Talk On Vivek Chudamani

Author(s): Chinmayanand Swami
Publisher: Chinmay Publications Trust

Page 92

Knowledge of Reality arises out of sincere contemplation upon the meaning of the Upanishadic Mantras. By this Knowledge, immediately a total annihilation of all sorrows, born out of the “perception of change,” takes place.
The previous stanza merely assured that there is a sovereign means by which we can cross over the world of our finite experiences. In this stanza here, we are given a definition in the form of a clear declaration of what that Path is.
Constant and continuous Vicāra over the meaning of Vedanta leads us to True Knowledge. Vicāra is a term which has no corresponding word, equally pregnant, in the English vocabulary. Words like thinking, contemplating, reasoning, analysing etc., are each too incomplete to express fully the technique of Vichar. Vicāra comprises all these in a symhesis, with certain unavoidable mental and intellectual discipline in the individual doing Vicāra. With a mind and intellect trained and made steady, a seeker rips open the Upanishad declarations, one by one, leisurely, and comes to experience the implications and the deeper suggestiveness of each mantra; this process is called Vicāra.
The honey in a flower is always secreted in the secret bowels of its fragrant beauty. Its enchanted lover, the honey-bee, that courts the flower with adoration and ardour, alone can scent the honey pouch, and groping through the "dusty halls' of the flower's veiled harem, reach the hearttreasure of the blossom !!
Similarly, in the garden of Vedanta are the flowers of the Upanishad mantras, and each has its real sweetnes secreted, not in its outer words, most fascinating though they are, but it lies hidden in the pulsating bosom where its immortal heart throbs with the thrilling ecstascy of Love fulfilled and Perfection experienced. This divine secret is treasured in the sacred-heart of each mantra, and a seeker is to reach this meaning by using his prepared mind and intellect.
The process by which the acutely intellectual and the divinely sympathetic head-and-heart of a seeker come to live