The Shivalingam

The Shivalingam is not merely a religious symbol. It is a deeply scientific and metaphysical representation of the universe's generative process. From the mathematical ellipse to the universal sine wave, from geometric form to spiritual energy, it stands as the perfect icon of manifestation - where the potential becomes real, and where the infinite takes shape.

The lingam is an ellipsoid, mathematically defined by its three semi-axes:

a: the radius along the x-axis
b: the radius along the y-axis
c: the radius along the z-axis

When these radii are all equal, we get a sphere, cross sectionally, a circle. 
When two of these radii are zero, the ellipsoid reduces into a one-dimensional line
When all the radii are zero, the ellipsoid collapses into a singularity - a dimensionless point.

Within You Without You

George Harrison's discovery of the sitar and Indian music was apparently accidental. He saw a sitar lying around in the studio when they were recording Norwegian Wood for the album Rubber Soul. In search of an exotic sound, he picked of the sitar, fiddled around with it and then delivered the now well known sound for the song. And created a new musical genre - raga rock!

We who have learned better would know that there are no accidents. There is a pervasive intelligence guiding everything that happens. Harrison was a seeker. He was guided to his answers through a cheap prop sitar lying around in his recording studio.

Determined to learn the instrument properly, he managed to get an audience with the maestro Ravi Shankar, who agreed to teach him. So off he went to Bombay (now Mumbai) where he spent 6 weeks under Ravi's tutelage. This was even before the Beatles had met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a meeting which brought all of them to Rishikesh one year later.

The Prana Body

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The upanishads teach us that we are made up of five layers of body. In this Page, I have touched on the role of the Body of Breath. If you want to know more about the five layers, read this Page.

The two body layers that are part of this material realm are the Physical Body which eats and procreates, and the Mental Body which perceives and processes information from the exterior and instructs the physical body on how to respond.

The two body layers that are from another realm are the Bliss Body which is the innermost experiential layer and which is enveloped in an Awareness Body, in Sanskrit called vignjana. Since we are unable to discern between these two layers, human language has a single common term for this body - the spirit, or soul or Astral Body.

Karma and yoga

Karma means action. The consequences of one's action are taken as part of the action. The commonly taken meaning of karma is the effect our past actions have on our present life. Karma is also the effect of current actions on future lifetimes.

Karma is actually the burden carried by the body we are attached to. So long as we don't realize who we truly are and remain attached to the body and its mind, we will be governed by the ego of that personality and remain bounded by its karma. Recognizing our true self to be the awareness within and realizing that our awareness is simply a part of the whole of consciousness, our relationship with the rest of the world takes on a different flavour. We become aware that whatever we do, we are only doing to and for ourselves. Then we can perform our action with fullness of heart and mind. And we become disengaged from the karma of that body.

Stotram of Awakening

Once again, my Post will be based on inspiration that found its way to me. This morning, I received a very inspiring message from the Isha Foundation linking me to a stotram sung by their own Sounds of Isha. I was so moved by the chanting that I investigated it further. It turns out, they have produced a video recording of the Sounds of Isha blessing us with the stotram.

This is just the introduction to the sutras, which first tells us about the difference between being aware of who we are and being lost in the maze of our mind. Then it explains the five states of mind in which we can be lost. The final line in this selection of the verses tells us what we need to do if we want to realize our true self.

Abstract Illustrations

I was told that some of the abstract ideas that I share in my Posts are difficult to grasp and that illustrations would help with understanding them. My problem is that I can't draw very well. My artistic brain-to-hand coordination is quite poor. So I thought, hey this is the age of AI. Why not let AI figure this one out?

As it turns out, while AI can do pretty good conventional images and video, abstract concepts are a whole different ball game. The trick is to put into words what I am conceptualising, while figuring out how words can get misinterpreted. And I've discovered that, while AI can produce pretty neat graphics, it's not easy to give them a drawing and get them to modify it. They seem fixated on retaining the original as much as possible.

So I've resorted to getting AI to produce elements of my design, and then I assemble those elements by myself. Let's see if it works.

Mahaasamaadhi

On the 4th of July 1902, Swami Vivekananda went to his room, entered deep meditation for hours and then, lay down and left his body. The official cause of death was the rupture of a cranial blood vessel.

It was reported that he had spent the day calmly teaching his disciples and conversing with them. Nobody could tell that something remarkable was about to happen. While his health had not been very good, there were no indications of any perilous condition. It had been a day just like any other day. You can see more about Swami's last day in this You Tube Short Video.

Awakening by a Guru

In my Blog Post yesterday, I spoke of the need for a guru to launch a seeker into the inner realm with a physical touch. I quoted two notable examples, but there was one exception which I did not touch on. In his recounting of his own awakening, Sadhguru Jaggi did not mention any guru being present to push him over. He simply sat on a rock and spontaneously entered the awakened state.

I could not understand it but chose to believe him. I figured that I will learn the truth later.

This morning, I received a WhatsApp message containing a very interesting link. It turns out that Sadhguru was indeed awakened by a guru, but it happened 2 lifetimes earlier. He was awakened to perform a task that would take longer than a single lifetime so he was given enough charge to last 3 lifetimes. That was why it appears that he awoke spontaneously in the last two lifetimes. I suppose, in an earlier era, he would have simply lived a longer life, but that's a little hard to do these days.

Why seek a Guru?

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In the aftermath of Guru Purnima, I would like to share my opinion on two questions about Gurus that have occurred to me and which may be nagging at some of you. But this is just my opinion. Do seek verification from a learned authority.

1. Does one need a Guru?

The vague history reports that Adi Shankara, who was 8 years old at that time, was discovered wandering around in the Himalayas looking for a Guru. A sage asked him who he was. He responded with the recitation of the Nirvana Shatakam.

I was informed that Adi Shankara in fact went directly to Guru Govindapadaal in Maharashtra. The Wikipedia entry on Adi Shankara admits that reliable information about his life is scant. What is important is his impact on advaita vedanta. In the context of this Blog, the importance is the reality that, no matter how spiritually advanced one is, a Guru is needed to take the final step.

At that tender age, he had already understood the Upanishads, had pondered about himself and had realised that, on his own, he could only discover more about this material realm, which he had already realised was nothing but a shell of illusion. In order to discover who he really was, he needed a Guru to guide him further. That's why he had gone in search of a Guru. That a seeker as advanced, both intellectually and spiritually, as he was also needed a guru is very telling.

Celebrating Guru Purnima

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The Sanskrit word "guru" (गुरु) is made up of two syllables 

"gu" (गु) — means darkness or ignorance
"ru" (रु) — means dispeller or remover

In its original context, the guru is one who helps his students to overcome the darkness of ignorance. The term is usually reserved for one who is well versed in the subject and capable of transferring the knowledge. Aspiring students are sent to stay with the guru and they offer him service in return for the learning he imparts.

In a wider context, guru is any source from which one learns. We can learn by observing the sun and rain, the rivers and trees. We can learn from the way animals interact. There is much to learn from observing children at play. We can learn from any person we encounter. Even the person who gives one a hard time is imparting a lesson. For the willing student, gurus can be found everywhere.

The Masterpiece of Manikkavacakar

According to legend, maNikkavaacakar, a 9th century CE minister of a Pandya kingdom, encountered civaa (Shiva) disguised as an ascetic. The encounter awoke his consciousness and moved him to record his understanding of the paths of devotion (bhakthi) and wisdom (njana) which could bring the devotee closer to union (yoga) with the Supreme Consciousness.

The civapuraaNam is a devotional prostration to Shiva as well as a summary of Shaivite theology and metaphysics. The song is very popular and is sung on many religious occasions. Sadly, most of the singers do not completely understand the meaning. For those who are not Tamil literate, it is simply a long-winded recitation of meaningless sounds.

In the third line from the end of the song, maNikkavaacakar mentions "Those who sing, knowing the meaning of the song". It is in knowing the meaning that the maximum value can be obtained from singing the song. This line in the song prompted me to offer a transliteration and translation of the song, primarily targeting those who can't read thamizh. 

My transliteration invites readers to abandon the idea that they are reading an English language version. I wish to encourage them to grasp the structure of the thamizh text. Therefore my choice of the Roman alphabets adheres closely to thamizh spelling.

In my translation, I have tried to retain the lyrical, philosophical, and devotional beauty of the original thamizh. I trust that I have succeeded. I have included guidelines on my romanization of the thamizh for benefit of those who are interested.

I have included the civapuraaNam in my Tao of Music.

Go here for my introduction, transliteration and translation in PDF

Go here for the You Tube video with subtitles.

Expressing an internal Experience

We are in this world to experience a life in the flesh and thereby exhaust our attachments and desires. Those attachments and desires are the bonds of karma that keep bringing us back into this life of toil. It is only by clearing our karma that we can exit the cycle of reincarnation.

Our interaction with the material world is made up of three stages: First, we receive inputs through our senses of perception. Then we process those inputs and experience the effect of those inputs. Finally we respond to those inputs through an expression of our internal experience.

There is a wide array of ways in which to express what we have experienced. Great souls express their internal experience in ways that can move huge numbers of people. Those expressions have served to transform entire populations.

Today's Post is a marker for a Page in which I explore in detail the matter of internal experience and the expression of it. Do take the time to read it. I hope you find it to be inspirational.

Perceive > Experience > Express

Dealing with Karma

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Karma means action. Every action triggers a sequence of consequences. Positive actions yield positive consequences while negative actions do the opposite. Positive and negative consequences can cancel out each other. The concept of karma includes the consequences of one's action. 

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that there are 3 kinds of karma - sanchita which is the entire karmic baggage, prarabdha which is the karmic baggage allocated for the current lifetime and kriyamana which is fresh karmic baggage being added on.

From the upanishads, one learns that there are 4 paths of yoga to help in dealing with karma - bhakthi, karma, njana and kriya. This is dealt with in more detail here. The popular mainstream religions offer bhakthi (devotion) and karma (service) as essential elements of piety. The advaita practices offer intellectual pursuit and meditative inward seeking as mechanisms to deal with karma.

We each have to search for the path that works best for us. This is usually defined by the religious heritage of the individual. Those who are not satisfied with the teachings offered by their religious tradition go in search of answers. Seekers from various disciplines very often find themselves headed in a common direction. That is because all traditions come from the same source.

May you find the path that works well for you.

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Determine your personality

We generally believe that our personality is something that is outside of our control. That it was determined by fate or circumstances or something like that.

The reality is that, as we grew up, we allowed external influences to determine how our personality was moulded. Some of it was the result of copying one or more role models while some was a defensive mechanism developed to cope with stresses we faced. These influences were placed upon us in layers - from family members, from the community we grew up in, from the schools we went to, from our workplaces, from the neighbourhood we live in... all these external factors have contributed towards what we allowed ourselves to become.

The truth is that we can have complete control over what we are and how we choose to be. We can address and overcome the influences of growing up and become our own persons, stop blaming external factors for what we are. Knowing that you can determine what your personality should be, you can consciously work towards becoming a better person. 

This is not something that can be achieved overnight. It will take effort and determination. But ultimately, we will be the biggest beneficiaries of our internal transformation.

Sadhguru Says

Realisation of Purpose

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At the end of it all, what we really want to know is, what is is all about? Without knowing what life is about, it is difficult to navigate a course. If life is a random occurrence, what's the point?

This final segment examines the deeper meaning of two things - purpose and realisation.

First, I examine the meaning of purpose and the idea about everything having a purpose. In that context, I discuss the purpose of being born human.

Then I look at the word realise and discuss how one can realise one's purpose.

Best to find out at source so I'll keep this intro brief.

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This ends my intro to the multipart extract of my paper on dharma which I put up without any introduction when I first created this Blog. From tomorrow, I'll resume my regular blogging.

If you want to read my complete paper in one go, get the PDF version.

The Blessing of Reincarnation

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Yesterday turned out to be a full day so I managed to do just two Posts. I should be able to complete the last two in the series today.

One of the toughest questions faced by advocates of religion is the evident unfairness of the circumstances of the people around us. Those preaching about a loving and compassionate and just God struggle to explain why some people have to suffer so much while others seem to live charmed lives. They resort to arguments like "we cannot understand God's purpose" and "we must have faith that God has a reason". They also struggle to explain why an Omnipotent God cannot eliminate Satan and the evil spawned by Satan. Most of all, they have no answer to the reasoning that an Omniscient God would have seen the future of the people who will commit terrible evil but still allows them to be born.

The many theologies that were born in bharath have one thing in common - they all subscribe to the idea that we don't live a single lifetime and, based on a judgement of the single lifetime, need to spend the rest of eternity in suffering or bliss. The common belief is that we all live multiple lifetimes and the circumstances that we face in each lifetime is the result of what we had done in previous lifetimes. This immediately offers a sense of justice and reason for the varying circumstances of the people around us.

The next segment of my paper explores this idea and the implications thereof.

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The Search for a Higher Purpose

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All humans are driven by a desire to do better!

Whether it is to score a higher grade or earn a higher salary or woo a better looking partner or live in a bigger house or drive a more fancy car, people are driven to want to do better. What they do to get there is another matter.

How we behave is a consequence of the lessons we learned as we grew up. Some contend that there is also an innate nature of the person. Whatever the case, we largely emulate the influential persons in our society. This is what determines what a person sees as "doing better" and what the person does to become better.

For some, it is outdoing their siblings or cousins, their friends, their neighbours - whether in earnings or title or possessions. For others, it is being able to serve others and making people happy - in doing their paid work or volunteering in an organisation or whatever.

This next segment examines where that drive to do better comes from and discusses how to harness that drive to define purpose in our lives.

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Cause and Consequence

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There is this eternal debate about fate versus freedom of choice. Humans need to feel that they are in charge of their lives. They cannot accept the possibility of their lives being defined by fate or karma. There is this feeling that, if people think their lives are fated and will just roll along as predetermined, then what's the point of making any effort? People will just give up and go about their daily activities listlessly.

There is one catch though. If there is no such thing as predetermination, how do accurate predictions happen? How can the future be known if it has not been determined yet?

More to the point, if Divinity is outside of time and can traverse the past, present and future, how is that possible if the future has not been determined yet?

The next segment addresses this vexing question.

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The Cause-Consequence Matrix

The Divinity Within

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I started on this Post quite early but was not able to finish it because of something I needed to do. So I'm now rushing to finish it before the end of the day.

This next segment uses vedic revelations as the basis to examine the human body and mind as layers of reality. Seen as layers, the functions of the different parts becomes clear and improves our ability to manage them effectively.

While our bodies and brains are made of stuff of this world, there is an inner core which comes from another realm and which survives the death of the body to move along into an afterlife. Understanding the nature of out inner self and thereby, understanding the purpose of this life gives us guidance about how to conduct ourselves.

This is preparation for defining a moral code or guideline for ourselves. The Page I'm referring you to discusses the subject quite comprehensively so I won't go into more detail here. Just click on the link.

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pancamayakosha - aananda>vignyana>prana>mano>anna

Four Paths of Yoga

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Unlike the other major religions which have one scripture each to build upon, what is popularly known as Hinduism has a plethora of scriptural sources. This is because of the antiquity of the revelations from which from which a huge host of religious practices have emerged. The oldest scripture, the rig veda, is believed to be perhaps 13,000 years old. The others, based on analysis of the shift in the linguistics therein, are believed to have been revealed/recorded some 2 to 3 millennia apart. Since then, there have been many more books, also taken to be scriptural, but the 4 vedas remain the mainstay.

Much wisdom was handed down from those scriptures but, as is always the case with humans, while rituals were adopted and even enforced, the wisdom was forgotten. By the time Jainism & Buddhism became popular in India, the Brahmins, who had been charged with preserving the ancient wisdom, had become corrupt and materialistic. With the people looking for better answers, the new religions swept across the nation.

Adi Shankara, who was already searching for his true self at the tender age of 8, went beyond the wisdom of the vedas. Seeing the need to unify the followers of the vedic traditions in the face of fierce competition, he codified the vast array of pathways to divinity that had evolved over the millennia into four primary paths of union with the Source. My next segment is about those four paths.

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Divine origins

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Until now, I have made it a point to only create a new Blog entry once a day. But today, I am catching up. I want the Pages that I created previously to have Posts referencing them so that they are not missed by a visitor progressing through Blog entries. So I will do more than one per day. How many I can do today is left to be seen.

The origins of the vedic traditions are shrouded in mystery because, for a long time, the vedas were not written down but were carried orally. As a consequence, history based on the oldest discovered artifacts does not do justice to the antiquity to the traditions. A more indicative method of dating would be to use the incredibly accurate constellation charts of the ancient texts and correlate them to what is currently known about the movement of stars in the night sky. It is a trivial matter to project star movements backwards in time and gauge when the positions would have matched the vedic descriptions. The results are startling. But until the scientific community is ready to accept them, let them remain mysterious.

My recapture of what probably happened back then is based on what was carried forward orally and only captured in writing some six millennia ago. Anyone interested in studying these origin stories can easily perform an AI assisted search. For the less dedicated, my summary should be sufficient.

I explain how the seven rishis credited with spreading the dharma are believed to have been initiated into their knowledge.

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Dharma - the purpose of life

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When I started this Blog, I was clueless about what I wanted to do and had no clue how this Blog platform worked. I had to learn and design as I progressed. So I started off with creating a number of Pages where I captured stuff that I had already written previously. One of those was a paper on dharma which I had completed about this time last year. That paper is available in PDF format, if anyone is interested.

I decided quite early that I didn't want my Blog to be burdened with long articles. So I split up my paper into 8 parts, each part on a separate Page. I provided links to each of the Pages in a top level Menu Page which was visible at the top of my Blog. I also provided links at the bottom of each Page to the subsequent Page. But I had never created Posts referencing those Pages. So anyone going through my Posts would miss those Pages. That's a defect I intend to correct.

The first Page introduces dharma, a Sanskrit word with a multifaceted meaning. I give a short history on the evolution of the religious landscape in India and the emergence of Adi Shankara's condensation of the vedic spiritual traditions in a comprehensive summary, and his effective rebuttal of the new traditions. That is the first stage of my paper.

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The Tao of Music

Today, I am introducing a new segment in my Blog - a dedication to music and song.

For a start, I will look at songs that helped me to attain clarity about one or another aspect of life. I have identified three to get started with and have provided links if you wish to listen to them. The videos I selected carry lyrics so that you can explore the songs on your own. I plan to discuss the lyrics at a later date.

I have also share links to three religious/spiritual songs. They represent three different moods. I plan to discuss those lyrics as well.

Finally, I have added some musical conversations that struck me as being symbolic of their genres.

From a philosophical viewpoint, music lies at the core of everything. That is my justification for including a segment on music. The illustration is simply a whimsical collaboration with my AI.

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