You don't have a soul. You are a soul.

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. 

This one sentence says it all.

Most people attribute these words to C. S. Lewis the author of the series  The Chronicles of Narnia 

My flower offering

I wanted to offer flowers to the Gods, one fell down on the earth and i discarded it, and then realized; without mother earth would it be possible for this flower to grow.

Then why do i not offer a flower which has touched the earth.

If you try to float.....you drown…....If you wish to drown…you achieve…

ख़ुसरो दरिया प्रेम का, उलटी वा की धार,

जो उभरा सो डूब गया, जो डूबा सो पार.

Khusro dariya prem ka, ulṭī vā kī dhār,

Jo ubhrā so ḍūb gayā, jo ḍūbā so pār.

Khusro! the river of love has an opposite, very  unusual flow

He who chooses to floats up will drown (will be lost), and he who abandons himself and drowns will get across and achieve what the world calls impossible.

What do these words, written in the 13th century mean…?

The realm of love has an unusual, opposite flow as compared to the flow of the material world.

To seek one must abandon himself completely and jump in this river without any fear

Then such a person makes his way to the opposite shore

It is necessary to fully immerse oneself in this love

The one who tries to float----he drowns.

These are the words of the sufi mystic-- Amir Khusrow. Applicable when one seeks his beloved or God…one has to jump in the river of love to drown.

  



Where women are worshiped, there the gods dwell. ………Rig Veda.

The cause of  the battle between Rama and ravana, the battle of Mahabharata.  Why were they fought? Because of a woman?

No..No..No.

They were fought because; the woman was not respected and this brought the end of those who did not understand the Divinity of a woman.

Jatayu who was wounded, his wing cut while fighting ravana trying to stop him from taking away Sita, kept on preaching ravana on the righteous path, he told him “this action of yours wanting to corrupt someone’s wife will bring your ruin”

Jatayu was a vulture having a linage of souls who had stood on the side of the Lord; and he spoke words of wisdom and tried to preach the righteous path.

We can all learn from the story of Jatayu.  

Traffic

I was most irritated whenever I got caught in a traffic jam; I called and said “I am caught in a traffic jam”.

Then one day I realized that my car was that traffic and a part of creating that jam.



And he was Enlightened..Nirvana Shatakam..Atma shatakam in story form.

What is the state of enlightenment?
I do not know;
I do not wish to understand it; 
I want to experience it.

I know one thing for sure that the path to this state comes from within.

No shri shri guruji or shri shri multiply by 108 or shri shri multiply by 1008 can bring us to this state; it is the journey of the soul, and the soul is the self.

I write this story inspired by Nirvana Shatakam; The eternal words of Adi Shankaracharya. And dedicate this article to all those souls who have little to do with the world and who strive for the progress of the soul.

The journey which begins with the prayer to the universe to lead us from darkness to light; till the day the soul comes out of all dualities to realize that without darkness light would have no meaning.

He grew up hearing stories of one enlightened soul known as the Mahavatar and he had a wish to meet him. He also heard a lot of stories about different baba’s; some known to have walked on water, some known to have travelled in thin air, stories of some giving up their bodies willfully.

In reality nor he nor his fore fathers had come across such people but there were stories and more stories.

He heard some beautiful words “….And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream…” and he decided to follow his dream, even though he did not know what enlightenment was; he desired to be enlightened.

Maybe this was the call of his soul. And he needed to experience it rather than understand it.

The spiritual super market had a lot to offer, because there was a huge demand, there was a huge supply.

He joined cults, and met Guru’s, followed rituals and took part in ceremonies.

After years he realized that the pious agony of the Gurus took him nowhere.

All of religion, all the cults, all the guru’s wanted to bond him, he was entrapped. These person themselves bound in their theories and believes, how they could liberate any one.

Everyone wanted to take charge of him, they wanted him to follow something, and no Guru set him free to experience the world, as they themselves were bound in their fancy dress and their titles.

He left them for good and started studying philosophies, tried to understand quantum physics, read the scriptures till the day he came across two lines of a saint.

पोथी पढी पढी जग मुआ पंडित भया ना कोय
ढाई आखर प्रेम का पढे सो पंडित होय

Pothi padhi padhi jag mua,
pandit bhaya na koi
Dhai aakhar prem ka,
padhe so pandit hoye

meaning:


Reading Books and Scriptures everyone died, No one became wise
whoever understands the small word ‘Love’, he truly becomes wise.

Still he kept on wandering from one temple to other, one river bank to other, he noticed that no one was interested in the onetime great Sindhu—The Indus river but people were attracted to the Ganga in the hope of washing their sins, and one day when the Ganga will dry up people will change their loyalty to some other source of water.

Now he was not well-seasoned in tradition, nor a part of the pomp of ceremonies, nor bound by theories, Nor corrupted by beliefs, not held in the bondage of religions or entrapped by philosophies.

He was finally free.

The mind which had entrapped him once; today that same mind became the cause of his freedom; his big step on the spiritual journey.

He no longer performed the difficult task of becoming someone’s student, nor did he perform the easy task of becoming a Guru himself.

He had neither merit nor demerit, he had neither virtues nor vices, nor was he high or low, neither was he pure or impure. He was neither liberated nor captivated.

He desired no one’s attention. He had no friends or enemies.

Neither was he interested in performing good deeds or bad deeds.

He did not have any chants or a mantra or a holy place not even was he interested in any pilgrimage or Vedic fire ceremonies.

He got up one day where he had no hatred or dislike, no desires.

Not even the desire to have no desires.

And he experienced eternal bliss.

Having opened his higher chakras to the universe and also his lower chakras to accept love, though he had no desire for the same, at the same time he had no reservations nor did he undertake spiritual practices or vows.

Slowly he did not associate his self with his body or the elements that made it or the five senses or the mind, ego or the intellect.

And that final state when the five coverings (pancha-kosha) that covered his soul were of no meaning to him, the big I had vanished, the I, the ego which bound his soul to these five coverings had disappeared and with that everything covering his soul vanished.

Today he was without any attributes and without any form.

He had no wishes for anything because his soul was everything.

He was himself Bliss and eternal consciousness.

He had no desire to fly or walk on water he had learned to walk on earth without that I which had held so many coverings on his soul; and whatever he had learned, he unlearned.

Then the Enlightened one whom he sought from ages to ages was in front of him----face to face-----When he saw his own shadow in the waters of the river.

And the Shiva in him danced the Ananda Tandava;

The dance of eternal joy.

The ex-dacoit wrote the Ramayana-We too can rise from the ashes of our life.

A part of infinity is also infinite.

When infinite is taken out of the infinite; what remains is also infinite.

When that infinite merges back to infinite; the resultant is again infinite.

Simple logic; isn’t it.

The Upanishads tell us this; not to explain mathematics but the philosophy of our existence, our soul.

Our soul has evolved from the infinite; after creating our soul that infinite remained as infinite, nothing changed.

Our soul being a part of the infinite is also infinite. {Having the same attributes}.

When it will merge back with the infinite; the infinite will remain infinite.

"Om purna madah purna midam
Purnat purna mudachyate
Purnasya purna madaya
Purna meva vasishyate
Om shanti shanti shantih"

this can also be explained as:

From Fullness comes that Fullness....

From the Whole, the Whole arises...

From completeness, completeness comes forth....

A perfect born out of the perfect....

Then why do we limit ourselves?

I have written this article because most people think that the path to light and enlightenment is a different path which can only be practiced by staying away from the world.

The term meditating in a cave in the Himalayas is often used.

More important than abandoning the world is to abandon what holds us to the material world.

One does not have to go to the Himalayas to realize that love is more profound than lust.

The Himalayas are 50 million years old and as far as I know the soul in us is ageless.

The person who seeks wealth; gets rich.

The one who desires love; that soul is one day capable of giving and receiving love.

The soul which seeks the light; will experience the light.

The light that enlightens, the light of God.

The only thing is that; that light will be the light of our own soul, that what we sought outside will emerge from inside and the world will experience one more enlightened soul.

If the ex-dacoit wrote the Ramayana and became the great Sage Valmiki; we too can rise from the ashes of our life; like the phoenix; the mythical sacred fire bird which has the ability to be reborn from its own ashes.

Break Free.

Do read my article on Einstein.

http://bhoj11.blogspot.com/2012/08/einstein-went-against-system-overthrew.html

There were many who dared to think and act against the fixed norms of society.

Adi Shankaracharya  challenged the society and stood up against the brahim's; breaking all customs, he is known as the biggest reformer and Jagadguru, literally meaning the Guru of the world. 

When Columbus insisted that their lay a continent on the other side no one believed him.

When the Beatles created an entirely different sort of music and dressed differently; no one accepted them, then one day they rocked the world with their look and sound.

Paulo Coelho when he was a teen wanted to follow his dreams; he was admitted to a mental hospital as he did not go with the traditional ways.

He grew up to write “The alchemist” the story of a youth who believes and follows his dream; this book has been translated into 71 languages and 65 million copies have been sold worldwide.

JK Rowling wrote “Harry Potter” an unusual children book, at first no one wanted to print it; ultimately she became richer than the queen.

All these people lived in their own world.

It was said that the dark ages will be the age of the machines.

This is so true; humans have become like machines, fixed ideas, fixed lifestyle.

People expect you to have a steady job, no matter you have to work like a machine throughout the day; people keep on asking you why have you not married after marriage they keep on asking you why you do not have children {to add to the burden of overpopulation}

People have become slaves; slaves to their fixed way of life.

Today how many school students are happy with the valueless education system?

If an adult wants to take a day off for from office, can he do it easily? Either he has to think of the loss of pay or his work load.

Can anyone dare to dress a little differently from the rest?

How many of us have danced when we felt like dancing?

How many of us cried openly in front of everyone?

How many times we had to check our emotions?

Humans can only claim to be free.

BREAK FREE

My next article will be on spiritual freedom.  

Einstein went against the system; overthrew accepted ideas and gave the world E=m c ²

Written on a tomb in Westminster abbey are the words “Mortals congratulate yourselves that so great a man has lived for the honor of the human race”

This happens to be the tomb of Isaac Newton.

Newton had introduced ideas like absolute time and absolute space and further said that absolute time and space respectively are independent aspects.

The world followed these principals for 300 years until Albert Einstein was born to shake the foundations of physics.

There was an answered problem---“how can it be that at the same instant of time the speed of light is same; both for an observer moving in the same direction as light and for an observer who is standing still”   

Einstein thought over this for 7 full years; he wasn't afraid to think differently from other people; then one day he dared to change Newtonian physics.

He said why we assume things; if the speed of light has been found to be constant let us take it as a constant; and the thing which changes is time, meaning moving clocks run slow.

The concept of absolute time and space were challenged; and Einstein proclaimed that; time varies and further, space and time are inseparable

The world did not believe him and ridiculed him; on his part Einstein got his constant ‘C’ speed of light---it took only 5 weeks in 1905 to write his famous equation   E=m c ². Today historians call it the miracle year.

If this equation is used to calculate the energy in mass, say a bus ticket which weighs less than a gram; this bus ticket has enough energy to run the bus for a life time.

It took him 2 more years to realize that the inverse also holds true; all matter is materialized from energy.

Spiritually speaking the fruit on the tree is not derived from cell multiplication alone but from energy from the heavens.

There are a very few people who live in their own world. Einstein was one of them and he changed the laws of physics; it all started when he had the courage not to follow fixed ideas.

What is due to the soul; the soul gets.

I love one particular incident from the Ramayana and that is the birth of the twin sons of Rama in Valmiki's ashram.

Sita gave birth to her twin sons Lav and Kush in sage Valmiki’s ashram in the forest.

The sage felt deeply hurt that the descendants of the Sun Dynasty       

{ suryavanshi} were born in a hut in the forest they deserved to be born in a palace among grandeur.

Just then a pupil called valmiki out to show him that their entire ashram was circled by the army of Ayodhya.
It has so happened that Rama had sent his brother Shatrughna to fight the evil asur {demon} Lavanasur; and on the way the army came across Valmiki’s ashram and wanted to halt there for the night.

Valmiki could not believe his eyes, where ever he saw; he could see the flags and symbols of the Sun dynasty, the army commanders and the horses. 

As if the entire army of Ayodhya was standing to welcome the two just born princes of the Sun Dynasty.

When Shatrughna was informed about the birth of the two babies he presented them with gold ornaments he was wearing which had the seal of the royal family.

Valmiki had tears in his eyes on seeing this divine arrangement; such welcome was due to the just born and they got what their soul deserved.

There was no point to worry; and Valmiki writes.

 होइ है  वही  जो  राम रचि  राखा
को  करे  तरफ़  बढ़ाए  साखा

Hoi Hai Wahi Jo Ram Rachi Raakhaa

Ko Kare Tarak Badhaye Saakha

What is destined will happen; there is no point in getting worried.

Maya---why is it an illusion?

Once I had this question about maya in my mind and just happened to open a page of a book at random; it was swami rama’s book; I got my answer.

One day swami rama went to his guru to clear his doubts on maya;his guru simply told him “tomorrow morning I will show you what maya is.”

The pupil could not sleep at night in the hope that tomorrow he is going to meet maya.

In the morning on their way back to their cave from the Ganga; his guru rushed up to dry trunk of a tree and wrapped himself around it; and cried out to his disciple to free him.

At first swami rama was afraid to go near the tree fearing that the tree would entrap him as well; but later tried to help his guru, but could not free him.

Exhausted he stopped to think; he realized that it was not possible for a dead tree trunk to entrap anyone; he said to his master “how is this possible the tree has no power to hold you; what are you doing?”

His guru laughed and said “this is maya”

We ourselves attach with worldly desires and then say that they have entrapped us.

Now the disciple understood that avidya {individual ignorance} and maya {cosmic illusion} were one and the same.

Does not the literal translation of maya---ma meaning no/not and ya meaning that; say it all, “that is not” but which appears to be real.

So the next time when we are attracted to something; let us not blame maya, but understand that we ourselves have created this bondage, like the guru who hugged the tree and started shouting that the tree has entrapped him.

swami writes that after explaining the philosophy of maya to him his guru further told him.“When we devote our mind, energy, and resources to believing in that which is non-existent, then it appears to exist, and that is maya. Don’t contemplate on evil,devils, sins, avidya, or maya and thereby put yourself in a state of stress and worry. Even spiritual people become preoccupied with blaming the world for their lack of progress. This weakness is significant in creating obstacles. For lack of sincerity, honesty, faithfulness, and truthfulness we do not realize that which we are. 

We project our weaknesses and think that the objects of the world are the source of our obstacles.”

He also told him to practice non-attachment and constant awareness. He said, “The strongest of bondages is created by attachment, which makes one weak, ignorant, and unaware of the absolute Reality. Maya, or illusion, is deeply rooted in attachment. When we are attached to or have a desire for something, it becomes a source of illusion for us. Those who are free from attachments and have directed their desires toward spiritual growth are free from the bondage of maya—illusion. The less attachment, the more inner strength; the more inner strength, the nearer the goal.

Vairagya and  abhyasa—non-attachment and constant awareness of absolute Reality—are like two wings of a bird which can fly from the plane of mortality to the height of immortality.

Those who do not allow their wings to be clipped by the illusion of maya can attain perfection.   

yogananda paramahansa had very rightly said “To tear the veil of maya is to pierce the secret of creation”

After writing this post I kept thinking about the sentence “When we devote our mind, energy…..to believing in that which is non-existent, then it appears to exist”    

Does this not explain the principle that our thoughts materialize; we and our surroundings are what our thought waves are.

We are capable of creating our own world with our thought patterns; simply because thoughts are energy and energy materializes.