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Spiritmails
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The Touch of Low Consciousness
By Karmayogi
The high mental concentration needed to grasp abstruse mathematical theorems or intricate points of any scientific idea is not developed by a few hours of study or a few days of practice. It does not come to all. When it comes, it comes by years of cultivation.Spiritual concentration is not to be had for the asking. Over a period of months and years, you may succeed in such a concentration.
It takes you to celestial regions of light and peace, resulting in an inner elevation. As you come out of the meditation room, your brother who was at the club until 3 am and got up only at 9:30 am comes behind you and puts his affectionate arm on your shoulder. The whole experience of your meditation dissolves, never to reappear. The touch of dissipation is the touch of low consciousness.
Consecration, too, develops higher spiritual consciousness in work. This higher consciousness is not confined to meditation. It is expressed in work. Doing the work, whatever it is, without losing the inner elevation attained in meditation, or doing the work so perfectly that the inner concentration develops to this level is consecration or invoking the Spirit in work. This is not something that can be lost by any touch except temporarily.
“Let him contemplate a sea of nectar in his heart, in the midst of an island of precious stones, the very sands of which are pulverised diamonds and rubies. Let the yogin imagine a beautiful kalpa tree with four branches -the four Vedas. Beneath the tree let him imagine a rich platform of precious stones and on that a costly throne inlaid with jewels on which sits his particular deity chosen by his Guru.” This is a meditation of the Saivite tradition, which becomes real if done appropriately, but this too can be lost by that TOUCH. These are the fleeting glories of inner life, which the Spirit in life renders permanent.
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Self-justification Fortifies the Present
By Karmayogi
Fortifying the present is preventing growth of Prosperity in the future. We go back to our village after twenty or twenty-five years and meet our neighbours who remain exactly as they were before. Some of them will be proud not to have changed anything in their lifestyle. There is an opinion that not changing is of value. It is a kind of mental conservatism. Psychologically, it is a good definition of misfortune of conception.
It is the idealism of the inept that has no avenues of external growth and no energies to seek it inwardly. It may or may not be all right for incapable persons. Sometimes capable men learn to espouse such an ideal and miserably stagnate at the level of career they entered. An idealist in 1943 was employed as a university lecturer after ten years of no employment. His idealism was not to seek money or status in matrimony, but he sought a graduate bride.
As he was determined, his parents gave way and they found a graduate girl in the house of a manual training teacher. She quickly disabused his mind of any idealism, proclaiming her infinite superiority in every respect. Many young men sought various kinds of advice from him, as he was an idealist. Several came for advice about marriage. He changed his tune and advised young men to marry into advantage, as his own idealism had led to a matrimony of disadvantage. His own brother took an engineering degree soon after. The idealist brother arranged for an unidealist wedding into advantage. The wife who had unsuccessfully pleaded the cause of her own sister to wed her husband’s brother, lamented loudly that foolish young men were gathering around her husband who was really not an idealist, as he had prevented her sister’s wedding. Self-justification is not idealism. It is the impertinence of inept ignorance or inexperience. |
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The Godhead I Love and Adore
By Karmayogi
The African tribals are great worshippers. Their prayers are invariably answered, as they are an invocation of their own powers, perhaps the power of their collective community. There are occasions when their prayers fail. They have a way of "God's Accountability". They drag the idol of God and beat it to their hearts' content for having failed to answer their prayers and throw it into the sea. Very pious families beset with great tragedies sometimes suspend their worship or even give it up. It is too much to tell them that this, too, is an act of God.
It is common for the Pillayar temple to be crowded with students during exams. Unmarried girls ardently pray for marriage, as do unemployed people for jobs. As tragedies pull a few people away from worship, a larger percentage of people suddenly become oblivious of their serious worship when affluence overtakes them in good measure. In a broad sense, Man worships comfort, convenience, riches, wealth, etc. and in that he is worshipping mammon and he is mercenary.
At the same time, we find a small number of people pursuing these mercenary goals with a vengeance and getting less than others, sometimes nothing. The rule is what you seek goes away; the more you seek, the more it goes further away. The secret is most of us have deep down true faith in God, though the surface mind hankers after material results. What comes to us as wealth is really in response to our inner faith and in spite of the worship of the surface mind, not because of it. Those who pursue it with a vengeance are those who have no real faith and that is why they are rewarded with total failure. The best is to seek God for His own sake and educate the mind out of its ordinary motives of mercenary pursuits |
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Pilgrimage to Prosperity
By Karmayogi
For fifty years, India is aspiring to abolish poverty and to usher in Prosperity. At the same time we hear as a chorus, ‘Money must not be a goal. It makes man mercenary. It rekindles our greed.’ That cry finds an echo in our hearts. We sink low, as our lofty aim is here described as a mean motive.
This is a confusion and not a real issue. Who are these people who voice this moral indignation? At least half of them own more than half a crore. To answer them is easy. ‘Let man not seek money. Let him stop his search when he reaches your level of affluence.’ The other indignant ones are those who are sure of not getting rich due to lack of talents and opportunities.
People who are passionately greedy for money try to reach MONEY which is located nowhere. Hence the frustration. In my view, patriotism today is to work for national prosperity and the only realistic way of accomplishing it is in one’s own life. How can someone working in an office or factory become vastly prosperous? No one will deny now that education is the foundation of today’s prosperity. Money that issues out of physical labour is better earned when education, a mental tool, is added to it. I advocate the next higher TOOL. It is seated in the Spirit as skills. Values are spiritual skills.
Whatever your vocation, when you add values to it, you will see Prosperity in abundance is the result. Honesty, integrity, truthfulness, fairness, and justice are higher values. Punctuality, politeness, pleasantness, record keeping, orderliness, soft speech, cleanliness, accuracy, precision, workmanship, and thoroughness are physical values. Perfection is the wider term that covers both. Be where you are. Do what you are doing. Add values to your work. Go on adding them in quantity and quality. You will reach the heaven of Prosperity. |
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Spirit is Infectious
By Karmayogi
One strong mark of Spirit is GOOD WILL. One can say that Good will is synonymous with Spirit. It is an age-old observation that when a great soul is born, life around suddenly becomes mere prosperous.
If one successfully invokes Spirit and continues to develop in that direction, all those who are related to him by good will witness a parallel development in their own Prosperity.
An employee in a private institution was suspended out of local intrigue. It meant the employee would be ruined forever, especially 40 years ago when such things were unheard of. Though it was a private institution, in view of the government grant, it was under a government department. The employee had a friend as a gazetted officer in that department. The officer, though not a close friend, exhibited extraordinary interest in the case and made arrangements to cancel the suspension orders forthwith. The orders were cancelled without resort to appeals, by the invocation of the Spirit.
The employee, who is in the habit of invoking the Spirit, was intensely anxious to help the officer. There was no way. It was only a kindly thought. The officer was selected to the IAS cadre. The officer desired his IAS selection to have a retrospective effect and went to court which sanctioned it. The employee saw in the papers that the officer who was selected to the IAS had been given the retrospective benefit from 1962 which was the year in which the officer had helped him.
It is the experience of this employee in his later years that many friends and relatives who were well disposed towards him rose in life far higher than their own expectations. Spirit that develops in one SIMULTANEOUSLY develops in all those connected with him. It is infectious in its growth.
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