Swami Prakashanand Saraswati profoundly illuminates the journey of divine love and spiritual receptivity. In the segmentswe’ve chosen to highlight for this blog, he explains that true acceptance of divine love requires overcoming deep-seated doubts and negative reserves of the mind, influenced by past actions and experiences. By understanding and navigating these inner conflicts, one can align the heart and mind with the path of divine consciousness and ultimately experience a more profound connection with God.
From Swami Prakashanand Saraswati:
A number of factors influence the spiritual receptivity of a soul. There are very few souls in the world whose heart and mind equally long for the vision and love of God. They are fortunate. Such souls do find the path and when they find the path they follow it wholeheartedly. Sometimes, a person comes to me and feels eternally acquainted with me, and from the very first day he accepts the path of divine-love- consciousness without much questioning. You may call it “love at first sight”, but such instances are very few. Mostly people come with questions in their mind. Their response to the path depends upon how confused they are and how deep is the root of their confusion.
The initial structure of questions, doubts, or confusion does not always substantiate ignorance of the philosophy of Divine love. It also includes the negative reserves of a person’s mind. As far as ignorance is concerned, it is very easy to explain the science of devotion and the Divine philosophy. But it is not only the lack of knowledge, it is the negativity of the mind that takes the shape of doubts and questions, and in such cases, unless negativity is reduced, doubts and confusion can never be removed from the mind no matter how logical and clear the description of the philosophy of God is.
This is the secret that people don’t know and (they) unsuccessfully stress their intellect in illogical arguments about God and His Love. God is the object of love. He is your Divine beloved. He is not a subject of discussion. It is only past sinfulness that obstructs intellect from accepting this truth. To clarify this situation, we are now going to consider the general intricacies of the mind in regard to its devotional receptivity.
There are two situations of the same mind. We may call them the inner-self and the conscious-self; heart and mind; or inner-self and mind. Your inner-self is a kind of feeler that accepts or rejects things somewhat on the emotional level. It is not rational. The conscious-self (the mind) is always analytical and accepts things according to its own judgment which is based on its own ideologies formed of social, educational, and religious associations of this lifetime. Because of these differences, there remains a conflict between the inner-self and the conscious mind.
The normal condition of the entire mind is an accumulated body of the negative and positive reserves made of negative and positive actions and thinking of present and past lives. Still, the conscious mind, which is the intellect, holds priority and discriminates the situation according to its own understanding. We are discussing the devotional receptivity of the mind, so the terms “positive” and “negative” in this book relate to the devotional attitude of the mind.
Take an example: A person comes and joins one of our meetings where devotional chanting of Krishn name is going on. Devotees are enjoying and are engrossed in its bliss. The newcomer also enjoys the effects of the satsang and feels relaxed, peaceful, and happy. Although his heart has accepted the authenticity of the satsang, his mind, having some religious or sectarian background, may not accept it.
He may have experienced much more joy in chanting as compared to his own spiritual practices, yet his mind may pursue his own belief. A majority of seekers of God have this kind of problem. The reason is that there are thousands of unscientific ideologies in the name of God. Those who follow them develop a similar intellectual base in their mind that comes forward to oppose when anything different from that is heard or seen.
The degree of devotional acceptance by the heart of a person depends mainly upon good and devotional sanskars from past lives, and the degree of disapproval by his mind depends mainly upon the study, social living, and associations and practices of the present life. Sometimes, when a person has a very great negative reserve from his past life, his heart may also feel a discomfort from the devotional chanting and his heart and mind both may strongly revolt against Krishn name.
The Influence of Past Lives’ Spiritual and Non-Spiritual Practices on Heart and Mind
You have done all kinds of actions in past uncountable lives, lived in every country, followed every civilized and uncivilized culture, done all kinds of social, ethical, and nonethical actions, observed all kinds of good and evil incantations, pursued all kinds of meditation techniques, and worshipped every form of God, selfishly and unselfishly.
All the doings have imprinted deep sanskars in your mind, and all of these sanskars contribute their subtle qualitative natural impulses to the present state of your conscious mind. Now imagine the messy complexity of the forces affecting your conscious mind. Human mind is like an ocean having a rough surface, but as one goes deeper its roughness subsides. Its bottom part is absolutely calm. Thus, the mind is comprised of (a) conscious, (b) subconscious, (c) unconscious and (d) fully unconscious sections of its own. There is a big span between the subconscious and fully unconscious mind.
All the sanskars of past lives lie within this span like micro- micro dots in physical technology, in life-wise sequence. The sanskars of the nearest past lie closer to subconscious mind, and the sanskars of the distant past lie farther from subconscious mind.
In conclusion, Swami Prakashanand Saraswati’s teachings emphasize the complex interplay between the heart and mind in the journey toward divine love. He highlights that overcoming deep-seated doubts and past negative influences is essential for true spiritual receptivity. He urges seekers to align their hearts and minds with the divine to develop a profound, loving connection with God.