Satyakama
Satyakama was a boy who lived in the dense forests of India with his mother Jabala.
Scriptural References
This story is from the Chandogya Upanishad.
Significance
Enlightenment can happen now, at this moment. It is only a matter of being receptive. The Master is a gateway to eternal consciousness. It is up to the seeker to have the courage, determination and intelligence to take the first step in the right direction. Thousands of parables exist in the vedic texts about the lives of seekers and the paths they must travel to reach the ultimate goal – that is, moksha or liberation. One such story is that of Satyakama, from the Chandogya Upanishad.
Story
Satyakama was a boy who lived in the dense forests of India with his mother Jabala. He had an intense desire to learn meditation and know the nature of the brahman. His search for a Guru took him to the sage Gautama. The sage asked him, “Of what family are you, my boy?” Satyakama fearlessly answered, “My mother said that I should tell you that her name is Jabala and my name is Satyakama – and I know nothing more about my family. So I am Satyakama Jabala.” Appreciating his honesty and courage to speak the truth, the sage accepted him as a student.
The next day, sage Gautama initiated Satyakama into a meditation to quiet his mind. This was the first step to the knowledge of the Brahman, brahma vidya – knowing the self. After teaching Satyakama to meditate, Gautama did something that was very unusual. He took Satyakama to the pasture where hundreds of cows were grazing. To Satyakama’s surprise, Gautama separated out four hundred thin, weak cows. He then told Satyakama that he was about to enter a different type of journey. He instructed Satyakama to take the cows to another part of the forest and to tend to them carefully. He was to return after the cows had multiplied to a thousand. Satyakama had many doubts in his heart, but in deference to the Guruvaak (His Guru’s words), he left the gurukul with the cows for the deepest part of the forest.
Deep in the forest, Satyakama lost all sense of time. At first he felt lonely, but soon he sought companionship in his cows and the surrounding nature and forgot even the human language. His mind had become completely silent and even the very goal of his journey was forgotten. He began enjoying his life in the forest. He became one with the nature around him and completely alive in the moment, lost in ecstasy and joy. He carefully tended the cows. His cows ate fresh grass and drank pure water from the streams and soon became very healthy. Satyakama stayed in the deep forest for many years, living a peaceful and happy life, so much so that he even forgot his goal of returning to his Guru with a thousand cows. Satyakama never felt alone. Every living creature became a part of his family. When the time had come to return, a cow approached Satyakama to inform him that they were now a thousand in number, and that they should return to the Master.
Satyakama traveled back to the Gurukul with the cows, and upon seeing them all, the Master exclaimed that now one thousand and one cows had returned. In other words, Satyakama himself had lost all sense of his former identity, and had simply become one of the cows. The Master simply pronounced the Vedic declaration for enlightenment – ‘Tat Tvam Asi’, or ‘Thou art that’. Satyakama was so empty of identity, and in a state of such pure listening, that the Master’s words just penetrated his being and became a reality in him. In that moment, Satyakama got enlightened.
The Master has the power to create the right situation in which a disciple can flower. It is through the guidance and instruction of an enlightened master that a seeker can reach the state of the ultimate bliss. Satyakama also had doubts, like any spiritual seeker, but he had the intelligence to listen to his Master’s words and the courage to practice the Guru’s instruction. In this way, Satyakama was able to transcend the plane of the mundane and reach a higher level of consciousness. The Master is a vessel for our own transformation, but the disciple must take the first step. Once that step is taken, then the possibility towards enlightenment, eternal bliss, becomes a reality.
Innocence
The story says that just by being, just by listening to what nature has to say, Satyakama established himself in the Truth. He became enlightened.
Total innocence leads to enlightenment. Satyakama asks the master for enlightenment and the master asks him to multiply cows!
Many of you will ask, what do cows have to do with enlightenment?
Fortunately Satyakama was not so intellectual. Fortunately he did not receive formal intellectual education. So he did not ask this question! He was simple, innocent and humble, ready for the transformation to happen. He had no logic to use. Unless you are without logic, or tired of logic, you cannot be ready for the transformation. Logic cannot help you understand even your own life. Logic cannot help you look even into your own mind. How can it help you change?
People ask me, ‘Swamiji, why are you against logic?’ I am not against logic. I am only telling you that all your suffering is because of logic without intelligence. Your logic creates so much politics inside you from morning till evening. What is politics? It is nothing but differing opinions on the same subject, is it not? Now watch your mind. It says one thing in the morning and a different thing in the evening on the same subject. This creates the dilemma in your mind. Your mind itself is such dilemma.
People say that in all spiritual organizations there is so much politics. I ask them, ‘What do you mean?’ There is politics inside the very persons who make this statement! To create politics, you don’t even need two people. One person is more than enough. One single person with logic is enough because in the morning his logic will say something and in the evening it will say something else! Naturally the fight between you and you is politics! Am I right? Then why are you making the statement that even spiritual organizations have politics?
If you place the decisions that you make in the morning and the decisions that you make in the evening together in front of you, you will see a politician sitting inside you!
Logic does not allow you to be simple and innocent. It does not allow the transformation to happen easily. Logic has to be overcome for the transformation to happen. Only when there is no logic there can be innocence. Innocence is the space for transformation to happen.
In the case of Satyakama, fortunately he was not bitten by logic.
The disciple goes to the master for enlightenment and the master tells him, ‘Alright, take these cows, go to the forest and stay there till they become one thousand cows. Then come back!’
If today’s seeker was in that disciple’s place he would have said, ‘I think the master is trying to exploit me. He wants a thousand cows, which is why he is telling me to do this work. He is using me to get his work done.’ Innocence is lost to logic! That is why no modern day seeker receives such amazing techniques.
Understand, this is not a mere story. It has got a great truth behind it. With innocence, Satyakama simply followed what the master said. Further, he lost his logic of counting. He was completely lost in ecstasy and joy. The mind stopped functioning. He didn’t care about one thousand or two thousand. Just the innocence and acceptance caused the greatest happening of enlightenment in him! When you completely accept, you don’t need the mind. The mind is necessary only when you live with struggles, only when you are fighting. Just this moment accept yourself in the outer world and the inner world. You will go out enlightened.
For so many years, completely accepting what the master said, Satyakama just was. What else can happen to him but enlightenment?
You may think, ‘How can simple acceptance do such a big job?’ The problem is that even spiritual knowledge is approached by us with the space of an intellectual mind. It is from that intellectual space that we ask the ‘how’. Intellect always questions. Innocence straightaway starts practicing what the master says. That is the difference.
Shiva says in the Shiva Sutras, ‘Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated.’ Why is he using the words ‘senses shut down’? How do you find out if you are completely lost in something? Your senses will not work! You will not see or hear! That is the way to find out. If your senses still work, you are still not lost. Shiva says, ‘Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated. ’ When your senses are working you may think you are hearing, but you may not be actually listening. The sense organ may work, but not the energy that activates the sense organ. Hearing is different from listening. If you are only hearing then the intellect is still at play. If you are listening then you are lost. Then the intellect is no more. The click happens. You sit completely melting. You exclude everything except you and the master. You are utterly innocent and open like Satyakama. Then just one word from the master is enough and you become enlightened!
He means that in that utterly innocent and open state, initiation is enlightenment. Just a word is enough to enlighten. Shiva is giving initiation itself as a technique. He says, ‘Just listen while the master is expressing the truth, and become enlightened!’
Paramahamsa Nithyananda Paramashivam on Satyakama
How can mere listening lead to enlightenment? Why did it happen to Satyakama when it is not happening to us?
First thing, he was innocent and therefore intelligent to receive the master’s instruction. Second, he was courageous enough to live with it. He had complete trust in the master. Innocence always comes with trust.
I am not asking you to get me a thousand cows. No! I am asking you to come with the same mood as Satyakama. Come with the same innocence. You don’t have to do exactly what Satyakama did. But you have to be like Satyakama. If your being is like that, in this moment the transformation can happen. Just in this moment the transmission of light can happen.
Just this moment accept yourself in the outer world and the inner world. You will go out enlightened. For so many years, completely accepting what the master said, Satyakama just was. What else can happen to him but enlightenment? You may think, ‘How can simple acceptance do such a big job?’ The problem is that even spiritual knowledge is approached by us with the space of an intellectual mind. It is from that intellectual space that we ask the ‘how’. Intellect always questions. Innocence straightaway starts practicing what the master says. That is the difference.
Shiva says in the Shiva Sutras, ‘Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated.’
He means that in that utterly innocent and open state, initiation is enlightenment.
Why is he using the words ‘senses shut down’? How do you find out if you are completely lost in something? Your senses will not work! You will not see or hear! That is the way to find out. If your senses still work, you are still not lost. Shiva says, ‘Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated.’ When your senses are working you may think you are hearing, but you may not be actually listening. The sense organ may work, but not the energy that activates the sense organ. Hearing is different from listening. If you are only hearing then the intellect is still at play. If you are listening then you are lost. Then the intellect is no more. The click happens. You sit completely melting. You exclude everything except you and the master. You are utterly innocent and open like Satyakama. Then just one word from the master is enough and you become enlightened!
He means that in that utterly innocent and open state, initiation is enlightenment. Just a word is enough to enlighten. Shiva is giving initiation itself as a technique. He says, ‘Just listen while the master is expressing the truth, and become enlightened!’
How can mere listening lead to enlightenment? Why did it happen to Satyakama when it is not happening to us?
First thing, he was innocent and therefore intelligent to receive the master’s instruction.
Second, he was courageous enough to live with it. He had complete trust in the master.
Innocence always comes with trust. I am not asking you to get me a thousand cows. No! I am asking you to come with the same mood as Satyakama. Come with the same innocence. You don’t have to do exactly what Satyakama did. But you have to be like Satyakama. If your being is like that, in this moment the transformation can happen. Just in this moment the transmission of light can happen.
Drop Cunningness and Become Spontaneous
When I told the story of Satyakama to a group of people, one person asked me, ‘Maybe these techniques are for highly evolved souls. In that story, the disciple gets enligh-tened when the master just blesses him. He must have been a highly evolved soul for that to happen.
I told that person, ‘No, it is not for highly evolved souls. It is for highly innocent souls!’ Understand this. Highly evolved people don’t need techniques. It is like how I was telling you the other day. In sage Patanjali’s teaching of Ashtanga yoga*, the eight techniques described are to be practiced all at once. It is not that if you finish the first technique you are one step higher and ready for the second one. No! Even the first technique is so strong that if you are able to master it and move to the second, you don’t even need the second because you are already done! The first step is yama, which is about codes of behavior. If you are able to master this alone, then you don’t need the remaining steps. You don’t need any further yoga or breath control! So understand this. All eight techniques are individually fulfilling techniques for the sincere seeker. They are not sequential steps.
Similarly, techniques such as those given to Satyakama are given to innocent people who are tired of being cunning. Understand these words, ‘tired of being cunning’. What is cunningness? It is the opposite of intelligence. You can be either cunning or intelligent, never both at the same time. Cunningness is also the opposite of vulnerability. When you are cunning, you cannot be vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, you are pure like a child. A child can be intelligent and innocent at the same time. Over time, his intelligence grows but the innocence invariably takes a turn to become cunningness. Then he is no more pure like a child. Societal conditioning causes the innocence in the intelligence to take the turn into cunningness. Children if left to themselves remain innocent. But we teach them so many things that they become social animals. We hold a great responsibility in bringing up children without making them cunning.
The poet Khalil Gibran* says beautifully about children: You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
The problem is that we know only to divide and look. We never know to look as a whole. If you watch a baby, it will look at each of its toys as a whole. It will just try to push it in as a whole into its mouth! Sometimes it will push the larger part of the toy first into the mouth where it won’t even fit. It doesn’t know what toy it is or what its parts are or whether it is appropriate to put it into its mouth. Its eyes know only to see as whole, never divided. The moment you teach the child to divide and look, you sow cunningness in him.
Cunningness is division. It is a constant calculation. It hinders free and innocent expression. It knows to express only through calculation. Calculation is alright for arithmetic, not for the being. We calculate for the wrong reasons. Do we ever calculate our blessings? No, never! They are just taken for granted. Cunningness starts with division of the whole. Innocence is lost when the mind is taught to divide. Once it picks up the thread, the mind continues and moves far away from its original innocence.
Two babies were in a pram next to each other in a mall.
One of them turn-ed to the other and asked, ‘Are you a girl or a boy?’
‘I don’t know,’ the baby replied.
The first one said, ‘I can tell.’ And he dived beneath the clothes and came out and said, ‘You are a girl and I am a boy.’
The baby girl was surprised and asked, ‘How did you know?’
Pat came the reply, ‘That’s easy. You are wearing pink booties and I am wearing blue ones!’
From a very early stage, the child is taught division by people who are themselves struggling with cunningness. The child unconsciously trades his innocence for cunningness.
The danger with cunningness is that it grows roots in many directions and solidifies as the very nature of the individual. The person will not even know he is cunning. He won’t even know that his struggle with himself is because of his cunningness.
One person came to me and started telling me, ‘Swamiji , I have extramarital relationships.’ I asked, ‘Do you feel it is wrong?’ He said, ‘Yes, I know it is wrong, and I am very clear that I am doing something wrong.’ I told him, ‘Then stop it.’ He said, ‘No, only you can stop it.’ I told him, ‘Hey, I am not the one having the relationship to stop it! You are the one having it, so it is you who is supposed to decide and stop!’ He stood silent. I asked him, ‘What do you mean by I should stop? Do you mean that I should take your car keys and not allow you to go there? What do you mean by I should stop?’
This is cunningness. He told me, ‘No, I have surrendered myself to you, so you should take care of it.’ I told him it was a good story! Then I told him, ‘You told just now you have surrendered everything to me. Alright then, just sit here and meditate.’ He asked, ‘What are you saying Swamiji?’ I told him, ‘You were the one who said just now that you have surrendered everything to me! Then just do whatever I say. Don’t move from here, just sit.’ That he was not ready to do!
A small story: The rivers one day gathered together and made a complaint against the sea. They asked the sea, ‘Why is that when we enter your waters fresh and fit to drink, you make us salty and undrinkable?’
The sea hearing itself being blamed replied, ‘Don’t come. Then you won’t turn salty.’
If you are not ready for the simple solution, then be assured that you are playing a cunning game! Unless you are tired of being cunning, you can’t be helped. No technique can help you because your cunningness knows how to escape from every single technique. People come and tell me, ‘Whatever you are saying is correct, but…’ Understand this. The moment you say ‘but’ to me, you have missed! The moment you say ‘but’, it is over. You are trying to escape with your cunningness.
Some people tell me, ‘Whatever you say is right, but please make me do whatever you say.’ What do you mean? Should I have two or three people continuously watch you and make you do things? Drop your cunning game, then automatically you will start doing what I say. Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game that you play with yourself. You can’t play it with me. I straightaway know where all you are hiding. I don’t need to come to you to find you. So understand that you are just playing with yourself. Just take a strong decision to be completely sincere and authentic to yourself. Only then you can drop your cunningness.
When cunningness dissolves, authenticity and sincerity happen and you will enlighten quickly. Also, with authenticity you will not indulge in any kind of gossip. Gossip is a pure expression of cunningness. When you are so cunning that you can’t tell a person anything on his face, you talk behind his back.
When I tell people that they need to become tired of cunningness to come out of it, they ask me, ‘How come I know and yet I don’t know? How come I can’t stop being cunning?’ You can’t stop because you are secretly nurturing it. It is your creation. You never miss a chance to nurture it. That is why you pretend that you want to stop and you urge me to stop it for you. You can wake up a sleeping person but you can’t wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. Until you are only pretending to sleep, you will never find the burning need to wake up. Straightaway stop cooperating with it, that’s all. That is the only way and it is so straightforward. When you know fire burns, will you beg me to stop you from touching it? No! Then when you know you are cunning, why can’t you just drop it?
When you drop cunningness, spontaneity flowers. Spontaneity is the opposite of calculation. Intelligence plus innocence is spontaneity. Intelligence plus cunningness is calculation. Spontaneity is nothing but a flowing expression of your innocence. It is a non-calculating state of mind. It is called sahaja*, being yourself without any burden. The burden is the burden of constant calculation.
Understand this, with cunningness, you may think you are gaining a lot of things, but the truth is that you are losing your innocence. Losing your innocence is like losing your entire life. You can afford to lose anything but not your innocence.
With cunningness you miss your state of sahaja*, the spontaneity that is your own. In being cunning you are constantly trying to be someone else. When you pretend to be someone else you are not only cheating yourself but you are also in danger of missing your own fragrance. Like all other creations of Existence you have your own beautiful fragrance. It is the fragrance of sahaja*, your natural spontaneous state that is unique to you.
When you are spontaneous, you are without any conclusions. There is no need to function out of conclusion all the time. Intelligence is fluid and creative. It is of the present moment. Conclusion is a foregone thing. It is of the past. With conclusion the juice of spontaneity is lost. Society has taught us to be with conclusions all the time. There are some standard conclusions, which we quickly try to fit with anything that we see. We are afraid to drop our conclusions and be open because the mind is always comfortable in repeating patterns. It finds security in it.
Existence never repeats patterns. Every day is different. Every night is different. Can anyone say it is the same day or same night? No. It is an event that happens everyday and yet it is never the same. That is the sheer beauty of Existence. Then why should we look for patterns? There is no need. The very joy of spontaneous living can be very well experienced. Children are open and spontaneous till the age of seven. Then society starts creating an impression on them.
A woman stopped and asked the little boy who was smoking on the street, ‘Son, does your mother know that you smoke on the road?’
The boy looked at her and asked, ‘Does your husband know that you stop and talk to strange young men on the road?’
Children are like this! They don’t bother.
They are just spontaneous.
A teacher asked in the class, ‘What is a comet?’
One boy stood up and said, ‘A star with a tail.’
The teacher asked, ‘Can you name one?’
The boy replied, ‘Mickey mouse.’ Children are not afraid. They just express, that’s all! No one can predict what the child is going to say the next moment. That is his specialty! The problem is that we are ready to handle spontaneity with children, but we are not ready to handle it with grownups. With a child, we mentally give him the space because we accept he is from a different plane. But with adults we perceive them as being in the same plane as us and so we cannot tolerate it. Children get away with so many things like even hitting you. You actually enjoy it! Can you imagine feeling like this if an adult hits you? The innocence of the child makes even the act of hitting beautiful. The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action. That is the difference.
A teacher was speaking at a meeting when a critic shouted, ‘Listen to him! And his father used to drive a wagon pulled by a donkey.’
The teacher replied, ‘That’s right. Today, my father and the wagon are no more, but I can see we still have the donkey with us.’
You can imagine the state of the critic!
Glossary:
- Ashtanga yoga – Eight limbs or paths of Patanjali’s Yoga: yama (discipline), niyama (rules), asana (body postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (bliss).
- Khalil Gibran – Lebanese American poet best known for his ‘The Prophet’.
- Sahaja – Spontaneous divine joy.
References
http://nithyanandatimes.org/satyakama-the-seeker-of-truth/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/11/what-is-innocence/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/11/drop-cunningness-and-become-spontaneous/ Living Enlightenment, The Gospel of Paramahamsa Nithyananda http://lifeblissprograms.org/e-books/pdf/le_abridged.pdf