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.