Sri NV Raghuram

Sage Patanjali's Recommendations for Practice of Yoga

2011-04-20T15:02:00.000+05:30

SUMMARY: yoga offers both philosophy and methods of practice. Though some schools may argue that how can the ultimate state of peace and tranquillity the state of Purusha, be the outcome of any doing and if it is so when we are not doing we may lose it. Therefore it should not be product of any doing. What is really required is to realise. Sage Patanjali rightly says that we are into habit formation of identifying with non self and we need to reverse it so that what habits are not us and we are wrongly identified with, we need to consciously come out of it.

Broadly speaking, there are two methods. One is the method of discipline called ‘Abhyasa’ and the other is the method of non-attachment, ‘vairagya’.

Human beings can be divided into two categories according to their psychology and they are extrovert and those who are introvert. Broadly speaking Abhyasa is the type of practices which will be cherished by extravert personalities and Vairagya techniques go well with introvert personalities. But another interesting observation is that no one is purely introvert or extrovert but there can be a dominance of one over the other. Therefore both the types of practices have to go hand in hand. According to one’s own nature one of them will take the priority. In addition we also do not stay at all times in one type of personality. Therefore what type works for us at one time may not work at other time period. Therefore the practice of yoga cannot be regimented for all and also cannot be rigid for one all the times.

Mind itself is only an instrument like our hands legs, or eyes and ears. There is nothing good or bad in itself. Like the functioning of eyes is in the form of seeing, same way the functioning of the mind is in the form of thinking. Since it is a very useful tool for us to interact with the material outside in general, the tendency is to get lost in mind itself. In this process we forget that our being is beyond this mind and its activity. Patanjali gives this process of going beyond mind as yoga. Vruttis are the modifications of the mind and to stop and go beyond is the process which will take us to our real nature [swaroopa].

Yogah chitta vrutti nirodhah Tatha drastuh Swaroope avastanam

....

Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tannirodhah

This can be done according to Patanjali in two ways one is Abhyasa and the other Vairagya, roughly translated it is method of discipline and the other method of non- attachment or ‘let-go’. Let us see how these terms are having mistaken notion and how useful they are when we rightly understand these concepts for the benefit of the spiritual sadhaka.

DISCIPLINE: the moment we think of discipline there are two positions available. One is the position that one is ‘under discipline’ and the other one who is ‘disciplining’. Psychologically one comes to a hasty conclusion of identifying with the one who is under discipline. This may be because while the child is growing up he or she only keeps hearing others saying constantly do this and don’t do this, like receiving orders all the time. Same way when yoga gives dos and don’ts this is taken as imposing. When one takes the position of being under discipline it is immediately translated as curtailing your freedom and as a result of it, however useful it may be one would like to come out of discipline at the earliest ,

In our residential therapy facility Prashanti, on the last day of their stay participants come to me to express their gratitude and say, ‘this is a wonderful place and we never knew that yoga has so many components, the practices are wonderful, the therapists are like angels and food is good the discipline of getting up early morning and working for the whole day is so helpful and Dr Nagarathna is like god and I would like to recommend all our family members who need a good therapy to come for treatment here. Finally they ask “Raghuramji, I have one question for you”. I ask them what it is. The question is, “How long should I continue to do yoga?” I wonder if they found yoga to be so useful then why this question of how long to do yoga arises! It is so because they have taken the program at our centre as discipline imposed from outside and not as a discipline coming from within.

In reality we don’t need any discipline from outside. As it is, since we are part of the nature, we are disciplined. In the nature everything is in discipline. Ants walk one behind the other in discipline. Birds in the sky fly in discipline in nice formations. Every cocoanut tree has similar leaves in the form of discipline anywhere in the world and we can recognise it to be cocoanut tree from distance! You can find discipline everywhere in the nature. Birds wakeup in the morning at the same time in a disciplined way that is why we have birds voice for the clocks! The same way you can find natural discipline in the children they are hungry at the same time every day they go to sleep at the same time every day. Their pattern does not depend upon whether it is week day or week-end. We also used to have this discipline when we were children. But as we grew up we have come out of discipline. Therefore lack of discipline is an imposed habit but the discipline is part of our nature! When Patanjali says to discipline, it is not to impose discipline on us but to remove the indiscipline which unconsciously we acquired on us. We don’t have to feel we are slaves under discipline. But we are the masters who are disciplining the unruly forces which work as tendencies to take us away from discipline. Discipline has some other qualities too. Discipline is strength. See the crowd of people in a market place moving around without any discipline in different directions. They appear like crowd. The same crowd put them in rank and file and make them march for a disciplined footsteps in the form of an army that shows immediately the strength of the army. Discipline is also beautiful. When we plant the crops in nice lines stretching for miles you can feel that beauty of such agriculture fields. When the birds are flying in formation on the sky in discipline that beauty has filled Sri Ramakrishna with ecstasy! On the other hand a discipline which is forced from outside however useful may be we feel it as pressure where as the discipline coming from within, can work as tonic and transform a caterpillar into a butter-fly giving a freedom to fly, a bud into a beautiful flower spreading the fragrance.

Therefore, one final word in this regard is that the discipline has to come from within and not with imposed feeling. It is also researched that in the society where discipline is introduced culturally, such society is stronger psychologically and the people in that society suffer less psychological problems such as anxiety and depressions compared to the society where this discipline is not there.

VAIRAGYA NON-ATTACHEMNT:

The other category of yoga practices according to Sage Patanjali is the non attachment. Whenever we say Vairagya in the name of yoga immediately in many minds and hearts fear and anxiety comes up as if you have to be prepared to give up everything and run away from the material world in to forest. If we closely watch, the idea of Non attachment is also something which is part of the nature. We only need to look at this as the river flowing. River can only be flowing because it continuously letting the water to flow. If this flow is stopped then the water will be stinking and loses its freshness. In the fall trees shed their leaves so that they are prepared to invite and embrace spring with fresh leaves! Life is a flow like a flame of fire. Unless until the old flows, new cannot come and freshness cannot be established. It is our sense of insecurity which makes us not to realise this. It is all due to ignorance that we hold onto no change. We give up something so that we provide room for something new to come in. We have been holding on to vruttis or the modifications in our mind which constantly torment us. These modifications solidify so much that they don’t appear any more as modifications but as concrete objects. We don’t see them as vruttis any more but we see them as objects. Object itself does not hold on to us. It is the attachment for the object which holds onto us. Like a person who is a non smoker going through a new place does not notice any cigarette shop and one who is a smoker, at once notices every cigarette shop on the way! Once we have attachment for the object then we can notice all our thoughts angers and frustrations are around that object. If only we don’t have attachment for that objects all those fall off. The object itself is not holding on to us but we are holding on to the object. A home will not hold onto you. If you forget to lock the home when you are going to the work the home will not express its insecurity. It is our mind which suddenly remembers that we have forgotten to lock the home becomes panic. If we can develop nonattachment, we can be free from the worry of it. We also need to recognise that non attachment does not make us non functional. We are fully functional, and where ever necessary, we function not like slaves but like masters. One thing that develops with this wisdom is that the number of things we constantly desire will fall off. The reason for us to develop attachment is that we feel without that object we are incomplete and insecure and that object is absolutely necessary for us to be at the least in a normal state. Wisdom is that we are full [Purna]. Our involvement in to this world is not our lacking but we can involve making this world a better place. Without this attitude if we try to give up we are filled with frustration and feeling of loss. In addition we become cynical about others who are involved in the objective world. Every child in the childhood attached to pebbles from the sea shore. But once he becomes an adult he outgrows it very naturally. Same way when yoga says to practice non attachment, it is only suggesting us to grow out of it so that we can be part of the better world or inner world. It is a technique ro give a paradigm shift to out being.

Both these paths are not new to us we are already doing them. We are learning several things. All this learning if you see is nothing but we are disciplining our body. A child does not have any control over his hands. But we make the child to do continuous practice of writing and the child develops. We have techniques to train hands, legs, voice etc but we have no technique to train our mind towards being calm. This technique of yoga therefore is a unique technique wherein we consciously train our mind to become quite and still, and enable us to transcend our mind in calmness. This way we can go beyond mind to an experience of self.

On the other hand we are unconsciously disconnecting our mind from the object. This we do every night by disconnecting our mind from the objective world. When we go to bed wanting to go to sleep, several thoughts, important ideas keep coming to us. But we say enough for all that and we go to bed. This is possible because temporarily we have detached from the material world things to attend etc. But we could temporarily say no to all of them and go to sleep! This is Vairagya and if we cannot do this Vairagya we cannot go to sleep.

Though the techniques are different, and the methodologies are different, the goal of both of them is the same that is the freedom and mastery.

People with extrovert tendencies by nature have to do something visible a mere clarification is not sufficient. They have to feel the experience of the change. Therefore method of discipline belongs to the people with extravert tendencies. These techniques are visible from outside. A practice of pranayama or meditation, doing some japa or kriya practice, are visible and one can record that he has done so many hours of sadhana. Without such proof he may not feel the confidence that the idea has entered his heart! Therefore an extravert person can enjoy and be benefited by these techniques. On the other hand an introvert person looks at the process of letting go from within. The moment he knows that he should not be holding on to unnecessary mental processes and that is tormenting him he applies that principle repeatedly and be transformed within. He is not so much interested in having to do something outside. Thus the second set is the practices for him.

An example for an introvert person is a professor who is a researcher and thinker. Once in America they wanted everyone to go through military training which included this professor also. The leader of the group was giving instructions right, left, about turn.... the professor stopped mid way. When the leader asked him, “Professor, why don’t you follow the team”, the professor replied first of all decide finally which way to go then I will go.

Mulla Nasruddin is a good example for extrovert! He is illiterate and his wife wrote to him a love letter. When the postman delivered that letter to him, Mulla asked him to read it for him. The postman replied with a smile Miya [friend], this is a love letter from your wife and how can i read it. Mulla gave him a suggestion, “you read it loud for me and I will close your ears so that you don’t hear it”!

We are all not purely introvert or extrovert. We have both of them and one may be dominating over the other. That is the reason Sage Patanjali suggests that both have to go hand in hand. Techniques of Abhyasa and Vairagya have to be judiciously adapted so that whenever we are having introvert nature dominance we do the Vairagya techniques and when extrovert dominance is there we do abhyasa practices. Ultimately our journey has to be progressing.

How to do Meditation - Meditasyon Nasıl Yapılır by Sri NV Raghuram

2011-03-28T23:21:00.000+05:30

Guru Mantra Chanting by Sri NV Raghuram

2010-11-09T19:05:00.000+05:30

Energy Transfer from guru to student by Sri NV Raghuram

2010-10-20T20:54:00.000+05:30

Maitrimilan talk - August 2, 2010

2010-09-23T21:24:00.001+05:30

In the link you may listen to the voice recording of Maitrimilan talk of Raghuramji.

Maitrimilan (ie cordial gathering of all the inmates of prashanit Kuteeram the residential campus) took place in the auditorium of Vivekanda Yoga University.

http://www.nvraghuram.org/voice_files/Mitrimilan020810.WAV

Video Upload: What is health (Part 1 & 2)

2010-09-15T14:50:00.006+05:30

Sri NV Raghuram answers the questions:
1. What is health
2. What is the role of modern medicine in health.

Part 2:
1. how to go back to natural state?
2. what is the role of prana in health?
3. can healers help us to go back to this natural state?
4. are healers successful according to our belief?

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - Chapter 1 SAMĀDHI PĀDA verse 1 & 2

2010-09-08T20:20:00.005+05:30

English meaning: "Now the exposition of yoga"
Listen to Sri NV Raghuramji's satsang on Verse 1: please click on.

English meaning: "Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of mind-stuff"
Listen to Sri NV Raghuramji's satsang on Verse 2: please click on.

To read the Patanjali's Yoga Sutras:
english translation: click for the online copy in pdf format
turkish translation: click for online copy in htm format

Newspaper articles from India Herald / Houston - USA

2010-07-26T00:07:00.000+05:30

pdf : India Herald - USA / part 1

pdf : India Herald - USA / part 2

Video Upload: What is Bandhas and difficulties in practicing bandhas

2010-07-03T21:30:00.001+05:30

Sri NV Raghuramji answers the questions:
1. What is a bandha?
2. What is the science behind the bandhas?

Sri NV Raghuramji answers the questions:
1) limitations of practicing bandhas
2) difficulties to learn bandhas
3) reasons of having a sequence in bandhas

Bhagavat Gita Talks - Chapter 2 - Sloka 58

2010-07-02T12:19:00.002+05:30

Sri NV Raghuram gives an explanation to the sloka

"Yadaa samharate chaayam kurmo'ngaaneeva sarvashah,
Indriyaaneendriyaarthebhyas tasya prajnaa pratishthitaa."

"When, like the tortoise which withdraws its limbs on all sides,
he withdraws his senses from the sense objects, then his wisdom becomes steady."

Audio recordings of recent activities in USA

2010-06-17T17:00:00.027+05:30

Satsang / Bay Area-SF June 27, 2010
Listen or download Yoga and Stress Satsang

Video slide show that Saurabh made from pictures taken at Yoga and Stress Satsang

Sastriji Memorial 2010
Part 1: Listen or download Concept of Fullness satsang
Part 2: Listen or download Concept of Knowledge Satsang

Talk in Indianapolis 2010
Raja Yoga slokas
part 1 : Listen or download Raja Yoga Slokas Satsang Part 1
part 2 : Listen or download Raja Yoga Slokas Satsang Part 2

Video upload: What is Enlightenment / Samadhi ?

2010-05-05T23:23:00.009+05:30

Part 1:
Sri NV Raghuram explains;
1. What is Samadhi?
2. What to expect in realisation / samadhi state?
3. How do we know that the experience is real?
4. Should we use hallucinogens to get samadhi experience?

Sri NV Raghuram explains;
Can anyone succeed in siddhis, that are mentioned in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras?

Sri NV Raghuram explains;
1) Is it possible to reach siddhis, mentioned in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras?
2) Are siddhis signs of spiritual advancement?

Bhagavat Gita Talks - Chapter 2 - Sloka 69

2010-04-21T13:26:00.000+05:30

Sri NV Raghuram gives an explanation to the sloka

"Yaanishaa sarvabhootaanaam tasyaam jaagarti samyamee;
Yasyaam jaagrati bhootaani saa nishaa pashyato muneh."

"That which is night to all beings, then the self-controlled man is awake;
when all beings are awake, that is night for the sage who sees."

Video Upload: Initiation in Yoga

2010-04-06T22:15:00.004+05:30

Part 1

Sri NV Raghuram answers the questions:
1. What is initiation
2. How is initiation done
3. Does initiation require ceremonies/rituals?

Part 2:

Sri NV Raghuram answers the questions:
1. Who is qualified to give initiation in yoga
2. Can something go wrong during initiation
3. Who should get initiation
4. Is spiritual progress possible without any initiation

Sanskrit Chanting in Germany

2010-03-26T02:59:00.001+05:30

Sanskrit Chanting - 11/2009
Place: Bad Griesbach / Germany

Sri NV Raghuram & Dr Christopf Garner, KWA Klinik Stift Rottal Bad Griesbach Neurological Hospital

Creativity or Killer Instinct?

2010-03-04T01:11:00.002+05:30

Whenever I heard the phrase ‘killer instinct’, it always used to create ‘not a good feeling’ and made me very uncomfortable but I never thought about it deeply. Especially when we hear in sports, I never liked it at all. Recently I had to give thought to it when my nephew asked me to give some philosophical background about sports.

Our seers and sages from the Vedic times held non-violence as the highest virtue with one of the most valuable sutra “Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah” . Parama dharma or the supreme reality or principle is creation. I consider anything that leads to destruction as the highest crime. All other virtues are simple virtues or simple dharmas and non-violence is the supreme virtue indicating that if there is any thing, which is directly opposite to creation, it is violence. The very concept of ‘killer instinct’ has the idea of violence at its core. Therefore, killer instinct is a very bad concept and just cannot be promoted however useful and effective and popular it is!

In the Astanga yoga of Patanjali ‘ahimsa’ or non violence is given the first place. This is the first of five yamas or disciplines that form the prerequisites for the practice of yoga. When Patanjali gave all these practices such as yama, niyama, asana pranayama etc, it was clearly for ones own personal spiritual growth and definitely not with reference to the world outside. I found many speakers and writers talk about violence, as some thing that has reference only to the world out side. When you look at violence and nonviolence with respect to the world out side, it is obviously a necessary discipline for a smooth functioning of the society. If some one violates these social norms he/she will become punishable. I feel that if we interpret ahimsa only in the context of social harmony it is a very superficial meaning of ahimsa. It becomes most meaningful if we look at it as a tool for one’s own growth. Just think for a while--- what will be the amount of damage a person inflicts upon himself physically mentally and spiritually if he takes to the course of violence!

As soon as we get any thought of violence, it creates a chain of negative reactions in our mind body complex. The mind gets into a state of agitation and the body chemistry gets terribly disturbed. We pour in huge quantities of adrenalin and steroidal chemicals into the blood that can create enormous amount of imbalance in the body. If you are a sensitive person, the damage done to your mind body complex by these thoughts is much more than the effect it can have on the outside. Interestingly for an insensitive person he will not even realize the damage it does. Whether one perceives it or not the damage is done. Therefore, both the faces of violence are terribly dangerous and cannot be promoted for whatever reason. However, sometimes when all others methods designed to bring about the desirable change in the society or the individual fail, harsh, firm and violent methods are to be used. This does not come under the concept of Ahimsa which is a discipline recommended for individual or social health. After all if any one becomes violent towards the society, the state legislation has provided enough protective measures at different levels starting from the police force to the military , the team that protects law and order. That is a part of the social system and no spiritual teaching is necessary to take care of it.

Therefore, Indian philosophy prescribes the concept of non-violence basically for protecting your core personality and the idea of external non violence becomes a by-product of this discipline. Since yoga is a system for developing one’s peace of mind, every recommendation is for the sake of self evolution through introspective correction and not with reference to the world around. Several instructions are recommended for the practice of non-violence as a spiritual discipline and it has to be practiced kaya, vacha manasa—i.e. at mental level and through words and action. But for any reason if you need to use harshness for correcting the evil violent forces, then the suggestion by Sri Krishna in Bhagavadgita is to use violence or anger with complete mastery only when necessary as a last resort. And show harshness and violence outside but never have anger within.your words and action may look violent but never be harsh in the mind. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to say ‘hiss’ like a snake when necessary but never bite.

Coming back to the concept of ‘killer instinct’ that is widely promoted today in competitive games or sports,I strongly feel that this concept is totally against the very philosophy of sports.It is poisonous because this puts the player’s mind also into a killing mode . It makes him contemplate on killing the opponent. With this very posture, we are harming ourselves and the others..

The contemplation on this thought of ‘killer instinct’ snowballs over time and the idea goes so deep into ones mind that the person is emotionally charged with the instinct. This preoccupation aoaks in to the system so much, that when he wins he is a killer but when he looses it kills him! As a result, his whole life is going to be filled with nothing but violence. This same violence shows up in all other activities.

You may tell me ‘ok. I agree that this word is not good; this attitude is not good and not very pleasant. But if I give-up this how can I perform in this competitive world! I will become non-active and a non-performer, leave alone winning in a competitive situation. Is there anything else that you can suggest to be a winner without using this cocept of a killer?’Yes. There is a much healthier attitude. ;an attitude in tune with nature; a concept that can never promote violence; an attitude very much in tune with the discipline of ahimsa. This wonderful life enhancing all encompassing spiritually acceptable concept is that of ‘creativity’.

Become an artist .Who is an artist? He is one whose performance is far far away from any thought of violence. He creates a mesmerizing art piece out of a simple piece of canvas and pencil. A sculptor creates a sculpture out of raw wood or stone. He has an ability to see the hidden beauty and the successful outcome that exists in the plain colorless sheet or the rough piece of stone. The final winning performance is already there even before he puts the first stroke. He only sees the master piece of beauty as if hiding behind the canvas. The sculptor approaches the stone as though the final figure is pleading him to unfold herself. Once Michel-Angelo was passing by a stone shop and found there was a stone lying by the side of the shop. He went to the owner and wanted to purchase.it. The shop fellow told him ‘why do you want to buy this stone? in fact I have actually been waiting to get it out of my way .I will only be thankful if you remove it from here. Michel Angelo smiled and said ‘I will show you this stone after an year’ and took that stone. A year later, Michel invited the shopkeeper to a big function which was organized for unveiling a sculpture. Michel told the shop keeper ‘this is the same stone that I brought from your place last year. As I was passing by your shop I heard this beauty asking me to take me and release from the bondage within this hard stone’. The friend could not believe him. A sculptor, an artist, a creator can hear the voice of life from lifeless. He unfolds the beauty hidden and he will bring about the seemingly impossible. For others it may look to be a challenge, a struggle but for the artist it is like an enchanting journey where every moment is a celebration.

Every activity can be done in two ways-- one is the way of fighting and the other is the way of creating. A child’s growth is not a fight but it is like unfolding the inner potential. This is ‘creativity’. Even a game that we play can be in a killer’s way or a creative way. When we do this in a killer’s way as I explained earlier, our focus will be on the opponent and if we are in a creative way then our attention will be on self. When we are in killer’s way we will be spoiling our body chemistry with the bad chemicals in our blood stream where as if we are playing in a creative way then we vitalize the system by pouring in health rejuvenating chemicals such as endorphins into our blood stream. In creative way of playing, there is always a rhythm and in a killer’s way there is a fatigue and break down of the system. One who takes the game in a creative way he will be able to appreciate the game whether he is a winner or looser. Then ‘I’ is not important but the game becomes important. Interestingly when the spectators watch the game, they also do not feel that it is a war but it is a graceful artwork beautifully shaped into some thing worth watching. I watch the Indian cricket team playing. Whether the score is high or low we can see that Virendra Sehwag’s play is so graceful and it is more like an art work than a war. Once, in an interview when the interviewer asked him how he could play against one of the tough bowlers, his reply was so innocent that he said ‘I do not play according to the bowler but I look at each ball and according to its merit’. The same case is with Roger Fedrer playing tennis. It is so graceful to see how he merges in the game and handles it so smoothly and gracefully. He seems to forget both himself and the opponent. This is probably the reason that we do not see him running around like a mad man in the court and lose his energy.

Every skill depends on the training you had. The real skill in training is not only the actual learning of the intricate details of the skill but there is something more. It needs a training in converting all activity into an art piece , an a act of creativity. This is the process of shifting the focus from outside to inside. You need to do it from within and not to focus on the outside. The out side is a situation and ability is inside. Situations are inert. You are the vibrant able being facing all situations.The ability to change the situation to move towards success is the process of training; more challenging the situation more the reward of achievement; more the expression of the inbuilt freedom. This is the purpose of playing a game or training in nay skill. This ability to express your inner freedom is called ‘karmasu kaushalam’ by Sri Krishna. This is the choice element that is inbuilt into all living systems. This ability is there in every animal too. You can see this in the monkeys in Amazon forest. They jump from one tree to another tree in a highly skilled artistic way. They only assess and decide about the next leap to the next branch. No other thing is in their purview. They simply express their inner ability. You must see how the little ones are trained by the mother monkey. It is obvious to see how natural it is to become skilled if we do not have the hang ups about the targets but just learn to express the inbuilt inner ability. The difference with man and animals is that they do not know that they are skilled but we as humans have the ability to know that I am the wonderful performer and hence can en joy this expression of the nature’s gift. Now can you see how we have moved from violence and killer instinct to become an artist and a joyful performer? You are an achiever because you could process the expression of the nature’s gift – the ability to adapt and tune to the challenging situation that is inbuilt within all of us. This is what Swami Vivekananda meant when he said ‘each soul is potentially free (divine) and the goal is to manifest this freedom within by controlling nature within and without’. You would be the best player if you decide to express this inbuilt ability in the situation of sports; you would be the best scientist if you chose to express this freedom in the field of unraveling the miseries of nature through mathematical formulae; you will tower the world of music if you express this freedom through culturing the muscles of your fingers on a musical instrument or the muscles of the voice box.

Now a days, it is unfortunate that we are hearing more and more incidents of shocking incidents of violence amongst big achievers in any field. It is most disheartening to see this happening amongst sportsmen although the philosophy of sports and games is basically to move away from violence and channelize our energies towards comradeship, team spirit, give and take etc. We have been seeing several such incidents such as misbehavior of sports persons with air-hostesses,; Use of banned drugs for enhancing the performance; loose sexual conduct of reputed sports personnel etc. It is not only these social evils. We are seeing several examples of life style related diseases; e.g. we read that a reputed WWF player died of heart attack at the age of 40 years! This is only one example of several hundred early deaths.

Another important feature of the ‘killer instinct’ is that it is like Opium. It takes away your awareness; when you get into the attitude of working for unfolding the creativity, you are deeply set in your awareness. It enhances your awareness; it opens up the inner doors towards purity which can only manifest as more and more compassion and non-violence. Every evil is characterized by lack of awareness. All violent emotions essentially benumb your awareness. Killer instinct is the height of anger against the opponent. Whenever we are angry we lose our awareness to the extent that we do not even know that we are angry and violent.

Sri Krishna told Arjuna in Bhagavad-Gita ‘you must participate in the dharma yuddha ( war to remove the incorrigible unrighteous elements in the society) with full awareness; killing is not the thrust ; to establish the righteousness in the society is the goal ;we had no choice than to adopt this path of war which we accept is violence; but this is the only way to punish the wicked.; oh! Arjuna, become a warrior with full awareness of the purpose and fight for the goal ; establish a healthy society; this is your duty as a man belonging to the royal dynasty; this is your dharma; in the process you will only manifest your nature, your freedom to be in tune with divinity; you are not the sinner who kills for selfish achievements ; you have to just tune to your inner being and fight’.

When we as human beings are capable of recognizing such wonderful truths, when we are bestowed with these abilities how can we behave like unaware instinctual beings? Fighting is an instinct for survival. Here we are not trying to survive for earning our bread. Excelling in any field does not need a killer instinct; it only needs a change in our mind set; it is a wonderful expression of creativity; excelling is flowering .For a plant to come out of the soil it needs a little effort of violence but flowering is effortless; it is softness; it is joy ; it is enchanting; it spreads fragrance. How can we accept that sportsmen should have killer instinct? Krishna continues –‘You cannot fight the war efficiently if you do not have inner peace. Your skill comes from the peace within and not when you are driven by your emotions’. If war can become efficient n a war with your peace within why do we have to think that a player should cherish this poison of killer instinct to be successful? This is the basic notional correction that is necessary for mankind today in any field of achievement; let us promote this change in mind set.

The degeneration in sports today resulting in misconduct is a manifestation of this concept of ‘killer instinct’ . Let us make sports healthier by changing the mind set and become creative. This will make sportsmen better human beings.

Video upload: What is Ahimsa - Non-violence

2010-02-19T11:07:00.008+05:30

Questions answered in 4 parts:

Part 1 :
1. What is ahimsa according to yoga?

Part 2:
1. Is violence necessary for living
2. Was Jesus Christ's words "you are responsible of your thoughts" reflect ahimsa principle
3. do we see animosity in our lives due to our past karmas.

Part 3:
1. Does the animosity in the outside world perishes immediately after we start good karmas?
2. Does ahimsa promotes staying passive in life and to accept whatever comes to your way.

Part 4:
Questions: 1. Does ahimsa promote selfless action?
2. Do we use suffering to draw attention? 2. Is creating violence necessary for charity work?

Lecture video: Yoga according to Scriptures

2010-02-11T16:31:00.001+05:30

Lecture video : Karma Yoga

2010-02-07T01:58:00.000+05:30

Maitri Milan talk on January 24, 2010 by Sri NV Raghuram. Maitri Milan is the auditorium of Swami Vivekananda Yoga University, in Bangalore, India.

Lecture video : Jnana / Knowledge (part 2)

2010-02-03T14:38:00.001+05:30

Maitri Milan Talk of Sri NV Raghuramji, international yoga professor of Swami Vivekananda Yoga University, on January 17, 2010. Maitri Milan is the auditorium of Swami Vivekananda Yoga University in Bangalore/India.

The first part of the talk can be watched in the following link:
http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2010/01/jnana-knowledge.html

video upload: significance of Chakras in spiritual path

2010-01-29T00:50:00.003+05:30

Sri NV Raghuramji gives answers to the questions below:
how many chakras do we have?
how to know whether chakras are working properly?
feeling chakras show spiritual advancement?
can feeling chakras be an obstacle on spiritual path?

Mail to Raghuramji and Nagendraji regarding Lalitaji's lefting her body

2010-01-25T12:48:00.001+05:30

We are all affected by the vacuum of elders . one generation of elders in the VYASA family gone.

she was 87, ailing for some time, was very sad after aunti went, was praying - in fact fighting with devi saraswati ( her ishta devata) daily to take her away; is it not confrting to know that she left ehr body without an iota of suffering? her prayers were heard as the end happened on vasanta panchami day which is the auspicious day on which a grand sraswati puja celebration happens in the country (specially bengal and orissa0 almost to the same degree of austerity and granduer as durga puja. our parents have been so great and we are blessed and could not ask for more . the divine family wherein our father whose name was ramarao -left his body on ramanavami day.

sri sheshadriji -- a naotionalist who wrote about the ' dark night of indian history- the 14 th august 1947' if you have not read that book you should read-- he left his body on 14th august. lakshmi amma the great rambhakta who was a great source of shakti for prashanthi left her body on ekadashi after hugging the huge durgama statue in prarthana mandir on vijayadasami day--we feel she has gone away for the jaitrayatra ( like sri rama and krishna (through pandavas) started the work on this day for dushta nigraha and shista rakshana) for her further sojourn in a healthy body as she was full of energy to do more for women's problems in the world . and now amma, a saraswathi bhakte, who was the mother of 5 of us who were all educated with so much ease to get the best of the education from both east and west and use it for 'be and make' . two of us for complete inner growth, three of us for offering it to the society and the family .rahguramji, phani , sameer and, latha who joins the family in wedlock also involved in simlar adhyatmika and seva work.the job of guruji has been made easy by the extended family which has now branched off like a banyan tree. the family tree started growing fast that included mohanji first, subhadra next , dayananda as a small boy and then the hiararchy of all at prashanthi fully committed to the mission and vision of 'be and make'. what a grand family we have-- a huge family of thousands who feel the oneness --

it is a pride that we have you both in our vivekanada family. looking forward to your inputs for our students at S-VYASA.

Dear Nagendra ji, Nagarathna didi, and Raghuram ji:

We are extremely saddened by the news of the sad demise of

revered Smt Lalithamma ji. This a major blow to the extended

family of Prashanti within a short span after auntie ji's

nirvana.

May the Lord give you strength to face this terrible loss.

--Anand and Meena Paranjpe

Lecture video : Jnana / Knowledge

2010-01-22T22:13:00.003+05:30

Maitri Milan Talk of Sri NV Raghuramji on January 16, 2010. Maitri Milan is the auditorium of Swami Vivekananda Yoga University in Bangalore/India.

The second part of the talk can be watched in the below link:
http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2010/02/lecture-video-jnana-knowledge-part-2.html

Beloved Amma, Smt Lalthamma, left for her heavenly abode

2010-01-22T15:31:00.000+05:30

Lalithamma very fondly called by all her relatives as Doddamma is a personification of love. She is one person who is one simple person amongst all intellectual successful well known personalities in that house. But her love is so powerful that in the peoples heart on a balance if you keep her on one side and all other members of the family

On the other side of the balance still the balance slides on her side. we may not remember about so many people who we might have come across but she not only remembers all of them and their families but she also very fondly enquires about all.

Even though Seetha mentioned the names of all of us and our connection with her in her message she is one who is very dearly connected with Doddamma. Right form the childhood whenever Seetha or her sister would come to our home she would directly go to Doddamma and spend hours with her. Especially after coming to US she and her children would invariably spend a day with her. The bondage between them is very unique and beyond words. Therefore the death of Lalitha Doddamma left a great void in the hearts of seetha and her family members.

Collection of Yoga Gems -1 & 2-

2010-01-14T06:23:00.001+05:30

Pooja vs Prayer and Worship & Sarve Bhaantu Sukhinah

The Essence of Suryanamaskaras

Message for Swamiji's Birthday

2010-01-11T13:28:00.000+05:30

Wish you all the very best on this youth day which is the birthday celebrations of Swami Vivekananda on 12^th January 2010.

Swami Vivekananda is inspiring youth since the time he represented the Sanathana Dharma at the parliament of world religions in Chicago in 1893.

His several statements for recognizing the inner strength and self respect have stirred the blood in many youth not only in India but also all over the world not only during his times but even today many new organisations are springing up taking inspiration for the good work to the needy by youngsters all over the world. That is the reason this is considered rightly as youth day!

When we call it as youth day it does not mean that only young people have to observe the day. It means that there is always a young person within us constantly wanting to guide us but some how we tend to over look him. On this day let us remember this youth in us and be inspired.

An obvious question comes up that how do I recognize this youth in us. An answer for that is that the youth is always with these important qualities and if we recognize and identify with this than we are listening to the youth in us! a young person is

1 open to enhancing his or her knowledge.

2 Creative and prepared to learn any thing new not known

3 Free from ego trips. A youth is humble and has no false pride saying I know every thing and I need not learn any more.

4 Free and not stuck to ways of orthodox practices

5 Positive in his approach whether it is successful or a failure.

On this day of 12^th January 2010 let us all find this youth in us and march forward!!

Especially my birthday wishes to all those lucky ones, who share the birthday along with Swami Vivekananda and let them also be inspired. Swami Vivekananda has to take birth some where he took birth in India. He has to belong to some culture he is born in Indian culture but let us not localize this personality by identifying him with a culture caste creed and religion.

Love,

Raghuram

Video Uploads: Basics of Pranayama & Yogasanas versus physical excercise

2010-01-03T11:30:00.000+05:30

Basics of Pranayama

Yogasanas versus physical excercise

2010 New Year Message

2009-12-30T23:37:00.002+05:30

Suddenly when we look back e realize how fast already nine years have passed in 2000 and we entered tenth year!

But January 1st strictly speaking is no different from either December 31st or January 2nd.. For earth it does not make any difference nor for the sun based on whose appearance we consider the day and we start the new year. It makes no difference for the wind or for any other elements in creation. Other species in creation such as trees birds or animals do not know that this is a special day!

Man makes this as a very special day by doing several things. If he has to do some thing new, he has to do it at some point. Probably for this reason he has this January 1st as the day the new year starts for him. We make it significant by starting the calendar from this day or some activities like accounts; it starts on this day for some people.

In addition many make this mid night of the first day of the new year as unforgettable by killing several animals and eating the meat of these animals and making merry. Then, this new year may be celebration for the people but this is an unfortunate day for the animals which give their lives on this day even thought they have no idea as a new year day! Some make this new year day unforgettable by drinking liquor and dancing where they loose their consciousness! I wonder many times these things happen in the name of religion also!

Let us think of it. Do we feel comfortable in doing these things can we make a difference in our making this new year some thing significant!

Can we make this new year day very special that this day we show extraordinary compassion towards fellow creatures by being strictly vegetarian! Can we make this new year day a very special day by spending time in greater awareness with the help of meditation bhajan etc rather than loosing our awareness in drinks. Can we make this a very special day for us and for the people around us by taking a resolution which can help in uplifting self as well as the creation around him or her! If we can let us try to help others to take up a resolve so that they can also make this new year a memorable one. The resolution can be around several things such as health, or harmony, spiritual growth, ecology global warming or plastic pollution etc

I wish all the members a very happy new year and I pray god to give strength to all to peacefully and efficiently execute their resolutions for the good of self and humanity!!

Aum shantih shantih shantihi

Raghuram

Annapūrṇāṣṭakam by Adi Shankaracharya

2009-12-30T00:09:00.001+05:30

Same video with Turkish translation

This poem to Annapurna devi is written by Adi Shankaracharya.
The music played is by Thiagarajan from the album Holy Chants of Shiva and Shakti, used according to fair play.

Question and Answer Sessions / 18th international yoga conference

2009-12-27T12:14:00.000+05:30

First let me express that there was a very participation of very sincere spiritual seekers at both pre-conference sessions and in the conference at VYASA 18th international conference at Prashanti kuteeram.

During my sessions, there were several questions, which are very important. I could only answer a few of them in the conference and I promised that I would give brief answers for them through my web site. Let me try to give them here.

Question: when it is said that a yogi is in Samadhi state, is it he is continuously in silent blissful state or is it something beyond.

Answer: yogi is in the state of absolute silence, which means there is no dialogue, taking place when he passes into Samadhi state after being in dhyana. However, one thing we need to understand that Samadhi also is not be a state which is of the nature of going and coming. Therefore such yogis slowly realising this truth and stay in the state of Samadhi while sitting in dhyana or while engaged in any other activity. At that stage samadhi is no more a state to achieve but it what they are. That is what some times some refer as a state beyond! Patanjali describes it in the following way.

Mind in normal human being is wandering from point a to b to c etc. When he has to think, then he will hold one point with his mind and this is known as dharana. Then he slowly goes in to dhyana and may touch Samadhi for a flash or so. Nevertheless, a yogi whose state has become Samadhi he is peaceful normally and only when he has to think of any object then he will put his mind on it and will go to rest once the need for thinking is over. A non yogi, on the other hand goes back to his multi directional mind once that task is finished. His mind does not know rest!

Surya Namaskara Yajna of Yoga Bharati Movement (January 1-January 22, 2010)

2009-12-17T13:28:00.009+05:30

Leading the Yoga awareness movement all over the world, Yoga Bharati organizes Surya Namaskar Yagna (Sun Salutation Marathon) every year to encourage everyone to add Yoga to the list of new year resolutions and start the new year on a healthy note!

We welcome you all to participate in the SNY 2010! It is very easy to participate in this marathon. Do a simple, quick and effective Surya Namaskar as many rounds as possible, daily and compete with the other participants as in a marathon. You can do it alone or as a group, at home or office or any of the yoga classes organized by Yoga Bharati, and self-report your count to us.

The event starts on New Year Day - Jan 1, 2010 (Friday) and completes on January 22, 2010 (Friday)
Upon completion of this 3 week event, results will be announced and participants with the highest Surya Namaskara count are recognized.

Yoga Bharati provides the needed information and training to start the practice free of cost.

In the below video, Sri NV Raghuram explains about what is Surya Namaskar Yajna of Yoga Bharati Movement, what is the significance of year 2010, how can the significance of each year be the same for everyone, from where could be gotten this yearly information of indian lunar calendar.

Video of Sri NV Raghuramji about the philosophy of Surya Namaskara Yajna and the importance of sun salutation

E-mail us for registration or other enquiries
Click on to learn Frequently Asked Questions
Click on to register yourself to the cause
For more information and follow up visit Yoga Bharati web page

SMET : Self Management of Excessive Tension

2009-12-14T16:13:00.007+05:30

Sri NV Raghuramji is giving his introductory philosophical ideas about stress and its management in this short video.

THEORY
-------------
The theory of Stress Management of Excessive Tension (SMET) is given with a full presentation in the below video by Dr. HR Nagendra, Vice-Chancellor of Swami Vivekananda Yoga University www.svyasa.org.

PRACTICE SET:
-----------------------
Here you may see the whole Stress Management of Excessive Tension (SMET) practical session that is guided with the naration of Sri NV Raghuramji.

SMET (Stress Management of Excessive Tension) program is developed by Swami Vivekananda Yoga University www.svyasa.org. Above you may find the full version of SMET program. The program is protected by Copyright laws and is shared strictly for personal & non-profit use. For any commercial use of this program, please contact webmaster@svyasa.org for details.

Basics of Yoga Therapy

2009-12-07T15:04:00.002+05:30

Sri NV Raghuramji gives the answers to the questions what yoga therapy is, how it works, role of a yoga therapist and also if yoga therapy denies modern medicine.

Sri NV Raghuramji explains how yoga therapy works on cronic diseases, his advices to the patients, Stop diabetes movement and yoga therapy centers all around the world.

Happy Gita Jayanthi !

2009-11-28T17:24:00.000+05:30

Bhagavat Gita happened 5111 years ago on this day, 28th december.

Below is the message of Sri NV Raghuram for the significance of this special day.

Asparsha Yoga - Part 1

2009-11-23T18:31:00.003+05:30

Several people are practicing some thing in the name of yoga all over the world. We really do not know how many of them have really understood what yoga means or how yoga has been explained in the parampara! The word yoga is not some thing new or need to be invented fresh. It has come since the start of this civilization and culture and has been consistent with its definition through out these many years.
Sage Patanjali in his treatise on yoga called yoga sutras gives us the technique how to reach the state of yoga with the help of ‘Astanga yoga’ which is very popular in the scholars’ circle. Adi Shankarachaya’s teacher’s teacher Gaudapada while writing the commentary on Mandukya Upanishad has given a method called “Asparsha yoga”, which is based on the principle investigation taken up by Mandukya Upanishad.
Mandukya Upanishad has a great appeal for the scientists because of two essential features. One is the simplicity and brevity of the subject content. No unnecessary information is given. And the second feature is the similarity between scientific investigation and inner investigation. Objects of the world may be many and random but in order to understand the matter science divides various elements into categories such as solids liquids and gases each category having common properties. Similarly our experiences may be many and appear very random. Mandukya Upanishad very successfully categorized our experiences into three categories and from there derives how this can lead us into the experience of the atman.
Atman is not a theory but we need to experience the state of atman. How can we have this experience? Is it some thing that has to come about or is it already there. If it is some thing which has to come then does it also not go away? If it is also having the quality of coming and going then why is it so important? Is it not like other experiences? Thus our enquiry has all these doubts.
Let us therefore take it slowly step by step to see how we can find out answer to all these questions.
All our experiences can be divided into three categories. First of them is the wakeful state experiences. It is the experiences in the gross world and the experiences are gross. There are nineteen (opening) mouths through which we have nourishment in this wakeful experience. There are few points we need to recognize here. First one is that nineteen senses are five perception sensory organs, five locomotion organs, five pranas, and four internal modifications of the mind namely mind, intellect, mind stuff and the ego. What ever interactions we have with these nineteen openings, they all belong to gross world. There can not be any experience which belongs to these senses and in the nature of subtle world. If I say that I am seeing with my eyes, it only means I am seeing in the gross world.
All these experiences are for gross nourishment. It is our decision to see what we interact is for our nourishment. If our interaction in this world is not providing us nourishment we can not blame any one but ourselves, because it is for us to accept things which are for our nourishment. We also follow this unconsciously. When we take banana we peel the skin away and take the fruit in it. The skin is not nourishing but the fruit is nourishing. Same way when we buy a toffee we take away the paper and eat the toffee. Even a child knows that, what is nourishing need to be taken and what is not nourishing we should just simply discord. Instinctively child throws away the food if child is full because eating food after being full is not nourishing. These cases are simple, but why not we think in the same way in all the cases. The food we eat should have the effect of nourishing if not we need not go for that. We find facts of nourishment in the form of labels on various food items these days and people select food accordingly. Organic foods are nourishing and foods which are chemically processed are not nourishing. Therefore, these days, people select organically grown foods and avoid foods which are chemically grown. An important fact we need to know in this regard. Nourishment factor has one more consideration. The food belongs to hunger. Food has to be given to hunger. If you are not hungry and give food that food is like poison and will be no-nourishing. We need to look at it more carefully. Are we giving food to the hunger within us? Are we eating food because we are hungry or are we eating food because of some other reasons? Many times we may be eating not because we are hungry but because we find the food interesting or we have nothing else to do so let us eat! Such food is not nourishing. When we take food it is also necessary that we have pleasant mood. Otherwise the food will not be nourishing. It is also not just the food items but the ingredients which go into food in what combination they are taken are also important. Instead of considering all thee things lot of orthodox people pay their attention seriously on who touches and what touches the food.
We can accept to some extent that we follow in food about what is nourishing very carefully. But the Upanishad says that the fact of nourishment does not belong only to the food that we take thorough the mouth but also to all other organs, because we nourish in this gross world through all our nineteen senses. What we hear through our ears has to be nourishing and what we see should be nourishing. We need to introspect ourselves about this. We read daily news paper or we read so many junk novels. Did we any time think whether what we read is nourishing or not. We see movies but have we thought if that movie is nourishing for us or not. Similarly we are engaged in gossip so often but have we thought of the nourishment we get out of it.
This awareness at once makes us a different person. You will recognize that a host of things in which we are engaged, become wasteful and non- nourishing. There is no reason for us to keep blindly taking it.
Another aspect is that, not only the external sensory organs, our internal organs are also for the sake of nourishing. The movement of motor organs is for the sake of nourishing. This concept is interesting. The animals and human beings are provided with the limbs which we need to utilize regularly on daily basis. If we fail to use our organs after few days or months we loose the ability if using the limbs. If we immobilize the limbs for few days the body part looses its functional ability. When we have a fracture or a dislocation we immobilize the limb for six weeks so that the bone rejoins. But due to immobilizing the part that hand or leg will not have any strength to perform simple duties. It takes some days of training before we can use that part of the body. Therefore it is necessary to continue to do the activities or exercise so that body will not become useless. In the ancient times people used to go to walk miles together in daily activities, sit down and stand up several hundred times in every day life and lift weights countless number of times every day. As we have become more and more sophisticated and technology developed we have appliances and gadgets to take care of all these activities and we don’t do with our body. We don’t walk any more because we need car even to go small distances. We don’t lift weights, which is taken care of by mechanical devises. Sitting down is nearly forgotten as we have couches and sofas which have also become a status symbol. Even a simple thing like hand writing is also forgotten by many because the computers have come. Since we don’t use these limbs and small joints we suffer from all sorts of ailments at body level. That is why Upanishad says that we need to do the activities with the motor organs so that we are nourishing. We need to do physical works such as walking, sitting and standing, lifting weights, all such activities for the sake of nourishing.
Not only the five pranas but the four internal modifications of mind stuff, namely mind, intellect, memory and ego are also for nourishing. What we think and what we memorize should also be for the sake of nourishing. We normally keep in mind only negative thoughts of any person and bad experience encountered and tend to forget good things. Even though it may be a single thing happened, we keep that in mind much more than several good things about him or her. Keep those things which are nourishing in your mind. We have to be careful to exercise ‘ego’ which is nourishing for us and if it is not nourishing we should have the freedom to discard it. People pursue their ego in all cases where it is non-nourishing. This is non spiritual according to the Upanishad.
- to be continued...

Pooja vs Prayer and worship

2009-11-19T01:53:00.000+05:30

A friend of mine Dr Anirudh having read my article on the meditation and Dhyana expressed that I should write about pooja or worship also giving the picture according to Indian philosophy.

Pooja is one of those words, which is very widely used in the Indian culture. This is so because in Indian culture, every house is having temple in the house and they offer daily pooja. This house of pooja will normally have the idols of or pictures of several gods of their own choice and many houses also keep the photographs of the saints sadhus or swamiji’s who either lived in the recent past or who are also living even now. Therefore, pooja is a very common word in the household in India. I do not think pooja to be translated as ‘prayer’. It is very different as pooja does not emerge from praying per say. in English we may say it as worship but we need to understand pooja clearly. I do not know the full meaning and philosophy behind the English word called ‘WORSHIP’ but let me here give some of the details of pooja its philosophy, which may help them not only to appreciate the depth of the ideas about pooja but also to follow it with this understanding in the day-to-day life.

The pooja place in a house is very intimately and emotionally associated with the owner of the house, I observed several times that the owner started building the house and the engineer would have put the marks on the ground about foundation for various walls. The moment the marking for the pooja room is there on the ground, the owner does not step there with his foot wear on because going into pooja room with footwear is disrespect to god! One could see such a thing in the earlier days where the owner would have built house himself and not like the culture of apartment houses these days.

According to Sage Narada, pooja, or what we translate as worship, has two components.

Poojadishu Anuraga iti prasharyah II

[The anuraga in pooja and other things is Bhakti according to Parashara’s son Vyasa.]

The component called Anuraga is the element of Bhakti in the case of doing Pooja. This brings about a question what is the other component, which is there in our culture along with the Anuraga? That component is the Physical details of the practice of worship.

He did not specifically make mention of it because this is some thing which one can see very clearly out side. The problem is that many people take this alone as the Bhakti. Let us try to understand it in detail.

Like many other things in the nature, pooja also has two components. One is the outer component and the other is the inner component, like the body and the soul. What we normally see is the outer component, the visible component and the other the invisible component or the hidden component. The outer part the body is having meaning and purpose only when there is the inner component. The freedom the growth, and the joy and satisfaction, which we see in the body, they all belong to the soul and not to the body. Body alone does not have any of these things.

Similarly, the practice of pooja also has two components. The practice details, the gods and their details, method and the ingredients involved, are the outer structure and what Narada calls as anuraga, is the inner component. This anuraga is again very difficult to translate in English. Roughly this can be understood as the feeling intimacy with, the feeling the presence of god in your heart and not in head. Anuraga is richer and nobler than attachment. You are doing out of pure joy in giving or doing for others! Feeling is some thing you can see from out side. It is one’s own experience happening inside. It is intimacy with the god or with the other so that the other will not be there as other any longer.

Pooja is the real one when the feeling of intimacy leads us into pooja or the worship. At that time in just doing pooja, you are satisfied and you are not looking for any further happenings. If there is any other demand or other expectations and the satisfaction depends upon any further happenings such as some grace or some benefit f winning a lottery or exams etc then the pooja becomes secondary. Therefore, anuraga is the seed for the pooja and your feeling is the seed, as the plant is the expression of the seed planted. Anuraga comes from deep respect, love, wonder, closeness and intimacy all blended into one thing!

The technique of pooja involves saying some mantras in Sanskrit and in between offering various things. If you look at these mantras they give a very simple meaning like this.

To start with, you offer your prayers and welcome the god. Offer him water so that he can wash his feet and his hands before entering so that he is purified of all the dust from out side. The corresponding mantras are ‘Padau prakshalayami and Hastau prakshaayami’. Stapayami poojayami, make his to sit down Asanam sweekrutya requesting god to accept the seat. The moment god comes light comes in to the house.. Symbolically the moment he comes in the lights are lighted and you offer him fragrance by lighting the dhoop sticks. The mantra for that is dhoopa deepam agrapayami. Depending up on the god we are worshipping we select the items for pooja. When we do the pooja of lord Ganesha because he is with elephant head he loves to eat the grass and fresh leaves his appetite is vast so. We prepare several varieties of sweets and offer him grass and variety of leaves and sugar cane etc. While offering with each mantra, which is the praise of god, we offer one thing. Since he is a child he likes to be with children so that day all the children go round several houses to see Ganesha and in his presence which ever may be the house children do some simple yoga exercise, scientists found in USA recently that this exercise is good for improving memory and attention. When we offer food to the god especially whenever any item is felt to be having spicy taste then naturally, he requires water in between to feel cool inside. There is a mantra for that saying, madhyemadhye paneeyam samarpayami. In between water is offered. In the evening, we offer music and dance programs and in the night, there are special rituals suggesting god Ganesha is being put to bed and there are bed tie stories. There are lullabies for all gods in Indian philosophy and culture. In the morning, there are wakeup songs for the lord. These activities are so sweet that they do not pace god far above beyond clouds. Thus, pooja is a practice for a very intimate specialized guest for you and the family. All these steps create the necessary psychological posture and inner preparedness. There are also substitutes in case you miss some thing you do not have to feel guilty about it. Rice with yellow colour and some times even some camphor or other essence is added, can substitute any of the missing items. Like the mantra says offer nice dress to god and if not available offer handful of this rice known as akshata in place of the cloth or dress. Vasteram samarpayami. Offer cloths and if not available offer akshata. tadabhave ashatam samarpayami. The best available material such as curd, coconut water, honey, thick milk, and dry fruits etc are all material for offering because god likes them! Having used the substitute items at the end out of humility there are also mantras praying to the god, ‘oh, lord, please for give me if I had done any thing wrong knowingly or unknowingly since it is not out of intention of doing things wrong way but my own other limitations.

Since the pooja is the expression of the deep love and oneness with god, you are experiencing the day of pooja you are not to get angry or irritated towards anybody and to keep cheerful mood and freely exchange cheers with all. Thus, these pooja will make our mind positive and helps arise above the level of complaints. This has to be done with pure inner experience of divinity. Now the question comes how to develop this feeling of presence of divinity!

Our life gives us many experiences or opportunities to develop this deep respect and love. On many occasions things will happen to you unexpectedly which brings about great happiness to you! If only you think deeply you will realize that things would not have happened if you planned and worked for it. It is not by your effort that things happened that way. Many times even in spite of you things would have happened in a favourable way to you and this can only be possible due to some grace from some unknown quarters. If you think like that, you will be filled with unusual joy and at the same time filled with such great reverence that you feel the help you received is from god beyond! We can let this situation slip away by saying egoistically that we have achieved it and it is purely our effort!

Only when one gives up this claim on the doer-ship and deeply feels touched by god then pooja the feeling of prardhana comes up whose expression is pooja! This feeling inside is the mother of all the rituals and all the forms of god and all the mantras and chantings which are the manifest form outside.

Not only in Indian philosophy but also in all the spiritual paths have emerged with the practices that are, expressions of great saints who gave the expression to their inner experience. Those who must have been around such great personalities would have seen their masters and would have been seen the shades of god on the faces of their masters and thus they adapted the rituals very diligently! However, later persons would have only followed the practices and further they become mechanical rituals and the soul the anuraga is not adapted.

If we observe the details of pooja one can notice that pooja consists of treating god as human being and welcoming him in the best possible way and offering him the water to wash his or her feel and fanning him after making him sit comfortably before you start any thing further. In case of Lord Ganesh since he is a child we need to get the permission from his mother so that we can take him to our house and for that you worship her before and please her so that she will not deny your request when you ask her permission to take lord Ganesh with you. In addition, all the days the god is with you provide time-to-time food entertainment and all that so that he will stay with you very happily and finally send him back to his abode with all care and love. Thus in all the pooja methods god is personified. For some people it may look silly but nature is such that all our emotions we need personification to find expression. Simple example is the dreams! Dream are he expression of our motions like fear anxiety or anger deep in our minds. They find their vent in our dreams where we see some persons or some animals and we have expression of our emotions. When we wake up we realise what we have seen is not real but in the process we find expression for our emotions. Bhakti is conscious tool to manifest our good emotions of love, reverence etc. However, unless until we bring god to the human level and treat god, like another human being very intimately related to you, we will not give expression to these emotions. Then the whole practice becomes mechanical and there is no devotion behind our doing pooja.

Once I was giving a series of lectures on Upanishads in a temple in Los Angeles. The organisers wanted to introduce me to the pujari who is employed to do pooja in the temple. When my fried took me to him he was talking to some one holding the phone in his right hand to his ear discussing about the share market and with the other hand he was offering the flowers to the god image and with the same hand he took the holy water ‘teerthem’ and offered to me! My friend felt that he has not heard him earlier introducing me so he attempted to tell him that I am the speaker on Upanishads in the temple, for which he replied ‘yes I know sir’, and continued to talk on the phone. Where is the spirit of pooja in this? pooja is not just a worship where you follow some rituals or say some mantras - holy chants, ringing some bells and finally feel relieved at the end of all that exercise relieved in the sense that now you can establish your claim for his grace and put in front of him your demands list. It is a method, which can flow the fullest expression to your heartfelt emotions and you are fully absorbed in his consciousness so that you become one with the divinity. The earlier sages who have given expression to their experience in the form of pooja methodology will feel satisfied.

That is the reason Nerada expresses in the subsequent sutra that you become one with god, ‘tanmayah’ out of love. When you go to god out of fear or favour god is not important, you are important. God is some one who is attending to your demands. If he has to keep his position then he has to attend other wise in your eyes he looses his position as god! When you go to god out of love, which is enriched in the form of devotion and deep respect and intimacy, then god is important and you are unimportant! Your worth is only in dissolving in god!

In the beginning, you become self-conscious about others observing you when you are doing pooja. Therefore, all cultures provided methods, which people can follow in the group so that you can do the rituals. Soon it is important that you do the pooja in aloneness and not in the presence of others where you can freely express your feeling from your heart, you can cry you can dance or you can use any other form of expressing your heart. That is the reason, sage Narada said in another sutra ‘Bhaktinah Ekantino Mukhyah’. Bhakti practitioner needs to practice in aloneness with god so that he can find his true expression. Therefore, people go to the temples and we have group ritual practices in the society but at the same time, every house we have temples where people do their pooja alone! Many times people do not find that kind of devotion in the, so-called big temples, what they get in their simple home temple. True pooja is to surrender to god and no to claim the achievements and it should make you humble. The people how does pooja and becomes arrogant and looks down upon others who do not do pooja are not sincere in their pooja.

A little child is playing with her doll for hours and mother was happy that the child has not done mischief. The child is engaged in offering child in doll food and tea and all such things. The child also changes the diaper of the doll child raises the tone like mother does and gives instructions to the child.

Mother has seen the child is playing for hours. I the evening the mother now instructs the child @ now you played enough with the doll now keep it a side and wash your hands and legs and come for dinner. Child replies to the mother “please, mom, don’t shout I am coming in few minutes child will be sleeping any moment and you don’t raise your voice that will disturb the sleep of the child”. Mother in reply says, “There is nothing like child and after all it is a doll. Don’t worry”. Pained in her heart the child says to the child doll motherly words, “you please you don’t take it to your heart, mom shouts and that is her nature, you go to sleep now. I will come back soon and be by your side”. Child feels the presence of consciousness in the doll, which mother does not see. Same way the person who does pooja must see the consciousness being present and not the stone idol; then only pooja is real pooja or worship is real worship and not otherwise!

Dhyana or Meditation

2009-11-14T19:59:00.006+05:30

Interview about the difference between Dhyana and meditation/concentration on youtube :

English language has found its place as one of the main languages of communication world over. Therefore we need to translate the concepts in Sanskrit texts in to English. Though we use an approximate English word but we should not lose the spirit of the word used in Sanskrit. Many times but we should not hesitate to use the freedom English language gives us in borrowing the original Sanskrit word into English, like English has borrowed the words like pundit or karma and people freely use it in all fields.
One such word I am going to explain is the most popular word meditation. Meditation is used to strictly speaking for Dhyana of Patanjali’s words Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi in the eight fold path of yoga called Astanga yoga.

Thought these three words namely Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi are together according to sage Patanjali, in order to say ‘let us meditation’ we say in all the Sanskrit based languages ‘let us do Dhyana or let us practice Dhyana’ . No one says let us do Dharana or let us do Samadhi. Dharana is the beginning and Samadhi is what happens to you and not what you do. Therefore we can say Dhyana is translated as meditation.

In English language when we say meditate upon an object, it means to go over the details of the object in all its details and then memorize the object in all its intricacies. An example for this is to go through the map of the new place thoroughly before embarking on journey so that we register all possible details for the use of reaching the place without any difficulty. In this case mind is the tool we use for obtaining all the details. The object is important and once we meditate and take the details of the object in to our memory and utilize that in reaching a place then it is no more necessary. It is sufficient to meditate once thoroughly.
We have to do similar kind of exercise every time we come across new object. Every new object is different and every time the details are different. This is like doing an activity and mind is the tool we use. This is different from dhyana. Unfortunately in many minds this confusion is there. Therefore many books on meditation supposed to be text on dhyana have given the description on the meditation on the flame with all the details of the various aspects of the flame such as the blue penumbra the golden flame and the whitish inner flame and deep inside the dark portion etc. This clearly shows that they have taken the object as important and the details of the object important. Some texts even mentioned the picture of eye and the mechanism involved in it and its connection with brain so that the mechanism is important! But these things are necessary only in case of meditation when we take meditation as doing something with the help of our instrument called mind. This may make a person efficient in the managing of the world such as driving in a new place or reading new subject matter with various complications. When this meditation has to be done and if the surroundings are not very silent and clear then we may have to concentrate or focus to pick up the sounds and matter what we require among several other things which interfere with your interaction. If you are reading a book or listening to a conversation of someone but all around you if there are so many other sounds present and distracting you then you may have to concentrate or avoid such place and choose a solitary place for your concentration.
Dhyana can help one in developing concentration but let us not confuse between dhyana or dharana and concentration as those terms have special meanings. This aspect of focus in our childhood was much stronger and natural for us than what we find today. In those days we four or five children used to sit around a lamp and read or do our work but we were not getting distracted by the others around us and their work.

But in the case of Dhyana it is not a happening in that way. Dhyana is a not what you do with mind or in Dhyana the object and its details are not important. In other words Dhyana is not what you do with mind but what you do to the mind! Mind is important and the importance of the object is limited only to the point that it will give us support so that we can work with mind using object at its base. Object is like the screen on which we project the movies in the theater or much better simile is that the object is like the jump board or the diving board of a swimmer, a person with the help of the object dives in to Dhyana and even leaves the object aside sooner or later! Dhyana is really not anything with the object but it is more to do to the mind and it also is not to exercise the mind but to make mind silent. When we say silent mind or empty mind it does not mean that we find some container like thing where the contents are cleaned and we find empty container. There is nothing like empty mind. We only have no-mind state which in Vedanta called as ‘amanāh= no mind state’.

The mind becomes important only for the reason that we should transcend the mind and go beyond which is to become one with consciousness which is known as spirituality. When object becomes important then we get locked up in the object and we do not proceed to spirituality and that becomes religion. In all the so called religions the object becomes important and not the consciousness. People will be prepared to give up lives for establishing the object in the name of religion. All the religious fanatics are based on this fact. When the mind or transcending the mind is important, then the support you use is an object which should be neutral passive and simple so that mind will take the help of the object but does not get caught up!

One of the important features of mind’s existence is we are in the process of doing. Even thinking in this regard is doing. We are trying to transcend the process of thinking which means ‘not doing’ but undoing. This way looking at Dhyana doing Dhyana is also wrong we should technically say undoing is Dhyana or unwinding. In this sense also meditating is the process of doing where as Dhyana is the process of undoing.

In Dhyana, these following steps are involved according to Sage Patanjali. Sit in a comfortable posture so that you can stay for at least for some time without any suffering. Fix the eyes half open on an object which is pleasant and in fixing your eyes you don’t have to put any effort. Through eyes you are actually fixing the mind on the object. This procedure is known as Dharana.

After fixing the eye or mind through the eyes, you can notice in few minutes your eyes start watering or you feel irritating. This is due to fact that you mind is saying how long should I be seeing and similar dialogues. By withdrawing the effort called ‘I am seeing’ or by withdrawing the ego slowly the eyes watering or being agitated will come down. Withdrawing this effort is called Dhyana. A conscious method of withdrawing the effort involved will give so much inner calmness that one can easily slip into Samadhi the third step which is characterized by a state of absorption and there is no ‘I’ sense. When there is no I at all where is the question of effort being there. Hence dhyana is something which should be leading one towards this effortlessness. If one says that he has done meditation for half hour and now let him relax, then he has not done meditation. Only, when we are free from the object on which we are meditating, and only, when we can divert our attention towards the self which is also putting effort out of ignorance we can consciously lessen the effort behind our seeing. Ultimately the result is that we are seeing yet seeing is only happening and you are not seeing, you may be walking but you are not walking as the one who is walking is not there, and then walking alone is happening. This is the reality of creation. Creation is only activity. There is no doer, but today we are so much doer therefore we are suffering with the tension born out of doer though the world is going on…. Once that doer is dissolved then what we see is only activity.

NON ACTIVITY IS BRAHMAN AND ACTIVITY IS THE CREATION

Shiva Manasa Puja by Adi Shankaracharya

2009-11-13T05:27:00.004+05:30

Transliteration:
Rathnai Kalpitham asanam, Himajalai snanam cha divyambaram,

Naana rathna vibhooshitham mruga madha modhanvitham Chandanam,

Jathi champaka bilwa pathra rachitham, pushpam cha dupam Thada,

Deepam deva dayanithe pasupathe, hrud kalpyatham gruhyatham.

Souvarne nava rathna Ganda Rachithe, pathre Grutham Payasam,

Bakshyam pancha vidam Payo dadhiyutham, rambha phalam panakam,

Chaaka namayutham jalam ruchikaram, karpoora gandojwalam,

Thamboolam manasa maya virachitham Bhakthya prabho sweekuru

Chathram Chamarayoryugam vyajanagam, chaa darshakam nirmalam,

Veena bheri mrudanga kahala kala geetha chruthyam thada,

Sasthangam pranthi sthuthir bahu vidha, hyethat samastham maya,

Sankalpena samapitham thava vibho, poojam gruhana prabho.

Aathma thwam Girija Mathi sahacharaa, prana sharreram gruham,

Pooja theey vishayopa bhoga rachana, nidhra samadhi sthithi,

Sanchara padayo pradakshina vidhi, sthothrani sarva giraa,

Yadyath karma karomi thathad akhilam, shambho thavaradhanam.

Kara charana krutham vaak kayajam karmajam vaa,

Shravana nayanajam vaa maanasam vaa aparadham,

Vihithamavihitham vaa sarva methath Kshamaswa,

Jaya Jaya karunabdhe sri Mahadeva Shambho.

English Translation:
A diamond studded seat, cool water and divine robes,

adorned with many jewels, musk and sandalwood to anoint you.

Jasmine and Champaka flowers, bilva leaves and incense,

and flame. O compassionate one, Pashupati, please accept these that I have imagined.

In a golden bowl inlaid with jewels, sweet rice and ghee,

Five different types of foods made from water, milk, curd, fruits and vegetables,

My chanting of your name that is like the tasty drinking water, scented with camphor,

and betel leaf, created in my mind with devotion. Please accept them, Lord.

A canopy, a pair of yak’s tail whisks, a fan and a spotless mirror,

With music from veena and mrindangam, singing and dancing,

And prostrations, and many hymns I offer you

In my imagination. Lord please accept my offerings.

You are my Self. Parvati is my reason. Pranas your attendants, my body your home.

My senses are for your worship, my sleep is your Samadhi.

When I walk I circumambulate you, Everything I say is in your praise,

Whatever I do is your worship, O Lord.

(Sins) of my hands and feet, of the body, or of action,

of hearing, or of sight, or of the mind,

whether allowed or prohibited, please forgive them all.

Hail, Hail, O ocean of compassion, O Great Lord, Shambhu.

Interviews on Youtube: Indian Gods, Festivals, Calendar

2009-11-12T23:12:00.002+05:30

Indian Festivals and Indian Calendar:

Multitute of Gods:

Indian Gods and Puja:

Interviews on Youtube: What is Guru & Is Discipleship still alive

2009-11-12T23:09:00.002+05:30

What is guru:

Is discipleship still alive:

Predictions As a Science -5-

2009-10-28T14:08:00.004+05:30

What factors influence the accuracy of this science?

When the social system was well organized based on triguna concept that understands and merges the micro and macrocosm, it was not difficult for some one to predict what could be the physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioral characteristics of a child that is born in that particular system of organization. It is not only the position of the stars (time and space) that influence our life. The life events are highly influenced by our basic nature. We have seen how much it depends on the strong impressions from the previous life (samskaras), the type of personality (‘guna’), the social structure and a strong will or self effort. We should not forget or ignore the basic character of the society in those days. If astrology has to predict with accuracy about how your business would flourish in the next few years, it depends on all these four factors i.e. your basic guna , the social structure, self effort and the time space interaction.

Why astrology is not accepted as a science today?

Human values such as sharing and caring, happiness and contentment were valued and respected in the spiritually oriented, moral society in ancient India where the science of astrology developed. An astrologer was expected to live a very strict life of austerity, selflessness and contentment so that he could tune to the higher laws of nature. An astrologer is expected to be like a saint not having any attachment to material aspects and to have absolute self control. A small little attraction can wrongly influence the predictions totally. This was another important parameter that ensured the accuracy of this science. Today’s society is simply revolving around money, materialism and selfishness. Every thing else including morality has taken the lowest berth in every walk of life including the so called future tellers. This has naturally changed the definitions of life events such as success, achievement, virtues and values of life.

I feel that with the changing of times and the social structure these sciences of predictions such as astrology or numerology, palmistry, etc should have been revised. But unfortunately we have not updated these sciences and hence they seem to have lost their reliability. Today we have landed in a state wherein these predictions appear to be not at all reliable that has made us discard this out of the arena of verifiable sciences.

In addition as I explained earlier, things were very rational and logical and based on evidences to start with but later on, as there were no experts who could explain these things rationally, it became a blind faith and dogma. Once it became a blind faith several meaningless things have crept into our day to day living that has created more fear than knowledge. The so called petty astrologers with very limited knowledge have taken advantage of the innocence of the people. I remember while I was working as engineer one of my senior colleagues was so much stuck to his blind faith and overwhelmed with the fear of the unknown that he would never sign the papers in rahukala (not so suitable time of day according to the position of the stars) however important it was. So we had to attach an almanac and check the time of presenting the papers to him to get his signature. This was not based on knowledge but he was threatened by the so called pundits that if you do not follow this meticulously it will cause calamities in the family and loss in business etc.

How do we use this science today?

First of all we need to understand that these predictions are only indicative of the possibility of some unexpected events of life and be prepared to face the difficulties if any with a proper mind set. It is clear that the accuracy of these mathematical calculations is good for phenomena that have already happened in the past. For predictions about the future this science provides the probability of an event. We can use it for planning our life just like you would plan your day’s schedule based on weather predictions. Let us consider this knowledge as precautions and not get lost in the fear of the unknown.

Some people are not only eager to know what is going to happen in the future but they also depend on it as if it is every thing and become lazy and complacent. For example, if an astrologer tells me that I will become a prime minister then the story does not end there. I need to continue to work my sweat out to fight the elections and do all the work needed to keep the image in the society. But this prediction makes me confident that I stand a good chance through my stars that I can pass the test and get there.

Is it important to know what is going to happen in future? How to use these predictions about the unfavorable or difficult events of our life without fear? There is a nice incident from Ramayana which is worth recollecting in this context.

After pregnant Seeta’s departure to forest there was grave silence all over Ayodhya and every one was feeling the big void. In that grave silence one day Lakshmana was walking in the garden and saw Sumantha, the minister sitting alone under the banyan tree lost n his thoughts. Lakshmana greets but there was no response from Sumantha who was lost in his own world. Suddenly Lakshmana heard Sumantha talking to himself, “oh lord, wonderful is your leela, (play). How strong is vidhileela (play of destiny)! We know what is going to happen yet we can’t avoid even the most distressful events of life and just have to accept and go through them! ”. Lakshmana shakes Samantha out of his state of deeply lost in mood and asks “what are you saying and about whom are you talking?” Samantha was surprised to see Lakshmana and replied, “I am talking about your great father”. “What is it”? Lakshmana asks. Sumantha says, “Your father knew that the separation from his son would kill him but he could not stop Rama from going to the forest.”! Surprised Lakshmana asks “how did he know and how do you know about it?” Sumantha in reply narrated the event of what he had seen when he was young and used to be the charioteer for Dasaratha. King Dasharatha, when he was young used to enjoy the sport of shooting an arrow by just listening to the sound of an animal in the forest (shabdabhedi vidya).On one such occasions he mistook the sound of water being filled into a pot in the river to the sound of a deer drinking water in the river and the most unfortunate event happened. The only son of a blind sage who had gone to fetch water to quench the thirst of his blind parents became the victim. On request by the dying child the shattered king takes water to the thirsty parents of the boy. The moment the parents knew that the king whose duty is to protect people killed their innocent son out of carelessness they cursed King Dasharatha that he will also die of separation from his beloved son and gave up their lives at once . Lakshmana became emotional and said, ‘why did you not tell me this? If I had known I would have stopped Rama from going to the forest’. Sumantha smiled and said “Your father who was such a great king and Rama such a wonderful person who is so wise could not do anything but to accept the ways of destiny .do you think you can have stopped them?” “What! Rama also knew about it, how?” Lakshmana asked in surprise. Sumantha replied, “Rama is so great that there is nothing that he does not know. He can see the past and the future with clarity”. “Lakshmana asks, “then did he also know that mother Seetha would be sent to forest”. Sumantha replied, “Yes”. Lakshmana asks “then why did he not stop that?” Sumantha “My dear Lakshmana, I just do not know. All that I know is that they are so great and I am so small a person that I only feel blessed that I am born in the times that such great persons are around!” and added “if you have any more questions go and ask your brother . I am too small a person to answer your doubts”.

Lakshmana runs to his brother who was sitting peacefully and narrated all that he heard from Sumantha and asks, “Rama, you knew that mother Seetha has to go to forest and you did not stop her, why?” Rama replied, “Lakshmana, it is not important to know what is going to happen and try to stop it. I know that we cannot stop destiny which is so strong. What is important is to be able accept and maintain equanimity, peace and tranquility, when such major events of life happen. This is the goal of life .This is spiritual growth. On the other hand generally what happens is that if we come to know what is going to happen and if we also know that you cannot do any thing we tend to suffer helplessly”.

Therefore let us understand the message of Rama to Lakshmana. ‘Instead of trying to waste our time by trying to find out what is there in future let us do what is good now and keep our poise in tact so that what ever the future brings us we will be able to face it calmly’. Let us not put our efforts to hear predictions and be carried away by the excitement of good events and anxiety and nervousness about the possible failures .We know that life has ups and downs. Therefore let us have spiritual growth of peace and calmness in the first place in our lives and not waste our precious time on this earth in searching for future tellers to find out what is going to happen.

Summary

Let us get back to where we started. Are the examples of child prodigies aberrations of nature? Are these phenomena accidents of nature? Is there something predictable about it? Is there a science that understands these phenomena? How relevant are these sciences today?

I hope you can now see how this science of predictions has a strong basis of unity of existence managed by a universal intelligence. Any event that appears to be an unusual phenomenon is not an accident or aberration of nature. It follows a higher law. This higher law works very efficiently when everything that is created in nature functions in tune with these laws. The accuracy and outcome of these predictions by the science of astrology depends on the following five factors (i) the basic instincts that we carry from our previous birth (ii) the time space interaction at the time of our birth (iii)the personality ( satva, rajas or tamas guna that predominates) which depends on the family in which we are born (iv) the social structure that provides the congenial environment and (v)the most important factor , the hard work that we need to put in to make these come true . We call these unseen factors as the play of destiny or bad luck or good luck. But what we have understood is that this destiny is predictable and has a wonderful mathematical science called astrology that worked effectively in Ancient India.

We as a human race, ignorant of these higher laws, have no right to tamper this. Let us grow out of the limited vision of creation. Let us adore this wonderful great universal principle that binds us together in this web of life. Let us appreciate and be happy with everything that we possess. This is divinity. Let us not go on tampering with nature in search of happiness. This is true spirituality.

Love,

Raghuram

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To read the previous parts of the same article please click on:

Part 1: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science.html

Part 2: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science-2.html

Part 3: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-3.html

Part 4: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-4.html

Part 5: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/10/predictions-as-science-5.html

Q&A: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/questions-about-predictions-as-science.html

DEEPAVALI SHADDHANJALI offering

2009-10-17T14:12:00.003+05:30

I was initially thinking of writing about the Goddess Lakshmi, who is the Goddess for Deepavali or popularly known as Divali. However, the situation in Prashanti has taken a sudden turn with Aunty Lakshmi becoming serious and we had to rush for oxygen and some painkillers etc. Almost a year ago, similar situation was there and that time she has come out of such situation showing us her great will power. All of us were hoping this time also she would be able to come out of woods.

Finally, the inevitable happened on 14th October the auspicious day of Ekadashi according to the Indian calendar before the midday plunging Prashanti into the gloom!

After several discussions among the family members and the elders, it was decided very rightly that the final resting would be done in Prashanti only on the next day at 10.00am.

Every one in Prashanti wants to do what is that he or she can do which gives her the happiness and satisfaction. Just to give an example our bhajan group sat throughout the night singing the most favourite bhajans keertanas of thyagaraja filling the air with an unusual divinity. A team of youngsters went round the forest of Prashanti to get necessary bamboo and other wood and with their own hands prepared a nice platform to carry her. Electrician was also fully busy to light the place because already through out the evening and all through the night people were pouring to pay her their respects.

When, she was being taken round the path some one was commenting the flower garland around her is heavier than her body! Her physical body is so small that even the garland was heavier! Her food is as it is very little and especially on the last few days, she would only eat two or three spoons of beaten rice and nothing more! I always used to wonder those two spoons of food is running the whole living system and in addition she was also very alert and clear in her thinking. Two days before while she wanted to get up from sleeping position when i offered her to lift her up into upright position supporting at the back she said how much I am becoming burden to all; even i need to depend upon you for sitting up. Her weight on my hand was only few grams. But i wondered this lady through out life she has only been doing for the others and never asked anybody to do any ting for her.

The story goes back to several years – at least three generations. We don’t know nor we heard any thing about earlier generations, but what we heard is how unique was the life style of Venkatramaiah and his wife ‘Putta’ (every one used to call her by this name). Those days belonging to the middle class family they had a great combination of deep Indian culture and modern British knowledge of things like cleanliness, hygiene and knowledge of medicines and other things. They were complimentary to each other. He was generous to the people around and she was a great support to the women folk in their day to day problems. We heard stories like in the how disciplined the mother putta was and how generous father ventaramiah was! My sister who was staying in a house opposite to their house said that the best way of cooking of any food item, we have to learn it from Putta. The flower plants in their front garden were talk of that area. The ideas of healthy life they reflected even in the flower garden. Putta was so meticulous that their house was like a model house for every thing. They used to take every thing very seriously. As far as my knowledge goes the dedicated life of every member of this family can be traced to this divine couple Putta and Venkatramaiah

It is because of their Tapasya, god chose them to be the parents for three extraordinary children. The eldest is Ramarao engineer by training worked as lecturer in the local polytechnic college married to Lalitamma. Ramarao appeared very tough and hard from out side but people who knew them from near would know how soft and helping her was. As a lecturer, he would be ready to take all burdens of all his colleagues for any silly reason any time. He would make sure that all the students learn well and pass. On one occasion i went to his college with him twenty years after his retirement but I was surprised to see that all the staff members and the students touched his feet!

The youngest is another brilliant child Seshadri who received early training and education at home with an idea that he could learn better than in school. Finally, when he has to go to school they tested him to admit in which standard he proved that he became the youngest in the class, topping every year. Finally, when he finished his masters with distinction he gave his certificates to his father and left home to give his life in service to the nation in the beginning inspired by Gandhiji and later he joined RSS and rose to the top popularly known as HV Seshadri. He remained unmarried. His life is also a life dedication and learning. A prolific writer and king maker, respected by everyone in the field of politics. Once when Seshadri was being honoured by citizens of Karnataka in a big function in front of several thousands of people Ramarao, elder brother of Sesahdri went there to see the function. He was standing on the last row enjoying the whole scene and he did not claim to be in front. This is one small example of his simplicity.

Ramaraoji’s wife Lalithamma is another wonderful woman. I heard that God chooses to be born in the womb of most innocent. I do not know about the innocence of Mother Mary or Kausalya but the most innocent woman I have come across is Lalithamma. That is the reason their children are one better than the other is. Five children, brilliant academically but equally dedicated for the cause of humanity. Boys, Dr Nagendra and Dr Venkatram are engineers and girls Dr Nagarathna is a into general medicine and Yoga therapy, and her sisters, Dr Rama Phanniraja and Dr Uma Bannerjee and both into gynaecology are highly qualified doctors, what else you want your children to be. If you look at Lalithamma, you can say she only deserves such children. Lalithamma is living in Prashanti along with the family of Prashanti. Dr Nagendra is the Vice chancellor of the Yoga University and Dr Nagarathna is the dean of faculty of medicine and yoga division and medical director of VYASA.

After Ramarao the second one is daughter Lakshmi, very brilliant right from childhood. She wanted to become doctor to serve humanity. Her health in early childhood did not permit her to continue studies and she had to go to doctor’s office for the sake of her health, in the process, she herself became proficient in medical knowledge. What she wanted to become she accomplished in her brothers children. Remained unmarried, she felt that is a gift from god that she could spend all her life in the service activity and her dedication stands today as a Prashanti, which is the proof for her selfless work! Prashanti Kuteeram is her child and her spiritual sadhana.

Prashanti kuteeram stands for twin ideals one is its academic uniqueness and the other is the thrust and thirst for sadhana. If Dr Nagendra son of Lakshmi’s brother Ramarao is the person behind the academic achievement of Prashanti, the sadhana face of Prashanti is Lakshmi aunty. Until the last breath, her mind was on sadhana. The last dialogue I heard from her was about her concern for the students. She was enquiring for the feedback from the students whether the talk is sadhana oriented or not. The very next day, she is no more!

She had nothing to say about this is mine at the time of her death. Material possessions were almost nothing but her spiritual gain was unimaginable! One of the inmates of Prashanti has expressed this that her weight is reduced to that of a small child. Her life is an inspiration for many sadhakas. Swami visharadanandaji always used to say that one person whose every cell pours out spiritual sadhana is Lakshmi aunty.

Under the influence of Beloved Lakshmiji, Her brother Seshadriji, her brother Ramaraoji’s children Dr Nagendra Dr Nagarathna Dr Rama and Dr Uma and Dr Venkatram have happily given their services for the sake the spiritual culture and country! What can be greater achievement than this in ones life!

Some one asked her, ‘do you want to be liberated from this cycle of birth and death which is normally the concept of Indian thinking’, and she replied negative. Her wish is to come back again and again and will request god to give her more and more strength so that she can serve more and more people in her next life.

Therefore, this Deepavali festival is the offering of our prayers for her soul and our prayers to her to guide us from wherever she is and to inspire us from time to time

Nature’s way of management

2009-09-16T10:18:00.002+05:30

This is a simple idea I felt very useful in the management system.

In the nature, until the matter is there it has no freedom and it is only there as long as it exists. However, the case is not same for the plants for the simple reason plants are having life and therefore they have to organise self for the existence. Actually, the first form of life is the plant. The moment life is there as a part of its need for survival it has to organise itself for the survival.

If you watch in order to see that, the work to take water from the earth in order to survive the plant sends its roots into the soil and sends its flowers and foliage into sky in order to spread itself into sun. We see in this arrangement also certain differences. Some plants have roots in the shape of our hair namely there is one stem and further there are several hundreds of small roots hanging from the stem itself. Where as there are some others plants and trees, which have one main stem which branches itself into two, root branches and they further divide into sub-sub branches into sub-sub branches.

In these, also we can see two varieties. One variety is where the stem of the tree branches itself into a number of final sub branches. An example for this is the Tulsi plant. There is hardly any intermediate structural detains in between. This is sufficient for the Tulsi plant to live. This is a small plant. Its life is less than ten seasons. By that time, the plant will give seeds and these seeds will help further propagation of these plants. The life of this plant is like five years max.

Another variety is where the root structure of the tree is different. The tree has a huge stem, which is known as trunk of the tree and it has several layers of branches and sub branches etc as you go deeper and deeper and spears itself far and wide. It has huge wide ad deep base this is necessary so that the tree can with stand storms and droughts and will stand firm on winds bowing from time to time. It not only stays but it also provides shelter to others. Such a tree lasts for several hundred years. Thy help you not only the human beings but they also provide shelter for animals and birds.

When I looked at this difference and as I was thinking of this I felt some idea based on the fact that god is the best manager and best planner and we need to lean from his creation!

When we compare this scenario and take the organisation is as lively and not as simple mechanical structure which many people give theories about, I felt that if we want an organisation to live like a tulsi plant all it requires is one intelligent person whose original and beautiful ideas are implemented by all others. In this we do not require the big structure. All that we need is one intelligent person and several assistants for him and who take instructions from him for all activates. This management structure has one main person and all others are his assistants who do not have any decision taking power or responsibility. But we should also understand that such an organisation could live for five or ten years like the tulasi lives.

If we want an organisation has to live for several hundred years then the organisation should think and to be like a banyan tree, which lives for hundreds of years. The essential characteristic is that the structure of the tree depends on roots which are distributed very beautifully like main stem followed by main root branches which in turn will divide into sub roots and sub- sub roots.. that will provide the needed stability and also there is this possibility to go deeper and deeper in to the ground. The same way an organisation whose goal is that it should serve humanity in a vibrant way, then it should think of the structure of the management as stem, roots, sub roots and sub sub roots, this is the reason we have hierarchy in the management. There is the main visionary but he or she will be assisted by a properly educated, experienced and motivated team to carry on this. These people should be assisted by several intelligent people and thus we require like in the plant several levels these people who are competent. When the structure is that way then there as several advantages.

1. Every decision anybody takes the blame is always passed on to the head of the institute.

2. Every decision is based on personal ease and comfort. One should not have therefore surrender one’s doership!

3. This gives us the training that how can we do some little activity and later on engage in total personality development!

4. Burden is not there on the top person all times so that some times he can devote innovative activity and not on routine maintenance activity.

5. Like a pyramid, the activity should be distributed in such a way that ordinary people who are associated with activity for the sake of simple joy will be plenty but as we reach top there are only very few who are interested in this. We cannot deny this proportion.

6. Like the way the activity is in the pyramidal form, the responsibility also should be clearly defined and divided in pyramidal form, that way even the growth also takes place in pyramidal form.

7. This will automatically addresses the issues of continuation plan for the organisation.

Predictions as a Science -4-

2009-07-26T16:08:00.003+05:30

Influence of celestial objects, time and space

We now need to understand another unknown factor that has its role in shaping of the individual’s development and growth. Indian society has always thought and planned everything in a very holistic way keeping in tune with the universe at large because of the expanded spiritual vision of the sages who were at the helm of affairs. We know that the nature is not ‘for man’ but we are a part of the nature. We survive on this planet not because of ‘me’ but because the nature has made life possible on this planet by providing the most congenial environment starting from the air, water and the right temperature. We live on this planet but we are not independent of our sun and moon or other planets and stars. We are in a web of life. Everything in this galaxy is influencing each other. Nothing can remain independent of the other. The living influences the non-living and vice versa. Scientists say that even the earth has life. Thus we cannot say that my mind and body can work totally independently. Our mind is the subtlest of the creation and has the maximum freedom as compared to all other things of this universe. Mind is the only stuff of this universe that has some freedom not to be bound by the laws that bind the universe. The freedom element that has crept into the human system during evolution has to make man recognize this great gift of nature and not tamper it. We are just realizing this over the past fifty years as to what havoc we have created in nature by thinking independent of nature and we are almost in a situation wherein we can completely destroy life on earth through global warming, depletion of ozone layer and creating a big imbalance in the eco system etc. This was simply because we forgot that we belong to the web and used the nature’s gift of ‘freedom’ as license to be self centered. Thus let us remember and realize that everything in this creation can influence each other. Mind being the most sensitive stuff of this universe it can be influenced to the maximum extent by the forces in nature. If you are sensitive and have the time to observe you can see that your mood varies with the rise and fall of the moon. It can influence your psychology. It is well known that psychological problems get aggravated on new moon and full moon days and hence the word ‘lunatic’ was coined.

Prediction as a science

The influence of the celestial beings on our life events and behaviour are predictable and this developed in India as a science called astrology. Careful observations of the effect of all these celestial objects such as sun, moon, planets and stars on major and minor events of life became the topic of this science. They could go on to realize that the influence was due to our relationship with these stars in time and space. Thus it developed into a highly systematized science that could predict things based on the time of birth of the individual soul. Thus an astrologer can mathematically predict the life events both the past and the future. Astrology can also predict the nature and tendencies of behaviour of an individual soul. This ancient knowledge is available as palm leaf writings and is being used by astrologers today. A very interesting research is being done at this university by one of our PhD students. Dr Ramesh is a veterinary scientist and one of his major jobs is to vaccinate live stock and maintain the breed healthy until it goes to the slaughter house for human consumption. He is a very good astrologer too. He selected sheep and goat from his stock that was to be vaccinated for the first time. He divided them randomly into two groups A and B. A group received vaccination at a favorable time of the day as per the predictions from astrology and the B group at an unfavorable time. The results showed that the A group had higher antibody titers in their blood that persisted for a long time as compared to the B group which had lower quantity of antibody that dropped faster over the weeks of follow up. These results were statistically highly significant. This fascinating observation gives us scientific evidence for the influence of nature on animal systems. if the immune system of the animals can be influenced to this extent by the position of the animal in this universe at any given moment of time ,please think as to how much our mind and behaviour can be influenced by these external forces which we tend ignore completely and tend to tamper the mother nature.

What is the basis of the science of predictions (astrology)?

A society which developed its calendar based on the position of stars, planets and the galaxies (Indian calendar is the most accurate calendar even today), a society that could easily predict the rain fall of a particular place and the intensity of sun at a particular spot at a particular time based on the position of earth in relation to planets and stars, could calculate and categorize people based on their relationship with stars and planets. This is the beauty of astrology or numerology. The method adapted is first to create a mathematical matrix (called Kundali) of your position in relation with the planetary positions based on the date and time of your birth and go on with further calculations. Once we took our mother’s kundali to a very simple astrologer. He did not even show any interest in talking to us or enquiring anything about us. He just sat down , looked at the kundali , took a piece of paper and drew his own matrix and did some mathematical calculations and within three minutes started saying many things about our mother’s life as to when she got married, how many children she has had, how many are surviving etc. What fascinated us the most was he continued and said ‘your mother has had a fracture of the bone in her right thigh region between such and such a date and this repeated on two occasions between two dates’. In fact we were highly impressed at how these calculations were accurate when we verified the dates on her X rays after we returned home. How could he do it? These calendars and astrological calculations are fascinating and hence has become a big business today in India.

The Indian society used these predictions systematically before venturing into any major events of life such as marriage or taking up a major business etc. This science would give accurate predictions whether the marriage would be successful and helpful for the society at large and for the individuals based on the characteristics revealed from the calculations. The calculations would even give the right time to get married or start a business. If you remember the life of Buddha the astrologers predicted at the time of birth that he will become a great monk. His father took all precautions not to expose him to the outside world and bring him up in a royal atmosphere. But the nature of Buddha was so strong that he went on to become one of the greatest monks who served many more people than what he could have done as a king. Astrology therefore is specialized mathematics. Just as one can learn music with training, one can also learn this speculative science.

We have many talented astrologers even today. I took a friend of mine who came to Bengaluru from Germany to an old lady who was not educated and was a very simple, least sophisticated woman who was very loving and caring. She took my friend’s hand and the first thing she said without any doubt was that he does not belong to the country he is coming from. He strongly denied and said that it was not true. But she looked at the hand once again and insisted that she was correct. Then he confessed that he belonged to Romania and had shifted to Germany only recently. Even I did not know about it till that day. Those days in early eighties not many of us knew that people could migrate from Romania, a communistic country to Germany, a free country and I cannot imagine that that this old lady who only knows a few streets around her house can think of Romania or Germany. She could not have guessed it by looking at the person’s facial features because even me, as an Indian, having traveled so many times cannot make out which country in Europe one belongs to by looking at their features., And this lady could derive it so clearly by her intuitive knowledge of the science of palmistry! I simply wondered at her ability.

- to be continued...

To read the other parts of the same article please click on:
Part 1: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science.html
Part 2: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science-2.html
Part 3: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-3.html
Part 4: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-4.html
Part 5: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/10/predictions-as-science-5.html
Q&A: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/questions-about-predictions-as-science.html

Happy birthday!

2009-07-20T18:14:00.010+05:30

Dear all,

Please join us wishing a very happy 61st birthday to our beloved guru, Sri NV Raghuramji.

With love...

Message from Raghuramji:

Subject: DHANYAVADAH OR THANKS

Date: July 23, 2009

I would like to express my sincere thanks and loves to hundreds of greetings i received who i can not reply individually but please take it as my personal thanks to one and all from all over the world.

It is all your good wishes prayers and sincere support that we could accomplish whatever we could do.

Your love is my health and energy!!

love,

raghuram

Predictions as a Science -3-

2009-07-07T14:19:00.001+05:30

Social structure for healthy nurture:

Let us for the time being leave the extraordinary talents aside and understand the common person who may not manifest any special talents in his life. Every person has some interest of his own right from childhood which the parents may also encourage. As the child grows he sees some great people who are highly successful in that field and he also reads about the life of people who attempted and became a failure. On one side he is inspired by the people who are successful but develops enormous fear of failure looking at the bigger number of people who failed. Many a times the influence of people who failed cast such great fear in parents they tend to become overcautious. That is why most people’s advices are very defensive. They say follow the middle path and do not venture into adventures.
The wonderful hereditary occupation based caste system took care of this. It gave a wonderful opportunity for the child to flower out its talents without these fears of failure. The system was so carefully organized that it could help every one to grow in the right direction with pride. In this system, society was divided into four types (castes) Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. The Brahmanas to carry out the intellectual functions as a teacher in all walks (both worldly and spiritual knowledge) and his duty was to protect the human value systems of the society as a guide to all other sections of the society. Hence he had to live a life of austerity with regular spiritual and yoga practices so that he could remain in tune with higher laws of nature and guide the society in the right direction. The Kshatriyas were the kings with enormous administrative skills and had to nurture physical valor, intelligence for strategic planning and the pride of protecting the entire community including the Brahmins. Trade and business was the occupation of the Vaishya community. Shudras were craftsmen (Blacksmith, goldsmith, architect, house keeping etc) and constituted the larger section of the society who had the responsibility to implement every thing through hard work and labor. When the system was designed this way there was no choice for the child born in one family to think of any new occupation that would create fear. This facilitated the person to get the necessary training right from his childhood .Over generations the skills of the family would snowball to move towards excellence. Thus, when a soul with a particular talent chose to enter the womb of the mother and took birth in that family the opportunities to express the talent were so congenial that the journey of the soul would become very easy. It facilitated a natural and systematic evolution and the child could easily find the opportunity to carry on further research in the same field of activity which his father was doing. Thus a doctor’s child could easily become a better doctor with some new innovations, a king’s son had the opportunity to be a better king and so on and so forth. Thus there was a vertical and horizontal matrix created so that there was social harmony. Every village therefore had all these four castes catering the needs of all types of people through clearly defined duties for each family group. This arrangement gave a very deep alignment in every individual and left no adolescent in a state of insecurity as it is happening today. In India today after the materialism and the foreign rule took over we have lost this system completely to the extent that we blame the caste system for the entire decline that India went through over the past two centuries. There was a systematic intellectual planning and brain washing by the British to erase this strongly protected system of the Indian society. The brain washing was done by introducing the concept of ‘high and low’ in this caste system. They used it as a strategy to win over the Indian minds and succeeded to rule India. This has become so much ingrained into the Indian system today that an adolescent feels ashamed to continue his father’s occupation and wants to venture into something different, more challenging, and more adventurous and ends up with the fear of failure. He loses his wonderful opportunity that was provided naturally through the family tradition. Modern management researchers from UK and Harvard are trying to study this caste system that had protected the Indian society over centuries.
This caste system was evolved taking into consideration the basic tendencies and preferences of a person which is called ‘gunas’. Let us now understand this concept of ‘triguna’ the three gunas that is necessary for balance and harmony in the society.

The law of triguna

It is very interesting to see how our ancient people of wisdom understood the creation as a whole in Sankhya philosophy. This is the concept of tri gunas which is translated roughly as three basic qualities. Using this concept of ‘guna’ we can divide the entire creation under three types. Creation includes not only the objects but animals human beings food and even the activity. Every thing in this creation, sentient and insentient, can be classified under three categories (gunas) namely Satva, Rajas and Tamas. We can understand this in this way that every plant has three components they are roots in the soil, the stem or trunk of the plant or the tree in between and the flowers fruits and foliage in the sky. The roots are tamas, the trunk is the rajas and the flowers and foliage is the satva. Accordingly since the roots are always in the darkness the darkness is called tamas, since the trunk is protecting the plant and constantly working in distributing the sap and organizing every thing of the plant in the place these kind of activities are also called as rajas, and finally the flowers and foliage are soft and colorful and having nice fragrance etc these qualities are called as satva. The roots are always in the soil and feed on the slush and dirt and the roots are tamas therefore the food which is petrified and causes dullness is all categorized into tamas. Tamas is also dullness and gravity. Dull and slow animals are called as tamas and aggressive type of animals are called rajas and the food they take are also called as rajas and those animals who are soft and gentle these animals are called as satva. Similarly the people in the society can be divided very systematically based on their deep inner nature or the gunas into satva rajas and tamas. These gunas are not arbitrary divisions in case of human beings but they are based on very deep inner psychology of a person and left to themselves what their predominant behavior.
Every individual is a combination of these three gunas in different proportions. Every individual like every plant has all the three gunas. In human beings they are in some proportion with one of the gunas predominating. Like his feet are tamas which carry the weight of the body all the time and goes through rough terrain, his stomach heart and the middle portion of the body is rajas which is constantly distributing the energy through out the body and is constantly working without any rest or respite and the head which is responsible for thinking and scheming and planning is satva. In the same way what happens in side of the body the human being also decides based on the gunas what he has to do outside. At different times he manifests one guna or the other depending on the requirement. Thus guna governs most of what we do. Let me explain this. When anyone is tired and needs sleep he resorts to his tamas guna so that he can enjoy his sleep. The same person when he has to think or plan for any activity he takes to satva whose very nature is analyzing and thinking. One may think of just simple travel he has to make or a big activity like planning an industry. Both involve thinking. Both involve satva. Similarly one uses rajas when he needs to get exited or irritated or perform intense activity. A harmonious blend of these gunas is a state of perfect balance and health. None of us are perfect in this mastery and blend of the gunas and we all have some predominance of one or two of these gunas. When this is used in the right way with mastery then the life goes on with health and happiness. For example if a person is predominately satvic then he would spend his time happily in doing satvic activities that involves thinking and soft emotions. He may be a scientist or a teacher. This kind of work would give him fulfillment according to his guna.
In Sanskrit language a ‘man’ is called PURUSHA which is Puri + isha. Puri means a city or a country and ‘isha’ means ‘the master’. Thus the body is the city in which we live as a master. Just like the body is a living organ the city is also a living system. Just like these three gunas are used by the person to carry on all activities of the body all activities of the social system also goes on with harmonious blending of these three gunas. Only when all these gunas are used efficiently and harmoniously the city can be healthy. In order to carry on these activities we require people who are having those qualities and will enjoy doing those activities. Thus we have people who are predominantly satvic and those who are predominantly rajasic and those who are predominantly tamasic in nature and they manage these activities according to their gunas and the society will grow harmoniously. The satva predominant families who were the teachers and spiritual masters were classified as Brahmins ; Vaishyas who looked after trade and business were also predominantly satvic persons with an additional component of rajas that was necessary for travel and hard work of carrying the goods etc. Kshatriyas’ duties were to protect righteousness and be physically and mentally very strong and hence were predominantly rajasic people. Shudras who were a combination of tamas and rajas were assigned the job of carrying on the routine duties in the society.
We saw the play of gunas in the society and human beings. Every thing else in nature sentient or insentient, are also made of these gunas. The sages said that all these gunas are necessary for the creation to continue. What is necessary is a wonderful harmony in these gunas. The beautiful blend of these gunas is ensured by the laws that govern the entire creation. This is the programmed functioning of the creative or cosmic intelligence (Ishwara or God) which we see in the universe starting from inanimate things that follow the laws of physics and also the living systems that follow biological (Darwinian) laws. But as we evolved as human species nature bestowed us with higher faculties of the mind that has introduced the wonderful component of freedom and mastery over these laws. By wrong usage of this freedom we have successfully messed up the programmed functioning of these gunas. We have succeeded in posing a big problem to even the creator! As long as a human being accepts and functions according to his or her nature then there will be no problem. But trying to tamper this balance by misusing the mastery over these basic qualities or gunas it can create a major imbalance within leading to diseases or in the whole society creating social and environmental problems. When one tries to imitate others and takes up jobs or activities that does not suit his/her nature then problems arise.
Until recently (150 years back) in India we had a well planned society and the caste system was functional. The education, occupation, and their contribution to the society were well defined and beautifully set based on their gunas. That way the society also had at any point of time people working the jobs which was harmonious to their nature and which is also required in the society. there were always competent rulers doing the rajasic work of ruling and competent intellectuals to carry n the satvic work of advising thinking and inventing and businessmen doing the rajasic work of distributing the material wealth and those who are tamas predominance who could happily do the labor work. With such an arrangement the society was very harmonious. This harmony was helpful for the future evolution of an individual during the next birth too. For example a person in a Brahmin community will have deep rooted impressions which are in harmony with Brahmin practices and when such a person dies the soul does not have to struggle for searching a suitable family to be born. The soul will be able to choose very easily another Brahmin family. This understanding of the gunas that control the whole of the universe and our human system was so good that people started evolving a method of predicting how, where and when a child will be born and what will be the tendencies of the person even from the time of its birth and developed into a big science. The soul would not be confused to choose parents and come back to take birth. I wonder we pay a great importance to select a dog or a horse and look at its father and mother for several generations but when we choose a boy or girl we do not look into what are their immediate parents. According to ancient Indian system the soul will look at the parents before choosing the birth.

- to be continued...

Questions about "Predictions as a Science" from readers

2009-07-04T15:53:00.003+05:30

Question:
I have often heard people quote that your bad deeds in the current life will make you manifest a body of a different species. Is there any basis to this or a mere corruption of ideas?
Answer:
the body what we get is the body what we contemplate. our mind created the body that suits the mind or suits the manifestation of the force we create by the thought process called sankalpa. Normally speaking once we are human being the impressions of human being on our mind is so strong that any other vasana or the impressions on our mind by the world out side is not so strong as to change the very instrument called human body though which we want to work our may to these vasanas. therefore it is not generally possible to come with different form in the next life. But exceptions are possible because some one has contemplated so strong on some thing else that it has affected the next birth. The famous example is that Jada Bharata though highly sattvic in his final days was living with a deer which has become very dear to him and therefore was so much engrossed in it that he was born as deer in his next life. It is purely how intensely you have contemplated and became one with that determines.

Question:

Is it necessary to bring in the concept of vasana to explain the differences in people or their achievements as in the case of Tagore, for example in this article? Why can't we say that Tagore was not interested in English education but was fascinated by Indian culture. Just like someone is turned off by Indian culture but fascinated by USA culture? I am ok with influence of environment, nurture etc. Is it really self effort or some need in a person trying to express itself whether in English culture or Indian culture? We could explain on the basis of Gunas and Swabhava/Swadharma as in Gita.

Answer:

*our actions has the influence of three ingredients. one is the vasana that we carry, the other is the environment and the third is education. the vasana was so strong that he is drawn to the music and art and poetry of Indian life style that the other two did not have lasting or no impact on him. whereas i think other people do not have such a great vasana from previous life that they can be easily drawn by the influence of the environment and upbringing. Especially Tagores parents wanted him to be influenced by the British ways that they sent him to England for his education. But that did not only not change him but he is convinced about the great wealth of Indian thinking. Gunas and Swabhava is more much more deeper aspects of individual like your vasana may be for art and music. but it manifests according to your guna. some people can bing out their talents in rajasic way or aggressively. So in our personality deep inside is the guna over that is samskara and then the particular form like art music or painting etc. some thimes scriptures refer all these together as samskara *

Question:

Where is the 'free choice' in the selection of family or environment after death? A money minded person wants to be born in a rich family. A knowledge seeking person in a suitable environment so on. Does the person selects his family just before death (as some scriptures say that the dying person's next life briefly flashes in his mind and once he makes that choice he will give up the present body etc.) or it happens due to UDANA carrying the mental impressions? In that case UDANA (which is normally considered as JADA) has to be Universal consciousness itself to guide the subtle body or we have to assume some other consciousness guiding vasanas.

Answer:

*Udana is the expression of the fundamental prana which in turn is atman or self or simply saying I! That is choice of this I. This is supposed to be free but this I uses the vasanas as a reason for choosing. since one has the free choice there may be several wombs ready to receive him this I chooses one which suits his requirements. All the time even after the birth the I has choice I can change its tendencies but he uses the influence of environment or education. That is the reason this life is called as Life of Karma where one can bring about change in understanding of life.*

Question:

If a person comes with certain vasanas to play them out where do the residue vasanas stay? Who tracks the vasanas associated with current life with Vasanas that are yet to play out which we have forgotten. Are they in Universal memory. What is the link between current memory with Universal memory.

Answer.:
*vasanas are there with one self. some find expression and some not because the person did not find an opportunity to manifest. like some people you see appear not have any greed or miserliness for all these years when they do not have much riches. but once they have riches suddenly these qualities surface as if they were never present earlier. This is where the philosophy says they are not newly found but they only found their opportunity to surface into manifestation like after rains suddenly the seeds hidden in the ground sprout!!*

Question:

It seems that rebirth theory raises lot of interesting questions and to answer them we have to make new assumptions which we have to take them on faith either as experience from saints or scriptures.

Alternatively, we could take help from 2nd law of thermo dynamics saying that nothing gets created or destroyed but only changes it forms. But, the total energy is constant. That way way the physical body goes back to 5 elements after death. Mind gets transformed into new mind after death so on.

Answer:

*that is true that energy can never be created and nor can be destroyed but the freewill of an individual found in this life is the one which can change it. Udana or samskara are the minor details explaining about the possible process. If we dont have the freewill then it reduces to only matter and nothing else! That is teh view of charvakas also saying there is nothing other than matter and follow the laws of matter.*

Predictions as a Science -2-

2009-06-29T00:58:00.002+05:30

Concept of Reincarnation as a science

There are several factors that are involved in understanding this higher law of nature. Let us understand these complexities one by one.

It may be too premature to decide that these phenomena are totally accidental. Sages said that these talents were there in the unmanifest in the form of possibilities, and are ready to manifest at the right time. Let us try to understand what this means. What is this unmanifest? What did the sages mean by manifesting it when the suitable time comes?. The Indian philosophy explained such phenomena (child prodigy) by proposing the concept of rebirth. The child who shows some extra ordinary talent in music must have been a very devoted student of classical music in the previous birth and this music has gone so deep into the person’s personality that he or she carries the music through the soul. This soul (sukshma sharira) while migrating after death into the next body carries this coded impression of the musical talent. This shows the extra ordinary relationship of the person with the music. This child must have nourished music close to her heart and spent all her life in music during her previous life which has entered into the present life. It is her investment through intense love for music that has given her this talent right from birth in this life. This knowledge from the scriptures helps us to realize that our life here is not a beginning and end all but it is a very small portion of a long journey. This applies not only to an art or music or an extraordinary phenomenon but it refers to each and every small thing that has shaped our personality and behaviour in every walk of life! Once we understand and experience this fact it makes us lot more responsible and cautious about any thing we do (good or bad) during this life which may leave us with a strong impression for the next life. Though we have many more desires to do or to achieve etc we don’t have a fitting instrument called body mind complex at the time of death we come back with new instrument called body mind complex with the whole idea of finishing the unfinished agenda. These unfinished desires and other things called as vasana and they are the cause for our rebirth or reincarnation l

The understanding of reincarnation makes you realize that you are not just what you are now. This present life is only a link in the continuum of your existence in this creation. Let me explain this a little more. Let us see what you mean by your ‘birth day’ which you celebrate with such great importance. It is just the day you came out of your mother’s womb and the people around saw. the baby with their eyes. Did you really come into existence on that day? You know that this so called ‘date of birth’ is only for relating it to the record of the world outside. This has very little to do with your original date of birth. You give so much importance to this date and celebrate year after year, although you know very clearly that you were there for 9 months in mother’s womb before coming out. From the womb if you go further back, you were there in the sperm of the father and the ovum of the mother. Take it further back. The scriptures say that all your faculties, fears, desires, etc that made you an unique personality were there in the form of coded impressions(karmas) in the soul (sukshma sharira) that left the previous body. This is the unmanifest seed in the subtle world that carries accumulated impressions (sanskaras) from several lives before. The scriptures go on to say that you chose to be born in this family culture because you wanted the congenial atmosphere to manifest those qualities during this life. The family that nurtured you gave you all the background nutrition through generations of the value systems and traditions. In fact we can see that this choice is reflected even in the physical features as genetic coding that determines the shape of the nose or color of the hair etc.. For example if your intense desire was to become a film actress you will chose a family of beautiful people and not ugly people. This shows up at the time of birth itself as physical features of the baby and its mannerisms. We say ‘wow, the baby is so tall, pretty with long fingers and toes and blue eyes she will become an actress like her great grand mum’.

Thus we may now say that this nature’s law is: Large number of unique abilities are there in the unmanifest, in the form of possibilities, and are ready to manifest at the right time. These are in the form of very strong possibilities only and we need to make them manifest through our efforts. If we fail in our efforts, then it can not express itself’. In this process besides our self effort to actualize there are other factors which are environmental etc.

Environment and nurture

Now let us consider the contribution of the environment to the component of ‘nurture’. The place you grow, the people around, the values of your parents seeded into you is necessary to shape you up. That is why it is said that we are in a web of life. In this web of life we are even connected with the planets and stars etc, to some degree or the other. Though all these effects are there from various forces one most important primary force which is responsible for our journey is the self effort which is one’s own will power. If one has a strong will power then all ‘like forces’ join hands and help him in that direction and he can resist the ‘opposing forces’. On the other hand if one has a weak will power other forces will drag him in all other directions.

Rabindranath Tagore’s father wanted to protect the child from the influence of the Indian surroundings right from his early childhood. He wanted him to be influenced by the British ways. He engaged special teachers to teach him at home and when it did not work out he sent him to England to educate him under strict supervision. But Tagore’s will power was so strong once he came back from England he went back to his original interest. The love for nature and poetry that was suppressed for a long time found its expression. He started writing poetry, which was not the liking of his father at all. The father wanted him to be a scientist and not an artist. But what was the result? Tagore became a great a poet to be rewarded with a noble prize. Thus we see how a strong will power can resist any outside force. In Tagore’s case we can see the play of all the factors we have mentioned until now. (a) He had the seed of becoming a great poet from his previous birth (b) his jiva (soul)chose to be born in this family because it needed the congenial environment of nurture that included the atmosphere of a rich Indian Bengali family full of soft emotions along with the strong will power and intelligence of the father (although he did not use them to grow the way the father wanted) (c) the stay in England helped him to obtain the British training in hard work, punctuality, meticulousness and mastery over English language and (d) the strong will power to achieve excellence. Thus he could flower out fully when all these aspects came together i.e. the basic poetic tendency from his previous birth, the strong will power of the father, the soft emotions from the mother and Bengali state culture, and the training in British culture and English language.

- to be continued...

Predictions as a Science -1-

2009-06-26T23:32:00.003+05:30

In the nature there are natural laws or rules and most common phenomena follow these laws. For example all fluids follow the laws of fluid mechanics, solids follow some specific rules and gases follow gas law etc. Then there are some exceptions to these rules in nature. The exceptions are there to prove the rules. They do not violate the rules. For example we know mercury is solid but it does not follow the properties of solid this is an exception. In similar fashion in human beings also there are natures’ laws but there can be exceptions!

What are these Exceptions?
Recently I was watching a blog in which a 3 year old child was giving a performance to a huge audience of more than a thousand music lovers and music pundits in Chennai. The anchor, highly talented in music would sing a raga (a traditional classical Indian musical note) and in less than a minute the child would identify the name of the raga and would give accurate technical details of the characteristics and even the exceptions that characterizes that particular raga. Not even on a single occasion the girl never faltered! These are child prodigies. We had a similar child prodigy in our house. My cousin’s son had a very unusual mathematical brain. He was only three years old. You give him any date which may be more than hundred years ago, within seconds he would tell you the name of the corresponding day of week. We would keep very old calendars and play with him! How do we explain this phenomenon? One can say that these things are some accidental neurological aberrations. Is this really an accident in nature? This may be a very sophisticated terminology but by saying so we have not explained any thing; we are only saying that we do not know what is happening! Is there any model or logical explanation that is available to explain such exceptions? Can this model help in predicting such phenomena? Is there a different set of laws for these phenomena? What is the nature of this unmanifest? These are all questions that are addressed in Indian scriptures. The answers and models were revelations during intense meditation. Several researchers went on adding to the knowledge base. These revelations dawned on them when they could go beyond the intellect and tune themselves to higher laws of nature. Such rare insights are possible even today if you can go into such deep meditative states.

Self effort vs genes
We can see such unusual talents happening not only in case of music but in so many other areas. Let us take the example of sports. We watch great talents in people like Diago Maradona in football or Tiger Wood in golf or Tendulkar in cricket. When one watches them play we can see the beauty in their game .You feel that this is not mere training that made them such a great genius. If a football dances on is foot all the time in case of Maradona, tiger wood has such a powerful eyes that hundreds of yards he can hit the golf ball to go directly in to the hole and for Tendulkar there is no bowler whose balls are not punished We say, ‘wow! He is a born genius’! What are the common features and what are the differences between the prodigal girl and these genius players? In the case of the girl the genetic talent has revealed itself later in life at a tiny age and in case of the players the talent manifested after going through a formal training in sports. But there are also several players who have undergone similar or much more rigorous training. But not all can become great sportsmen or musicians with training alone. The genetic tendency that is carried over helps one to manifest it through training. Thus the genetic tendencies that are carried over from the previous birth may manifest right from birth or it may need more training to unfold itself. Thus we see that there are two aspects in any performance: the nature and nurture. The nurture or the training makes the nature (the genetic tendency) manifest itself to create a genius. And they show up as the miracles of creation!

In these singers or artists or players, even though they had extraordinary talents they had to put in their efforts to actualize the possibilities. A gifted singer like Lata Mangeshkar had to put in an enormous amount of sadhana before she became famous even though there was an inborn talent. When we look at this way, we can understand that there must have been so many more people, who had the possibility to manifest their extra ordinary talents but they would have remained as ordinary people. The talent that is hidden in them found no avenue and has no chance of flowering. This is simply because they did not put in the necessary effort to flower out. In many cases we find that the parental pressure in trying to put the child in the so called right path becomes so strong that it would have put them off and undermined their talents! Every flower that is on the mango tree has all the ingredients to become wonderful fruit! Every seed has a tree in it but how many seeds actually become trees? Only those seeds which got the right nurture right from the time they fell from the tree can bring out the tree hidden in it. The factors are too many- the time of falling, the ground, the water, the nutrition, the weather, the fauna around, animals around etc. If the factors involved in unfolding a tree (that has no free will and is completely programmed) to its beauty is so complex , think of how many factors (environmental ,social and self effort) will be necessary for a human seed which is endowed with free will to manifest its talents!.

In these two examples we saw the talents that are possible in normal people but show up in an extraordinary way in prodigies or geniuses. But there are some unusual talents such as paranormal powers which appear to defy the nature’s laws completely because a normal person just cannot perform such feats. I have a good friend of mine Mr. GS who has amazing ability for psychokinesis. He can show all the feats that we see in a magic show right in front of your eyes without any stage arrangements. One day we were having a casual chat on philosophy over a cup of tea and he just picked up the fork from the table and by looking at it in a focused way he bent it as if it was made of a flexible wire. Bending spoons and forks and keys is a very simple feat that he can demonstrate apart from moving objects as if he has a remote control button in his hands. Though he can perform all these things GS is such a simple and honest person that he says that these are the special abilities that he discovered and he has been able to improve upon them by repeated practice. He told that one day when he was a kid he looked at the spoon intensely and it could bend! He says ‘in my teens when I discovered this unusual talent within me I had a great temptation to exploit this talent and declare that I am a God’s messenger and can demonstrate God’s miracles .But thank God I did not cheat people by yielding to my adolescent temptation’.

He went into true path of spirituality to understand reality and is deeply involved in meditation and doing good to people. He says these powers have nothing to do with spirituality!

Having these abilities is not necessarily a sign of spiritual growth. Scriptures bring out this clearly in our epics through examples of demons (rakshasas) like Ravana and his son Indrajit who acquired special powers which could overwhelm even the godly powers of Rama and his brother Lakshmana for a while; but Ravana and Indrajit were demons because they did not have any spiritual growth and they created problems to the rishis who were silently doing tapas in the forest for the good of mankind! Whether they are ordinary powers which can appear like extra ordinary talents, or some kind of special abilities, both of them are part of creation which fall under the category of exceptions but they have nothing to do with spirituality. But it will be interesting to further understand them with reference to factors involving our lives.

- to be continued...

To read the other parts of the same article please click on:

Part 1: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science.html

Part 2: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/06/predictions-as-science-2.html

Part 3: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-3.html

Part 4: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/predictions-as-science-4.html

Part 5: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/10/predictions-as-science-5.html

Q&A: http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2009/07/questions-about-predictions-as-science.html

Detroit tour program

2009-05-21T14:52:00.003+05:30

Below you may find the Detroit tour program of Sri NV Raghuram

5/29-30-31/2009
Retreat at Ronora Lodge
Seetha

6/1/2009
5:30 - 6:30 pm7:00 - 8:00pm
Pranyama SessionSatsang: Prasnhopanishad
TBDRamu/Seetha's house
Seetha

6/2/2009
5:30 - 6:30 pm7:00 - 8:00pm
Pranyama SessionSatsang: Prasnhopanishad
TBDRamu/Seetha's house
Seetha

6/3/2009
5:30 - 6:30 pm7:00 - 8:00pm
Pranyama SessionSatsang: Prasnhopanishad
TBDRamu/Seetha's house
Seetha

6/4/2009
2:00pm - 4:00pm5:30 - 6:30 pm7:00 - 8:00pm
MS SocietyPranyama SessionSatsang: Prasnhopanishad
Southfield MS SocietyTBDRamu/Seetha's house
SudhaSeetha

6/5/2009
6:00 - 8:00pm
Happiness Analysis: How to stay happy in troubled times
Ravi's office
Ravi

6/6/2009
9:00am - 12:00pm Pranyama and Meditation / Ravi's Office
2:00pm - 4:00pm Happiness Analysis / Sai Baba Temple
5:00pm - 6:30pm Yoga for Positive Health / Ramu
7:00pm - 9:00pm olunteer potluck / Seetha's house

Seetha - Ravi - Sastry - Gayathri

6/7/2009
9:00am - 9:00pm
Sastry Memorial
TBD
Aruna/Mahalakshmi

Upanishad and Consciousness

2009-05-16T01:46:00.002+05:30

part 1

part 2

part 3

Part 4

part 5

part 6

part 7

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah

2009-04-10T12:51:00.003+05:30

Sarve bhavantu sukhinah= may every one be happy
Sarve santu niramayah= may every one be free from all diseases
Sarve bhadrani pashyantu = may every one see goodness and auspiciousness in every thing
Ma kaschit duhkha bhaag bhaveet- may none be unhappy or distressed
Om shantih, shantih, shantih-Om peace, peace, peace!
May all be happy, may all be free from sickness, may all see things good, and may none have misery. Om peace, peace, peace!

This is a very simple prayer applicable to one and all. Millions and millions of Indians have been offering this prayer for last five thousand and odd years. The prayer is so simple that one can easily remember the simple meaning as ‘ may all be happy and healthy’. As we go into the depth of its meaning there is lot more to understand about the psyche of the sages who offered this universal prayer which is wholesome, all encompassing, purely socialistic and highly spiritual. It brings out the uniqueness of a spiritual master who develops enormous love for the entire creation so that he not only does whatever best he can do for others and also offers prayer to the higher forces that are beyond one’s control .Thus, this prayer is not just a simple prayer but becomes a mantra, a goal for a sadhaka (spiritual seeker) to meditate upon and move on in the path of spiritually to achieve universality. Let us dwell on these thoughts in. Today’s satsang .

Why do we need to pray?
Before I go on to explain the meaning of the mantra, let me give you an example from Mahabharata to show how the great warrior Bhishma was a living example (now there is enough proof through archeological studies that mahabharata is a history and not just an imagination of a poet) of this Indian (Hindu) advise that ‘we only have the right to pray for others and never for seeking favours for ourselves’. This is brought out beautifully by the poet through Bhishma’s own statement in the warfare.
When every one had assembled for war at Kurukshetra, Krishna and Arjuna stood in the battle field discussing about the vital questions of life which turned out to be Bhagavad-Gita, the divine hymn, an all time message for humanity at large. Although the conches were already blown with full readiness for the orders from the leaders , the entire army had to wait and could not start off the war as Bhishma the senior of the two captains did not give the orders. The restless Duryodhana asks Bhishma ‘what is happening there? What are they discussing in the middle of the battle field? Why don’t you give the orders to start off?” Bhishma in turn replies ‘My dear son, let us wait for a few moments to start the destruction. They must be discussing some thing important’. Duryodhana says with arrogance, “Oh, what else could it be, I know it! Arjuna must be terrified looking at our army and he must be discussing how to run away from the war field!’. Bhishma replies to Duryodhana, “Why do you want to show off you ignorance.” and adds, “in all my life, I have never prayed for any favour for myself; whatever was given to me I accepted wholeheartedly. Only at this moment I feel like praying to wind God to blow towards me so that a few of those divine words of wisdom pouring out from Krishna’s lips may fall on my ears”. . This shows how great masters like Bhishma were living examples of this prayer that we only have the right to pray for others and not for self and it had percolated as a living culture of the Indian society. Thus, this prayer that carries such a great message has been sung and chanted heartily all over on this Indian soil over five thousand and odd years for the welfare of ALL.
In the first place one may ask ‘what is the need for a spiritual master who has mastered all laws of nature, to pray to Gods (higher forces of creative intelligence), either for himself or for other? This is because the sage who has gone through this highest experience of oneness of the universal consciousness or self realization knows that praying is the mode and tool to manifest that experience and compassion for the fellow beings. In fact you will realize through your own experience that we cannot really change a person, unless he wants to, except to pray and pray for his or her well being which can fructify if done with full sincerity and integrity. You know that happiness is not something that you can get by possessions of material things. One may possess every thing one can think of that is meant to give happiness, but he may be the most miserable person. Money or position or power or authority can never ensure happiness. In fact, with a small introspective observation of the society and friends around you, you will realize that these two are not connected to each other at all. I am sure you have come across many people who do not have any luxurious possessions and do not have big laurels to their credit and live a very simple life, but they are very happy .You can see the pure genuine smile on their faces always. You also have examples of persons who have every luxury you ask for, but the happiness is not there. A person who is poor but unhappy, at least has a hope that one day he can find money and that he would become happy in future by satisfying his wants. But a person who has tons of money but is not happy is all the more miserable because he does not even have this hope that money can bring happiness. Similarly, the so called educated and knowledgeable person can be much more unhappy than an uneducated and ignorant person!. Upanishad goes on to unravel this truth systematically to reach the right understanding. These sages realized that real happiness is to ‘Know’ that ‘I’ am made of the stuff called ‘Ananda or happiness’ and also that ‘prayer’ is a wonderful tool to tap this divine happiness for one and all. Thus, having realized that satisfying the material wants of an individual cannot give the lasting happiness, what else can a sage who is established in this eternal happiness do as an expression of the great compassion that he nurtures for the fellow beings? How can he express his universal love? How can we the mortals who have not yet attained that highest experience of eternal happiness culture ourselves? Only thing any one can do is to pray that may every one be happy!
Seeds contain the entire tree within them. Just this knowledge about its potentiality is of no use. You should allow it to express itself as the fully grown tree by preparing the soil and providing the necessary nourishment. If you do not prepare the ground and give the right type of environment the seed cannot sprout and yield a healthy and useful tree. In addition to this, once the sprouts have come up, it is also very important to deweed the wrong sprouts around. Prayer is like weeding out the wrong sprouts. It is important to carry on our duties with utmost care and efficiency and then the prayer works by deweeding the unseen obstacles. Rishis give these prayers with love, compassion and deep concern. But the prayers do not eliminate the need of our efforts to work with efficiency and commitment. Prayer is not for a lazy person.. Now, with this understanding let us try to understand the ideas in this prayer “Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah…”

‘May every one be happy…’
Every one here refers to the entire creation, to all sensuous beings including plants, animals and human beings. Although this prayer is in Sanskrit and though this is given in the so called Hindu scriptures, when the sages say “sarve…” they do not exclude non- Hindus. The prayer does not say, I pray God to give happiness to Hindus only and you do not deserve my prayers if you are not a Hindu!
Some times the religious institutions can be so narrow that the God you believe in may be the same, the heaven and hell are the same, and the prophet also is the same, but you cannot pray for the well being of people of other sects. One of my Christian friends was saying that when she was a young girl in US, the church school she was going to, taught her that they are supposed to pray only for those who go to that particular church and those who are associated with other churches do not deserve their prayers. She realized the shallowness of this when she grew up, but for many of her friends this remained as a belief for life time! Religious fundamentalists in every religion have been responsible for creating such illogical unhealthy beliefs and even wars have been waged for protecting such doctrines. This is rampant even today when we are in this 21st century of science and technology, when man is considered to be dominated by logical thinking. Thus we see that our prayer shall reach every one , every human being, every one belonging to all religions, all castes, all creeds, all races, all animals and all plants not only on this planet but to all living beings on any planet in the galaxy. Then a question arises as to why we should pray for the protection and well being of bad people? Is it not important that we protect the good and destroy the bad? Does it not appear very logical that we pray only for protection of the good?

No one is bad by birth
When the sage is saying ‘sarve…’ he is so large hearted that he includes not only the believers of God but those who do not believe in God. One may believe in god but he may be totally anti-social and inhuman, but on the other hand one may be a non=believer of God but very highly spiritual. Therefore the prayer does not exclude the non-believers of God!. This mantra says that we are supposed to pray for the well being of every one including the good and the bad, the lazy and the hard worker, a burglar and a savior or the downtrodden and the knowledgeable , Sarve…. therefore appears to be beyond all differentiations and denominations. How can the intellect accept this idea ‘May the good people be happy and the bad people also be happy!’ If good people are kept happy, they will continue to do good, but if the bad people are happy then they will continue to be bad. Only if they are unhappy or suffer then they have some chance of becoming good. This is the simple logic which appears to be the basis on which we have created courts and prisons to punish the bad and protect the good to maintain social peace.. This concept believes that if the criminals suffer tortures in the prison cell, then he will change into a good man. Hence the persons who manage the prison are trained to be cruel in their appearance and behaviour. I have never seen any prison myself but that is what is shown in the movies!
Let us ask ourselves as to how many criminals have changed truly through these prisons and tortures? . We know that, a person who has been a criminal out side and who has never gone to a prison may have some fear about the life in the jail and the torture he has to face but once who has come back from the jail he will not even that fear any more. Not only that, once he is in jail he will have an opportunity to see several people who are more professional than himself and he would have had an opportunity to learn more tricks of committing crimes without getting caught. Out side they may to have had gurus to guide them, but once they are in side there are maha- gurus to guide them in many more tricks of the trade! Do you think cheating can not go on within the prison? One can pretend to be an obedient inmate, so that he can cleverly escape difficult jobs.
This I have seen happening in many Ashrams, churches, organizations and amongst politicians too. In Ashramas , if you are close to the chief guru, you can be exempted from waking up early in the morning and sitting for meditation sessions like other inmates of the ashram!
.Nadir Shah, the emperor was known to be some one who used to invent new types of tortures for the criminals every day. He thought that this may stop people from revolting against him. There is a story about him that once he asked his minister, ‘they say sleeping for long hours is bad for health according to scientists; is it true?’ The minister replied , “sir, the scientists’ findings are true in case of ordinary people but you are an exception .This does not apply to you, In your case the longer you sleep and lesser you are awake, the more healthy people will be!”

Thus, you can understand that, the fear of punishment may not change a person to become a good man and in fact it can make him worse. It is all hypothetical to say that punishment can change a bad person to become good. Of course it is necessary to punish the wicked and keep them away from the society so that they will not team up to destroy the entire society. But for individuals or groups to change we need a different approach. . These days revolutionary thinkers and reformers of prisons like Ms Kiran Bedi of Tihar jail or Mr Vyavahareji of Vivekananda Yoga research foundation, teachers of Sri Sri Ravishankar who teach the ‘art of living program’ etc have successfully introduced methods of vipassana meditation, and yoga in prisons with positive results of real change in these criminals . There are examples of a few of these criminals who have taken to teaching yoga and leading a respectable life in the society after they came out of the prison..
Hence, this assumption that ‘bad people will become good through unhappiness’ does not seem to have a solid foundation. In addition, saying that good should be happy and bad should not be happy presupposes the idea that basically there are two different categories of people namely originally good and originally bad people. This also is not true by the simple logic that good people can turn bad and vice versa over time. How can we think that God creates originally good people and bad people! Why do you think that God would create some one bad? Is it by chance that some one is good? Is the creator partial to someone? How can we accept a universal creative intelligent being which is very partial to be ‘the God’?! Some religions posit other assumptions to explain this discrepancy that we see in the world. They say that God created good people and Satan created bad people! All these assumptions are so illogical that it cannot be the truth.
According to the sages this prayer has a deep presupposition that by birth every one is good. If so, then why do we have bad people in the society? Why some people create problems to others? Why are there people like Hitler?
God has not created any one originally bad or good. In their original nature every one has only goodness as his true nature. The real self, the “I”, the auspicious being, the changeless, the basic stuff of this universe made of Ananda is free from any taint of badness. Hence every one in their true nature is good and it is only the situations that make men behave badly. The difficult circumstances have forced them to become bad. In the given circumstances they found it so difficult to survive as good people and it pushed them to become bad as he had no other choice for survival. Even a bad guy, is only bad in his business hours and tries to be good wherever possible and expects others to be good to him. Even the worst of the criminal, a dacoit, wants his subordinates not to tell him a lie or be disloyal to him. Most of the Indian movies on any criminals show how caring he is for his mother, wife and children and can do anything to protect them.
Intuitively, can you not feel this goodness in everyone? I do not think it requires any great spiritual master to tell you this .This is the reason that when you happen to get introduced to a new person for the first time ,you spontaneously greet him and say, “hello, nice to meet you or good to meet you!!”, even before you have known anything about the person. This is the wonderful expression of the positivity that you are able to see in the stranger about whom your mind has not yet formed any opinion... You never greet a person in a negative tone and not even in a neutral tone. It is spontaneously positive .You will never say, “ok, I am meeting you now, let me decide later on after some time whether it is nice to meet you or not!” At the outset you presume that he is good and only later when you find out that he has many unacceptable qualities you may change your opinion. Even then we need not say that the person is bad. You will only conclude that this person’s behaviour is not acceptable to ‘me’ and to the society at large.

Seeing good in every one is the beginning of spiritual journey
You start a great spiritual journey when you nurture these spontaneous expressions that are inbuilt into our system and make it a Sadhana that you will consciously dwell on this thought that’ every one is good’. You don’t have to be defensive. The very thought that every one is good irrespective of gender, religion, colour or creed, brings out the feeling that every one belongs to me. You start recognizing that everyone is ‘my own ‘. And there is no need to be defensive about the people and society around you... This simply paves way to peaceful coexistence. It will add strength to your personality and makes you feel secure. When you think of goodness all the time, then all good aspects of your personality such as love and compassion, sharing and caring become visible and you get controlled by these good qualities... On the other hand when you become defensive you start looking at all the wonderful qualities in a person with suspicion. When we assume a positive attitude, the world becomes a heaven the same world appears to be a hell if you look at this with a negative attitude. Just because you want to look at things in positive attitude it does not mean that you could be careless and reckless. Chanakya says you lock the house not because the people around you are thieves but let your unlocked house not tempt people to become bad.. We don’t require to be policing the so called bad people all the time. On the other hand when you approach them with love, care and concern and pray for their well being, there are better chances that they change to become good people.
Another question that you may ask is,’ if every one is good, then why do we have bad people around us? Why do we have criminals all over?’We have already answered this. To start with, a person was made good, but when he could not cope up with circumstances, he must have felt that he has exhausted all the fair means of overcoming the intense distress and was left with only one choice-either to take to wrong means or commit suicide. He did not know that he had yet another choice, a third option. He is stuck with the wrong notion that the cause of his unhappiness is the world around and the people around him. With this wrong notion, when he faces difficult situations and cannot come out as a successful happy person, he decides to take revenge on the society that caused the problem by torturing or disturbing or creating unhappiness to others. Generally this tends to show up as a torture for the innocent and the gentle ones in the society. Do you think he would have turned to be a bad person if he did not have to face such difficult situations? We said there is a third option that could have helped him to continue to be good. What is this? This is the notional correction; a cognitive correction; a correction at the level of perceiving the situation in an entirely opposite way; i.e. to recognize the inbuilt freedom to change your perception of the situation and correct the wrong notions about happiness and unhappiness itself. To understand this and find a permanent solution requires a small twist in the question. This shift in the question provides the answer. It removes the root of all distress and unhappiness. What is that shift? Ask yourself ‘what is unhappiness?’ instead of ‘what makes me unhappy?’ Or ask ‘what is happiness? Instead of asking “what makes me happy?”

What is Happiness?
No prayer will give happiness. Nothing from out side can give you happiness. No out side situation can give us sorrow too. If out side can give us happiness the same out side can take away our happiness too. No outside agency has the authority on you more than you have. Out side can only create good or bad situations, but whether the situation makes you happy or unhappy is in your hands. The sage is one who has realized that he is the master. His prayers are therefore his wishes. He wants every one to realize this truth. He is not going to more happy or less happy by this prayer. It is his heart’s wish and enormous love for the creation that pours out in this form. Then it becomes a mantra.

Unhappiness is a learnt habit
Our wrong understanding has given us unhappiness. For example, we feel very unhappy when we do not win in any game or feel miserable when some one gets more points. Playing any game is actually is meant for recreation and at the end of the game winners are happy and losers are miserable. It is obvious that all can not win. We forget that playing a game was for recreation and as a part of the game we created teams and rules etc. If we are not caught up in success or failure then we can always be happy. I watched a tennis game wherein the loser was so happy and cheerful that the winner became confused and dazed and lost his happiness. The crowd in the gallery turned and cheered up the loser as they found it very strange! Thus the loser won the hearts of the spectators than the winner.

Unhappiness is a learnt habit.
As parents, we have created higher value for unhappiness in the minds of our children. We create the feeling in the child even before he knows any thing about the world that we love him and care for him only if he is unhappy or at least he shows he is unhappy and he is suffering. Only when the child is suffering then the mother leaves every work to take care of the child. The child learns that if he is happy the mother has no time for him at all! Dad will talk only when he is sick! If the child falls but is not hurt then the parents brush it aside. But if he cries for the hurt, then the parents are with him all the time. This way, unconsciously we are giving the message to the child that if you have to be important then you have to be sick and suffering. When he comes back from the school happily and shows no strain then he is not paid attention. On the other hand if the child shows he is tired and exhausted then he receives a lot of care. This message is used after he grows up also. The husband working in a government department comes back home tired and exhausted whether he works or not. These days in government offices who does any work? Every work in every country is out sourced! Then wife will come to him to take off his shoes and she serves him fresh coffee. Thing come to him... He has all sympathies. If the same person comes back home normal and not tired then he will only hear an instructions about where the milk is, where the sugar is etc and he has to fix his own coffee. Same thing happens to the wife too. She has also understood the trick of the trade. Child may have behaved very fine through out the day. But when the husband returns home, she has to show that she is exhausted taking care of the child whole day so that she deserves his sympathies! I therefore tell people that I and my wife have equally shared the burden of work and responsibilities this way. “She is busy and I look busy”!
Another peculiar concept is ingrained in our minds right from our childhood. If one is happy for some time then he has to face unhappiness immediately after that. We are all the time
living in the fear of unhappiness when we see a child happy and joyfully playing; we say ‘oh, now child is laughing so much that certainly it is going to cry soon’. If a child drops some thing on the floor and the thing breaks then it gets scolding but if the child breaks it and also cries, it gets sympathetic remarks from the parents! When we have given so much value for suffering, how can we expect that one can be happy always under all circumstances? Everywhere suffering has gained an upper hand and therefore it is hard to believe that every one should be happy and could be happy always.
There is a difficulty in the education we give to the child. On one side we expect the child to get all top marks and top ranking in every thing he takes up. Even if he gets the second position, every one around him starts questioning why he did not get the first position? The child hears this so frequently that he feels his life is useless because he did not stand first. We forget that in every class only one person can be the first one and the rest are losers and every loss can make one miserable.
Even the so called spiritual practices have also given too much importance to suffering. If you torture others, law is there to punish you but if you torture yourself then the society respects you as great spiritual person. When we portray the lives of great spiritual masters also, we tend to emphasize the torture they have undergone in their Sadhana. Talking about Buddha, I heard someone saying how much torture it was that he was not even getting enough food to eat and he had to go through so much humiliation etc. I am sure Buddha never felt that it was a torture or distress to go for alms. His only goal was to find what is there after death and this was so intense that nothing could disturb him. Buddha’s focus was some thing different and the emphasis given by the onlookers about his Sadhana was different. About Ramakrishna and Sharada Devi also people take so much joy in portraying as if it was a life of torture. If you torture others you will be prosecuted whereas if you torture yourself you will be decorated. What we need to learn from the life of these saints is that, being happy or unhappy does not depend on the circumstances and what appears to be torturous need not make you unhappy. If one wants to be unhappy and tortures himself then no one can help him and he will continue to be unhappy. Hence it is not the circumstance that is making us unhappy but it is the learnt habit of responding to the situation that has made us suffer and be unhappy. Thus, Sarve bhavantu sukhinah is essentially said to remove the wrong notion that suffering is valuable.

Does this mean that a spiritual seeker should not be looking for comfort? Even the notion that comfort will give me happiness is as wrong as suffering takes you close to spirituality. Material can not give any thing. Simplifying life is the essence of spirituality and not to subject to self torture! Dukha or suffering can not give us spirituality; therefore let us aspire for every one to be happy through this prayer Sarvebhavantu sukhinah.
Let me sum up the ideas about happiness. Let us not have a wrong value for unhappiness and let us also not be confused that happiness can be achieved from out side or given by some one else. The sage realized that happiness is his true nature and he has a compassionate appeal and prays ’may everyone realize this truth’ that ‘happiness is my true eternal unchanging nature’.

Freedom from sickness
Next sentence in the prayer is Sarve Santu Niramayah meaning ‘May every one be free from sicknesses.
In Sanskrit we have a very interesting word for health. It is Swastha or Swaasthya, which means ‘to stay in oneself’ or ‘being oneself’. It implies that when you are Swastha, you are in total harmony with yourself which means that you have realized your original nature that ‘you are made of the stuff called happiness’. Thus, if health can be defined as being in oneself, then it is obvious that sickness or unhappiness is, being away from oneself. Thus our original nature is to be blissful and unhappiness is something that comes and goes like the violent waves on the surface of an ocean. We cannot think of an ocean without waves. The waves are soft sometimes (happy mind). They may be violent sometimes (distressful). The non moving stable unperturbed water is not visible on the surface. We tend to conclude ‘an ocean is made of only the waves’. Life appears to be made only of these waves of happy or unhappy moments. But what one needs to realize is that it is all water. The waves on the surface and the non moving deep waters underneath are both made of the same stuff, the water. The entire stuff of our existence is the quiet non moving blissful awareness that forms the background or the screen on which all experiences happen. Thus blissful awareness whether you have realized it or not is the basic swa- stha state or the healthy state of being.
Look at every child. They are naturally blissful. They don’t need any thing to be happy. Only thing that happens with them is that they some times go away from the happiness and there is a reason for that. Those situations which bring them away from their nature called happiness are only the hunger, thirst and sleep. Some children are very conservative. They come away from their very nature only in the last second. Until that time they are happily playing and when the situation occurs that they can not stay any longer without food then suddenly they start crying. Mothers tell the children “wait my baby, don’t cry. Why don’t you give me two minutes so that I can fix your food?” But if there was one more minute’s time the child would have been blissfully playing! The same way the child gets irritated when they feel sleepy and they fall off to sleep within a minute .They are playing until the last second of their wakeful state. Once they get up again they are blissful. Thus the baby comes away from happiness when the basic needs bother the original nature. As adults these basic needs of drinking and eating are no longer guided by thirst or hunger but we have made it a habit to go on and on with eating and drinking incessantly. We need to have a bed coffee and then a small breakfast, followed by another coffee and then a small munch and another small coffee etc. This story of repeated coffee and munching goes on and on. Especially on a holiday when you are not doing any thing then the requirement goes on multiplying.
When we grow to become adults, it is not only the physical needs of thirst; hunger and sleep that take us away from our natural state of bliss but the wants are at subtler levels of our personality, the mind. Our needs are now completely at the level of intellect and emotions that takes us away from our natural state. Hunger, thirst and sleep no longer give us an alarm because all other things at a subtle level have silently taken over. These keep us so much preoccupied that we get lost in the ocean that is full of waves and waves alone and forget to see the bed of non-moving layer of water. The events of life that result in multitude of reactions including distress, agitation, depression, fear, excitement etc occupy all our wakeful hours. We wake up with problems and sleep with problems. We wake up into violent waves of activity and keep our mind and body active until the last second before we go off to sleep. Thus what was a natural state of happy blissful swastha state as a baby now became a state preoccupied with worries and unfulfilled desires. We have forgotten our basic blissful true nature .But remember you have not lost every thing. You have not lost anything, although you feel that you are always miserable and unhappy. The fact is that this state of bliss, whether we recognize it or not is still the background screen on which all this drama of unhappy violent waves can exist. The unchanging vast blissful existence and consciousness is always the base like the water under the waves. It is the background blissful awareness that is reporting to you that you are happy or unhappy. It provides the base on which we experience suffering or joy. Thus the agitations and waves are visible on the surface at different levels of our personality as shown in the table below. The remedy is to enter into the background by recognizing the freedom that is inbuilt into our system by using techniques to get back to our natural state. These are at different personality levels namely annamaya pranamaya manomaya and vijnanamaya and anandamaya kosas. The details are given in the table below.

Note: Yoga practices take us back to our nature consciously!
In the modern life style, stress related problems are on the increase. Medical professionals are talking about mind body medicine indicating the need to deal with these diseases at a psychological level. Yoga texts said that all unhappiness and bondage including physical illnesses are traceable to an imbalance that starts at the mind level (Mana eve manushyanaam karanam badha mokshayoh). They also gave a model to explain how these diseases that begin in the mind level percolate into the physical system through these kosas. They also went on to describe how practice of these techniques can take us to our original nature and help in prevention of many of these diseases. When the sage is saying ‘niramayah’ he means ‘may every one live in harmony and balance of all these kosas so that one can prevent and /or cure diseases’.
I have an earnest appeal to you all. Please do not allow doctors to pump in medicines and carry out surgeries for diseases that are born out of mismanagement of your life style. Learn to recognize the root cause of the problem within yourself, do yoga practices that are therapeutically designed so that you can remove the root cause of the problem. Surgeries and medicines do have a role for immediate relief and taking care of injuries, infections etc.
Since deep inside our true nature is this blissful awareness which is the basis of spirituality we need to nurture the spiritual attitude consciously as much as possible. This requires constant awareness and regular practice.
May all see things good and auspicious!

Next sentence of the sloka is sarve bhadrani pasyantu…

This requires again our own awareness. There is so much comfort in looking at every thing as auspicious and good. Several people are of the opinion that if we do not look at the defects, then we can not improve ourselves or help others. This is not true. Appreciating the goodness in others does not disturb growth. On the other hand the growth that takes place by a positive feeling is the real spiritual way of growth. In fact if you appreciate the work done, your employee will put his heart and soul to function better each time. Seeing the good and treating every one as a manifestation of divinity helps you to develop a positive attitude towards life and be happy under all circumstances. This also helps the people around you to unfold their innate ability to keep growing continuously.

Let there be no sorrow.
And finally the sage says ‘Makaschit duhka bhagbhavet!’What a universal prayer. He has no enmity towards any one in the entire creation. This is the true wish of a great master who has seen the unity of existence. By saying this prayer the sage is leading us through the real spiritual journey which will lead us to the realization that our nature is bliss. Life is full of events. Some events lead to happiness and some are unfortunate and can make us miserable. Here the sage is giving us this spiritual lesson that even these difficult moments of life triggered by unfortunate events need not make us miserable. He is hinting that you have the inner freedom to accept them without any complaint.

Once again let us recollect that a prayer is complimentary to hard work .It is not some thing some one can give us with out putting our effort. It is also not some thing which can reject the unseen higher force behind any activity. Prayer is to give additional inner strength that can give us confidence to work with full energy. When we pray, you are tuning yourself to the un-manifest good forces in the web of universal consciousness that can help you to get the desired results. It tunes you to the natural laws. Many a times when your prayer was very deep and heartfelt it worked wonders, is it not? The results were so rewarding, you got more than what you expected. You wonder and say ‘Oh God, thank you so much. Your grace is so great. Things are too good. ‘I’ could never have planned it this way, Thank you my Lord!!.
Let us remember that all this process of spiritual satsang is useful and meaningful only if we recognize that ‘peace within is the basis of establishing peace in the entire globe here and now!’

Ego According to Vedantha

2009-04-05T12:55:00.004+05:30

The concept of ego is neither ontological nor philosophical in my view. It is a practical instrument in our hands. When we consider any thing as an instrument, then it is neither good nor bad intrinsically. But unfortunately it is the most misunderstood and wrongly punished aspect of our being. Normally, in most spiritual circles ‘ego’ is looked down and is considered to be a big hurdle in the path of one’s spiritual journey. Several questions come up while accepting this concept. Let us try and find a logical understanding of this ‘ego’, so that we can utilize this highly simplified introspective knowledge for the healthy growth of the individual to live a happy life free from all distresses which is the goal of any spiritual seeker. Let us pause and think without any prejudice, if the ‘ego’ was only a big hurdle and, a poison why such a thing was created by God?? Like many things which are good in one area and dangerous in another area, my feeling has always been that ego also must have its good and bad aspects. It may be that we have interpreted it wrongly and overplayed its bad aspects and made it a big hurdle to one’s evolution. It is like the food which can be nourishing when taken in the right way, in the right place, in the right quantity and at the right time (in empty stomach) and can become a poison and destructive when the conditions are not right. It is not the fault of the food but the application is wrong. Similarly, according to Indian philosophy there are both the good and bad aspects of the ‘ego’, just like a sharp edged razor which can be used for killing some one brutally or saving someone through a life saving surgery. We discuss about ‘ego’ and think that only adults can understand and realize the impact of ego on one’s life as it is too philosophical. But an incident happened which surprised me to realize how even a simple child can also recognize this concept of’ ego’. A group of our friends were watching a documentary on yoga and its relevance to modern man in which there were several elite people who were being interviewed to give their ideas about yoga, yoga research and its application as a science etc.. The anchor person questioned one of the participants of the panel, about his opinion on yoga. He started talking about how much he is committed to scientific experimentation, how many papers in science he has published and how rigorously he is scientific in his temperament etc. Listening to this for about two minutes, a small girl of not more than eight years sitting next to me said very innocently, “Why is he talking about himself and not coming to the topic?” It was interesting to realize that , while an innocent young girl could understand what is ego and also that it is bad which the elite adult , the speaker, could not .What could be the reason ? There are several reasons. Let us understand how Indian scriptures understand this inner stuff called ‘ego’ and how it camouflages itself as we grow into adults.

Ego , the self, can have dual existence, (a) as a distinct entity (the observer mind) or (b) connected inseparably with all aspects of our personality ,the entire body mind consciousness complex. Ego exists not only in human beings but you can find it in entire creation. That means every thing in this manifested world has its own ‘being’ which distinguishes its ‘self’ from others. Hence it cannot be good or bad; it is only a self distinguishing quality of the organism. Animals have ego, plants have ego and even the matter has its ego. In case of physical matter, we may not use the word ‘ego’, but we call it as its innate property .Thus, ego of physical matter establishes its identity and individuality, manifests as its fixed property and is predictable. .For example water follows the law that under normal pressure and temperature, it becomes steam at one hundred degrees centigrade and turns into ice at zero degree temperature. It is the property of the water. This property inbuilt into its nature distinguishes it from other substances. This is what I call as the ego of nonliving physical world and all objects share their distinct ‘self’ or ‘ego’. Similarly plants also have their own individuality. For example, roots grow downwards into the soil in search of water. The genetic programming is to find water and not just a downward growth. Hence, if the roots happen to come across an obstacle of a huge rock on their way, they know how to negotiate themselves to reach the water. This clearly indicates the inbuilt intelligence that helps the plant to survive and is achieved through this programmed effort to strive to reach a goal. This ability and intention to pursue its goal is the ego of a plant. Thus, in case of living organisms the ego takes on the property of trying to protect its own existence in addition to its physical property .This can be established so clearly when we see small plants which start their small roots in small cracks in a wall. These little ones, as they continue to grow, send their roots into the wall in such a complex network that even the huge stone structure may give way over time although their aim was never to destroy the wall. This ‘ego’ makes the widespread roots of huge trees break open and lift off the heavily concreted road surfaces for their survival. This is the ego of living things that is characterized by the law of ‘survival instinct’.

Further in case of insects or animals, we can see this ego for survival or the survival instinct has an added advantage of mobility. Try to disturb an ant that is resting, you can see the ant becoming alert at once and trying to run away or fight for its survival. This survival instinct can be found even in the new born.

In the’ Animal World Channel’ of the television i saw a live video, wherein the baby

Turtles coming out of their eggs early in the morning on the sea shore, were swiftly rushing towards the ocean! They were millions of them and not one of them missed their direction. Who told them that the ocean is in that direction and they have to go to the ocean for their survival? Even though at some places the sand dunes were going up and the ocean was far behind them, the turtles made no mistake. The anchor of the program picked up one of them and turned it around and left it on the sand in the opposite direction, the turtle wasted no time to turn around and proceed on its journey to the ocean! It is the ego of the turtle which makes it to do this way. It is the individuality which ensures its survival. This I call as the ‘good ego’, the very nature of the individual described as ‘Asmita’ in Vedanta. This ‘Asmita’, the ego, is the first aspect of our personality to take birth as we evolve as an individual and then comes the other aspects of our being that includes the mind and the physical body.

As human beings also, we all have this ego that strives for survival. This exists from the time of birth. This is very much visible within seconds after birth even in human babes. I was watching a documentary where the doctor puts the baby on the mother’s tummy as soon as it is born (even with out cleaning it) and in less than ten minutes, it crawled on the mother’s tummy to reach the breast! How did the baby know that the food is available there! This is the ego of survival.

In the case of human beings, apart from this survival ego which is programmed into our physiology, we have evolved enormous degree of free will which we may perceive as psychological ego. There are three aspects of this psychological ego that we use for our day to day functioning. These are- the doer ego, the identifier ego and the experiencer ego, which are called Kartrutva Asmita, Bhoktrutva Asmita and Jnatrutva Asmita respectively in Indian scriptures.

Let us try and understand what we mean by these three types of Asmita.

KARTRUTVA ASMITA

………………

Doer ego is responsible for carrying out the actions that we do and we need to do.

For example we have legs and in order to keep the legs in good shape we need to walk. ‘I’ have to walk;’ I’ need to walk and this requires the ‘ego’ which is the good ego. If we do not have this ego we can not take care of our legs. We can not keep our body in a healthy state. Say you are convinced that doing yoga is good for your health and you have made a resolve that you shall do yoga regularly. If there is no strong ‘doer ego’, you can miss out on the regularity in spite of being convinced about its benefits. Thus a strong ‘doer ego’ is necessary under all circumstances so that we do not become parasites on the society. In order to promote this good doer ego, wise people said that if you do not take care of your ‘self’, you are a sinner. This concept of sin in this context was probably introduced to encourage us to recognize that if one does not put in the right amount of effort through a strong doer ego, he cannot be happy.

A young man saw a caterpillar just turned into a butterfly and fighting to come out of its cocoon. With lot of sympathy for the struggling insect, he took a pair of scissors and very carefully cut the shell to release the butterfly out of its cocoon and was very happy about his success in helping a small creature.

Side by side, another butterfly also struggled and came out of its cocoon by itself.

Finally when both of them were out in the free world, the butterfly that did not fight or struggle could not fly because the wings had not grown fully. On the other hand, the one which had struggled through its life had strong wings and flew freely. We realize that even a butterfly has to nurture a strong doer ego in order to grow fully! Same way we have to do what we need to do, in order to grow. This is the positive ‘doer ego’.

There are two ways in which one can utilize this Kartrutva. The doer ego can be called Asmita when we do the work with a sense of duty which is the good Kartrutva ego. The same Kartrutva becomes Ahankara or ‘bad Kartrutva ego’ when we try to claim the ‘doership’. In the present day life style we see many stress related problems in high profile performers (executive stress) that can go on to many killer diseases such as hypertension and heart disease. The doer ego of such a workaholic person is very strong and effective that produces great results .But the problems of stress that goes with it is basically created by the ‘ahankara’, (‘I am the doer’) that goes with it and not the Asmita ego. The problem of such an activity is not created by the activity, but by the doer. Hence the solution does not lie in giving up the activity but changing the inner ‘doer ego’ through right understanding and introspectively change from Ahankara to Asmita. Of the several techniques that have been recommended for this, Sri Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita says ‘the fire called true knowledge of the self burns the action’ .Through the right knowledge, the Ahankara is removed resulting in complete freedom from the distresses of life including the so called executive stresses. How can knowledge burn an activity? Spiritual knowledge has especially no connection with activity. Knowledge has nothing to do with action directly. It is directly connected with ignorance. Knowledge has its role in removing the ignorance. Ignorance gives rise to Ahankara. What is this right knowledge of self? The right knowledge is to realize that it is really the universal intelligence that is doing the work using ‘me’, the doer ego, as an instrument .Ignorance of this knowledge obviously results in doership and Ahankara. With the dawn of the right knowledge that ‘ I am only an instrument in the hands of the divine universal will or the universal ego’, the Ahankara gets burnt. The moment the identification with this limited ‘I’, the Ahankara goes, the ‘doer’ falls and the attachment to the action also drops. Then the burden of ego is dissolved.

Here, the question that needs to be addressed is, how can such a person with no ‘doer ego’ function in this world after it has been completely burnt ? How can any one function efficiently without an intense commitment to the activity on hand? The answer comes from the following proclamation of the scriptures. After attaining this true spiritual knowledge, although the doer ego does not exist in its earlier form, its functional aspect continues to be available with all its capabilities. Hence the practically useful functional abilities that are necessary for survival and doing good to others etc., do not go away, but the snow balling effect of the repercussions of good and bad actions(called vasanas) are completely erased. The example for this is that of a burnt rope.

Krishna says that even after the action is burnt by the fire of knowledge, he continues to function with an ego with utmost efficiency. A burnt rope that is not disturbed has exactly the same appearance as before but cannot act any more like a rope. Another useful example of a burnt ego is that of a burnt seed which has the same size, shape and appearance as a live seed but it has lost its potential to sprout any more. This seed does not give rise to any branches and reproduce more seeds. Same way a burnt action cannot gather unconscious impressions (vasanas) of suppressed emotions such as unfulfilled desires, hatred, anger, frustration etc. The activity goes on with a sense of duty and joy without any distress. Sri Ramakrishna says that the realized person goes on working like a wheel that continues to rotate and function with gathered momentum without collecting any mass on itself. It is like the way light removes the fear of darkness. Light literally has nothing to do with fear, but it was the non visibility of the obstacles in the room due to darkness that created the fear of a non-existent danger. And the moment he light is lit, things become clear and the fear drops off. If you were holding a gun to protect yourself from danger in the dark room, you drop that gun too. Light directly can not drop the gun but it appeared that light dropped the gun from your hand. Same way knowledge drops the identification of the doer. Once the doer is dissolved, the fever of activity also disappears.

The difference between an ordinary person’s Karma (the unconscious non erasable impressions created by any action )and the Karma of a Jnani is that, in the case of a Jnani, karmas are like lines drawn on the water and in case of an ordinary person the Karma is like line drawn on a stone. Even of you take a sharp instrument and draw a line on water the line will not last even for a second. On the other hand even if a soft substance like water falls on the stone repeatedly it can make lasting impressions as we see in river beds. This is to say that in case of a Jnani even if he does work of killing as a worrier he will not be affected but in case of an ordinary person who does the work with ahankara, even a respectable action of giving a charity, can lead to intense attachment and result in deep impressions (called punya vasana).

We claim credits for things for which we are not really responsible and we become a Kartru for that action. For example, we say ‘I breathe’. We cannot take even a single breath by our own effort if the system fails. If the “I”, the ahankara type of (bad) ego had to decide to do the job of breathing, we would have been dead by now. Many things which we are supposed to do, we conveniently forget and this can be one of them because taking breath is such a monotonous activity and hence this has been programmed into our nature and is the Asmita type of doer ego. God has given us legs and we are supposed to walk. How many of us walk regularly? God has given us joints and wanted us to regularly exercise them but we don’t do it and land up with ailments like arthritis. That is why God kept the activity like breathing to go on by itself but we claim that ‘I breathe’! Similarly we say ‘I have given birth’ to my son. Giving birth to another human being is such a great act of creation that only God can do that and in this process he uses us as an instrument .We are only the birth canal and nothing more than that! But we do have the responsibility to take care of them to develop into a healthy human being. When we say ‘I gave birth to him or her’ it is Kartrutva Ahankara which is bad, but when we take the responsibility of bringing up our children that is Kartrutva Asmita which is good.

When Buddha came back from his tapas of several years, his father said to him ‘I gave birth to you!’ Buddha replied, “Oh Father, when you were not born ‘I’ was there. I am coming from the time when this universe was created and you are also coming from the time of creation. We are meeting here in this life like two passengers meeting in a train. We both only happen to meet here as father and son!”

Another form of Kartrutva Ahankara is found in organizations. There are many responsible members in the structure of an organization to run it efficiently. Some times, some people want to take on every thing on their own shoulders and are never satisfied with any one else’s way of functioning and they tend to suffocate the other functionaries. Here the intentions may be good but the ego of one person wanting to be the Ahankara Kartru is the sickness that prevents him from functioning with a peace of mind and getting the joy of performing! In addition it also comes in the way of the growth of the other persons in the organization. Here, the litmus test is whether the activity is done using Asmita or Ahankara type of ego. If one can nurture the capacity to move from Ahankara to Asmita, then it will help them to enjoy the work they are doing .This helps one to grow. But if the work is done with Ahankara Kartrutva then the person will not grow.

When I was working as an engineer, one of my colleagues- a senior executive, wrote a very unsatisfactory report about his junior and sent it to the administration asking them for extension of his probationary period and not to make him a permanent employee although he was his close friend at a personal level. But we all knew that the junior was very capable, intelligent, and hard working. The administration asked me to solve this problem! I observed their way of functioning in the office for ten days. I noticed that, whenever there was any work in the office, the senior would ask the junior to attend to it and within a few minutes he would go back and check whether the work has been completed. If it was not completed he would conclude that the junior is not confident to tackle the problem, immediately jump in and complete the work himself. Poor fellow, the junior employee had to stand there as a mere spectator with folded hands! Now, this senior executive has a valid point when he said ‘look at his way of doing. How can you expect me to give him a good report?’ I interfered and explained to him that he, as a senior is not allowing the junior to grow. I advised him,’ give him an opportunity, give him time, let him do mistakes and you please correct his mistakes and help him to grow’. The senior understood and gave him time to finish the work at his own pace. When the junior was given the freedom and opportunity, in less than three months, he came up so well that the same senior, not only sent a good report but also mentioned that this junior should be working under him only. This is a very subtle Kartrutva ego! This Kartrutva ego undermined the Kartrutva responsibility of training a junior. This can be seen happening in many organizations where very efficient seniors cannot create and recognize capable juniors to take over!. Thus the Karturtva ego is not always bad . One needs to grow from the doer ego to the responsible ego

BHOKTRUTA

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The second type of ego is the ‘experiencer’ ego or the Bhoktrutva Asmita. We require this experiencer ego to perceive and experience the inputs from the world around us through our sense organs such as eyes, ears etc. Hence the experiencer ego is incorporated into the act of perception. For example, the eyes carry the experience of light and its diversities.

Seeing is an experience and we are continuously guided by this experience.

Sense perception is a direct experience for which we don’t have to depend upon anybody else’s experience (This is called pratyaksha pramaana). We say, ‘I have seen with my own eyes’. I see through my eyes and not through your eyes. We see using my experiencer ego and not someone else’s experiencer ego.

This ‘I’ who sees cannot be replaced by any amount of technological development. When I was a boy of ten years, I went to an ophthalmologist to get my eyes tested. At that time the sophisticated technology was not developed. The doctor put a frame on my eyes and mounted a lens and he asked me whether I see clearly. After a few trials, I said that ‘wow, this lens is the best as ‘I’ can see clearly with this’. Then the doctor gave me a prescription of that particular power of glasses. Recently I had an eye checkup in USA and this time it was they used the latest computerized technology. A gadget was mounted on my eyes and some computer signals were generated. But this time also the decision was made based on my inputs as to when I see it blurred or when I see it clearly. The experiencer is important for right perception happen and it can not be replaced how ever much the technology develops. This experiencer ego is a life saving mechanism. The experience brings about responses that can invite immediate self protective actions. Like the experience of pain or suffering, experience of a foreign and dangerous virus entering our system through the nasal passage or a wrong food put in the stomach etc.. This perception immediately sets the system into action and helps us to protect ourselves. If there is discomfort, immediately the child cries to indicate that it is experiencing some thing which is not agreeable with the system and the mother immediately responds. That is the experiencer ego which is present even before the intellect is born. Therefore, the experiencer Asmita does not belong to intellect. For example, when a wrong and unhealthy material enters through the air that we breathe, immediately the nasal passage responds by sneezing.

This is the experiencer ego which is the good part of our ego. Every part of our body has its own experiencer ego which protects not only itself but has the ability to respond suitably to protect the whole body.

The experiencer ego is also responsible for our sensitivity. We have the capacity not only to experience our own pains and sufferings, but we do experience the pain, suffering and joy of others. Even the pet dog in your house is sensitive to your pleasures and pains, your anger and joy etc.

Thus we have seen how important the experiencer ego is, for the sake of healthy survival. It also becomes a problem when it functions the ahankara way and not the Asmita way..

Sensitivity is a gift and a sign of evolution, but oversensitivity or wrong sensitivity can create problems. This oversensitivity can lead to unnecessary responses that can upset our emotional balance resulting in agitation, anxiety, depression etc. with the resultant health problems. For example, many do not have the sensitivity to be clean and neat .That is the reason the preparatory steps of ashtanga yoga prescribes shoucha or cleanliness (outside and inside) as one of the important steps to promote and maintain cleanliness and orderliness. This is one of the niyamas, the individual disciplines. But some times people can be so obsessed with cleanliness that their whole time is spent on cleaning and arranging things that they can do nothing beyond and their life revolves around that for ever. At that point they can only see dirt every where and that can turn into a disease called obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) !

Same way, our good Bhoktrutva ego aids in healthy perception of smell so that we can smell good fragrance to enjoy and smell bad things to protect our system. But if one becomes over sensitive, he not only perceives unwanted smells but can be so sick that his life becomes miserable. On close observation, we can see that this is not because of sensitivity of the sense organ that he is in trouble but he is suffering because of his attachment to the sensitivity. Therefore the experiencer is Asmita which is useful and the attachment to the experience is Ahankara which is suffering!

JNATRUTVA

……………….

The third aspect is the identifier ego which is known as Jnatrutva Asmita. This identifier ego is very important and exists even in plants and animals. Because of this ego, a dog can recognize a dog, and not only as a dog but can distinguish a ‘she dog’ from a ‘he dog’. A he-dog not only recognizes a dog but he also recognizes whether the other one is she dog or he dog. If the other one is a she dog then he approaches it a wagging tail but the other dog happens to be a male then he is ready to fight or run away for life. This recognition is necessary for the sake of maintaining the species. This shows, though the dog does not know the word called dog, he knows that the other one belongs to his own species. This is its Jnatrutva ego. Similarly we also have identification ego, the Jnatrutva Asmita.

Even in human beings also, this Jnatrutva ego has the two dimensions of species and sex identity as seen in animals. The moment we see another human being we feel a form of comfort that we can not experience with animals or plants around us. We also have the ego that identifies ourselves as a man or a woman. This identification is so strong and deep that it will not leave us even in our dreams. In dreams also we belong to the same gender. This is the power of Jnatrutva Asmita. This identification is very important to maintain the social order and discipline.

In the society, the Jnatrutva Asmita has other forms of identities. A father has father’s Asmita, mother has mother’s Asmita, a child has child Asmita, a citizen has his citizen Asmita etc. this identity or Asmita provides the necessary social bonds and fixes their roles in the social organization.

For a family to survive healthy and happy, all these forms of Asmita are very important. In the Indian society particularly there are such strict adherences to family structure that they observe their roles with religious rigor. We have such stories from Ramayana.

Lakshmana, the younger brother of Rama had identified so intensely with his role of protecting them that Seeta, the elder brother’s wife, became his mother for the entire period of their stay in the forest. His deep respect for her made him always look at her with head down. This aspect has been brought out poetically by the poet Valmiki. When Seeta was abducted and was being taken away by air in Pushpakavimana by air by the evil Ravana, very thoughtfully Seeta bundled some of her ornaments and dropped on a hill when she heard some voices so that this may guide Rama to find her. . The monkey army on the hill had found them and had preserved them. When ram reached that place in search of Seeta and Sugreeva the chief of the monkeys showed them to Rama ,he says ‘Oh, lakshmana ,The memories of Seeta by looking at these ornaments are filling my eyes with tears .I just cannot identify them . Can you please help me?’ Lakshmana examines them and indentifies only her toe rings and says, ‘My dear brother, I am sure these are her toe rings as I would see them daily when I bow down to her feet. In the morning’. He could not identify the necklaces or bangles as he never would raise his head in front of mother Seeta.

That way, he sets an example for how a brother should respect his sister in law.

Just like we all have our roles (role ego or role Asmita) and responsibility for the health of the family, we also have a responsibility in the society too. In society a teacher has teacher’s Asmita and an executive has executive’s Asmita etc. Same way all the roles have their respective egos. If a person who is a teacher does not have that teacher’s ego he can not be an efficient teacher, like the way a father who does not have a father’s ego is not an efficient father. In an organization it is also necessary that we not only have to take care of our own Asmita but we also need to protect the organizational ego. For example if you are the chief of an organization and if you cannot uphold the ego of your juniors in the company in front of others, then not only the outsiders do not respect the organization but they loose their respect for you also.

The role ego is important. One has to have the core competency. Adi Shankaracharya in this context says that those who have this core competency are Adhikarinah. Therefore it has to be understood that the role ego is actually the responsibility of a person and is not for feeling egoistic about it. But unfortunately today when one assumes administrative positions, they become egotistic and tend to lose their responsibility. Especially when one gets into political positions it becomes a matter of Ahankara and not Asmita. It generally happens that people who occupy high positions end up as poor administrators because they are not competent to adhere to their Asmita ego to function with responsibility and end up becoming egoistic and self centered due to the Ahankara Bhoktrutva.

In Ramayana, when it was decided that Rama was to be enthroned as the prince, Sage Vasishtha says to Rama, ‘my dear Rama, this is a time for people of Ayodhya to celebrate as they are going to have a great prince, but for you, this is the time for contemplation as you are taking up the responsibility for the kingdom. Becoming a prince is to take up responsibility for the entire community by nurturing the king Asmita and give no room for the king Ahankara to capture your mind’.

When Asmita ego is at work the person identifies with the position, only during the work because this ego belongs to the position and not to the person. But ordinary persons do not understand this. The ignorance of the Ahankara ego is to identify with the position inseparably. This identification results in making a teacher behave like a teacher even while he is not teaching. A doctor becomes a doctor even in the shopping place. He may be playing cards in a club, but he thinks that he is doctor there too. They don’t realize that it is a big burden to carry that title wherever they go. We tend to forget how to be a simple common human being. When he is giving medicine to a patient, identifying with the position of a doctor gives him the freedom and authority to function efficiently as a medical doctor. But in the market place, being a doctor takes away this freedom which a common man can enjoy. We tend to forget that we are a common man and want to ride over others. This is like an actor is doing a role where he becomes a murderer or a criminal but he is not so otherwise when he is not on the stage. In fact, if only he actor does the role like that then only he can do it much more effectively than when he gets lost and becomes the role that he is playing! Once the famous Indian scientist and highly respected person in early nineteenth century Eswarachandra Vidyasagar was watching a stage drama being played in Calcutta sitting in the front seat he was totally absorbed in the play. A person who was acting like a bad person was giving such a trouble to the young lady character. It was all in the drama but Eswara Chandra Vidyasagar felt it so real that out of total rage he got up and hurled his shoe at that actor. The person immediately caught the shoe and paid his respects to the professor saying, “Sir, I received many many mementos for my acting but to day what I received in the form of your shoe is the most precious one and I would like to preserve it for the life time. Please allow me not to return this shoe to you,”

Only then Eswara Chandra Vidyasagar, realized what happened! An actor does much better wok than a person who forgets this and gets attached to what role he is playing.

Once the governor of Kyoto Mr. Kitagagi went to a Zen master and gave his visiting card to the young boy sitting at the front desk to be presented to the master. The moment the young boy saw the card , he was alerted, filled with fear, because such a great person had come to see the master, and responded saying “Sir, please wait here , I shall show this card to the master and come back to you to take you in”. The boy rushed in and presented the card to the master.

The master was busy in talking to some body and casually looked at the card and continued his dialogue. The boy became restless and tried to draw the attention of the master to the card. Master replied, “Wait! Let me finish my work on hand before I attend to the card”. After a while, he slowly looked at the card from top to bottom and with a harsh tone said, “Why is this man here? Ask him to get out immediately!” The boy was surprised at the harshness in the tone of the master. The boy could not say any thing and hesitantly came back to Mr. Kitagagi who was eagerly waiting expecting the answer from the master to bring him in. But the boy said “sir, the master is busy.” Kitagagi said, ‘I can wait I am not in a hurry’. Now the boy was in trouble and and had to say, ‘Sir, may be he is not available today’ as he did not want to repeat the harsh words of the master to the governor. Looking at the discomfort of the boy the Governor asked him, “Tell me exactly what the master told you?”

The boy narrated every word that the master had said very apologetically. The governor went in to deep thinking for a moment. Suddenly he took the card and scratched the word ‘governor of Kyoto’ and asked the boy to produce it to the master. The boy did not feel comfortable. But very reluctantly he went in and showed the card. The moment the Zen master saw the card, with a great joy he told the boy ‘why is he sitting out side? Please bring him in”. In fact, the master got up from his seat, walked towards the door and said ‘Kitagagi, please come in’.

In this anecdote, one can see that the governor is necessary for a state. But he was carrying this burden of a governor even when he came to the Zen master.

A seeker of truth has to drop all burdens. We tend to carry the burden and suffer because of inseparable identification of our ego with the position we hold.If this identifier ego can identify only at the time of being in that position, then it is Asmita and if the Jnatrutva ego becomes identified inseparably all the time and carries the burden around, then it becomes Ahankara type of Jnatrutva ego.

Thus we find the clear distinction between good ego(Asmita) and bad ego(Ahankara) ,in all three aspects of our being, i.e. the doer ego(Kartrutva), the experiencer ego( Bhokrutva) and identifier ego( Jnatrutva).This clear and useful distinction portrayed in Vedantic scriptures should help a sincere seeker to culture Asmita and get out of the bondage of Ahankara which is the ignorance that is repeatedly recognized as a hindrance to one’s spiritual growth . Let me summarize this in the following way.

Aspect	Asmitha or good ego	Ahamkara or bad ego
Kartrutva or doer ego	Need for doing like exercising, learning etc Allowing others to grow and develop taking the team in collective way	1.Instead of doing a work as responsibility but taking pride of it 2. Interfering in others works with a feeling I can do better…

Bhotrutva or experience ego	Being sensitive to not only the sensory perceptions but to others feeling and caring for that	1.Not only sensitive but also over sensitive and developing allergic tendencies due to attachment to sensitivity. 2. Growing sensitivity to that degree that one only sees negativity and bad!
Jantrutva or identifier ego	We have identification not only of ourselves but about others and giving respect to this	Identifying self with the responsibility. Carrying the position where it is not necessary.

Love

Raghuram

Thoughts of rebirth in the light of Vedanta philosophy

2009-03-03T00:53:00.002+05:30

When ever any non Indian of non Hindu comes to know that I am not only a Hindu but I also give talks on Hindu philosophy immediate stock question he/she will have is, ‘do you believe in rebirth’, or ‘why do Hindu’s believe in rebirth?’

Similarly when ever I conduct a seminar in Germany or Austria one of the interesting topics for discussions is rebirth!

I some times feel like being naughty and tell them that yes I believe in and their immediate question is why? My answer is because I am a Hindu. Next question some people have that follows is why Hindus believe in rebirth? I simply say that every one has some thing or the other they believe in the name of their religion, such as Jesus Christ is born to Virgin Mary and this is a belief. N the same way we believe in rebirth. I know that this is not real answer but that at least silence a casual enquirer.

The idea of rebirth is also useful in making certain situations light hearted. On one such occasion a friend an NRI living in US was very proud, saying how much that country gives importance to the recycling of the material once used and disposed off, that they have separate bins for waste paper and separate bins for plastic and separate for glass bottles and how little India pays attention to recycling. I tried to tell him in India actually our waste is also very less compared to west especially in those days. After some time I felt irritated because it is not in my capacity to implement any thing and I am a simple person; but he never listened to me. Finally I took chance to tell him, “no other culture thinks recycling as much as Hindu culture did, that we even thought of recycling our soul, and that is the reason we have the concept of rebirth!” he was at once stunned!

For a sincere and serious student there is a detailed explanation with minimum assumptions possible for rebirth on the basis of simple experiences and the scriptural support which I shall try to present here. The idea of rebirth is also useful in making the direction for our approach in life!

Krishna addresses it very directly and in a simple manner. According to him what is the body which is apparent reality is an ever changing reality. But in order for this to exist there must be an unchanging inner reality which is hidden behind and which is also non-apparent reality. Krishna says that we are the unchanging reality and what is changing in the form of death and decal is like when ever our dress is worn out we change it and put on new dress. Similarly we have passed through childhood youth and old age, and we will come back in new body. The underlying reality which is we are can not be cut by sword or burnt by fire or wet by water. Where there is no question of birth and death where is the question of rebirth! But we need to experience that we are that undying principle and what we see as dying is the unreal. This is where Hindu philosophy gives the methods of Sadhana for achieving that experiential state.

How can we experience that unchanging aspect within us? The process is of translating this idea into experience is called meditation. I meditation we sit comfortably and consciously de-identify from the physical body, and then develop absolute nonattachment from Prana and mind which is pranic personality and mental personality- pranamaya kosa and manomaya kosa, as further journey de-identify from intellectual and bliss personality- vijnanamaya and anandamaya kosas deep within, and finally be that and finally be that which is non of these personalities and you are mere awareness. This is described in Taittiriya upanisad as the following sloka

Tatra Annamayam Atmanam upasankramati. Pranamayam Atmanam Upasankramati

Manomayam Atmanam Upasankramati. Vijnanamayam atmanam Upasankramati

Anandamayam Atmanam Upasankramati

Yato vacho na nivartante Aprapya manasa saha Anandam brahmano vidvan…

The student then rises beyond the identification of physical personality and pranic or life force personality and then he rises above the level of mental and intellectual personalities and finally he goes beyond the bliss personality and then becomes one with the Brahman which is beyond all states which can be reached by mind or intellect or emotions. This is not only a philosophy but the Upanishad gives it as the method of spiritual practice or reaching or realizing the goal of life.

The personalities from annamaya kosa to anandamaya kosa are of the quality of coming and going and that which is beyond is not the same and that we are. In other words, truly speaking we do not belong to that aspect which is coming and going and we are the one beyond. Therefore the Upanishads also mention that one who realizes that will not have any bondage.

There is another logic Upanishad gives to explain about our existence beyond this changing physical body and its various aspects. This is also given in a simple way in Bhagavad-Gita.

Dehinosmin yatha dehe kaumaram yavvanam jara,

tatha dehantara prapti, Dheerah tatrana muhyati. 2-12

Jatasyahi dhruvo mrityuh, ……2-27

We are the ‘dehi’ one who has the body and like the way we remain through the body ‘deha’ as it is undergoing the changes such as childhood, youth, adulthood and finally dies, in the same way we remain one body after another body too and this does not depend upon your consciousness! One, who knows about this truth, is not affected by birth and death.

We can agree to the idea that we are behind the flow of life called childhood youth and adulthood etc, but several questions rise as a result of this way of looking at life. These are as follows.

1. Can we explain the mechanism with little more clarity how this process of coming back in a new body takes place?
2. What brings about in to new life?
3. How can I modify my life with this knowledge?
4. Why don’t we remember about our previous life or lives?

In order to understand these ideas some of the passages in Prasnopanishad are useful, when we try to look at them comparing them with day to day experience in life.

In Prasnopanishad the sage Pippalada, states that we are all born with life force which is called as Prana and this Prana is responsible for all the activities going on in this body.

The only one form of energy we get that we know of is the suns energy in the form of food we eat! The sage appears to be hinting us that apart from the energy we consume in the form of food there is another form of energy called ‘Prana’ which is responsible for all activities. This Prana is the grosser manifestation of the self which is in subtler form than even the mind and intellect realm. The ‘self’ drives the mind and which in turn influences the Prana and this Prana manifests that as activity at the body level. For example the soul or self having a thought of desire to see first of all creates the eye. Then this desire further becomes a force called Prana in the eyes and same thing will see through the eyes!

At thought level we don’t have any instrumentation for finding or proving and intention is much more subtle than that. Even when thought becomes Prana also we can not find out through instruments. But this aspect we can experience that we desire to see and we see through the instrument called eye and we desire to walk and we walk through the instrument called legs, etc.

Though this Prana within the body is same every where, depending upon the nature of activity this Prana is divided into five branches called Prana Apana, Vyana, Udana and Samana. These are not different Pranas but they are different types of functioning modes inside the body. While describing these Panca (five) Pranas excepting a portion of Udana the activities of all the other Pranas can be understood easily by observing the activities the respective Prana does in our body. For example, activities such as respiration is because of Prana the rhythmic up and down or in and out activity, urination and bowel movement etc are all the responsibility of Apana the downward Prana, Udana the upward Prana creates the activities such as seeing hearing thinking and similar activities. These are explained in slokas iii-5,6, of Prasna Upanishad.

In addition in sloka iii-7 an interesting point is brought about by the Upanishad teacher. Pippalada says, Udana is also responsible for taking you to heaven or auspicious worlds depending upon the auspicious deeds one performed in this world and the world of suffering for the acts of suffering one does in this world!

This can be simply taken in a mystic way saying that there are ‘heaven and hell’ some where in the space and one will go to the place as per once deeds. By taking it like that it will no more be logical and we loose some important pointers Upanishad it trying to convey to us. Let me try to understand it from the point of our experience in normal life of any individual.

The scriptures indicate and the modern science also accepts that our body is like a flowing river where water is constantly changing and fresh water is coming. Similar to that in our body also the old cells are dying and going out and new cells are taking birth and we are therefore constantly changing. A famous philosopher said that we can not put our foot in the same river twice because by the time you put your foot second time the river has already flown and new waters are there. But this needs to be further extended by saying that even your foot is also not the same by the time you put it for the second time. The cells in you foot also have changed.

Another point of experience we need to recognize is, let us consider the activity of Prana which is respiration. We breathe now and we are alive now, which means that the Prana belongs to the body here and now. Similarly the activity of Vyana which is conveying the information of some thing touching our skin and the message immediately goes to the brain which also means the activity of Vyana is here and now. In the same way the activity of seeing, hearing etc also belong to here and now. You can not say that we touch now and the sensation goes to the brain tomorrow, or I am feeling the sensation of touch of yesterday on my hand today in my brain. Which in other words, all these Prana activities belong to body. Keeping this in view it is very important to know that there is some thing of this Prana which does not belong to body.

There is one activity which does not belong to ‘here and now’. As I said earlier Udana is responsible for all the upward activities such as seeing hearing thinking which also includes memory. This memory we know is in several layers. A part of Udana is responsible also about the memory. Our memory does not belong to this body alone but it is the bridge between body and soul or consciousness. That is the reason though memory collects the information from the body it does not flow away along with body. It stays with us even after several days years stored in our subconscious levels. This memory is there even if the body is not there physically. That is the reason when we sleep the whole memory goes in to a shell in subconscious level. When we wake up then the memory comes back to the forefront.

At sub conscious level we have several layers. Our memory also will be stored in these subconscious levels. For example, we are not born with our names, name is given to us after our birth, and every one call us by that name and we learn to respond. We hear our name so many times that the name enters into sub conscious levels. That is the reason when we are sleeping along with several people and some one calls us by our name only we hear and others do not hear because the name they call will enter into our subconscious levels and for others it does not bother.

The same way the memory of our body is also deep in some layers of our mind. That is the reason we have the memory of the body even though we don’t have body. This is observed in several cases and the phenomenon is called as ‘phantom body experience’.

A friend of mine lost is thumb in a motor bike accident. The doctor put sutures for the hand where now there is no thumb. After ten days also my friend reported that the thumb which is not there is itching! Similarly we also come across people whose legs are amputated complain pain in that leg which is not there any longer. That means though the leg is not there the memory of the leg is there and is around the body part. If a leg is not there and the memory of the leg can exist, Hindu philosophy says even though there is no body the memory of the body exists around that body; which means even after death we exist and for some time we carry the memory of the body for some time with us.

Now let me summarize the thoughts we examined earlier. A part of Udana which carries our memory does not go away like all other Pranas go away as the body flows, since it does not belong to the body. We are soul or self or consciousness which takes this part of Udana when we die along with us. This is like the intention that we talked earlier. When we have body we have an intention and we materialize that activity since we have the necessary equipment called body is there with us.

This kind of phenomenon has been demonstrated very effectively by Dr Satwant Pasricha in several cases where she could connect the memory of some children in this life can be traced to a child existed in the previous life.

Therefore what we store in our memory goes with us whether we have body or not. If body is there then we can give expression to what we have if it is good we give expression to good or in other words we do good in this birth and if we have bad in our memory from previous birth we do bad. That is why in Hindu philosophy when one dies; symbolically we tap the head and say that the Prana of a person goes from the head. This is known as ‘Kapala moksha’.

The body memory stays with the soul for fourteen days. How our sages came to this idea we really do not know and they have therefore prescribed that we need to take care of the departed soul for thirteen days. Each day the son or who so ever is conducting the ceremonies will wake up and give him bath and offer prayers and feed him or her with the choicest food items for next thirteen days. On the fourteenth day all the family members are invited and amidst chanting of good Sanskrit verses from Upanishad bid final farewell to the soul which is supposed to be in the home premises for all these days. The scholars also say that the soul thus will feel satisfied that we took care of it.

When I joined as an engineer freshly graduated from college, I had a very senior engineer who was my super boss. He was superintending engineer and wanted desperately to become chief engineer. The whole office knows about how desperate he was and behind his back they made fun of his attitude. That super boss in addition had a great faith in the power of god and so called spiritual or godly people. He is also very religious and the moment he would see any temple in his way he would stop and bow his head towards god and pray that he should become chief engineer immediately. Every morning he has to tell the story to his subordinates about his dream where in he has seen himself as chief engineer at this project or that project! When ever the superiors call him he would say passionately that they must be calling him to personally tell him that he is going to be chief engineer. Any person looking like dressed in spiritual attire he would at once fall at his feet and ask for his blessings that he will become chief engineer!

One day I happened to reach office late and I didn’t want especially my boss to see me coming late, obviously. But to my bad luck as I rushed into the elevator I found this super boss already in the elevator alone! The lift door closed and it started moving up. To my shock I found my boss suddenly at my feet and asking me, ‘Raghuram, bless me that I become chief engineer’, I said, ‘sir, what is this you are so senior and I am just new entry how can I say any thing’? He replied, ‘Raghuram I heard yesterday some people talking that you also meditate and it is said that those who meditate will have powers. May be you have some powers so I want you to bless me’. With uneasy feeling I said, ‘sir, what will anybody think if he sees us’? ‘That is why I am catching you in the elevator, nobody can see us’ was his immediate reply! By the time we reached our floor we came out and he now turned to me in front of all asking, ‘Raghuram, why are you late to the office’? I was surprised because just now he was at my feet and now suddenly he became my boss!

This man was given to all kinds of vices and abused his body with drinking and smoking. As a result he developed sclerosis of liver and eventually was in deep coma. We, friends were by his side in hospital as his heart lung machines are working not allowing him to die. Ten days are over and the doctors also have very little hope for his recovery. People say that just as before dying the lamp glows bright life also shows a spark before the final end comes. That evening suddenly we found some little movement in his body which has been lying lifeless all these ten days recognizing that he is regaining consciousness I gave my hand in his hand and in his ears said to him, ‘sir, don’t worry. Things will be alright and doctors say you are doing fine and once you gain strength we will go home and you will be alright’! I only thought I have to give him some positive suggestions.

He recognizing my voice opened his eyes and told in feeble voice, ‘Raghuram, save me, I want to become chief engineer’!

I wondered at the strength of the desire that he nurtured to become chief engineer. It entered into such deep levels of subconscious states and unconscious states that he was in a total coma state living like vegetation for days and suddenly when he regained his consciousness for few minutes the thought surfaces so strongly at the top of his mind! I thought that this shows that the thought can be so deeply embedded in us. In few moments the inevitable happened and he died but I am sure his soul would have carried this thought of wanting to become chief engineer and would come back on this earth with a preformed agenda that he wants to become chief engineer. In the next birth he would acquire new impressions from the new environment and he restlessly runs to become some thing!

That is the reason our elders say that don’t keep in mind such thoughts which can make you restless and agitated so that that forms the investment for the future life. What we do in this life is the investment for the next life. Keep in deep memory things which are pleasant and happy s that in the future life you will make your life happy and if you nurture the thought that you are bound you will be bound and if you nurture the thought that you are free you will be free. People like Krishna and all are born free and have no bondage. When you are born as free person then you will enjoy the life blissfully with out any struggle.

Another positive note by looking at this way about life is that one need not feel bad that so much of life is already spent with out nurturing any good because what you do now on will be useful and you can shape your life.

Let me summarize the thoughts as follows.

We are a combination of aspects which have the qualities of birth and death called body mind complex and the aspect which is eternal which is known as soul or consciousness. We continue our journey even after death in the same manner that we give up worn out dress to new dress. Deep inside our activities are propelled by the aspect deep in our memory which is created in Udana. This aspect of Prana does not finish with the body but at the time of death we carry this memory with us the soul and we create another body suitable to fulfill these unfulfilled desires. If we carry bad memories of destruction, violence then, we come back with destruction and violence. On the other hand if we nurture in our memory good thoughts and peaceful ideas our life will be peaceful and joyful. Therefore Vedanta says that there is a definite reason for nurturing good not just for the sake of others but for our sake and our rebirth! When the sage in Prasnopanishad says punya loka and papa loka, they are not any where outside but they are what we create around us here.

EGO ACCORDING TO VEDANTHA - 2-

2009-02-17T03:07:00.001+05:30

KARTRUTVA ASMITA

Doer ego is responsible for carrying out the actions that we do and we need to do.
For example we have legs and in order to keep the legs in good shape we need to walk. ‘I’ have to walk;’ I’ need to walk and this requires the ‘ego’ which is the good ego. If we do not have this ego we can not take care of our legs. We can not keep our body in a healthy state. Say you are convinced that doing yoga is good for your health and you have made a resolve that you shall do yoga regularly. If there is no strong ‘doer ego’, you can miss out on the regularity in spite of being convinced about its benefits. Thus a strong ‘doer ego’ is necessary under all circumstances so that we do not become parasites on the society. In order to promote this good doer ego, wise people said that if you do not take care of your ‘self’, you are a sinner. This concept of sin in this context was probably introduced to encourage us to recognize that if one does not put in the right amount of effort through a strong doer ego, he cannot be happy.

A young man saw a caterpillar just turned into a butterfly and fighting to come out of its cocoon. With lot of sympathy for the struggling insect, he took a pair of scissors and very carefully cut the shell to release the butterfly out of its cocoon and was very happy about his success in helping a small creature.

Side by side, another butterfly also struggled and came out of its cocoon by itself.
Finally when both of them were out in the free world, the butterfly that did not fight or struggle could not fly because the wings had not grown fully. On the other hand, the one which had struggled through its life had strong wings and flew freely. We realize that even a butterfly has to nurture a strong doer ego in order to grow fully! Same way we have to do what we need to do, in order to grow. This is the positive ‘doer ego’.

There are two ways in which one can utilize this Kartrutva. The doer ego can be called Asmita when we do the work with a sense of duty which is the good Kartrutva ego. The same Kartrutva becomes Ahankara or ‘bad Kartrutva ego’ when we try to claim the ‘doership’. In the present day life style we see many stress related problems in high profile performers (executive stress) that can go on to many killer diseases such as hypertension and heart disease. The doer ego of such a workaholic person is very strong and effective that produces great results .But the problems of stress that goes with it is basically created by the ‘ahankara’, (‘I am the doer’) that goes with it and not the Asmita ego. The problem of such an activity is not created by the activity, but by the doer. Hence the solution does not lie in giving up the activity but changing the inner ‘doer ego’ through right understanding and introspectively change from Ahankara to Asmita. Of the several techniques that have been recommended for this, Sri Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita says ‘the fire called true knowledge of the self burns the action’ .Through the right knowledge, the Ahankara is removed resulting in complete freedom from the distresses of life including the so called executive stresses. How can knowledge burn an activity? Spiritual knowledge has especially no connection with activity. Knowledge has nothing to do with action directly. It is directly connected with ignorance. Knowledge has its role in removing the ignorance. Ignorance gives rise to Ahankara. What is this right knowledge of self? The right knowledge is to realize that it is really the universal intelligence that is doing the work using ‘me’, the doer ego, as an instrument .Ignorance of this knowledge obviously results in doership and Ahankara. With the dawn of the right knowledge that ‘ I am only an instrument in the hands of the divine universal will or the universal ego’, the Ahankara gets burnt. The moment the identification with this limited ‘I’, the Ahankara goes, the ‘doer’ falls and the attachment to the action also drops. Then the burden of ego is dissolved.

Here, the question that needs to be addressed is, how can such a person with no ‘doer ego’ function in this world after it has been completely burnt ? How can any one function efficiently without an intense commitment to the activity on hand? The answer comes from the following proclamation of the scriptures. After attaining this true spiritual knowledge, although the doer ego does not exist in its earlier form, its functional aspect continues to be available with all its capabilities. Hence the practically useful functional abilities that are necessary for survival and doing good to others etc., do not go away, but the snow balling effect of the repercussions of good and bad actions(called vasanas) are completely erased. The example for this is that of a burnt rope.

Krishna says that even after the action is burnt by the fire of knowledge, he continues to function with an ego with utmost efficiency. A burnt rope that is not disturbed has exactly the same appearance as before but cannot act any more like a rope. Another useful example of a burnt ego is that of a burnt seed which has the same size, shape and appearance as a live seed but it has lost its potential to sprout any more. This seed does not give rise to any branches and reproduce more seeds. Same way a burnt action cannot gather unconscious impressions (vasanas) of suppressed emotions such as unfulfilled desires, hatred, anger, frustration etc. The activity goes on with a sense of duty and joy without any distress. Sri Ramakrishna says that the realized person goes on working like a wheel that continues to rotate and function with gathered momentum without collecting any mass on itself. It is like the way light removes the fear of darkness. Light literally has nothing to do with fear, but it was the non visibility of the obstacles in the room due to darkness that created the fear of a non-existent danger. And the moment he light is lit, things become clear and the fear drops off. If you were holding a gun to protect yourself from danger in the dark room, you drop that gun too. Light directly can not drop the gun but it appeared that light dropped the gun from your hand. Same way knowledge drops the identification of the doer. Once the doer is dissolved, the fever of activity also disappears.
The difference between an ordinary person’s Karma (the unconscious non erasable impressions created by any action )and the Karma of a Jnani is that, in the case of a Jnani, karmas are like lines drawn on the water and in case of an ordinary person the Karma is like line drawn on a stone. Even of you take a sharp instrument and draw a line on water the line will not last even for a second. On the other hand even if a soft substance like water falls on the stone repeatedly it can make lasting impressions as we see in river beds. This is to say that in case of a Jnani even if he does work of killing as a worrier he will not be affected but in case of an ordinary person who does the work with ahankara, even a respectable action of giving a charity, can lead to intense attachment and result in deep impressions (called punya vasana).

We claim credits for things for which we are not really responsible and we become a Kartru for that action. For example, we say ‘I breathe’. We cannot take even a single breath by our own effort if the system fails. If the “I”, the ahankara type of (bad) ego had to decide to do the job of breathing, we would have been dead by now. Many things which we are supposed to do, we conveniently forget and this can be one of them because taking breath is such a monotonous activity and hence this has been programmed into our nature and is the Asmita type of doer ego. God has given us legs and we are supposed to walk. How many of us walk regularly? God has given us joints and wanted us to regularly exercise them but we don’t do it and land up with ailments like arthritis. That is why God kept the activity like breathing to go on by itself but we claim that ‘I breathe’! Similarly we say ‘I have given birth’ to my son. Giving birth to another human being is such a great act of creation that only God can do that and in this process he uses us as an instrument .We are only the birth canal and nothing more than that! But we do have the responsibility to take care of them to develop into a healthy human being. When we say ‘I gave birth to him or her’ it is Kartrutva Ahankara which is bad, but when we take the responsibility of bringing up our children that is Kartrutva Asmita which is good.

When Buddha came back from his tapas of several years, his father said to him ‘I gave birth to you!’ Buddha replied, “Oh Father, when you were not born ‘I’ was there. I am coming from the time when this universe was created and you are also coming from the time of creation. We are meeting here in this life like two passengers meeting in a train. We both only happen to meet here as father and son!”

Another form of Kartrutva Ahankara is found in organizations. There are many responsible members in the structure of an organization to run it efficiently. Some times, some people want to take on every thing on their own shoulders and are never satisfied with any one else’s way of functioning and they tend to suffocate the other functionaries. Here the intentions may be good but the ego of one person wanting to be the Ahankara Kartru is the sickness that prevents him from functioning with a peace of mind and getting the joy of performing! In addition it also comes in the way of the growth of the other persons in the organization. Here, the litmus test is whether the activity is done using Asmita or Ahankara type of ego. If one can nurture the capacity to move from Ahankara to Asmita, then it will help them to enjoy the work they are doing .This helps one to grow. But if the work is done with Ahankara Kartrutva then the person will not grow.

When I was working as an engineer, one of my colleagues- a senior executive, wrote a very unsatisfactory report about his junior and sent it to the administration asking them for extension of his probationary period and not to make him a permanent employee although he was his close friend at a personal level. But we all knew that the junior was very capable, intelligent, and hard working. The administration asked me to solve this problem! I observed their way of functioning in the office for ten days. I noticed that, whenever there was any work in the office, the senior would ask the junior to attend to it and within a few minutes he would go back and check whether the work has been completed. If it was not completed he would conclude that the junior is not confident to tackle the problem, immediately jump in and complete the work himself. Poor fellow, the junior employee had to stand there as a mere spectator with folded hands! Now, this senior executive has a valid point when he said ‘look at his way of doing. How can you expect me to give him a good report?’ I interfered and explained to him that he, as a senior is not allowing the junior to grow. I advised him,’ give him an opportunity, give him time, let him do mistakes and you please correct his mistakes and help him to grow’. The senior understood and gave him time to finish the work at his own pace. When the junior was given the freedom and opportunity, in less than three months, he came up so well that the same senior, not only sent a good report but also mentioned that this junior should be working under him only. This is a very subtle Kartrutva ego! This Kartrutva ego undermined the Kartrutva responsibility of training a junior. This can be seen happening in many organizations where very efficient seniors cannot create and recognize capable juniors to take over!. Thus the Karturtva ego is not always bad . One needs to grow from the doer ego to the responsible ego.

- to be continued...

Ego according to Vedantha -1-

2009-02-08T22:19:00.003+05:30

In the’ Animal World Channel’ of the television i saw a live video, wherein the baby

Let us try and understand what we mean by these three types of Asmita.

- to be continued...

More radio talks

2009-01-27T11:33:00.005+05:30

Below you may find the radio talks of Raghuramji in Stanford (http://www.itsdiff.com/) in Nov/2008.

yoga and society

Happiness – a yogic perspective

Definitions of yoga

Anger management

Bhaja Govinda - part 1

2009-01-12T00:58:00.003+05:30

In the below video, you may listen to the commentaries of Sri NV Raghuram on the first part of Bhaja Govinda, that is written by Sri Adi Shankaracharya. The satsang is recorded in November, 2008 during USA tour program.

For the full text of the manuscript Bhaja Govinda, please visit wikipedia.

Sri NV Raghuram

Sage Patanjali's Recommendations for Practice of Yoga

How to do Meditation - Meditasyon Nasıl Yapılır by Sri NV Raghuram

Guru Mantra Chanting by Sri NV Raghuram

Energy Transfer from guru to student by Sri NV Raghuram

Maitrimilan talk - August 2, 2010

Video Upload: What is health (Part 1 & 2)

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - Chapter 1 SAMĀDHI PĀDA verse 1 & 2

Newspaper articles from India Herald / Houston - USA

Video Upload: What is Bandhas and difficulties in practicing bandhas

Bhagavat Gita Talks - Chapter 2 - Sloka 58

Audio recordings of recent activities in USA

Video upload: What is Enlightenment / Samadhi ?

Bhagavat Gita Talks - Chapter 2 - Sloka 69

Video Upload: Initiation in Yoga

Sanskrit Chanting in Germany

Creativity or Killer Instinct?

Video upload: What is Ahimsa - Non-violence

Lecture video: Yoga according to Scriptures

Lecture video : Karma Yoga

Lecture video : Jnana / Knowledge (part 2)

video upload: significance of Chakras in spiritual path

Mail to Raghuramji and Nagendraji regarding Lalitaji's lefting her body

Lecture video : Jnana / Knowledge

Beloved Amma, Smt Lalthamma, left for her heavenly abode

Collection of Yoga Gems -1 & 2-

Message for Swamiji's Birthday

Video Uploads: Basics of Pranayama & Yogasanas versus physical excercise

More Question and Answers / 18th international yoga conference

2010 New Year Message

Annapūrṇāṣṭakam by Adi Shankaracharya

Question and Answer Sessions / 18th international yoga conference

Surya Namaskara Yajna of Yoga Bharati Movement (January 1-January 22, 2010)

SMET : Self Management of Excessive Tension

Basics of Yoga Therapy

Happy Gita Jayanthi !

Asparsha Yoga - Part 1

Pooja vs Prayer and worship

Dhyana or Meditation

Shiva Manasa Puja by Adi Shankaracharya

Interviews on Youtube: Indian Gods, Festivals, Calendar

Interviews on Youtube: What is Guru & Is Discipleship still alive

Predictions As a Science -5-

DEEPAVALI SHADDHANJALI offering

Nature’s way of management

Predictions as a Science -4-

Happy birthday!

Predictions as a Science -3-

Questions about "Predictions as a Science" from readers

Predictions as a Science -2-

Predictions as a Science -1-

Detroit tour program

Upanishad and Consciousness

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah

Ego According to Vedantha

Thoughts of rebirth in the light of Vedanta philosophy

EGO ACCORDING TO VEDANTHA - 2-

Ego according to Vedantha -1-

More radio talks

Bhaja Govinda - part 1