Going Beyond the Senses
A sage should go beyond the five senses of touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing. Understand, Mahāvīra is not saying you should control your senses or suppress them, no. You are expected only to go beyond. In all the worlds including the celestial regions, the attachment to the sense pleasures is the root cause of physical as well as mental suffering. A seeker who goes beyond these five senses goes beyond the mental as well as physical sufferings.
A person who follows such strict brahmacharya, goes beyond mental and physical sufferings. All beings including the devas, gandharvas, rakshasas, danavas, yakshas, salute such a being. Such brahmacharya is eternal and ultimate and never-ending. By this several have become siddhas in the past or are becoming siddhas now, and will continue to become siddhas in the future.
Beautiful! These great Truths should not be analyzed intellectually before you start practicing.
That is the main thing. If you analyze these words intellectually before starting the practice, you will think, 'What is going on? What is Mahāvīra telling? He is telling us to become swamis. He is telling us to give up the life.' And you will naturally give up Mahāvīra, not life!
Understand, only when you try to put these few words into practice, you will realize he is not telling you to give up life, he is telling you to give up the negativities or blockages which you carry in the life.
Here he is telling to go beyond the five senses. He is not telling you to suppress your five senses. No. The other day, we were having a conversation. Somebody asked me, 'Swamiji, you don't feel your body, right?' I said, no, who said I don't feel I am body? I feel I am body also. There is a big difference between the two. People try to say, 'I am not body, I am not mind.' No. Be very clear, you can constantly repeat and try to believe it but you will never have that as an experience.
There is a funny story:
There was a great Guru called Paramartha Guru and he had four foolish disciples. In South Bharat there are lots of funny stories about this Guru and His foolish disciples. In South Bharat he is very popular. Of course he is an imaginary figure, but very popular.
Once all his four disciples went to a devotee's house for a feast. During the feast when the people serve them, they are supposed to chant some mantras. So one disciple started chanting, 'Brahma satyam jagat mithya.' It means, only Brahman is reality, the world is maya. The next disciple said, 'Deham naham' - I am not the body. He was sitting in front of the food and saying, 'I am not the body.' The other disciple said, 'I am beyond taste.'
When they started telling all these Sanskrit slokas, the person who was serving, the owner of the house, stopped serving. He said, 'One is telling the whole world is maya, then why does he need food? The other one is telling he is not the body, then why does he need food?' So he stopped serving.
At the end, the Guru was sitting. He understood, now these fellows had completely disturbed the whole feast by their chanting. He added one word, 'Kao purey' - after eating all these things will become true, not till we eat. When is Brahma satyam jagat mithya? After eating. And when 'I am not the body and I am not the mind? After eating. When 'I am not the senses, I am only atman'? Shivoham, shivoham, everything when? After eating, not before that.
See people who try to constantly remember, 'I am not the body, I am not the mind,' please understand, are trying to imitate the experience of the Master. They themselves never had the experience. One big danger in trying to imitate the expressions of an enlightened being is it will not lead to enlightenment.
There are few things which will lead to enlightenment, those things are called sadhanas, techniques. There are few things which will not lead to enlightenment.
See, for example, imitating the master's blissful mood, constantly trying to be in that same mood, will lead you to enlightenment. Those things are called sadhanas. But trying to live like him is dangerous because there are so many things which you can't even imagine about imitating.
People come and ask me, 'Vivekananda smoked, why not me?' I tell them, do everything that Vivekananda did, if you do all those things then you also can smoke. These people don't want all the things which Vivekananda did, they want to pick up. That is a big difficulty.
But with Mahāvīra you don't have even that difficulty. You can never imitate Mahāvīra. His body language is so pure, you can never imitate. If you imitate you have to be in that space. Otherwise it is impossible. Mahāvīra is a Master who has not left any loopholes. He is a foolproof Guru, foolproof Master.
You can imitate anything of Mahāvīra, and you will only grow. There is no such thing that you will come down or you will fall down. Saying or thinking constantly, 'I am not the body,' is not the right technique or right method. Actually when you have experience you will go beyond the body. You will not have an idea 'I am not the body.'
See, all of you feel the life that you are living inside your skin. What life and intensity and energy you feel inside your body, inside your skin, the same thing you will feel with the Whole, with the whole cosmos, with the whole Existence. That is what I call going beyond the body and going beyond the senses.