Vedanta Rocks -21 > Play with the innocence of dreams

Part 21 of 46

The dreaming self, is like a helpless child.

It doesn’t pass judgement or have the power to discriminate or apply any kind of critical analysis “Guarding his vital self with his breath… the luminous immortal one glides out. He goes wherever he pleases, this golden luminous one, flying like a lonely swan on the expanse of dreams.”
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 43-12

The dreaming mind is a beautiful state of being. It holds a great reservoir of unused potential. It can delight your senses, take you on fantastic voyages, regale you with incredible experiences, and lead you into the light of your inner self. Vedanta has great respect and regard for the dreaming mind. It does not dismiss it as an irrational phase of sleep, where strange visions are seen and heard. A student of Vedanta is urged to nurture, protect and revere his dreaming self and use it as a vehicle to glide into domains beyond the ken of human imagination.

Your waking mind is smart and competent, but your dreaming mind is innocent as a child. In fact your residual innocence, if at all it exists at your age, is mostly in your dreaming mind. The dreaming mind does not pass judgment or have the power to discriminate or apply any kind of critical analysis. All those faculties are with your waking mind.

The dreaming self, in many ways is helpless as a child.

How would you look after an innocent child? Would you expose it to a violent street fight, for example? If you do, won’t you expect the child to have fantasies and fears over what has happened? The same happens to your dreaming self.

Your first task is to keep the dreaming mind pure and detoxed. If you allow the dreaming self to become locked with your street level ego, if you keep it stressed with your fears and hopes, it will distort itself willingly for your sake, but when you sleep, it will release the accumulated stress in the form of weird dreams. Keep a constant watch on your self, especially when your ego collides with reality around you. Dissolve the emotional nicks and cuts before they bleed. That’s the way to protect your dreaming self.

Don’t pollute it with your local — this day’s, this minute’s ego problems — which in all likelihood will not exist the next day or the next minute. Your waking mind will forget and move on, your dreaming mind will hold on to them like a child.

The secret of keeping your dreaming mind pure and detoxed is by remembering that a little child walks with you wherever you go. You are old enough to protect yourself, but then you have to protect the child also. To keep the child happy and laughing you have to live pure, think pure. You can’t remain locked in viciousness and hope the child won’t notice. You have to gradually become more relaxed, more forgiving, more accepting. In time your dreaming mind will become relaxed and carefree.

You will experience this happiness when you sleep. Waves of peace will carry you away and gently drop you on the shores of tomorrow. A day will come when you can actually harness the beauty and power of your dreaming state, and move with that innocence into the radiant source of your being.

The sad truth is that we live such overloaded lives during our waking hours, the dreaming self has been crowded out of existence. We punish our bodies and minds to the limit, overdosing it with food, caffeine, alcohol or too much TV.

It is little wonder that after a certain age, many people need little blue and pink pills to sleep in the first place. The delicate balance of the twin selves, the waking and dreaming minds, is irreparably damaged.

Our mind and body slips out of harmony, leaving the field wide open for disease to set in.

Sometimes I wonder if any one of us can experience what Yajnavalkya taught Prince Janaka 35 centuries ago. Those were different times indeed.

People kept to the circadian rhythms of day and night. The world was probably a lot simpler and less confusing than it is for us today.

Yajnavalkya first taught the prince how to protect his dreaming self until it was pure and detoxed. Then he taught him a special breathing technique, and urged the prince to go into sleep using the breathing technique.

“Guarding his vital self with his breath…” Janaka would have touched his dreaming self, and with all the delight of a child on a giant wheel for the first time, actually sailed off into realms vast and wonderful. “…the luminous immortal one glides out.” What fun. To all who think Vedanta is some serious philosophy stuff… think again! Vedanta just helps you find the keys to your locked up mind, just as Yajnavalkya helped the prince to discover himself.

“…he goes wherever he pleases, this golden luminous one, flying like a lonely swan on the expanse of dreams.”

Janaka is soaring, gliding into realms beyond the ken of human imagination. I can imagine a lone white Himalayan swan, flying across a lake in the moonlight that Yajnavalkya would have seen during his wanderings. The allegory of the lonely swan is beautiful, poetic and mystical. But then that’s how our dreams should be. Beautiful. Poetic. Mystical.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 31st May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -20 > Wake up to the secret of harnessing dreams

Part 20 of 46

Svapna sthano antah pragnyah…
Mandukya Upanishad 1-4
“In the dreaming state, the pure intelligence lights up the world within…”
Svapnena sariram

abhiprahatya suptah suptan abhicakasiti
Sukramadaya punaraiti sthanam, hiranmaya purusha, eka hamsa
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4-3-11

“The enlightened one leaves behind the dreaming body… rises and glides away into the golden light like a lonely swan glides in the moonlight, alone, majestic and serene.”

The dreaming state is present all the time, even in the waking state, but isn’t visible to the waking mind. It is just like stars are present in the sky during the day but the intense light of the sun blanks them out. At night, when the sun sets, as when we sleep, the stars pop out on the surface of the sky the way dreams pop out on the surface of the mind. The stars were always there… and so are dreams.

If you develop a cool observant nature, if you slow down your mental processes and learn to watch your mind, you can easily observe how dreams flow right below your consciousness all the time. Remember the déjà vu?

Where suddenly you feel ‘this has happened before’? Well, that’s a rare moment when the dreaming state collides with the waking state, resulting in a reality-meets-fantasy situation. To most people, dreams just churn up the debris and frustration of the day. During sleep these debris come floating up and dance on the surface of our minds in the form of weird dreams. We seem to have absolutely no control over them. We cannot stop them from coming, cannot shape their outcome, cannot stop ourselves from believing them to be true as long as it lasts. Our powerlessness and helplessness is painfully visible in the dreaming state. We may be the president of a nation, but in dreams we cannot stop ourselves from becoming a beggar on a street, rolling and crying in agony.

How do you stop this from happening? The Sanskrit term samskara clarifies this subtle process. A samskara is a tiny impression, a little nick, a drop of emotional blood. You gather it by the hundreds each day. Each time your ego collides with reality, it causes a tiny fear, or a hope, or an agony, or a tinge of jealousy, or a pang of guilt, or any of a dozen negative emotions, and a little drop of emotional blood congeals below the surface of your mind.

These nicks, distorted and amplified, are absorbed by the dreaming state which is active all the time. If you have collected many of them during the day, a manic crazy person takes over as you collapse in sleep. This manic person has gorged on these drops of emotional blood, and now rises with wild visions while you cringe and watch like a helpless frightened child.

Is this it? Is this all? Not if you flow with Vedanta. Vedanta expects you to not only control the content of your dreams but master them as well. In fact it expects you to use the power of the dreaming state to touch the source, to become enlightened, to feel the grace of the pure intelligence, and even go beyond, to plunge into deep silence.

How? Well to start with you need to purify the content of your dreams. You need to stop gathering those nicks, those drops of emotional blood. The only way to do this is to keep a watch over your mind all the time. The samskara can happen anytime, anywhere. Remember the old ad for a washing powder where one lady looks at the other and asks herself how the other lady’s dress is whiter? Well for the mind, that is also a samskara.

Someone upstaged you, and you have felt hurt, felt put down for an instant. If at that moment you are alert, you can detect the formation of the samskara and dissolve it before it forms. This is the only way. In fact great masters have repeatedly said that merely observing the samskara is enough to dissolve it.

If you practice this mindfulness, this state of alert observation, you can prevent these nicks and cuts on the mind. You can flow through the day without emotionally bleeding. Then your dreams no longer torment you, no longer throw up weird visions. You sleep peacefully, dreamlessly. Or, better, you take control of your dreaming state, command it to take you into realms beyond the ken of your imagination.

Yajnavalkya teaches the secret of harnessing dreams to Prince Janaka in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It’s a great secret, and an extremely powerful one. It has the power to alter your world. This is something we shall explore next week.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 24th May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -19 > Enjoy your world regardless of how good or bad the day is

Part 19 of 46

Jagrita sthano bahis pragna… Sthula bhug vaishvanara prathama padah
‘Gain a mastery over your waking state. Enjoy your world. This is the first step.’
Mandukya Upanishad 1-3

Lots of people take to spirituality as an escape from the rigors of life. But in truth there isn’t any escape possible. After a few soothing moments of temporary (and doubtful) tranquillity, they are back to where they started. The harsh world they tried to run away from comes staring back at them.

Take a long cool look at this business of spirituality. You will realise that whatever you do, wherever you go, you will always remain within your waking state. You will never go beyond to understanding the dreaming state, and are always very far from touching the pure intelligence that runs you. The final state of deep silence, of Infinity remains firmly out of bounds, a virtual impossibility. Vedanta does not allow the luxury of illusion. It doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear. It advocates a path of practical common sense, and tells us never to run away from reality. It urges us to live, enjoy, and eventually master our reality until a time comes when that mastery automatically opens doors to self discovery. What does mastering reality mean? Is it an attempt to gain absolute power and control over our world, where we become the lord and master of all we survey? Not at all.

That never happens in anyone’s life, even the richest and most powerful. The world is always in a fluid state.

Power, wealth and fame comes and goes with a will of its own.

Those who spend a lifetime gaining control become deluded obsessed people. Mastering reality does not mean that at all. Rather it means exactly the reverse. That we do not allow the world to have a control over us.

Whatever be our situation, we retain a sense of independence and freedom that enables us to cherish the depths of our being.

The Sanskrit phrase sthula bhug vaishvanara explains this beautifully. It means ‘enjoy this world and all the happiness it can give you’. When can you enjoy the world? When all other negative emotions are absent. Joy comes only when hate, guilt, anger, jealousy, possessiveness and ego are wiped out. When you develop the right balance of attachment and detachment, of alertness and relaxation, of give and take. When you give up the impulse to dominate and manipulate. When you can learn to let go in the worst of moments and best of moments. When you always have time for laughter and merriment.

When you don’t take life too seriously, or too non seriously. When a state of dynamic equilibrium is reached, where regardless of what happens or does not happen, you can admire a sunrise or a flower or the smile of a child. Yes. If you can truly enjoy your world, regardless of how well or badly the day went, then one fine morning, every fibre of your waking self will spontaneously say yes to the inner self. On that day a door will open, magically. That day the AUM chant will sweetly take you into realms you never knew existed.

Vedanta Rocks- The background story>>

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 17th May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -18 > Master the waking state to begin the 1,000-mile journey

Part 18 of 46

‘Your waking state — master it first’
Mandukya Upanishad-1-1-9

The simplest, smallest mantra — the AUM, is also the toughest to hold on to. It’s most inaccessible to turbulent minds and near impossible to master. People will experience an irritation when they try the AUM as a silent chant.

It seems as if the surface mind does not need or want this imposition upon itself, and views the chant as a challenge to its freedom. Very soon the mind pulls a trick on the AUM and slips away into other thoughts, leaving the mantra in some irrelevant corner. After a while the individual will either stop chanting, or simply forget it altogether.

This is how the surface mind is. Stubborn, undisciplined and very resistant to any attempts to gain control over itself. In fact the more you try, the more stubborn it gets and the more devious its tricks become. People spend decades sitting in silence yet nothing happens. They just become more miserable, more frustrated than before.

How can we break the firewalls inside the mind and penetrate to the pure Intelligence within? This is the essential challenge before all of us. The ancient Vedantic practice of mastering the waking state — the jagritha sthan provides the key. This is the mindfulness approach. It’s straightforward and effective. If you are not able to meditate on the AUM, observe what else the mind is doing. Just follow the mind like a dog follows its master. Go where it goes. Never leave it out of sight. The mindfulness technique can be very valuable. As you keep following the mind, you also gain a sense of camaraderie with it — a sort of empathy as to why it is unable to stay in one place. This empathy can bring you to contact with your mind. This might sound weird but it is a fact that the mind always controls us. We never question this so we never actually come to contact with our own minds. With the mindfulness technique we detach ourselves from our minds and slowly, eventually achieve a mastery over it.

Behold the awesome power of your waking state — the surface mind. Most people, in a hurry to delve within, ignore this most potent part of their being and suffer as a result. The waking state is where your life happens. This mind is always under great strain. It has to keep worrying about a zillion things all the time.

It has to help you win the battle called your life. If you don’t respect its efforts and just keep saying AUM, it will horsewhip you out of irritation. This is why most so called meditators have strained and pulled down faces. They are trying to meditate blindly and are being punished by their minds as a result. Unless your surface mind wants it you will never be able to open the door to deeper domains. Lao Tze said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step — well this is that single step. Master your waking state first. Figure out a way to open that door.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 10th May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -16/17 > Discover the four layers of your personal universe/ A divine sound that transcends space, time

Vedanta Rocks -16 > Discover the four layers of your personal universe
Part 16 of 46

Akara, ukara makara iti…amatras chaturtho…aumkara
Mandukya Upanishad 1-1-8, and 12
The syllable ‘aa’ the syllable ‘uu’ the syllable ‘ma’…and the syllable without a sound, these are the four syllables
of the sacred mantra Aum
Eka eva tridha smritaha
Gaudapada ‘Karika’

The three states, (the waking, dreaming and pure intelligence) are controlled by the one which is beyond the three.

You are a beautiful creative expression of the deep silence of infinity. You may not be aware of this in your waking or dreaming states, but the pure intelligence that runs your being knows this very well, for its roots are nourished by infinity all the time. At this very moment, if you can somehow touch that pure intelligence, you can reach out into the silence. Touching the deep silence is what is called being enlightened. It is a simple everlasting moment of great joy and a life altering experience. It will release you into a freedom beyond imagination. Deliver a bliss beyond expression. Reveal a truth beyond articulation.This is the essential wisdom of the great Mandukya Upanishad, a wisdom that has been accepted unquestioningly by all eastern religions as the core truth of existence.

The big question is how to make that connection. The other realm seems to be out of bounds for us. All our lives are spent in the waking or dreaming states. We never touch the state of pure intelligence, so reaching the deep silence appears out of question. There isn’t any mechanism that directs our energies inward. The waking state allows us to interact with the world and fulfill our ambitions, but all its energies are expressed into the world outside. The dreaming state seems to be totally useless since it takes us to a weird irrational domain, which vanishes into thin air the moment we wake up.

The Mandukya reveals the connection technique. It is meditation on the syllable Aum. The Aum is the core mantra of Hinduism. It is a most powerful and sacred word. The Aum has the power to take you from the waking state into the deep silence and deliver you into the arms of the infinite.

The Aum has four syllables, each syllable corresponds to each state of being. The ‘aa’ relates to the waking state, the ‘uu’ to the dreaming state, the ‘mm’ to the state of pure intelligence, and the fourth syllable of Aum is the syllable without a sound, the ‘amatras’ (literally ‘that which is beyond a matra or syllable’) that corresponds to the deep silence of infinity. When the Aum is chanted in the mind, it has to be expressed as a combination of the four syllables. Start with the ‘aa’ sound, then slowly morph it to the ‘uu’ sound, then flow into the ‘mm’ sound and then slowly taper the ‘mm’ into silence but keep flowing, for you are now uttering the fourth syllable which is pure silence. Keep flowing into the silence for a long moment before resuming the chant. This is the technique. Let’s discuss its secrets in detail next week.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 19th April 2009 )

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Vedanta Rocks -17 > A divine sound that transcends space, time
Part 17 of 46

Yach chaanyat trikalateetam, tad api aumkara eva
“If there is any state beyond Time, that too is the AUM.”
Mandukya Upanishad 1-1
Advaita evam aumkara eva, samvishaty atmana atmaanam…ya evam veda
“The Source of your self can be felt as AUM, and he who knows this becomes enlightened…this is the truth of the Veda.”
Mandukya Upanishad 1-12

The primordial AUM has remained an enduring mystery even for mystics. Since thirty five centuries no one,including the great masters, has been able to say why AUM works. All they can say is that it does work - it takes the individual into another realm of experience - and reveals visions and truths he will never be able to articulate when he surfaces. The AUM is considered as the Pranava, the primordial resonance of creation, and the Maha Bijakshari, the great seed sound, the first and original expression of the formed universe. The AUM is not of this age or this place. It transcends Time and Space. It can represent the past, the present and the future - or even an unimaginable state where time does not exist.

All this sounds close to a description of the Quantum Domain as described by bewildered physicists who have reached the edge of knowledge - and reason. Indeed, Vedanta has had a profound impact on the minds of the greatest nuclear and particle physicists - like Frank Oppenheimer, Erwin Schrodinger and many others.Its almost as if they took refuge in Vedanta after coming up with bizarre and nexplicable observations. Frank Oppenheimer was the creator of the atomic bomb, and was intrigued to no end by the famous verse of Katha Upanishad, ‘Anor Aniyan, Mahator Mahiyan’- “I am hidden in the atom- but I am unimaginably mighty and powerful.” He could never shake of the notion that Vedanta contained coded secrets that scientists would keep unraveling for generations to come.

Indeed the mystery of AUM may be unraveled someday by a Quantum physicist, applying as yet undiscovered theories about matter and the universe. Meanwhile, lets master the technique without worrying over how and why it works. The AUM is a sweet and beautiful sound, but saying it in the mind isn’t so easy.In fact it’s almost impossible for people who have lived on the surface all their lives. It needs a pre-requisite of silence and inner calm. If you don’t have the calm you can’t chant it. The reverse is also true - if you can repeat it inside your head effortlessly, you are already an evolved person.

For those who cannot intone the AUM easily, there are other techniques - which we shall see next week. To those who can chant the AUM, here are a few tips. Treat the AUM with respect and reverence. Remember to flow with the fourth syllable - which is pure silence. So in effect, with each chant, you must be able to feel the pure silence. As you get better, extend the duration of that silence.

A time will come when you don’t need to chant the AUM anymore. The pure and beautiful silence will ever remain with you at all times.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 3rd May 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -15> Discover the four layers of your personal universe

Part 15 of 46

“Of the Upanishads, the Mandukya, by itself, is sufficient to enlighten.”
Adi Shankara
“Behold the chatushpat…the four layers of your being”
Mandukya Upanishad 1—1-4

Of all the great works of wisdom which collectively comprise the Vedanta, the Mandukya Upanishad is the smallest. With only 12 short verses, this phenomenal treatise fills up less than a quarter of an A4 page. Yet it ranks among the most potent.

Adi Shankara wrote a comprehensive treatise on it 21 centuries ago. His guru’s guru, Gaudapada also wrote a famous commentary. Every Indian mystic has commented on it, discussed it, been awed by it.

At the heart of the Mandukya is a vibrant model of your personal universe — the Chatushpat. The Sanskrit is easy enough to understand Chatur — four, Pat — way, layer, or quarter. The universe within, called ‘you’, has four layers. Grasp this scientifically, intuitively, emotionally and you are through to the first stage.

You are an entire universe, the roots of which go all the way to infinity. Since you live only on the surface, the waking state, you are unable to figure out the true quality of your being. Below the waking is your dreaming self,where you are vaguely aware of an internal being as images, feelings. Further below is the state of pure intelligence, which manages the 100 trillion cells of your body and knows everything that is happening to you at all times. This intelligence isn’t the brain or your IQ. It’s the stuff that designed your brain and manufactured it from the rice and dal your mom ate when she carried you.

From your waking state you cannot even begin to understand how powerful and complex it must be. The task it performs is truly mind boggling. If somehow you could touch this state of pure intelligence, you would intuitively grasp the extent of your real capability. But this is not all.

Behind this pure intelligence is the deep silence. The infinite. There is an intimate relationship between the two. The first is the deepest part of your finite being. The second is an indefinable part of infinity. It cannot be spoken of or described, but it is the ultimate source of your being. It is also the source of everything else in this universe. In that beautiful way everything and everybody is connected. This, in essence, is the model of your personal universe. Hold it as an abstraction in your mind for a while and let it grow on you.

To most of us the abstraction is as far as we can ever get. Acknowledging the intelligence and the silence is one thing while connecting with it is something else. Even though the intelligence is roaming everywhere, it is accessible nowhere. You cannot measure it, grasp it, or quantify it in any way. It remains till date, among the most elusive mysteries of science.

In fact some believe it is theoretically impossible to connect with because the mind is too small and insignificant to come to terms with an giant intelligence that created the mind in the first place.

The Mandukya Upanishad lays out a connection. A slender but strong lifeline to the deepest most hidden part of you. This is something we shall discuss next week.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 19th April 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -14 > Compassion opens up path to endlessness

Part 14 of 46

Hrt Ayam iti…tasmad Hrdayam…ahar ahar va evam vit svargam lokam eti
“He is in the heart… and so the heart is full of compassion, anyone who knows this evolves day by day and finds the kingdom within.”
Chandogya Upanishad 8-3-3

The Sanskrit word for the heart is Hridaya, which is a beautiful blend of two words — Hrt and Daya. Hrt means heart. Daya means compassion. Heart and compassion together make the true heart. The implication here is that unless compassion sits in your heart, it isn’t much of a heart. It is just a pump that moves blood around. It’s a physical organ with no great significance.

Why compassion, of all emotions? Why not courage, determination or love? Because of all the feelings that we express, compassion is the only one which is altruistic and unselfish. Compassion gives. All other emotions take. Even love doesn’t come close to it. Love celebrates itself, yes, love energizes the heart, but at the end of the day, plain everyday love is still a selfish emotion.

Unselfish love is compassion. It gives with no regard to getting anything in return. This isn’t an easy emotion to have. All our systems are geared to looking after just ourselves, our families and no one else. It’s the basic principle of life. In a hostile world compassion doesn’t have much place by design. Yet a time should come in our lives when we find place for a little bit of compassion. When we break the manic hold of life’s preprogrammed design to always think of I-me-mine and no one else.

Vedanta says a life full of compassion is a life truly worth living. Compassion opens the heart to its hidden potential. It spreads warmth and energy all around. A healing quality emerges. Such a person acquires a natural aura of being. Surprisingly another principle of life opens up, and we tend to get back whatever we give. It usually comes through another route, in most unexpected ways. Nature seems to be giving back a return gift for every act of kindness. As your heart opens up, everything about you, around you undergoes a magical change and you discern the hidden presence of your true self. Hrt Ayam iti.

Note the elegant play of words. Hrdayam is now expressed as a combination of Hrt and Ayam. Ayam means “He, or this one”. So Hridayam now means “He is in the heart.” When your heart brims with compassion, you begin to discern a truth, beauty and joy beyond description. You go on giving, go on emptying your heart, and find to your surprise that more and more is coming your way. You discover an endlessness — an ecstasy no words can express.

This is the way of the heart. 1500 BC or 2009 AD — hearts and humans have remained the same. It was the way of Jesus, the way of Ramana Maharshi, and the way of thousands of Indian masters — ancient and contemporary. It’s the easiest most accessible way — and wide open to you — right now !

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 12th April 2009 )