Amarnath Journey Prompts Reflection

Jul 19, 2004, 12.00am IST

I was on my way to the Amarnath cave in the upper reaches of Sonamarg. At a secluded spot, I stopped for a while to enjoy the beauty all around.



The winds, tall and green pines, the silvery peaks and the soft murmur of the Amrawati river below, cattle grazing - it was exhilarating. Why can't we experience this blissful feeling everyday?

Krishna talks about the immutable Ashvatta Tree whose roots are in the air and branches, touching the ground, symbolising the subtle truth that the world we observe is an inversion of the real.

We know that a reflection is always false, only the object is real. So, reality and perception are two different things.


Reality has been described as one without a second birth; changeless, immu-table, ageless and deathless. However, we perceive the world of births and deaths to be real. Are there two worlds, one real and the other, a reflection?


At midnight, some drunkards started rowing a boat. The boat, however, was anchored. They rowed the whole night. In the morning, they realised that they had not moved even an inch.


Similarly, in life, our boat is anchored to our ego, name, fame, home, family and above all to an unending desire. Human desire is a bottomless pit.

We do make pilgrimages to holy spots. We perform sacred rituals and give to charity but still, our mind is restless.

We should have a positive desire to concentrate fully on the Godhead, sublimating our mind and controlling our senses.

To be able to enjoy the bliss of the sacred is a difficult task. Once, a man asked Sri Ramakrishna, "Have you seen God?" "Yes," the sage replied, "just as I see you." "Can you show me?" asked the seeker.

Paramhansa asked for a bucketful of water, and told the aspirant to keep his head in water. After a minute, he pulled his head out, gasping for breath. Later, Paramhansa asked him what his experience in water was.

"Sir, I was breathless and was about to die. In that state of helplessness, I applied all my physical and mental strength to save myself."

Swami Paramhansa said "The way you applied all your senses, mind and nerves for a breath, will you apply all those powers to see God? If you really strive even for a minute, the next minute God will come running to you with a ton-load of bliss.
We tend to pray to God only for our worldly needs, which are much more than our requirements. Krishna says in the Gita, "Four types of devotees worship me: the distressed ones, those seeking knowledge, those seeking wealth and others seeking wisdom. Of all such devotees, the one who seeks wisdom is dearest to me".

Shrishti or creation means projection and expansion coming out of One. That is the evolution of the world. Krishna also says that at the end of a Kalpa, the whole universe - all the souls, whether in the state of birth and death or in moksha, including Brahma - will dissolve within Me.


This will be followed with the evolution of a new Kalpa, a new Brahma will emerge who will manifest the new Shrishti.


We do remember the sacred One when we are in distress, and this is how the English saying goes: "Man's calamities and God's opportunities". We must never forget God.


He is always concerned about us but our worship lacks concentration and devotion. Unfortunately, we remember Him in sorrow for our selfish ends and not in moments of joy.


Once we experience the sacred, the secret of bliss will emerge within us and all the joys experienced through the senses will get overtaken by intense spiritual joy.

Ashok Parimoo

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Oneness & Wellness: The Yogic Way

Jul 12, 2004, 12.00am IST

The word 'health' comes from the root word 'whole'. When we say we're "feeling healthy", we're saying that we have a sense of wholeness within us.



A person can be said to be of good health only if he feels complete in body, mind and spirit. Mere medical fitness does not indicate complete wellness in the true sense.

In order to experience this sense of wholeness and oneness, it's important that in body, mind, and energy functions, there is a certain level of intensity.

Physically, one may be healthy, but energies may be lethargic. For every physical or psychological situation that you go through in life, there is an energy basis, which in turn has a chemical basis.

In a way, modern allopathic medicines have been reduced to mere chemistry.

For every problem that arises in your body, you are just trying to take in some medicine, a chemical, and come to some kind of balance.

If you use one chemical to bring down one aspect, or enhance another, there is also a side-effect to this.

For this side-effect, there is an antidote; for the antidote there is another side-effect and antidote - it's an endless chain.

Whatever is happening on the chemistry level in your body is only controlled by the way your energies function. If a man has got excess acids within him, you introduce some alkaline medicine into him.


But why does he have excessive acids? Because of the way his mind, his body, and above all, his energy, functions.

In yoga, neither the body nor the mind is looked at in isolation - the focus is on energy. If your energy body is in proper balance and full flow, your physical body and mental body will be in perfect health.

For this, you have to go to the foundations of your energy system and activate it in a proper way, building a foundational yogic practice that establishes your energy in a manner that your body and mind are naturally fine.

No one gets to live in perfect conditions. The pressures of life, the food that we eat, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, can affect us variously.

The more our activities, the greater our exposure to things that can throw our chemistry asunder, creating health problems. But if the energy in our system is properly cultivated and kept active, these things will not have an effect.

When something great happens and you don't understand the process, you think it is a miracle. On the other hand, if something bad happens and you have no idea how it happened, you might turn superstitious.

Let's say you know nothing about electricity. It is dark. Someone comes along and flicks on a switch, and the room gets flooded with light. It's like magic. So too, in life, many things happen in many different ways.

You have limited yourself to just the physical, the logical - physical in experience, logical in thinking.

Right now, medical sciences are limited to just knowing the physical body. If anything happens beyond that, you think it's a miracle. I just call it another kind of science, that's all, because life functions in so many ways.

You have confined yourself to certain limitations.

This life energy in you created your whole body - bones, flesh, heart, kidney, everything. Do you think it can create health? If your energies are kept in full flow and proper balance, they are capable of much more than just health.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

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