Necessity of having a Guru for getting Enlightenment

"The tortoise is on one bank of the river and her young ones are on the other side. She gives neither milk nor warmth to them. Her mere glance gives them nutrition. The young ones do nothing but remember their mother. The tortoise glance is, to the young ones, a downpour of nectar, the only source of happiness. Similar is the relation between the Guru and disciples."

- Shirdi Sai Baba (to get my free e-book on His teachings, you may click here).

All serious spiritual aspirants interested in getting Enlightenment must necessarily have a Guru for their guidance. That is because we don’t know much about the means or end. Unlike material goals, spiritual goal is always abstract as is the path. Even though we read a lot regarding path or goal, we won’t understand it completely. So, unless there is a Guru to guide us, we won’t make it.

I don’t mean the verbal guidance - we can read a lot from books or hear a lot from the enlightened people. It is about controlling our words, thoughts and desires that are responsible for manifesting the process of Enlightenment. After all, Enlightenment is a process of manifestation.

Bhagavad Gita talks about two kinds of Enlightenment - one in our individuated consciousness and another in the universal Consciousness. A person enlightened in his individuated consciousness is not capable of controlling our words, thoughts and desires - only a person enlightened in the universal Consciousness is. That is because, spiritual guidance involves assuming the omniscient and omnipotent capabilities of the all-pervading universal Consciousness.

You need not search for a Person enlightened in the universal Consciousness. That Person need not be alive with body now. The soul of such Person doesn’t take birth again. And even after shedding His body He will be very much alive and in complete merger with universal Consciousness. If you surrender to His soul, He’ll guide you.

Who are such Persons? There are many - Shirdi Sai Baba, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Chaitanya Mahaprabu, Sankara, Ramanuja to name a few. You may choose any one - mostly, it will be other way around, if you know what I mean.

Just worship One in your residence and request Him to guide you daily. That’s enough. He’ll guide you - wherever you are and whatever you do.

Many persons who are enlightened in their individuated consciousness, may offer to guide you. Remember that they can’t. They may claim that they are Gautama Buddha and so on. Remember that they are not. They may ask you to leave your properties, profession and relations and move to their place. Don’t do that - you are already in the best environment for Enlightenment to happen to you. Don’t spoil that. They can only describe what Enlightenment feels like and some can explain the path but none of them can control your words, thoughts and desires to make you walk in the path.

With the subtle guidance from the One Who is enlightened in the universal Consciousness, it is very easy to walk the path leading to Enlightenment. There is absolutely no need for you to renounce your family, social or professional life. And there is no need for you to stick to any particular dress code or food code, either. Your Guru will take care of your spiritual as well as material needs.

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- umasreedasan

https://instagram.com/umasreedasan

Experience of Enlightenment

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 8 of 8

athavaa bahuunaa etena kim jnaathena tava arjuna |
vishTabhya aham idam krutsnam ekaamSena sthita: jagat || (BG – 10:42)

Meaning: But of what use to you is all this extensive knowledge, Arjuna? I stand sustaining this whole universe with a fragment of My power.

Have you ever seen Krishna, the God and Lord of this universe? I understand it is less likely for you to have seen Him because only an enlightened can see Him. But do you know that Krishna doesn’t appear in human form with two hands or in angel form with four hands to the enlightened? Of course He can appear in any form He chooses but during the process of spiritual enlightenment He always appears in His innate form - otherwise, enlightenment will not happen to the seer. And His innate form is nowhere near the gross forms we are used to.

Experience of Self-Realization

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 7 of 8

yat yat vibhuutimat sattvam Sriimat uurjitam eva va |
tat tat eva avagaccha tvam mama teja: amSa sambhavam || (BG – 10:41)

Meaning: Whatever being is possessed of power or glory or energy, know that as the manifestation of a fragment of My splendor.

You would have never experienced such a Field of Splendour. It is a Field that arises from your heart, crosses the physical boundary of your body and extends into infinity in all directions.

Experience of Spiritual Awakening - The Conclusion

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 6 of 8

teshaam eva anukampaartham aham ajnaanajam tama: |
naaSayaami aatmabhaavastha: jnaanadeepena bhaasvataa || (BG – 10:11)

Meaning: Out of compassion for them, I, abiding in their soul, destroy the darkness born of ignorance by the shining Lamp of Wisdom.

Consider an iron piece that is moved by a stationary magnet by means of its magnetic field. Magnet never moved - it is only the iron piece that moved. Magnet didn’t cause the iron piece to move - it is only the magnetic field that caused the movement of iron piece. Magnet only possessed the magnetic field that caused the iron piece to move.

Experience of Spiritual Awakening - The Beginning

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 5 of 8

teshaam satatayuktaanaam bhajataam priitipuurvakam |
dadaami buddhiyogam tam yena maam upayaanti te || (BG – 10:10)

Meaning: To those who are ever united with Me and worship Me with Love, I give Buddhi Yoga by which they come to Me.

Who is a devotee? Most of the devotional cults define the supreme Deity as God and Lord of the universe and a devotee as one who worships that Deity with such faith. The definition of devotion is thus limited to mere faith. As already discussed, due to the absence of omnipresence feature in this definition for the supreme Deity, the devotee will never go beyond this faith until death.

Krishna - God of the universe, the Creator and Assimilator of the Creation

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 4 of 8

etat yoniini bhuutaani sarvaaNi tu upadhaaraya |
aham krutsnasya jagata: prabhava: pralaya: tathaa || (BG – 07:06)

Meaning: Know that all beings have evolved from these twofold Prakriti (insentient matter/energy). I am the Source and the Sink of the entire world.

Who is Krishna? If we have to understand Who Krishna is, we’ll have to understand first who Krishna is not.

Krishna - Lord of the universe, the Pervader of the Creation

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 3 of 8

aparaa iyam ita: tu anyaam prakrutim viddhi me paraam |
jiivabhuutaam mahaabaaho yayaa idam dhaaryate jagat || (BG – 07:05)

Meaning: Arjuna, know My higher Prakriti, the Sentient matter (Jiva bhuta), that is different from the above said lower Prakriti, and by which this world is sustained.

Our mind where our thoughts arise and our body where our sensory perceptions of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch arise, are actually insentient. They behave like sentient entities due to the sentience supplied by the consciousness of our soul.

Krishna - Lord of the universe, the Supporter of the Creation

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 2 of 8

bhuumi: aapa: anala: vaayu: kham mana: bhuddhi: eva ca |
ahankaara: iti iyam me bhinnaa prakruti: ashTadhaa || (BG – 07:04)

Meaning: earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and ego – thus My Prakriti (insentient matter) is divided eightfold.

As long as we confine Krishna to the human form He has taken, we won’t get any significant assistance from Him for our Enlightenment efforts. Some devotees think that Krishna should be worshiped as the four-handed Vishnu form bearing conch, wheel, club and lotus, in order to get assistance from Him. Wrong again.

How to get Enlightenment with Divine Assistance

Enlightenment Teaching of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita - Part 1 of 8

mayi aasaktamanaa: paarta yogam yunjan madaaSraya: |
asamSayam samagram maam yathaa jnaasyasi tat SruNu || (BG – 07:01)

Meaning: Arjuna, hear how you will know Me wholly without doubt by performing yoga with mind set on Me and supported by Me.

Enlightenment is achieved only after performing Karma Yoga, followed by Jnana Yoga and then by Bhakti Yoga.

Introduction to Enlightenment

I was passing through a critical phase in my life. My wife was hospitalized. I was shuttling from home to workplace to hospital daily. Doctors were proposing some life-threatening disease that I didn’t want to hear, pending diagnostics. She was taken in stretcher to the scan centre of the hospital for taking a scan. I was anxiously waiting in a chair outside the MRI scan centre of the hospital.

By now I had fully realized the contribution of my wife to my life and our family. We realize the value of a person only when we are going to lose her. God has given me an angel but what have I done to her? I remembered most of the instances in our married life when I had behaved inhumanly towards her, when I had ill-treated her and when I had insulted her before her near and dear. As I remembered more and more, I began to hate myself. Tears began to roll down my cheeks. I wept making sobbing sounds oblivious of where I was sitting. Suddenly I was physically shaken by somebody.

My wife was sitting on the bed beside me looking at me with her characteristic charming smile. I looked at the wall clock of our bed room that showed 5 AM. I sighed with relief. So, I was having a dream.

Even after I was woken up, I could remember each and every part of the dream. On thinking twice on that terrible dream, I found something weird. It was not a usual dream. There were two me’s. In all the scenes of the dream, I was playing the part of the husband of my wife. I was also playing the part of observer of all scenes. I was travelling from my workplace to the hospital. Another me was simply watching that I was travelling. I was remembering about how I behaved inhumanly towards my wife. And another me was observing the me who was remembering. I hated myself. And I observed I hated myself.

Have you ever seen a dream in which you played double roles? One you playing a character of a scene and another you observing it - have you had such a dream? Or can you imagine a theatre where you alone are seeing a movie in which you have acted in a role?

In that dream I described above, which me will be worried most that she should recover soon? Husband me or observing me?

The nature of our soul is Peace-Love-Joy. It doesn’t require peaceful circumstances to be at peace. It doesn’t require deserving persons to express its love. It doesn’t require happy events to be happy. Your soul can be at peace even when your mind is boiling with anger. It can be at love even when your heart is broken by your sweetheart. It can be happy even when your body is sick and dull.

Our soul has taken this birth to experience its unconditional Peace-Love-Joy in various circumstances and various events of our life. That is the whole purpose of our life. For this purpose it uses our body, mind and heart as its tools - more technically, gross body, subtle body and causal body. It is okay for our body, mind and heart to get carried away by the circumstances and events of our life. That is because our body, mind and heart live in explicit and implicit fear - unconditional Peace-Love-Joy cannot exist where there is fear. But it is not the case with our soul.

I have seen some in the audience especially ladies who would identify themselves with a sobbing heroine of the movie and weep with her. That is what our soul is doing now. It identifies itself with our body, mind and heart, and so it also gets carried away when our tools are carried away by the circumstances and events of our life.

Why? Why does our soul get carried away by our tools? Our soul is buried deep in our body, mind and heart. So, it identifies itself with our tools. It behaves as if it were body, mind or heart. It is doing, it is thinking and it is desiring. Instead of observing what our body is doing, what our mind is thinking and what our heart is desiring, it is doing along with our body, it is thinking along with our mind and it is desiring along with our heart.

So, what should we do? Dig out our soul from its tools, one by one and separate it from its tools permanently. Then it will know who it is and what it is supposed to do. A lion cub was reared by a deer trio right from its childhood. So, it was fearing for life all the time. A lion passing by, taking pity on this cub, took it to a well. On seeing its reflection on the well water, the cub came to know who it is and shed the fear imparted by the deer trio.

Once our soul knows itself to be entirely different from its tools, it starts experiencing its characteristic unconditional Peace-Love-Joy. This will dramatically improve the quality of our life experience.

Enlightenment is, therefore, essentially the process of permanently separating your soul from your body-mind-heart to permanently experience its Peace-Love-Joy even as your body-mind-heart might live in implicit and explicit fear. All spiritually enlightened persons have done it. You can also do it. Do it now - for the benefit of your own soul and other souls you are related to in your family, social and professional transactions.

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~ umasreedasan

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Light in Meditation - Achievement or Obstacle?

Many persons doing Meditation, for material as well as spiritual goals, have reported to me that they were seeing light within them during meditation and wanted me to comment on their achievement. I thought an article on this phenomenon would be of some help to many people who are doing or intending to do meditation.

First let me clarify to you that meditation has nothing to do with our mind. Our mind does become calm and free from agitating thoughts during meditation, but that is the result of meditation, rather a by-product of meditation - it is not even the direct goal of meditation. The target of meditation is always our Consciousness. When we move our identity to our Consciousness from our mind, our mind is automatically freed from its agitating thoughts.

On the other hand, if you try to control your thoughts, either you’ll increase the intensity of your thoughts or you’ll enter dreamy or dreamless sleep. That’s because when you try to control your thoughts, you reinforce your identification with your mind that will fuel your thoughts - You, that is, your Self is the fuel for your thought. Or you identify yourself with your heart (more exactly, the causal body - what you perceive during dreamless deep sleep) which will result in sleep. If you fully identify yourself with your heart, it will produce dreamless sleep. If you identify yourself with your heart as well as mind, then you’ll enter dreamy sleep.

Worse, such identification of yourself with your heart may manifest some nonsense faith of your heart during meditation. Suppose you read in Scriptures that Self is a luminous Entity that makes our mind to think. It must be interpreted that in the absence of our Self our mind is merely insentient, and only in the proximity of our Self it can become sentient and function to think its thoughts. In other words, luminosity of Self is just a simile employed by the Scriptures to refer to the source of sentience. Instead, suppose you assume that our Self is literally luminous. This belief of your mind will slowly percolate down to your heart as the faith that your Self is literal light. Now when you try to control your thoughts by switching your identity to your heart, your faith will manifest itself as a beautiful light.

White light, color light or variable color intensity light is a manifestation of some nonsense faith of your heart. It has nothing to do with your Consciousness or Self or Lord. You are led astray. If you think it is a big achievement of your meditation, not only you are mistaken but you are increasing your grip on the crap your heart has manifested, forfeiting any chance of getting back to the right track.

If you enjoy this crap of light during meditation and teach your wonderful achievement to a few novices of meditation, all your chances of quenching the light are completely sealed. Then you’ll be left with your light for the balance of your life as you are moving away from your Consciousness instead of moving towards your Consciousness. Without entering your Consciousness, you can’t even think of realization of your Self or Lord therein. If you are meditating for reduction of your negative energy, you won’t succeed in your attempt as negative energy of your body, mind and heart can be controlled only after entering the plane of your Consciousness.

So, if you see a luminous entity during meditation, know that you are going astray. Take immediate steps to quench that useless crap. How to make it disappear?

Stop thinking that appearance of light is a big achievement or great milestone of your meditation efforts. It is not. It is a useless crap standing between your mind and your Consciousness. It is not just delaying but completely blocking your journey to your Consciousness from your mind. So, it is not divine but devil. Leave it. Just ignore it. It will disappear on its own.

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~umasreedasan

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Myths and Facts of Spiritual Enlightenment

Gita says that not even one in a thousand succeeds in getting enlightened [BG 7:3]. Due to the large section of people being ignorant of what enlightenment feels like, there are more myths of it than facts. If you and I have not seen a single lion right from our childhood, our discussion about lion described theoretically in a book written by a person who has actually seen a lion, will generate more myths than facts of a lion, isn’t it? This article considers five such popular myths and presents the facts.

MYTH:  An enlightened person will renounce all his worldly engagements after enlightenment.

FACT:  People quote Buddha, Shankara and Ramana among others to support their argument that during or after the process of spiritual enlightenment, the aspirant will renounce his/her worldly duties and possessions.

Bhagavad Gita discusses two types of enlightenment - realization of God in one’s individuated expanded Consciousness [BG 18:65] and realization of God in the universal Consciousness [BG 18:55]. If you choose the latter difficult type as your goal, then yes, you’ll have to leave your worldly possessions after a certain stage. But if you choose the former one, there is no need for renunciation. Aspirants who had the former one as their goal and renounced the family life and material possessions did it as a choice - there was absolutely no need for them to do so.

In this book the term enlightenment is exclusively used to denote the individuated-Consciousness-enlightenment.

In any case if you are immersed in family and professional activities like me, you can’t even imagine the universal-Consciousness-enlightenment as your goal. Hence, please be assured that there is absolutely no need for you to renounce your worldly life either during or after the process of enlightenment.

Having said that, I must add that after enlightenment, your indispensable compulsive attachment to the worldly possessions and activities are weakened to such an extent that it improves your capability of managing them without affecting the quality of your experiencing them. That’s what we need, isn’t it?

MYTH:  An enlightened person is God or almost so; for, she will know everything about everyone and can do anything for anyone.

FACT:  People believe that enlightened persons are omniscient and omnipotent going by the life events of Shirdi Sai Baba, Jesus Christ and others. As already stated universal-Consciousness-enlightenment is different from individuated-Consciousness-enlightenment. The latter doesn’t give you either omniscience or omnipotence.

By the way, do you know that people get some occult powers through means other than enlightenment process? Paranormal knowledge and powers are not necessarily signs of enlightenment.

What enlightenment really gives you is absolute Peace and absolute Happiness. Even when your heart, mind and body are ripped apart by negative emotions like hatred, anger and fear due to external events and circumstances, your inner core will always be at pleasant Peace supplied by Lord in your Self, just as you’ll feel pleasant Peace during dreamless deep sleep. By moving your identity from your body, mind and heart to Lord in your Self, which you can do in a jiffy after enlightenment, you can observe your heart, mind and body to control your negative emotions. This is the single biggest benefit of enlightenment which cannot be obtained by any other means. Enlightenment gives you the gift of Kingdom of pleasant Peace. It’s all yours - always.

MYTH:  When challenging events take place in the life of an enlightened, he will not at all be disturbed and will display no negative reaction like fear, anger or anxiety.

FACT:  Again this is a case of confusion between universal-Consciousness-enlightenment and individuated-Consciousness-enlightenment. If your kid needs, for an example, urgent medical attention and you are cold and unresponsive, what will your spouse think of you? Unfit for family life, isn’t it?

Even after enlightenment, your heart, mind and body will behave as they did before enlightenment during challenging life situations. But you can control your negative reactions to the tolerable limit due to your capability of switching over to your Consciousness. And of course, your inner being will be always at pleasant Peace even during challenging life situations.

Thus, after enlightenment, the quality of your life will improve a lot, yet, your regular experience of life will never be compromised. You can lead a normal family life, and social and professional life as well.

MYTH:  An enlightened person will wear special simple attire with no vibrant color, will grow a long beard (of course, in case of male), will live in a secluded mutt, possibly beg his food, talks only about God and sleeps on a floor.

FACT:  Once again this is a case of confusion between universal-Consciousness-enlightenment and individuated-Consciousness-enlightenment.

An enlightened person may wear any dress she chooses - not necessarily white or saffron colored ones only. She may lead a normal family, social and professional life. There is no need for her to found a non-profit organization. She may work as an employee under you in your organization enjoying wealth, power and pleasures. You cannot discover an enlightened by her outward appearance, but you talk to her on wide ranging issues - political, social, professional and family issues, and ask for her frank opinion. You’ll be stunned at her view points. You may not be able to accept or even understand some of her view points and solutions because she talks from the spiritual plane of unified Consciousness, whereas you are trying to understand from the material plane of divided heart, mind and body.

MYTH:  You have to abstain from sex to get enlightened.

FACT:  People think that indulgence in material pleasures like gratification of physical needs of the body will wean them off their spiritual pursuits, and so it should be dropped altogether.

Overindulgence in such pleasures will definitely slow down one’s spiritual pursuits - I don’t have a second opinion about it. But abstaining completely from them will make one crave for them. This is worse than overindulgence. You can’t learn anything while you are hungry.

Sex is not a taboo in the spiritual realm as some people think. After enlightenment you’ll know how to have sex with your spouse with more love and less lust. Your relationship with your spouse will improve a lot due to this and other Consciousness Principles you’d practice.

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~ umasreedasan

https://instagram.com/umasreedasan