In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shares beautiful insights on how enlightenment, yogic powers, and celibacy are connected. Find out.
The word enlightenment has been used, misused, and misunderstood so many times. When someone who says, “I am enlightened,” know that isn’t enlightenment.
“I” and “enlightenment” cannot go together. Both cannot exist.
So, when one who is enlightened is asked this question they keep quiet. In enlightenment, there is only one, not two. There is no “me” and “enlightenment. “I experienced enlightenment. This happened to me, that happened to me,” are all misconceptions of enlightenment.
Enlightenment
Some will say “Suddenly I felt everything was one with me”. Still that “I” is there. There’s an experiencer and the experience they’re having.
It’s like saying, “I didn’t find myself. I searched for myself but didn’t find myself.”
Sometimes enlightenment is sudden. Sometimes it is a gradual realization. Both are possible.
The Art of Being Centered and Contented
Renunciation, or Sanyas, isn’t something that happens to you. Sanyas is a conscious decision to be centered. It is a commitment to something higher. Sanyasis—those who have renounced the material world—are free from all smaller attachments.
Sanyas is being centered in all circumstances. Sanyas is the vision of a higher goal in life. Sanyas is an expression of total contentment.
Sanyas doesn’t arise out of frustration. People may leave things and run away and call this sanyas. I don’t think that is sanyas.
Celibacy
Celibacy is conserving energy. When you have conserved energy from one channel, that energy becomes available for you to use in other channels. Maharishi Patanjali also said that celibacy brings strength. It brings energy for you to do many other things. To realize the self, you need a lot of energy. If you’re dull or weak, then inertia takes over your life.
When you want to be more vibrant, you need energy. And so you have to conserve energy. Enjoyment in all the five sensory pleasures depletes our energy.
If you keep looking at the screen for too long your eyes get tired. When you keep listening to something, something happens to your brain. It starts rattling. You want to be quiet for some time, don’t you? Our brains can’t handle so much noise pollution. Similarly, people who work in fragrance factories want a place where there is no fragrance.
Similarly, our taste buds have limited capacity to enjoy, and so does our sense of touch. So does sex. All these stimulating pleasures drain our energy to some extent. Conserving it is yoga. Spending it is called bhoga. Life is a balance between these two: yog and bhog.
This doesn’t mean that enjoyment is bad. But when you no longer get any pleasure or enjoyment from “spending” your energy, then you start looking for something better. You’re looking for bliss, a happiness that is beyond the senses, and to reach that highest level of human existence you have to close certain tabs.
Higher bliss
Ancient people said so beautifully that if physical pleasure is one unit, then the pleasure or joy of samadhi is one thousand times more than that. When you aim at a higher bliss you can give up the small things without it even feeling like you’re giving anything up.
It’s not a struggle to let go of small pleasures when you are seeking the ultimate. A child is so hung up on chocolates and toffees. But as an adult, even when it’s offered you say “No thank you.” It no longer gives you that much pleasure.
The same with celibacy. Celibacy is two things. One is a practice where you take certain vows and put a boundary around yourself. And the boundary helps you to grow. It’s like a plant having a little fence around it so that the goats don’t come and eat it. You take certain vows so you don’t drown in the habits of pleasures or enjoyment. This is one level. This also helps a person to move forward.
The second level is when pleasures don’t even matter to you because you have a vision or taste of something higher. You don’t need to do anything sensory to experience pleasure. It’s a pleasure that is even bigger than any physical enjoyment. A glimpse of it makes the smaller, sensory pleasures irrelevant. They don’t even matter to you.
When the sunlight is bright a candle is not going to bring any more light to you. So whether or not the candle is there or not is irrelevant to you. This is a higher level of celibacy where pleasures are irrelevant to you.
Hang-ups and judgments
Some sanyasis travel in fancy cars and stay in five star hotels. Don’t judge someone by their outer behaviors. You have to see beyond that.
I remember once in the 1980s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was staying in a five-star hotel in Bangalore. That was the only hotel available in those days. A journalist came and asked, “Why are you staying in this five-star hotel?” They all started asking questions like this, trying to attack him.
He just smiled and said, “Is there a better place? You tell me. I’ll stay there next time.”
A sanyasi isn’t hung up over this car or that car. “Oh, I have to go in a bullock cart only. I have to walk. Only then I am a sanyasi.” This is wrong. Some people have this concept of a sanyasi being like a beggar sitting on the roadside.
Begging isn’t the sign of greatness. Greatness is much bigger. Greatness is beyond riches or poverty. You can’t judge that because someone is rich that they're not enlightened, or because someone has chosen the path of poverty that they’re better.
But if they’re hung up over cars and all of these things, then it’s pitiable. That means their channels are not open, and they haven’t had the highest experience of bliss.
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