Excerpts From Gurudev’s First Global Tour : 1&2. Swami Chinmayananda

13/02/2019
Some excerpts from Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda’s first global tour in 1965.

1.

On 20th May 1965, Swamiji was invited at the Bartholomew Hospital for tea and later to address the students, most of whom were in their final year of medical college. Swamiji spoke to them on the “Art of Meditation”.

“Meditation” he said, “is a vocation which only the human intellect is capable of.

It is not possible in the animal, for the human intellect alone has the capacity to stand apart from its own emotions and judge.

In the case of the animal, its actions spring from its instincts and impulses. An individual who is also victimised by instincts and impulses, will not be able to meditate.

Meditation is a method of controlling our thoughts so that we can be better and efficient men in the outside world. It brings out a better cadence of work from an individual. There are thoughts which are prompted by our earlier animal impulses or more dignified human ideals. In all human beings both good and bad thoughts come. The one who refuses to entertain low vulgar thoughts, sensuous or degrading thoughts but only allows noble thoughts and ideas, is the man.”

2.

On 21st May at the Indian Institution of World Culture, Swamiji spoke on the Upanishads.

With an uncanny sympathy with the audience, Swamiji started, “This great life we see everywhere in everybody and in us, this life pulsating through the body manifests as the perceiver and life pulsating through the intellect as the thinker. Life is something different from the body, the mind and the intellect. E.g. the bulb, the heater and the fan are the equipments of electricity – the light, the heat and the air, are its manifestations: but electricity is something apart from all these, because of which they function, without which these things are lifeless. So this Life which is the “perceiver” in the body, the ” feeler” in the mind, the ” thinker” in the intellect is the ultimate essence in the experiencer. This individuality is forever defeated in our everyday life, because the objects around are always changing as they are conditioned by time.

These subjective scientists who had man as the theme of investigation, were called the Rishis and their recordings were called the Upanishads.

The Upanishads were not given out by one man. It was a science like any other sciences, built slowly by generations of thinkers.” Swamiji, after his one hour’s logical outpouring, concluded. “To rediscover this life in us is the path of Spirituality. To recognise it in us is to recognise it everywhere.

These Upanishads are in the form of conversations between the teacher and the taught. Upa – means near; ni -means below; shad – means sit. So it is that literature, or a knowledge gained through the teacher, in a spirit of humble enquiry. The disciple in his term, teaches his pupils; and so the great knowledge comes down through the centuries by word of mouth.”

To be continued ..