Dr, Babu Ravindran: A modern definition of the soul with a scientific approach may enable one to see what a ‘Soul’ might be and how it might work.
It may be a possible to compare parts of a Soul with corresponding parts of a computer system. I found an interesting scientific definition of ‘Soul’; according to that comparison, and further explanation, an elboration will be illuminating.
‘The Soul in every living thing is the informational parts of that thing that are purposefully engaged in the informational aspect of its ability to be conceived or germinate, grow with cells differentiating, grow further in size, move, make use of sensory information, react reflexively, learn, behave instinctually, think intelligently, communicate with other beings, teach, reproduce, evolve and in general carry out informational interactions starting with the combining of parallel DNA, informational interactions with itself, with things external to itself through senses, actions, constructions, creations, and communications, and with its progeny through contributed DNA. A soul can learn from experience, from reflection, or by being taught by other souls. In turn, a Soul can teach other Souls.
Thus the Soul is an immaterial substance and its primary operation of willing and thinking have not only no connection with the known properties of the element of the body, but, seems plainly inconsistent with some of the body’s more essential qualities. The Soul is an informational entity, which is constructed by one of the states and arrangements of material things. Yet it is immaterial, in the sense that particular choice of the material, whose states and arrangements represents the bits of digital information, is not of great consequence. If the entire informational structure of a soul was transferred intact into a suitable new host, it could continue in existence largely as a soul.
So there is dynamic soul and static soul.
A dynamic soul is just what we normally think of as a soul of a living, awake and active being. It is something that seems to inhabit a living body that is the essence of the ongoing intellectual and emotional activity of that person. It is the soul, with the help of the brain, and the body, that contemplates and reflects, feels, thinks, learns, communicates, decides and commands the body to do its bidding. It is the home of processes that implement our ethical, moral, religious, convictions. Thus the dynamic soul makes use of the brain in doing its thinking, and also makes use of the body to manipulate things in the real world, to receive information through the senses and to communicate with other souls.
A static soul is simply the digital information that is similar to a combination of computer programs and computer data. A static soul cannot be understood without understanding the exact processes that interpret and process the information that corresponds to computer programs, and understanding the nature and intent of the part that corresponds to computer data which is certainly complexly encoded in some kind of data base like a set of structures.
When the computer comes to life with Microsoft Windows and various programs doing various things, what is going on from the informational point of view, is similar to the concept of what is going on in a dynamic soul. When you buy a CD Rom that contains various programs and data you can use with your computer, from an informational point of view that CD is similar to the concept of part of the static soul.
The dynamic soul is the consequence of a set of computer like programs that are running in the brain body; the dynamic soul is in control of the body in the same general way that a computer might be in control of a robot. If one could extract a copy of a soul from its brain body, it would make no sense without also knowing the detailed structure and logic of brain-bodies in general and of its particular brain-body. Similarly if one is given a binary copy of a machine code computer program, it cannot be understood without also understanding the exact nature of machine and the operating system that is capable of running that code.
The more common example of a natural static soul is a seed. It has all the informational aspects of a plant that it can grow into. While static, a soul can remain viable for decades. Then, when put into an appropriate nurturing environment, it can start to grow into whatever it is destined to be. A seed is similar to a floppy disc that has a software virus on it. It is static until it is placed in a nurturing environment, that is moist, fertile earth, for the seed, a computer for the computer virus.
The age old concept of clear distinction between the physical part of the body and the evanescent part, the human soul turns out to be correct, the fact that the soul can be resident in a physical brain-body does not mean that the soul is physical in the physics sense of mass, length, and time. the soul is physical only in the sense that information is part of the world of physics. But physics has not yet finished putting information into the proper pigeonhole. Information is certainly subject to the laws of physics, but it is not physical in the sense that a machine is physical.
Mahathmas give the example of an earthen pot floating in an ocean with water inside and water outside. Once the pot is broken, the water inside the pot and the water outside becomes one. The shell of the pot is the barrier between the water inside and outside. This is a simile to the relationship between the all pervading cosmic conscience (Paramatma) and us. We are floating with Paramatma inside and outside, one body identified with Mano-buddhi-ahamkara) is the barrier separating these two parts of the same consciousness. We are Jeevatmans with bodies. Mind, Body, and Intellect collectively becomes the ego, and that is the sole identity of a person. The ego with all Vasanas latent in it can be called the Jeevathma, which is the subtle body or soul.
I was impressed by the example demonstrated by the language TV telecast. A TV serial is telecast from a TV station. Only when our TV set is switched on, we can receive the program on it. Even if the TV set is kept in a closed room or in a shelf, the movies, serials and the commercials can be clearly seen. But before the TV was tuned to the programmed frequency, what was the state of the telecast program?
We know that all the programs were present in the atmosphere in the form of waves. These electro-magnetic waves can again be converted to its original form when the TV set is tuned to that particular frequency.
Thus we can see that a visible form can also exist invisibly as waves which still contain the size, beauty and every quality latent in it. Similarly audible music can also exist as inaudible waves. It follows therefore that matter can exist as visible and invisible, that is, matter can have both a physical form as well as a subtle form. The difference is in the frequency level. Even if matter is destroyed physically, it is there in another form. That is, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It is there in the universe. This can be extended to a life-serial. To illustrate this, think of an architect designing a building. Even if the sketch drawn on a paper gets damaged, or lost, he can again draw the very same design. Thus we understand that the true existence of the design is not on the paper, but in the architect’s mind.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Soul - Have you a soul?
Have you a Soul? –
The question, have you a soul is much easier to answer than what is a soul? The reason is that the former question is about a belief or a feeling while the latter is controversial and has umpteen answers depending on Religion, Philosophy, Opinion, and one’s perception.
We have all a superficial understanding that the soul is what we consider as ‘I’ less it’s physical component. That is to say that it is the spiritual part of ‘I’, including mind etc.; that is, with the corporeal body alone fully omitted.
According to the ancient Greeks, the soul is ‘aliveness’. This is somewhat similar to the Buddhist view that the soul dies along with the body. But in Buddhism some residue (Anatta) continues to live to reincarnate. In ancient Egyptian religion, soul is the mental processes of a human being and is continuously changing. On rebirth the individuality continues very much changed.
Aristotle said that the soul is the living essence and dies on death of the body. But Socrates and Plato considered this essence to be spiritual and continues to be reborn eternally. The Persian Muslim philosophers (Ibn-al-Nafis and others) said that while the soul died there is some thing else that is spirit which is having the quality of immortality.
In Hindism the soul is translated as Athma but the word does not convey the same meaning as soul correctly. Athma is part(or even the whole) of the Absolute known as Brahman. All Hindu gods are other names for this absolute reality. Individual soul or individual itself is not real. They are illusions(Maya) and feelings of continuity created by the ignorance of the individual. This illusory spirit or soul disappears when the individual realizes that he is none other than the Absolute itself. For this realization it takes so many rebirths in which one progressively proceeds with good deeds and meditation. There are other schools of thought also in Hindism that says the individual soul has separate identity but still merges with Brahman ultimately.
Taoism has ten souls for each individual. Seven are YIN and three are YANG. Some may reincarnate and others may not. In Judaism The soul is breathed into an individual by God at the time of birth and returns to God on death. In Jainism every living being including insects and plants have a soul. The soul in Sikhism is similar to the soul in Advaitha Vedanta of Hindus. It is part of God or God itself and merges with God on the death of the body. But there are different opinions as to what immediately happens after death before the merger.
According to most of the branches of Christianity the soul is given to Man at the time of conception or birth and returns to God on death. But each individual’s soul is sent to either hell or heaven for an eternity by God till final judgment on resurrection. Jesus Christ saves people’s souls on the basis of good deeds and repentance. There are variations in the beliefs as to how this happens in different branches of Cristianity. Some of them believe that hell is nothing but the grave where the soul is till resurrection. Some others believe that soul progresses even after death till resurrection.
According to the Hadith of Islam the soul is put into the embryo 40 days after conception. In some different interpretation an angel is sent to breathe spirit into a human being after 120 days of conception. At that time itself his future is written down in detail. Like in Christianity on death the soul is sent to hell or heaven on final judgment.
According to Bahai faith the individual soul does not exist before a person is born. After birth the soul is immortal. After death the soul goes to God. Nearness to God is said to be heaven and distant from God is said to be hell.
From about more than twelve view points on soul described above one can make out how difficult it is to decide what a soul is or to answer the question as to whether one has a soul. Therefore people are inclined to say, yes, I have a soul, or no, I don’t have a soul, according to their notion gathered from what they have been taught or told in their childhood. Most people believe blindly what they have been told. There has been no other way.
Now, what is the remedy? To accept one of the views? Or to say there is no soul or no God, like atheists or Karl Marx.? That will be escapism. And I refuse to be satisfied. So, I decided to find out for myself whether I have a soul within me by searching inside. It was difficult and I am not sure I will ever get any result. But I will at least know that there is no soul or it is not possible to know. I tried.
I sat down and started looking inside. First I noticed my body, my body as a whole. Then I felt the breath going in and out. Then I noticed comforts and discomforts of the body. These have some connection with my thoughts and emotions. The thoughts seem to come from the discomforts and comforts- bad and disturbing thoughts and bad emotions from bad discomforts and pleasant ones from comforts and happiness. Of course reasoning thoughts are neutral and arises from memory- by correlations of memory with sense experiences. And thoughts are controlled and directed by intellect unless the emotions hijack them. Then comes the ego, which, whatever Freud might have said, is seen to have two elements. First is the pure ‘I’ feeling, and the second, the structure constructed or put up by thought. I have no quarrel with the first. But the second, staying glued to the first does all the havoc giving one the miseries, troubles and agonies of the world. Beyond the thoughts, memories, emotions, and intellect, I could find nothing. It is empty, nothingness, but alert, fully attentive (because I am on the look out for something or anything that may pop up at any moment!) and pleasantly vibrant with energy, the energy that drives the system and that remains in the whole system. I could not find any soul unless you call the empty vibrant space with the possibility of the pure ‘I’ lurking somewhere in that space, as The Soul.
Anybody may think that my idea is a summary of what I have read in books. True, I might have been influenced by what I have read and heard; but nothing in what I said is what I have not verified from my observation of my own mind.
Regarding rebirth of the soul or any life after death, no indication at all could be got and I have a suspicion that nothing ever can be found out unless one is able to die and come back. Any claim to the contrary could be the play, trick of the mind or some vivid hallucination. Mind cannot fathom what is before or after this life. I would like to keep it open for the present so that we are not accused of blind denial.
The question, have you a soul is much easier to answer than what is a soul? The reason is that the former question is about a belief or a feeling while the latter is controversial and has umpteen answers depending on Religion, Philosophy, Opinion, and one’s perception.
We have all a superficial understanding that the soul is what we consider as ‘I’ less it’s physical component. That is to say that it is the spiritual part of ‘I’, including mind etc.; that is, with the corporeal body alone fully omitted.
According to the ancient Greeks, the soul is ‘aliveness’. This is somewhat similar to the Buddhist view that the soul dies along with the body. But in Buddhism some residue (Anatta) continues to live to reincarnate. In ancient Egyptian religion, soul is the mental processes of a human being and is continuously changing. On rebirth the individuality continues very much changed.
Aristotle said that the soul is the living essence and dies on death of the body. But Socrates and Plato considered this essence to be spiritual and continues to be reborn eternally. The Persian Muslim philosophers (Ibn-al-Nafis and others) said that while the soul died there is some thing else that is spirit which is having the quality of immortality.
In Hindism the soul is translated as Athma but the word does not convey the same meaning as soul correctly. Athma is part(or even the whole) of the Absolute known as Brahman. All Hindu gods are other names for this absolute reality. Individual soul or individual itself is not real. They are illusions(Maya) and feelings of continuity created by the ignorance of the individual. This illusory spirit or soul disappears when the individual realizes that he is none other than the Absolute itself. For this realization it takes so many rebirths in which one progressively proceeds with good deeds and meditation. There are other schools of thought also in Hindism that says the individual soul has separate identity but still merges with Brahman ultimately.
Taoism has ten souls for each individual. Seven are YIN and three are YANG. Some may reincarnate and others may not. In Judaism The soul is breathed into an individual by God at the time of birth and returns to God on death. In Jainism every living being including insects and plants have a soul. The soul in Sikhism is similar to the soul in Advaitha Vedanta of Hindus. It is part of God or God itself and merges with God on the death of the body. But there are different opinions as to what immediately happens after death before the merger.
According to most of the branches of Christianity the soul is given to Man at the time of conception or birth and returns to God on death. But each individual’s soul is sent to either hell or heaven for an eternity by God till final judgment on resurrection. Jesus Christ saves people’s souls on the basis of good deeds and repentance. There are variations in the beliefs as to how this happens in different branches of Cristianity. Some of them believe that hell is nothing but the grave where the soul is till resurrection. Some others believe that soul progresses even after death till resurrection.
According to the Hadith of Islam the soul is put into the embryo 40 days after conception. In some different interpretation an angel is sent to breathe spirit into a human being after 120 days of conception. At that time itself his future is written down in detail. Like in Christianity on death the soul is sent to hell or heaven on final judgment.
According to Bahai faith the individual soul does not exist before a person is born. After birth the soul is immortal. After death the soul goes to God. Nearness to God is said to be heaven and distant from God is said to be hell.
From about more than twelve view points on soul described above one can make out how difficult it is to decide what a soul is or to answer the question as to whether one has a soul. Therefore people are inclined to say, yes, I have a soul, or no, I don’t have a soul, according to their notion gathered from what they have been taught or told in their childhood. Most people believe blindly what they have been told. There has been no other way.
Now, what is the remedy? To accept one of the views? Or to say there is no soul or no God, like atheists or Karl Marx.? That will be escapism. And I refuse to be satisfied. So, I decided to find out for myself whether I have a soul within me by searching inside. It was difficult and I am not sure I will ever get any result. But I will at least know that there is no soul or it is not possible to know. I tried.
I sat down and started looking inside. First I noticed my body, my body as a whole. Then I felt the breath going in and out. Then I noticed comforts and discomforts of the body. These have some connection with my thoughts and emotions. The thoughts seem to come from the discomforts and comforts- bad and disturbing thoughts and bad emotions from bad discomforts and pleasant ones from comforts and happiness. Of course reasoning thoughts are neutral and arises from memory- by correlations of memory with sense experiences. And thoughts are controlled and directed by intellect unless the emotions hijack them. Then comes the ego, which, whatever Freud might have said, is seen to have two elements. First is the pure ‘I’ feeling, and the second, the structure constructed or put up by thought. I have no quarrel with the first. But the second, staying glued to the first does all the havoc giving one the miseries, troubles and agonies of the world. Beyond the thoughts, memories, emotions, and intellect, I could find nothing. It is empty, nothingness, but alert, fully attentive (because I am on the look out for something or anything that may pop up at any moment!) and pleasantly vibrant with energy, the energy that drives the system and that remains in the whole system. I could not find any soul unless you call the empty vibrant space with the possibility of the pure ‘I’ lurking somewhere in that space, as The Soul.
Anybody may think that my idea is a summary of what I have read in books. True, I might have been influenced by what I have read and heard; but nothing in what I said is what I have not verified from my observation of my own mind.
Regarding rebirth of the soul or any life after death, no indication at all could be got and I have a suspicion that nothing ever can be found out unless one is able to die and come back. Any claim to the contrary could be the play, trick of the mind or some vivid hallucination. Mind cannot fathom what is before or after this life. I would like to keep it open for the present so that we are not accused of blind denial.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Belief and Reality
THATHATHAN --- Belief and Reality.
When we hear the words higher consciousness what come our mind is thoughts of God almighty. High consciousness and high thoughts are not the same thing. So far we are concerned, thinking about God is only a belief principle. That belief may be because of some culture of a particular place, the knowledge acquired by reading, or what is heard from some one else. That belief has not turned into our experience. High awareness or higher consciousness is not a belief or theory. That is one’s own experience of Truth.
There is a lot of distance between belief and experience. God-belief is creation of society. Society maintains this in order to utilize the good aspects of belief. For example, the priest appears in this world as the authorized representative or spokesman of god. Maintenance of belief is their requirement. Religious leaders and politicians take advantage of belief systems based on their narrow interests. On the other side the atheists say that there is no God. Is it after really experiencing or understanding the truth that they say so? Never! Atheists need to deny god in order to justify their belief in their systems. They deny God only for that purpose.
Thathathan is not saying that belief in god is not necessary. It is, of course, necessary. That our belief today goes or obstructs the experience of god is the contradiction, because, the actual presence of god is waiting to sprout and grow within us. It remains within us as butter in milk. It is our mind of to-day that hinders the consciousness from waking up. The mind which expresses outside today is not our real mind. That is merely the society’s mind. Society’s mind does not need the experience of God. Only belief in god is necessary for it. Actually the social mind opposes God-experience. The life of Thathathan itself is an example of that. It is to uproot and destroy the God-consciousness in me that my father, family and the society tried.
Where does our mind stand today? If you think a little deeper you find that our consciousness is at the level of the body only. It is that we call also as Animal Awareness. That is the un-awakened state. Getting agitated suddenly, becoming emotional without control, mindless indulgence in desires etc. are signs of blind awareness. Adamancy, thoughts of vengeance, desire of domination, conquest, enslavement of others, are also signs of body level awareness. To raise it and experience the awareness that lies beyond and behind the body level, to higher a level, is the core of spiritual life.
When we hear the words higher consciousness what come our mind is thoughts of God almighty. High consciousness and high thoughts are not the same thing. So far we are concerned, thinking about God is only a belief principle. That belief may be because of some culture of a particular place, the knowledge acquired by reading, or what is heard from some one else. That belief has not turned into our experience. High awareness or higher consciousness is not a belief or theory. That is one’s own experience of Truth.
There is a lot of distance between belief and experience. God-belief is creation of society. Society maintains this in order to utilize the good aspects of belief. For example, the priest appears in this world as the authorized representative or spokesman of god. Maintenance of belief is their requirement. Religious leaders and politicians take advantage of belief systems based on their narrow interests. On the other side the atheists say that there is no God. Is it after really experiencing or understanding the truth that they say so? Never! Atheists need to deny god in order to justify their belief in their systems. They deny God only for that purpose.
Thathathan is not saying that belief in god is not necessary. It is, of course, necessary. That our belief today goes or obstructs the experience of god is the contradiction, because, the actual presence of god is waiting to sprout and grow within us. It remains within us as butter in milk. It is our mind of to-day that hinders the consciousness from waking up. The mind which expresses outside today is not our real mind. That is merely the society’s mind. Society’s mind does not need the experience of God. Only belief in god is necessary for it. Actually the social mind opposes God-experience. The life of Thathathan itself is an example of that. It is to uproot and destroy the God-consciousness in me that my father, family and the society tried.
Where does our mind stand today? If you think a little deeper you find that our consciousness is at the level of the body only. It is that we call also as Animal Awareness. That is the un-awakened state. Getting agitated suddenly, becoming emotional without control, mindless indulgence in desires etc. are signs of blind awareness. Adamancy, thoughts of vengeance, desire of domination, conquest, enslavement of others, are also signs of body level awareness. To raise it and experience the awareness that lies beyond and behind the body level, to higher a level, is the core of spiritual life.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
conscious awareness and unconscious awareness
Body and mind are both such a complicated mechanism that no ordinary intelligence, or for that matter any super- intelligence of man could have envisaged. There is clearly an ultimate superior energy or intelligenbe that is functioning in all of us, which make every complicated organ in us work with utmost unison. But we are not aware of the working of the vast majority of the organs. They work at the bidding of the unconscious part of the ultimate intelligence in us. I find that we all have in us a conscious part of the awareness or Intelligence, and an unconscious part. The conscious part can be seen with some effort while in meditation. A deeper and much more deeper meditation is perhaps necessay to bring the areas controlled by the unconscious part to the conscious domain. Is it impossible to do so? Do we require some better specialized equipment than the existing faculties provide to do so?
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Sandananda Gori 5
Sandananda Giri 5
Know Experiences as waves. – We see sights. But the images that strike the eye-balls do not remain in the eye. The eye is clear there. But if a particle of dust falls in the eye it makes the eye disturbed. Likewise objects do not remain in the mind’s eye. They do not stay; they only come and go. But if anything stays there, like the dust in the eye it disturbs the mind. Meditation is broken then.
Like objects coming to the eye and going without remaining in the eye, the meditator should be able to keep his mind clear with equanimity without the matters impinging on the mind remaining there. For this there is no need to practice any posture (Asana) or hand-symbol. While engaged in daily activities also one can remain in balanced equanimity. Science has already proved that Sound, Shape and light travel in waves. Different lengths and combinations of the waves make us distinguish the waves as sound, shape, light etc. There are ultraviolet, infrared, gamma rays and so many other types. In short, objects/matter functions as waves.
It is in the form of waves that objects reach the mind. None of the objects reach the mind in the form of matter. Only images reach. But the mind, giving them colours differentiates them and distinguishes each from others. Life force or energy is lost in modifying the shapes or objects sighted to distinguish and retain them. If one is able to avoid the conceptual images of objects without thus losing the energy, then life can be in equanimity. This is the state of meditation. The life that reaches this state is the Reality itself. If one proceeds in this perspective and is able to avoid names and shapes from getting retained, his experience will be something beyond words that cannot be described to others. Absolute peace is felt. He becomes quiet and silent.
Know Experiences as waves. – We see sights. But the images that strike the eye-balls do not remain in the eye. The eye is clear there. But if a particle of dust falls in the eye it makes the eye disturbed. Likewise objects do not remain in the mind’s eye. They do not stay; they only come and go. But if anything stays there, like the dust in the eye it disturbs the mind. Meditation is broken then.
Like objects coming to the eye and going without remaining in the eye, the meditator should be able to keep his mind clear with equanimity without the matters impinging on the mind remaining there. For this there is no need to practice any posture (Asana) or hand-symbol. While engaged in daily activities also one can remain in balanced equanimity. Science has already proved that Sound, Shape and light travel in waves. Different lengths and combinations of the waves make us distinguish the waves as sound, shape, light etc. There are ultraviolet, infrared, gamma rays and so many other types. In short, objects/matter functions as waves.
It is in the form of waves that objects reach the mind. None of the objects reach the mind in the form of matter. Only images reach. But the mind, giving them colours differentiates them and distinguishes each from others. Life force or energy is lost in modifying the shapes or objects sighted to distinguish and retain them. If one is able to avoid the conceptual images of objects without thus losing the energy, then life can be in equanimity. This is the state of meditation. The life that reaches this state is the Reality itself. If one proceeds in this perspective and is able to avoid names and shapes from getting retained, his experience will be something beyond words that cannot be described to others. Absolute peace is felt. He becomes quiet and silent.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Am I not my body?
Am I not my body?
Every Spiritualist, seer, and Guru tells that I am not my body. They say that I am some fictitious soul or Athma lying deep within my body and existing eternally. How can I believe it? Should I, just because they just said it? For all that, they may be absolutely wrong. First of all I do not know whether there is something called a soul(Athma) at all.
If I am pinched I feel the pain. It is I who am feeling the pain; not the soul. Here, by ‘I’, I mean the body which includes the brain and the mind that are exclusively that of mine. At present while continuing to be alive I have no reason, need or feeling to believe that when the body and brain are no more, any mind or anything behind the mind remains back.
I do of course feel that there is some great force or energy that is inside me kicking all the time and pulsating, making the whole system work continuously from birth to death. Not even from birth, but from the very beginning of time when life started. But the pushing and wriggling will stop the moment I am dead. It is such a great wonder to think that the energy, the core within me started from the very beginning of time and to this day it has lasted all through in a continuous chain, all the time living through my forefathers and foremothers, escaping termination! But I cannot identify myself with any of the past existence in my mother, father or ancestors, and therefore so far as I am concerned, I have existed as ‘me’ only ever since I was born here.
Now tell me, am I the energy that is within me illuminating my body-mind system and pushing it grow, repair and survive? Can electricity be the motor that it runs? So far as the motor is concerned, electricity is the energy, power that runs it; that is all. The same energy that pulsates within me, moves also within the tree before my house making it grow up and up bursting into branches leaves, and flowers.
There is that great power, intelligence that creates the network of neurons, the brain and the tremendous force of the tiny atom, all within my body also.
But all that does not mean that I am not my body!
Well, I can of course pretend, imagine, or visualize within myself that I am not the body but am the great force at the core about which I mentioned and sit pretty in ‘meditation’. My capacity for imagination is very efficient. i can imagine whatever i want. When I imagine, it almost feels true! There's also a euphoria engulfing me because when you identify yourself with the energy within, there is no other thought present, and therefore everything is quiet and peaceful.
Yet, I don’t see how I am not my body, the perishable body that I feel that I am right now. Can anybody clarify, explain, elaborate, answer, this?
Every Spiritualist, seer, and Guru tells that I am not my body. They say that I am some fictitious soul or Athma lying deep within my body and existing eternally. How can I believe it? Should I, just because they just said it? For all that, they may be absolutely wrong. First of all I do not know whether there is something called a soul(Athma) at all.
If I am pinched I feel the pain. It is I who am feeling the pain; not the soul. Here, by ‘I’, I mean the body which includes the brain and the mind that are exclusively that of mine. At present while continuing to be alive I have no reason, need or feeling to believe that when the body and brain are no more, any mind or anything behind the mind remains back.
I do of course feel that there is some great force or energy that is inside me kicking all the time and pulsating, making the whole system work continuously from birth to death. Not even from birth, but from the very beginning of time when life started. But the pushing and wriggling will stop the moment I am dead. It is such a great wonder to think that the energy, the core within me started from the very beginning of time and to this day it has lasted all through in a continuous chain, all the time living through my forefathers and foremothers, escaping termination! But I cannot identify myself with any of the past existence in my mother, father or ancestors, and therefore so far as I am concerned, I have existed as ‘me’ only ever since I was born here.
Now tell me, am I the energy that is within me illuminating my body-mind system and pushing it grow, repair and survive? Can electricity be the motor that it runs? So far as the motor is concerned, electricity is the energy, power that runs it; that is all. The same energy that pulsates within me, moves also within the tree before my house making it grow up and up bursting into branches leaves, and flowers.
There is that great power, intelligence that creates the network of neurons, the brain and the tremendous force of the tiny atom, all within my body also.
But all that does not mean that I am not my body!
Well, I can of course pretend, imagine, or visualize within myself that I am not the body but am the great force at the core about which I mentioned and sit pretty in ‘meditation’. My capacity for imagination is very efficient. i can imagine whatever i want. When I imagine, it almost feels true! There's also a euphoria engulfing me because when you identify yourself with the energy within, there is no other thought present, and therefore everything is quiet and peaceful.
Yet, I don’t see how I am not my body, the perishable body that I feel that I am right now. Can anybody clarify, explain, elaborate, answer, this?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
dualism swami sandananda giri
The Suffering seeker, the Knowledge Seeker, and the Wealth Seeker and such other categorizations are all in Dualism. Those who think that God is different from one’s own Self do not know the principle or reality. If one thinks of God as separate from oneself then only one can pray to God. What is created by addressing somebody for a need is a sense of division. Without dividing oneself and God how can one put forward his wants? That is not merger It is division that is not proper. It is cutting instead of knowing what is indivisible as a whole. Any process which cuts the whole with wants and desires, is ignorance. To merge with the sea, the river joins with the sea. That is the usual process. After that it does not separate. One cloud joins with another cloud and becomes one; after that it does not again split. When the separation becomes non-existent, then only one is aware of the omnipresence. Any knowledge is incomplete until one knows the omnipresent as it is, as a whole. If the knowledge is incomplete, it is only like seeing worldly sights. Then, for the minds habituated to seeing things of the world divided, it is easy to treat the awareness of divinity also the same way, divided. Therefore the majority of the people are those that seek God in the dark path of untruth, quickly discarding the right path. It seems one man prayed, ’Oh, God! Please save me from the clutches of Gods’.
It is as a result of thoughts based on reasoning that the Sages (Rishis) of India (Bharath) accepted an omnipresent existence of Oneness (Adwaitha). Ordinary people are not able to understand the Awareness of Self shining bright gloriously in the Upanishads. Awareness of God is not something like the knowledge obtained by comparing and selecting one out of two comparable objects. Think deep discriminating among the mind that camouflages the Self, its decisions, and the ever-changing sense imageries. ‘Inside is emotionless’. Thoughts of sense objects are coming from outside. Inside there are no such thoughts. Don’t enquire why. Search or enquiry is movement. It can be intellectual, mental, or connected with senses. But God is not an object that can be known by such enquiry. When the mental processes that create forms or objects subside, then whatever remains, that is God.
It is as a result of thoughts based on reasoning that the Sages (Rishis) of India (Bharath) accepted an omnipresent existence of Oneness (Adwaitha). Ordinary people are not able to understand the Awareness of Self shining bright gloriously in the Upanishads. Awareness of God is not something like the knowledge obtained by comparing and selecting one out of two comparable objects. Think deep discriminating among the mind that camouflages the Self, its decisions, and the ever-changing sense imageries. ‘Inside is emotionless’. Thoughts of sense objects are coming from outside. Inside there are no such thoughts. Don’t enquire why. Search or enquiry is movement. It can be intellectual, mental, or connected with senses. But God is not an object that can be known by such enquiry. When the mental processes that create forms or objects subside, then whatever remains, that is God.
Friday, December 24, 2010
from senses to reality - straight
From Seeing to Ultimate Reality
Knowing from sense perceptions happens continuously. What can be discarded is only what we have put together from memories. The emotional attitude that is required for any action is only the thoughts from our energy source. Therefore all actions are contained in thoughts. And thoughts? They are in us. Where is that ‘us’? In the center of our awareness. And where is awareness? Anywhere and everywhere, always the same perpetually. In truth we are that.
Whatever is known is the knowledge of oneself. The knowledge of ‘I’ alone is not that of ‘I’. Therefore to illuminate the knowledge of ‘I’ there should be something else there. That something is that has to be known. What can be done for that? All the knowledge that is known can be discarded. That is the only thing that can be discarded. Even the thought of ;I’ has to be discarded because that is also what is known. Then I with my world is no more. Only Truth stands there.
Unable to die or be born, above birth and death, or destruction, alone without a second, it exists as the secret of existence. As the secret of birth and death, as the secret of creation and destruction, as the mind and light of everything, it exists. It exists by itself. Just like the sun that exists by its own self illumination. Just as the things illumined by the sun are not of the sun, its knowledge is not of itself. Nothing that it illuminates can be itself. Nothing that I know is self-illumined, because as I am there to know them. I am the one that lights it. They are dead and inert things. To be aware that they are not me it would be enough to have the knowledge that ‘I Am’ .
Therefore, to know the self the only way is to grow above what is known and reaching the knowledge of ‘I’, disappear along with that ‘I’. Then there will be only the Truth. That truth is the real Me.
-Sandananda Giri Translated from Malayalam 23-12-10
Knowing from sense perceptions happens continuously. What can be discarded is only what we have put together from memories. The emotional attitude that is required for any action is only the thoughts from our energy source. Therefore all actions are contained in thoughts. And thoughts? They are in us. Where is that ‘us’? In the center of our awareness. And where is awareness? Anywhere and everywhere, always the same perpetually. In truth we are that.
Whatever is known is the knowledge of oneself. The knowledge of ‘I’ alone is not that of ‘I’. Therefore to illuminate the knowledge of ‘I’ there should be something else there. That something is that has to be known. What can be done for that? All the knowledge that is known can be discarded. That is the only thing that can be discarded. Even the thought of ;I’ has to be discarded because that is also what is known. Then I with my world is no more. Only Truth stands there.
Unable to die or be born, above birth and death, or destruction, alone without a second, it exists as the secret of existence. As the secret of birth and death, as the secret of creation and destruction, as the mind and light of everything, it exists. It exists by itself. Just like the sun that exists by its own self illumination. Just as the things illumined by the sun are not of the sun, its knowledge is not of itself. Nothing that it illuminates can be itself. Nothing that I know is self-illumined, because as I am there to know them. I am the one that lights it. They are dead and inert things. To be aware that they are not me it would be enough to have the knowledge that ‘I Am’ .
Therefore, to know the self the only way is to grow above what is known and reaching the knowledge of ‘I’, disappear along with that ‘I’. Then there will be only the Truth. That truth is the real Me.
-Sandananda Giri Translated from Malayalam 23-12-10
Saturday, August 28, 2010
feel the secret source within
feel the secret source within
‘I’ was not there when I was born. It had not yet been formed. The feeling of ‘I’ came much later. What was there then? Just the wriggling dynamic force of life vibrating inside a bundle of flesh and blood, growing according to a package of coded instructions. All that I am now, my thoughts, my image of myself, my body, my likes and dislikes, my agony and ecstasy, all were formed much later. The vibrant force behind life that was there when born is still there now, and was there even before the birth took place and was always there, within the womb and before the ovum and sperm met. Otherwise they could not have met and joined.
The point is whether I can feel that single force which was there all through, and is still there within me while I sit in meditation, ignoring everything else, the thoughts, fears, happiness and sorrow, emotions and everything, all of which surfaced only after my birth? That is of utmost importance. How can anything thing else be important if you want to know the secret?
That energy one can find every where in the universe, moving, growing, changing, creating, destroying. But only human individual is equipped to feel that camouflaged secretly within him, but available for apprehending.
But if what you want, what you desire to have is the ecstasy of divinity or some special powers, that is entirely a different matter. You go ahead in your own way.
‘I’ was not there when I was born. It had not yet been formed. The feeling of ‘I’ came much later. What was there then? Just the wriggling dynamic force of life vibrating inside a bundle of flesh and blood, growing according to a package of coded instructions. All that I am now, my thoughts, my image of myself, my body, my likes and dislikes, my agony and ecstasy, all were formed much later. The vibrant force behind life that was there when born is still there now, and was there even before the birth took place and was always there, within the womb and before the ovum and sperm met. Otherwise they could not have met and joined.
The point is whether I can feel that single force which was there all through, and is still there within me while I sit in meditation, ignoring everything else, the thoughts, fears, happiness and sorrow, emotions and everything, all of which surfaced only after my birth? That is of utmost importance. How can anything thing else be important if you want to know the secret?
That energy one can find every where in the universe, moving, growing, changing, creating, destroying. But only human individual is equipped to feel that camouflaged secretly within him, but available for apprehending.
But if what you want, what you desire to have is the ecstasy of divinity or some special powers, that is entirely a different matter. You go ahead in your own way.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
God Particle AIR talk
(The article speculates on the impact of finding the God Particle in the thinking on spirituality.)
Scientists are now seriously searching for the ‘God Particle’. Whether we understand it, and appreciate its significance or not, we read in the newspapers about the Large Hadron Collider or LHC and the mysterious Higgs Boson that the scientists are expecting to find. They are searching for it by making protons collide with each other. An unusually large amount of money is spent for the purpose. The fact that scientists have called this ‘god particle’ raises a curiosity and hope in the minds of all of us to know whether they have at last found a basis to connect divinity and spirituality with the material world unifying both together to reveal the ultimate secrets of existence.
When I was studying Chemistry for my Intermediate Class (that is, the present plus two) way back in the forties, we learned that Atom was indivisible. All the materials and substances of the universe were consisted of by the combinations of the atoms of about seventy different elements. Now with the further elements discovered there are more than a hundred elements. From the material point of view when we talk about what the world is made of, we say that it is made of these elements. The atoms have since been split, and we have now as the ultimate constituents of matter, twelve different particles of energy called quarks and leptons, and four different types of forces. But the most important thing in this set up is the large space between these particles which though thought to be empty has a field like that of the magnetic field. This field although very weak is spread through out the infinite space and therefore of great importance. Scientists feel that this field is in the form of a particle that can be perhaps found. As the probable existence of it was suggested by Peter Higgs it is called Higgs boson. Once found it will have tremendous importance in the sense that it will be omnipresent and therefore nearer to God. It is therefore called the God Particle. It is mostly non-existent in the physical world. Perhaps it is most of the time beyond the physical in the quantum plane or spiritual domain.
If we approach the question of the constituents of the phenomenal world from the mental angle, we have a picture of the history of the world constructed by Bertrand Russell from sense impressions of the mind. His famous book ‘Mystisism and Logic’ explains it. He called one single impression or image a ‘sensibilia’. A series of sensibilias constituted a perspective. All the perspectives from all points in the universe constituted the article and all perspectives for all time of all objects from all points existent or non-existent constituted the history of the universe. But this model remains at the mental imagery level and does not appear to go deeper. To make good the shortage let us consider a probe into the layers of the mind as available in ancient spiritual texts. The ancients say that objects are, after all mere groups or bundles of sense impressions. Therefore senses are more reliable and important than objects. Mind which collects the impressions are even more important than the senses. Intellect which processes the mental impressions and functions is of next higher importance. Higher than that in importance is the entity that sits behind all this phenomena and perceives all this. Next stage is emptiness from which the entity that perceives emanates. Thus according to their point of view it is from nothingness that the whole universe emerges. But in all these there seem to be no meeting point between the physical, mental and spiritual views.
Human body is physical, made of matter. It deteriorates and ultimately dies. But ultimate material constituents are not destroyed. Deepak Chopra, the author of the book ‘Ageless Body and The Timeless Mind’ says that aging is a matter of choice or is optional and is not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed to slow down aging. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it comes from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. You might have read the drama of Bernard Shaw titled ‘Back to Methuselah’ in which the Butler, overhearing about the possibility of living for five hundred years or more from a group of professors’ discussions, believes it so firmly and so intensely that it actually happens to him. The professors were doubtful and they died in their time as usual. Every hundred years the butler managed to fake death by drowning or missing and lived as a new person. Shaw was actually predicting what may happen in future. Now Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are molecules and atoms only. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons and bosons, all of which are particles in vibration or spin. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body where there is hardly any solid portion where data can be stored.. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises. It makes sure that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. In the atoms there are quarks and leptons, i.e. electrons and neutrinos. These are concentrations of energy waves. Therefore the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy and empty space. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. So, our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The material nature of the body ends there. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space in the quantum field. And the empty space is the Higgs field with Higgs bosons. Is the source of all thought and matter including the all pervading Higgs boson that in the quantum domain? Or is it further deep in the spiritual domain? Thus speculating, in finding the God Particle there seems tremendous possibilities not only in the field of nuclear science and origin of the universe, but also in revealing the nature of Ultimate reality or God.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored thought. Therefore all kinds of functions that we are conscious of are connected with matter. The only thing we have left is our awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat is in space, everywhere in space. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the only possible window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. According to Deepak Chopra, attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick.
Einstein has shown ihat is time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours, then hours into minutes etc. Imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We understand time by thinking. But if we feel it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Finding the Higgs Boson will lead to better understanding of the nature of empty space, and in turn nothingness, which at the spiritual level is equivalent to awareness.
Scientists are now seriously searching for the ‘God Particle’. Whether we understand it, and appreciate its significance or not, we read in the newspapers about the Large Hadron Collider or LHC and the mysterious Higgs Boson that the scientists are expecting to find. They are searching for it by making protons collide with each other. An unusually large amount of money is spent for the purpose. The fact that scientists have called this ‘god particle’ raises a curiosity and hope in the minds of all of us to know whether they have at last found a basis to connect divinity and spirituality with the material world unifying both together to reveal the ultimate secrets of existence.
When I was studying Chemistry for my Intermediate Class (that is, the present plus two) way back in the forties, we learned that Atom was indivisible. All the materials and substances of the universe were consisted of by the combinations of the atoms of about seventy different elements. Now with the further elements discovered there are more than a hundred elements. From the material point of view when we talk about what the world is made of, we say that it is made of these elements. The atoms have since been split, and we have now as the ultimate constituents of matter, twelve different particles of energy called quarks and leptons, and four different types of forces. But the most important thing in this set up is the large space between these particles which though thought to be empty has a field like that of the magnetic field. This field although very weak is spread through out the infinite space and therefore of great importance. Scientists feel that this field is in the form of a particle that can be perhaps found. As the probable existence of it was suggested by Peter Higgs it is called Higgs boson. Once found it will have tremendous importance in the sense that it will be omnipresent and therefore nearer to God. It is therefore called the God Particle. It is mostly non-existent in the physical world. Perhaps it is most of the time beyond the physical in the quantum plane or spiritual domain.
If we approach the question of the constituents of the phenomenal world from the mental angle, we have a picture of the history of the world constructed by Bertrand Russell from sense impressions of the mind. His famous book ‘Mystisism and Logic’ explains it. He called one single impression or image a ‘sensibilia’. A series of sensibilias constituted a perspective. All the perspectives from all points in the universe constituted the article and all perspectives for all time of all objects from all points existent or non-existent constituted the history of the universe. But this model remains at the mental imagery level and does not appear to go deeper. To make good the shortage let us consider a probe into the layers of the mind as available in ancient spiritual texts. The ancients say that objects are, after all mere groups or bundles of sense impressions. Therefore senses are more reliable and important than objects. Mind which collects the impressions are even more important than the senses. Intellect which processes the mental impressions and functions is of next higher importance. Higher than that in importance is the entity that sits behind all this phenomena and perceives all this. Next stage is emptiness from which the entity that perceives emanates. Thus according to their point of view it is from nothingness that the whole universe emerges. But in all these there seem to be no meeting point between the physical, mental and spiritual views.
Human body is physical, made of matter. It deteriorates and ultimately dies. But ultimate material constituents are not destroyed. Deepak Chopra, the author of the book ‘Ageless Body and The Timeless Mind’ says that aging is a matter of choice or is optional and is not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed to slow down aging. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it comes from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. You might have read the drama of Bernard Shaw titled ‘Back to Methuselah’ in which the Butler, overhearing about the possibility of living for five hundred years or more from a group of professors’ discussions, believes it so firmly and so intensely that it actually happens to him. The professors were doubtful and they died in their time as usual. Every hundred years the butler managed to fake death by drowning or missing and lived as a new person. Shaw was actually predicting what may happen in future. Now Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are molecules and atoms only. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons and bosons, all of which are particles in vibration or spin. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body where there is hardly any solid portion where data can be stored.. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises. It makes sure that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. In the atoms there are quarks and leptons, i.e. electrons and neutrinos. These are concentrations of energy waves. Therefore the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy and empty space. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. So, our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The material nature of the body ends there. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space in the quantum field. And the empty space is the Higgs field with Higgs bosons. Is the source of all thought and matter including the all pervading Higgs boson that in the quantum domain? Or is it further deep in the spiritual domain? Thus speculating, in finding the God Particle there seems tremendous possibilities not only in the field of nuclear science and origin of the universe, but also in revealing the nature of Ultimate reality or God.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored thought. Therefore all kinds of functions that we are conscious of are connected with matter. The only thing we have left is our awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat is in space, everywhere in space. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the only possible window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. According to Deepak Chopra, attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick.
Einstein has shown ihat is time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours, then hours into minutes etc. Imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We understand time by thinking. But if we feel it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Finding the Higgs Boson will lead to better understanding of the nature of empty space, and in turn nothingness, which at the spiritual level is equivalent to awareness.
Friday, April 23, 2010
sandananda giri
Here is my translation of a Malayalam article from ‘JANMABHOOMI’ which I thought is worth publishing here :-
Divinity is untouched by thought – by Santhananda Giri
Experience the Absolute Truth in the denial of the ‘I’ awareness. It is all the imagined differences joined together that has perpetuated and maintained the ‘I’ throughout the ages and rebirths. When that is removed the quest as to ‘who am I?’ ends. The doubt as to what is that I see around also ends. Because the apprehension of everything is one single unity; then how can one see a second? To evaluate what you see and to elaborate it, the mind is ever ready; but where the mind has vacated what elaboration can exist? Unity is where no two things exist for comparison. Everything ideologically or conceptually habituated end there. Before the existence of One Truth nothing second remains to be talked about. That is the joy of divinity.
Right, wrong, good, bad, blessing, sin, duty, idling, etc. or the interpretation of language to conceptualize the meaning of a thing and its shape, its memory and experience, nothing of these are there in divine experience. Divinity is untouched by thought.
Our decision on any subject is always likely to be wrong. That is because, what we know is about a thing or subject that changes. On things that we know, we decide that it is such and such, but it should have been so and so, that it is beautiful or ugly, and that it is useful or useless etc. They are all ideas that get changed. Life and death are just two concepts. And soul is divine experience. It is very difficult to understand. If life is the continuance of the present, death is an interval. Again it has to continue. The entity that remains throughout the changing experiences is the Truth.
Our conclusions about a subject are most likely to be wrong. Because, what we know are about changing things. And on those changing things we decide what we know as beautiful, ugly, good, bad, useful, useless, essential, unnecessary etc.etc. The ideas are all subject to change. Life and death are just two ideas. And Atma is an experience. It is difficult to understand this. If life is a continuation of the present, its stand-still interval is death. It has no alternative but to repeat itself. That which continues through all these changes of experiences is The Truth. That is the essence of divinity. It is to that entity that has no birth or death. It is beyond time. It is not something that has come into being. Therefore it has no death. Only when one goes beyond the mind it will get revealed. There is neither space nor time there. Therefore God does not engage himself in the work of completing your imaginary aspirations of the future. What is the role of God in life? It exists ever luminous throughout, at the root of all, enlightening everything and every experience, omnipresent, while you conceive and execute every action of yours. Once you understand that God does not undertake the work of making changes in the day to day transactions in the life of man as per man’s wishes, you will not feel cheated.
The reason for all tragedies, all untoward happenings and all sorrows is because of seeing things through the narrow gap of the senses and mind constricted by the feeling of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Once you know the basics of ‘I’, all problems end. The first thing to understand is that the experiences of the senses are not truth. And firmly establish in your mind that the world around you is not as you see around.
Athma is essentially in the nature of bliss. Therefore whatever you understand in Atma is blissful. Bliss is right. All else is wrong. When does a thing create sorrow? It is when you separate what you see through names and boundaries and considering them as different from you that something becomes the cause for sorrow. Know that all experiences are within yourself. Without the presence of Atma nothing exists here. To know anything ever there must be first a person to know. While knowing as well as after knowing he is there. Therefore without the presence of an ‘I’ it is not possible to know or experience this world. Before experiencing the world there is no sound. Where all the sounds terminate there is the real form. Atma in the form of knowledge is the self; that is the fact and all else is false. There is no ‘knowing’ there. What one knows is of things imagined or conceived in one’s mind due to ignorance. One who knows that what is known in imagination when the energy of Grace is reflected and present, is different from Atma, is the greatest among the spiritual masters. There is no doubt about that. See the world bereft of conceptual imaginations. Don’t doubt whether that is possible. To see our body we do not need imagination, is it not so? Like that see all bodies. That is the way or trick to experience ultimately the divinity in its entirety. In all that you consider as universe, you can experience the essence of divinity. ‘All this in its entirety is divinity of God!’ “Isavasya midam sarvam”, understanding that should be without the interference of the mind.
The duality perceptions of one who sinks into the depths of his visions in the heart gets annihilated. When sights are annihilated the ‘se-er’ is left. The illumination and brightness of the seer is not imaginary or a guess-work. That is Truth. You cannot take it and present it to somebody as you give a physical object. It is not possible to take is as something that can be argued about and won over. It is beyond words. The Atma entity cannot be shown by any demonstration. Those who say that they can show God is misleading you. A real Guru is one who shows you that ‘God Is’ behind the process of your seeing. Not the one who undertakes to save you in the name of God and cheats you.
Words, mind and intellect have no reach there. Then how can it be shared? How can it be shown? There is no other way but to sink into one’s own self. Existence is infinite. Everywhere it is complete. Therefore by perceptions in depth inside it does not become non-existent there. That is how its ‘is-ness’ is to be experienced.
Dry leaf has no individuality in the wind; likewise fly for the sake of Truth in complete renunciation. In that you surrender everything. Let detachment come with a passion. This Absolute Truth is not far off. It is because of burying one’s heart in darkness without appreciating the greatness of human life that we fail to know it. Keeping the mind silent turn your attention towards its depth. It is there, for sure.
Divinity is untouched by thought – by Santhananda Giri
Experience the Absolute Truth in the denial of the ‘I’ awareness. It is all the imagined differences joined together that has perpetuated and maintained the ‘I’ throughout the ages and rebirths. When that is removed the quest as to ‘who am I?’ ends. The doubt as to what is that I see around also ends. Because the apprehension of everything is one single unity; then how can one see a second? To evaluate what you see and to elaborate it, the mind is ever ready; but where the mind has vacated what elaboration can exist? Unity is where no two things exist for comparison. Everything ideologically or conceptually habituated end there. Before the existence of One Truth nothing second remains to be talked about. That is the joy of divinity.
Right, wrong, good, bad, blessing, sin, duty, idling, etc. or the interpretation of language to conceptualize the meaning of a thing and its shape, its memory and experience, nothing of these are there in divine experience. Divinity is untouched by thought.
Our decision on any subject is always likely to be wrong. That is because, what we know is about a thing or subject that changes. On things that we know, we decide that it is such and such, but it should have been so and so, that it is beautiful or ugly, and that it is useful or useless etc. They are all ideas that get changed. Life and death are just two concepts. And soul is divine experience. It is very difficult to understand. If life is the continuance of the present, death is an interval. Again it has to continue. The entity that remains throughout the changing experiences is the Truth.
Our conclusions about a subject are most likely to be wrong. Because, what we know are about changing things. And on those changing things we decide what we know as beautiful, ugly, good, bad, useful, useless, essential, unnecessary etc.etc. The ideas are all subject to change. Life and death are just two ideas. And Atma is an experience. It is difficult to understand this. If life is a continuation of the present, its stand-still interval is death. It has no alternative but to repeat itself. That which continues through all these changes of experiences is The Truth. That is the essence of divinity. It is to that entity that has no birth or death. It is beyond time. It is not something that has come into being. Therefore it has no death. Only when one goes beyond the mind it will get revealed. There is neither space nor time there. Therefore God does not engage himself in the work of completing your imaginary aspirations of the future. What is the role of God in life? It exists ever luminous throughout, at the root of all, enlightening everything and every experience, omnipresent, while you conceive and execute every action of yours. Once you understand that God does not undertake the work of making changes in the day to day transactions in the life of man as per man’s wishes, you will not feel cheated.
The reason for all tragedies, all untoward happenings and all sorrows is because of seeing things through the narrow gap of the senses and mind constricted by the feeling of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Once you know the basics of ‘I’, all problems end. The first thing to understand is that the experiences of the senses are not truth. And firmly establish in your mind that the world around you is not as you see around.
Athma is essentially in the nature of bliss. Therefore whatever you understand in Atma is blissful. Bliss is right. All else is wrong. When does a thing create sorrow? It is when you separate what you see through names and boundaries and considering them as different from you that something becomes the cause for sorrow. Know that all experiences are within yourself. Without the presence of Atma nothing exists here. To know anything ever there must be first a person to know. While knowing as well as after knowing he is there. Therefore without the presence of an ‘I’ it is not possible to know or experience this world. Before experiencing the world there is no sound. Where all the sounds terminate there is the real form. Atma in the form of knowledge is the self; that is the fact and all else is false. There is no ‘knowing’ there. What one knows is of things imagined or conceived in one’s mind due to ignorance. One who knows that what is known in imagination when the energy of Grace is reflected and present, is different from Atma, is the greatest among the spiritual masters. There is no doubt about that. See the world bereft of conceptual imaginations. Don’t doubt whether that is possible. To see our body we do not need imagination, is it not so? Like that see all bodies. That is the way or trick to experience ultimately the divinity in its entirety. In all that you consider as universe, you can experience the essence of divinity. ‘All this in its entirety is divinity of God!’ “Isavasya midam sarvam”, understanding that should be without the interference of the mind.
The duality perceptions of one who sinks into the depths of his visions in the heart gets annihilated. When sights are annihilated the ‘se-er’ is left. The illumination and brightness of the seer is not imaginary or a guess-work. That is Truth. You cannot take it and present it to somebody as you give a physical object. It is not possible to take is as something that can be argued about and won over. It is beyond words. The Atma entity cannot be shown by any demonstration. Those who say that they can show God is misleading you. A real Guru is one who shows you that ‘God Is’ behind the process of your seeing. Not the one who undertakes to save you in the name of God and cheats you.
Words, mind and intellect have no reach there. Then how can it be shared? How can it be shown? There is no other way but to sink into one’s own self. Existence is infinite. Everywhere it is complete. Therefore by perceptions in depth inside it does not become non-existent there. That is how its ‘is-ness’ is to be experienced.
Dry leaf has no individuality in the wind; likewise fly for the sake of Truth in complete renunciation. In that you surrender everything. Let detachment come with a passion. This Absolute Truth is not far off. It is because of burying one’s heart in darkness without appreciating the greatness of human life that we fail to know it. Keeping the mind silent turn your attention towards its depth. It is there, for sure.
I AND MY BOREDOM
I and my boredom
Who am I?
Of course, I am surely the entity that feels the pain when this body is pinched.
No doubt about that. Is that your body that feels the pain or the mind behind it?
The body feels the pain and the mind recognises it.
Then who are you?
The body-mind-complex, or the body-mind system as a whole.
But what is the mind?
Running thoughts, memory, and memory retrieval mechanism (and the running commentator?) constitute the mind.
What about the sense organs and attention? Are they not part of the mind?
No, sense organs just feed the attention at the moment, and the memory storage. Attention seems to be focussed awareness, a part of the vast awareness that powers everything.
Then where comes the feeling of ‘I’ or the ‘ego’ as it is referred to?
‘I’ seems to be a mental construction of an image from various memory factors for purposes of identity, self perceived security, and self importance.
In this set up, who is bored? The body cannot be bored. There is no reason for the memory, or running thoughts to be bored. Awareness, while supplying power, is a passive witness, never bothered about boredom. Then who gets bored?
The mental construction that is ego, who is selfish and wants some pleasure all the time, coaxes the attention to jump from one thing to the other searching for pleasure or at least some engagement of the attention so that it can ride on it and enjoy. Otherwise it is afraid that it will be burdened with suppressed fears, discomforts or aches of the body highlighted, and other unpleasant experiences. That could be the only reason to be bored. It is this ego, a fictitious element that is getting bored.
There is that great saying Tat Twam Asi ‘that thou art’. What is ‘that’ and what is ‘thou’? ‘that’ seems to refer to the Ultimate reality, and ‘thou’ to ‘you’. How can the ultimate reality be the miserable ’you’?
'THAT', of course, refers to the Ultimate Reality, which is the same entity as the Pure Awareness that powers man including his universe. Or it could be what is virtually beyond and behind the Awareness in the quantum domain. There is no way of knowing.
And ‘thou’ here does not refer to the miserable ‘you’ or the ego. It refers to the entity that is beyond and behind the body-mind complex, powering it as well as everything else. It cannot be ‘you’ in the sense that the limited ego or ‘I- feeling’ cannot be the vast immeasurable Infinity that is the ultimate reality. The profound statement if thus interpreted would seem to be nothing but a tautology saying ‘ultimate reality is ultimate reality’. It may look absurd, but It means that the ultimate principle of the universe is the same as the ultimate reality lying within you. That is to say that you need not look elsewhere to find the Truth but within yourself.
Who am I?
Of course, I am surely the entity that feels the pain when this body is pinched.
No doubt about that. Is that your body that feels the pain or the mind behind it?
The body feels the pain and the mind recognises it.
Then who are you?
The body-mind-complex, or the body-mind system as a whole.
But what is the mind?
Running thoughts, memory, and memory retrieval mechanism (and the running commentator?) constitute the mind.
What about the sense organs and attention? Are they not part of the mind?
No, sense organs just feed the attention at the moment, and the memory storage. Attention seems to be focussed awareness, a part of the vast awareness that powers everything.
Then where comes the feeling of ‘I’ or the ‘ego’ as it is referred to?
‘I’ seems to be a mental construction of an image from various memory factors for purposes of identity, self perceived security, and self importance.
In this set up, who is bored? The body cannot be bored. There is no reason for the memory, or running thoughts to be bored. Awareness, while supplying power, is a passive witness, never bothered about boredom. Then who gets bored?
The mental construction that is ego, who is selfish and wants some pleasure all the time, coaxes the attention to jump from one thing to the other searching for pleasure or at least some engagement of the attention so that it can ride on it and enjoy. Otherwise it is afraid that it will be burdened with suppressed fears, discomforts or aches of the body highlighted, and other unpleasant experiences. That could be the only reason to be bored. It is this ego, a fictitious element that is getting bored.
There is that great saying Tat Twam Asi ‘that thou art’. What is ‘that’ and what is ‘thou’? ‘that’ seems to refer to the Ultimate reality, and ‘thou’ to ‘you’. How can the ultimate reality be the miserable ’you’?
'THAT', of course, refers to the Ultimate Reality, which is the same entity as the Pure Awareness that powers man including his universe. Or it could be what is virtually beyond and behind the Awareness in the quantum domain. There is no way of knowing.
And ‘thou’ here does not refer to the miserable ‘you’ or the ego. It refers to the entity that is beyond and behind the body-mind complex, powering it as well as everything else. It cannot be ‘you’ in the sense that the limited ego or ‘I- feeling’ cannot be the vast immeasurable Infinity that is the ultimate reality. The profound statement if thus interpreted would seem to be nothing but a tautology saying ‘ultimate reality is ultimate reality’. It may look absurd, but It means that the ultimate principle of the universe is the same as the ultimate reality lying within you. That is to say that you need not look elsewhere to find the Truth but within yourself.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Knowledge Vs Devotion
We often hear the expression ‘god-fearing’ attributed to virtuous persons with a sense of approval. A god-fearing person is supposed to be an upright, honest, reliable and generally good person. I was brought up in a society having these sort of values, in which I had the fortune to be recognized a god-fearing boy. And I always felt guilty whenever I felt that I did some thing wrong or something against my conscience.
But now I feel and understand that the basic emotion underlying the need to be god-fearing is only pure fear, and not the desire to be good. What is actually required is not fear of God, but love of God, pure devotion or divine Love. Fearing God is just fear of one’s own conscience. Of course it has its own virtue for making one desist from doing things considered wrong or ‘sinful’.
One may ask why the love of God or devotion is more important than fear of God? Because, while fear of god helps keep a person pure in mind without the feeling of guilt, and prepare him ready to seek spiritual blessings, it does not help one to experience the Ultimate. Even intellectual knowledge of the Absolute is useless without devotion. Intellectual knowledge separates the knowledge from the known. To know reality, knowledge and the known has to merge and be one with the knower. That would be possible only with utmost devotion where the knower merges with the absolute. To know God one has to be God. Only in divine love oneness happens. That is why it is said, ‘Surrender to the Infinite, the Ultimate Reality that is God’.
But is the other way around true, meaning, does knowledge of the absolute come from devotion alone without any effort to know? The logical answer is, of course, having known God everything else is automatically known. Nothing is left to be known.
We often hear the expression ‘god-fearing’ attributed to virtuous persons with a sense of approval. A god-fearing person is supposed to be an upright, honest, reliable and generally good person. I was brought up in a society having these sort of values, in which I had the fortune to be recognized a god-fearing boy. And I always felt guilty whenever I felt that I did some thing wrong or something against my conscience.
But now I feel and understand that the basic emotion underlying the need to be god-fearing is only pure fear, and not the desire to be good. What is actually required is not fear of God, but love of God, pure devotion or divine Love. Fearing God is just fear of one’s own conscience. Of course it has its own virtue for making one desist from doing things considered wrong or ‘sinful’.
One may ask why the love of God or devotion is more important than fear of God? Because, while fear of god helps keep a person pure in mind without the feeling of guilt, and prepare him ready to seek spiritual blessings, it does not help one to experience the Ultimate. Even intellectual knowledge of the Absolute is useless without devotion. Intellectual knowledge separates the knowledge from the known. To know reality, knowledge and the known has to merge and be one with the knower. That would be possible only with utmost devotion where the knower merges with the absolute. To know God one has to be God. Only in divine love oneness happens. That is why it is said, ‘Surrender to the Infinite, the Ultimate Reality that is God’.
But is the other way around true, meaning, does knowledge of the absolute come from devotion alone without any effort to know? The logical answer is, of course, having known God everything else is automatically known. Nothing is left to be known.
talk in seminar at current books, Tellicherry
The subject today, 'Ageless body and Timeless mind’ is a very tough subject. It would have been very vague and intangible also but for the book by the same title of Deepak Chopra, a doctor and an endocrinologist. It is one of the best sellers, a wonderful book much appreciated in US as well as in India.
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)
Monday, June 15, 2009
the restless mind
I am awake for about sixteen hours every day. All this time my mind is engaged with something or other. There seems no alternative; it will anyway be engaged with something automatically whether I like it or not. If it is not engaged in work, pleasure, reading or day dreaming, it will get uneasy inviting some disturbing thoughts. That is why when there is nothing interesting for the mind to do it is called boredom. When one is bored, disturbing thoughts nag and push for entry into the mind.
Not having anything to do is not boredom. Having nothing interesting to do, or be engaged in, is boredom. Having nothing at all to do, nothing interesting or nothing uninteresting to be engaged in, can actually be a pleasant silence, a calm quietude. Interest in something keeps the mind occupied so as to avoid unwanted disturbances and uneasiness. If I keep the mind engaged in observing the mind itself, that is to say that if I am aware and attentive to the very movements of the mind, then, I am never bored. Slowly pleasant silence also quietly enters in.
Why the mind is normally engaged in something or other incessantly? There is no respite even for a moment unless one is asleep. Sometimes the thoughts are pleasant, other times compulsorily unpleasant. There are anxieties over anticipated pain. There are pleasures to look forward. Most of the time the mind is engaged with something in the present. And it gets absorbed in the incoming sense impressions. Why can’t the mind be still without being hooked on to senses or thoughts?
Is it because that is its intrinsic nature? Or is it because it is a habit acquired from birth? Or, is it to avoid things unpleasant and painful from coming in uninvited. I think it could be the last. Of course when it is engaged with known things pleasant or even unpleasant, no unknown fears can come in.
I find that in my case it is clearly to avoid the onslaught of fears or the fear that barges in as soon as the mind is empty. Can grace come in instead of fears if one cultivates some suitable habit? There is no time left!
Not having anything to do is not boredom. Having nothing interesting to do, or be engaged in, is boredom. Having nothing at all to do, nothing interesting or nothing uninteresting to be engaged in, can actually be a pleasant silence, a calm quietude. Interest in something keeps the mind occupied so as to avoid unwanted disturbances and uneasiness. If I keep the mind engaged in observing the mind itself, that is to say that if I am aware and attentive to the very movements of the mind, then, I am never bored. Slowly pleasant silence also quietly enters in.
Why the mind is normally engaged in something or other incessantly? There is no respite even for a moment unless one is asleep. Sometimes the thoughts are pleasant, other times compulsorily unpleasant. There are anxieties over anticipated pain. There are pleasures to look forward. Most of the time the mind is engaged with something in the present. And it gets absorbed in the incoming sense impressions. Why can’t the mind be still without being hooked on to senses or thoughts?
Is it because that is its intrinsic nature? Or is it because it is a habit acquired from birth? Or, is it to avoid things unpleasant and painful from coming in uninvited. I think it could be the last. Of course when it is engaged with known things pleasant or even unpleasant, no unknown fears can come in.
I find that in my case it is clearly to avoid the onslaught of fears or the fear that barges in as soon as the mind is empty. Can grace come in instead of fears if one cultivates some suitable habit? There is no time left!
Monday, June 8, 2009
staying with emotions
When I am angry, I am anger. I stay with anger. I become aware of anger. Anger then loses it’s strength.
I am afraid. I am fear. I stay with fear. I am aware of fear. I perceive it and become bold enough to play with it. The fear fades and subsides.
If I stay with the mood, with the emotion, the emotion does not erupt into thoughts that reinforce the mood to sustain it. It is thought that helps the continuation of a mood or emotion.
But, if the mood is a pleasant one, like say, a feeling of elation, that also fades and vanishes on being aware of it. Naturally I want to retain the pleasant ones and avoid the unpleasant moods. The trick is to allow thoughts arising from pleasant emotions to go on. It has of course, the risk of allowing thoughts to become a habit, thereby bringing in unpleasant thoughts also by force of the habit. After all, mind is a complicated, intricate maze!
I am told by a friend that my Radio Talk on ‘Aging Gracefully’ was very good, and he congratulated me on that. I feel happy and elated. I stay with the happy mood and observe it. Slowly it starts fading. But if I go on thinking about it the elation gets continued for some more time. Even after it is completely faded, the happiness can be revived for small intervals by thinking about it. If it had been an unpleasant incident like a derogatory remark, I would have tried to avoid thinking about it, and failed in the attempt. The unpleasant emotions attached to derogatory remarks are much more powerful and do persist. Complete conscious awareness can however eliminate all of them. The mechanics of how emotions erupt are to be understood.
I have to be aware of the whole process working within me. If I allow the thoughts to erupt and continue without being aware or conscious of the process, then I am either being miserable or indulging in pleasure, as the case may be. In pleasure or misery, one is not consciously aware. But in pure joy, one is fully aware.
In sexual pleasure with an element of guilt, it is the lack of conscious awareness that makes it mechanical indulgence and not joy. In the union of love there is awareness and joy.
I am afraid. I am fear. I stay with fear. I am aware of fear. I perceive it and become bold enough to play with it. The fear fades and subsides.
If I stay with the mood, with the emotion, the emotion does not erupt into thoughts that reinforce the mood to sustain it. It is thought that helps the continuation of a mood or emotion.
But, if the mood is a pleasant one, like say, a feeling of elation, that also fades and vanishes on being aware of it. Naturally I want to retain the pleasant ones and avoid the unpleasant moods. The trick is to allow thoughts arising from pleasant emotions to go on. It has of course, the risk of allowing thoughts to become a habit, thereby bringing in unpleasant thoughts also by force of the habit. After all, mind is a complicated, intricate maze!
I am told by a friend that my Radio Talk on ‘Aging Gracefully’ was very good, and he congratulated me on that. I feel happy and elated. I stay with the happy mood and observe it. Slowly it starts fading. But if I go on thinking about it the elation gets continued for some more time. Even after it is completely faded, the happiness can be revived for small intervals by thinking about it. If it had been an unpleasant incident like a derogatory remark, I would have tried to avoid thinking about it, and failed in the attempt. The unpleasant emotions attached to derogatory remarks are much more powerful and do persist. Complete conscious awareness can however eliminate all of them. The mechanics of how emotions erupt are to be understood.
I have to be aware of the whole process working within me. If I allow the thoughts to erupt and continue without being aware or conscious of the process, then I am either being miserable or indulging in pleasure, as the case may be. In pleasure or misery, one is not consciously aware. But in pure joy, one is fully aware.
In sexual pleasure with an element of guilt, it is the lack of conscious awareness that makes it mechanical indulgence and not joy. In the union of love there is awareness and joy.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
infinite nothingness
Nothingness!
There is nothing; not even space – or time.
Reality is of the size one divided by infinity (1/∞).
The nothingness, pregnant with infinite energy,
Self suppressed,
Burst out vibrant,
Forward and backward; up and down, inside and outside.
The vibrating explosion of energy was electro-magnetic,
Of the order of lightening
Let there be light; there was light.
The Light was Life.
Light condensed itself into everything.
Nothing has become everything.
And it goes on becoming everything.
It has to finally go back into Nothing!
I too will go back to Nothing,
That pregnant, dynamic NOTHINGNESS!
There is nothing; not even space – or time.
Reality is of the size one divided by infinity (1/∞).
The nothingness, pregnant with infinite energy,
Self suppressed,
Burst out vibrant,
Forward and backward; up and down, inside and outside.
The vibrating explosion of energy was electro-magnetic,
Of the order of lightening
Let there be light; there was light.
The Light was Life.
Light condensed itself into everything.
Nothing has become everything.
And it goes on becoming everything.
It has to finally go back into Nothing!
I too will go back to Nothing,
That pregnant, dynamic NOTHINGNESS!
Friday, May 1, 2009
the ego and 'I'
I saw my ego. That was when I got angry. The mere feeling of ‘I’, the simple fellow became an angry swollen ‘ego’ when I felt the anger. The anger joined with the connected thought stream, and condensed into ‘ego’ with the awareness. When one is agitated, the mood or emotion creates a thought stream. The thoughts, the emotion, and the awareness that illumines them, all combine together to form a single entity that is the feeling of ‘I’. The memories and images of all such ‘I’ formations together in the mind constitute the ‘ego’. It is never the same. It changes, modifies, and revises itself as memories increase on each experience.
Friday, April 17, 2009
the flow of life
I can imagine life as a flow from future through the present to the past. The immediate future is, within an instant, the past. In the process I hardly notice the present. But the present is actually noticed immediately after it is passed to the past invariably as the memory of the last moment. This is so because of the lack of attention. If attention, the focused awareness, is on the present, then things are different. Then the present is a continuous stream.
My awareness is like a magnetic head of a tape recorder or the laser head of a CD player that detects, becomes aware of what is instantly passing before it, as the sound track or video track passes from the future to the past
Thursday, April 16, 2009
pure untouched awareness
When no thought, no image, or emotion is present in the mind, is it empty? Is it a vacuum? One may not find it so. Awareness is never felt in pure form. Something is always attached to it. Either it is from the past in the form of memory or from the present in the form of sense impressions. They are seen stuck to the awareness. Awareness is never without an object to be aware of. Can it exist alone without an object, or a sense experience? I do wonder.
Without memory there is no past, and if there is no past, no future can be projected or imagined. Only the present in the form of immediate sense impressions can exist. Who feels the impressions coming through the senses? It is the awareness that feels them. But without the sense impressions or memory, what is awareness? What is it’s nature? Pure awareness without anything to be aware of? Can a live mass of flesh, a blob, with no sense organs whatsoever have awareness? If it can have, that must be pure awareness. That would then also mean that the whole mass of live blob is awareness. Such an awareness will be pure untouched awareness without any impression of past, present or future attached to it. Pure life is thus ‘Pure Awareness’. With no life to apprehend non-life, no non-life can exist.
Therefore, all of us, body, mind, intelligence, universe, everything can be only a big mass of awareness. And, awareness is a movement, a pulsation, a sort of kinetic energy.
Without memory there is no past, and if there is no past, no future can be projected or imagined. Only the present in the form of immediate sense impressions can exist. Who feels the impressions coming through the senses? It is the awareness that feels them. But without the sense impressions or memory, what is awareness? What is it’s nature? Pure awareness without anything to be aware of? Can a live mass of flesh, a blob, with no sense organs whatsoever have awareness? If it can have, that must be pure awareness. That would then also mean that the whole mass of live blob is awareness. Such an awareness will be pure untouched awareness without any impression of past, present or future attached to it. Pure life is thus ‘Pure Awareness’. With no life to apprehend non-life, no non-life can exist.
Therefore, all of us, body, mind, intelligence, universe, everything can be only a big mass of awareness. And, awareness is a movement, a pulsation, a sort of kinetic energy.
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