The Road to Real Shanti

Genuine shanti is won by the control of the senses only. Then it can be called prashanti. The experience of that stage is as the stream of peace. Calming the mental agitation that surges like waves leveling the swirls and whirls of likes, dislikes, love, hate, sorrow, joy, hope, despair, and shanti is earned and maintained, without disturbance.

Until you intelligently fix upon a certain direction for all your thoughts and activities, you will be only building shadow castles in the air and roaming about in them. Why, even your senses will be pursuing contradictory paths and distracting your attention to such an extent, that you cannot easily come to a decision regarding the ideal. They make you feel that their paths are the best. But you should always strive to change the course of the senses and the imagination, to subjects and desires that are conducive to the ideal, whatever be the difficulty, however serious the crises. That is the sign of real intelligence; that is the road to real shanti.

Steady and undeviating earnestness is very important for avoiding conflicts in the mind and for overcoming them. One has to be calm and unruffled. Courage, wise counsel, and steadiness, these will make the will, the ichhashakti [wishing abilities], strong and sturdy. Luster in the face, splendor in the eye, a determined look, a noble voice, large-hearted charity of feeling, unwavering goodness, these are the sign-posts of a developing and progressing will-force. A mind without agitations, a joyous and unblemished outlook, these are the marks of a person in whom shanti has taken root.

Brahman is a shoreless bottomless ocean. That ocean is the basis for the ever-shifting waves, the evidence and result of its power. The waves emerge from the sea, leaps forth from it, falls back into it, and dissolve itself into it. Though the power of the sea is thus manifested in ups and downs, rise and fall, the sea is steady and fixed. But, the world is concerned more with the temporary and the sifting, and thinks that the waves are very important. So, also, the sadhaka [spiritual aspirant] is more concerned with attainments that are evanescent and changing and not with the unchanging experience of the principle behind, the Brahman. All the senses, all the impulses rise up in overpowering strength like waves from the sea, roar in fury, and subside in the waters; they do not confer peace. The wise thing is to forget these waves, and to direct attention toward the sea beneath, which is without change. Then only can you attain shanti, swim about happily in the deep undisturbed waters.

Source: Prashanti Vahini