The Sunlit Path in the Yogic Endeavour

0:00 When we see deeply religious or spiritual people, we expect to see people who are serious, reserved, and who carry an air of distance from the things of the world. This expectation has been so deeply embedded in the human psyche that we almost unconsciously take up this attitude when we tread the spiritual path. Consider the austerity and silence of monasteries and cloisters, or even the churches, temples, mosques or synagogues that abound throughout the world. It almost feels like heresy to relax, enjoy a laugh, or just to be generally cheerful. The austere monk is the image that many hold for what true spirituality looks like.

0:53 The path of austerity, struggle, suffering for one spiritual practice, becoming a martyr for God is the way we think about spiritual practice. This increases the perceived gap between the spiritual or religious life and the external life in the world. It also tends to lead to a severe strict view of things and can lead to judgmental practices that want to limit, constrict, punish and stamp out anything that varies from this model. There was a famous film in the 1960s which centered around the story of a novice in a cloister in Austria who did not quite fit in.

1:43 She was boisterous, smiling, laughing, singing, and otherwise finding full expression of the joy of living and the developmental needs of her vital being. The nuns discussed in song the trouble she was, but the Mother Superior supported her with the statement that she makes me laugh. The happiness she brought to the environment she lived in was recognized as something valuable and worth while. Eventually the nuns found a solution to the problem by sending her out to become a caretaker for a number of children of a widower who was raising the children in a quasi military style.

2:30 She succeeded in bringing out the natural joyfulness of the children and eventually won over their father, and they were married and faced the troubles of the Third Reich in Austria together with joy in their hearts and a song on their lips. The film The Sound of Music was based on a real underlying story and captivated hearts everywhere for its musical delights. But the deeper message is one that bears consideration, perhaps the austere, strict judgmental view of many traditional religious or spiritual traditions.

3:13 Or let us not leave out the materialist versions based on economic models or political systems and ideologies. Is not the only way, or even the best possible way. The Law of Attraction holds that whatever we focus upon, we bring toward us. If we focus on difficulties and struggles, that is what we get. If we shift our focus to the divine, to the beauty, the harmony, the oneness of the creation, the uniqueness and the bliss, that is the secret air that we all breathe in. In the Brahmanandavali of the Titiria Upanishad, the Rishi states as translated by Sri Aurobindo, Quote. When he hath gotten him this delight, then it is that this creature becomes a thing of bliss. For who could labour to draw in the breath, or who could have the strength to breathe it out, if there were not that bliss in the heaven of his heart, the ether within his being, It is He that is the fountain of bliss.

4:31 End Quote. In Savitri, a legend and a symbol, Srioro Vendo calls forth this power of bliss. Quote O radiant fountain of the world's delight, world free and unattainable above, O bliss, whoever dwelleth deep, hid within, while men seek the outside and never find. End Quote. If the seeker focuses his attention on the oneness, on the higher ranges of consciousness, on the bliss that lives in the secret heart, rather than on all the petty concerns and struggles of the external being, he can tread a different path, which Shrioro Bindo and the Mother call the sunlit path. Shrioro Bindo notes Quote.

5:29 There is nothing spiritually wrong in being glad and cheerful. On the contrary, it is the right thing. As for struggles and aspiration, struggles are really not indispensable to progress, and there are many people who get so habituated to the struggling attitude that they have all the time struggles and very little else. That is not desirable. There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy 1, and it is the better of the two. End Quote reference Shrioro Bindo and the Mother Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, page 140.