How to overcome the mental hurdles?

Question: When I began to do sadhana [spiritual practice] everything went smoothly at first. There was a lot of peace and happiness and jnana [true knowledge] seemed very near. But nowadays there is hardly any peace, just mental obstacles and hindrances.

Annamalai Swami: Whenever obstacles come on the path, think of them as not me’. Cultivate the attitude that the real you is beyond the reach of all troubles and obstacles. There are no obstacles for the Self. If you can remember that you always are the Self, obstacles will be of no importance.

One of the alvars [a group of Vaishnavite saints] once remarked that if one is not doing any spiritual practice one is not aware of any mind problems. He said that it is only when one starts to do meditation that one becomes aware of the different ways that the mind causes us trouble. This is very true. But one should not worry about any of the obstacles or fear them. One should merely regard them as being not me. They can only cause you trouble while you think that they are your problems.

The obstructing subtle desires may look like a large mountain which obstructs your progress. Don’t be intimidated by the size. It is not a mountain of rock, it is a mountain of camphor. If you light one corner of it with the flame of discriminative attention, it will all burn to nothing.

Stand back from the mountain of problems, refuse to acknowledge that they are yours, and they will dissolve and disappear before your eyes.

Don’t be deluded by your thoughts and subtle desires. They are always trying to trick you into believing that you are a real person, that the world is real, and that all your problems are real. Don’t fight them; just ignore them. Don’t accept delivery of all the wrong ideas that keep coming to you. Establish yourself in the conviction that you are the Self and that nothing can stick to you or affect you. Once you have that conviction you will find that you automatically ignore the habits of the mind. When the rejection of mental activities becomes continuous and automatic, you will begin to have the experience of the Self.

If you see two strangers quarreling in the distance you do not give much attention to them because you know that the dispute is none of your business. Treat the contents of your mind in the same way. Instead of filling your mind with thoughts and then organizing fights between them, pay no attention to the mind at all. Rest quietly in the feeling of “I am”, which is consciousness, and cultivate the attitude that all thoughts, all perceptions are ‘not me’. When you have learned to regard your mind as a distant stranger, you will not pay any attention to all the obstacles it keeps inventing for you.

Mental problems feed on the attention that you give them. The more you worry about them, the stronger they become. If you ignore them, they lose their power and finally vanish.

Source: http://ashramof1.tumblr.com/post/50571966415

The Most Important Question

Reblogged from The Wisdom Of Life:

Answering the question; “What is truth?” is arguably the most important question about life we face because it is the key to how we interpret all the other questions. Questions such as; “What is real?”, “How should we value what we know, see, touch and so on?” and “What should (or must) we do with our life?” are built on the foundation of what we consider true.

Read more… 711 more words

A thought-provoking question!

Recognizing inner space…

If you are not spending all of your waking life in discontent, worry, anxiety, depression, despair, or consumed by other negative states; if you are able to enjoy simple things like listening to he sound of the rain or the wind; if you can see the beauty of clouds moving across the sky or be alone at times without feeling lonely or needing the mental stimulus of entertainment; if you find yourself treating a complete stranger with heartfelt kindness without wanting anything from him or her… it means that a space has opened up, no matter how briefly, in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking that is the human mind.

When this happens there is a sense of well­ being, of alive peace, even though it may be subtle. The intensity will vary from a perhaps barely noticeable background sense of contentment to what the ancient sages of India called ananda – the bliss of Being. Because you have been conditioned to pay attention only to form, you are probably not aware of it except indirectly. For example, there is a common element in the ability to see beauty, to appreciate simple things, to enjoy your own company, or to relate to other people with loving kindness. This common element is a sense of contentment, peace, and aliveness that is the invisible background without which these experiences would not be possible.

Whenever there is beauty, kindness, the recognition of the goodness of simple things in your life, look for the background to that experience within yourself. But don’t look for it as if you were looking for something. You cannot pin it down and say, “Now I have it,” or grasp it mentally and define it in some way. It is like the cloudless sky. It has no form. It is space; it is stillness, the sweetness of Being and infinitely more than these words, which are only pointers. When you are able to sense it directly within yourself, it deepens. So when you appreciate something simple – a sound, a sight, a touch – when you see beauty, when you feel loving kindness toward another, sense the inner spaciousness that is the source and background to that experience.

Many poets and sages throughout the ages have observed that true happiness – I call it the joy of Being – is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things. Most people, in their restless search for something significant to happen to them, continuously miss the insignificant, which may not be insignificant at all. The philosopher Nietzsche, in a rare moment of deep stillness, rote, “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!…. the least ting precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance – little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

Life is a Billion Breath Package – 2

We can correlate the frequency of our mind and breathe. Scientists today have assigned names for the mental states which are as follows:

• Delta Wave – Less than 4 Cycles per second (CPS). It’s a deep meditative state and also experienced in deep sleep state. Our body recharges itself in this state, life force is acquired and our immune system strengthened. At this deep meditative state the breath is almost suspended and this is the difference between this and deep sleep state. We would see in the later chapters as to why continuous sleeping cannot increase our life span and why after longer periods of sleep we feel tired.
• Theta Wave – 4 to 7 Cycles per second (CPS). It is the dreaming state and the yoga Nidra happens at this state. During this state the subconscious mind is active for any programming.
• Alpha Wave – 8 to 13 Cycles per second (CPS). This is a mild meditative state or a conscious state which is tension or anxiety free.
• Beta Wave – >13 Cycles per second (CPS). This is our normal wake up state in our worldly life. They say that the Joy center in our brain works at 17.65 Hz and below.

So today scientists say that lower the mental frequency, healthier it is for the human being. This is what Sage Patanjali told in his Yoga Sutra as definition for Yoga itself as“Yoga Chitta vrtti nirodah!, That which removes the vibrations of the mind is called Yoga”.

I would encourage you to visit http://www.bevolution.org. They have been working on the impact of electro-magnetic pollution on human life and they state that above 33Hz panic, anxiety and nervousness start. They have classified few more states like High Beta, Hyper Beta state, Ultra Beta states. Normal exposures to electricity which is at 50Hz disconnect our mind from our higher mental states. The state of electro-stress starts at this stage. This means we are permanently in the state of electro-stress. Using Cordless DECT phone in our home invites an electro-stress of 100Hz shock waves being sent to brain continuously. The impact of Bluetooth, 3G and Wi-Fi services are also highlighted which results in hormonal disturbances, stress related disorders, cancers and other diseases.

So we are in some sort of a trap of electromagnetic pollution and it is important to protect our health and the health of our family. This book gives some secrets and techniques to quickly gain back our health but most importantly understand the nature of things within us.

We generally tend have a tendency to take things for granted that are simple and free. We are both ignorant and indifferent to the fundamental activity – breathing that is an inseparable part of us. Our ability to drive ourselves to the edge without an internal credit management for this current account of breath drives our risks higher of being “liquidated” earlier than budgeted.

Breathing is simple and air around us is free (so far) but we tend to ignore the effects of managing the same beneficially. I just want to wish you that “May every moment of yours be a breath-taking moment, so that you conserve your breath for longer and healthier life”.

Life is a billion breath package and how much have you used up so far?

Reference

Know thy Nature by Raguram Gopalan, http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com

Life is a Billion Breath Package -1

According to ancient scriptures, each and every thing in the universe undergoes a cycle of birth and death, including the universe itself. It is told that all living beings (in the traditional sense – because there is no such thing called non-living thing) are endowed with a life span which can be calculated by the number of breaths we take. As a wise man said, “Language of the gods is mathematics”.

So, what if I tell you that the math about one’s life span is controlled by our breath and nature endowed count for every human being is the same? They say that the effect of Karma and the consequences of our action in this life impact this naturally endowed life span.

Not many realize that when we were born we have been given a current account which is filled with a billion breaths (approx) and we are programmed to continuously withdraw at some rate from this account and this program is called as “Life”. They say that when we manage to exhaust this current account then ‘death” occurs. The math goes something like this:

• We are supposed to take 4 seconds for one breath, so it is 15 a minute and 21600 for a day (15*60*24).
• The natural age endowed to a human being is 120 years.
• So it is – (21600* 360*120) just about a billion breaths (0.933 billion to be precise) which is endowed to us by nature as our life span.

In our daily life we spend energy to get things done. When we spend energy we breathe heavily and hence withdraw from our current account of billion breaths. Now let’s get this little more nuanced. A breath has four components – Inhale, Retain, Exhale, Retain outside. In normal day today life there are only 2 components – Inhale and Exhale.

Against a budget of 15 a minute, we spend 12 a minute while sitting, 18+ while running, 25 while sleeping, 32 during sex and between 32 to 64 breathes a minutes during emotional upheavals like Anger, fear. Effectively it’s the rate of breath which changes with time. Now recollect that Swami Chinmayananda said “Time is nothing but a period between 2 thoughts”. Hence under extremely excited / tense situations we expend far larger quantity of breath than our budget.

Some key items to be noted as follows:

• The very essence of saying that “Anger or Fear as emotions are suicidal or it is like holding a hot iron rod and it injures the self first before others” can be well understood since we are losing a part of our endowed life because of these emotions.
• Irrespective what we do, we seems to be wasting our breath that includes sleeping. The thing that we need to be clear about is when we sleep; we recharge our body at the expense of larger breath counts than what is budgeted to us.
• The importance of “Pranayama” can be better understood now which is stressed for the longevity and health. In Pranayama, all the 4 cycles of breath are effectively used and the mind is calmed for better health. Pranayama is the one of the ways for effective breath management and longer life.
• The secret of youth and healthy life is effective breath management. The longer we retain the breath, the deeper our breaths, the younger we are and the longer we live.

Reference

Know thy Nature by Raguram Gopalan, http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com

Science and Tamil – Part 2

Energy and Matter concept in formation of letters

The concept of Energy and matter is not new to us and does not start with Einstein’s days of E=mc2. Let us look at how our letters are formed from Aksharas then people would know that the concept of Energy and Matter is old as our language. In Tamil there are two kinds of Aksharas/Letters. They are உயிர் எழுத்து – Uyir Ezhuthu (Life / Energy letters – 12 letters) and ெமய் எழுத்து – Mei Ezhuthu (Body / Matter letters – 18 letters). Both put together it is 30 letter pack for Tamil as alphabets. Now both have to combine to give letters called “body with life” which are called uyir mei Ezhuthu. This combines to form 18*12 which is 216 letters as Uyir Mei Ezhuthu. For example க்+ அ = க in Tamil and क़ + अ = क in Sanskrit.

So the formation of letters itself is a science where Matter (Body) combines with Energy (Life) and then the living organisms (Body – life letters) are formed.

The following table lists vowel (uyir or life) letters across the top and consonant (mei or body) letters along the side, the combination of which gives all Tamil compound (uyirmei) letters.

In the above example க்+ அ = க, க் is the body and அ is life. So as per our language sciences be it Tamil or Sanskrit the matter is formed first and then the life came and attached to it. This is very well documented in Tamil scriptures as follows:

உடம்புடன் உயிர் வந்து ஒன்றுவது இயல்ேப – ெதால்காப்பியம் . This is over 2500 years old which states that life comes and joins a body in language and this is nature.

ெமய்ெயாளி உயிெராலி சிவணுதல் இயல்ேப – ஐந்திறம் (Aintiram). This is over 12000+ years old which states that same thing and adds that body is like light and life is like sound and they merge and this is siva’s nature. This certainly means that both Body and life are not formed at the same – as popularly believed. Life comes and joins the body to give a living being – in the above case the letters are the living beings.

Masculine and Feminine names based on ending letters

I am also going to give you as to how Indians distinguished masculine from feminine names. Kanchi Maha periyavar, the Sage of Kanchi had explained this beautifully in his “Arul Vakku”. I am giving a gist of it here just to conclude this:

Masculine names: All the names shall end with the phonetic a, im, in , ir, aha etc. Examples are Ram, Shyam, Raman, Kannan, Kishan, Vivek, Adam. So phonetically names like Catherine is a masculine name because it ends with “in” phonetically.

Feminine names: All names ending with phonetics aa, e, I, oo etc. Examples are Radha, Ramya, Savithri, Gayathri, Uma, Rosy, Isabella etc. Same way phonetically Joshua is a feminine name. Vishnu and Lalitha sahasranamam follows this rule and hence one invokes Shakthi as lalitha and the other invokes Purusha as Vishnu.

Just to conclude this part, I think we looked at how science is an integral part of our language formation and for us science has always been about the knowledge and nature of the space and we believed that space manifested itself as the physical world.

Source: Time = Space by Raguram Gopalan, http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com

Science and Tamil – Part 1

One of the main reasons I believe as to why our wisdom has degraded so much in the last century is our ignorance and reluctance to learn our rich language. Our language offers richness not just in literary sense but is supremely scientific too. I am going to touch upon just 3 to 4 aspects of it which I knew and understand at a fundamental level and request you to learn your mother tongue well.

Vigyan / Vigyanam (விண் ஞானம்) means Science:

But most importantly I wanted to take the word called Science as meant in Tamil and Sanskrit. A word always can be broken down to its dhatus for its exact meaning in Tamil and Sanskrit. Some examples below:

Science in Tamil is Vigyanam and in Sanskrit is Vigyan. This is split as Vin and Gnanam / Gyan. Vin means space and Gyan means knowledge. Hence according to Indian system science means it is the nature / knowledge of the space. This has very deep significance since modern science has not agreed the existence of space for a long time and their gross and materialistic approach prevented them from seeing the most subtle component and its nature. We were masters of it ages back.

Universe is called as Brahmanda in Sanskrit. Brahma + Anda which literally means a big egg. This means we knew that the galaxy is elliptical in shape ages back and it required hubble in 1950 to tell us that.

Bhoogol means Earth (Study of) / Geography – This Splits as Bhoo +Gol. Bhoo means Earth Gol means round. We did not throw stones at a scientist as late as 17th century when he said that earth is round and not flat. We would have laughed our heart out and ignored him.

Be it the age of the universe, all of the astronomical measurements, health, spirituality etc, many of us need a proof in modern science to tell us that what we knew was right and they have certified it. When we decide to come out of this mentality then the process of reclaiming our rich heritage shall start.

Origin of Universe and linkage with Tamil:

The initial evolutionary process for the universe consisted of 5 stages states Aintiram. You can imagine that these are the movements of particles during the Big bang. They are அமிழ்தல், இமிழ்தல், குமிழ்தல், உமிழ்தல், தமிழ்தல்.

• Amizhdal (Withdrawal)
• Imizhdal (Overflowing)
• Kumizhdal (clustering round in an order)
• Umizhdal (Emitting)
• Tamizhdal (resulting into a well defined form)

These are the first stages from the Big bang till a well defined shape is formed. Now the last level is called Tamizhdal which results in a well defined form. This state has emanated from the Pranava and not been created by some one. Hence a language as rich with the sweetness of inherent order, originating from the luminosity of the original particle is called Tamil. Tamil is word based on the final resultant state called Tamizhdal (தமிழ்தல்).

Source: Time = Space by Raguram Gopalan, http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com