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