Do Not Take This World Seriously: Vol 2 - Spiritual Practice

God is not a product of a chemical reaction! In a chemical reaction, you put together certain chemical substances, make them react in a prescribed way, and lo and behold! You will get the products in accordance with the relative chemical equation with 100% certainty. God is not the value of “x” in an algebraic equation so that once you solve the equation correctly, you will know “x”! It is not as if one puts in, say chanting of some god’s name, for a certain number of hours daily, combined with daily visit to a neighbourhood shrine, as also an elaborate daily ritualistic worship of the house deity for a certain number of years and then god has to appear before him! God will COME to you at His own sovereign will. Does it mean one can’t or need not, do anything to meet God? What one DOES cannot be a direct cause for taking him to god. What is fundamental is the desire to meet god. It also means that one has to turn away from the world (detachment - vairaagya bhaav), if s/he desires to meet god. The reason is one can’t keep holding onto the river bank and hope to swim across to the far bank! Jesus Christ also said, “No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both god and money.” (Matthew 6:24). Thus, it seems clear that what one does is less important than what one stops doing since most of what one is doing is related to the worldly life. However, what one does in the spiritual realm, for example meditation, keeping company of like minded seekers, reading of holy literature, worship of a deity, chanting god’s name etc, can help in getting one’s mind to develop, and keep burning, an intense desire to meet god. It will also help keep one’s mind away from the worldly matters and focus on the spiritual. Then one has to simply wait for god to come to him in His good time. Vairaagya (disinterest in worldly life) is a crucial prerequisite for moksha (liberation / salvation). However, this disinterest should be a mental phenomenon. What one is doing outwardly is immaterial. One may appear to be leading a normal life. But inwardly, he is detached from whatever may be happening around. Spiritual pursuit is a journey consisting of many steps. So, a gradual progression towards stronger and stronger vairaagya can be expected and not quite an overnight change. So, even that gradual change along the way is also a spiritual pursuit. However, moksha or liberation cannot come about until a thorough and durable vairaagya bhaav (detached attitude) is established firmly in one's mind. Moksha/Mukti (Salvation / liberation) is a liberation that can be experienced in this life when we are still in this body on this planet. It is basically liberation from the duality of pleasures and pains as normally experienced by us. Liberation is getting freed from – • Wants and desires pertaining to the body and ego • Fixed ideas of well-being of myself as also that of the near and dear ones • The fixation that I have to get this and that from the world • Wanting to become someone, reach somewhere, do something • The idea that one must live as long as possible even by unnaturally trying to extend one’s life • The urge to compare myself with others For attaining this kind of salvation, one has to first get a strong a durable desire to attain it. One has to get disillusioned with the ups and downs and the constant agitation of mind that this life essentially is. Then by following a path of spiritual practice as prescribed by the scriptures and spiritual masters of the past, preferably under the grace of a living master, one will be able to transcend his identification with this limited body and ego. That is when the duality of pleasures and pains will disappear since it is associated with this limited identification. That ultimate spiritual experience of liberation can be experienced in this life, very much in this body and with this very mind.

I was born and brought up in a fairly conservative brahmin family in a small town, living a typical god fearing life till my early youth. Later, I moved to the metropolitan city of Mumbai (India) to do my graduation in technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, a premier technology institute in India. Through my career, I lived in many different places interacting with many different people of widely varying thinking. As such, I may concede that by virtue of my education and profession, I must have changed significantly from a god fearing child and teenager to a "rational intellectual adult," such as they come in the modern times! So, I never thought I would ever become a serious spiritual seeker. In the year 2000, I stayed with my younger brother in Singapore for about 3 months, when I was on a short project assignment and he was a permanent resident of Singapore. He had already got onto the spiritual path and had received "deeksha" (initiation into spiritual pursuit by a self-realised guru) from a living guru. During a conversation, I once said to my brother that being an intellectual, I didn't think I would ever "surrender" to a guru to get into a serious spiritual pursuit! Within a couple of weeks of the above-referred conversation of ours, my brother's guru came to Singapore to stay with him. An interaction with the guru brought about a miraculous transformation in my outlook towards life. I became more spiritual and less materialistic. I even hung my boots at the age of 53 years and started devoting more time to my spiritual pursuits. Eventually, I also was formally initiated by my sadguru. I was blessed by the Almighty with a sustained desire to study Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta which is the best spiritual philosophy in the Indian tradition. I read and reread the commentary non pareil on it, called Shri Jnaneshwari or Bhaavaarth Deepika by one of the greatest Indian saints, Sant Shri Jnaneshwar Maharaj. My understanding of spirituality comes totally from my reading of Shri Jnaneshwari and the related literature / discourses by our guru lineage. I had been regularly posting my spiritual musings as blogs. Also, more than 20 spiritual articles of mine have been published by one of the leading daily newspapers of India, The Times of India, in its column on spirituality titled Speaking Tree. This book is based on these blogs and articles of mine.