BLISS IS WITHIN By Sri Swami Chidananda SERVE, LOVE, GIVE, PURIFY, MEDITATE, REALIZE Sri Swami Sivananda So Says Sri Swami Chidananda Founder of Sri Swami Sivananda The Divine Life Society A DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY PUBLICATION First Edition: 1991 (3,000 Copies) World Wide Web (WWW) Edition: 2000 WWW site: http://www.SivanandaDlshq.org/ This WWW reprint is for free distribution © The Divine Life Trust Society ISBN 81-7052-091-6 Published By THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY P.O. SHIVANANDANAGAR—249 192 Distt. Tehri-Garhwal, Uttar Pradesh, Himalayas, India. PUBLISHERS’ NOTE Sri Swami Chidanandaji Maharaj has been giving innumerable talks during his extensive tours both in India and abroad. Only some of them are available to us in the form of recorded cassettes; out of which only a small percentage have been transcribed, edited and printed. Swamiji’s lectures are simple, lucid, inspiring, absolutely practical and universal in nature. To ensure that his inspiring and life-transforming talks reach a maximum number of spiritual seekers and that this treasure is not lost to posterity, a systematic effort is needed to get them transcribed, properly edited and printed. We have great pleasure in bringing out twenty-five lectures by Sri Swami Chidanandaji and releasing the volume “Bliss Is Within” on the eve of his Amrita Mahotsava (75th Birth-Anniversary) which falls on 24th September, 1991. 23rd September, 1991 THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY iii CONTENTS Publishers’ Note . .............iii Spiritual Life: Its Relevance in the Modern Age . ..............1 Divine Life.............................................9 Vedic Culture...........................................14 Introduction to the Gita. .................27 Thoughts From The Bhagavad Gita . ..................31 True Happiness ..........................................36 Nishkama Karma—The Philosophy of Excellence in Work . .....39 Man’s Relationship With the Mind. 46 Maya...............................................55 Sadhana. ..........................................60 Satsanga . ............................................62 Divine Name ...........................................64 Be Your Own Saviour, Says Lord Krishna. ............69 A Unique Message of Gurudev Swami Sivananda. .............73 What is Yoga? ..........................................76 Yoga—Its Implications, Objectives and its Place in Your Life . 80 Meditation . ..........................................85 The Path of Devotion. ............89 Attainment of Divine Perfection . .............94 Transforming Spirit of Saints and Mystics . ...............103 St. Francis of Assisi . 116 Essence of Religion . 120 Underlying Unity of Religions . ......................124 World Peace. ..............127 Bliss Is Within .........................................130 iv SPIRITUAL LIFE: ITS RELEVANCE IN THE MODERN AGE What is the necessity and the relevance of spiritual life? This question is often put by sophisticated, educated modern man who considers the concept of spiritual life as being something ancient, something old, something which has lost its relevance now. Once upon a time it might have been a fashion and trend, the order of the day, but now centuries have passed, man has advanced, times have changed and therefore, this seems to be an old concept of some other age of the mythological times of Puranas (scriptures). How can it have any place, how can it hold any meaning in our lives today? So this is the doubt, a sort of an inner thought in this sophisticated and scientific age, when man has conquered time and distance. You sit and dial your telephone, you are able to talk to your daughter or son or brother in New York. So space is as good as not being there. 500 years ago, if we, who were in India, wanted to talk to someone who was in New York, there was no possibility unless perhaps we undertook a hazardous voyage, taking about two months to reach that place. Now it does not take even two minutes. That is our age and what can spirituality have to do with man’s life? My attempt will be to try to focus your attention on the fact that spiritual life has not only a relevance, it is not only necessary, but it is absolutely indispensable and it is the very central meaning of human life. In spite of man having advanced a great deal during recent centuries, having come far, far away from the state of life in which his ancestors and forefathers lived, yet he has left many of the problems that face man in bygone millenniums still unsolved. And so spiritual life is the one and only solution to all mankind’s unsolved problems that have accompanied him down millennium. Other problems man has created for himself but even without having created any problems, certain fundamental problems always existed since the dawn of creation: the problem of old age, disease, death, pain and suffering, the problem of sorrows of human life. It is here today, it was there when man was living in the stone age. His life was in no way different from the lives of common animals. For all animals their life is a struggle for existence, a struggle for survival and for man in bygone, pre-historic times of the stone age, life started with the same problem. It may be ironical that with the sudden turn of time and the discovery of man’s ability to harness nature, coming of the age of science, industrial revolution, within the past three or four centuries, man has made amazing strides. He has conquered physical nature, harnessed all the resources and forces of nature to his advantage and provided himself all the comforts and conveniences. Jungles have been converted into cities and night has been converted into day. We have conquered time, distance and air. We go under the water faster than the fastest submarine animal created by God; we are able to fly in the air faster than any bird created by Brahma. We have outdistanced the fleetest animal upon the surface of the earth and vast knowledge has been accumulated. There are thousands of libraries with millions of books, universities galore and colleges without number and education has spread all over the world. And in spite of all this advancement it is the most ironical fact that today human society in this world lives in a fear psychosis. The great commercial product making billions for the producers are sedatives and tranquilizers because the modern man is an anxiety-laden creature. The world is filled with problems, complexities, and there 1 BLISS IS WITHIN is such a great state of worry, fear and uncertainty that man has become compelled to take recourse to medicine to calm his mind. Alien excitement somehow or other gives him a little bit of stability and he lives in fear. You are fortunate in India that fear has not yet come. It is slowly coming but yet it is not come in its full course. But in the West, both sides of the Atlantic, you cannot imagine, unless you have had occasion to go there and stay for some time. Those of you who have been there know what it is. Their one great fear is the question, ‘will we survive’? Has man a future or are we on the brink of global destruction, suicide, because man has accumulated due to advancement in science such unbelievable destructive potential. They say that the stockpile of nuclear weaponry in the arsenal of Russia and America is enough to completely wipe out everything that is on the surface of the earth nine or ten times over. And yet they are not stopping the race of piling up. Naturally when both sides know that the other side has the potential to totally bring about destruction upon us, they live with this question hanging over their heads: Have we a future? Will mankind survive? The problem that faced our pre-historic stone-age ancestors, the problem of survival, has now come back to confront modern mankind after so much of progress, and accumulation of knowledge. What is the reason for this? Why is not mankind better off than it was before in the real sense of the term? We are better off in certain ways. We have more comforts. We can live life with greater ease, less exertion and if that is interpreted, as a better state of life then we are vastly better off than our ancients. But in spite of so much knowledge, so much of progress which man insists upon calling civilisation, why does the world confront this situation? When mankind is pitted against mankind, everywhere there is hostility and hatred, clash and conflict, restlessness. No one believes or trusts another and there is disharmony. Human beings are rent into separate parties and everywhere there is violence and destruction. Can you call this real civilisation? What is the reason for this? Where has man lost his way? We cannot say that the scientific knowledge, technology, advancement, discoveries and inventions by themselves have brought mankind to the situation that prevails today. We cannot say so because knowledge is only accumulation of information and facts. The forces that man has learnt to harness are amoral. They are neither good nor bad. They are just there. They are neutral because they by themselves do not have the ability to cause any experience to man. They cannot destroy because they are inert things. Therefore, we cannot say that by themselves they constitute the present problem of mankind. It is the way in which they are applied, in which they are used, that decides whether they are a menace to mankind or a boon and a blessing. If today these discoveries have become a curse to mankind, they threaten his very existence, like the monster created by Frankenstein was about to destroy its own creator, it is because of the way in which man, the conscious entity, has chosen to use them. They become destructive according to whether you are going to use them negatively or positively. And today it seems that in spite of man’s knowledge, education and outer refinement; there seems to be some fundamental malaise in man.