Mahabharata is Current News

While there will continue to be endless and scholarly discussions as regards the exact history and geography of The Mahabharata, let at least some of us wake up to the fact that The Bhagawad Gita (which is a small part of the Great Epic) itself, at the end of each chapter affirms that the particular chapter is in fact a limb of the Body of Knowledge, of the science of Yoga, which in fact is the science of expanding one's consciousness from the limited to the Infinite.

Thus, The Mahabharata, rather that being viewed as history or mythology, should be absorbed as the Greatest Metaphor ever. The Kauravas are none other than the hurdles within us that need to be addressed, before any progress could be made. These hurdles have been listed by Paramhamsa Yogananda as under:

Characteristics of the one hundred sense inclinations (kurus):

material desire, anger, greed, avarice, hate, jealousy, wickedness, lust,
sex attachment, abuse, and promiscuity, dishonesty, meanness, cruelty,
ill will, desire to hurt others, destructive instinct, unkindness,
harshness of speech and thought; impatience; covetousness; selfishness; arrogance; conceit;
pride of caste or social birth; racial pride;
false sense of delicacy; high-handedness; saucy temper; impudence;
ill feeling; quarrelsome attitude; inharmoniousness; revengefulness; sensitive feelings;
physical laziness; lack of initiative; cowardice; absentmindedness and mental sloth; spiritual indifference;
unwillingness to meditate; spiritual procrastination;
impurity of body, mind and soul; disloyalty to God; ungratefulness to God;
stupidity; mental weakness; disease-consciousness; lack of vision; littleness of mind; lack of foresight; physical, mental, and spiritual ignorance; impulsiveness; fickle-mindedness; sense attachment;
enjoyment in seeing evil, touching evil, listening to evil , tasting evil, smelling evil,
thinking, willing, speaking, remembering, and doing evil;
fear of disease and death; worry; superstition; swearing; immoderation;
too much sleeping; too much eating; dissimulation;
pretense of goodness; partiality; doubt; moroseness; pessimism; bitterness; dissatisfaction;
shunning God;
and
postponing meditation.
----------

So would you not agree that The Mahabharata is in fact Current News?

Brahma Muhurta: The Best time for Sadhana

This is inresponse to a gentleman's criticism of Brahma Muhurta:

1 Muhurta = 48 minutes and Brahma Muhurta is the second last Muhurta before sunrise. Our sages and rishis had realised that happiness that is derived from external objects is impermanent and also amounts to slavery to those objects and to the senses. To put it differently, beyond a point, it is waste of energy. Hence, what they did was to halt this energy from being wasted in the channels of the mind. Surprisingly, this energy found its way into hitherto unknown aspects of the subconsciousness that gave them knowledge as well as a different state of happiness known as bliss.


Brahma Muhurta is the naturally bio-rhythmic time, when the creative forces of nature are at their peak. The sweet dreams you mention, are a proof of this. Why not try and halt the energy flow into the mind and experience this Muhurta in a different light.

One might say, why should we bother! Of course that is also a choice.

After Death, What?

This is in response to a recent question:

Dear Bandhu:


This is regarding your question as to what happens after death. I am quoting Swami Vishnu Tirth in this regard as below:

All bodies, vegetative, animal and human are made up of two aspects--- physical and metaphysical; both connected together by Prana. The first is composed of physical elements, while the other is known as sukshma or astral body, composed of finer principles.

At death, the individual Prana leaves the physical body, which decomposes into the physical elements. But death does not cause the separation of the astral body from Prana. The rays of Prana, which during life radiate from the self, stop their outflux and revert to their centre, in the sub-consciousness of the causal body i.e. Karan Sharir, taking within their fold, the senses, mind, intellect, and consciousness intact into the subconsciousness and the Karan Sharir migrates to take up a fresh physical body.

Whereas at Moksha components of the astral body undergo an evolution and one after the other evolve to Prana and the soul's exigency of taking up another physical body is eliminated.

Siddha Mahayoga Sadhana puts the aspirant on this track.

Become a Seer Rather Than a Doer

In all other forms of yoga such as Hatha, Mantra, Laya, etc, one has to do something and hence, ego is inevitable.

In Siddha Mahayoga, the doer is replaced by the seer. Shakti precipitates the yoga kriyas necessary for self-purification. Sounds amazing at first. One has to experience it.

The steps given below constitute the Introductory Practice of Siddha Mahayoga:

1. Sit in any comfortable position. Relax the body to the maximum, as if it is not there.
2. Close the eyes calmly, with deep devotion to the Divine Power. As soon as the eyes are closed, a wave of Prana-Shakti, the driving life current naturally rises up from the base of the backbone to the top of the brain.
3. Let the NATURAL inflow or outflow or stoppage of air take place OF ITS OWN. Keep the eyes closed and mutely observe the incoming and outgoing air.Continue for three minutes or more and allow any involuntary happenings that may take place.

The above practice if done daily, soon teaches the mind to easily merge into our higher aspect Prana. The aspirant could even start experiencing various involuntary, self-purificatory yogic movements of the body and mind due to the force and will power of the Prana-Shakti.

Experience it yourself.

The nearest God

At work, boss is the God of promotion. Within us all, the life current i.e. Prana, the vital divine force that keeps us breathing, is demonstrably, the God of the mind.

A Brief Idea About Siddha Kundalini Yoga

Let us look at the words "Siddha", "Kundalini" and "Yoga" in the reverse order. While the ultimate goal of Yoga is experiencing one’s true self, the ardent Yogi attains this goal by a science known as Yoga, which could be of many types and involves various practices and lifestyle adoptions that cause the integrated purification of body, mind and spirit, making the aspirant increasingly free from the dualities of nature.

Such purification paves the way towards the ultimate goal of experiencing one's true nature, while simultaneously making the aspirant increasingly deserving along the way, in all respects.

Kundalini is the name of that primal and living force within us all, which ordinarily lies spiritually dormant, but has the explosive potential to transform our existence from inharmonious to harmonious; from imperfect to perfect and thus in other words, from ordinary to divine.

Siddha here means “ready”. Like in ready-to-eat, ready-to-serve and so on. Most yoga practices aim at awakening the dormant Kundalini. Quite contrarily, Siddha Kundalini Yoga is a ready-to-experience Yoga, in which the awakened Kundalini is the starting point of the aspirant’s journey of self-purification.

There are various ways of awakening one’s dormant Kundalini. Swami Satyanand Saraswati of The Bihar School of Yoga mentions many ways, all which have to be under a Guru, such as, by Mantra, or by Tapasya i.e. the practice of austerities, or through the use of specific herbs, or by following Raja Yoga, or by Pranayama, or by Kriya Yoga, or by Tantric Initiation, or by self-surrender.

Spiritual Awakening or Kundalini Awakening essentially is possible only when the mind becomes subservient to the primal energy above referred. All the above mentioned methods involve doing something. This doer-ship means functioning through the mind and ego, the very elements which need to become subservient to another higher aspect within us. Needless to say, few can overcome this paradoxical situation.

He also mentions a way known as Shaktipaat, in which the awakening is performed by the Guru, by virtue of his being at a spiritually higher potential. Naturally, a person should be awake, to wake up someone else!

He authenticates thus: “This Shaktipaat can be conducted in the physical presence, or from a distance. It can be transmitted by touch, by a handkerchief, a mala, a flower, a fruit or anything edible, depending upon the system the Guru has mastered. It can even be transmitted by letter, telegram, or telephone.”

Shaktipaat or Kundalini awakening is effected by the Guru having authorization to do so in such a lineage or tradition. In Bharat, i.e. India, I know of two such traditions. One is known as the "Nath" tradition. The other tradition which I know and in which I haved received is the “Tirth” tradition.

Kundalini Initiation is also possible through some Gurus who do not have precedence of a lineage. Although such Gurus could be adepts, in such cases, the aspirant stands to lose the chance of uninterruptedly having behind him or her, the collective strength and guidance of the entire tradition through subtle spheres.

I will validate this important point some other time.

Vegeterian by Design

Recognizing that the body, mind and spirit are interconnected leads to the understanding that what we do to one of these aspects of ourselves will undeniably impact the others.

Food thus, is not just a sustainer of the physical body. There is more to it than just fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and proteins. Yoga recognizes many more subtle aspects of food and accordingly considers various food items as virtuous or otherwise.

The first glaring question is, whether humans should eat meat, or be vegetarians. To find the truth about this, let us at least observe some typical characteristics of other meat-eating and non meat-eating species.

Firstly, meat-eating animals (cat, tiger, dog, etc.) are born with their eyes closed, which open only after a few days, while vegetarian animals (cow, deer, elephant) are born with eyes open.

Second, meat-eating animals have canine teeth to facilitate tearing of meat, while vegetarian animals do not have such canines.

Third, vegetarian animals drink with a sucking action, while meat-eaters have a tongue-lapping action.

Lastly, natural meat-eaters digest meat within just a few hours and also have short intestinal canal so that the waste is excreted before it decomposes. On the other hand, meat eaten by, or forced upon naturally vegeterian vegetarian animals remains undigested for so long that in fact, this meat serves as food for putrefactive germs in the long intestinal canal.

Clearly then, Man is a natural vegetarian and only an un-natural meat-eater.

Those on the spiritual path will see another dimension to this issue viz., meat-eating amounts to causing serious disruption in the karmic journey of another soul, an act that would, by the universal principle of cause and effect, increase one’s own karmic bondage meaning that much distancing from attaining liberation or moksha.

However, the bottom line is, vegetarianism is good, but not everyone is spiritually evolved enough to embrace it.