Seeing God

There is the God that can't be seen. And there is the God that can. Hindus visit their temples to see God. And be seen by him. Whether it's a statue of the warrior goddess Durga, the ever popular goddess of prosperity, Lakshmi, with her handsome husband, Vishnu, or the powerful South Indian deity Vel, Hindu families come bearing their gifts of coconuts, flowers, rupees, bananas, or whatever is on hand to offer God or Goddess that day.

The priest draws aside the gate that separates the worshipper from the image, and the family members gaze into the eyes of their beloved deity. This is the process of darshan, which means "sight". You see your beloved deity. He or she sees you. A connection is made. A blessing is rendered.

Yet, in spite of what my Sunday school teacher taught me, in all my travels through India from one end of the subcontinent to the other, I have never met a image in the temple is God. In fact, if the "idol" dump it in the river! That's a petty unceremonious way to treat God, don't you think?

If you look through a telescope, you can clearly see the planets. Yet no one thinks the telescope is actually Mars. The "idols" in the temples, called murtis in India, are telescopes to help us see God and goddess closer, comes so near we can reach out and touch the divine feet.

Seeing the Unseen

The seers of the Upanishad wrestled with words, trying to show us that which cannot be seen. The Katha Upanishad endeavors to explain :

Beyond the senses is the mind. Beyond the mind is the higher intellect. Beyond the intellect is the Inner Self. Beyond the Inner Self is the vast unmanifest reality, the primal energy from which all things emerge. Beyond the unmanifest is the Supreme Being, who exists everywhere yet cannot be seen. One who realizes the Supreme is liberated. Yes, that one becomes immortal.

No one can see the Supreme with  the eye. The only way to know Him is through deep meditation, after the intellect has been completely purified. Those great souls who know the Supreme One, they are liberated from suffering and delusion. Yes, they become immortal.

Remember that in Hinduism immortality does not mean immortal life in a physical body. It means the Inner Self becomes free from the process of death and rebirth, relaxing into undying divine consciousness.

The somber Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman liked to compare God to a spider. It was meant to be creepy image, suggesting a malevolent being who captures us in an inescapable web and eats us alive. The Upanishads use the image of a spider repeatedly but in a different sense.

To the seers, the Supreme spins the entire universe out of its innate being, just as a spider generates a web from its own mouth. At the end of a world cycle, the Supreme One dissolves the universe back into itself. The nature of that awesome eternal being is far beyond the ability of our intellects to understand. Yet the unseeable one is the very one pervading awareness in which our awareness abides, our own innermost truth.

We cannot see Nirguna Brahman, yet we are Nirguna Brahman!

Unthinkable Truth

Nirguna Brahman is " the Godhead behind God" that the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart experienced in deep meditation. It is absolute Reality itself, pure self-existent being. Any attempt to describe it falls flat. Even the words I just used are a dim reflection of its glory. The supreme One is totally beyond our imagination. The human mind can't begin to grasp it.

What we can do is transcend our own minds, shift back into the pure awareness within ourselves, and simply experience the reality. It can be known but it can't be communicated in words- though mystics never tire of trying!

In Hinduism, this transcendent being is symbolized by the sound " Om". Om is produced by running the Sanskrit letters a, u, and m together. The Mandukya Upanishad says that "A" stands for the waking state. " U" signifies the dream state. "M" stands for deep sleep. And the slight pause, the little piece of silence that follows your speaking the sound Om and the precedes your repeating it again- that pregnant silence is Nirguna Brahman. It's the " nothing" that contains everything.

Embracing Transcendence

This experience transported Ramakrishna into one of the highest meditative states a human being can achieve. He experienced the living reality of Brahman, the all-pervading essence of awareness that exists beyond thought. Ramakrishna became so firmly grounded in this transcendent state when Naren challenged him to show him God, the master was able to transmit the actual experience of divine being to the unsuspecting young man.

Let me hasten to make a point here, so you don't get the wrong impression. Unlike Naren, precious few of us go to meet a guru and find ourselves thrown into the highest mystical states. Most of us spend quite a few years performing spiritual practices before we get to a point where we can receive the guru's transmission.

Ramakrishna later explained that Naren was in fact a very highly evolved soul who had selflessly entered the physical plane to serve humanity. His European training temporarily led him away from his innate spirituality. All Ramakrishna had to do to put him back on track was "reawaken" a cosmic state of awareness Naren had already achieved in previous existences!

You will understand Hinduism if you can grasp this concept: There is only Supreme Reality, called Brahman- But Brahman has two modes, nirguna and saguna. Nirguna means without qualities. Saguna means with qualities. Nirguna Brahman is the transcendent Supreme Being contacted only in the highest states of meditation. Saguna Brahman is God or Goddess as we know and love 

Him or Her. This is the deity we can picture in our minds. The one who helps our problems and saves us in emergencies. The one whose loving embrace we feel in prayer.

Try understanding it this way. If  Physicist was called in to describe you, she would list the fields of matter and energy that constitute your body. It would be a very impersonal description . But if a psychologist was given the same job, he would list your many personality characteristics. Some yogis in very deep meditation experience God as an impersonal absolute. Others, whose awareness is focused at another plane, experience God as a loving, caring personality.

It's that elephant again. One blind man has it by the tail. The other is running his fingers over its flapping ear !

A Rock in the Eye

Ramakrishna was a priest of the Hindu goddess Kali. It was his responsibility to care for the statue of the goddess in the Dakshineshvar Temple, to bring offerings to her and chant her mantras.

Ramakrishna took his duties very seriously (his brief forays into other religions, which I mentioned in Chapter 6, " One God with Many Names ", notwithstanding). He hardly had a life apart from the goddess. He would speak about her, sing about her, meditate on her and worship her in virtually every waking moment. He experienced the statute of Kali as actually alive and would see her leap down from the altar to dance around the temple.

A tantric master named Bhairavi Ma noticed Ramakrishna's extraordinary devotion and began calling people's attention to the presence of the great saint among them. As an advanced adept, she could see that his intense devotion was not only giving Ramakrishna divine visions but carrying him into very high meditative states.

Then a master named Tota Puri visited the Kali temple. He was an adept in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. This, to remind you, is the tradition of Adi Shankaracharya which encourages mediators to go beyond every trace of duality (See Chapter 9, " Truth Is a Multi-Layer Cake"). Tota Puri scolded Ramakrishna for his attachment to Kali's form. He explained that if Ramakrishna really wanted to know the goddess's true nature, he must go beyond the image of her he cherished in his mind.

Tota Puri took a sharp rock and pierced Ramakrishna's forehead at the "third eye", the point between his eyebrows. " Next time you go into meditation", the Vedantin instructed ", focus behind this point. If a picture of Kali appears in your mind, take a sword and hack her to pieces".

Ramakrishna was shocked at this advice, but he obeyed. When he next sat for meditation, he brought his full awareness to his ajna chakra, the center behind the eyebrows. When he saw his beloved Kali approach, he destroyed the image, moving through the visual image he held of her in his into the formless reality beyond.

God Is Mind Blowing

I don't think there's any schoolchild in the state of Bengal who doesn't know the rest of the story.

Naren was sitting on the floor when he posed his challenge to the temple priest. Ramakrishna lifted his foot and brushed Naren's forehead with his toe. Remember in Chapter 8, " Turning on Your Inner Light", when I told you about shaktipat, the shot of energy some disciples get from their gurus? Well, Naren got a dose of shaktipat. A massive dose. He was pitched into cosmic consciousness, his awareness merging into the living universe all around him. It was ecstatic!

Then, Naren suddenly remembered his poor widowed mother, who should starve if he wasn't there to support her. In that moment, his consciousness imploded back into his body. He was Naren Datta again. Or rather, he had just become the man history would remember as Swami Vivekananda, the leading disciple of one of the greatest Hindu masters of recent centuries, Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

Naren- called Swami Vivekananda after he took the vows of a Hindu renunciate- would turn the tables on his schoolmasters. He would be the first swami in modern times to visit Europe and America, teaching the Santana Dharma, the eternal religion of Hinduism. He would met with spectacular success abroad, introducing tens of thousands of eager Western students to yoga and meditation.

But for our purpose here we need to understand exactly what happened in that extraordinary moment when the master touched Naren's forehead. And to do that we need to understand Ramakrishna's own spiritual history.

A Divine Challenge

To express his disdain, Naren would go to Hindu pandits-men who spent a great deal of time talking about God-and ask, " Can you show me God?" Inevitably they would regretfully they couldn't.

Then one day a friend took Naren to visit a local priest at the Kali temple in Howrah. " Can you show me God?" Naren haughtily demanded.

" Of course!" Ramakrishna Paramahansa replied.

" Can You Show Me God"?

Naren Datta was born in Calcutta in 1863. His parents, hoping for a bright future for their precocious son, arranged for a good British education. His future would be bright indeed. In fact, the future of Hindus everywhere would improve radically thanks to Naren Datta. But not because of his British training.

Naren's European schoolmates bequeathed to him the same gift they almost every Hindu schoolchild entrusted to their care : complete contempt for Hinduism. Naren would roll his eyes when he saw Hindu holy men on the streets. Or the bhairavi's, the women yogis. How sad that these people lived in complete superstition, never having benefited, as he had, from an enlightened European education!

Who Hindus Worship

"The one God wears many masks ", wrote mythologist Joseph Campbell. In no other religion does the Supreme Being wear masks and invite worship in so many different forms as the eternal religion of Hinduism.

Hindus love to worship. Every aspect of life is worship. "Let my walking be circumambulation of You", wrote Shankaracharya . "Let my speech be the recitation of Your holy mantras. When I lie down to sleep , may it be prostrating to You".

The Supreme Being has no form at all Yet is inherent in all forms. In the following chapters , you'll meet the most popular forms in which the Eternal One is honored. Among the thousands of different Hindu sects, you'll also meet the three largest denominations-the devotees of Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti.

This is the universe of Hinduism , in which any chance encounter can be a meeting with God.

Music : Lord of the Dance

God Himself is Nataraja, " Lord of the Dance ", His spinning motions are the orbits of subatomic particles and the rotation of the galaxies.

Watching a skilled sacred dancer from India is an amazing experience. Dancers assume a variety of stylized poses suggestive of different Hindu heroes and deities. Krishna playing his flute. Radha putting on her makeup. Rama carrying his bow. Some dancers are so adept that the audience has the uncanny sensation they're actually seeing the deity itself.

Music is a sacred art in India, and the signing of bhajans or hymns is a big part of Hindu spirituality. The Hindus, like most Europeans and Americans, compose melodies using seven musical notes. Our do-re-mi-la-ti-do is their sa-re-ga-ma-pa-dha- ni sa. But while Western music has only two modes to choose from, the major and the minor scales, Hindu music uses dozens of different modes. This is why Hindu music often sounds so exotic and complex to the Western ear.

Hindus use different ragas or musical styles to create different physiological and spiritual effects. One style is invigorating another soothing, still another is healing. The power of music and dance to transport both the artists and the audience into higher states of consciousness is fully acknowledged in the Hindu tradition. Musician meditation. follow the source of a note back to its source in the original composer, the Goddess herself.

In the West, science, the arts, and religion have become three completely separate domains. In Hindu culture, however, spirituality permeates every department of life. Each activity, from building a house to playing a musical instrument to diagnosing an illness, reflects and sacred and fundamentally interconnected  character of all life. Everything in nature is inherently meaningful because it's all the expression of the divine Word. When we live in harmony with this inner truth, our outer lives also gain meaning and spiritual purpose.

Sacred Space : Holy Architecture

The concept of sacred space is critically important in Hinduism. It has to do with aligning human-made structures with the flow of cosmic energies. The Vedic fire pit, for example was always constructed with painstaking care in a precise geometrical pattern, using carefully selected materials. This maximized its capacity to benefit the sacrificer.

Hindu temples are specially designed by sutradharas, master architects, who incorporate spiritual symbolism and cosmic principles into the sacred structure.

The sutdhara has five major areas of expertise :

1. Orientation : How the building aligns with the cardinal directions.

2. Site Planning : How the building aligns with its environment.

3. Proportionate measurements : How the building aligns with itself.

4. Building Components : How the rooms in a building relate to each other.

5. Aesthetics : The visual effect of the building.

In the past few years, Feng Sui, the Chinese art of building design, has become well known in the West Vastu is the Hindu equivalent. You will often hear Hindus (and even now Vastu clients in the West) report that after modifying their home according to these principles, their health improves. Or after making several structural changes in their place of business following a consultation with a Vastu expert, their client base expands exponentialy virtually overnight.

Martial Arts : Draw Your Bow!

Kung Fu devotee are well aware that the Chinese martial arts got rolling in the sixth century C.E. thanks to a buddhist teacher named Bodhi Dharma. Bodhi Dharma came to China from India, where the martial arts were already an ancient tradition.

I don't recommend you pack your bags and fly to India to study with the Hindu martial arts masters, however. This tradition has been in decline in India for so long it's barely kicking anymore, except for a few locations, such as pockets in Kerala where small groups of enthusiasts fight to keep the old traditions from total extinction.

In ancient times, the most prominent, and most deadly form of military skill was archery. If ancient accounts are true, Hindu troops used to use arrows like we use missiles today, to carry payloads. The Mahabharata describes arrows and laden with toxic substances that could stun dozens of troops into unconsciousness.

Hindu martial arts training included mastery of the breathe as well as mastery of mantras. Warriors used mantras to "empower" their weapons. By manipulating icking during an emergency( Breath control really works, incidentally. I'll show you how in Chapter 23, "The Royal Road")

The spiritual training underlying the martial arts is of course intended to teach the student self-discipline, courage, and the ability to remain calm even under life threatening circumstances. These are valuable skills for anyone to add to their resume, if you ask me!

Live Long and prosper

Ayurveda is famous for its rasayana techniques, methods to promote longevity. According to the Charaka Samhita, an exceptionally long, healthy life is not possible unless a person lives a moral life. Ethics are important because they contribute to a clean conscience. Peace of mind is a prerequisite for a really long life, according to Ayurvedic physicians.

Westerners who've heard Hindu legends of immortal spiritual masters often ask if the stories about kaya kalpa, the technique for regenerating the physical body and reversing the aging process, are true. Recent masters like Trailinga Swami and Tapasviji Maharaj were credited with extraordinary longevity. Some Hindu holy are supposed to have lived three or four centuries in the same body.

When I asked the Hindu swami about this, I was told that the technique really exists and works quite well, but many yogis don't bother mastering it because it's so much intense focus on the physical body. Most saints  don't like to take their minds off God for that long.

I was also told that the technique can only be reapplied a limited number of times. Eventually the physical body simply wears out. It just takes too much time and energy to keep rebuilding it.

After several centuries of intense yogic practices, presumably the saint has mastered the technique of transferring his or her consciousness into a fresh body which, they say, is a lot less trouble than kaya kalpa.

Yogis complain that with modern methods of disposing of dead bodies becoming more common in India, it's harder to find a vacated but still usable adult body to transfer one's awareness into.

I was told that the "immortal masters of the Himalayas" like Shankaracharya and Markandeya are not still in their original bodies but take a new physical body every century or so!

Too Much, Too Little

Human actions involving over-or underdulgence are real killers. Problems arise from eating too much or too little or the wrong kinds of foods. Sleeping too much or too little, having too much or not enough sex, exercising too much or not enough, worrying too much, not going to the bathroom when you need to, sitting in a poor posture -all these and many other factors were identified as contributors to ill health.

But more than any other factor, Ayurveda identified "happiness" as the cause of health and "unhappiness" as the cause of disease. It strongly emphasized the psychosomatic nature of illness, making Ayurveda a very early form of holistic medicine!

Medicine : Ayurveda

Medicine is called Ayurveda in India, which means " the science of longevity ". This is because poor health can be a major obstacle to success in one's spiritual practice. Early death can be calamity for a disciple on the spiritual path.Most people want to hang on to their present body for as long as possible because they fear death. For Hindus, a human body is the ideal environment for rapid progress in mediation. You don't want to throw yours away for no good reason if you can help it.

The Charaka Samhita, a classic of Hindu medicine, was probably composed near the beginning of the common Era, though the medical ideas it expressed can be traced back thousands of years earlier. The text opens by explaining that in vast antiquity, the sages noted that humanity was increasingly suffering from ill health. So they held a meditation conference. As they meditated together, they discovered the root causes of disease and how many illnesses can be successfully treated.

Adjunct Science

I mentioned that there are four important adjunct arts and science-Medicine, Music and Dance, the Martial Arts, and Architecture. These arts help Hindus live more spiritually, attuning themselves to their bodies and their environment.

Talking Stars

How can the stars speak? Vedic astrology is based on the familiar Hindu premise that every part of the universe reflects every other part. The universe folds around itself like sets adjoining mirrors, reflecting a set number of patterns back and forth across many dimensions of being. The patterns of our lives are written across heaven, in the palms of our hands, and in the flight of  birds -in fact everywhere we-look if we have the skill to read the patterns.

For Hindus, the planets and stars, like every other part of the universe, are alive. The Sun is Lord Surya, the Moon is Lord Chandra. The stars along the ecliptic are the glittering wives of the Moon. The Sun, Moon, and planets are the gods responsible for adjusting our karma, They send us the results of our good or bad deeds at an appropriate moment in their cycles.

Vedic astrologer are Hinduism's physicians of the soul, diagnosing our karma and prescribing spiritual remedies to correct karmic imbalances. These remedies include pilgrimages, charitable donations, the chanting of mantras, and similar methods of clearing our karmic accounts.

Mapping Your Destiny

In Hindu culture, most marriages are arranged by the parents. The astrologer is the responsible for comparing the horoscopes of the prospective couple-who may never actually have not met each other-to see whether thy'll be compatible.

You can also bring a burning question such as, "If I run for office in the upcoming election, would I win?" The astrologer looks at the position of the planets at moment you ask the question, and offers appropriate advice.

According to the legend, in ancient times Hindu sages noted that the level of human consciousness had sunk to a point where most people could no longer remember their past lives. They didn't understand why good or bad things were happening to them. they didn't remember what they'd done in previous lives to cause the karma they were experiencing now. So they went to God and asked for a way to help  people understand the flow of their karma and prepare for events coming in the future. God thought the sages astrology, and they passed it on to the rest of us.

The first time I sat down with a Vedic astrologer, who didn't know me from Adam or Eve, he glanced at my horoscope and accurately told me my profession, my interest, when I'd moved into an ashram, when I married, what my husband was like, what I was doing now, and what I'd be doing in the future. I was flabbergasted!

Astrology : The Mirror in Heaven

Astrology was outlawed in Christianity not because Christian theologians thought it didn't work-obviously the Magi used it to find the infant Jesus. Christians condemned it because they considered knowledge of the future inappropriate for humankind. Hindus have exactly the opposite attitude.

If you want to go on a long journey into unknown territory, a map is a very useful thing to keep in your glove compartment. Astrology offers a map of the future, showing what part of the terrain will be tough going, and where the roadway is smooth. Hindu scriptures call astrology a gift from God designed to help us find our way.

Vedic astrology is called "the eye of the Veda" because brahmin priests use it to find the exact moment the flow of cosmic energies most strongly support their rituals. Astrology has several specific functions :

>Determining the most auspicious time for a particular event.

> Gauging the compatibility of two individuals 

> Answering specific questions.

> Predicting the future.

One of the most important functions of the astrology is to select the best possible time to start a trip, begin  a project, open a business, or get married. The astrologer carefully considers the positions of the Sun, Moon, the five classical planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), and two "shadow" planets called Rahu and Ketu. (These shadow planets are called the Moon's nodes in Western astronomy. They're responsible for solar and lunar eclipses).

Ritual : Spiritual Technology

If all this talk about transmitting on mental channels made any sense to you, good. You're now in a much better position to understand kalpa, Vedic ritual science. Or, as it's rather naively called in the West, " ritual magic".

Rituals must be performed with focused attention and exactly correct pronunciation of exactly the correct mantras so that exactly the right waves of mental energy broadcast out into the subtle worlds, reshaping reality to the desired effect. Thought energy is considered extremely powerful (and even potentially dangerous ) in the Vedic tradition when it is intensely focused.

Particular rituals were established by enlightened sages and have been performed millions of times over the years by successive generations of priests. This is believed to make them particularly super-changed because a priest who enacts a ritual today is "riding" on waves  of energy generated by numberless priests who enacted the rituals in previous centuries.

Rules for ritual science are incredibly elaborate and must be followed to the latter. One slip of the tongue or a part of the ritual performed out of order can sabotage even a multimillion-dollar, 108-day rite. Brahmin priests specialize in different components of ritual science. It's so complex no one person can master the entire field.

Traditional Vedic rituals are performed primarily by brahmin priests. For a few special rites, their wives are required to join in. In the last few decades, as young brahmin men have been abandoning their traditional rites going in some communities. Increasingly, women are filling the priestly job openings vacated by brahmin men.

Many communities cannot afford to have a brahmin preform their rituals for them. So members of other castes, who strike their neighbors as especially spiritually gifted, are called upon to perform rituals on their community's behalf. Rites performed by brahmins have more cache, but rituals performed by priests from other castes are effective for most practical purposes.

Pregnant with Meaning

Suppose I see a small white truck driving past outside playing a characteristic jingle. I shout, " Ice cream!" You didn't see the ice cream truck , but when you hear me, you instantly know what I mean. Okay, now you understand the first level of sound, vaikari.

You think to yourself, " Linda Johnson eats too much ice cream. She really ought to lose some weight". You hear the words distinctly in your mind. Great-now you understand the second level, madhyama.

You don't hear words in your head, but at the back of your mind you feel a craving, a sense that you'd like to have some, let's say, ice cream. You're not sounding words in your mind-" I scream for ice cream! " But the concept of  ice cream is present in your awareness. Perfect- that's the third level of sound, Pashyanti.

You're dead asleep. You're not speaking of ice cream, thinking of ice cream, or even dreaming of ice cream. Ye if I poke you awake and ask you if you'd like some ice cream, you would understand perfectly well I mean. Because while you were asleep your memory tapes weren't erased. Even though you weren't thinking about it, the concept of ice cream still existed somewhere within you. That's para vak, the fourth level of sound.

God is para vak. Why? Because even when the universe doesn't exist, when it's hidden in the unfathomable darkness of God's slumber in the Milky Ocean,all of material existence is still inherent in Him. When he "reawakens" and begins to create, he has only to "speak" the word and the dimensions of reality hidden in the profound depths of His silence start to manifest. His meaning, His "thoughts", become our physical reality.

Hearing Without Ears

While shabda is usually translated "sound", a more accurate translation would probably be " meaning". It's meaning, not sound waves, that the sage Kapila meant is transmitted through the medium of akasha, 

or space.

" What do you mean?" you're probably asking.

Suppose I'm standing near you, and suddenly I fall. I shout, " Help! I'm in trouble!" My message is transmitted to you through the medium of the air in the form of a series of sounds which everyone who speaks English agrees mean, " Linda fell down. Go help her up".

I'm at work, and you're at home. Suddenly I fall. I cry out, " Help! I'm in trouble!" There's no way you can hear me from miles away, yet you distinctly hear my voice in your inner ear calling, " Help!" This phenomenon, called clairaudience, is said by most Western scientists to be impossible. Hindus, raised on yogic science, know that in the real world this kind of thing happens all the time. The meaning in my mind was transmitted to your mind through a more subtle medium than air. It came through " space" or "ether" as it's sometimes called, a super-fine form of matter.

Let's ratchet the process up a notch. I'm at work and I fall. You don't hear any words in your mind. Yet somehow suddenly you absolutely know that I've fallen and hurt myself. This phenomenon is now called telepathy. It involves the third level of sound, called pashyanti, and engages the intuitive powers of your higher mind. How many new mothers just " know" what's happening with their infant even if they're miles apart ? How many times have you heard of mothers who "knew" their son was injured the very moment he was shot on the battlefield?

Hindu yogis would say the "information" about your offspring is being "transmitted" through akasha, the material of which "space" is made. Our thoughts are continually "broadcasting" from our minds like radio  towers. But most people don't have their " receivers" on and don't hear our thoughts (thank God). Those of us  who've spent time with highly trained yogis often have the disconcerting experience that they read our minds like newspapers. Their channel blockers are down, and thy're picking up everything that's coming out of our mouths-and out of our minds!

What about para vak, the highest level of sound or meaning ? In deep meditation, we contact the "ideas" or archetypal patterns around which the physical and subtle worlds are framed. They exist eternally in Brahman, the Supreme Reality. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God". This profound understanding lies at the root of many ancient metaphysical traditions.

The Silent Sound

Let's turn technical linguistics to the practical spiritual significance of the Hindu teaching about the divine Word.

Going back at least to the great Sankhya master Kapila, Hindus have thought that the medium sound travels through is space. This has provided plenty of laughs for modern Western scholars who know that sound waves cannot travel through the vacuum of space. What they don't know is what Hindus actually mean by the word Shabda, which is translated into English as " sound".

There are four levels of sound in Hindu understanding. You'll need to grasp this point if you want to understand why Hindus say Shabda Brahman, " the Word is God":

1. Vaikari : Physical sound you hear with your ears.

2. Madhyana : Verbal thoughts heard with your inner ears.

3. Pashyanti : Abstract concepts perceived in your inner ear.

4. Para Vak : Unmanifest meaning inherent in silence. Truth which abides in deep meditative states.

" Okay ", you're probably thinking, " Run that by me again". 

The Word Is God

I would be willing to bet your first reaction to hearing that Hindus consider grammar a a sacred science was identical to mine: " You've got to be kidding"!

But consider the opening words of the Gospel of John in the Bible. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". The concept of the sacred word has an extremely ancient pedigree, not only in India but in other ancient cultures as well. The ancient Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks pondered long and hard over the sanctity of the inherent meaningfulness of  life and the mystery of meaningful human and divine communication.

Four of the six Vedangas- grammar, phonetics, meter, and etymology-are devoted to the science of language.

< Vedic grammar explores in incredible detail the question of how a series of sounds uttered by one person can be understood by another. How complex concepts can be conveyed through the medium of physical sound.

< Phonetics looks agonizingly closely at all aspects of pronunciation. This was immensely important to the brahmins whose job it was to ensure that the Veda continued to be pronounced in exactly the same way despite the passage of thousands of years.

< Meter means the measured rhythms in which a verse is chanted. This is a big deal in Hinduism because the different meters in which the Veda are chanted are said to have different effects in the human psyche and in the subtle inner worlds.

< Etymology looks at where words came from, their present meaning, and their inner significance. As the millennia rolled by, the brahmins continued to pronounce the Veda correctly but they were beginning to forget what some of the words it meant! Therefore etymology became an increasingly important field of study.

Until only recently- and some would argue even today- no other culture has come remotely close to the Hindus in detailed analysis of language structure or in the exploration of how the human mind actually understands language.

Recently, American linguists have admitted that, even with the super computers now at their disposal, they would have a very difficult time matching the ancient Hindus in the brilliance of their analysis.

The sacred Science

In Hindu culture science, the arts, medicine, even cooking and lovemaking, have a sacred dimension. Six science from ancient times have been considered particularly sacred. The are called Vedangas, " limbs of the Veda", because they are especially useful in understanding the Veda, India's most sacred holy book, and in applying its blessing power in practical ways. The Vedangas are Grammar, Phonetics, Mater, Etymology, Ritual, and Astrology.

Four other arts and sciences are considered especially sacred, but are not directly related to study of the Veda. These are called Upa Vedas. They include Medicine, Music and Dance, the Martial Arts, and Architecture.

The whole Elephant

Most of my Hindu teachers are not in the least distributed by the dramatic difference between various Hindu masters like Kapila, Shankara, and Jaimini . To my gurus, these different philosophers were just hanging on to different parts of the elephant. In some respects, their differing doctrines say more about where they were in their meditation practice than about reality itself.

There comes a point in one's meditation where you enter a state much like unconsciousness. There comes a deeper state where you feel yourself to be pure conscious awareness alone, an observer of the material that seems somehow " outside" you. Continuing the journey inward, there comes a still deeper state where the distinction between you, the world, and God fades away and you experience an expansive state of unity. So these different teachers aren't contradicting each other. They're all correct, based on the level of meditation they attained.

The broad consensus today (with a fair number of contemporary gurus dissenting) is that Shankaracharya grasped more of the elephant than the others. But for practical purposes of advancing in one's spiritual practice, Kapila's Sankaya system is still considered the most useful.

Two, Not One !

Madhva, who lived around 1200 C.E., rejected both points of view. He created a third major school called Dvaita Vedanta, the Vedanta of duality. Some scholars have speculated that his views were influenced by Christianity. He is the only major Hindu thinker distinguished by teaching eternal damnation!

Madhva taught that the world is real, we're real, and God is real, we're all eternally separate. We're not united or in union or anything to that effect, thank you!

During Madhava's lifetime, the Muslims were creating havoc in India, actively trying to extinguish the Hindu religion. It's possible he felt the need to arouse Hindus from the other-worldliness that the other schools of Vedanta tended to produce and inspire them to deal with real life emergencies in the material world, like homicidal Muslim armies.

One, Sort Of

Ramanuja caught hold of a different part of the elephant. Ramanuja, who may have lived somewhere around 1000 C.E., couldn't quite accept that we individual souls are in some sense equal in essence in God. He started his own brand of Vedanta called Vishishta Advita, which roughly translates as " almost but not quite not two.

For Ramanuja, we souls can experience union, not unity, with Brahman. The world is not an idea superimposed on reality but has a real existence  of its own. It is the body of Brahman, and Brahman is the innermost soul of the world. We exist as beings distinct from Brahman, and will forever, though our innermost essence is rooted in that Supreme Reality. We can recognize our unity in Brahman, but we never lose our identity in it.

One, Not Two!

Shankaracharya was once of those staggering geniuses the world too rarely sees. He was not just just a brilliant intellectual but a highly advanced yogi with a living experience of the unity of all reality. He appeared at a time in history when Hinduism was in a slump, having taken some big hits from alternative religions, like Buddhism and Jainism personality, his impeccable logic, and his yogic power.

Shankara as he's known carried the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta throughout the subcontinent. Advaita means nondual, or " not two". Shankara disagreed with the Sankaya masters that reality is dual, that spirit and matter exist separately. To Shankara, spirit-by which he means pure consciousness- is the only reality.

Shankara uses the Vedic name for the one reality, Brahman. Atman, our innermost Self, is identical in essence to Brahman, the divine consciousness, just as a drop of water essentially identical with the ocean. When we achieve moksha, spiritual liberation, we merge into that ocean of consciousness,as a drop of water merges seamlessly into the sea.

There is no way to describe Brahman. It is far beyond human conception. But if we had to use words to give us a hazy idea of the greatness of that vast reality, Shankara would use the words sat, chit, and ananda: being consciousness, and bliss. To him, the highest state of awareness was not the unconscious state the Vaisheshiskas   described. It was a luminous and lucid state full of divine knowledge and blissfulness.

If all that exists is pure being, consciousness,and bliss, why do we have to deal with rent payments, incompetent supervisors, and dead car batteries? Shankara would be the first to acknowledge the practical realities we face in day-to-day life. But from the point of view of the deepest states of meditation, where one actually experiences one's own Atman merging in Brahman, the external world is maya, the superimposition of our own ideas about the world on an unchanging and everperfect underlying reality.

If you see a coiled rope on the road in the dark, you may think it's a snake. Your heart starts pounding, you get sweaty and clammy. For you, at the moment, that's really a poisonous snake. But when you shine a flashlight at it and see it's a rope, your fear disappears instantly and you recognize the fear was groundless from the very beginning. When the flashlight of genuine meditative experience shines in our awareness, we recognize that there is not and never has been anything, anywhere, anytime, but Brahman- pure, perfect divinity.

While Shankara emphasized using the discriminating intellect to contemplate the Inner reality, Ramajuna, like the Mimamsas, emphasized the importance of rituals and religious and social duties. While Shankara promoted a mental approach to the truth, Ramajuna felt devotion was a more appropriate way to approach the Supreme Being.

Vedanta : It's All an Illusion!

For many educated Westerners who know anything about Hinduism, Hinduism means Vedanta That's because the first Hindu spiritual leaders to teach widely in the West were the Vedantists. If you hear people say, " Hindus believe this world is just an illusion", you're hearing a rather jumbled version of Vedanta.

Vedanta means both " the last portion of the Veda", referring to the Upanishads, and " the fulfillment of the Veda", meaning the most enlightening portion of the Veda. For over a thousand years, Vedanta has been the most important theological force in India. This is due largely to the immense impact of Shankaracharya, and to the incredible strength of the reaction against him by other Vedanta masters, such as Ramajuna and Madhva.

My Visit to Munnar

Munnar is a hill station on the Western Ghats, a range of mountains situated in the Idukki district of the Indian  state of Kerala.

The name of Munnar is believed to mean " three rivers", referring to the town's strategic location at the confluence of the Madhurapuzha, Nallathanni and Kundaly rivers.

Munnar town is in Kannan Devan Hills (KDH) Village in Devikulam taluk and is the largest panchayat in the Idukki district having an area measuring nearly 557 km2

The nearest major railway stations are at Ernakulam and Aluva (approximately140 kilometers (87 mi by road). The nearest airport is Cochin International Airport, which is 105 kilometers ( 65 mi) away.

The region in and around Munnar varies in height from 1,450 meters (4,760 ft) to 2,695 meters ( 8,842 ft) above the sea level. The temperature ranges between 5 C ( 41 F ) and 25 C (77 F) in winter and 15 C (59 F ) and 25 C (77 F ) in summer. Temperatures as low as -4 C ( 25 F ) have been recorded in the sevenmallay region in Munnar. The mean maximum daily temperature is at its lowest during the monsoon months with the highest temperature being 19 C.

Most of the native flora and fauna of Munnar have disappeared due to severe habitat fragmentation resultant from the creation of the plantations. However, some species continue to survive and thrive in several protected areas nearby, including the new Kurinjimala Sanctuary to the east, the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Manjampatti Valley and the Amaravati reserve forest of Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary to the north east, the Eravikulam National Park and Anamudi  Shola National Park to the north, the Pampadum Shola National Park to the south and the proposed Palani Hills National Park to the east. These protected areas are especially known for several threatened and endemic species including Nilgiri Thar, the Grizzled Giant Squirrel, the Nilgiri Wood-pigeon, Elephant, the Gaur, the Nilgiri langur, the Sambar, and the Neelakurinji (that blossoms only once in twelve years).

Yoga : Techniques for higher Awareness

In the West, yoga means standing on your head. In Hinduism, it means meditation. Yoga literally means meditation. " union".It's about uniting your attention with its source, your everyday awareness with the fountain of consciousness from which it springs.

Hindus thinkers were not into philosophy just to show off how smart they were. Even the driest Hindu thinkers of them all, the Nyaya logicians, had a sacred purpose in mind. That was to use their knowledge as a means to moksha, spiritual liberation. To Hindus, philosophy is never just an intellectual exercise as it so often is in the West. It's a door to the living experience of divine reality.

Yoga is practical branch of Sankhya, the spiritual techniques used to move from talking about higher levels of reality to actually experiencing them.

Sankhya says that everything in the ever-changing universe, including the energy out of which our minds are made, comes from prakriti, energy. Prakriti is the ocean of energy that exist forever in all dimensions of eternity. Its grossest manifestation is the physical matter we see' and touch.

> Rajas : Motion. Active, energetic, hot. Kinetic energy.

> Tanas : Inertia. Heaviness, dullness. Potential energy.

> Sattva : Harmony. Lightness, clarity. Balance energy.

When all three gunas balance each other, the universe melts away. It's like the mathematical equation {-1} +0+1=0 . But when the gunas fall out of equilibrium, a motion rolls through the cosmic ocean of primeval energy , and a new universe begins to form.

Yogis actively way to balance the gunas in their personalities so that they can disengage from matter completely and shift their awareness back fully into pure consciousness itself. When that happens , the karmashya, the baggage of karma the causal body carries around when it, falls away along with the causal body itself. The yogi is now liberated- free from karma and the cycles of rebirth. She has shifted her awareness totally into the twenty-fifth category of reality, purusha, the Inner Self.

The Sankhya masters stay there are an infinite number of purushas floating around the universe, trillions upon trillions of souls. The yoga system adds one more special purusha: God. According to yoga, God is divine consciousness that never fell into matter when the universe first formed. God has always existed outside time and space , but is so gracious he occasionally lends us a hand in our efforts to escape the eternal treadmill.

Purusha and prakriti, spirit and matter, never come into contact with each other in this system. Purusha doesn't " act" in matter. It can't because the power to act, our organs of action, belong to the sphere  of prakriti. The Purusha is a ball of consciousness that merely observes. Have you been in an accident where your car was spinning out of control ? During emergencies, many people report they were thrust into a state of calm clarity they weren't afraid at all, but were simply observing what was happening. That tranguil inner observer is the purusha.

Meenakshi Amman Temple

Meenakshi Amman Temple is a historic Hindu temple located in the southern banks of river Vaigai in the temple city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is dedicated to Parvati who known as Meenakshi and her consort, Shiva, named here as Sundereswarar. The temple forms the heart and lifeline of the 2500 year old city of Madurai. The complex houses 14 gateway towers called gopurams, ranging from 45-50m in height, the tallest being the southern tower, 5.19 meters (170ft) high, and two golden sculptured vimana, the shrine over sanctum of the main deities. The temple is a significant symbol for the Tamil people, and has been mentioned since antiquity in Tamil literature; though the present structure is built during 1623 to 1655 CE the temple attracts 15,000 visitors a day, around 25,000 during Fridays and gets annual revenue of sixty million. There is an estimated 33,000 sculptures in the temple and it was in the list of top 30 nominees of the " New Seven Wonders of the World". The annual 10 day Meenakshi Tirukalyanam festival celebrated during April-May attracts 1 million visitors.

The marriage was supposed to be the biggest event on earth, with the whole earth gathering near Madurai. Vishnu, the brother of Meenakshi, prepared to travel from his holy abode at Vaikuntam to preside over the marriage. Due to a divine play, he was tricked by the Deva, Indra and delayed on the way. After the marriage, their pair ruled over Madurai for a long time and then assumed divine forms as Sundareswarar and Meenakshi who are presiding deities of the temple Following the tradition, every evening, before closing the temple, a ritual procession led by drummers and a brass ensemble carries the image of Sundareswara to Meenakshi's bedroom to consummate the union, to be taken back to his day setting the next morning in dawn The marriage is celebrated annually as Chitrai Tiruvizha (meaning Chittirai festival) in Madurai. During the period of Nayakar rule in Madurai, the ruler Thirumalai Nayakar linked the Azhakar Thiruvizha (meaning Azhakar festival ) and the Meenakshi wedding ceremony.

The Nature of Mind

In other words, it's not brain that sees and hears. The brain registers sound waves and photons from the physical world, but these are transmitted to a receiving station that's not in the brain, though it operates through the brain. This receiving station is called manas, the processing port of the mind. It's Sankhya's twenty-first element 

The renegade Western physicist Rupert Sheldrake explains this phenomenon in terms that parallel the Sankhya idea is closely it's positively eerie. He pointed out that a person who doesn't understand how a television set works believe Andy Griffith and his son Opie really live inside the TV. So if the TV st breaks, Andy and Opie no longer exist. In reality, of course, Andy and Opie filmed the TV show hundreds of miles away and their program is being broadcast to your TV antenna or routed through your cable service, which sends the signals into your TV.

According to Sheldrake , we in the West have a very primitive understanding of the brain. When the brain is switched on, images appear. When the brain switches off, the images vanish. Ergo, scientists assume the images exist only in the brain. But our thought processors may be going on in other dimensions entirely and may only routed through the physical brain if the Hindus, and scientists like Sheldrake, are correct.

In addition to manas, which receives transmits, and interprets sense data, there's the ahankara, or "me" awareness. In some people, this function shuts down, in whole or in part. You may have heard of people who, due to certain medical conditions, have lost the ability to tell that certain parts of their own body belong to them. The ahankara has flaked out.

Buddhi is the part of mind in which will kicks in. Manas transmits the immediate presence of Rum Raisin premium ice cream. Ahankara goes, " That's for me! I want it"! Buddhi is the part of intelligence that then deliberates: " I'm already 25 pounds overweight". And then makes the decisions to go and ahankara, but buddhi, or the capacity to make wise or foolish judgments based on reason, exists primarily in humans.

The real Self, consciousness, called purusha in this system, exists outside the range of mind and matter all together. The mind is the apparatus through which consciousness interfaces with the inner and outer worlds. But the mind is made of perishable patterns of energy and will dissolve away sooner or later. Unlike the real conscious Self within, which is eternal.

How do the Sankhya masters know this? Because they've been doing yoga!