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120 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
Let us not get scared off by words like faith, devotion, worship and surrender. There is a mystery much deeper than meets the eye in these few simple lines. We must take the time to inquire more deeply into their inner meaning if we are to appreciate the relevance of this mystery to the behavioral sciences. The words may actually relate to a level of reality which many of us have mistakenly discounted as primitive or unreal.
In my experience, understanding the dynamics of devotion—the miraculously transforming relationship between man and God—leads to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of love, in a way which nothing in the field of psychology can equal. Yes, Krishna’s declaration may at first appear simple; it seems so because we behavioral scientists haven’t accepted the possibility of divine intervention effecting miraculous transformations of consciousness through the devotional process. Since it is beyond the mind’s comprehension, the only way of understanding this transformation is through the direct personal experience of devotion and love itself. Devotion and love are the path . . . and the goal. This process leads to a whole new inner world of strength and peace and toward the transcendence of the material world and the realization of our own inner divinity. Modern mainstream psychology is largely unaware of this extremely subtle inner dimension, at best glimpsed fleetingly in the words and images of mystics and saints. In the Hindu tradition, this attainable universal self, whose central attribute is selfless love, is called the atma and is described by Sai Baba as follows:
The atma is the unseen basis, the substance of all the objective world, the reality behind the appearance, universal and immanent in every being. It is inherently devoid of attachment, is imperishable and does not die. it is the witness, unaffected by all this change in time and space, the immanent spirit in the body, the motivating force of its impulses and intentions. It is one’s own innermost reality, one’s divinity, the real self—the soul.
The atma cannot be grasped through metaphors and examples. No form can contain it; no name can denote it. How can the limited comprehend the unlimited; the now, measure the ever; the wayward understand the stable?
The atma persists unchanged, however many changes the thing