', or 'subjectivity' is instantly implied. If the latter were not first there, the former could not have been. The world, an outer and exterior phenomenon, becomes so, has been so, with reference to something inner and interior to it, not to us, to you or to any one in particular; otherwise how could it have been visible and external?
This truth is applicable to the world taken as a whole, and also to any single entity in it – like yourself, the enquirer – on the same basis. Thus a phenomenon implies a noumenon, objectivity implies subjectivity, the world implies the perceiver of it.
What is this noumenon, subjectivity, when enquired deeply into? Relatively speaking, it should be inside the objectivity. All right; apply then the finding to your own being, the exterior existence of it, and see whether inside the objective body you are able to locate a subjectivity with reference to which the body is felt to be objective. And this is what the seeker does through enquiry, contemplation and spiritual realization!
In meditation, do you not get into the subjectivity of your own body in which all the exterior dimensions become unfelt, transcended, negated, and yet the subjectivity prevails as a valid experience? This subjective expanse, without interfering with the body – its nature and dimensions – exists in itself, enabling the exterior objectivity to be. Inside the dense body is felt a totally non-dense, luminous expanse. If you try to relate the two with any known standards of comparison
and inference you will be led to complete failure. In the same way, the truth applies to the universal objectivity too. The universe itself being multi-dimensional and objective, there is a subjectivity in it too (as in your body), which, like your own subjective sphere, transcends all its dimensions, density and the like.
The body, its exterior dimension, is hosting within it a range, an expanse, a kind of thing which totally invalidates and transcends all the characteristics of the body. Is this not a peculiar, un-understandable proposition? Yet is it not true and experiential to us?
Take a mustard, search within its boundaries, into its depths. And suppose you find a huge bottomless lake. What will you then feel and say? Is this not the case with your body too? During meditation, you enter into the inner recesses of your own body to find that there is an unlimited expanse, unbounded and immeasurable in every way? Mind you, the body is still limited, inert, made up of the gross things of the earth and the world.
Once this subjective expanse is traced and felt, found in relation to your single body, then that is the expanse related to the whole world – objectivity as well. Imagine a well dug in your compound and another made in the contiguous plot. The water struck by you in yours is the same sheath as the one which your neighbour strikes in his well in his compound. I am told that the oil struck in one country apparently implies the same oil belt from which the other distant countries are also tapping. The example is still not wholesome, as it is bound to be.
If you mean by the 'I' in you this subjective, impersonal, indivisible, and unidentifiable expanse, then in its dimension it also includes and contains the whole universal objectivity. Differences and distinctions can be there only in the objective entities like your body, earth, moon,
etc. To be different, the things must be objective and space-occupying. Naturally, to be subjective means a full contrast, and hence to deny all distinctions and separateness. The subject expanse – and that is the Consciousness you refer to as 'I' or the 'Self' – when both in your experience and realization, and in your intelligence and understanding, denotes this impersonal, distinction less range, then can you say that it is as well the subject of the whole universe. But mind you, it is a very delicate, magnificent spiritual position, which in one sense sounds absurd and in another sense shines as the pinnacle of spiritual experience and truth of seeking.
Your questions on continuity of births, relationship, etc. do not have any meaning or relevance in such a context, Spiritual perception, in fact, takes one to such a free, unconditioned inner level of stability and contentment. What more can I say now?
Reflect further and see. Sivasis.
Yours
Swamiji 1979
1919
Respected Swamiji.
Pranams.
Received your letter. Soon after I wrote to you about my problem with dreams, a feeling of indifference has come in me and hence I feel quite relaxed. Now most of the days I am not at all bothered by dreams and I do not even remember whether I dreamt at all. There are some rare days when I wake up with a heavy mind on account of a bad dream. At that time I try to be indifferent and try not to pay any attention. After some time the heaviness disappears and I find that I have forgotten the matter.
In an earlier issue of Vicharasetu, I came across an article on Guru Poornima. Knowing its importance, this year the day seemed to be a very special one and I felt an intense joy on that day. Decided to start reading Gita again, and have started. These days I very much wish to learn Sanskrit so that I can grasp the rhythm in the slokas. I had also thought that starting with Guru Poornima day I would wake up early in the morning and sit for meditation for some time, but have remained unsuccessful so far.
Swamiji, here are some of my problems. I find myself very much self-centred. I feel that I'm not able to love people around me nor do I feel that I love God. Also, I'm always trying to judge people's actions and behaviour. What's the remedy?
As long as I am busy I'm quite happy, but as soon as I'm without work, and my husband is not at home or he is engaged in reading or meditation, I start feeling lonely and feel there's nobody to talk to. One day it so happened that my husband was away and in the evening I started feeling lonely. There were many people around; children were playing in front of our house, but still I felt lonely. That day after much thought, concentration and
exploration, there was a revelation of this kind: there are so many things around me given and arranged beautifully by God – the trees, the big pond, the ducks, the clouds... and the people whom I do not even know. I do not try to belong to Nature, to be one amidst this vastness, do not try to feel the oneness. I look at Nature from a distance and never go close enough. Had I gone I would not have felt lonely at any time. Swamiji, this was my thought. Don't know whether that was the right one.
I always wish to have constant ananda and 'bliss' in the mind but this I rarely have. One day I was discussing this with my husband. He pointed out that I do not sit for pooja now-a-days, nor do I concentrate my thoughts on God. At leisure times I let my thoughts stray away to other bogus and useless subjects. Exactly so. Swamiji, I even find that the japa does not remain inside. At least I'm not aware of it being so. The other day I was thinking everything over and saw that I seem to have lost the aim of sadhana. What was it? What do I actually seek and want? And in actual practice, what should be the attitude in activity as well as thought? What I feel is that there should be ananda, a clear and distinct joy in my seeking. Otherwise wouldn't everything be mechanical, a compulsion, rather than being spontaneous? Where is that Joy? What should I do to get that joy? Don't know whether I have been able to express my difficulty. Swamiji, sometimes I feel so confused. I want to hear something to which I can stick.
Previous month I underwent an elaborate check-up. The gynaecologist opined that it is a case of cervical incompetence and prescribes the Shirodkar Operation as a remedy. In this case, the patient has to take absolute rest for several weeks, for five months or more.
The doctor suggests we should not delay the next pregnancy for I'm growing older. But I don't find any 'enthusiasm'. May be that's because I will have to go through such an abnormal process of lying down in bed for 5-6 months. My first requirement is that I would like to have a strong and beautiful mind.
The letter has become so long. Wonder how much it will bother you – with so many questions?
How are you?
Pranams
...
Dear and blessed...,
Hari Om Tat Sat. Your letter of 26th July to hand. I went through all that you wrote about the unconcerned attitude you have gained towards dream. Good that you feel a sense of release and peace. You should learn Sanskrit, as you have felt, and daily recite a few slokas loudly, listening to your own recitation, then getting to a state of absorption and joy in the process. It is the most effective purificatory means in religion and spirituality. Do it at the earliest.
Your self-centredness-- Now that you have discovered it, the condition will gradually decline. By light, darkness vanishes, so too is the case with right understanding and its opposite. To discover a wrong is to remove it 50%. Constant ananda cannot be had so easily. Have ananda now and then, progressively, and that will be adequate for you. Aim at a sense of moderation in every walk of life. In attaining purity, in giving concession to impurity, in getting nearer to God, in taking to the world, in accepting loneliness, in appreciating, in depreciating, in short in everything that concern's you BE MODERATE. Let there be some wrongs in you, what of them? Let some confusion also be there. Not an excess definitely! In this way, you will start accepting yourself as what you are, and nevertheless trying patiently for improvement.
About the problem which maternity and childbirth pose: you have to
be clear in your mind, although the consequences are quite telling. But you cannot help it being so. The situation implies two distinct considerations, one linked to another: (1) your mind, which is not to your satisfaction, and which you want to build up and improve, and (2) your female body, its characteristics and features, and in which there seems a built-in inadequacy standing in the way of rearing an embryo in the womb. Medical advice is that a possible safety can be sought by doing an operation to help pregnancy to full term. O.K. But, even then, the consequences are quite exacting. Your movement and freedom will be restricted for quite a few months. With your educational background and professional pursuits, will such a spell be acceptable? Even if you accept it mentally, in good faith, will actually your mind and moods cooperate with you in undergoing the persecution? If so, on the strength of what – the sound promise of motherhood and the birth of a child? In that case, there should also be a provision willingly extended by the mind to face the risk in the whole venture. What will your mind have in reply, when something unexpected happens? Think! Medical people want that the pregnancy be not delayed: but that is the bodily part of the whole diagnosis. But the body-problem revolves around the mind-person. The mind is not fully under the medical men, their purview!
The more important consideration is that any venture on the bodily level can be accepted only when the mind is attuned to it, strong enough to bear the challenges and consequences involved. Maternity and child-birth are quite a complex adventure, demanding from the mother a variety of concerns, sacrifices, adjustments and disappointments alike. If you propose to attempt "motherhood" and face it meaningfully, then admittedly it will be a very elegant and noble one. As long as you have difficulties with your mind and its welfare right now, is it not wise to ensure the mind's welfare first, and then impose upon it the task of facing a more complex phase of life? Think well.
With your wisdom and educational career, you must be able to think freely and more gracefully, to see things clearly and rise to any position of height. The feminine temper is inherent as also the wishes and motivations. Do not deny any of them. But add to them the benefit of clear and lofty thinking as well. Try, there is nothing to be fearful or shy. A long life lies ahead. There are mothers who sacrifice their children for the sake of a noble cause – giving them to the nation, or to other women for adoption. Equally so, there can be women who will make sacrifices of even a more generous kind.
I am all right, with the season‟s aggravation of the rheumatic symptoms on the body. With all this said and done, there is still the course of Nature at work in every walk of life. Rely upon it cheerfully, waiting to meet the outcome without resistance.
I am in good health but for the seasonal aggravation of the rheumatic symptoms. Love and Sivasis.
Yours truly,
Swamiji 1979
2020
Revered Swamiji,
...... For the consolation of my mind in removing some doubts, I approach you to kindly throw some light in your brilliant way to the following question:
Who was the Creator and what was His Nature, millions and millions of years ago before the birth of this world and other planets in the universe?
In my humble mind, I feel that the Creator at that time was an Absolute Power who kept some seeds in His lap (analogically) sowing, so to say, the seeds one after another in the ground and watering them to give birth (to trees and Planets) to this world and innumerable planets in the Universe. I sincerely need your guidance to give me a lucid picture of the phenomenon, clearing my query. I am merely an electrical engineer and have not read well-known religious books like Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and others. While reading your Journals and attending religious discourses in Ramakrishna Mission, some questions arise in my mind and I wish to refer them to you to give solace to my enquiring mind.
With best regards to Mataji and you for the New year.
Yours faithfully,
...
Dear and blessed...,
Harih Om Tat Sat. Your letter of the 8th Jan. to hand with the enclosure. O.K. The gift copy will be mailed as you have desired. Now about your questions:
(1) Millions of years (incalculable number) ago, this world (our earth) was inert and insentient, quite unlike what it is today.
(2) How the whole world was like cannot be answered, as the reference and judgement cannot be about the whole universe at any time. We only study, understand and imply a portion of the Universe for our purposes.
(3) Still further in the past, the Creator was not the Creator at all. Because there was not the creation, with reference to which alone He can become the 'CREATOR'. Say „He‟ was like the earth of millions of years ago, when we could not say that it was the supporter of living beings.
Imaginably, the "Creator" (he was not the creator then) was the Space and Dust we see around us, devoid of the heavenly bodies inside.
Still before, and by now we have reached the finale of our thoughts and reasons, also the beginning of our very knowledge based on comparisons, the Creator (He was not anything, not to speak of 'anybody' then) was the objectlessness, from where and when, the objectfulness came to be. Can you imagine the transition from the objectlessness to the objectfulness? If so, the nature of the erstwhile presence (the later Creator) also you can.
This statement is a speculation for those who are unable to get to the areas of understanding, transcending space and spatial dimensions. Nevertheless, the speculation may strike as meaningful and hopeful.
For the real finders and followers, it becomes a step more than a mere speculation. The key to make it something above speculation and near reality lies within the seeking and experiencing mind of the enquirer.
Search the state and area of sleep, where the difference between objectiveness and subjectiveness does not come in at all. This is what I meant by saying 'Objectless entity'.
So, as objectfulness is now there, objectlessness can also be there, and in fact it is there every day for you, as for all others.
Just when the sleep state breaks off, instantly arises the objectfulness. With respect to what (say the subject) does it take place? Think.
Again in our dream, the factor inside us brings about a widespread object-subject phenomenon, thereby proving that the stuff inside our body is capable of giving rise to both a subject and then its object.
However, the conclusion is clear that there is, and so there was (there must have been) a condition namely the objectless presence. The moment you reach that level in your understanding, it instantly becomes the first level and the last level too.
The Creator then was like this. Pronounce yourself whether He was or He was not. Also whether this is the truth for the humans to take in, to abide by and be filled with.
Love and Sivasis,
Yours in the ken of space, but really in the incomparable presence above, beneath and inside it.
A big zero, I am
Swamiji 1979
2121
The following letter is to a student in Delhi who wrote to Swamiji expressing his dejection at not having scored the much-needed 'top position' in a crucial examination.
Dear and blessed......,
Harih Om Tat Sat. Your letter of the 1st to hand just now. I note what you say about your effort and the past disproportionate result. I am not much bothered about the top position you get or lose, except in one sense, that of getting further admission somewhere.
Generally in the actual field of experience, the actual life-situation, it is not the top-classers who flourish. Toppers remain intellectual experts. Actual field of excellence needs more of application, endeavour, which requires health and dedication. These qualities do not belong to the intellect. You need not then get worried the least. By worrying you will only be creating another hurdle before you. Assuming that the outcome you get, will be unfavourable be prepared mentally for that.
The world always has consisted of several individual life patterns. Yours also is one amongst them. Your thought should then be: does not the world in its variety hold out a scope for me, my nature and outcome? The long standing answer is that it does. There is enough place for it. What then? Explore the right possibilities so that you will discover your right place and scope. That will be the effective step for success.
Confrontation, if I can call it so, should make you strive harder, grow keener, cover distance skillfully, faster than even those who run. In any given situation, assess it well, relate it properly to what you
actually are, find out then how best you can harness yourself to produce the best outcome. Such thinking is the real creative power. Before it, no hindrance will prove hindering. By its grace you will not merely be expanding your own inner powers but also be giving forth a kind of creativeness which otherwise you cannot dream of. "How am I to be effective in these circumstances? Maybe I have to strike hard ground, even then what? Let me face the situation boldly with confidence." You will preserve your enthusiasm in this way, avoid the scope for disappointment, be growing every time, creating newer and newer dimensions within yourself. This is the course of defeatless progress.
Neither I, nor will your elders blame you if you have made the right effort in time, and then the result turns out unfavourable. But, the right to judge and feel will be ours, mind you.
Remove from your mind the curse called doubt, the enemy called fear. Remain confident that despite whatever comes. 'I shall still be on to my task'. That is the really top position, not in the usual academic sense, but in the broad practical view. In the language of the mind, its horizon!
Yours
Swamiji 1980




(My humble salutations to the lotus feet of H H Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha ji  for the collection)

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