Spiritualising the Senses
The sense-organs have always been seen as enemies of critical thought. They have been shown to fall prey to all baser emotions like lust, greed, jealousy, anger, and the like. Our discriminative faculty is weakened and its strictness is affected by the strong pull of the sense-organs. Religion and non-religious sources of education have always warned us of the pitfalls of indiscriminately following the sense-organs. It is not that people do not understand that the sense-organs are misleading; it is very difficult to get away from them. All regimens and recipes for individual development or progress, including health recovery plans, stress on not giving a free rein to the sense-organs. But it seems almost impossible.All spiritual aspirants have great difficulty in practicing the restraint of sense-organs, so much so that religious life seems to be a distant dream for most. Many lifetimes are spent in tackling the senses. The pull of the senses operates on many levels: the physical, psychological, neurological, and the spiritual. Only by having a good understanding and complete control of these levels of activity of the senses, can we aim to use them to desired ends in one’s spiritual life? Sense-organs get their power from the sense-objects. And so, our controlling of the sense-organs should begin with the controlling of the sense-objects. It is necessary for a spiritual aspirant to practice severe control of exposure to various sense-objects till one gets a complete control over the sense-organs. Some people foolishly believe that they can control their senses or rather test their mental strength by constantly exposing them to the strong influences of various sense-objects and not be attracted to their lure. Not only does this never happen, it only shows that the vestiges of desire have not been completely annihilated and that the aspirant wants to have the best of both the worlds! Such a situation could only lead to a disaster leading to a fall from the spiritual ideal and the complete erasing of the spiritual practice done till then. Apart from the maximum possible abstention from sense-objects, a change in attitude towards them would enable one to have the least possible harm from them, even when exposed to them. This can be done by constantly reminding the mind that basic food, shelter, clothing, and other basic needs are required to continue one’s spiritual life and that the ultimate goal is to realize one’s true nature. By constantly telling the mind to think in such a manner, the mind becomes gradually free of its attachment to things more than absolutely necessary. This is also an exercise to increase the strength of mental resolves.Even these basic needs have to be fulfilled with an idea that one is divine. The sense-objects and the sense-organs should be seen as aids to the training of the mind. However, this training should not be through the abundance of the sense-objects but by abstaining from them. This way, the sense-objects become tools for realizing Desires propel our mind to be forcibly pulled by the sense-objects.one’s divinity. One should constantly question how less can one live. Then, one’s needs would gradually reduce and finally one would look upon the body also as an extra possession. Even when one is having just the bare minimum of the sense-objects, the nature of the sense-ob-jects should be changed. One should not be exposed to sense-objects that could accentuate one’s baser instincts. For example, if one has to read, one should not read books that deal with baser human emotions like lust and greed. Instead, one should read spiritual and philosophical literature. Similarly, if one has to hear music, such music should not be loud or harsh but should be soothing and conducive to bringing peace of mind. Even while mixing with people, one should take care not to mix with people who have no higher ideals in life. The biggest problem in spiritual life is that one has to constantly live and do spiritual practices through the body. Hence, it is necessary that one constantly meditates on the fact that one’s true nature is not the body. The true reality is wrongly read as this universe due to our ignorance. In its essence, however, the universe is a divine principle. That is what the spiritual aspirant needs to remember whenever dealing with the body, mind, the sense-organs, or the sense-objects. Spiritual aspirants following the path of bhakti can offer the sense-objects to one’s chosen ideal before experiencing them. However, they should remember that this should not encourage them to increase the enjoyment of sense-objects; rather they should gradually reduce their dependence on sense-objects. The major cause of our attachment to the sense-organs and sense-objects is desire. Desires propel our mind to be forcibly pulled by the sense-objects. By a continuous process of meditation upon the transitoriness of this universe and all experiences within it, and also by understanding the cyclical nature of the experiences of the sense-organs, one can eventually reduce desires. The reason for doing so is the plain truth that desiring things is mostly counterproductive. The restlessness of the mind, often disguised as the activity, is another important cause of our becoming weak in front of the sense-organs. Every spiritual aspirant should strive hard to maintain an inner poise and calm irrespective of the external circumstances and be unruffled by any adversity. Only a calm mind can stem the upsurge of desires.The entire exercise of spiritualizing the senses is possible only when the spiritual aspirant has the clear and strong conviction that this is a practice that would eventually lead to the dawn of knowledge and consequent liberation from the transmigratory cycle of births and deaths in which one is bound due to ignorance. And this ignorance is manifested as the idea of duality. This duality is further seen in the doubtful and misleading nature of both the intellect and the mind. All our resolves are filled with uncertainties about our choices and they narrow us down to a particular way of thinking or living. This again leads to the vicious cycle of attempting to make better choices and the cycle never stops. Even if the resolves and ignorance about spiritual truths can be to some extent dispelled by a proper guru, until the spiritual aspirant completely gets rid of superimposition by one’s intellect, a complete removal of ignorance does not take place.Therefore, the main purpose of spiritualizing sense-organs and sense-objects is to get rid of this confusing characteristic of the mind and the intellect, which in turn would lead to a decrease in the attempts to make a better choice, eventually leading to a decrease in desires. Finally, this exercise of spiritually dealing with the sense-organs and sense-objects would lead to the knowledge of the ultimate reality and liberation. The spiritual aspirant should have this thought in mind always and then the difficulties of the practice of spiritual-ing the senses would seem much less.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA TODAY 