On morals and the steading of the mind

[Pannirselvam Kanagaratnam]

On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Nanda Kumar wrote:

> I quite agree with Allan about the moral aspect. Sometime back somebody
> remarked on the Ramakrishna mission monks insistence on mental
> purification before undertaking jnana yoga. It made immense sense to me,
> because it's been my experience that reading the Upanishads and
> Vivekachoodamani and trying to apply them to my day to day life has been
> quite a strain for me. The reason I believe is that I'm still under the
> control of my senses and ego and clearly not pure enough. I understand
> that it cannot be done overnight but gradually with practice.  It's my
> opinion that undertaking jnana yoga without purification is a fruitless
> task, as there's no point in studying the scriptures if one's heart is
> not wholly in it and one's not able to apply them to one's life.
>

Namaste!

In Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj's lecture on dreaming and waking, he has
given another way to look at self-control.  Swamiji says that one should
place oneself strongly with an intense form of imagination that one is
dreaming this world (so as to wake up to the fact that Brahma Satyam Jagat
Mithya, Jeevo Brahmaiva Na Aparah - Brahman alone is real, this world is
unreal; the Jiva is identical with Brahman).  Since the dreaming is
possible only when the sense organs of dream also are active, they ought
to be withdrawn in order to "Wake Up".  Hence sense abstraction
(pratyahara) becomes the precondition for the other type of concentration
on the higher level of consciousness in meditation.  In fact Swamiji says
that 90% of our "work" is done if we can successfully withdraw the senses
from the objects.

Hari Om Tat Sat!

Pannir

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  Pannirselvam Kanagaratnam
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