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 -13 > Switch off the outside world to find your undisturbed core

Part 13 of 46

Tam akratuh pashyati…
Katha Upanishad 1-2-20
“The undisturbed one arrives at a state of grace effortlessly.”

If you can wake up one fine morning and be naturally silent and still, with no itch, no thought, no frustration, no disturbance, no panic -where you naturally think nothing, do nothing -you have become the akratuh, the undisturbed one. It means you have really truly arrived in this life. In terms of spirit you can count yourself among
a handful of life’s lucky billionaires. You have found an unshakable peace within. Outside you will sense a storm brewing in everyone else’s mind but your own. They will resent your calm, your placid poise. Let them. You have spent a lifetime in sympathetic vibration where you reduced your poise to street-level noise just to be one with the world. It is time to say goodbye.

Five minutes of renunciation is all you need to kick start an irreversible chain reaction that will eventually liberate you. Let the world go jump for five minutes. Take no calls, either on your cellphone or in your head. The latter isn’t easy. The calls in your head will keep ringing, and you will have to struggle to find the switch that turns it off. You will have to pull out the sticky strings that bind you to the world. It’s a tricky gluey web, and all of us are stuck on it. Don’t pull too hard, or a mental spider will bind you some more. That’s the way the mind works. It deceived you into the web, and now you need to deceive it to get out.

Your warped self image was the primary deception. The mind pulled your image into the marketplace to draw you into the web. It gave the world power to alter your image, and the moment you accepted that, you became stuck to it. At first it gave you an illusion of happiness and mirth, for what could be better than to be wanted and respected?

But deep inside all the laughter you could sense a residue of pain. It was the stress of constantly striving to keep up that silly image of yourself to the rest of the world.

So now you deceive the mind to try and get out. Just five minutes, you plead. I will return to the web in five minutes and bind myself in. Keep at it and one day the mind will show you where the off button is located. You will spend perhaps one minute in serenity before the web snakes out and pulls you inside.

Once you taste this freedom you will wrestle with your own mind and negotiate terms. A stiff price will eventually be paid. You will have to renounce your self image before you walk free to a new world of unlimited freedom and creativity. You will become the akratuh, the undisturbed one. It is a price worth paying.

It is your life after all -you’ve been seeing the same old boring you -now see someone totally different.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 5th April 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -12 > Wisdom is a connection with deepest part of self

Part 12 of 46

Prince Janaka: Sage Yajnavalkya, Have you come to my court to earn gold or to spread wisdom?
Yajnavalkya: I came for both, your majesty.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad Ch 4.1-1

Most of Vedanta is expressed in a terse ultra compact sutra form with rivers of meaning running in between lines. One needs to unravel it and I have attempted my own creative interpretation using a dramatic tool of dialogue and punch lines. Yajnavalkya’s "unspoken words" have the power to shake the world with their truth, beauty and utter fearlessness.

The prince: Do not speak to me of wisdom yet. Speak to me of the world instead. Speak of so-called wise men, who claim access to gods.
Yajnavalkya: Anyone who claims access to a god is a clever hollow man.

The prince: Why is that?
Yajnavalkya: Because gods are figments of human imagination. The real power, the true source of the universe is beyond mind or words.

The prince: Well said. Tell me, is it not true that most of the so-called pious men are in truth pretenders?
Yajnavalkya: Yes it is true.

The prince: How can I know if I am really pious and not a pretender?
Yajnavalkya: Watch over your dreams prince. If by day you feel virtuous and by night you frolic in wild fantasies, you are surely a pretender, for a man may control his desires, not his dreams.

The prince: There are frauds among holy men who can sense a devotee’s fears and hopes. These people can hook a victim the way a fish is hooked with a bright insect of desire. What do you say of them?
Yajnavalkya: If you are willing to be a fish, then you deserve the hook, your majesty. It is not the fisherman’s fault, but your own. He was merely hungry. You were greedy.

The prince: Yajnavalkya, you say you came for gold…isn’t that contrary to wisdom?
Yajnavalkya: Even wise men need a bit of gold to get by in life. We don’t live on air, as some would like you to believe.

The prince: Tell me, how shall I address you? As divine master, great teacher...
Yajnavalkya: Call me directly by my first name. I want no titles.

The prince: Why?
Yajnavalkya: Spare me from my vanity, prince. Men like me get giant size egos easily.

The prince: What about women? Are you celibate?
Yajnavalkya: Why should anyone be celibate? I love the company of women.

The prince: If you are so worldly, how can you be wise?
Yajnavalkya: A man of wisdom delights in the world without drowning in it. All wisdom is essentially an attitude — a connection with the deepest part of your own self. The world will always remain the same, whatever happens. It is your attitude to it that will change.

Silence.

Yajnavalkya: Sir, if you have finished with the interrogation, ask me a real question.

The prince: What?
Yajnavalkya: Ask to be taught to live, to love, to rejoice, to become innocent again, to discover a deep happiness within, to connect with this endless universe, to arrive at a beautiful state of being where you accept each moment with grace and joy.

I came to teach you that and take away the gold of course.

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( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 29th March 2009 )

Vedanta Rocks -8 > Eyes reveal Inner Chaos and calmness

Part 8 of 46
Our eyes don’t rest even in sleep. Dreams are full of rapid eye movements, where we are searching and seeking.

‘Those who have felt the eye of the eye have touched the immortal spirit.’ Kena Upanishad 1-1-2

It is not what your eyes see — but with what eyes you see — that really counts. Eyes betray the chaos of the soul. Eyes reveal the state of inner being.

Chances are, you have so far played the game of life with restless eyes — your victories have been equally restless — and your losses quite devastating. The more the turbulence, the more life passes by in a daze.

Influences around you are designed to keep you in that daze. Mark this, the state of your eyes is of strategic importance to society. The global economy runs on it. God forbid if everyone developed calm and peaceful eyes. You wouldn’t be a sucker for a million marketing tactics that ‘grab eyeballs’ and morph minds. The advertising industry’s job is to keep your eyes and mind destabilized. That’s how raging desire is created for products you don’t need or want.

Our eyes don’t rest even in sleep. Dreams are full of rapid eye movements, where we are searching, seeking, and never relaxing. Daytime brings on the sleeping chaos awake and the cycle never ends, except in death, when we finally close our eyes fully, irrevocably, forever.

All religions are thankfully friends of your eyes. The reverential gazing at the altar of the Christian church or Jewish synagogue, the darshan of Hindu temples, the half closed eyes of Buddhist meditation, the steady gaze towards Mecca in the mosque, all these have a deep meaning and purpose. They help soothe your turmoil.
Their ancient healing chants assure you that the search has ended.

In minutes you calm down. A deep feeling of peace follows as the eyes relax from the pain of endless seeking.

Whatever your religion or ritual, if you practice giving relief to your eyes, they will become aware of something that was always there — something you missed noticing in the chaos. They will naturally feel out the eye of the one who is watching you as you watch the world. That is the ‘eye of the eye’.

Normally the question as to who is watching you seems irrelevant. Not any more — as you discern the witness— just observing… not passing judgment, not saying anything. Its presence, even when unfamiliar, is always assuring, comforting, healing and a mystery. It is in you, yes, but it is also not you.

Vedanta calls it the immortal spirit, but that understanding is personal to its unknown author. One fine day, in a flash of understanding, you may appreciate it for what it is. But know this — whatever it is — it is beyond words.

You cannot spin around quickly and catch sight of it, because it can move faster than the fastest thought you are capable of. Such is the ancient teaching of the Upanishad. It always guides you up to a point and asks you to discover the rest as direct intuition.

Vedanta Rocks. Go ahead take the plunge.

( Source: Mani Shankar/ Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad 1st Feb 2009 )