Book Notes
For the Seekers of Moksha
P.P. Aryra is a prolific author on the life and teachings of Bhagavan Baba.
Once again he has lifted his pen to aid devotees in combing their way through a
topic strewn with dead ends and pitfalls. The subtitle is specific:
A Guide to
The fundamental truths they must know
The rules they must follow
The inner battles they must fight.
It is soul stirring to read that someone finally acknowledges that the journey to moksha may from time to time be an inner battlground with the senses, the mind, and the ego.
Ayra writes in the Preface:
The mind is drawn with strong unconscious impulses and instincts of passion and attachment towards the external world and its multifarious attractions. It therefore experiences untold sufferings and miseries. Egoism breeds attachment and desire. Through attachment and desire, even envy and hatred, one plunges into activity and gets immersed in the world. To become free from the dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, one must rid oneself of body consciousness and keep away from selfish Karma. The desire is the enemy of liberation. Desire binds man to the wheel of birth and death. The mind is so influenced by the passion for objective pleasure and delusion of ignorance that it is always seeking the fleeting objects of the world. Liberation from the tentacles of the mind can be got by the pursuit of some spiritual disciplines and acquisition of Brahma-jnana, the Self-knowledge, the knowledge of Atma and Paramatma, that forms the subject matter of this book. The seekers of moksha need to equip themselves with this knowledge for pursuing the path and reaching the goal of life.
It is interesting that Ayra refers to acquisition of Brahma-jnana; I was
recently reading the extraordinarily well researched Italian PhD dissertation
on the Life and Times of Shirdi Sai Baba. Kakasaheb once mused in the presence
of Shirdi Sai why the seekers, sanyasins, and other wearers of the ochre robe
were not flocking to the temple of Shirdi Sai for instruction and knowledge of
Brahma-jnana, that which will give knowlege of Brahman and lead ultimately to
merger. Shirdi Sai is said to have given the following pithy reply:
"They are not interested in knowledge of Brahman."
It
was a shock to realise that of the 6.5 billion on the earth, many, many of them
are not interested and do not have the taste nor inclination to seek the goal
of life itself.
But, Ah! We the devotees of the Lord Sathya Sai, we seek his very presence, nay, demand it, day by day as we pursue sadhana and perhaps, with self confidence, even sue for the grace of merger at the end of our lives. What to do?
Ayra would have us know a lot of things; manage a lot of things, do a lot
of things, (and refrain from doing a lot of other things) and acquire wisdom on
the journey itself.
At the end of the first chapter
he offers the following overview:
Ignorance will never vanish until this wisdom dawns that this world is unreal
and God alone is the Reality, that this world is but God and nothing else.
Everything, every being is but His manifestation, bearing a different name and
form. The aspirant should believe in this Truth, love this Truth and live in
this Truth. Every act done with the consciousness of the body is bound to be
egoistic. Consciousness of God instead of the body will result in love of God
that will guide us to find Him. The pursuit of God alone can make our life
worthwhile. Life without God consciousness is darkness. We must keep the mind
away from low desires prompted by body consciousness that run after fleeting
pleasures and turn them towards the permanent source of bliss. We must keep
before the mind's eye the faults and failures of sensory pleasures and grow in
wisdom and discrimination that will result in non-attachment and spiritual
progress on the path of experiencing God.
Contents include black and white and colour plates. Several illustrations of the kosas, various subtle bodies, chakras, mind, crown, many useful plates and illustrations included. A selection from the table of contents is shown below:~
- Experiencing Divinity
- the nature of the physical world - Maya and the Three Gunas
- The Place of a Guru - shastras and God as the guru
- Brahma-jnana
- Essential qualifications of a seeker - The Central Purpose of all Spiritual Practices
- the Five Koshas and Three Bodies
- Living in God Consciousness
- Different Paths lead to the same goal - Practice of Dhyana Yoga
- Practice of Raja Yoga
- Practice of Bhakti Yoga
- Practice of Karma Yoga
- Practice of Jnana Yoga
$3 from Sai Books, 24 Kenilworth Ave, Wonga Park, 3115,
Margaret and Randall McDonald
email books [at] saiaustralia.org.au
Phone (03)9722 1740