Mysorean

The discourse was on “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad” by Swami Gautamananda. Swamiji started of with a recap of the last shloka of last week's discourse. We had ended on Sloka 11, last Sunday.

Sloka 11:

The external actions have to bring in inner development. We do so many rites and rituals (for eg. Going to temple, etc.) without knowing our spiritual self. Once we get into the rites and rituals in a mechanical way, such rituals will take us to the abode of misery and darkness. A person who does not evolve himself into conscious spirituality decays into a world of ignorance and darkness.

For example, we go to tirthyatras, say Amarnath. We go keeping our mind above everything, seeing infinity everywhere, chanting the name of the Lord. This automatically takes our mind to a higher state. We should be able to retain the state of mind even after coming back. On our way, there are co-passengers. We should treat all ofthem equally. All of us are in pursuit of the Lord. This equality should be maintained when in our daily life too. Otherwise, there are no lessons learnt from the pilgrimage.

Rituals become mechanical activities if we do not do it with concentration bhakti. We should become one with the divine while doing them, that's when the rituals have meaning.

We are not mere human beings. We are Gods. We should realise that. If we don't, we will continue to live in misery. We get attached to the Worldly pleasures and think that there's nothing higher than that. But on attaining realisation, we attach ourselves to something higher. The highest joy of the “Atman” (soul) is not attached to this world.

This was a recap of what we heard last week. From tomorrow let's understand the subsequent slokas, the ones that Swamiji touched upon yesterday.

Tomorrow: Sloka 12, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as told by Swami Gautamananda at Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.