Parabola for Spirit: Sat-Chit-Anand or Three Types of Phenomena

“It is like the Ocean before you, where I am there and I want you all to come into it and enjoy. It is all for you. The whole thing was created for your enjoyment. You have to become subtler and subtler. ” Shri Mataji

The Spirit Parabola - Light and Ocean and Sky in Oakville Ontario - LakeshoreThe Spirit Parabola – evoked by this image of Lake Ontario captured in Oakville by Anca

Shri Mataji (circa 1983)
reprinted from Nirmala Yoga volume 3 number 16

“The Spirit is the most precious thing that we have within ourselves. The preciousness of your spirit is immeasurable and that is why it is called the thing of eternal value. Because it is infinite, we cannot measure.
Now, God the Almighty we say is sat-chit-anand. Sat means the truth. The truth we understand in human terminology is relative. But the truth I am telling you is the absolute, from where all the relations start. An example I will tell you, how to understand. This Earth has got oceans and rivers and all kinds of waters you can say, but the Earth is enveloping all of them. If the Mother Earth was not there, there could not have been any of this existing. So we can say that the Mother Earth is the support of all the things that exist on earth. She is enveloping us. In the atoms She exists, in the big mountains She exists because the elements are part of that Earth. In the same way is God Almighty. The sat part of Him, the truth is the support of all the things that are created or not created.
Another example you try to understand, how the sat is the purush, is the God who does not take actual part in the creation itself, but is a catalyst. The example can be like this: I am doing all the work, I am creating every thing, but I have a light in my hand. Without the light, I cannot do anything. The light is the support of My work, but the light does not in any way do anything about what I do. In the same way, God Almighty is just the witness like a light.
But His other quality is the chit. It is attention. When it is excited … or when it is pulsated … then through His attention He starts creating.
And He has a third quality which we call anand. Anand is the feeling of joy that He gets by His perception, by His creation, the joy that He gets. All these three things – sat chit anand – when they are at a zero point where they meet, then they become the principle of Brahma. When these three things are one, where there is complete silence, nothing is created and nothing is manifested, but the joy is one with the attention because the attention has reached to merge into joy and joy has become one with the truth.
This combination of three qualities separate and create three types of phenomena. Anand, the joy, inwards merged with His creation and with the truth. When joy starts moving with the creation, the creation starts, moving down from, first, the sat or truth stage to asat, that is untruth, to maya, that is illusion. And at that time, the creation starts working out and when it starts working out, the joy, which is on the left-hand side, the emotional side of God, also starts becoming grosser and grosser, until they reach a stage where there is, we can say, a complete darkness of tamoguna, the complete cessation of the creativity and the complete sleeping of the joy.
Is it clearer? You will understand now Mahalakshmi, Mahakali and Mahasaraswati. That is why Christ said, “I am the light” – because He represents the sat, the light of God. And when the light of God becomes absolutely gross, dormant or dead, then it reaches the second stage of creation. All these things go deeper and deeper and become grosser. That is one part of the parabola.
Now the another part of the parabola starts when you are attaining back to God Almighty. That process now gradually starts becoming higher and higher, subtler and subtler and finer and finer. In that refinement, ultimately the light works for the evolutionary process. Gradually the grosser parts start becoming enlightened. You find the lower animal is not much enlightened as the higher animal. Gradually even the joy starts becoming subtler and subtler. We can call it beautiful. Human joys are much more beautiful than that of animals.
So the joy also start changing their manifestation in the sense you start more and more and a wider range of joy comes into your hands. For example, to a dog, beauty has no meaning, decency has no meaning. So at a stage when you reach, when you are a human being, to that extent you develop your sat, which is awareness. To that extent, you also develop your joy and, to that extent, you also develop creative action. Now you see how the creativity of God passes into the hands of man, when he turns out, how the joy of God passes into the hands of Man and how His light comes into the heart of man as spirit.
It is beautiful. I have just touched when you have become a human being. People say human beings have a soul – not that others do not have – but light starts burning in a human being only. Because of that light, we talk of religion, we talk of God and we talk of eternal things. But it is really a precarious stage, that is to be human being, because, at this stage, you have to jump only a little bit that side, while you start jumping this side and that side. Because this jumping is not possible unless and until the awareness reaches that stage where you become independent and, in that independence, you find your own course. This is the position. Because your Self cannot be yours until and unless you are independent. As long as you are slave or under bondage or something that is gross, how can you enjoy that eternal joy that is within you?
So it is for you to expose yourself more to that joy by opening out your Self more and more and getting subtler and cleaner, so that you feel that Divine.
Once you know this point, that after getting Self Realization, unless and until these three things start merging together, you cannot feel that you have established yourself. The joy within you must be felt through your awareness, otherwise you cannot see it. Suppose you have no eyes, then how can you see? If you were not aware to see Me, how will you see Me? If you are not aware to hear Me, how will you understand Me? And once that awareness comes to You, then only the joy awakens within you because only through these subtle feeling of the awareness, you are going to absorb the joy.

Just now you felt, you said “What a beautiful thing it is!” You felt very happy. You are feeling the joy of creation at this stage and man is the summit of creation. But only the crown part is such a little thing. Very little it is. Very little distance it crosses in no time, but the only thing is that three things have to be combined. And that is why you find even if you get Self Realization, you do not feel the silence because you have not become the light. You do not feel the joy because you have not become the anand. That is the left side of you.
In everything there is joy as a human being. You start seeing joy in patterns. You see a key box. You open it out. You see the patterns. You call it the veneer. You call the roughness and things, the smoothness and the harmony of it. You start feeling the matter, the joy of His creation. But after Realization, you start feeling the joy of creation. The summit of creation is the human being and that is why, for a Sahaja Yogi, he must realize if he tries to be friendly or interested or involved in a person who is at a lower level, he can never get the joy from that person. The only thing that he can do is to raise that person higher to his own level and make him also feel the same joy as you are getting.
Supposing a man who is an artist marries a blind girl. What is the use? She cannot enjoy the arts created by this man. In the same way, if you are interested in your family people, in your relations, in your friends, the first thing and the finest and greatest thing you can do is to give them Self Realization, which means the joy of your spirit. Expose them to the joy of their spirit, which is the most precious thing. And this is the reason why people flicker and they fiddle and they feel uneasy and they lose their joy very easily at small things that has parts of it and finished.
It is like the ocean before you, where I am there and I want you all to come into it and enjoy. It is all for you. The whole thing was created for your enjoyment. You have to become subtler and subtler. You are wasting lot of time here on very gross things you have noticed.”

More links on Spirit & Spirituality

(click!) Bring the Ocean in a Cup – How everything becomes Spiritual!

(click!) Who is Lord Shiva – Mythology, Symbols – Meditation for Heart

(click!) The Psalm 23A Powerful Mantra for the Heart and Bach’s Cantata 122

This Post Has 26 Comments

  1. sanjay taneja

    Many thanks for mailing such a beautiful peace of Suggestions and Advice from Our Shri Mataji to Humankind. The word Sat-Chit-Anand seems so simple to spell but has so much within — The Truth-The Attention -and finally the Anand for the seekers .

  2. Shashidhar Rao

    I do not remember having read this wonderful speech before. Thank you – I enjoyed it immensely!

  3. Costel Lungu

    Many thanks for this divin speach !

  4. Rabi Ghosh

    Sat …Chit…Anad …the ultimate bliss for a community of realized soul. May all who have not enjoyed it yet let us give them that awareness….. that joy to see his own understanding ,becoming, being and living….That is Sahaja Yoga.

  5. C L Patel

    How beautiful is movement of Brahma is in’t it?
    Sat ot Asat.Light to darkness.Death to immortality.Subtle to gross. Bondage to freedom and vise versa.
    To express the Anand The Bliss which is Reality. And it is The God.
    Thank you so much.

  6. ioana avram

    let’s surrender and immerge in the ocean of joy !!

  7. adrian

    There is one very interesting quote found within the article on Sat Chit Anand… as follows…

    “Because your Self cannot be yours until and unless you are independent”

    Here is what I feel this is about… By independence, we mean “freedom”… freedom from … “emotional attachment, mental attachment and physical attachment”. So until we release these attachments we cannot truly be free. That is… once these are released through awakening, then the “light or love” can completely permeate our being… and will then lead to our joy and happiness… which have always been there.
    The result, I believe is in our discovering our Natural state of being “healed”, our Natural state of simply Being.

    1. adrian kraayeveld

      Innocence…
      To be free…
      To be playful…
      To smile…
      And to realize the wisdom…
      That comes from Being…

      I am grateful.

  8. Ravindra Gaonkar

    Sat-chit-ananda.The best way to Enjoy is
    Give Realisation to others everyday.
    SAT-The absolute in the atmosphere flows
    thru us, CHIT-Attention in sahastrara-
    he is the doer,ANANDA-when paramchaitanya
    starts flowing, others get their realisaion
    and we get joy-ANANDA

  9. Anshu

    Thanks fr sending such joyful n blissful mail. I enjoyd a lot. Kindly Keep sending such anandit mails. Thanks

  10. adrian

    Quote from Shri Mataji…

    “…the (Sat) part… the God who does not take actual part in the creation itself, is but a catalyst… the light is the support of his work… God… is just the witness like a light”…

    This is to say that We have the responsibility…

  11. Lene Jeffrey

    Can you possibly inform me of which talk (time and Place) this is from as Id like to share it with new seekers – truly enlightening! Thank you so much for posting!

    1. Ioana

      Dear Lene, as mentioned already in the article, this was found in an old magazine, reprinted from Nirmala Yoga volume 3 number 16 with the mention that it is approx year 1983. if you will find more, please get back to me so I can post the more precise time and location for this excerpt. Thank you.

  12. adrian kraayeveld

    “as long as you are a slave… how can you enjoy that eternal joy within” …

    Quote from Shri Mataji… on “sat chit ananda”

    Advocating independence so that you may realize Self.

  13. Rajendra Tosawar

    Nice and subtle explanation of sat chit anand.When we are in light, it is the matter of that how long the SAHAJA YOGI(NI)S can remain in that situation.
    Thanks for sharing it.

  14. ioana avram

    the right point !we need these talks so much,
    to remember- because we forget…… tks so much………. you make our days better and better… love, ioana

  15. nithya roy

    dear Ioana

    i m a yogini from india,yr website is so informative here i got to know many new things about sahajayoga n our beloved shree mataji.this article has so nicely explained abt sat chit anand…

  16. Sunil

    if you need recording of this is available.This is my best talk

  17. Anjali

    I can read this talk over and over again and still feels like there is so much to it. The last Para of this article sums it up so well. Simple to understand. Thank you Shri Mataji for thsee wonderful pearls of knowledge and thank you Ioana for posting it. It is now a routine for me to read the articles from this website out loud to my mom in Montreal and sister in brampton over the phone as part of our night meditation before bed. They too really enjoy listening to the words of Shri Mataji. It transports us to deep meditation state and we feel so relaxed and joyful. Perfect way to end the day.

  18. Sahaj

    The limitations of Ego makes one to live in a pond but when it’s bursted, we realize that there is endless sea to be discovered. Only after realization a human can become a global citizen with no misidentifations of borders.

  19. Deepti

    Thank you for this great information, Mother keep blessing us through our beloved sisters and brothers sharing divine information.

  20. Jolanta

    Thank you for posting this transcript of Shri Mataji’s talk. This website is priceless!

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