This satsang is inspired by my recent stay at Mundo Sundaram. I passed a week or more with beloved Ramji and luckily a little time with beloved Sundari too. I came across a book ‘Wandering the Himalayas’ by Swami Tapovan. Each chapter accounts of a journey so austere and isolated, very few of us today would be capable of a fraction. Times of brutal cold exposure, little food and sometimes long delays if a man went down. Amidst his accounts of God’s peak and valleys he offers sublime kernels of Vedanta. I felt a kinship in ways as I read and gazed out at the Axarquia Mountain range of Malaga, grateful to be blessed by warmth and swooping swallows, yet the very same magnitude of peace, appreciating God’s glorious bounty stemming from this idyllic space where at every glance mirrors of the divine. I chose a few paragraphs from the book, added and edited slightly.
‘Arise, Awake; and Understand the Supreme Goal.’
‘O Beautiful Child of God lying immersed in the sleep of ignorance from time without beginning, arise, awake from this sleep of illusion. Seek and find noble teachers and learn directly from them the Truth about the Soul’
‘Like a loving mother, the scriptureadmonishes us tenderly to wake up from the terrible sleep of ignorance which is the source of all sorrows and calamities, that is, to eradicate ignorance completely.
The scripture also assures us that the only means of destroying ignorance is by knowledge of the Self. So it is clear there is no other road to salvation. To the mansion of Moksha there is no entrance except through knowledge. Devotion and yoga lead you to the door of knowledge and not directly to the home of salvation. The darkness of ignorance lifts only on the rise of the sun, knowledge, not on the appearance of the stars like bhakti.’
‘So says the Svetasvatara Upanishad – If only one can fold the sky like a piece of parchment, can he cross the sea of worldly sorrows without the knowledge of the supreme soul. It is the view of all Vedanta scripture that there is no vessel to ferry a human being across the ocean of worldliness except knowledge. But then, what is knowledge? It is the full and firm realisation of the Self, a realisation beyond all doubt, change and contradiction. Neither control of the breath or mind, nor the performance of karma yoga without desire, neither devotion to the gods, nor fasting or pilgrimages.’
How does this knowledge originate? How does one who identifies with the body and think ‘I am rich, I am happy’ or ‘I am poor, I am unhappy’, turn away from this immoral worldly life and enter that life of the soul with the thought ‘I am the Self, the bodiless, ageless, deathless bliss…?’ Inquiry in the Truth, carried on with the help of holy men and women.
I offer these words and inspirations as attestments to associate with and read about the lives of great souls. Find places and time without distraction with an intensive search after truth and eagerness to find salvation. I thank my teacher. His dedication to sharing the knowledge and keeping the tradition alive knows no bounds. I’m eternally grateful to you, Sundari and all of Shiningworld.
