CONVERT YOUR MIND INTO A LIBERATOR

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

80. CONVERT YOUR MIND INTO A LIBERATOR
Loving adorations to worshipful and beloved Holy Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji,
whose benign glance of grace is ever upon you and with whom you seem to have had some
inexplicable and unfathomable karmic relationship brought over from your previous incarnation.
Without karmic relationship it is impossible for individual souls upon this earth plane to be drawn
into any type of relationship. And, the highest kind of relationship—the greatest, most auspicious
and blessed relationship—is between a devotee and God, a seeker and a saint, because this is the
one and only relationship that liberates.
All other relationships are prolific sources of bondage to sorrow, to restlessness, to asanti.
All experiences arising out of contact and relationship with passing, ephemeral, perishable,
temporary things are said to be the source of sorrow. Ye hi samsparsaja bhogah duhkha yonaya eva
te (The enjoyments that are born of contacts are only wombs of pain).
When one realises this ground truth—that association with all temporary things are fraught
with sorrow—then only our journey to the Eternal begins. Sorrow, therefore, seems to have a
purpose. Pain was declared by Gurudev to be an eye-opener. It can lead to the discovery and the
rectification of error as well as the cause of sorrow.
Sorrow is caused by relationship with temporary things, and it is mind that creates
relationships by its thought moving towards relative things. Through thought alone is brought about
all human bondage, all human sorrow. And strange is the paradox, it is through thought alone that
one can liberate oneself from the bondage created by thought. The one and only way of overcoming
the state created by thoughts moving in a certain direction is to undertake the heroic task of
purposefully making the mind to go in the one direction in which the mind becomes the liberator.
Sorrow then begins to recede until it gradually fades away and vanishes, giving place to peace and
to ultimate liberation.
The secret of sorrowlessness is to undertake this purposeful direction of thought—not
towards the relative, but towards the Absolute, not towards the non-eternal, but towards the Eternal.
That is the relationship that brings about liberation.
Recognising this, the wise seeking soul realises: “The way is through consciously directing
my mind and my thoughts towards the Divine, towards the source of my being, towards the
indwelling presence of the Supreme Reality in the very centre of my being, towards that Being who
is everywhere—nearer than the nearest, more proximate to me than myself. Wherever the senses
move, let me make the mind recognise the presence of the Divine there, even in that object.”
By thus transforming your interior, making the mind take up a new vision—not beholding
the name and form and forgetting the indwelling presence of God; but, on the contrary, rejecting the
name and form and directing your attention towards the indwelling Reality; by launching upon this
purposeful new method of seeing, new method of the awareness of God here and now (in us and in
all things) as the one and only reality that there is—man becomes taken up into a state of
God-consciousness upon the psychological level, of God-awareness upon the mental level.

Here mind changes its entire role. Instead of taking you towards bondage, it now becomes
the instrument to move you towards moksha and liberation. Mana eva manushyanam karanam
bandhamokshayoh (Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation of human beings). “God is
here and now.” If you think in this way, you dwell in God. “This is the world I am caught in.” If you
think of the world in this way, you are caught in the world.
Verily, you have to decide whether you will make your mind a gift of God or whether you’ll
make your mind a net in which you are caught and struggling. The wise decide to make use of the
mind and liberate themselves from bondage, darkness and sorrow. Those who are not wise, who
dwell in folly, allow themselves to be made use of by the mind, and this gift of God becomes a
source of affliction, our greatest problem.
They refer to it as a gift from God because it is the highest endowment. The ability to think
and feel and reason through the mind is what makes us what we are. Without it we would no longer
be upon the human level; we would sink to the animal level of species. But, even a gift from God
can become a burden if we allow it to possess and control us. It becomes truly a gift of God if we
control it and make it take us along with it to the great liberation.
This is where we stand in relation to our minds and where our minds stand in relation to us.
For it is through the mind and its thought that we create all relationships. Will we allow the mind to
create relationships for us willy-nilly, or will we make use of the mind to purposefully create the
one great supreme relationship by which the mortal becomes immortal, by which man becomes
liberated here and now, even while in the body?
That is the decision we have to take, and blessed is the one who takes the right decision. God
bless us all to take the right decision. For we are most blessed and fortunate that He has brought us
into relationship with an enlightened, holy spiritual master who has thrown much light upon what
relationship to take and how to create this relationship.
We are blessed. May we recognise this blessing, make use of it, go beyond sorrow, and
become established in bliss, peace, fullness and freedom!