THE FINAL DESTINATION

After thoroughly understanding the first two stages, we have to enter into the third stage. We have already seen that Ishta Devata is important in one’s spiritual progress. This Ishta Devata alone will take us to the ultimate stage. Ishta Devata is like a Guru. We will get instructions from Ishta Devata quite often, when we are nearing the final stage. So what is this final stage? This is nothing but identifying ourselves with Brahman, the God. We have already learnt to identify ourselves with our Ishta Devata, to whom we have a form. But Brahmam does not have a form. He is the cause of the creation of the Universe. We have to identify ourselves with the formless, which is by no means an easy task. The first thing in the final stage is understand the clear distinction between the Brahman and the maya. We have already seen that maya is surrounding the Brahman as a sheath. So, for knowing the Brahman we have to go past this sheath. Maya controls all our deeds and actions. It makes us to laugh and cry. But Brahman does not act. You can know a table as table on seeing the table, as it has a form. The knowing a table as a table is the work of Maya, the illusion. But in the case of the Brahman, we have to realise something that is the Supreme in this universe which does not have a form. We have to visualize the form of the formless. How do we go about it? “Aham Brahmam asmi” and “tat twam asi” are the two famous sayings from the Vedas. Both have the same meaning. Aham means ‘I am’. Asmi means existing. Te literal meaning is “I am existing as Brahmam”. Tat means ‘that’. Twam means ‘you’. Asi means existing. The literal meaning is “you are existing as that”. Here ‘that’ means Brahmam. The initial two stages help us here. The first stage is the universal love, the concern for others. The second stage is sadhana with manifestation. The third and final stage is realizing us as God. Unless somebody has gone through the first two stages meticulously, the final stage is just not possible. Now let us enter into the final stage. The first thing in the final stage is to get away from the attachment. The ‘I’ concept should be completely taken away from your consciousness. If we have leftover ego, nothing will work for us. We must develop the attitude that God will take care of everything. We must also understand that whatever one does, that will be the will of God only. The actions are controlled by the God and not by the individual. If somebody hurts us, we should think that the God has decided to hurt us at this appointed time and the God has done that act of hurting through that person. In the final stage only our mind alone need to work. There should be no thoughts in our mind other than the thought of the form of the formless. The absolute purity of our mind is essential. Even a small distraction will spoil everything. That is why during this period ancient saints went to mountains and forests just to focus their attention on Brahman. It is extremely difficult to focus on something that does not have a form. Only at this stage the true meditation is to be practiced. For a true meditation, no particular posture is required. We can lie down on the floor and meditate. The form of the Ishta Devata, our Guru should disappear. There will me no more Guru. No more teaching. No more chanting. No more rituals. We need to do nothing. From here on every activity will be different for each individual. It bill be nothing but total bliss; total ananda, the Oneness. Once we follow these principles, the exact realisation will happen at any time and will take only a few seconds. Only for these few seconds, we have to take so many births. From the moment of realisation, we will be different. We will not be just humans. We will be part of Creation. We will merge with Him. But please understand that we can only merge with Him and not become God. God is all alone. He does not need anybody. From this moment onwards, we can pray for others. What ever we say will come true. For a moment if our ego takes over, everything will be lost. We have then to undergo the ordeal of births after births. We live like others, we do everything like others. But we are different. The bliss will be reflected in our body. Body will shine. Our speech will be different. We will not take credit for anything. Now one can say “Aham Brahmam asmi”. Those who realise this become Brahman, that is merges with the Brahman.

THE PATH

We have seen a few steps towards self-realisation. Now let us discuss its implementation. Meditation is the entry door for self-realisation. Normally, when we sit for meditation, we make so many preparations, like breathing exercises, bending and stretching exercises, etc. We begin our meditation, as if God is going to appear before us. No, God will never appear before us. As we have seen in self-realisation, we have to realise the Brahmam by destroying maya. The first step in meditation is to question ourselves. This is Ramana Maharishi’s teaching. We have to enquire “who I am”. Think about our origin, how we had come to this earth, who would have created us and why we have come to this earth. It is difficult to find answers to these questions in the beginning. But when we probe deep into our self, we will get answers one by one. Only after getting answers for these questions, we can think of realizing the Brahmam. During this, we need not necessarily look into the basic aspects of meditation. When we are set to seriously think about the cause of our existence in this earth, it is only the beginning of the process of realisation. During these initial stages, we are neither going to drive away our thoughts, nor manifest anything. Bagwan Ramakrishna Paramahamsa showed the form of Mother Kali to Vivekananda. Vivekananda did have the vision of the Mother Kali. When we are talking of Brahman as the formless, how can Bagwan Ramakrishna show the divine Mother in flesh and blood? That is because of the power of manifestation of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. That kind of manifestation is extremely difficult for people like us, as we have our own karmas to perform. The utmost concentration is necessary for such manifestation. Now a days it has become a fashion to get ourselves associated with Kundalini yoga. Except you, nobody can ever raise your kundalini energy. Even if you practice for years, self realisation through kundalini yoga is ruled out, as there are no proper gurus. So, let us not be under the impression that kundalini yoga will pave the way for quick self realisation. It is a misconcept. Realisation cannot be achieved quickly. It will take its own time, in many births. When we start probing deeper and deeper into our own self, we will first realise our concern for all living beings. We will start feeding the animals and birds with our own hands. Then, we will start feeding the poor and hungry humans. Tears will roll down our eyes when we feel and see their happiness. If we decide to do the feeding with pomp and vanity, we only add our bad karmas. If we decide to feed them through our servants, again there is no use. No doubt, their hunger will be satisfied. But we will not get that everlasting happiness. This happiness will subsequently blossom into eternal bliss. This is the first step in realisation. We cannot attain this stage by sitting in so called meditation for hours together. The ultimate stage in meditation is that we should be meditating perpetually. We need no separate time to meditate. Meditation will be happening always. So, in the initial stages of self realisation, we will have concern for others. The concept of co-existence will be realised. This in turn will lead us to internal rejoice. We will take part in others happiness and sorrow. The hatred will not be there. Eternal love will start engulfing us. We all know that love is God. Then what next? How do we proceed further? From the initial level we are now going to move to the middle level. We have learnt to love others, thereby making our inner self to rejoice. Next step is to focus our attention on some form. We should remember here that Brahmam is formless. But for the purpose of our concentration and focus, let us manifest some form of a deity, like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had done. We have to manifest a very clear form of the deity, which is usually called “Ishta Devata”. We can use our imaginative power to give a form to this deity. For example, the deity’s complexion is blue. He or she has four or two hands. The crown on the head, the dress they wear, the weapons they hold and all such minute details. Constant and regular manifestation over a period of time will make the deity real for us. By regularly practicing this manifestation, we can start two way communications with the deity. This is absolutely possible and depends upon the power of our sadhana (practice). Initially, we may not be able to decipher the communication from the deity. But over a period of time, we can understand. Since, the deity is created by our own manifestation; the communication will be in a language known to us. Here the frequency and dedication are very important. Let us understand that this is not the final stage of realisation and only a middle level. Let us also not confuse between Brahmam, which is Supreme and formless and our Ishta Devata, to whom we have given a form to our liking. This middle level mainly emphasizes on sadhana. We can also set specific times in a day to do this sadhana. At least two sessions of half an hour a day is the minimum. Two things are important. One is that our stomach should not be full. Second, no disturbance during this time. If we are able to achieve our goals in the first and the middle stages, the third and final stage of realizing the Brahmam will be easier. This stage will be discussed subsequently.

SELF-REALISATION PART IV

SELF-REALISATION. PART- IV. This is the concluding part of this series. There are two concepts in life. One is Brahman and another is Maya. Brahman has no qualities. It does not have form. It has no limits. It is absolute. It is one and the only one, which exists in all the living beings. It does not have a second. It is all alone. Brahman cannot be seen and could only be realized. It is a witness to all our activities. It is our soul. What is soul? Soul is called “atman”. Brahman inside a living being is called atman. Atman is not life (prana is life), but it is a witness to the activities of a life. It does not act on its own. It is the ultimate. It is the Creator. It is the Creator of everything. That is why Brahman is called the God. God is the Creator. Now let us take an example. Krishna an ordinary human is going to be born. Krishna is created in the womb of his mother. At the time of conception, Brahman enters into Krishna as Krishna’s soul or atman. From this point onwards Brahman does not act. But he continues to be a witness to all the acts of Krishna. Brahman does not make Krishna to act, whereas the Maya makes Krishna to act. This is the difference between Brahman and Maya. Brahman is the Creator and the maya is the actor. In cinematic term they are called Producer and director. Everything around us is maya. Brahman is covered by maya as a sheath. The Brahman has different names like atman or soul. The effort taken by us to realise that Brahman is within us is called sadhana. Maya is illusion. Whatever we see, listen, feel etc. are the work of maya. Our joy and sorrow is the work of maya. If a person is fighting with you, you get angry. Both you and the other person are seeing only the anger in each other. Anger is the form of maya. If you look beyond anger, you will realise that there is nothing wrong between two of you as individuals and the problem is in your thought process. You are a person. All your actions are initiated and executed by maya. Brahman, within you is just witnessing your actions. You become addicted to the pleasures given by maya and go deeper and deeper into these pleasures. These pleasures are not permanent, as you will not enjoy pleasures forever. Pleasures are temporary. Too much of pleasure will lead to misery. You are misguided by maya to get yourself involved into the worldly pleasures. We have already seen that anything connected to maya will disintegrate over a period of time. Let us assume that you are not willing to be misguided by maya and started practicing sadhana to realise the Brahmam within you. Depending upon your sincerity in the sadhana, you will start distancing yourself from the worldly pleasures, induced by maya. Once maya goes away from you, you will start realizing the Brahman within. Proper meditation is necessary to drive away the maya. Sit for meditation daily at the prescribed hour and try to explore within you. No Sunday and government holidays for meditation! Develop your will power to drive away the maya. One fine day you will realise that Brahman is within you. From that time onwards, you will be a different person. Since you have realized the God within you, you will not care for the good or the bad done to you. You cannot even think of bad to others. You will pray for others. You become a SELF-REALISED person. Becoming a Self-Realized person is the ultimate purpose of our birth.

SELF-REALISATION PART III

SELF-REALISATION. PART III. Maya makes the mind to think. Maya induces the intellect to respond to the thoughts created by the mind. Maya again makes the consciousness to act on the thoughts created by the above two. Finally maya makes a person to act. He thinks that he was responsible for the acts done by him. Let us take two examples. A person is in need of huge money. He thinks, thinks and thinks. His mind becomes very active in thinking. The mind decides finally that he should get money at any cost. This information is passed on to the intellect (buddhi). He uses his intelligence to find ways and means of acquiring money. The intellect tells him that he cannot get the kind of money he is looking for, even if he works hard throughout his life time. Intelligence tells him that there are crooked methods to get that kind of money. This is passed on to his consciousness. Consciousness is not permitting him to do evil acts and it is not able to take a decision. Confusion prevails. Consciousness is not passing on the information to ego to execute the act. Instead, it passes on the information back to intellect, which in turn refers to the mind. Mind again thinks. It could not find a better solution in the given situation. It endorses the decision of the intellect. Intellect on getting the approval of the mind knows the pros and cons of the act. Knowing fully well about the ultimate result, it passes on to the consciousness. The consciousness also thinks twice and then informs the ego to execute the act approved by the other three. The ego executes. The person steals the kind of money he was looking for. Finally he got the money. The thief thinks that he had stolen the money. Here he means “I”. He thinks that he alone is responsible for this mean act. He repents for his mistake, and it goes on like this. The point to be noted here is that the man feels that he is responsible for the whole act. In fact, he was induced by the maya through the anthakkaranam. Though he is not responsible for this act, his ego makes him think that he (“I” concept) is intelligent enough to do this act. Our point of discussion here is to just to understand the concept alone and not about the nature of the act, weather good or bad. (Rudram blesses thieves also. This is the power of Veda.) Now, let us take another example. There is a poor man. He does not get adequate food. A dog always goes with him. He is not rearing the dog. He does not show any affection to the dog. Obviously he cannot feed the dog, as he himself begs to get his food. On a day, he gets a handful of food. This is not even enough to satisfy 10% of his appetite. When he got that handful of food, the dog was with him. The dog was equally hungry and was looking at him. For a moment he looked at the dog. The maya started working on the man. His mind started thinking. It tells his intellect to feed a portion to the dog. Intellect agrees with his mind and informs his consciousness. Consciousness approves this and informs his ego to act. He acts and feeds the dog with a portion of his alms. The dog expressed his gratitude to the man through its eyes and the man understood that the dog was grateful to him. Both the man and the beast were happy. Here the maya worked for a good cause. We have seen two instances how maya induces a man to act under different circumstances. Whatever is happening around us is nothing but maya. Since everything around us is maya, we get ourselves identified with maya alone. If we don’t want to get ourselves identified with maya, what happens? How to get rid of maya? Who makes maya work for us? If we find answers for these questions, we are nearing self-realisation. Self-realisation is nothing but exploring ourselves internally. This is being dealt with in part IV of this series. Your feed back will be of immense help to me.

SELF REALISATION - PART II

SELF-REALISATION. PART II. In part I we have discussed about the 24 tatwas. These tatwas play vital role in a human being. These tatwas are bundled in a concept called “Maya”. Understanding Maya is very important. Only a thorough understanding of Maya can lead us to know about “Brahmam.” A thorough understanding of these two will lead to “self-realization”. So, now let us now try to understand “maya”. For a proper understanding of maya, a thorough knowledge of the 24 tatwas is necessary. This has been dealt with in Part I of this series. The five basic elements viz., akash, air, fire, water and earth form the basis of the whole universe. All the activities of a man are controlled by the five elements through the other tatwas. Let us now take an example. Krishna wants to drink a cup of water. First he should have water and water is one of the panchabhudas or five elements. Then he needs a cup to hold the water. Let us assume that the cup is made up of clay. Clay is the earth element and space inside the cup is filled with air before water is poured into the cup. For holding the cup he needs hands. He has to swallow the water through his mouth. Here one of the karmaenthriams and one of the Jnanaenthriams are involved (hand and mouth). While he drinks water, he has to realize that he is drinking water only. How he decides? One seeing through his eyes, and another by tasting through his mouth. Thus all the tatwas are involved in a particular act of drinking water. We can imagine the magnitude of the activities of all the 24 tatwas in the universe. Without these tatwas, there is no life on the planet earth or even the universe. These 24 tatwas together is called “Maya”, the illusion. All the things and beings around us are maya. A thing that exists today and does not exist at a later date is maya. Maya’s ultimate end is death or destruction – be it movable or immovable. We buy a table today and this will not lost for ever. May be for 5 years or 50 years or 100 years or even 1000 years and after its life is over, the table will not be there. So things that ultimately perish are maya. We see a tree and we call the tree as mango tree, coconut tree or whatever. We see a tree, with its green leaves and beautiful fruits. On seeing this tree our mood gets lifted. We get attached to the tree and fall in love with it, simply impressed by its lush external appearance. But we fail to explore what how the tree has grown or which or who made the tree grow. In other words, we do not try to find out the root-cause for the tree’s creation and existence. The external appearance is called “Maya” and the cause for its existence is called “Brahman”. Now, let us understand this concept of Maya and Brahman. These two are interrelated. Maya cannot exist with out Brahman. Brahman cannot function without maya. Brahman is The Creator and maya nurtures the creations of Brahman. Any thing in the universe is created by the will of Brahman. Since the Brahman is the cause for creation, he is also called the Creator. We could see and feel his creations. He becomes real. Brahman is alone. He does not have a form. He does not have qualities. He is not controlled by tatwas or by anything. He is independent of everybody. He is called GOD. Nothing can control him. He does not need a second person for his creation. Except the Brahman, we need a second for getting a third. Two cats can create a third cat. Creation of a table needs wood and a carpenter. Trees need butterflies for their proliferation. A man needs a woman to get a child. Thus all the creations of Brahman need a second to create. But Brahman himself does not need a second for his creations. We cannot see the Brahman as he does not have a form. The understanding of Brahman is called Self-realisation. How we can understand him when he does not have form, nor we can feel his presence, nor we know where he is. To understand the Brahman, we have to understand maya first. We have dealt in detail about maya. Maya is the combination of the 24 tatwas. Out of this 24 let us take only the anthakkaranam. This consists of four tatwas viz. mind, intellect, consciousness and ego. Mind thinks and influences the intellect to discriminate, which in turn informs the consciousness which finally decides to act through ego. Why the mind thinks and what is the necessity for the mind to think? We should have an answer for this first, as the mind is starting point of maya. This will be dealt in detail in Part III, which will be posted shortly. Your feed back will be of great help to me.

SELF- REALISATION. PART I

The search within, is the ultimate goal of human life. Unfortunately the term has been complicated by various teachers. Often Vedas are cited. It is not necessary to make a reference to Vedas as Vedas only teach Self realization. Basically the self-realization concept is based on the five basic elements. These are akash, air, fire, water, and earth. . These five elements are embedded in the human body, in the form of indriyas. These indriyas are divided into five tanmatras, five jnanaenthriams, and five karmaenthriams. These make 20 tatwas. Five karmaenthriams are Mouth, Legs, Hands, Anus and Genital. Five jnanaethriams are Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth and Skin. Five thanmatras are Sound, Taste, Smell, Light, and Touch. Five elements we have already seen. Thus we have 20 tatwas. These tatwas are all interrelated to each other. You will also find that the mouth finds a place both in Karmaenthriams and jnanaenthriams. This underlines the importance of the mouth as it a giver and also a taker. Food is taken through the mouth and speech is coming out of the mouth. All our physical activities are done by karmaenthriams, Eating, walking, writing etc, excretion and reproduction. We perform all our karmas through these. Jnanaenthriams perform hearing, seeing, smelling, speech and seeking comforts for the body. These five aid the karmaenthriams in doing karmas. The five tanmatras are nothing but the activities of other three. Thus, we have to basically understand that only the five basic elements do all the internal and external activities of a life through the karmaenthriams, jnanaenthriams, and tanmatras. All these make us to understand and realize the external world. After understanding and realizing an object, we get attached to that object and want to enjoy the finer aspects of it. At this point, all the 20 tatwas will be working for us. The focal point at that moment is only that object and nothing else, as all the 20 tatwas are centered on that object. But what makes these 20 tatwas work for us? Anthakkaranam makes this work for us. Anthakkaranam is made up of four more tatwas. They are manas (mind), buddhi (intellect), Chitam (consciousness) and ahankaram (ego). The five basic elements which are called panchabhudas in the form 20 tatwas induce anthakkaranam. In other words, these four - mind, intellect, consciousness and ego cannot work without the 20 tatwas mentioned above. These make us to understand, realize, get attached and enjoy the finer aspects of the object mentioned above. But the anthakkaranam does not work directly and works only with the influence of the 20 tatwas. Now let us see how it works. The 20 tatwas first influence the mind which gets corrupted. The corrupted mind influences the intellect. Now your intellect gets corrupted. The corrupted intellect influences the consciousness. Consciousness is also called thought or perception. So it understands what the mind and intellect say. This intellectual capacity then passed on to our ego to do the act. The ego is “I” concept. The ego makes us think that “I” did this or that which is not the fact. The act was originally initiated by the 20 tatwas and implemented by the anthakkaranam. So for the whole act, all these 24 tatwas are responsible and not our ego (one of the 24 tatwas) alone. But we unfortunately think that our ego or the “I” ness has done the act. So, we are not responsible for the act done by us. To put it in other way we have to realize that our “self” is not responsible. This is the beginning of “self realization”. The concept of maya and brahmam and how to realize our “self” will be done in Part II of this series which will be published shortly. Your suggestions and corrections will be of great help in making Part II more interesting.