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You must first understand the real objective of the kalpa sadhana session for which you have come here. This is a training session, which is designed mainly to transform the otherwise haphazard and aimless routine of life into an orderly and focused one, with some constructive and worthy aim.

Uptill now most of us have been busy in jumping from one activity to the other, like a monkey or from one desire to the other like a child. Our mind is never stable. One moment it wants something and at the other something else. We have never bothered to discipline its fickleness. We have never bothered to think what we really want, which direction we want to focus. Our activities continue day by day in this manner – sometimes following the social trends, sometime running behind what our neighbors, friends and colleagues are opting for. Sometimes our ambitions drive the course of our thoughts and actions, sometimes circumstances compel us and so on…. In short, this is the sketch of our lives in general. Now, its time we revise this and add a new chapter in this story. Haphazard wandering should be controlled by some discipline, disorder should be refined into order and aimlessness should be given a focused direction. It is time to set some target, to march towards some higher goal.

I have called you all in this sadhana satra to teach you the first lesson of this process of transformation. Your routine in this satra is set to give you practical guidance and self-training on this. Every activity in your daily timetable here is part of this training. Try to set your body and mind to adapt to this new routine. If you really want to do it, it will not be difficult to get accustomed to this hermitage-like ambience, this austere food, hard work and busy schedule.

You have been asked to observe fasting by taking only one meal per day, that too without salt and sugar. The food cooked here is pure, fresh, vegetarian and simple. This discipline is essential to practice self-restraint. It also helps keep your stomach light and your body fit. As you know, the quality of food we eat influences our minds too. Therefore, use of simple vegetarian food and fasting is advised in all spiritual practices. But this alone is not everything. If this was the only purpose of our sadhanacourse, why should I have called you here? You could have observed fasting in your own way at your place as well, as some of you might have been doing during the Navartra period and on several other sacred occasions. In this sadhana, fasting is a part of several other disciplines that you are supposed to adopt.

Aswad Vrat – Source of Vigor and Self-restraint:

Strict self-control over the greed of the tongue is crucial, as control over other senses is also hard without it. One can’t even dream of having control over sensuality and observing chastity unless he/she restrains the lust of the tongue. The tongue longs for spicy, oily, buttery, sweet, sour, salty, or combined varieties of tastes. You are asked to observe aswad vrat1 to help you ‘treat’ this major weakness of your tongue. If you succeed in restraining the greed of your tongue, then you would also be able to follow other disciplines, which are of vital importance for ascent of life.

Mahatma Gandhi has referred aswad vrat as topmost in his book “Sapta Mahavrat” (seven major self-restraints). He has devoted the first chapter of the book to this topic. Here he writes that one who restrains the tongue can also restrain his other sense organs including the mind. He also warns that if one does not have control over the greedy tongue, one would never be able to observe celibacy. Our scriptures and sages also teach this fact in several ways. This is because unrestrained passion for taste not only triggers one to eat excess of ‘delicious’ food, it also makes one blind towards the quality of what is being consumed. This harms the physical health and also boosts up the fickleness and negative tendencies of the mind. The food being offered to you in this ashram is satwik – pure and most suitable for keeping the mind calm and alert.

In this sadhan period, you are eating only one meal per day and your meal is mostly porridge of barley with fresh boiled vegetables that too without salt, sugar and spices! Many of you may not like it and therefore might be eating much less. But don’t worry. Your tongue will be set right in a few days. All the trainees of the earlier sessions of this course had returned back in more energetic and rejuvenated forms. Many had even gained weight. The reason is obvious: healthy quantity of light food gets fully digested; metabolic reactions fully convert it into vital elements required in the blood. The so-called tasty foodstuffs or delicious preparations are expensive and heavy to digest. These gradually disrupt the digestive system. Keeping off from lavish food is like getting rid of a hidden enemy who used to live with you like an affectionate friend but used to silently harm you in several ways. From this point of view, prudent control over diet and eating habits is very important. Fasting is the first and most crucial lesson in this regard. Most importantly, it initiates you into training of self-discipline.

Give Yourself a Fresh Life:

Now onwards you need to look at your life differently. You need to give a new purpose, new direction, new thrust to your life. Uptill now, the standard of your life has been sub-standard or inferior in general. Why I call it sub-standard or inferior, because it has been mostly driven by carnal pleasures, beastly instincts and passions. If you had realized the greatness imbibed in your soul, if you had made thoughtful use of the potentials bestowed upon you by the Almighty, if you had chosen the path of evolution of the inner self, by now you would have become someone like saint Kabir, Ravidas, Gurunanak Deva. Yeah! No doubt! You would have become another Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln. Your being would have been transmuted into another Swami Vivekanand or Dayandand Saraswati. If you look at the life sketches of these great personages you will find that they all were born like ordinary mortal beings. Moreover they had to face hardships and adversities too. But once they understood themselves, followed the righteous path and marched step by step towards the higher goals of enlightenment, then? You know, where they reached? Their lives became majestic exemplars of immortal glory and light.

Why you could not improve upon the routine course of your lives? Don’t make false excuses of scarcity of resources or support or pressures of circumstances. Refinement of personality has nothing to do with these. What you really lacked is the will, the strength of mind. You have let your mind wander in darkness and plunge into filthy mire. You have preferred following the crowds around you and prevalent trends of your times. You never took the trouble to improve yourself. You never let yourselves get inspired by great lives. You have accepted the course of life the way it is for you. Even if some of you might have been inspired by education to progress, it would have remained confined to earning wealth and materialistic success.

Now you have an opportunity to rectify the wrongs, to gain new courage and motivation. You get the right spirit, the right attitude from here. This s³dhan³ period should be a phase of transformation. Start a new life. Weed out the old self-destructive habits, prejudices and attachments. Very often you get trapped in attachments under the pretext of “duties”.

What Are Your Duties?

You usually regard adopting the life-style as per the set norms or wishes of your near and dear ones as part of your duty. That is incorrect. You should make use of your wisdom. If you were really devoted to altruistic duties, I would have saluted your greatness. But your ‘duties’ seem to revolve around only your own family, you are all the time occupied in making yourself and your family members happy, in increasing their comforts and pleasures. If it were possible for you, you would have gifted sets of diamond ornaments to your wife, aeroplane (aircraft) to your son, and what not? You are not doing so because it is beyond you capacity. But tell me honestly, is it not that you would dream of doing? This is what defines duties? This is why you call yourself duty-bound?

Introspection in Silence:

During your one-month stay here, you should ponder over your aims and activities; analyze your conception of the world and your interactions with its entities. Review your relationship with people in your contact. As you are going to be alone most of the time, you will have good opportunity to do this crucial exercise, which is an integral part of your sadhana. Imagine, as though you are sitting alone inside a cave. Great saints, sages and yogis used to live in caves in the ancient times. Many devout sadhak also do it in the present times. This solitude helps them experience the absolute fact that every jev has to traverse the cycle of life on its own.

Every one is born as an individual self and lives with specific identity (e.g. a name) attached to him/her. Every one dies alone. Just think about it. In fact, every activity, which is naturally vital for one’s survival is performed alone. For example, you get up alone, meet the calls of Nature alone, bathe alone; you sleep alone – you may share the bed with someone but not the sleep. You may share your food with someone, but it is only through your own mouth that you can eat. All the sensory functions you experience on your own. You think alone. In fact, if you pay deeper attention, you will find that whatever you do, it is only your self (via your own body and mind) who does it.

So, you have to do your sadhana also on your own. You have to refine yourself and rise all alone. Rest assured, once you do that, you will be fit to live and work efficiently in the company of groups of people. The room you are being put in here is like a cave for you. During the entire span of this sadhana this should be your world, in which you are alone. This is to give you sufficient time and opportunity to be free of all unnecessary burdens and tensions of life and be only with your self. Once you understand this purpose, you will start enjoying it. You will know yourself better now. Introspect your shortcomings and strengths. The guidance for improvement will emerge from within.

Solitude is an excellent opportunity to turn the otherwise extrovert mind inwardly. I have also experimented it. Whenever my divine master (Gurudev) had called me for sadhana, he had put me at some lonely place (on the Himalayas), where there was no one except me. This gave me a rare opportunity for self-reflection and introspection.

Most of the time, you think of everything, every topic, every event, etc. What others have done or said is most familiar occupation of your mind; sitting at home you might think of your shop or office? While at work you may worry whether your children have reached home. Thoughts, memories and imaginations pertaining to relatives, friends, foes, celebrities, current affairs, reactions of past interactions with people, plans of future gatherings, expectations from others, etc, this is what your mind is engaged in all the time. Your mind is always busy thinking something or the other except looking at your own self. When will it experience its own existence?

(To be concluded in next issue)

Notes:

Aswad Vrat: Fasting in which only essential amount of one meal is taken; this meal consists of fresh and healthy simple food. This food is prepared without using sugar/sweet, salt and spices.

Sadhana: self-refinement and transformation by self-determination and self-discipline.
satra: Training session/workshop/training camp.
Sadhak: One who endeavors a sadhana.
Jev: Individual self. Soul incarnated in the form of a being.

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