Holy Company

Friday, May 7, 2010, 14:32

Essence of religious experience is “Flight of the alone to the alone"

Always living in seclusion is one of the steps of Yoga or spiritual experience. The Gita recommends to spiritual aspirants - meditation in solitude and distaste for mingling in crowds.

Sri Ramakrishna advised house holder devotees to retire periodically to solitary places for prayer and contemplation. Solitude helps contemplation by minimizing external disturbances. The pot in which the milk is kept for curdling should not be moved about frequently. Similarly a spiritual aspirant should keep his mind-pot undisturbed for the purpose of divine contemplation.

Holy men are those who have purified themselves, established God in their hearts and become utterly unselfish. Holy company leads to yearning for God. It begets love of God. Nothing is achieved in spiritual life without yearning. By constantly living in the company of Holy men, the soul becomes restless for God.

To sustain the earnestness and enthusiasm which we feel at the beginning of spiritual life, three things are necessary, association with the holy, devotion to the chosen ideal and purity of conduct.

When we read about spiritual experiences in the holy books we get a glimpse of their sublimity by seeing them actualised in a Holy Man. Divine love, renunciation, dispassion, selflessness, compassion for all these values remain verbal. When we meet a Holy Man, they become living dynamic and transforming.

In the process of magnetisation by repeatedly rubbing a piece of iron with a good magnet the disorganised magnetic forces in the iron piece get arranged in one direction thus changing it into a magnet. Similarly love of God already exists in man, only it is scattered on a thousand objects and persons, centered on oneself.

When all these loves are brought together and diverted to God - we say divine love has awakened. Holy company focusses all the scattered rays of the love-beam back to God from whom orginally it came from.

Sri Ramakrishna was not merely a Holy man but Holiness itself.

Paramahamsas do good by simply being. They know it not. They simply are.

To be continued

About the author

This article is written by Padma Bai R S for the Vedanta Vani of 'Chinmaya Mission'