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Table of Contents
Ways in Which Truth Unlocks Spiritual Realization
- The soul’s journey from ignorance to wisdom
- Why most people are trapped in Maya
- The role of conscience in spiritual progress
- The difference between material success & spiritual progress
- How scriptures guide towards truth
- The impact of karma on spiritual life
- Finding your dharma and purpose
- Learning from the past to break illusions
- Understanding destiny & free will
Why Truth is the Key to Spiritual Growth
Truth is vital in the nurturing of spirituality. Truth cannot be separated from spirituality. It is interesting and important to understand what makes one spiritual in one’s outlook and understanding.
Unless these aspects are well cared for, one shall not be able to nurture the spirit and ascend towards reality, that for which we all are here for but sadly we do not exactly that. Only when the soul is sick and tired of endlessly freewheeling within this universe, having started its journey from beginningless time, the hunger for knowing the Truth, why one is here for, the hard problem of existence can never be solved.
We must remember that it is not the problem of the universe, but the very problem of the individual soul which finds itself trapped in so many ways, after having tried and realized pure existential suffering in all that is available in the buffet of existence.
How Beliefs and Perceptions Shape Reality
The world around us is a conglomeration of our thoughts, notions and belief systems. It is this which adds up and gives us the experience of “my world”.
Other than this, there is no other world. We must understand that if there are 7 and a half billion human beings on the planet, it essentially means 7 and half billion worlds intermingle with each other and not that there is just one world, since each individual is living in a mental universe he creates within himself built with thoughts, emotions, biases and opinions.
Over and above the experiences of a personal world, which the senses make one experience, there is a subtle world that adds up to the cognition of the physical world. These subtle experiences are our deep rooted dogmas and mental constructs which heavily shape and even power the manifested world and make them “unfortunately” real, in our experience, although the scriptures give the term “Maya” to this experience, which means, “that which is not”.
The Advaita Vedanta declares this world as illusory while the Bhakti Scriptures refer to this world as ‘real’ but extremely temporary or transitory, like words written on flowing water. I use the word “unfortunate” deliberately to highlight the “lie” aspect of the world.
Based on our preconceived ideas and notions, “our world” starts manifesting, exactly the way we conceive it. For example, if we have an experience, to which we say, we never had any prior conception, it is not exactly true. Our conception is very deep-rooted. We, as individuals, hardly understand our own mental make-up and are largely unaware of the ghostly pre-conceptions that we harbor deep within ourselves, over billions of past lifetimes.
Why We Lack Awareness of Our Own Mind
The irony is that we do not know ourselves that well. Simply put, we do not have the user manual of the technology that operates within us, common to every living being that we see around us. Our own personal history pre-dates the current body and hence, what lurks in the dark corners of our minds, is largely unknown, dark and phantom-like.
If this is the case, the world that is emergent all round us, is a manifestation of that unconscious aspect, projecting itself from within, which the imperfect senses falsely conceive, the senses being the evolute of sense perceptions and sense-organs, perfectly imperfect by design. Hence a large part of our experience of the world is fake.
The perception of the world, then depends on the way the mind and senses distort the experience. This lie is to be distilled, through the higher cognitive faculties of intelligence that Providence has embedded within us that has always existed within us, but sadly, about which we have no idea.
For a human being, there are many opportunities Mother Nature provides, to recognize truth through allusion of the higher faculties, the divine faculty of conscience which is ever awake and beckon man, whispering to us all the time about our higher goals. Unfortunately, we have unconsciously turned deaf to these timeless whispers.
The Power of Free Will and Choice
With the calling of inner conscience, nature gives man freedom to choose; to decide his own fate. Destiny does exist, but destiny is not fatalistic by nature. There is the call of inner conscience and an ambivalent pull of the senses, to choose the shorter path of sense-engagement.
Man has the option to create a world of make-belief, within this universe. This lower propensity is this world of fakery. Man has the option to accept this world and drown himself in the muck of sensory-engagement and pleasure.
This is the option of “Believing that which the senses show”. It stands for cooking up a story within the mind, seeing it and making do with what the senses highlight. This is a life that is extremely myopic. It is based on the philosophy that this world of senses and sense-objects are the only reality. There exists no spirit or no world beyond that.
There exists only this world which the eyes can see. So it would be a wise thing to create one’s own story here in this world and live in it; falsely accepting that there is no life beyond this one.
When Truth is Forgotten, Illusion Prevails
When such a feeling encroaches the mind, Truth is never researched. Since this is believed to be the only life, one tries to build a castle by any means right here. One does not then bother about rules and character.
One forgets the higher call of duty. One is then a person interested only in rights and dominion. This is a similar approach taken by the ancient Charavakas, a cult of ancient India. Charvaka, also called Lokayata (Sanskrit: “Worldly Ones”), was a philosophical Indian school of materialists who promptly rejected the notion of an after-world, karma, liberation (moksha), the authority of the sacred scriptures, the Vedas, and the immortality of the self.
The world today seems to adopt the very same philosophy on a grand scale. Most people are drugged with this fake lack-lustre world having lost sight of the infinitude that lies beyond this one, largely unexplored. The man lacking this vision, is bound to suffer at the end of this body, without fail. So say the Vedic scriptures.
Why Our Value Systems Are Rooted in Falsehood
“Realizing” is a necessary aspect of life. When realization sets in, we enter the spiritual domain. If we are to regain our spiritual identity, the spirit has to be awakened. Only then shall “realization” happen.
Most of life focuses on the matter-aspect of life. For example, as we mature, certain value systems are injected into our psyche by the world around us, which includes our parents and the general society. We are taught to be “individuals”, who have to fight it out in the world, out there to survive and proliferate, if we are to become lucky.
We must know that, most of us have accepted this world of sense perceptions and sense organs as real and so our life is rooted in falsehood, untruth. The “fighting” or “survival” mentality is induced into us, as part of our acceptance that “this world” is real and so we have to fight this world and survive.
Little do we realize that we are inside a multi-dimensional simulator where nothing is real or to say that least, right from “A” to “Z” is temporary. Right now we are ill-equipped to handle such a vast colossal simulator where the simulation of reality is extremely scary.
Right now, in the state we are in, we have no option other than to accept that everything around us is “real”. But then, this is, in reality fake, completely fake.
7/8 Questions from Sanatana Dharma
The scores generated in this Quiz may or may not be absolute. There may be right or wrong answers to each Question. A percentage towards 100 indicates that you are more aligned to the overall subject matter.
How Society Conditions Us to Chase Rights Over Duties
We are taught to believe that a career is important, rearing a family is important, standing up for one’s rights is important and so on. We are taught more about rights and how to get them. We are also taught to become competitive.
Many parents spend their adulthood nurturing this spirit of “fighting” and “competition” into their wards. We know many sports achievers, whose parents have been their primary motivation; inspiration.
Parents have sacrificed their entire life to nurture this “Do or die” spirit into their wards. The West usually subscribes to this fight mode of operation. This looks good, but is no match for the simulator we are in which is “Maya”.
Why We Are Stuck in the Same Spiritual Position for Ages
Through the fighting spirit, one might succeed in the materialistic aspect of life, where the focus is food, shelter and clothing or the amplified tendencies of a living entity rather than that of a living “being”.
The “being” is a great possibility in humans, yet most of us exist as mere possibilities, nothing more. We are simply draining our battery with almost zero output. Unless the “being” aspect is awakened we shall be far from attaining our True Purpose .
The Vedic scriptures proclaim that the human expression, is an invitation to the entity to transform itself into a “being”, which right now exists as a pure possibility, having not moved an inch since we started off from beginningless time.
Other than the great handful of Vedic sages who have walked the blessed land of Bharath Bhumi and the surrendered souls of the great Bhakti revolution that manifested 500 years ago here in Bharat, the rest of us have not moved an inch.
We may have apparently achieved much success in the world of matter, but then how does it matter, it will be snatched from us when we leave this body and then we return to the zero mark.
Human Rights vs. Responsibilities: A Misguided Focus
Until man becomes conscious of duties and commitments, this possibility of realizing the “Spirit” shall remain a far-off possibility. We talk of “Human Rights”.
We talk of job opportunities, we talk of empowerment and what not. We also talk about racial discrimination and sexual exploitation. If we are to look deeper into each of this socio-political aspect, we are simply speaking about rights.
Where are the duties? We talk of the right to live. What are we doing to enable life, to power life, to make life vibrant. We are exploiting nature and hunting for more opportunities to earn more wealth. What can wealth procure?
It can buy you food, clothing ,shelter and a name perhaps, that shall be forgotten, the moment you die? Then why struggle so much, to “earn your bread”? Will it not be worthwhile to talk about duties? Will it not be worthwhile to, “not expect”.
From Survival to Self-Realization: The Path of Dharma
Life is precious and is not meant for eating, sleeping, mating and defending. It is meant for a larger cause. A cause, which modern man cannot even imagine. The Vedic Scriptures allude to this aspect.
The Vedic Scriptures talk of “higher attainment”. They ask man to forget about rights; since there are none, not one. This is the Truth, which the Scriptures talk of. The Vedic Scriptures have talked about duties all the way. They talk of “Duty” as the “Natural State”, as Dharma, Sanatana Dharma.
Even in the Mahabharata Lord Krishna did not wage a war with the Kauravas to reclaim the Pandava kingdom, but rather attacked the Kauravas because they violated Dharma and represented Adharama. That was the Lord’s motive behind the war of Kurukshetra, fight as duty and not fight for rights.
The day man comes to this understanding, the spirit shall awaken and, the being shall have entered paradise without a return ticket. This is what the Scriptures have certainly promised.
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