Song of the Spirit

Another day spent trying to read and digest the Introduction and the first Verse from Yogananda's God Talks with Arjuna. The intrdocution is very precise interms of explaining the essense of Gita. Bhagavad Gita means song of the Spirit. Its god's own words to the human soul. The whole of Gita dwells on the divine conversation explaining the divinity in every human and how to envoke it to reach back to the source, GOD.

The richness of a civilization is refelected in the arts and literature developed during that era. By that parameter, India has been far advanced in civilization long back dating to prehistoric times before the birth of christ. Gita in its 700 verses stands as an epitome of our literature, throwing various aspects on how advanced we were long ago.

The ego in each of us, separates us every day from the spirit. Yogananda rigtly terms it as body consciousness. We think of ourselves not as soul, rather as the human body and limit ourselves to the limitation of this body. Gita explains the science called Yoga, which is the only way to liberate ourselves from this thought.

Gita emphasises on sanyasa. What is sanyasa ? We would have seen different meaning for it, is it leaving all the material possession behind and retiring to Himalayas or some deep forest to perform Thapas ? No !!! Lord Krishna explains sanyasa as liberating oneself from the ego of body consciouness and uniting through the highest step of meditation, samadhi, with the Almighty.

Once we have GOD, do we need anything more ? He would be kind enough to materialize anything for us !!! Thus Gita in a nutshell points to us that we are all made in the reflection of GOD and our ultimate aim is to find him back and unite.

Living a Thought

An idea or thought can be manifested only in the form of words inorder to justify it completely. The process of idea occurence and explanation are two entirely different phenomenon. When does an idea occurs to some one ? No Idea comes as a sudden thunderbolt, Newton's apple discovery story though alludes us to think that great ideas are sudden burst of impulse, its really not so. Newton would have been examining the peculiar aspect of earth in some form or other for a long long time, rather for the lack of right phrase, I would say, he lived that thought. The mind as believed by the great sages and saints of the east is a reservoir of super powers unknown to the vast majority of the man kind. The phenonmenon of "Living a thought" acts as a catalyst and throws open the facts from deep inner mind into the living being, that it looks very impulsive on the face of it.

The principle behind the Integral Yoga advocated by Sri Aurobindo Ashram becomes very clear in the introduction chapter "Life and Yoga, Part I,Chapter I of Synthesis of Yoga". The chapter ends with note saying life is a yoga by itself, the constant evolution process of reaching the supreme spirit. Sri Aurobindo, points us to working of Mother Nature in this context. Everything in Mother Nature is constantly performing its duty without giving any thoughts to the consequence or the results of it.

Quoting Swamy Vivekanda's definition of Yoga, Yoga is a compression process of Human Being's evolution to few years, or at some cases few months, Sri Aurobindo explores the fundamentals behind the various Schools of Yoga known to human man kind. He explores the striking similarities between Science experiments to prove facts and yoga techniques. The aim of Science is to derive at hypothesis and subsequently prove or disprove the same by experiments. In chemistry or any kind of Process engineering sciences, existing or previously found elements or process are constantly reworked, either new assembled or disassembled to come up with new functionality.

Similarly Yoga also works constantly on the human body in the case of HathaYoga and Human Mind in the case of Rajayoga, and eventually make it more suitable for knowing the Supreme Divine. The nature has been constantly working on our body through various evolution process and now we are at a more advanced level. The next immediate job is similarly working on our mind and consciousness.

Hence the emphasis on yoga being constantly running in the background of our every activity, would fasten this evolution process, thus making this whole life a Yoga.

Universality of Yoga, another chapter from Yogananda's Man's Eternal Quest start with an emphasis on what a true religion is. All religions which are practiced today are based on Man's beliefs. The code and the conduct of the religion comes from people who call themselves the authority of it. Early literature including great epics were written in Sanskrit. The beauty of the language lies in its grammar and vocabulary that a same sentence can be interpreted differently.

Rodney Lingham in his website www.geocities.com/rigvedsamhita has serious of articles on the right interpretation of Rig Veda from a spiritual perspective. This throws great light on what our ancient sages wanted to convey to the future generations. Mastery of Sanskrit language is not the only qualification to understand and throw ideas on religious principles from vedas.

Yogananda clearly points out that any religion should be based on science and not mere human beliefs. The science should be able to reveal the true identity of the almighty or GOD.
This would throw light on the universality of all religions helping the man kind to setup an universal brotherhood under the fatherhood of the almighty. Yoga is that science which can help the mankind understand the purpose of his / here existence in this world and his true identity.

In most of his works, Yogananda never misses the point that we humans have been created as an image of GOD. But as we start our worldly journey we associate ourselves only with the body and forget our true nature. During the beginning, that is before big bang happened as the scientific community would like to callit, there was Universal consciousness, the spirit, as the living creatures were formed, Universal consciousness came upon the creatures as Krishna consciousnes or the soul. Eventually with the human being started disassociating themselves from the soul and started believing more in the body consciouness.

Yoga is the true science to take the journey backward from body consciouness to Universal Consciousness. Any Master who has done it himself only would be able to guide us in that path. Infact it was the first question which Swami vivekananda asked Swami Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, " Sir, Have you seen GOD ? If yes the can you show it to me ? ".

Yesterday morning was spent reading another article from beloved Yogananda, "The Desires of All Desires", from his book Man's Eternal Quest. His extracts form Gita and Bible were so apt to explain the concept of why should we aspire for GOD always in our life leaving all other desires as secondary. The one part which was so sole stirring was the Mother son example. In our every day prayers we demand / beg worldy pleasure to god, we may ask for a new car, home, a promotion at work, or a bigger salary cheque etc etc....never once we have demanded for God himself. Yogananda, says this resembles the act of a son who comes to his mother only for demanding money for his needs and forget about her otherwise.

This started a lot of thought process in my mind, interms of how do we cultivate the habit of remebering GOD every moment in our life ? Do the normal rituals which were prescribed for Brahmins is an attempt to do it ? In the long course of time have we forgotten the real meaning behind it,and have tried to ape it as it was thought ? I dont know the answers for these questions.. however the article is a nail on the head to bring the point that man's ultimate desire should be to find almighty.

In most of his lesson Yogananda emphasises the point that we are all made as an image of GOD. We dont have to go around to find GOD, he resides within us, with closed eyes and practiced concentration we can find him anytime. Mediation is the key to find GOD.

Another para which dwells on why to forfeit desires, we tend to think this world as real and this is the Kingdom of GOD. However Yogananda, points out that this is not GOD's Kingdom, rather its his laboratory, where he wants to put his children to test. The real test of our god given will and conscience. How much are we ready to use the god given conscience to find our lost treasure, our Heavenly father, The GOD.