Divine Seeing – part 2
A few years ago, Jack and Louise Hawley spoke at the Sathya Sai Baba Center of San Diego. For the past fourteen years, they have spent five or six months a year with Baba. Jack is a management consultant. He is also the author of two books which Swami directed him to write: Reawakening the Spirit at Work: The Power of Dharmic Management has become a bestseller (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, SanFrancisco); and The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough For Westerners, recently published by New World Library, Novato, California. Louise was a community activist, part-time teacher, and an events-producer until she received the message to detach from it and embark on her real mission in life. The following is an edited version of their talk. This is the second of two parts.
Now, lets address the all-important question: “How?” Swami constantly emphasizes that we have to practice our spirituality, not just read or hear about it. He says, “One gram of practice is worth a thousand kilos of theory.” Okay then, let’s look at the question of how one develops Divine Seeing:
The first rule is not to think so much. Yes, we have to be aware, to be conscious, but we have to learn not to think so much—to just love, and trust, and be. We have to learn to not try to think our way through life, but to try to be a different way. This may sound simple, but it’s extremely hard to break the life-long habit of thinking rather than being.
Second: Don’t judge! It’s related to not thinking. We have to de-program our minds, to learn how to not (even subconsciously) leap to quick judgments and evaluations, the snap criticisms that come so easily and naturally to us: “That’s good; that’s bad. That’s okay; that’s not okay.” Instead, we have to learn to allow the Divinity within us to guide us away from doing that. Swami, when He was Krishna, talked a lot about the importance of purifying our mind and thoughts. He keeps telling us that today. When we kick out our critic, our bliss moves in. When we remove our impurities, we can move closer to God.
Third: Fix two ideas firmly in mind: Divine Seeing is an active process, not a passive one. Divine seeing won’t just drop out of a tree into our laps. Swami uses the example of a man who sits with a fruit in his lap, waiting for the juice to leap into his mouth. Of course it doesn’t come. We have to be active; we have to go after it, to reach out to taste the sweetness (of all life). It won’t simply come to us.
Divine Seeing is a deliberate decision. We have to decide to develop it. Doing this, we invoke the power of intentionality. As the saying goes, once we really make a decision, then providence moves too. That is, once we truly decide to develop Divine Seeing, then everything starts to line up in support of that decision—needed information comes, necessary energy comes, needed insights come, and so forth. Once we decide to progress, we begin to progress—but we first have to decide!
Fourth: How is to invoke the “principle of attention.” Swami uses this principle often. The principle is this: That on which we place our attention grows stronger. Think about it. It’s a law of life. Research studies show that people (usually women) who diet to lose weight statistically gain weight! Of the sample studied, some will lose weight and others will gain weight, but overall, the whole population that goes on the diet ends up heavier than when it started! How can that be? Because their attention is on what? It’s on their fat. Therefore, their fat grows “stronger” (that is, bigger). They’ve put their attention on the wrong thing. Similarly, if we place our attention on constantly seeing God, what will happen? Our God-seeing grows. The trick, then, is where we put our attention. All sadhana, when you think about it, is about putting our attention on the right places and things. Why does Swam say, “See me in everything?” So our attention is always, always on Divinity. Then our Divinity grows stronger; then that part of us, the God in us, grows stronger!
Fifth: Divine Seeing is a step-by-step process. One day, Mr. V.K. Narasimhan, the wonderful old editor of the Sanathana Sarathi, was going to give a talk to foreigners. Swami stopped near him on the verandah, “What are you going to talk about?” V.K. told Him. Swami said, “Expecting too much, you will frighten them. Instead, tell them that there are no mountain peaks to climb; to just drop habits one by one.”
We have to take that first step. There’s a detail in the Bible few people know that illustrates this. It’s about when Moses was leading the Jews out of Egypt. He wasn’t worried about getting to their promised land on the other side of the Red Sea because he had an agreement with God. They arrived at the shore late one afternoon and camped. The Egyptian army camped a short distance over the hill. The next morning the army was coming down the hill to take them prisoner again and lead them back into slavery. Moses walked to the shore and held his staff up. “Part,” he said, and waited. Nothing happened! He more firmly planted his feet, gathered himself together, and tried again. “Part,” he repeated. And again nothing happened! Not knowing what to do next, he took a step into the water. At that instant the sea waters parted and the tribe walked to safety.
Swami says, “Faith comes first.” Like Moses, we too have to have faith and take that first step—toward, in this case, Divine Seeing. This rule applies to whatever we do on our spiritual path.
Are there any questions—not only about what we’ve talked about, but questions about anything?
Question: Is Swami speeding things up?
Jack: It seems like He is, doesn’t it. I’ll tell you a recent story I heard about Phyllis Krystal. This is my version of it, so some of the details may not be quite right. Phyllis was in Europe doing workshops and she got an inner message, “Come. Now.” She knew who was saying it. “But Swami,” she argued, “I don’t want to come now! I’m X years old; I can’t simply leave what I’m doing here and jog halfway around the world!” The inner voice repeated, “Come. Now.”
So she postponed the remaining workshops and got on the Bombay plane. She sat in Prasanthi Nilayam for two weeks, but Swami paid hardly any attention to her. Finally, two days before she was to leave, He walked by, looked at her, and said, “Go inside.” Good, she thought, an interview! She got up to walk to the Mandir. He said, “Sit down.” Surprised, she sat down. He began to walk away, looked back at her, and said, “Go inside.” She got to her feet and started walking toward the verandah. He looked her way again, as if to say something. She again sat down. He spoke to her very deliberately, enunciating each word. “GO INSIDE,” He said.
He’s saying that more and more to all of us nowadays. The message is to go inside, to turn within, to not need a connection to His physical form—perhaps because the chance to be with Him in that form is not going to be as available much longer. In the context of today’s talk, He is directing all of us to begin to go inside for our own true vision, to see differently, Divinely. When we do, our whole life will change. Swami often uses a colored glasses example: “If you put on blue glasses, the whole world is blue.” Well, when we all put on our Divinity glasses, everything we see will be God!
Louise: Yes, the pace is really picking up. Last summer we were in the woods, camping. We planned to spend six weeks just relaxing by a lake in the High Sierras. A week into our trip we both, separately, got a message: “Higher vibrations now.” It was so strong that we decided to pack up go back to our California home to get ready to return to India. We spent the next five weeks “getting ready,” which meant then that we tossed out old books, clothes, sofas—almost anything we put our hands on. We had the inside of our house repainted. After we did all of that, we got ready to go to India. Then I heard [Him], “You’ve done the outside, now do the inside.” We went back to India right after that.
Jack: One time, I was about to lose a member of my family. I thought about all the years we’d had together, all the experiences, how I would miss this person, and so forth. I thought about how hard it would be, not having that person in my life anymore. As I focused on all this, I became sadder and sadder, and sunk deeper and deeper into a funk until I just sat there fighting back the tears. For several days this went on. We were in India at the time. Swami of course knew of my sadness. After a few days of it, He walked by me on the verandah, looked down at me, and quietly said two words: “Don’t think.” What does that mean? I wondered. But, being obedient, I began to try to stop thinking. I started repeating, “Om Sai Ram, don’t think.” I repeated it several hundred times but it didn’t seem to work. I fished around for something that felt better. Finally, after trying on several other mantras, I settled on, “Om Sai Ram, cleanse my mind.” This one felt good from the start, and it grew more and more comfortable as I repeated it. I must have repeated it 20,000 times. Gradually—actually, quite quickly—the darkness left me and my happiness returned. I came out of that dark hole I had dug for myself. The problem (losing the family member) was still there, but somehow it had dissolved, and had become a non-issue. Swami tells us that bliss is our natural state.
Question: How do you sort the painful experiences and learn the lessons in them?
Jack: Do you mean, how does one get to understand—that is, to see—the deeper gift in one’s pain? A big part of it, as we’ve mentioned, is to not think! Another part of it is having faith, to really know that there is indeed a gift in the pain, in all pain. If everything really is Divinity, how could there be only pain there? Seeing life that way is a healthy, positive way of living life.
Louise: We had a four-year-old child who died in a drowning accident at home. Jack was away working; I was home in Boston. It was a huge tragedy for us, terribly painful.…
Jack: I was away lecturing at Cornell. When I got the phone call I couldn’t believe it. In total shock, I drove, zombie-like to Syracuse and got on the first flight to Boston. Sitting a few rows in front of me was a Catholic priest. I had been brought up Catholic, and thought that I should go up and talk to him. I was numb, but knew I needed help. I noticed an empty seat just across the narrow aisle from his seat. I figured that his business was helping people in distress, and I was certainly that. But something kept me in my seat. I thought many times about moving up near him, but I never did. Now, many years later, I see that experience as a major turning point in my life. I knew at some deep level that I had to face up to this tragedy all alone, within myself, without the help of a priest. It was a turning away from the worldly, even away from worldly religions, and turning toward something that was for me higher, toward Spirit. In retrospect, that was the beginning of my spiritual quest. I can see now it was a new way of seeing myself and the world. In that moment of great need I had to turn to my greatest resource, the Divinity within myself.
Louise: Jack got home that afternoon. Later that night, after everyone had left, we were sitting there, alone on our sofa, dazed, in shock, terribly sad—just the two of us. All the lights were on throughout the house, but I didn’t dare to get up and turn them off. We just sat there, holding hands, not saying anything. Then a voice came to me (I didn’t know Swami at that time), and the voice very clearly told me, “He’s your angel now”… We went through a long period of grief and had some awfully hard times after that, but that message and image stayed with me and helped.
Jack: It’s our thinking that doesn’t “see.” Deep inside, beyond the thinking level, we know, we really can see. When we can learn to suspend thinking, then our vision begins to clear. For example, standing, sick, at a window in a strange hotel in a far off city looking for a bird that’s talking to you, …well, that’s weird. [Laughter] But when the bird flies away with your illness, that’s not so weird. It’s certainly different, and that’s the point. We, all of us, have to be different, and to be different we have to see differently. We have to allow new ways of seeing to enter us. We have to somehow open ourselves up to new angles of vision, new perspectives—to be open to the possibility that there just might be a new, different way of seeing that can serve us better: seeing through our Divine eye.
Louise: A couple of years ago, just before afternoon bhajans, Swami was walking toward me. It was winter and already dark. As He approached, I asked internally, “Swami, show me God.” His face was turned away from me at that time. As He got closer He turned His head and looked straight at me. There, in the space surrounded by his large hair, where His face should have been, I saw that it was empty! He had no face, none! In its place there were stars, planets; black, deep space as far as I could see. Startled, I looked at the lady sitting next to me. She was as startled as I. “Did you see that,” she whispered, “He had no face!”
Jack: Louise has a wonderful closing quote from the Gita. Krishna is teaching His beloved friend and devotee Arjuna the qualities of a yogi (one who seeks union with God)…
Louise: This is from Jack’s book, The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners, Chapter 6, 30:
“Those who see Me in everything and everything in Me, Arjuna, know the staggering truth that the Self in the individual is the Self in all. As they live in constant spiritual awareness, I, God, am never out of their sight or lost to them, nor are they ever out of My sight or lost to Me”…
Jack: Thank you all very much for having us here. Lokaa samasta, sukhino, bhavantu (“May all the beings in all the worlds be happy”).
