Swadhyaya
Swadhyaya: Self Study -
Believe only what you experience, have an attitude of a scientist.
Swadhyaya is the fifth aspect of the Divinity, the Path of Light. If
someone tells you to believe in a thing because the majority of
people believe in it, say no. Majority of the people believed that
the sun moved round the earth. Galileo said otherwise and he was
right. If somebody asks you to believe in
a thing because various religious scriptures mention it, say no. The
scriptures may have been interpolated, the translations might have
gone wrong, and thirdly the people who interpret them may be talking
without experiencing the truth in them. Believe only what you
experience. Say to yourself, "This is my experience of the Divinity.
If some great prophet says similar things he must have had similar
experience." This is the attitude of a scientist. This is Swadhyaya.
You like a sweet pie. You eat it and feel happy. If you have three
more helpings you will cease to feel happy about it and you may even
be repelled. You feel like watching TV. or playing pocket billiards.
You do it and feel happy. If you do it for a few hours you would
feel like going away from it. What you termed happiness a few
minutes ago becomes a source of disturbance now. Find out whether
happiness lies in the tongue when you eat the sweet pie. Does it lie
somewhere else beyond the tongue? The search for this is Swadhyaya.
You do not ask for misery and yet misery is a constant companion in
life. You wish to be happy. However, you experience a gram of
happiness followed by a ton of unhappiness. Whether you like it or
not there will be sunrise at fixed intervals. The cosmic objects
will rotate irrespective of your opinion. You are unable to
influence their movements. This shows that there is some other WILL
which keeps the universe going and it is higher than your own will.
Can you attune yourself to that WILL? Search for this is Swadhyaya.
You try to find happiness through various objects. You see a
beautiful dog and feel like patting him on the back. Then the dog
bites you and you become miserable. You try to make use of things
and persons as means for your happiness, but most of the time misery
is your lot. This is everyday
experience. Will the search for happiness through outside objects
ever land us in bliss? Pondering over this is Swadhyaya.
You see some nice flowers, pick them, and keep them in a flower pot
in your room. Then they fade. What gave you pleasure a few minutes
ago fades out and you cannot keep it any longer. You have to throw
it away. Is there anything which will always make you happy? Yes. It
is the Light that shines
within you and it is not dependent on anything outside. Search for
this Light is the Divinity. This is Swadhyaya.
What is Karma (good action)? What is Akarma (bad action)? What is
Vikarma (the specific allotted task of a person)? To know this is
Swadhyaya.
To stick any formal religious label on yourself is not the goal of
life. To become the devotee or disciple of any particular Guru is
not the goal of life. Unfoldment of the Kingdom of Light within you
is the goal of life. That Light is eternal Truth and "Truth shall
make you free." This is the Divinity. This
is Swadhyaya.
Eye is the organ of sight, ear the organ of hearing, and so on. The
constitution of man is taken to be body, mind and intellect. Is
there anything beyond this or pervading this? The physical sense
organs bring their temptations. The psychic sight brings the occult
temptations. Is there anything beyond this? This is Swadhyaya.
Every religionist claims that his window alone throws light on the
Divinity. Religion as it is seen today and Divinity are two
different things. Sometimes they conflict. Those who talk about
proselytizing and conflict have not seen the depth of water through
their window. The Fivefold Path will enable them to see the depth
through their own window. The depth is Eternal Religion. When they
get a glimpse of the depth view there is no conflict. It is TOTAL
LOVE. True religion is the science of all sciences. Science is
knowledge. "Knowing which nothing remains to be known" is true
knowledge. "As in microcosm so in macrocosm." THAT "whose center is
everywhere and
circumference nowhere" is Swadhyaya.
Sorrow and misery are concomitant to all life. Everyone feels the
urge to get rid of that state of mind and enter into a state of
bliss. When the urge is consolidated it is second birth in the
physical body. This is the beginning of the pilgrimage on the
Divinity, Path of Light. Complete cessation of misery
while living in this world then becomes the ideal of life. This
leads us to the examination of the attitudes of the mind. Then
begins the mind training program, the program of "renewing" the mind
and becoming transformed. The program offered in this book is the
Fivefold Path. It is the essence
of all Divine teachings that have been offered to humankind. The
Fivefold Path is the oldest program for transformation by the
renewal of the mind. It comes from the Vedas which literally means
knowledge. The Fivefold Path is not a religion as Divinity is not a
religion. To study the various "mind
renewal" programs offered by prophets and scientists is Swadhyaya.
Is man merely a puppet in the hands of destiny? What is destiny?
What is free will? How to develop the capacity to execute this free
will to choose between good and bad Karma? The law of cause and
effect in the physical realm when transposed to super physical realm
becomes the law of
Karma, the law of reap as you SOW. Intense Karma, good or bad,
fructifies within a short time. Repentance is intense good Karma. Do
Karma without attachment to the fruit thereof. Manifestation of
Grace is also an aspect of the law of Karma. There is no such thing
as fatalism. It is only Karma
Yoga, that is Yoga of Action. You make your own destiny. It is not
given unto you what to see. However, it is given unto you how to
see. This is Swadhyaya.
What is knowledge? What is wisdom? Wisdom shows the relationship
between various facts gathered by the intellect. Without this
relationship the facts may not be of much use in the journey towards
the Divinity. Purity of mind ushers in wisdom. Agnihotra reduces
your effort in this task as a
"push" is given to subtler matter called mind. To know and
experience it is Swadhyaya. Swadhyaya clarifies our perception of
the universe. Better perception leads to better evaluation of the
sensory data that goes in the computer of the brain. This culminates
into right action. To understand this is Swadhyaya.
We have a desire. It becomes manifest as an attitude. By brooding
over it, it gets stronger and becomes a propensity. A signal goes to
the intellect to find out means for the gratification of the desire.
Intellect searches for the means, wise or otherwise. This leads to
action and momentary
happiness. A person attributes this happiness to gratification of
the desire and not the eradication of the desire. The desire is
eradicated and puts no more burden on the mind. To know how the
unmanifest desire culminates into visible action, to learn about the
points where it could be
checked is Swadhyaya. If you are unable to check it, at least learn
to observe the mind when you follow the flow of desire and smile at
yourself. This is also Swadhyaya.
"Keep the lamp of knowledge on the threshold of the tongue." Take
care what goes in, that is food. Take care what goes out, that is
speech. How does the food affect the mind? What are the factors
involved? The journey of the seed that a farmer plants in his field
ends up in your stomach. Being a
living seed it is affected by the atmosphere and the thought
patterns impinged on the atmosphere. This affects its qualitative
value. Food builds up your body and the mind. Interplay of subtle
energies becomes a part of it.
Similarly, every time you utter a word you have to breathe out
through the mouth. Breathing out through the mouth exacts a heavy
toll of mind energy. Hence, speech is called a sacred gift.
Sometimes we hear it said, "Speech is silver, silence is golden."
Anything that you utter affects the
atmosphere. The intensity and potency of the utterance decide the
cumulative effect. To know this is Swadhyaya.
You may live for a while without food but not without the air you
breathe. The atmosphere is polluted in all ways. Noise pollution,
factory pollution, water pollution, nuclear radiation, pollution due
to thought patterns impinged on the atmosphere as a result of
hatred, greed, scheming for
destruction, all these affect the atmosphere. Purify the atmosphere
to purify the mind. Purified mind creates its own blissful thought
patterns. This is the science of Agnihotra, the smallest form of
Yajnya that is purification of the atmosphere through the agency of
fire leading to purification of
mind. We are trapped in the jaws of atmospheric pollution leading to
more psychiatry, mental syndromes and the like. All this takes us
away from LOVE.
The Divinity basically states, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Love
is the be-all and end-all of our effort. On the Path of Light that
is the Fivefold Path given through the Vedas, LOVE is the passport.
Study of the science of Yajnya, its effect on Prana, its effect on
the mind, on pathogenic bacteria, on
the absorption of sun's rays by the water resources, the resultant
nutrition to plant life due to the creation of some new substance in
the atmosphere, all this forms part of Swadhyaya.
Happiness will elude you until the capering frolic of the mind is
reduced. This leads to concentration, contemplation and meditation.
Practice of meditation purifies the mind. Your will becomes a fitter
instrument of the Omniscient higher Will. This is unfoldment of the
Light within you.
To practice this is Swadhyaya.
Perform agnihotra and believe your own experience...
If you like to arrange a workshop or like to learn advanced healing
yagnyas
please contact
yogni@agnihotrausa.net