Blessed Immortal Atman! Glorious children of the Supreme! Beloved seekers! It is a great joy and a great blessedness for me to be with you all and bathe myself in the radiance of your holiness. It is said in India that the greatest blessedness a soul can have is to come in contact with those who love the Lord. Many things can be had—you can have riches and material things which may be very valuable, but this is not anything compared to having the company of the pure in heart, of people who love God, of people who aspire for Truth. This latter cannot be purchased. It comes to us only through His Grace. It is a bestowal that comes directly from God. It comes only when the Divine wishes to be gracious unto us. He has been very gracious to me in this way.
People speak of the modern age, the Godless age, the age of Godless-ism, of the material West, but I have, during the past one and one-half years moved only in the spiritual West. I have not encountered the materialistic West. For those who are in the environment of Godly people, it is a golden age. No matter what age you live in, to come into contact with those who love God, who cherish the aspiration to know the Truth, who have realized that life is not to be wasted away amidst passing changeful unreality, but that it is meant for the sublime task of realizing the Reality, to come into contact with such people, is to enter into the golden age. Such a person who courts the company of the holy is blessed indeed.
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Next: Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 1.The Purifying Power of Holy Saints
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Sri Swami Sivananda The Path Beyond Sorrow
Chapter 15
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, Blessed Immortal Atman! Glorious children of the Supreme! Beloved seekers! It is a great joy and a great blessedness for me to be with you all and bathe myself in the radiance of your holiness. It is said in India that the greatest blessedness a soul can have is to come in contact with those who love the Lord. Many things can be hadyou can have riches and material things which may be very valuable, but this is not anything compared to having the company of the pure in heart, of people who love God, of people who aspire for Truth. This latter cannot be purchased. It comes to us only through His Grace. It is a bestowal that comes directly from God. It comes only when the Divine wishes to be gracious unto us. He has been very gracious to me in this way at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 1.The Purifying Power of Holy Saints
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 1.The Purifying Power of Holy Saints, Satsanga is a transformer. Satsanga is the company of those who are at one with the Reality. Sat stands for the Supreme Truth or Reality. Sanga is association or company. Satsanga means being in close contact with the Supreme. The highest of holy company is to be with God in God-thought or divine contemplation, in meditation, in worship. You get close to the Reality with the aid of these processes at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 2.Conflicting Declarations of Creeds and Scriptures
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 2.Conflicting Declarations of Creeds and Scriptures, The pathway to the Supreme is beset with many difficulties and it is confused with conflicting declarations. Especially in this modern age, man is confused about religion. He does not know what the truth is, or the right religion, or the correct belief, for diverse religions abound. There are different scriptures declaring the Ultimate Reality in different terms, one contradicting the other. There is mutual conflict. There is no agreement and each religion insists that its conception of the Truth is the only Ultimate Reality. Sometimes they do not stop at this, but go one step further saying, All other conceptions will lead you to hell-fire and you will have to continue in that state, in the furnace of hell-fire and brimstone, for centuries and centuries. You who do not believe thus are all pagans and heathens at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 3.Infallible Guidance from the Lives of Saints
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 3.Infallible Guidance from the Lives of Saints, So, if you go to the scriptures and they confuse you, well, just look to the path which these great ones have taken. See how these saints have lived, how these people have tried to make themselves fit for the expression of the Supreme. See how they have spoken, how they have dealt with their fellow-men, how they have reacted to life and its experiences. Behold! Channel your life upon the pattern of the saints, and in this way, the great importance of the lives of saints for us is that they present to us a blueprint of the life-perfect. Their lives offer to us a tangible scheme of living, a way of life, glorifying their own exemplary personalities, their own ideal personalities; and we find that now we are in safe hands if we can just follow in their footsteps. Lives of great men oft remind us...they leave behind them footprints in the sands of timeand these footprints, their ideal pattern of living, becomes to us the indicator of the path to perfection at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 4.The Transforming Influence of a Saints Action
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 4.The Transforming Influence of a Saints Action, There was a saint living on the banks of the Ganges in the province of Bihar, a Vedantin, but devoted to Lord Rama. For many years he had been practising Yoga in a cave which he had dug out on the river bank and had attained to a very high spiritual state. He would be immersed in trance for several days and weeks and eat no food during that time. Due to this, he came to be known as the holy man whose food was air. Being a devotee of Lord Rama, he had many articles of worship (vessels, plates, pots, spoons, lamps and candlesticks) and devotees would come and lavish upon him their offerings (fruits, flowers, camphor and incense) and he would offer these to the Lord at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 5.True Saintliness Is Egolessness
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 5.True Saintliness Is Egolessness, The principle which the saints enliven within themselves, the principle of seeing the Lord in all, beholding the Self in all, and of attaining to a state of absolute desireless non-possessionthat is the way to liberation. The Supreme can be achieved only by making these truths live in reality within ourselves. And the forbearance of the saints! The very essence of saintliness is the total effacement of the ego. If you wish to briefly sum up the inner heart of saintliness, it is the total effacement of the ego. That is the perfect emptiness of which Christ spoke when he said, Empty thyself and I shall fill theea total emptying of ourselves of all I-ness and mine-ness and of all their offsprings, namely, desire, selfishness, attachment, anger, delusion and greed. From I springs mine. If there is no I, there is no mine. I is the root thought that separates us from God, and when I and mine come, there comes selfishness. The I wants to possess all things and countless desires spring into life. And when a desire is blocked, anger comes; and if the desire is fulfilled, more desire comes and greed follows because desires are insatiable and cannot be appeased. From desire springs greedgreed to obtain and possess that which is desired. Out of this possession comes clinging, infatuation and delusion. Saints are devoid of I at energyenhancement.org
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