This review was published almost 8 years back in the RMIC Bulletin...

Review of Swami Jatiswarananda’s book How To Seek God

                                                                                                         Sreemati Mukherjee

            Swami Yatiswarananda book How To Seek God, though sometimes written in the form of notes or sketches or lectures,  nonetheless is a treasure trove of spiritual wisdom and has curative and cathartic value. The matter ranges from a description of the four types of devotees who are arta, artharthi, jijnasu and jnani to Sankaracharya’s Drig Drishya Viveka and the Yoga sutras. The reflections on each spiritual  subject that the swami takes up, reveals a passionate commitment to the life of the spirit and and an enduring  love for it. The various chapters Mind and Its Control, Values for Spiritual Life, Continence , Karma Yoga, Preparing for Divine Company, How to Sublimate Our Tendencies, Mediation Parts I &II, How to Live in the World, are often the same matter, simply with a different emphasis. This leads to some repetition in the text, yet, it also gives it a unity that leads to a kind of reinforcement for the reader. In the chapter Spiritual Progress on Experience he speaks about how meditation should be ‘niravacchinna tailadhara’ and how in spiritual life one has to progress form the world of form to the formless. He quotes Swami Brahmananda as saying to him “As you go on with your spiritual practice, you will discover what the heart is, how to go deeper, what to discover.”(152) Jatiswarananda posits that the height of spiritual awakening is  that state when  Thakur perceived the same divine ground to permeate everything including the  “shrine, the Puja vessels, everything..”(152) This is referred to in the happenings of December 14^th, 1883, when M quotes Thakur as saying, that everything seemed suffused with the same rasa, including a false person in front of the Kali temple and  the cat, which led him to feed Kali’s bhog to the cat! (Sri Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita, Second Part, Ramkrishna Mission Ashram, Narendrapur, 545). Yatiswarananda concludes that this samesightedness is the end of spiritual life  and brings with it great humility(152).

            This review ends by quoting Swami Brahmananda who was the writer’s teacher and is hailed by him as one of the greatest teachers.  Sawmi Brahmananda’s saying, “Find joy in the struggle,” is perhaps one of those truths to cling to as one makes one’s journey through the difficult journey that is this life!