Shanti Mantra - Elaborate Discussion

#MysticSpiritualism
WE start with the famous Shanti mantra:
ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः।
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु।
मा कश्चित् दुःख भाग्भवेत्॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

All of our spiritual legacy is timeless, lets see how
We pray that all live in peace!!
This is what is currently going on the planet.
Radical Islam, and other forms of fascists and separatists operating in the world to destabilize and force their ideological agenda.
They live in some fantasy world wherein they feel that simply by forcing people to follow will bring Jannat, which is wrong!! Totally wrong!! Peace entirely lives in mind!!
What an irony, just to enjoy heaven on earth we are harassing, insulting, mocking and eventually killing people!!
This has been the pattern since ages and we hope as civilized people of modern society, all the violence stops!!
Hence, we pray that all live in peace!!

 ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः।
 Let all be in happiness.
We know that happiness is purely in mind. Happiness differs from person to person. But then what it really means, Lets see

In spiritual development  there is a concept known as content, which means to be satisfied with whatever you have. This means that the person who is satisfied will remain happy in whatever the conditions he is in. It is the greed that makes the person unhappy. Hence this is an indirect pointer to us!!

सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः।
Let everybody enjoy good health.
Health is wealth and Health is happiness is known to everyone. So then what would be a deeper meaning hidden in this. Lets see

In spiritual concept, mind and intellect should be pure, clean and without corruption. Then is very mind and intellect would be stated as healthy. If mind and intellect both are healthy then the actions performed would be completely genuine and this very process would give immense satisfaction which is equal to happiness and eventually peace both interior and exterior.

सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु।
Let everybody see good.

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder", this is well known. Similar to this the entire world revolves around the vision of the person. A person gentle and kind hearted will see everything nice. So the prayer is that all should be so spiritually advance to see everything good. There would be another thought, make all people so happy that they will see good in whatever happens, this is called as "Positive Attitude".

There is another dimension to the sentence:
May all see what is spiritually uplifting.
Unless one blessed with spiritual vision or spiritual guru or has done efforts in the path of spiritualism, to see what is spiritually uplifting is missing. So this line is very complex to understand. One has to do efforts in order to see spiritualism or one has to search his own path to see what spiritualism is all about.

मा कश्चित् दुःख भाग्भवेत्॥
Let no one suffer with miseries.
Who want sufferings, no one. Therefore the prayer says no one should suffer. Lets see how:

When the person is content (is not greedy), has healthy mind and intellect (mind without any negative affliction)  and sees everything good or makes an effort to make everything good (does karma)  then the result is that there is no suffering. If everyone does that then there is eternal peace, that is the next line:

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
 Hence, we pray that all live in peace!!

Some commentators and scholars, have given thrice Shanti, meaning three loks, heaven, earth and hell which is true, but then all the three states are of mind, heaven if you do good, hell if you do bad and suffer in earth if you are not enlightened. So three times of Shanti means peace of mind will give heavenly experience, peace of mind will show the right path so one does not suffer in earth and peace of mind will avoid hell like experience!! 

Sincere request to all friends, family members, member of any caste and creed and more specifically religious outfit, please bring peace to this world!!

Started FB daily spiritual dose

Hello friends,
After a long time, my thoughts is again active. Shortly I will be presenting new concepts and ideas. Thanks

Atman - The universal and only truth.

 This is the something which we always see it as an engima. Very few bother even to reach to the first step, that is not our point of discussion here. Atman in itself as no expression or in other terms; The Body, The Mind and The intellect are not capable of finding or realizing atman unless the person reaches the state of self realization. This state is very very difficult infact just even to experience or visualize to that state is very tough.
We will see why this is so:
1. The Body - as we have seen the past discussions is the lowest state where the person identifies himself as body or its miseries. At this even the person is so occupied with lower - petty things that even he deos n't reach to the emotional level. Forget Atman, he even does not believe in real love. His entire life is spend on I the one word and spends all the possible things to acquire for I and pleasures of I.

2. The Mind - as we have seen the recipient of all input from various senses and the action initiator is so busy in processing information and delagating jobs is never free. We see always there is something always going in our mind. Mind is never vacant for that matter mind is always pondering over things which hardly makes in difference in our lives. We think about past - can the past be changed? and yet we spend millions of minutes or for that matter hours on that isn't that true? Or we think too much about the future which is yet to arrive. If mind has no work it starts creating the world of itself. It is not possible for mind to identify Atman because mind deal with more of emotional level, if mind cannot raise above emotions to intellect it cannot reach atman state.

3. Intellect - as we have seen intellect is mostly absent or performance only when called. When we say that intellect should be called for as we write all this then intellect should know atman but intellect has its limitations too. Intellect falters because it has habit of analyzing everything and atman is more to be realized than analyzed. Though intellect is the only or say prefered tool for reaching self-realization.

This brings us to various routes for atman:
अतीतः पंथानं तव च महिमा वाङ्मनसयोः (Shiva Mahimna - Pushpadanta)

Intellect: (ज्ञानयोग:)
This is the highest form of mode where we can reach to atman as we have seen atman can be only realized. It is the ignorance of the self which causes the "ego" and hence desolution of "ego" and so by involving intellect in all actions and all experiences we can reach there. Although writing this may look simple in reality it is not so. (We will look at this in the sessions to come.)

Mind (भक्तियोग:)
Here we are devoting ourselves to some God (idol or anything higher). This is most popular channel through which everybody operates. Everybody has faith in that entity which everybody calls by different name and also quarrels with other people who follow that same entity with different name. Suprising but true and everyone who is following his/her own path thinks that he/she is following the superior path again amazing. Therefore we find millions of ways and millions of schools and millions of workship centers though that entity is one!!
I will offend everyone to say that all these are commerical centers to nourish people who don't actually believe in entity itself. Also any path or religion or sect doesn't teach either discrimination, violence or hatred and if that were true there won't be any riots based on religion or sect and we see it almost everyday. On the contrary we are taught tolerance, non-violence, character, detachment and so on..... so where are these values??
We are attached to probably all possible things in the world either materialistically or emotionally. Violence is probably default mechanism. And what is tolerance/character??? isn't it? Ironically all the disciplines of life tell you precisely this. If this is so contradictory so is the reason why our life is that miserable and then why we should blame others for our debacle.

Anyways..... so we were in भक्तियोग:, now as we devote ourselves to the entity with some shape or form or ideologies we then engage our mind on it. As we know mind engaged in activity is much better than idle. This engagement with some higher subsistence disintegrates or liberates our mind from the petty, mediocre and unnecessary things of life.

We have always had someone as our rolemodel. Say a person in music will have "Lata Mangeshkar" or "A. R. Rahman" as his rolemodel. So he will follow them try to attend their programmes. Read about their lives. Also will try to emulate their styles or ingeniousness. In doing so he actually forgets "ego" (temporary dissolution of "ego" in much higher state "we"). This is also a common observation that in such a state the person forgets his miserries or problems just to achieve that higher enjoyment. In a way that is भक्ति too!!

Body (कर्मयोग:)
Our body is the best working machine in the universe and yet just because we are attached to the inaction we are ruining our lives. Again all great people have possessed highest level of discipline and have worked (कर्म) a lot in their lives to achieve some degree of charisma/state. We do mostly all the activities for the fruit of action (although there is a difference between activity and action) and just because of this we face pairs of opposites (joy or sorrow; we are using joy/sorrow as meronymy), isn't it.

The person who does exactly what he is supposed to do without expecting fruit of his action and simultaneously is not engaged in inactivity is sure sign of karmayogi.(कर्मयोगी) . For this the person should know his duties or he does everything without actually bothering for fruit of action. A typical example is that of mother or saint they simply love without counting for any returns.

Well this session is little .. heavy !!!

In coming sessions we will see pointers to atman.

16 January - My Birthday!!

In life you are blessed with many things. There are many people who help you directly or indirectly. So they always say treat everyone you meet with love, probably we don't know they in any form may have helped in past. And seriously if you look back "n" number of people are involved in your growth and progress either directly or indirectly. Ironically we don't understand their kindness because we find their negativities or faults. Nobody is perfect is this world and so we should accept what world offers. One thing that does not change is love (atman) and hence we should implicate the same in our life.

I generally don't like to mention about myself or I, but as 16th January is special day for me, I will speak more of I and my than, say probably "we".

Amongst all the people who have been kind to me, I have five best friends in my life. Two are, as I say "My guardian", one is friend and two of them I have never seen in person, talked or met. The two people who I say as my custodian one is Vishwajeet he of my age and we met in college and yet he is more than just best friend. I can write millions and trillions of pages for him. Second is his wife and I always say my mother no.2. I am really blessed by the divinity to have them as my custodian.

Then my friend, we met via our professional contacts and still we are in professional sphere. To our surprise, though we are in professional sphere we understand each other more than mere professional level. Many times I was surprised to receive a call from him when I was very very low and just was not doing well and vice-versa. I generally have interacted with Praseeth (yes his name) on phone and this person has an excellent capacity to understand what I exactly mean. Again blessings from the unknown entity "God". Also it is not like we are in touch daily or weekly or therein-thereabouts but still!!

Now two people to whom I never met and yet the are my best friends. One is Rj aditi and another is Rj smita. I will not be rebellious to say that only people who meet or you are in interaction with are you friends. Adi gave me two things relentless working and still having cheer about what you do. It gave (gives) me inspiration to work relentlessly for hours and hours and hours.... or probably days and days together and still be passionate about what you do and also have cheering personality. Well thats too many... and still ponder how she does this. And smita gave me break or say they say "Stress busters" so whenever things went wrong as they always do, I had that backup which gave me peace. I always try to communicate to them (my limited scope). Again the blessings of heaven and I just request that entity to bless them too.

Hmm... say three years back, I was in the worst possible situation in my life, then I didn't had even money to buy my own clothes. Almost looking down the barrel and having nothing but for these five strong assests, these people may not feel the same way and as I always say divinity finds its way to help you, just you should receive it with kind heart and it works miracles.

Intellect - Custodian.

We have seen that all the activities are carried by 5 senses to mind and mind accordingly has various inputs and hence depending on the inputs creates desire(s). Now these desire are to be fulfilled and some of them are so intense that actions thereafter are inevitable. Most of the times this happens and unknowingly we start creating programs or routines simply because of that. These desires can be a temporary affair or relatively permanent. And yet many times we ourselves feel why we doing this or why we into this schedule or why we are in this company? We also do retrospection but it doesn't last because we haven't changed either the routine or the inputs what we are receiving. Almost 99% of our activities are mechanical because of that. We also resist change (say 95%) or we like changes and always newness (signs of unstable mind or untrained mind) this also means we are in intial stage (ghrut analogy: where milk is the day to day experiences, we have to consume milk everyday (experiences) but we aren't accumulating knowledge/wisdom cream and thats why we constantly need changes) and also resistance to change means we have climbed one step(Ghrut analogy: we have accumulated cream but are not ready to churn for higher goals that is butter).

The question in mind will come then don't we use brains and what then if we are so mechanical would be differences in animals and we as humans. Well the answer is no, there is absolutely no difference. Awkward, but true. Animals can be and are trained, similarly humans are trained. Only the difference probably would be we are better trained or can be better trained. But there is also one difference animals don't have desires so eventually it evens out. Are we suggesting the depressing side, this is very shocking and so on would be reactions in mind, also there can be a thought this writting is all bogus and this person is insane..... well actually this brings to our topic, the Intellect.

By intellect we are not suggesting (IQ = intelligence Quotient or brilliancy) but role of intellect in our life. As we know majority of our actions or activities are desire driven. So lets go to the inputs again; we hear ( we are using hearing as a meronymy) good or bad so this input will create wonders in our mind, isn't it. This input will further escalate our emotions depending on its nature and intensity. Now because this falls in mind domain the person gives way to emotions or reaction to the input. Surprisingly intellect is not involved in this activity. For example we watch the movie and the emotions displayed (created by writer, director and shown by actor or situation) are felt by us (may be limited to that situation or during the hours) so we cry or laugh and yet when we leave the theatre we only remember the movie and forget the emotions because then the intellect tell us that we are no more in that situation, but because while viewing the movie intellect was absent we faltered to emotions. So similarly many of our situations in life we face trauma of miseries just because in those situations intellect not called for or just not present. They give us a rope snake analogy, where suppose in a dark you have stepped on a snake you are naturally frightened and start to panic and do all sorts of things and then there is a beam of light where you come to know that this thing is merely a rope. So in this situation intellect was absolutely absent, naturally so!!. Similarly this is applicable to our real lives (What is real is again in question?) we have situation where our mind falters and there is a total chaos.

Therefore we should allow our intellect to intervene. All the action or activities that we do should have intellect involved. Is this difficult, well it depends. For this either you should know swadharma (duties) or you should accept what world offers to you. There is a reason for this, we do all the activities that are driven by desires so the action will leave some result which may or may not be pleasant. So the other side is we do things only for pleasantness or for fruit of action. This is the ignorance which will show us pair of opposites (joy or sorrow) but mostly we get bad part (80-20: 80% stressful conditions, 20% happiness) and therefore we get into futher emotional or delicate situations because again the mind has a negative input, isn't it. So its like a giant wheel so land up in the same place where you started from. Now if the intellect is called a. before the action or b. duriing the action, then we understand either the repurcurtions of the action or we also know that we are doing it with purpose, so therefore whatever the fruit might me is irrelavant. For example, if a karate aspirant is doing his routines, these routines may not give him black belt but in order to get to that level he should possess some pre-requisites. So therefore even if he misses a schedule or two it hardly makes difference in the final objective but skipping routines for a longer period will definately make difference. So there the intellect comes in picture, here the aspirant has to decide whether he is skipping too many or he will manage (not implusive or by mind). 

Now if the intellect starts to intervene in all the actions then the person only deos action which are his duties because then the desire driven actions are not there and also as he does what he is suppose to do the fruit of action is irrelevant. The major cause of stress or dissent or unrest is desire driven actions.

Are we suggesting that we should not have any desires we should not have any fun or luxuries and we should not enjoy, the answer to this is we should enjoy to the fullest we should have all the luxuries (they say play while you play, study while you study and enjoy while enjoying) but all these activities are first to be scanned by intellect. Intellect will always alarm us about the lurking dangers. If the action is scanned by intellect the enjoyment is to the fullest. But if all the actions taken are doing my mind ( as we always do), we face problems.

Yadgna - Sacrifice.

Well this is something tough, at least for me. As we have seen in past few sessions, all about senses, mind and intellect (we haven't discussed but as we progress I think things will get clearer). Now based on these thing we will touch delicate yet important topic of Yadgna (Sorry I don't have Devanagari fonts).
We know that the senses carry tons of information to the mind, I am not saying brain there is a reason for this. This information in raw form is pretty innocuous till the time it is processed. Say for example you had a bad day, that is life isn't but say if you post the whole blame on your boss then probably you are in trouble or say you land up in the conclusion that these things went wrong because of someone else.
So the experiences of the world are going to be pairs of opposites therefore we find pair of opposite people, because their mind have been altered with experiences. Therefore the experiences of these five senses are having no value in themselves till the time they are processed. Now it all depends how they are processed, that is why great people say you should have positive attitude, by this they mean gain the experience where you can learn in right way.
This brings to our topic Yadgna, this is slightly boring, if you have seen the ritual of yadgna, om indraya swaha, indraya idanna mama. They say "This is for indra this is not mine". Which also means that the experiences of world are not mine. Also (I don't think anybody will agree), indra means individual who as conquered his senses. So the other side is person who wants to controls over senses should leave experiences (idanna mama - not mine). So are we suggesting that person should be mute, deaf and blind to the experiences? No not at all.
There we come to what is required in Yagna,
You require
- Firewood (Samidha)
Ideally dried firewood of five different trees are taken. So five also means senses. Dried means devoid of life or doesn't involve in life.

- Ghrut (Cow Ghee, well !!)
Well again this is my favorite and top class thing. Ghrut starts its journey from milk which we consume daily (in some form or other) so this milk means daily experiences of mind. Then as we keep the milk the next day you have cream over it. So which means we gather wisdom out of it and as we know cream floats above milk so wisdom floats above the petty and small things (experiences of life) or the other side is wise men are above mediocre people. And also cream was in the milk which floated above so the experiences are all there wisdom is a scarcity and floats above. Then this cream is mixed with curd for settling (i don't know whether is term is correct). which means this acquired wisdom, knowledge has to be preserved. The the process of churning this curd consisting of cream which results in butter. Now this means that whatever we have gathered has to be churned, thoughts churning is inevitable in any process.
- This is my favorite example, a chess player he thinks during the game and then finishes his game. After the game is finished he just plays the moves again to see how the game has progressed (settling cream with curd), then after the tournament is finished goes back to his library and refers annotated games with similar positions so in fact churning process and he gets navneet (butter) and yet he has to testify this result or analysis or thought process, so that brings us to ghrut which means burning butter with heat or testifying your thoughts with intellect ( here the example is heat, intense heat) so rigours research.

So this is entire thing for Ghrut

- Chanting mantra & performing rituals
Now this is again interesting, (for many people boring though) as we saw mind is responsible for actions, so doing actions with right thoughts (they call attitude these days) is also an objective for yagna.

Now we see the relevance, as we are doing yagna we are burning firewood (five senses) adding ghee (the entire process of ghrut) and taking action (chanting mantra and doing rituals). If you see any person who has evolved he does exactly what we have mentioned above. He sacrifices his senses, purifies his mind (may be to the limited domain) and does his action with a fixed objective in mind.

Mind - The door

We have mentioned that the mind is reflection of senses, mind is also the door to the world. We know the term - "Open minded" where we related the person who is open to new ideas, thoughts etc. So the mind is good door to the world. There are however few things done before we have openmindedness, because mind takes everything the intellect of the person should be very sharp (alert) otherwise the world will manipulate you by offering the opposite pairs of experiences and then the person get confused with everything. We often find open-minded people though very popular are inside facing more miseries.

 

Introvert person has less miseries or rather manages miseries well. The reason for that is introvert person looks inside more than the world, I am not saying that the person should not be broadminded or openminded but what would like to suggest is that the person should be more (alert) in that case. The person who analysis all the events in this manner could hardly get manipulated with the worlds experiences. The person selectively registers what he want and rest all goes unregistered.

 

Mind also is responsible for actions therefore the side is also important, many times we find many people are very busy with activities and yet they don't achieve anything significant in life. There are many people in that contemplative stage they don't seem to do anything and yet they are full of actions. Because mind can get manipulated so does the actions of the person and therefore the person reaction to the situation differs and also person to person. The same person reacts differently to the same situation because his past experience has taught him something different. And past experience means worlds presentation to the mind. Most often, in these cases intellect is absent.

 

Mostly all our actions are done my mind and therefore we continue to repeat the same things all over throughout our lives, and learning curve is not that fast. We often find people having same environment for years together. Rich men continue to get richer and poor continue to get poorer. This is because constantly we get same environment and therefore the thoughts are same and the mind remains the same and we never grow or we never change our mind.

 

That is the reason why many people are advised change either in the environment or city or the company. We many times see that the person just changes his house and suddenly his luck or circumstances get changed. This is the precise reason why this fluke happens, but deeply we can know that when his environment changes, unknowingly mind is given different sets of inputs and hence his decision making becomes different and hence the results. There are many such techniques where actually the person is supposed to break is routine and do something else this is given some spiritual background like for example astrologist tell to visit temple or do something, so eventually the person is brought to entirely a different set of conditions which he has never followed or done and thence accumulate something which is beneficial for him and therefore his thought process and hence the result.

 

This is a very deep rooted philosophy and has to be delicately handled the reason for that is many spurious people take advantage resulting in loss of reputation.