Experience Directly The Nature of Life

Jan 28, 2005, 12.00am IST
Andrew Cohen.

What is enlightenment? The person who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, he has seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all his human experience. That explosive realisation liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in a relationship to life that is merely personal. Enlightenment is a condition in which the individual has come to the end of a fundamentally self-centred relationship to life.

What do you mean by the term 'absolute'? Absolute means free from limitations. Those who directly experience enlightenment find themselves infused with a consciousness that transcends time, a consciousness that was never born and therefore is free from death. They experience that which is immortal. They are no longer fundamentally limited by the conditioned human personality that they have exclusively identified with since the body was born.


Does it happen gradually, or instantly? It really depends upon the individual. But it doesn't matter whether it happens instantaneously or gradually. The only important thing is that it happens. Because as long as we are self-centred, lost in that which is merely personal, we are simply not going to be available.

Available for what? Available to manifest the profound and extraordinary evolutionary potential that in most of us lies dormant. This suffering world is in dire need of truly conscious beings — human beings who know who they are and why they are here.

But wouldn't moving beyond the personal discount many important aspects of human life? Absolutely not. The enlightened condition in no way denies any aspect of our humanity. The condition enlightens it. It means that our perspective dramatically deepens and widens. The perspective of the one who has not awakened is limited by definition. The reference point for all of his personal experience is the separate ego. But the perspective of the one who has awakened is free from this fundamental limitation because he has realised the absolute nature of life and the universal nature of his own human experience. And that changes everything. It transforms his relationship to being alive because the context in which he is living now infinitely transcends the merely personal dimension.

Therefore, the question I encourage people to ask themselves is: How enlightened is my perspective on my own personal experience? So would we see all our experience in a much, much bigger context? Yes. And that bigger context reveals itself automatically when we make the thrilling discovery that who and what we are, beyond the personal ego, is a profound mystery that is completely free from any sense of limitation. A truly enlightened human being spontaneously expresses that freedom from limitation as his own humanity. Indeed, simply through spending time in the company of the enlightened, we can awaken to that same mystery that is also our own true nature. In their reflection, it becomes obvious how, in our ignorance, we have been living in an alarmingly small context. And we see directly that it is that small context alone which creates the painful sense of suffocation and isolation that is so familiar in the unawakened state. The miraculous experiential discovery of the enlightened perspective is instantly liberating. And it is in this discovery that our humanity is finally set free to manifest its evolutionary potential without inhibition.

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Legendary Tales of True Sanyasis

14 January 2003, 12:00am IST
S Srinivasan

A true sanyasi is one who has no attachments to worldly things. He has no self interest and whatever he does is for the benefit of society. This is more a state of mind and does not depend on whether he is a grihasth, brahmachari or sanyasi. Once Swami Vivekananda was invited to Mysore. The king had arranged for a grand reception befitting royalty that included a dance by a dasi. When Vivekananda heard of it, he chose not to attend the reception. The dasi, overcome by sadness, sang a song to express her feelings: "Parasmani, which turns metal into gold, can convert an idol of god into gold as well as the knife of a butcher. It does not distinguish between the two, because parasmani is pure. Similarly, a true sanyasi does not distinguish between people. I was awaiting your visit, hoping it would give me an opportunity to cleanse myself." On hearing these words, Vivekananda felt ashamed. He rushed to the place with folded hands and told the dasi that he had become a true sanyasi only after hearing her words. Another interesting story of sages acting for the greater good involves saint Ramanuja. With great difficulty, he managed to learn the divya mantra from his guru. This mantra was supposed to absolve one of all sins and take one closer to moksha. Ramanuja's guru made him promise that he would disclose this mantra only to the most distinguished among his disciples. The very next thing that Ramanuja did was to climb to the top of the temple in a place called Tirukottiyur, and call out to the people of the town. He then recited the divya mantra in his loudest voice for them. He declared that he was ready to go to hell, but at least all the other people would be absolved of their sins and attain moksha. According to another story in the Vedas, Janashruthi was a rich man who was very pious. He would give donations of food and money to the needy and the poor. Once, while standing on the terrace of his eight-storied building, he overheard the conversation of two swans flying above him. One bird was asking the other: "Is there anybody greater than Janashruthi?" The other bird asked in reply: "Is he greater than Raickwer?" Janashruthi was intri-gued. He wanted to meet Raickwer. He thought that Raickwer would be richer than him and sent his men in search of him to all big cities. But they could not find Raickwer. Then he sent his men to towns, but they failed to locate him. Ultimately, his men found a person named Raickwer sitting under a cart in a small village. Janashruthi went personally to meet him with a cartload of riches. Raickwer was suffering from leprosy, with wounds all over his body. Insects were eating his wounds and if they fell down, he would put them back. He told Janashruthi that his wealth consisted of these insects. Janashruthi learnt about atmagyan and ways to reach God from Raickwer. Vedanta Desika was a great Vaishnavite scholar. Once, when somebody gave him diamonds, he threw them away, saying that they were stones. At once, the diamonds turned to stones. Once, a poor man approached Vedanta Desika for money for his daughter's marriage. Vedanta Desika sang Sristuti in praise of Goddess Lakshmi and it is said that gold coins showered on the poor man. Madhvacharya composed poems addressed to Lakshmi and he too was blessed with gold, with the condition that he could use it only in his next birth. Immediately, he took sanyas, as sanyas is a new birth, and utilised the wealth for public good. In all these cases, these sanyasis prayed for others and not for themselves. Thus sanyas is a state of mind and the true sanyasi makes no difference between human beings. He spends his time for the betterment of all.

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Inner Engineering for Effortless Living

Jan 19, 2004, 12.00am IST


Consciously, why would anyone choose to be anything where he has to seek something from someone or something else? Maybe out of his helplessness he seeks, but consciously would anyone choose to do this? Wouldn’t every human being want to be hundred per cent within himself?

This doesn’t mean you have to become totally self-sufficient. Always, there is interdependence, but within yourself everything is there; you don’t have to seek anything from outside.

Even someone else’s company is not needed for you. If another person needs it, you will give it, but by yourself, you don’t need anyone’s company. Only for external things, maybe you will have to go to the world outside. This is ultimate freedom.

Spirituality is not to be taken as being only for those who can’t do anything in life. If you have the strength and the courage to take up anything in the world and do it well, then you might also have the capacity to turn spiritual.

Only if you have the will and ability to do something constructive in life, can you be fit enough to seek the spiritual.

Right now, there is this impression among many that only good-for-nothings turn to spirituality. Spirituality does not mean merely wearing ochre-coloured clo-thes and sitting in a temple or ashram. But living on charity will not get one anywhere. That’s not spirituality.

There are two kinds of people who depend on charity: Highly evolved thinkers like the Buddha, belong to the highest order of those who live on charity. Most others merely live off others.

A beggar on the street and a king sitting on the throne are both beggars. They are continuously asking for something from the outside. One looks for money, food or shelter. The other, the king, might be looking for happiness, or ways to conquer another kingdom.

Gautama, on the other hand, begged only for his food, for the rest he was self-sufficient. Others, however, beg for everything else but food. A spiritual person has earned everything else from within, so he begs only for food.

Whichever way you think is better, be that way. Whichever way you think is a more powerful way to live, live that way.

Once there is no hankering, we will come to know what love, joy and sharing are. Sharing has to be unconditional. Setting up a whole life of barter may be conve-nient, but it is the way of the weak. This weakness is the first thing that has to go if you want to meet Shiva.

There are two ways: Gnana and bhakti. Bhakti means you make yourself a zero, then you meet Him. Gnana means you meet Him on his terms, you become infinite. Otherwise, there is no chance of a meeting.

Love, or bhakti, looks like a much easier path. It is, but there are more pitfalls on that path than in gnana. With gnana you know where you are going, you know if you fall. In bhakti, you don’t know.

Even if you’re trapped by your own illusions, you will not come to know about it easily. In gnana, every step that you take, you know. I can’t say it is a hard path, but it’s the path of the courageous, not of the weak.

The way we think is the way we become. Whatever you hold as the highest, naturally all your energies get drawn towards that. Once you achieve that, once inner engineering equips you to live life effortlessly, it will put an end to all your daily struggles.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

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A way to deal with frozen feelings

Feb 22, 2010, 12.00am IST
WARREN STAGG.


Did we ever grow up? Well, yes and no! A part of us did and some parts of us didn't. Let's find out how that happens.


Every child experiences all that happens around him with total awareness. In the first seven years the child's brain is like a sponge, taking in all sensory inputs and building his idea of his surroundings. As long as the environment is safe, the child learns with incredible speed. However, when the environment is scary or stressful, the child unlearns past learning just as rapidly.

In the early years of every child's life, whenever there is shock, violence, fear or pain, these intense emotions are imprinted deeply into memory. Whenever the same activity or situation is repeated, the nervous system and body subconsciously re-experience the memory of that trauma. This creates a blind spot in the child's neurological process and he literally goes blind to any alternative except knee-jerk, repetitive reactions.


As an example, if a toddler is happily playing with a puppy and gets accidentally scratched or bitten he might forget the incident consciously but never be able to like being around dogs and may not know the reason why. All compulsive behaviours begin this way and continue into adulthood, until we are willing to make another choice.


For instance, when a child is learning the alphabets, say ABC, if there is stress around him like people shouting or judgements like, 'You'll never do it right', or constant comparisons, this activity gets fused together with other sensory inputs like hearing and seeing and one package of memory is formed. From then on whenever he attempts to learn ABC or write he subconsciously remembers past events and feelings and the same stress comes on line. This interferes with his ability to do it well. Over time, the child may even avoid trying to read or write because he believes it is stressful and undoable.


Any emotional situation that takes us out of the present and into the past means that whenever the same kind of emotion crops up later in our life we return to the past for our reference point. If that point was at age three, we find ourselves behaving like a three-year-old. We feel childish and we behave childishly. Even worse, we condemn ourselves for being stupid or immature and through our mental self-talk; reinforce the problem while desperately searching for a solution.


Whenever we feel deeply stressed our brain and body goes into a fight or flight response. It's good if we can actually fight or run away, but most times we just freeze emotionally. Our 'frozen feelings' are the cause of this 'glitch' in our learning process. We know we should be able to make a positive change, but that doesn't change anything. With a sense of helplessness we fear the future and self-doubt rules our lives.


The process of change need not be traumatic. We need to understand that whatever pain we experienced in the past because of which we made certain choices, were the only recourse we had at the time. We couldn't have done any better because we didn't know how to. But we should realise that was then and this is now! We can get help from trained professionals and learn to unblock the negative emotions fused in our past that affect our positive future. We can choose to choose again. It's up to us. It's our movie!

(The writer is the co-founder, AJNA Centre for Learning, Pune)

E-mail: ajnacenter@yahoo.com

Website: www.ajnacenter.com

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Trimurti of Maths, Music, Meditation

20 January 2002, 12:09am IST
Osho, TNN.

Music comes closest to meditation. music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence — what the zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. when you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart. then you start, for the first time, hearing silence. silence has a music of its own. it is not dead; it is tremendously alive. in fact, nothing is more alive than silence. music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner. music is a device; it was invented by the buddhas. all that is beautiful in the world, all that is valuable in the world has always been discovered by the buddhas. only they can discover because they have travelled the inner country — the inner, immeasurable universe. whatsoever they have found and experienced in the inner world, they have tried to make something similar on the outside for those who can only understand that which is objective, who are not yet able to enter the interior of their own being, who are not yet even aware that there is an inner world. devices can be created on the outside which can help. listening to great music you suddenly become silent — with no effort. falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. you become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. you are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk. whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation — it has to end in meditation. if it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. that’s why much of modern art is not art. much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. it is just the opposite of real music. real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. real music takes you to the world of the beyond — what buddha calls the farther shore, even beyond the beyond. to me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. and without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. without meditation, music is simply noise — harmonious, but noise. without meditation, music is an entertainment. and without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented. hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. that adds a new dimension — to both. both are enriched by it. remember the three ms just as you remember the three rs. the first m is mathematics, the purest science. the second m is music, pure art. and the third m is meditation, pure religion. where all these three meet, you attain the trinity. my approach is scientific. even if i make illogical statements, i make them very logically. even if i assert paradoxes, they are asserted in a logical way. whatsoever i am saying has a mathematics behind it, a method, a certain scientific approach. i am not an unscientific person. my science serves my religion; the science is not the end but it is a beautiful beginning. and my approach is artistic, aesthetic. i cannot help you unless this energy field becomes musical. music is pure art. and if it is joined with mathematics, it becomes a tremendously powerful instrument to penetrate into your interior. of course, it will not be complete unless meditation is the highest peak, the purest religion. and we are trying to create the ultimate synthesis. this is my trinity: mathematics, music, meditation. this is my trimurti — three faces of god. you can attain to god through one face, but then your experience of god will not be so rich as it will be when you attain two faces. but it will still lack something unless you attain all the three faces. when you know god as a trinity, when you have come through all the three dimensions, your experience, your nirvana, your enlightenment, will be the richest. my effort here is to give you a total religion, which contains all the three ms in it...the journey is not going to be dull, it is going to be very alive. we are going to move towards god in such a multidimensional way that each moment of the journey is going to be precious.

(sourced from the dhammapada: the way of the buddha, vol 1 chapter 2 and vol 12 chapter 4, courtesy: osho world foundation).

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Dance of Shiva in The Golden Temple

27 January 2002, 09:58pm IST
Karan Singh.

Whenever the golden temple is mentioned, we tend automatically to think of the beautiful harmandir sahib in amritsar which is known worldwide by that name. however, there is another golden temple down south - the great nataraja temple at chidambaram in tamil nadu. this temple figures prominently in tamil shaivite literature and is considered to be one of the most holy spots dedicated to lord shiva, next in importance to mount kailash itself. numerous miracles have been associated with this temple in the centuries since it was constructed by the chola kings. its four magnificent gopurams or ornate towers, great temple tank with colonnades and the sanctum sanctorum covered with solid gold make it a truly unique place of worship. the concept of nataraja, lord of the cosmic dance, is a most profound one. it portrays the deity not as a static entity but in a kinetic form, which could reflect equally the great inter-galactic dance of the galaxies or the sub-atomic dance of the neutrinos. in his right hand lord shiva holds the drum, representing the great sound - the logos, from which all creation springs; the big bang from which time and space both flash into being. in his left hand is the eternal fire, representing destruction that is the inevitable counterpart of creation. had there only been these two symbols, the individual soul would have no locus standi. but there are two more arms, signifying more truths. the third hand, raised in the gesture of benediction, reassures the devotee, telling her not to be afraid, and the fourth points to his upraised foot as the path to salvation. shiva dances on a small dwarf-like figure which represents our individual ego. he is surrounded by a nimbus of light symbolising the vast unending cycles of time. from his matted locks the ganges flows down to irrigate the earth, while the crescent moon shines in all its glory. in one ear he wears a ‘male’ earring and in the other a ‘female’ one, symbolising the concept of ardhanarishwar, the creative fusion of the male and female entities into a single divinity. the snakes twined around his arm represent the kundalini power that resides at the base of the human spine - which, when aroused, leads to the transmutation of consciousness. this image of nataraja is surely one of the greatest artistic creations of the human race. if a single image had to be chosen out of the vast profundity of indian iconography to represent the quintessence of our cultural heritage, it would surely have to be the nataraja. there are beautiful hymns in tamil in praise of the lord of chidambaram, many of which are depicted through the dance form, bharatanatyam. one hymn that particularly describes his ecstatic dance is called nadanam aadinar written by the poet gopalakrishna, and it runs as follows: "so, in the golden hall, danced the divine one, / with celestial exquisiteness. long long ago, in kailash, his home in the north, / he asked the rishis to assemble at tillai on the / day sacred to the guru in the month of tai, that they / might witness his wondrous dance. the eight spheres of the universe trembled. adi shesha, upon whose head rests the world, swayed / in fear and shook the earth. from the storm-tossed waters of the ganga fountains / gushed forth. then the assembled devas chanted praise to the lord and gopalakrishna sang with joy in his heart. ornamented with hooded serpents, the hair of shiva / swayed as he danced. and his dance brought the world to salvation". there are several different kinds of tandavas, notable among them being the anand tandava, the dance of bliss and the vinasha tandava, the dance of destruction. the world today is experiencing a great deal of unhappiness and pain as a result of widespread unrest, violence and conflict. some of us would naturally hope and pray that the lord is inclined to the anand tandava rather than the vinasha tandava at this critical juncture in human history. perhaps it is our vanity or ego that causes us to believe that this is a critical juncture - for the shiva within us, there is no time or space. in fact, it is our conceptualisation of these two artificial constructs, that the tandava seeks to destroy.

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