We are our own worst enemies

• AJIT BISHNOI
BY WHOM, consciousness (mind, senses and body) of the self has been conquered by the self, his consciousness is a friend, and for whom, who has not conquered the consciousness, his consciousness remains an enemy of the self”, says Bhagavad Gita. So what should one do? “One should deliver the self by the self; shouldn’t degrade the self, because a person is a friend of the self as well as an enemy of the self”. (Gita, 6.6 &6.5) But what do we generally see? Many persons reach high levels of excellence in different fields and attain wealth, fame, power, etc, but succumb to the temptations of flesh, pride, vengeance and so on. One famous example comes readily to the mind. Ravana was a very accomplished brahmin. It is said that Lord Shiva had personally honoured Ravana besides giving him an important boon. Ravana, however, became very proud, so much so that he decided to kindnap Sitaji. Later on he was advised by nearly all his near and dear ones, but he wouldn’t retract. We know what happened to him ultimately. What is there to learn from this famous example? There are two parts in becoming successful. The first part is to put the necessary hard work, which many are able to do. The second part is the more difficult of the two, that is to stay on course. Any success, including in the spiritual field, gives the feeling of invincibility and a sense of superiority. No wonder Lord Krishna has warned in the Bhagavad Gita, “Out of thousands, hardly anyone strives for perfection. Out of those striving, hardly anyone reaches perfection”. (7.3) Why is it so? Because success, any success has the potency to make one proud, to look down upon others, and in many cases to become revengeful; that is how one makes progress and spoils it. Why ? Because one is deluded into believing that one is highly intelligent. “How else could such success have been achieved?” one thinks. Then one assumes that he or she can get away with such transgressions. Even pseudospiritualists do this. So what should one do? Be like a tree which bears fruits: the more laden with fruits it is, the lower its branches will bend. Become humble and stay humble. And better still, surrender to God. He shall be one’s guide. God promises such help. Lord Krishna has declared in the Bhagavad Gita: “Those people who worship Me with undeviated attention, meditating on Me, of those regular practitioners of yoga, I undertake attainment of what one does not have and security of what one has.”

Raise Your Kundalini, Expand Energy Field

Divyaa Kummar
Energy follows thought. Your energies travel to where you place your attention. Kundalini describes personal energy fields; and ‘raising your Kundalini’ really implies an expansion of this personal energy field. As we extend our individual energy fields from current self to higher aspects of Self, finally merging into pure consciousness and its oneness, we naturally experience its bliss. Mind expansion helps. Gyan yoga encompasses a long-term focused attention on higher aspects of self and life; our attention shifts from the microcosm to the macrocosm. This is followed by energy flow and over a period of time this leads to raised energy fields. This is why we can be operating from the higher awareness and bliss of a raised Kundalini without ever doing any direct work on it; and why gyanis are able to reach enlightened states of being. In reverse, a raised Kundalini implies the wisdom and purity of an expanded beingness and thus energy management, be it through meditation, pranayam, kriya, reiki, or some means of directly working with your energies. Gyan and meditation help expand your personal energy field at a geometric rate. Bhakti or devotion to God helps for it is at deeper levels; it is love in its various expressions — starting with love of self and evolving into unconditional love for humanity and all that is. If your focus is on love, your energies follow and you dwell in an expanded energy field moment-to-moment. Such a state eventually leads to what is known as a rising Kundalini. Guided meditations can be a vital aid, for they are the modern alternative to ancient dhyana techniques, whereby you wilfully place your attention on divine aspects of self. Your energies follow and if you are a regular meditator your energy fields expand and merge with your point of focus in these meditations. Based on the law of attraction, if you are vibrating at a finer frequency, you are receptive to a comparable quality of consciousness elevation. And based on the law that tantra employs — energy resists its opposite and raised energy fields automatically resist denser energy signatures of anger, judgment, sorrow — we find ourselves increasingly in sync with the universal qualities of love and beingness. Allow your Kundalini to unfurl rather than looking for quick-fix routes that might end up having just the opposite effect. A raised Kundalini implies expanded energy fields and your current physical reality is only a reflection of this inner you. Density cannot coexist with raised energies and whatever doesn’t match this expansion will begin to disintegrate. Without the support of gyan and its deep understanding, without the succour of bhakti and its deep acceptance, without the dedication to self growth, you may well be thrown off guard. Become aware that as your energies follow thought, they can indeed be directed through constant focus and continued attention. In this manner, you will find that raising your Kundalini is not as exotic a goal as it seems. It is more about where your thoughts reside on a regular basis. Based on your inclination, gyan, kriya or hatha yoga could work equally well. All inner expansion leads to bhakti which automatically amplifies the process. You would eventually meditate 24x7 within even while carrying on with an enhanced reality on the outside. That is called a raised Kundalini.

Who created the Universe?

• PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA

FROM the earliest days of humanity there has been intense curiosity about how it all came about; how man and woman were created and how the Universe was created. Each religion, each culture developed its own answers, its mythology. Christianity and Islam adopted the Judaic version of creation, as laid out in the Book of Genesis. God made the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh. He created man and from the man’s rib made the woman. Hindu mythology had a different version. So do other cultures and religions. Was God then independent of the Universe? Where was He before the Universe came into being? Where would He go after the Universe is destroyed? Buddha said: Universe was never created. Universe will never die. Universe has been in existence always, and will be in existence always. Sanatana Dharma, the philosophy of Hinduism, supports Buddha. The Brahman always was, is and will be. Brahman is Existence. Existence is the universe. There never was a time it did not exist, and there never will be a time it would not exist. Different parts of the Universe will die and new ones will be created. The Big Bangs and Black Holes will occur at different spaces and different times in the Universe randomly and in a chaotic manner. But the Universe will exist forever and ever. While modern science talks about the Big Bang theory, no scientist has an answer to what was there before to cause the Big Bang, if it is considered to be the seminal act of creation. Science has as of today no answer even to how living matter was created. A-biogenesis, the emergence of living matter from non-living material is still a mystery, though there may be hundreds of unproven theories. How the first particle of the chain of life, the amino acid or its constituents, came into existence is still a question mark. Hindu scriptures say that living matter came out of the energy of the elements of the Universe. Taittreya Upanishad explains how from the energy of cosmos arose all other energies such as space, air, fire, water and earth, finally resulting in plants and humans. Science has a long way to go before it has an alternative explanation. After reading the Upanishad, Einstein remarked: Spirituality starts where science ends. Unlike most other scientists, Einstein understood that there was never a time that the Universe and Life did not exist.

Prophet Mohammed, Last Messenger Of Allah

Zeeshan Ahmed

The life of the Holy Prophet of Islam, Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa, whose birth anniversary falls this month, is a role model. The high accolades paid to his personality by Allah through the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah or Islamic practices reminds us of his exalted personality. Thrice in a day, the adhan or call to prayer reminds Muslims that the Holy Prophet is the Messenger of Allah. In addition, the namaz recited emphasises the unity of Allah and the messengership of the Holy Prophet in the same breath, thereby underscoring the significance of the persona of the Prophet. Islam teaches that Allah chose to introduce Himself through His words revealed to His choicest servants. For the guidance of mankind, Allah sent 124,000 prophets, the first of them being Adam and the last being Hazrat Mohammed Mustafa. It was the Holy Prophet of Islam upon whom Allah chose to end His message and complete the chain of prophethood and messengership: “This day, I have perfected the religion (Islam) for you; completed My proof upon you and am satisfied with Islam as a religion (Maidah, verse 5). Allah emphasises the finality of the prophethood and messengership of Hazrat Mohammed with the words, “Mohammed is not the father of any of the men among you, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the seal of the Prophets” (Ahzab, verse 40). Such is the respect accorded to the Holy Prophet that Allah chose to end his communication and message with the Holy Qur’an revealed to His last prophet and messenger. The Qur’an itself, along with the code of laws, pays rich tribute to the Prophet. At one place, while the Holy Prophet is called “Uswatul Hasanah”, the ideal model to emulate, at another place, he is called the “bearer of good news”, paradise, and a “warner” for divine chastisement and retribution. The compliments paid to the Holy Prophet by Allah are not out of place. The period before the arrival of the Holy Prophet in Arabia was one of darkness and ignorance. Wars were fought over petty matters, superstitions were rife and women were hardly respected. The social fabric of the Arabs veered more towards vice and debauchery than religion. Principles which we take for granted in our lives like justice were thrown to the winds. It was in such trying circumstances that the Holy Prophet announced his message that would change the face and social fabric of the Arabs and others forever. Within a period of 23 years, with extreme patience, with the odds of success stacked against him, the Holy Prophet attracted people towards the message of Allah. Centuries-old customs were disbanded, enmity replaced by brotherhood and superstitions replaced with firm beliefs and reliance upon Allah. Through the love showered upon his only daughter, Fatemah, the Holy Prophet reiterated his commitment to the respect and uplift of women and abolished the shameful practice of burial of female infants. This brings to the fore the primary mode adopted by the Prophet for disseminating his message: his exemplary character and morals. So whether it was dealing with his family members, his friends or his enemies, he set standards of ethics which remain unsurpassed. It is for this reason that despite the advance of 1,400 years since his demise, the Prophet lives amongst us today through his teachings and words.

Fasting Is A Way Of Knowing Your Body

Amar Misra

The two important pillars of health are good nutrition and moderate exercise. The most important factor, however, is your mind. Diet control has a lot to do with mind control. Which is why fasting is prescribed in many religions as a way of self-discipline. If you try to learn the inherent programme loaded in your body, it would direct you to health and happiness. You may not need to curb your cravings to eat what is not good for your body. The method is called witnessing. You can start by taking five minutes from your morning schedule and spend it watching your breath. Sit in a comfortable position and start watching your breath. Keep your focus on your breath when you inhale and exhale. This practice would give you a glimpse of a state where there are no thoughts in your mind. Slowly you would be able to watch the activities of your mind and the journey of thoughts from one subject to another. Soon you would know the system that operates your senses and in turn your mind. You have five sense servants. You can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. None of these sense servants are designed to govern your hunger. Yet you feel hungry when you see the food you like. Any talk about your favourite food or its aroma immediately triggers your hunger. When you find anything tasty, you want to eat more and more of that food. If you allow all your servants except the cashier to handle and operate your cash chest, you cannot remain solvent for long. Your body is programmed to send a specific signal to your brain when it feels hungry. The trick is in the knowledge that most of the time your eating patterns are governed by habit and not by the requirements of the body. Then how to know and feel the real and actual sense of hunger? Fasting is one of the timetested and proven methods that helps you understand your hunger and has been used by almost all religions of the world. The best way to begin is to go on an ‘only water’ diet for as long as you can do it conveniently depending upon your health. It may range between 10 hours and 24 hours unless you have some medical problem. The purpose is to focus on your hunger and understand how it feels to be hungry and how hunger increases its intensity. When the body gives you a signal that it is hungry and needs food, then try to witness the sensation and understand how it feels. Drink water and the signal would fade away. Next time it would give you a stronger signal. You need to understand these signals before you respond to the same. When you feel that you are very hungry then you drink some fresh fruit juice and watch how a signal of satisfaction is generated. Try fresh fruits, milk and cereals later but always keep the focus on your hunger and satiety signals of the body. The objective is to know the dynamics of your body which is unique for everybody. Is it not surprising that among the six billion people living on this planet, no two persons have the same finger prints? We are designed to be unique and incomparable. So respect your body and learn its dynamics. Knowing ourselves would help our body attain perfect health. Always.

Beware, the ego is constantly at work

VITHAL C NADKARNI

WITH 500,000 copies sold over three years, Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth wasn’t scorching the bestseller charts the way his earlier Power of Now had. Then came Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement which created a publishing history of sorts: 3.5 million copies printed and shipped in just four weeks to feed the blistering demand for a book that exhorts readers to give up ‘ego-consciousness’ and live in the present. In his first new book in eight years, Tolle concedes that awakening to your life’s purpose may not be an easy endeavour at the best of times. But it helps when you travel light, when you “chuck de” all that inner baggage and identification with things, along with mental concepts, or addictions, says the German-born mystic. Again, this is easy to say, almost impossible to accomplish without the help of insightful action: for the wily ego is constantly at work, finding new ways to ensnare our mind in new yarns and escapades away from the ever-present now. Tolle’s book also delineates a new, universal demonology for the 21st century: accordingly, ‘hearing voices in the head’ is not only the prerogative of the possessed, and those damned with the label of being psychotic. Listen carefully and you’ll find a voice (or even a cacophony) whispering in the caverns of your mind. What is more distressing “most people are so completely identified with it — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe these people as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are,” Tolle explains. The ego thrives on comparisons, on combat, and on being right, not to forget judging others. But one can go beyond it by getting into the witness mode, what the Indian tradition calls sakshi bhava. One can then take appropriate action as the Zen teacher Kasan did. The monk had to preside over a funeral of a local dignitary. As he stood waiting for the VIPs to arrive, Kasan found he had sweaty palms. He stepped down on the next day, pleading inability to see the sameness of being in every human. He became the pupil of another master and returned eight years later, enlightened. Tolle ends with a paean to the spiritual practice of enthusiasm, which is not dependent on winlose mindsets. Instead, enthusiasm rides the wave of the present moment to “give out its own abundance.”

Nothing to be proved out there

• MUKUL SHARMA
THIS notion that science seeks to empirically understand the nature of physical reality is not only wearing thin but has begun to beg the question in a big way. That’s because the premise of a “physical reality” — one that is considered to be the sum of all matter-energy patterns in existence — is turning out to be such a dynamic and fast-changing concept that hypotheses regarding it have to be modified almost as soon as they are formulated. What this means is that the goal of objectivity in knowledge can no longer be properly sustained. Before the 20th century, for instance, the “out there” was something which was believed to be static and basically provable and, therefore, considered easy to analyse and investigate. But after Einstein and quantum mechanics, this peaceful worldview underwent a historic transformation. Time turned out to be a fourth dimension, gravitation was the result of curved space, subatomic particles could be at two places at once, one aspect of something could never be measured without compromising another, black holes sucked stuff into the limbo of oblivion — in short nothing was as it appeared to be. Still science soldiered on. Next, two foundational pillars of objectivity began crumbling: causality and the ultimate nature of the medium things are immersed in — spacetime. The flow or arrow of time appeared not to necessarily respect a past to future movement. Meaning, the theoretical statements that describe physical processes at the microscopic level remain true even if the direction of time is reversed. So can effects at this level come into existence before their causes are generated or what? Also, theories suggest that at sufficiently small scales spacetime loses its continuous nature because of things like virtual particles popping in and out of existence in a process called “vacuum fluctuation.” Both space and time then become a grainy foam instead. Of course science doesn’t have to be abandoned because of these momentous discoveries. For one thing, the discoveries themselves were made because of the findings of science. It has also given us awesome and almost magical technological prowess and continues to do so. However, what it needs to develop now is a little respect for what it studies and probably a generous helping of subjectivity, too, in order to justly elaborate on the transcendent nature of its subject.