MESSAGE FOR CONTEMPLATION 1148

MESSAGE FOR CONTEMPLATION 1148

Radhe krishna,

Have a blessed day,

INDWELLING REALITY

Swami Sivananda

Atma is uncaused and cannot be accepted or rejected by anyone. It is one's own Self. The spiritual essence, the Atma, equally dwells in all human hearts, and every other living being. The ignorant wrongly identify Atma with adjuncts such as body, mind, etc., and imagine that they know it. He who dwells in the Sun, who is different from the Sun, whom the Sun does not know, whose body the Sun is, and who pulls the Sun from within, is thy innermost Self, Antaryami, Inner Ruler, Immortal. To live in Atma or the Supreme Self is Selfrealization. In the silence, which transcends all noise, in eternal peace, thy essential divine entity exists. This Atma is silence. Thou art essentially Atma. Thou art the supreme silence.

Supposing you have been exposed on an ice-cold winter’s day, immediately, you come into
a room and warm yourself before a fire, take a warm drink, cover yourself with a hot blanket, and
say, “Oh, such wonderful pleasure now!” Actually, what has happened is that the discomfort, the
painful experience of cold, has been removed by these three things—warming yourself, covering
yourself, and taking a cup of something hot—and you think this is a pleasure. But for someone who
is already in the room and has not had the negative experience of the cold, these things would not
hold the special value which they held for you, because in your case the cessation of pain was taken
to be pleasure. If you use your intellect and analyse all the contact-born experiences a human being
goes through, you will find that they are all just the removal of some painful experience or other,
though man deludes himself into thinking that they are of a positive nature. When you feel very hot,
to take a plunge seems a refreshing experience; or to go to a soda fountain and take a cold
milk-shake or Coca Cola seems wonderful. It is because you have come out of a very hot place
where you have been uncomfortable and perhaps perspiring. When you take the cold drink, it seems
wonderful; but what has actually happened is that for the time being you have removed the painful
experience of heat and perspiration. Every experience obtained from contact with objects outside of
ourselves partakes of this nature and, together with the momentary removal of the painful
experience immediately preceding it, it also contains within itself the power to give you certain
positive reactions. You may sit down to a fine dinner and enjoy it. What has actually happened is: it
was preceded by the painful experience of hunger, and by eating the dinner, you have satisfied your
hunger and you think that your sense of fulfilment has actually come from the food which you have
eaten at the table. While the dinner appealed to you because you were hungry, to another person
who was not hungry and felt no desire for food, it would not have given pleasure. He would have
turned away from it saying, ”No, thank you. I don’t want anything". For him there is no pleasure, as
he has not come with that painful experience called ‘hunger’ with which you drew near to the table.
If that painful experience had been in him also, he would have enjoyed the dinner equally. So, the
so-called pleasurable experiences of this world are nothing but the removal of painful experiences
immediately preceding them.
Swami Chidananda.

The spiritual way of life is perhaps the most intriguing and enigmatic of all arts and sciences.

- Swami Krishnananda

Chant the Maha Mantra

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

BE HAPPY.

https://sekhar789.blogspot.com/2018/11/swami-chidananda-sings-rama.html