Life

While driving a car, we stay focused on the road. We hardly notice the buildings, parks, and gardens on the side of the roads. Especially, when driving at a high speed, we need to stay more focussed on the road and observe further less on the side of the road. Similarly, most of the time, we keep moving with our thoughts at a very high speed, and in the process, we stay focused on our desires and ambitions. We hardly have time to look at the life, which just passes unattended on the side of the road. We happen to meet life, only when our vehicle slows down or stops for some reason. Sometimes, we get some disease that forces us to slow down the pace. We stay back at home and see our own home like a stranger. We notice the things at home, which we generally didn't notice due to the fast pace of life.  Sometimes, we meet with an accident that forces us to slow down and observe life. Sometimes, we do not get the desired results and become sad. In that state of sadness, we slow down and...

Probably when I look back, the 3 persons who have had the most vivid impact on me are Sri Aurobindo, Shri S N Goenka, and Shri J Krishnamurti. In fact, I came into contact with all three of them without any conscious effort. In around 2008, while I was posted in Mumbai, I was a big fan of neurology and quantum physics. One day, I came in contact with the commentary on Bhagwad Geeta written by Sri Aurobindo and that was one book that fascinated me greatly. After that, I got posted to Delhi and I have been a regular visitor to the Delhi Branch of Aurobindo Ashram since then. The bookshop there is a very peaceful place and the meditation hall is one of the most wonderful places in this world. It is filled with divine energy and whenever I sit in meditation there, I do feel an inner peace. After coming to Delhi in November 2011, I happened to visit to USA on an official trip with one of my seniors. I still remember that we had lengthy discussions at the New York airport about a book by Swa...

The purest form of love in this world is the love of parents towards their children. Most of the other relationships in this world are not so pure. When a child is born, he is in the purest form, completely naked. He has no likes or dislikes, rights or wrongs. He does not know any language. He does not understand any moral values. The parents observe the child in the purest form, like an empty vessel or a clean slate. They form a relationship with that purity.  Slowly, the child grows up in society and comes into contact with matter and thoughts. His senses get attracted to different objects of pleasure and try to run away from different objects of pain. That gives rise to different desires, and to fulfil these desires, he acquires different tools. The most important tool in the toolkit is social validation. It's easy to survive if we follow the rules of society, or at least pretend to. There are many written and unwritten rules of a society. Consciously and unconsciously, the chil...

Scriptures place great importance on the quality of honesty. This world is full of dishonest people and most of them are doing well in life. Therefore, at times, we doubt the value of this quality. However, if we examine it more closely, that doubt arises from two fundamental errors. Firstly, we do not appreciate the broader meaning of honesty; secondly, we see only the surface consequences and miss the deeper impacts. Honesty has a very deep meaning. First and foremost, the requirement is to know oneself. There are layers and layers of the unconscious mind. Unless we examine, observe, and get to know these layers. we don't know ourselves. Unless we know ourselves, how can we be honest? After all, honesty requires transparency. How can a black box be transparent? Secondly, even if we know the ins and outs of the black box and it becomes completely transparent, how can we disclose this to others? It is not possible to disclose these secrets even to our spouse or closest friends beca...

What appears on the surface may have deep hidden truth. A disconnected "being" feels quite fearful and insecure. When an insecure being tries to gather security, through worldly means, he starts becoming more and more insecure.  The discontented "being" tries to get that contentment by earning more and more money. The more money he earns, the more discontented he becomes. On the surface, he appears to be wealthy, yet deep down he continues to become poorer. Somehow his mind is trapped in the loop and he is not able to see the reality inside. The disconnected "being" further tries to overcome the fear by getting power and positions. The more power, from VIP to VVIP to MIP treatment, there is more fear of losing that power. Some people try to gather and demonstrate similar power within their own families and organizations by dominating the people around them with physical or verbal aggression, being just an appearance on the surface with deep insecurity with...

Watched the Netflix movie "Three of Us". It was quite a profound movie. A movie about a dementia patient who goes back to her village to meet old friends and relive her childhood. She has a happily married life with a son who has passed out of IIT and her husband is doing well. But going back to the village and meeting old friends does something wonderful for her. She meets her childhood best friend and that brings happiness back to her face. It handled childhood love and guilt. However, a scene I really liked from the movie was where the lead actor is sitting with her childhood friend in a giant wheel and the wheel stops at the top and she says that this is a place where I wanted to be. Probably, the whole of our life we keep moving with the giant wheel of life. There is hardly any occasion when the wheel stops and we live life. Suddenly, we grow old and it is time to leave the world and go. We realize that we have never lived life except for the few moments when the wheel s...

This world is full of wonders and attractions. Today, after getting up, went to the kitchen to prepare morning tea. After making tea, I was looking for a biscuit. I found so many things there on the dining table. An idea suddenly struck my mind that all the food items lying there are meaningless if I am sure that I need a biscuit. Otherwise, everything can tempt us. This phenomenon is not limited to the kitchen. It is there in every aspect of life. If we are focused on what we want in life, nothing can attract us, else, the world is full of temptations. While talking to colleagues, we get to know about so many things. While reading the newspapers, we get to know about so many people who lived life so differently. Many of these things look quite tempting. There is something in our conscious or unconscious mind that gets attracted to these things. However, at the end of the day, what decides the course of action is the strength of the "connection" of our intellect with the soul...

We all exercise different choices almost every minute. A choice of whether to work or take a rest, the food to take, the people to meet, the work to do, the books to read, the place to visit, the experiences to go through. Some of the decisions are imposed on us, for example when we suddenly get a disease, we have to take medicines. We get different bosses and assignments that we may not have chosen. We met with different accidents and litigations in life. Our life is a sum total of our choices and chance. However, if we see from a different perspective, each choice is a chance and each chance is a choice. Do we come across accidents suddenly in our lives or that is a choice we have made for our evolution across multiple lifetimes. When I examine my life, many sudden things happened in my life. Getting inclined towards reading psychology and neurology was just an accident. After the civil services mains examination, I went to Rajghat. I just came across the book written by Daniel Golem...

Friendship is a very different relationship from the rest of them. This is one relationship that we choose. It is not imposed on us. We get few friends in our lives that connect to our souls. Such a connection brings magic to the relationship. I recently visited one of my soul mates along with my wife some days back and after interacting with him for a few hours, my wife commented that I talk the way he thinks. I was so pleasantly surprised to hear these words from my wife. That’s quite wonderful.  When we get soul mates, we get complete trust. Such trust helps us open up to them. That allows them to work on us. Our mind and intellect are at loggerheads many times, and we are not able to resolve the conflicts since neither the mind nor the intellect listen to the testimony of the soul as a witness. However, our soul mate is always a witness to our actions and thoughts. Since we trust him, he stands as a witness and our mind and intellect start listening to his testimony. That does ...

We all play different roles in this world. The role of a father, mother, son, daughter, employee, citizen, member of an organization, relative, or friend. Sometimes we confuse these roles with the self. The self is quite different. The self is part of the infinite divine. It has the same qualities of the divine as every drop of the sea has the quality of the sea.  We keep playing different roles across our lives. These roles are assigned to us to help us evolve as a human being. While playing these roles, we come across different emotions lying deep in our conscious and unconscious minds. Our intellect also passes through different confusions. It explores this world and the forces of nature from different perspectives. Each exploration makes it richer.  So far we see these roles as roles and do not confine our existence to them, they help us evolve. However, the moment, we confine our existence to these roles, we become narrow and confined. An actor is not the role he plays on...

In a court of law, a witness plays a very significant role. The witness may be associated with both the victim and the accused. The role of the witness is to provide an accurate picture without taking sides. While living in this world, probably, the most important thing is to be aware of what is happening inside rather than outside events. The inner world is like a court of God where we divide ourselves into three parts: the intellect (accused), the ego (victim), and the soul (witness). Most of the time, we run away from the internal conflicts. That's what most sensitive people do. However, Krishna does not allow Arjuna to run away from that conflict and helps him take the matter to the inner court. Intellectually, Arjuna is convinced that he should fight the battle of Kurukshetra. However, his emotional nature makes him run from the battlefield after seeing his elders and cousins fighting against him on the other side. Krishna helps him take the matter to the inner court, with the...

We are all bundles of body, mind, and soul. All our decisions have different shades of input from all three of these, some hidden and some apparent. Our mind is quite complex. It has so many motives, shaped by the likes and dislikes it has developed through experience. We undergo different experiences and form likes and dislikes without awareness of the soul. We go to meet a friend and see his lovely, well-decorated home; he welcomes us warmly with his family, and we all spend a good evening. We develop a desire to have a happy home like his. Our mind develops a desire without analysing what happiness really is. We spent almost a decade chasing after a similar home and family, only to realise that our friend was happy not because of the home or family, but because he decided to connect with his soul, and that happiness was actually a reflection of the soul, not the possessions. We form many such desires each of the moment. Many of these desires remain in the conscious mind, while other...

We all wish to fly like birds, but we slowly settle under the Earth's gravity, unable to shed our mass. The mass of attachments and identifications that form the centre of our lives. That is how freedom gives way to bondage, and we settle for a sub-standard life. Sometimes I wonder as if God has tied our eyes with a blindfold and left us to live in this world. We are chasing eternal bliss, and when we get hold of that and open our eyes, we find that it was just a momentary pleasure. Our eyes are again tied with the blindfold, and we start once again searching for eternal bliss. To make the game funnier (funny for Him and challenging for the players), He makes his presence felt through different symbols: the Sun shining in the sky; the planets and stars, making his presence felt from a great distance; the realised souls; and the acts of nature. We run to chase Him and fall flat on our faces. Sometimes we catch hold of Him and yet are unwilling to open our eyes for fear of having cau...

In my discussions with my friends, one point that comes up quite often is the role of attachments in our lives. How will we be motivated to live life in the absence of attachments? In that case, we will not have any relationships. Without attachments, life will be dull. I have a very simple question. Do we play only for the sake of winning the game, or can we play for the sake of the fun of playing? I feel that the best play is when there is nothing to win or lose, and yet we give our best. The best artistic performances are where the artist is performing for the sake of expressing himself and not for the sake of earning money or getting a round of applause. The best scientific discoveries are those in which the scientist searches for the truth just for the sake of knowing, with no commercial interest. The soul has entered the human body. The soul is always free. Free of all types of attachments. It is fully aligned with the divine will. It seeks to manifest the widest possibilities on...

Yesterday, while walking, I realised that I was too busy with certain thoughts. I walked along a long track yet hardly observed anything outside. The thoughts preoccupied my mind. This morning, while sitting for meditation, I realised that in Vipassana meditation, we observe different sensations in our body. This act of observation requires slowing down and being stable. We cannot observe so long as we are busy with thoughts of the past or the future, or busy reacting to sensations. The only cause of busyness with thoughts appears to be a loss of awareness of "who we are", which naturally brings fears and insecurities. These fears give rise to ambitions and desires, and, in turn, we are busy analysing the past and making plans for the future. Our minds are continuously busy analysing what is good or bad for us. We are all the times busy making plans for the future. The funny thing is that we hardly know anything about ourselves, yet we are so preoccupied with deciding what is...

It's not that Arjuna lacked faith in Krishna before the Mahabharata war. In fact, it was Arjuna who chose Krishna to lead his entire army to fight the battle of the Mahabharata. Yet he was confused about whether to fight the battle when he saw his cousins and elders fighting against him. That is the beauty of a spiritual journey. A spiritual journey is about confronting the deepest of our attachments lying hidden in the layers of the unconscious mind.  Ordinarily, we live a very shallow life full of attachments. Most of our decisions are driven by desires, attachments, and ambitions. Sometimes, we try to hide these ambitions behind the veil of helping others. Generally, we are not concerned about giving away our attachments. In fact, society as a whole, in one way or another, tells us to be more and more ambitious. At its very best, it tells us to follow the society's legal and moral code of conduct, with the underlying understanding that if all of us follow it, there would be ...

It is almost impossible for most of us to surrender completely to the divine. We all have different ambitions that we want to pursue. Some of us want to earn a lot of wealth, while some want to have all types of fun; some want to take care of the family; some want to form friendships and companionship; some want to roam around the world and explore different places; and some want to explore different fields of knowledge. So long as the situations support us, we feel happy, confident, and proud of ourselves. As and when situations stop supporting us, we start to feel less confident, fearful, and anxious.  The sense of "Doership" is so strong that when something does not go our way, we start holding ourselves guilty for not having made the correct decisions. Basically, we carry an image not only of the doer but also of a perfect one who is intelligent enough to understand the interplay of different forces and of nature operating within ourselves, in other human beings with whom...

Today, while listening to a video by J. Krishnamurti, I realised that the body has its own movement. Since I had breakfast some time ago, I have been feeling sleepy. Although I was keen to listen to the video, it was very difficult for me to concentrate. The body had its own movement. Similarly, the mind has its own movement too. Not necessarily; it will listen to the command of the intellect. It may be busy with its own movements, the memories of the past, or anxieties of the future. Most of the time, the intellect seems to have no control over the movements of the mind or the body. The body and the mind behave like a stubborn child, unwilling to listen to their commands. Probably, intellect is the favourite child of the divine. It connects to the divine at the earliest when we listen to a Bhajan, read a spiritual book, or talk to a spiritual person; the intellect readily connects to that and develops an inclination to pursue the path of spirituality. However, the decisions are not un...

I am often surprised to see that we have so many things in our lives and yet do not feel gratitude for them. We have all the ways and means to survive in this world, decent security, good health, kids, and decent respect in this society, yet feel insecure and fearful. We become anxious and stressed by the smallest challenges in life. I often try to examine the underlying reasons for this insecurity and fear. There are probably only two ways to live life. First, the way most of us live our lives i.e. living with a sense of separation. We live as if we are an individual "unit" in this world. Just like an atom. We feel insecure when we're alone. We try to address this insecurity by adopting various tactics. There are two prominent ways in which we try to do away with this insecurity. Firstly, by gathering more and more physical wealth, and secondly, by forming stronger bonds. We try to form different types of bonds. We form ionic bonds, such as the bond between Sodium and Ch...

Kids are one of the greatest blessings in life. I was pleasantly surprised to have a discussion this morning with my younger daughter who is around 10 years of age. She started discussing with her understanding that there is no God. Then I asked her that if there is no God then who is taking care of the digestion of food inside her stomach and the circulation of the blood. Is that happening automatically? She said that it is the forces of nature that are governing that and not any God. She discussed further that I do not understand why people pray to God in different forms and why they always keep begging from that God. I expressed my views that probably God, by whatever name we call him, is someone who has understood the forces of nature in and out and we pray to him to show us the path of such realization. We keep the symbol of God in our prayer homes to remind us of his qualities so that we may also follow that path. I further explained to her that it is just like your teacher in th...