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Reality is One, which appears to be Many, because of our wrong Perceptions and wrong Identification.

 Reality means the Absolute Reality. This Reality is known by different names such as the Self, Consciousness, Brahman, Atman, Parmtman, God, Krishna etc.

One means one without a second, Infinite, where nothing else is. Any thing other than this ONE is only a perception.

Many means ‘me, mine and you.’ Me and mine are self-evident. Any thing other than me and mine falls in the category of you (i.e. not me and mine).

Perceptions: What are the wrong perceptions? "Me, Mine and You", this triplet, are the wrong perceptions and is the cause of all our sorrows. It leads to competition, likes and dislikes (‘Raga, Dwesha’), anger, hatred, jealousy and what not. It does not stop there. Each mine and you creates its own world of ‘me, mine and you’, and this goes on endlessly.

Identification: What is the wrong Identification? I am the body, and all other bodies are different from my body. This wrong identification leads to competition and make us commit all kinds of sins, such as telling lies, deception, fraud etc. for the sake of this body (i.e. me and mine).

The question then arises is, if I am not this body, who am I? The answer would be that I am the ‘ Immortal Atman, one without a second.’ Contemplate on this Truth and free yourself from this Samsara Chakra (repeated cycles of birth and death).

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Reality, what's its nature:  

• It is one without a second. It is absolute i.e. there is nothing like It and none other than It. It is independent of every thing but all perceptions are dependent upon It.

• It is beyond the reach of all our sense perceptions. That means eyes can not see it, ears can not hear it, nose can not smell it, tongue can not taste, skin can not feel it and the mind can not perceive it.

• That is to say, this Self is beyond seen and unseen; It is beyond sound and silence; It is beyond smell and non-smell; It is beyond all tastes and non-tastes; It can not be touched and is beyond non-touching; and It is beyond all perceptions and non-perceptions. In other words It's beyond the reach of our body, mind, intellect (BMI) complex.

• It is not void. All our instruments (senses) function in the presence of this Reality only and yet It's beyond the reach of our senses.

• It is self existent, self evident and self effulgent. It includes every thing and excludes nothing and yet It is not touched by any thing. 

• Upanishads tell us that It is the eye of the eye, ear of the ear, mind of the mind etc. that is, It is the Seer behind all seeing, Hearer behind all hearing, Thinker behind all thinking and yet It's totally un-attached.

• Even though the Self is beyond description, the scriptures tell us that the Truth is Sat, Chit, Ananda or Satyam. Jananam, Anantam, Brahma (Existence, Knowledge and Limitlessness or Bliss Absolute).

• These are not separate qualities of Brahman, they are all one. Sat is Chit, Chit is Ananda, Ananda is Sat, the Bliss Absolute where nothing else is, only Bliss and infinite mass of pure Bliss.

• This is the one and the only Goal of human life, the Self Realization, to free ourselves from this Samsara Chakra.

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SELF REALIZATION:

What's Self Realization?

• It's gaining the already gained. Self is our true nature but due to our ignorance and our past impressions through the varied incarnations we are firmly rooted in the body consciousness and thus believe the body to be Self. Therefore removing this ignorance through  various Vedantic disciplines is gaining the already gained.

• This classic example will make it clear. Suppose in a family the man of the house is busy with his work and unintentionally he pulls up his glasses over his head. After a while he realizes that his glasses are missing. Now as usual he goes about shouting and screaming. "Where are my glasses, in this house nothing stays in place, things are moved without my knowledge etc." Now the wife looks at him and stays calm. The little one smiles and tells his dad, "I know where your glasses are dad. If you put your hands over you head, I will tell you where they are." As soon as he puts his hands over his head, he realizes his folly. The glasses were always with him but he was ignorant of the fact. As soon as his ignorance was removed, he attained the already attained. Similar is the case about our own essential nature, the Self. We consider ourselves to be the impermanent body due to ignorance of the fact that our essential nature is all blissful Atman. How can we remove this ignorance? By knowing, who we are? Which is further elaborated below?

• Self is said to be all pervasive. That means It is the subtlest. The rule is, the subtler a thing is, more pervasive it is. For example, the pervasiveness of our mind is greater than that of our vision, therefore mind is subtler than our vision. So the saying goes, mind is subtler than matter. Also introvert mind is subtler than the extrovert mind. The subtler the mind gets, the purer it becomes. To visualize the subtlest Self therefore we must make our mind purer and purer until the two are at the same level or in other words the mind and the Self become One. This is a state of Self Realization.

• Next question is, how do we purify the mind? Gita says, through Karma Yoga or selfless actions. To understand Karma Yoga we have to look at the process of Samsara Chakra and Moksha Chakra.

• Samsara Chakra: When we perform selfish or ego centric actions to fulfill our desires, impressions are formed on the mind. When the process is repeated time and again to fulfill these ego centric desires one after another, the cumulative effect of those impressions on the mind leads to deep rooted habits which in turn leads to bondage. This bondage keeps us in the Samsara Chakra or the repeated cycles of birth and death, life after life.

• Moksha Chakra: On the other hand, when we perform selfless or God centric actions (i.e. actions performed with an attitude of surrender to the Lord, otherwise termed as Ishwara Arpitam Budhi), it leads to the annihilation of ego and purification of the mind. When this process is repeated over and over again to please the Lord, we start identifying ourselves with the totality by shedding our I-ness and My-ness little by little. The end result is the purification of the mind, gradual identification with the totality and freedom from bondage. (There is a graphic display of wheels of bondage and freedom available, to see it please click here)

• Therefore, Self realization (or God realization) means knowing, who am I?, by shedding our ignorance little by little thus purifying the mind gradually and ultimately establishing in our true nature of BLISS ABSOLUTE.

CREATION:

·       Our creation consists of Jiva, Jagad and Isvara.

·       Jiva is the individual soul which takes different embodiments birth after birth by the force his karmic influences of past lives, known as 'Samaskaras'.

·       Jagad is the vast cosmos spread before us. It is the field provided by Isvara in the form of a suitable environment for the Jiva to experience the fruits of his past actions.

·       Isvara is the overall controller and awards the fruits of actions to the Jivas and also provides a suitable environment for the Jiva to enjoy or suffer, as the case may be, the fruits of his past actions.

·       The three entities i.e. Jiva, Jagad and Isvara, are interdependent. If Jiva could be eliminated, there would be no need of the field of experience (Jagad) and the controller (Isvara) because there would be no one to experience or be controlled or supervised.

·       Therefore the recipe for freedom or salvation (Mukti) is to eliminate the Jivahood by knowing one's essential nature, which is the Self or the Pure Consciousness. Once this is done, Jagad and Isvara disappear automatically, leaving behind Pure Consciousness, one without a second. Hence the saying, "know thyself and be free."

THREE STATES:  

Three states are:

1. Waking (W) - Jagrat; In this state all the three bodies i.e. gross, subtle and causal are functional. Therefore the body, mind (conscious, sub-conscious and un-conscious; To understand the relationship between three levels of the mind please click for the chart titled, "Mind and it's Products".) and all the senses (of knowledge and action) are active and are available for day to day transactions. This is a Sattvic state of existence and all the spiritual practices are possible only in this state.

2. Dreaming (D) - Swapana; In this state only the subtle and causal bodies are functional. Mind functions only at the sub-conscious and un-conscious level. This is a Rajasic state of existence and in this state the mind projects the dream body, the dream world and the dream activity between the dreamer and his dream world.

3. Deep Sleep (DS) - Sushupti; In this state only the causal body is functional. The mind functions only at the un-conscious level, which means that for all practical purposes no mind is available at all. This is a Tamasic state of existence, i.e. a state of total ignorance and one's experience upon waking up is that, "I knew nothing".

Mind is the main entity that controls the bodily activities. A thought first arises in the mind and then this thought is translated into action through the body. That shows how the body and mind are related to each other. It is our daily experience that if our mind is fatigued the body also feels tired. Conversely  when we relax our body the mind is relaxed also. Therefore due to the hectic activities during the day, the conscious mind gets tired and slips into the sub-conscious state, which we call the D-state. Due to the dreaming activity even the sub-conscious mind tires itself and slips further into the un-conscious state, which we call the DS-state. As the mind relaxes due to DS, it may return to the D-state. This oscillation between the D and the DS states continues through the night. Usually the dreaming period is relatively very short (the longest dream is said to be 3-4 minutes) as compared to the length of the DS and consequently the end result  generally is feeling of relaxation overall.

These three states, viz. W, D and DS, gives us a very important clue about the philosophy of life or the way we can make our working day blissful similar to that of the DS experience. It is a common experience that after a good night sleep we feel relaxed. If we can simulate the conditions of DS into our W-state we can achieve our objective. This requires the analysis of the conditions prevailing during the DS-state as follows:

As explained above, during the DS, we are (or Jiva is) removed from the body-mind-sense complex and its transactions with the world outside. This temporary severance of our relationship with the B-M-S complex, places the Jiva close to his own Self, which is of the nature Bliss Absolute or Sat-Chit-Ananda. This is the proximity of our selves with the Self during the DS, which gives us the feeling of bliss or relaxation upon waking up. 

The trick here is to distinguish ourselves from ourselves. A normal human being considers oneself to be this physical body and gets attached to all its actions, possessions and relations etc. and as a result becomes happy or miserable for any desirable or undesirable happening to its attachments. The first thing, therefore, is to understand that I am not the body. By doing so we have now two distinct entities instead of one, I myself and the body. We have already seen above that I the Self is of the nature of Bliss Absolute. Therefore any elation or depression belongs to the body and not to me. With this knowledge the rationalization becomes much easier and our attitude in our transactions with the outside world should and must change. If I am not the body, all the so called me and mine belongs to the body and not to me and all the transactions between me, mine and the world also belongs to the body. Knowing thus I don't have to be unethical in my worldly transactions. This in itself is rewarding because clean transactions means self satisfaction and peace of mind. Also we can equate the W-state transactions with the DS-transactions. The misery and happiness of the D-state has no direct bearing on the W-state, for example if I win a million dollar lottery in my dream, it has no value what so ever for my waking life. Similarly, having distinguished the body from the Self, we have to understand that the actions of the body cannot touch the all blissful Self, and their influence is limited to the body related entities. (to be continued)

Law of change:

BRAHMAKAR VRITTI:

'Aham Brahmasmi' is a Brahmakar Vritti, which is capable of driving out the ignorance about the Self upon realization of the Self. After driving out the ignorance about the Self i.e. upon Self-realization, this Brahmakar Vritti itself disappears also but it leaves behind a power that prevents the ignorance about the Self taking root again, in the Self-realized person. An appropriate example of this would be that of a person feeling sleepy. 'Feeling sleepy' is a Vritti capable of driving out wakefulness and when the person falls asleep, this 'feeling sleepy' Vritti itself disappears, leaving behind a power that is capable of keeping him in slumber for a period of time. The effect of Brahmakar Vritti is permanent i.e. ignorance once driven out cannot return under any circumstance. 

SOME HELPFUL AXIOMS FOR A SEEKER OF TRUTH:

1. Act but do not react.
2. Practice what you preach.
3. Silence is golden.
4. Do unto others what you want done unto you.
5. Know that; only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches, therefore be sympathetic to others' needs and difficulties.
6. Any contact with the world is a source of misery only.
7. My first prayer is of truth, the second of honest living, the third of the grace of God, the fourth of a clean mind and the fifth of the remembrance of God always.
8. Submit to His Will totally without any reservations and accept whatever comes as one's lot cheerfully as the Will of the Lord.
9. When we focus our attention on the sub-stratum the illusory superimpositions disappear automatically. For when we focus our attention on the rope, the sub-stratum for the illusory snake, the illusory snake disappears and what is left is the rope alone. Similarly when we focus our attention on Brahman, which is the sub-stratum for the illusory world, the illusion disappears and what is left is the pure Consciousness.
10. Mark but don't remark.
11. Happiness comes to him who gives happiness to others.
12. Learn to live without the least inconvenience to others.
13. Desireless, choice-less and effortless living is living in God. This is how Nature exists in God effortlessly.
14. Attachment is a disease, a serious disease, therefore destroy it root and branch with the weapons of discrimination and detachment.

 MAN'S ESSENTIAL NATURE:

"Man's essential nature is Bliss Absolute and total Freedom like the sky. Therefore he longs for it at all times but out of ignorance he feels
lacking, and thus he tries to achieve freedom through fulfillment by
acquiring things and beings around him. In this process he gets bound and entangled instead, like a cocoon, never be able to get out of it birth after birth, until at last he comes to realize the worthlessness of his
acquisitions. Eventually after many many births, by the Grace of the Lord Almighty, he starts questioning the purpose of his human existence."

THREE REASONS FOR THE HUMAN INCARNATION:

There are three reasons for our incarnation as human beings, viz:

1. To work towards the goal of life i.e. to attain freedom from the repeated cycles of birth and death.
2. To exhaust our Prarabdha Karma.
3. To clear our account with others which is brought forward from our past lives. This is achieved through relationships like husband, wife, son, daughter etc. and friendship and association with others in one form or another.

While exhausting the Prarabdha, through ignorance, we accrue more Karmas, which become the cause of further incarnations. Karma is possible only during the human existence because animal and plant life is only meant for exhausting Prarabdha and cannot acquire new Karma. There is no escape from the law of Karma possible except through Self-realization.

HINDU SCRIPTURES:

Hindu Scriptures are like novels authored and directed by the Lord Himself. He Himself is the story writer as well as the script writer  for these scriptures. He is the director and also the actor too. These scriptures cover every thing that is possible in the three periods of time i.e. the past, present and the future. Since it is all God's work, God is very much present in them. In fact, in Ramayana and Mahabharata He Himself is the principal actor. One should try to understand the hidden ideas and their meanings in order to elevate one's consciousness. Ultimately one should strive to see God in them and in everything else, which is the goal of human existence.

On the other hand if we try to find faults with them, we ourselves shall be the losers because the fault finding nature (Dosha Buddhi) is destructive for oneself. 

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