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What is the cause of brahman Why were we born? By what do we live? On what are we estabilished? Governed by whom, O you who know brahman , do we live in pleasure and pain, each in our respective situation

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This is the very first step in the spiritual path. Irrespective of all other details, spiritual life begins with some degree of questioning. About oneself, about the ups and downs of life, about what truly support us and sustain us.

This is particularly true when we are living hard times. These are times that, inevitably, causes some degree of self questioning. What are we doing? How are we doing all we have in front of us? What is wrong in my life right now?

If our answer to all these questions is a higher spiritual awareness, an increased level of practice, greater dettachment, and greater love towards our next ones, towards all beings, we are in the sattvic path.

If our answer to all these questions is to use spiritual things as one would use an aspirin, a practice directed to satisfy none but us, if we use everyone around us as puppets to our selfish desires, we are in a rajasic path.

If our answer to all these questions is to forget spiritual issues, lower level of practice, greater attachment, and disrespect, if not hate, towards our next ones, towards all beings, we are in the tamasic path.

Naturally, all gunas operate on us, so we all have mixed feelings in this kind of situations. We may, indeed, be temporally afflicted by unwholesome states of mind. But it's the long term what really counts.

After the perturbation that suffering supposes, we have changed. Events don't come and pass by our lives without leaving a trace. And this is the time when we make evaluation of everything. And this evaluation is necessary.

This evaluation is the begining of viveka . But viveka only won't suffice. A spiritually acute individual may lack of enough will to turn this viveka into realizations. And both discernment and realizations are the two main constituents of a spiritually sound life.

Krishna Tushar

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Should we regard it as time, as inherent nature, as necessity, as chance, as the elements, as the source of birth, or as the Person? Or is it a combination of these? But that can't be, because there is the self atman . Even the self is not in control, because it is itself subject to pleasure and pain

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Man is the only animal who sacrifices

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Understood in its broader sense, the one who sacrifices is the one who prays, the one who is devoted to God. S/He who makes day after day an practice of yoga, who makes each day an oblation to God in the altar of time, who as the Holy Gita says sees Brahman in all and all in Brahman.

Out of our personal histoy, we may be tempted to find so to call "solutions" that are not open to transcendency, that is, not open to God. But to no way. We may be tempted to leave issues to time, to chance, to say to ourselves that things must be this way, so why bother?

We may even try go through our own personal forces. But, when we face serious problems, really big problems, going through without God's help is a complete temerity.

And it is indeed, because, even people who faces really big problems sometimes find hard to see the presence of God, presence that is always there, but is not always felt.

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Those who follow the discipline of meditation have seen God, the Self, and the Power, all hidden by their own qualities. One alone is he who governs all those causes, from "time" to "self"

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Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo

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That is, more inner than the innermost part of me and highest than the higest in me.

And It's only one who does this. One alone who governs all, one alone who has power over time, over our nature, over all the universe. His name is God Almighty. OM.

Only He is the answer to all our entreaties and problems. Only He is who gives us true freedom. Only He who points us the way.



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