The Nature of Truth

May 1972, Summer Course 1972, Brindavan

Published English.

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In the heart of every individual there is the or the tree that gives you all that you want. Around this , there is a growth of weeds; and, by your efforts, if you can remove all these weeds, then the , or the sacred tree, will become evident. The texts which traditionally belong to Indians are all intended to teach the inner meanings of all the sacred sayings, to put the outside world in its proper perspective and to make men realise their own individuality. God is not only capable of curing the ordinarily understood external diseases, but He also undertakes the setting right of all bad qualities that enter into the inner life of an individual. We generally make an attempt to cure various diseases by externally applying medicines. There are other kinds of diseases, to cure which, we take medicines internally. There are still other kinds of diseases which require not only external application of medicine but also its internal administration.

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Today, you all have joined a hospital that is connected with the Divine. For all your diseases, there is a necessity of not only applying medicines externally but also of taking some medicines internally. Although, as the equivalent of external application of medicines, we undergo certain practices and certain , we also have to realise the inner meaning of such and such practices. It is the realisation of the inner meaning of such practices that constitutes the medicine that you take internally.

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The , which is really the essence of all the , teaches us how life has to be handled internally. It is in the 32nd stanza of the sixth chapter of the that we are told how this internal cleansing or purification should be effected. Good qualities like kindness, compassion, , sacrifice, qualify a man to be called a devotee or a , or one who has attained , or detachment from the external world. But till then, till the individual attains these good qualities, he remains a person only in that name and does not become one who has had any experience of these things. That these good qualities should be shown only in limited circumstances with certain restrictions, while for example, you are engaged either in or in or in devotion, is not the right attitude. That when you come out of your , you may forget about these good qualities and begin to develop hatred instead of love, to develop lust and anger instead of compassion and forbearance are not the attitudes that our devotees should develop. It is only when we can adhere to the observance of these good qualities both outside and inside and put them constantly into practice, that we will feel some happiness. There is the necessity of your observing and accepting such qualities like peace and forbearance always. By putting them into practice always you will deserve the title - you are always a .

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Today one does not become a all the time. In the morning you are like a . In the afternoon you are like a - that is one who eats and enjoys. In the evening you are like a or a sick person who gets the disease after eating. How can something that changes in all the three parts of the day be of any lasting value? That is why our , in the task of seeking truth, are telling us how we can get happiness throughout the day and every day.

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We have the story in our mythology about the churning of the ocean of milk with the , a certain hill; and how many things like diamonds, like the , the tree that fulfils all your desires; like the , or the cow that gives you all that you want, , the immortal nectar, and many other precious things were got from it. In the same way, in modern times, we are churning the ocean of our life. By churning our life and by churning the bowels of the earth on which we live, we get many qualities and many things that we require, such as food, gems, and so on. If we look into the inner meaning of the parable or of our history, we note that there is a hill called and by putting this hill inside the ocean we churn it with the , or the bad qualities, on one side and the , or the good qualities, on the other side. Out of the ocean have come some good things and some bad things. This is the meaning of the story. You may ask if this story has also got an inner meaning.

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You should understand that there is not one single story in the whole history of our culture, which has not got an inner meaning in addition to an outer meaning. It has been explained that or wisdom is the source from which these things come. The body has been established as the vessel. Our intelligence has been put into this body as the hill with which you churn. The essence of has been taken as the milk in this story. In this churning, the right side and the left side have been equated to and . and are the two nerves and these have been taken as the ropes for churning. Taking the name of the Lord, the churning or the sadhana has to go on. Out of such churning arises what may be called the divine butter. Therefore, if today we keep the good qualities on one side and the bad qualities on the other side, if we realise that our ideas are to be constituted into these churning nerves, the and the , if we regard our own body as the vessel in which the milk is contained and we apply the sadhana or the practice, then surely we will reach the Divine.

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If I have to give you an illustration of what has been said in the modern context, I may refer you to the game of football, where some children are on one side and others are on the other side. There will be say, six children playing on one side and six on the other side. They have a ball put in the centre. This ball will be hit by the players who play on one side and the players who play on the other side. Not only will they have two fixed boundaries, two limits, on either side but also a rule that the game should be played within the limits which have been accepted on both sides. Today, in the world, every man and every woman is continuously playing football during his life. Our heart is the football ground. It is not the physical heart but the spiritual heart. In this playground of our spiritual heart, on one side are the or the six bad qualities. These six bad qualities are , , , , , and . That is lust, anger, greed, attachment, arrogance and jealousy. On the other side are the six other players, , , , along with two others and , that is, nonviolence and fullness. These two contestants are having the ball, which is life, right between them. The good people are hitting the ball and the bad people are also hitting the ball. But the situation now is that we are not able to decide who is going to get the victory. The bad people are having physical strength and the good people are having divine strength.

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We also have to ask ourselves, while this game of football is going on in the field of the heart, what the two limits are, the boundaries which we talked of beyond which the ball should not be hit? They are the and the . That is, the education relating to our conduct in this world and the education relating to our conduct in the other world. These two are the limits within which the ball has to be kept. If during the play, we hit the ball such that it goes out of these two boundaries that we have established, we would only be scoring a fault as we will send the ball outside the limits of the court.

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The essence of all the , what is being taught by all the , comes from within man. It is not coming from anywhere outside. In the context of our belief that God is omnipresent, that God is present in front of you, inside you and outside you, there is no need for you to give any special importance to what comes from outside. You will have to believe that everything is contained within yourself. On account of ignorance, on account of some illusion and also due to some of your actions in past births, you are thinking that there is something which is coming from outside into yourself which has got some sanctity. This is not correct. It is only when you are able to overcome this ignorance, it is only when you are able to throw away this illusion that there is something sacred which is coming from outside, then alone can you realise your own real nature.

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If we succeed in throwing out this illusion or , then we shall be aware of our divinity. The one who realises his true self is God. The one who does not realise his true self and who is in the illusion of believing that he is something else than his true self, that he has to get something sacred from the external world, will be entangled in great many difficulties. We will have to conclude that or illusion is not something that is our property. is something that belongs to God. You have to get round only by the grace of God. is something which by the consequences of your own - what you have done in your previous births - can make itself look like a thing quite different from what it actually is. In fact, just by the result of an illusion on your part, it can create a considerable amount of fear and terror.

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All these changes are simply the result of the fear and the illusion that has been caused in your mind. So it is the attitude of the mind that can cause such an illusion. This is being referred to by the word . You may ask, how long will this trouble, this illusion that is being called , last. It will last only so long as you are not able to understand what the divine nature is. So, if in the very first instance, we try to understand the meaning of the Divine, then we will not be subjected to either these troubles or these doubts.

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You may be getting some doubts as to whether we can get an answer to these questions through the study of either the or the or the . By studying these texts you will only understand their subject matter. But just by reading them neither the nor the ignorance is going to leave you, nor are you going to move any closer to divine things. These books are all like guideposts. The guideposts only tell you that such and such a town is situated in such and such a direction, that another town is situated in another direction, and so on. The actual walking has got to be done by you if you want to reach a particular town.

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There is a small example for this. We get an idea that we want to go from here to . Are we going to immediately we get the idea? No, we have to fix the right time. At that time, we have to go to the station. We have to purchase a ticket and reach the City station, then buy a ticket to and get into a train, travel all the night till the next morning, and it is only then that you are reaching . In this process, all four elements - the idea, the time, the reason, and the act of going - have all come together and this would be regarded as one unit. In the dream state, not only are all the five sense organs absent but, these additional things, namely, the time, the reasoning, the person who is doing are all absent.

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Let us take another example. You are sleeping in the night in . You are dreaming and your dream is about your having gone to witness a cinema in . In this dream, if you had felt that you had gone to and that you had witnessed a cinema and also witnessed a number of people in , we have to ask ourselves the questions: When did you travel to ? How did you go? Did you go by a plane or did you go by a train? Where was the time? Where is the person who is doing this act and where is the action itself? None of these exist in the dream state. Further, if you ask the persons, whom you had met in your dream, the next day, whether you had met them in , they would deny having had anything to do with you. They would say that they had not been to at all. This is not so in the waking state.

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You may ask, how is it that what we see during the waking state is also being described as a kind of dream? How can it be? It is all right if it is on one day or on two days. We are living through several years, fifty years, sixty years, and all that we see during these fifty or sixty years in our waking state, cannot be a dream. I will give what you sometimes experience in your dreams as an answer to this question. One has had a dream. In that dream, he saw that he was just then born. In that dream he found that after he was born, he had grown into a child, he had become an adult, he had entered the classes in , he had gone through all the summer courses, gone back home, got married, got a child, the child had grown and he got that child also married; and that son after his marriage got another son who becomes his grandson and all these were seen by him in the dream. So, in the waking state if he was to have been born and if he was to have reached a stage when he could have claimed a grandson, he must at least have spent 40 to 50 years. In the dream, the events that he was born, that he had grown, that he had a grandson and that he could play with his grandson, which would have taken at least an experience of 50 years in the waking state, had all been handed to you in that one dream. The experience relates to 50 years; but if you see the actual time of the dream, it was only two minutes.

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You may get another doubt. You may ask a question that if what we are seeing is all a dream and if all our waking state actions are to be treated as a dream, then why should we do these things at all. Why should we do any sadhana, or , etc., in order to attain , if all this pertains to the dream state? Even in the dream state, some kinds of dreams have the capacity to wake you up immediately and push you into the waking state. For example, if in a dream you see a lion chasing you, because of such a dreadful dream you are suddenly forced to get up and you are in the waking state. Thus what has happened in the dream state has enabled you to get into the waking state. In the same manner, in the waking state also if you regard it as one dream, then a situation may arise when, by the grace of God, you are quickly pushed from the waking state into the state of . Just as for the dreaming state, this is a waking state, if you believe the waking state also to be a kind of a dreaming state, then the state is a waking state for this dreaming state. That is why all the seers and have told us to Awake and Arise and come to the state of realisation. The are also preaching that we should Awake and Arise and approach a state of realisation. We should now ask ourselves, what is this sleep from which we should awake? This sleep is not the ordinary kind of sleep. This is the sleep of ignorance.

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Therefore, the things that are contained in our and the pathways that the have been indicating to us are to be well understood by you and you have to put them into practice. The contents of the tell you that is just one word. This is by its appearance a small word but it contains very deep and important ideas. In the text of , there are only 12 . These 12 contain the essence of all the . Although they do not tell the way in which you have to do your , they tell you in an excellent manner the aspects of .

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This Upanishad, more than any other, contains all the important issues and these will be taught to you in future classes. Even if we are not able to read the , this Upanishad alone shows us the path for liberation. Thus, the one and only Upanishad that can offer to us the knowledge of oneness or is the .