God is represented in some other aspects now. In a wide, wide ocean of milk which covers the whole universe, a beautiful crawling snake or dragon forms a soft bed with some of the folds of its body for a cushion. It has a thousand heads serving as an umbrella. Upon such an ocean lies a most beautiful, lovely Divinity who is the consort of this God. She has a transparent body, eyes half closed and lips smiling. She is softly rubbing the feet of this God. This lovely figure is sitting upon a beautiful, magnificent Lotus, and sitting upon that she is rubbing his feet and kneading him. The eyes of the two are meeting, each is looking into the eyes of the other. Now what does this consort represent? She represents Divinity, Wisdom, Bliss, and Happiness. That is his own glory. This means that the free soul looks into his own glory all the time, and that soul is free when the world is all drowned for him. Away from all relations and connections, having snapped all ties, he has nothing to do with the world.
The Ocean means Infinity. And why is this ocean said to represent milk? Milk has three attributes. It is light, then it is white which means Bliss, it is also invigorating, which means Power. Consequently the ocean of milk represents Infinite Light, Infinite Bliss, and Infinite Power. In this the two rest.
Now what does the snake mean? The serpent means one that survives everything. When the female snake gives birth to its hundred eggs, she begins to eat up the eggs that she has spawned. Everything dies away the one thing remains. In the ocean of bliss, knowledge and power, the Immortal One remains. Both are in their own glory, perfectly happy, calm, and peaceful. Om!
Rama brings to your special attention two important points: –
1. Denial of little Self.
2. Positive assertion of Real Self.
First: Denial, according to the Vedanta, is perfect relaxation, relief, rest, renunciation. Whenever you can spare time, just throw down your body on the chair or bedstead, as if you never carried that burden or weight and had nothing to do with it and it were quite as much a stranger to you as any piece of rock. Let the body rest for a while like a dead carcass, altogether unsupported by your strained will or thought so that there is no tension. Give up all attachment and clinging to the body. Let the mind be relaxed of all care and anxiety for the body or anything. Give up and deny all desire or ambition. This is denial or relaxation.
Second: Godhead. Make God’s will your own. Defend His purpose as if it were your purpose whether for weal or for woe, and according to the trend of thought laid down in the lecture on “Realization,” feel yourself above the body and its environment, above the mind and its motives, above thought of success or fear. Feel yourself to be the all – pervading power supreme, the Sun of Suns, above causation, above phenomena, and one with all the mighty worlds, the all – bliss, the free Rama. Chant OM and sing OM to any tune or tunes that naturally and spontaneously occur to you. Feel that you are all happiness, happiness, happiness. Thus will all causes of complaints and maladies leave your presence of themselves. The world and your surroundings are exactly what you think them to be. Let not the world lay heavy upon your heart. Day and night meditate upon the truth that all the public opinion and society of the world is simply your own idea and that you are the real power whose breath or mere shadow the whole world is. The reason why you do not attain the height of your aim is that you are more courteous and polite to the fickle, unsettled, hazy judgment of others than to your own near neighbour, the Real Self supreme. Rama says live on your own account, not for the opinions of others. Be free. Try to please the one Lord, the Self, the one without a second, the real husband, master, your own inner God. You will not in any case be able to satisfy the many, the public, the majority, and you are under no obligations to satisfy the hydra headed mob. Do you owe the public anything? Are you under any kind of debt to the people? No, not at all. You are your own architect. Sing to yourself as if you were all alone and no listeners were by.
When your own Self is pleased, the public must be satisfied. That is the Law. What is the use of living unnatural lives for others?
A prince in his childhood was playing hide and seek with the children of noblemen. He had much ado to find the boys. A bystander remarked, “What is the use of making so much fuss to discover the playfellows who could be collected immediately if he exercised his princely authority to order them?” The answer to such a question is that in that case the play would lose its relish. There would remain no interest in the game. Just so, according to Rama, in reality you are the supreme ruler and all knowing Omniscient divinity but as you have in fun begun the search for your own subjects (all sorts of ideas and so called knowledge) in the great hide and seek labyrinth of the world, it would not be fair play to give up the trail of thought and exercise in the game the authority which checkmates the whole play. In the plane where the past, present, and future and all the thousands of Suns and stars become your own self, and are mere ripples and eddies in the ocean of your knowledge, how could you care for the Law Examinations and worldly success? If you want to possess the Divine clairvoyance, you have to give up or rise above the very plane of senses from which you sought clairvoyance.
A net was spread to catch fish. The fish on falling into the net carried it off by their stupendous strength. Do not counsel God how to behave; do not dictate your will to Him, just resign yourself to Him, abandon the little self, renounce spurious desires and thus you will make your body and mind full of light and a perfect instrument of the revelation of divinity. All true knowledge and education worth the name comes from within, and not from books or extraneous minds. Men of genius, original workers in the field of investigation made their discoveries and investigations only when they were merged into thought absolute, far above the plane of senses, far, far above yearning or hurrying of any sort, making their mentality and personality free of any tendency to selfishness. They were looking through a transparent mirror or glass and the light of knowledge shone through them, they shed light on books, illumined libraries and books, and libraries could not enlighten them. This is work. By work Rama never means plodding drudgery. In the Vedanta work always means harmonious vibrations with the Real Self and attunement with the universe. This unselfish union with the one Reality, which is real work according to the Vedanta, is oftentimes labelled and branded as no work or idleness by the ignorant. Please read the “Secret of Success” once more thoroughly. Again even a most laborious undertaking, pursued in the spirit of the Vedanta, is found to be all pleasure and play and no drudgery or burden. Thus that which is called the highest work from one stand – point is no work at all from another, according to the teaching of the Vedanta.
There are two pictures of God given in the Hindu mythology. Every religion ought to have three phases, one is philosophy, the other is ritual, and the third is mythology. Philosophy is for the learned; ritual is for the outward body, for the children; and mythology is for the thinker. The three have to go hand in hand. If anyone lags behind, then that religion cannot stand. It is because of these three being in perfect harmony in the Hindu Scriptures that the Hindu religion is still the religion of 300,000,000 people. Any religion that lacks one of these cannot be the real religion. In the Hindu religion all these three are in a perfect state. Form the Hindu Mythology Rama will tell you about the perfect man or Divinity which is continually held in mind.
There are two phases of (rod, two sides of Divinity shown in the Hindu Scriptures. One is a white, grand, majestic, beautiful young man, a glorious figure, sitting on the heights of the Himalayas, lost in meditation and contemplation, eyes closed, insensible to the world, a picture of ecstasy itself. Away from troubles and turmoil, exempt from all anxiety and care. Free, free. A being to whom the world never existed. This is one picture of God. This picture is of contemplation. A free, emancipated soul. The white is a symbol of the Himalayas; the mind at rest, peace, peace.
Along with it there is the consort of that God, who is represented as rose colour from head to foot. She is sitting on the knee of this God and goes on grinding vegetables and other fermented juices all the time for his sake. God opens his eyes and immediately his consort holds to his lips a cup full of the intoxicating juice she has prepared for him, in order that he may fall back into his state of reverie again. She then puts questions to him concerning the whole universe and he explains them to her. She is the daughter of a king, but gave up all her beautiful things in order to be near this God. That God is called Shiva, his consort is called Girija.
Om! Om!! Om!!!
You see the demands of life and the different claims on your physical and mental powers are likely to keep you all the time strained and in tension. If you allow these outside circumstances to keep you all the time strained and in tension, you are making an early grave with your own hands and your own muscles.
How to avoid it and how to take some rest? Rama does not recommend the shirking of work or the giving up of daily pursuits. Rama never advises that. Still he advises you to cultivate a very useful habit, a habit which will keep you all the time clear of onerous and trying tasks. This advice is nothing less than Vedantic renunciation. You have to keep yourself all the time upon the rock of renunciation, and taking your stand firmly upon that vantage ground, giving yourself up entirely to any work that presents itself before you. You will not be tired; you will be equal to the task. To explain further. While at work, take short intervals of rest and devote those short intervals of a minute or so to the thought that the body is nothing, you never had anything to do with it. You are simply a witness, you have nothing to do with the consequences or the results of, its actions. While contemplating in that way, you may close your eyes relax your muscles, and keep the body perfectly at ease, unburden yourself of all thought. The more you succeed in taking off the burden of thought from your shoulders, the stronger you will feel.
Nerves keep up the vitality in the body, and thought is also sustained by the nervous system. The digestive process, the circulation of the blood, the growth of the hair, etc., depend ultimately upon the action of the nervous system. If your thought is disturbed and you are hurried and worried by all sorts of thoughts, that means too much burden upon the nerves. This action of the nerves in the shape of strenuous thought – effort, which is a gain on one side is a decided loss on the other. That is the way the vital functions of the body suffer. It is like two heavy burdens placed upon the same horse. Increase one burden, then you must decrease the other. Unload the horse, then the horse may run without doing any damage to the weight of the loads. If you want to keep up your vitality, if you want to preserve your health, if you want the weight of life to be borne easily by the horse of the nervous system, you ought to make the burden of thought lighter. Let not perplexing thoughts and worrying ideas suck the sap of your life. The secret of perfect health and vigorous activity lies in keeping your mind always buoyant and cheerful, never worried, never hurried, never borne down by any fear, thought or anxiety.
Thus Vedantic renunciation means throwing off and casting overboard all anxiety, fear, worry, hurry, and trouble of mind by continually keeping before your mental vision the Godhead of your real Self, exempt from all worldly cares, worries, and duties. You have no duties to discharge, you are bound to none, you are responsible to nobody. You have no debt to pay, you are bound to none, assert your individuality against all society and all nations and everything. That is the Vedantic renunciation. Society, custom and convention, laws, rules, regulations, criticisms, and reviews can never touch your real Self. Feel that, throw it off, renounce it, that you are not. Give this meaning to Om, and chant Om on all occasions of fatigue.
Om! Om!! Om!!!