Table of Contents
Pure Awareness is the Source of the World
The mind is the repository of impressions. When the conscious element interacts with these impressions, it gives the experience of the world. Spirituality is the exact science of the mind, where the goal is to get established into the very source of this worldly projection, the pure awareness. All that we experience through the senses and the mind, is a sub-component of pure awareness.
An example to this effect can be useful. For example, when we receive light from an electric bulb, when we receive cool air from the air-conditioner, when the heater heats water for our bath, all these are powered by electricity alone.
Evolutes of Consciousness
The objects like the electrical element, windings of the air-conditioner, the heating element etc, contain electrons one cannot see. When electricity passes through these elements, electrons vibrate and we get the services for our comfort. Similarly, mind and its evolutes which includes the senses and the many impressions are evolutes of pure awareness alone. When these evolutes power pure awareness, they trigger the phenomenon of life which settle within us as the experience of life.
Spirituality is, going back to the source. At the source, awareness is its purest form, unsullied. That awareness is constant. It does not represent individuals or things. That is one, universal. It is present at all times and in everybody as that “One”. One cannot measure it as more or less.
Whether one is alive or dead, it simply “is”. That pure awareness, is an entity which is subjective and beyond space and time. Only when the individual, reverses his outward going tendencies, shall he be able to free himself from the limited shackles of things born out of the evolutes of awareness, which we know as matter or the mind.
The mind, is the major impediment to our being established in pure awareness. Awareness is present everywhere, all the time. However, to realize our source, it is important to purify and calm down the distortions of the mind.
Why Sadhana or Spiritual Practice is necessary
It is necessary that we work upon the grossness of the opaque mind through sadhana or spiritual practice. When the mind is relieved of the heavy dross of matter and materialistic thinking, it becomes transparent and reflective at the same time. Pure awareness, which is our natural state, gets reflected by the mind and one can take cognition of the pure source that is universal.
Once man can experience the image of that pure awareness, all apparent struggles of life, simply evaporate under the brilliance of that pure awareness. Meditation and contemplation are some tools that help rarify the mind so that it can reflect pure awareness.
When the water in a puddle is muddy and turbulent, one cannot see the reflection of the moon. However, when the puddle water is clean and calm, the moon’s reflection in the water is stable and perfect. Similarly, when one performs noble and unselfish acts or follows the edicts of the Vedic Scriptures toward Truth, through service and surrender, the mind gets purified.
When does the Mind attain Purity and Calmness?
When one performs meditation, study of the scriptures, contemplation and japa (chanting of the holy names of the God), especially under a perfectly God-Realized Guru, the mind becomes calm and transparent. When the one carries out the process of sadhana which includes all the above processes, for a protracted length of time, the mind becomes clarified and can reflect the universal light.
This is the light of pure awareness, where no darkness can survive. Our entire life is lit up through our commitment to the Truth. Awareness when revealed in the heart or the clarified mind will dispel all doubts from the heart. There shall be no knowledge that shall remain, left to be assimilated, in the light of pure awareness.
The Short-Sighted Approach towards Meditation Practice
Today, the world recognizes meditation as a practice which is essential for good mental health. This is indeed correct. There are so many benefits of meditation that it shall be difficult to enlist all the benefits of meditation in one go.
As our step towards heightened Spiritual Awareness, we shall try to unravel the ontology of meditation, which is perhaps overlooked; given the many tangible benefits of meditation, such as health and medical care. Meditation, as a practice, far exceeds the spectrum of goodness and welfare. Sadly, the world is only interested in immediate benefits and negligent about the far-reaching goals of meditation, as a practice.
The Beginning of Spiritual Awakening
Meditation is the inherent aspect of an awakened being. Meditation as a routine or practice is the starting point. The maturity of meditation is absorption. Santana Dharma and Buddhism, an offshoot of Sanatana Dharma, propound the practice of meditation, with 10 fundamental principles of practice known as Yamas and Niyamas.
Meditation, if looked, only from a limited viewpoint of mental health, is not very effective. This is a fact. Using meditation only with the intention of good all-round health, is like using an aircraft, to travel by road. Although this travel is possible, it is not sustainable and even foolish. The scope of meditation is huge and one should use meditation for the purpose, that Scriptures prescribe it for, and that is for enhancing Spiritual Perception and Enhancement, which will ultimately lead to Spiritual Awakening.
How Meditation gets you into the Spiritual Domain
Humans have advance mental faculties of humans, is advanced, when compared to other forms of life and the goal of meditation is to tunworld to a higher domain, normally inaccessible through any other means. When the mental tuning happens; the psychology, physiology and the whole human system, gets tuned to the higher domain, whereby, higher energies become easily accessible.
This accessibility then transmutes itself into a pathway, which the being uses to walk through, to the spiritual domain. Great Masters have done this, through the tool called meditation. If meditation is performed under the auspices of a good teacher, who has this tuning, one one performs meditation away from the limited conception of body-mind and shall be able to enter that domain, where the spiritual law far supersede material laws, although the being is very much a part of the physical world.
This mystical break-through is the very purpose of meditation. If one is sincere enough, in one’s intention, one shall be guided to this form of meditation by Grace alone.
Grace shall guide one.
Pure Intention is the Backbone of Spiritual Practice
Meditation, is the process through which one can align all of one’s attention towards the unification of the life-energies, which are currently available, although, in a dissipated format in and around the body. Integrating this energy is possible through the process of meditation. Meditation can have different forms.
It can be of the form of focusing on the breath, in Buddhist processes like Anapanasati, Vipassana or like in Anulom Vilom or Bhastrika, which are forms of Pranayama Yogic practices. Meditation may be, focusing on words like “AUM” or “RAM” and so on. Whatever the practice, the goal is to get access to the higher dimension. If there are any other intentions behind the practice, meditation can achieve it, although the effects of meditation, for having used it for a lesser purpose, shall be short-lived.
A short-term approach, shall distance one from the process of meditation altogether. One must use meditation, for purely spiritual purposes. There are other key considerations if one is to board the vehicle called Meditation
Fundamental Considerations for Successful Meditation Practice
A person must practice meditation, with pure intention, if he intends to serve spiritual purposes. One needs to get rid of all materially motivated intentions such as, trying to get rich through meditation, getting occult powers for using it, for or against anyone, etc. One should refrain from all materially motivated mind-sets. Meditation yields immaculate results, if the mind becomes purged of all motivations. This is key to success in any form of Meditation.
If one is interested in Knowing the Supreme Being, the True Purpose of existence and so on, which are spiritual goals; meditation shall work best and shall even exceed one’s wildest imagination. Personally I have been witness to such a phenomenon. The purer the intentions, the better.
Meditation, as a practice, seldom lets down sincere seekers. Only people with shallow minds, will find that meditation is taking them nowhere and they shall soon abandon their meditation practice. The process of meditation, is to be understood as a “Person”, a being, rather than a technique, who knows your deepest intention.
Meditation is a carrier to the spiritual world, something like a spacious space-ship. This should be the mood when one takes up the practice of meditation.
Higher Intention and not “Your Intention” shall take you to Spiritual Awakening
When one gets committed to meditation in moods similar to those mentioned above, meditation shall start carrying you to a newer world of thoughts and realizations. Things, events, circumstances, people, with whom you had no earlier interaction or knowledge about, shall start manifesting in your life.
Highlights of Spiritual Awakening
Your life’s true vision shall start manifesting before you. This does not mean “you have to intend”. The intention itself manifests from the higher domain. It shall not be “your intention”. In fact, it shall be the intention from the highest domain that is directed towards your highest good.
This is how one must understand intention in meditation. One may not find it odd or out of place, at the initial stages; but through continued practice, one shall observe that the quality of life gets automatically enhanced. Lower habits shall automatically start getting replaced with healthier, genuine ones. Sleep patterns will start getting re-oriented. Interests and occupations may change.
Some relationships will suddenly break, some newer ones will start emerging. One’s entire world will start getting re-oriented. Interest in Spirituality will start picking up. One shall automatically start going deep into the “How and Why of things”.
The theory of Karma shall start getting interesting. One will start looking deeper into the smallest happenings and even start understanding how nature works. Realizations of life and afterlife will unravel within your consciousness, even without reading a single book about it.
Doubts of the dumped past, will suddenly appear past, on the screen of consciousness and shall stand cleared to the last dot, with no brain-racking. The knotty kinks of life shall lie open just like the clear blue. Problems shall continue to exist and yet their size will be the size of a mustard seed in front of your mountainous consciousness. There will be a drastic change in one’s lifestyle and preferences. Yet joy alone, shall be one’s language of communication.
The Awakening Individual will stop Chasing “Benefits”
It would be an understatement to call, all the above as benefits of meditation. It would be rather appropriate to call them, the realm of meditation. How can one classify such experiences as benefits? The word benefit, means that somewhere, I am the same and some things around me change for a short-time. The experience of meditation is far from this. It is a transformation of consciousness; a journey from the temporary into the domain of permanence.
When the world falls apart, beyond comprehension; and when the mind cannot put things together, you might probably be hallucinating.
But…
when you view it in the light of spirituality, it is a spiritual experience indeed. In this state, you might not know what’s happening around you. But over times, it settles within you as deep knowing, deep realization.
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.
The Caving In of Individualistic Facade during Awakening
When all that one has known, disintegrates it marks the first sign of a spiritual experience. Everything crumbles in the present’s light.
If this is the case, know that you are on the brink of a massive spiritual experience. A person undergoing spiritual experiences might face many challenges. Such a person undergoes mental, physical, and spiritual challenges. People might call such a person mad or might rush him to the hospital. But this experience is far from such equations. It is a profound experience.
The mind caves into something supra-mundane, something profound. This experience can also find no expression. It is something deep that takes you to your very core, inexplicable. Nothing but deep silence can only do justice, such is this experience.
The Spiritual Deluge when Massive Awakening takes place
I shall try to allude to what happens in a “spiritual experience”, in the “Spiritual Deluge”. The internet has tons of material on the topic of “Signs of Awakening”. But here in this article, I shall try to put some words together to explain that which is almost inexplicable.
Something more deep and incomprehensible is when the “spiritual deluge” happens.
You Lose control over Life situations
Before the spiritual awakening process…
Many people find themselves in a superior state of control and authority. Life moves the way they want. However, after a spiritual awakening the genuine challenges of life come in the fiercest forms, impairing your decision-making capabilities. This spiritual opening can be so severe that, life can turn topsy-turvy.
Everything changes in a matter of a few days. The experience can last from a month to a couple of years. The situations are not in control of the person. It’s an avalanche, an explosion, which has a mind of its own. You surrender to Nature, God, or Energy, or whatever you may want to express it as, something over which “you have no control”, whatsoever.
A Detail of Spiritual Experience
Spiritual Awakening experience is such that it simply forces you to surrender, where an alien force grabs all control. After the harsh battering one might lose confidence. As this experience is uncommon among common folks, you might seem to be left alone.
However, only Nature, God, or energy stand by your side. They manifest through you. Hence, you find it best to surrender to superior forces rather than taking charge of your life. This practice makes it easy for you to sail through the spiritual experience, explosion.
You may face Identity Crisis
The spiritual experience might bring about unpleasantness for a short period. However, the experience is intense, wherein one may face an identity crisis. The person cannot relate with one’s own form, likes, tastes, habits, mentality, relationships, ideas, thought processes, etc. It may become so severe, that superficial memory or even cellular memory might get reset.
There is no trace of the “old self”. Habits become long forgotten, just like when a piece of white cloth is dyed black, whiteness simply vanishes.Memory literally becomes absent.There is no trace of the previous moment as the spiritual aspirant dies in one moment and is reborn the very next moment.
You experience impermanence in its truest form.You see, a moment die and a new moment replacing the old one.
Sometimes Relationship Problems may manifest
Relationships are wholly based on familiarity and emotions.The more one knows the other, the better is the relationship. To make it simple, it is completely based on memory.
We resonate with each other through ideas, likes, and dislikes. Partners get close to the other by satisfying one another’s needs and appreciating each other’s presence. But, a spiritual experience most often cuts off all these cords that bind two people together. The need for someone or something becomes an unknown thing and instead the spiritual vibration becomes a permanent feature.
This might cause a disturbance in existing relationships.
The spiritual experience might mute the emotional faculty for a period and this can cause turmoil in the personal lives of certain people. You might not feel for the other person as much as you used to feel before your spiritual experience.
However, a true partner or family member should try to help the person and support him/her rather than adding to the mental turmoil. Your need to connect with other people or your partner no longer finds a valid reason as the spiritual force overpowers you.
The need to interact or familiarize with something external vanishes. Fundamental definitions of mother, father, and brother, all get changed in a matter of days.
One may not view “relative” or “friends” as they used to, before the massive awakening process trigger. One can only see a bunch of life forms floating around. This mindset is probably difficult for family members and your loved ones to digest.
Feel Extreme Fear and Sometimes get Scary Visions
Though there is freshness because of the absence of memory, there remains extreme fear and uncertainty. This freshness of existence is very disturbing to the mental construct that is under sudden attack.
Our old mind tries to regain control over us through scary visions, which may be millions of lifetimes old. This is because our mind has been the passenger through the millions of lifetimes we have undergone. It throws these past impressions to get our attention and tries subduing the spiritual experience.
The individual, therefore, undergoes hell and heaven, all at the same time.You might experience immense peace for a moment, but right after that, a horrific state of mind can pull down your energy levels.
Other Common yet Unusual Signs of Spiritual Awakening
Delusions can temporarily attack the spiritual aspirant. In this state, one cannot differentiate between dream and reality, night and day. He may feel that he has no head or has lost his arm.
All this, owing to the tremendous “chakra-realignment”. The alignment is happening at the life-energy level. A man undergoing such a spiritual attack becomes lighter than a feather. But, sometimes he/she becomes heavier than earth.
In the fit of this experience, he may jump from the top of a 4 storeyed building. Yet, the person shall not have a scratch on his body. One may wonder who this can happen.
The answer to this, is that the entire being of such an awakening person gets transported to an alternate field of consciousness where all these events take place physically, as opposed to it happening in a dream state.
We can compare this to a dream that has physically manifested.
In a normal dream of a sleeping person, unconsciousness or the subconscious mind is the substrate of all happenings and therefore even if all the senses appear active, when the dream breaks, the person realizes he was in sleep and what he underwent was just a dream.
With an awakening person, the same dream manifests but in a perfectly conscious state and yet one can never categorize it as delusion, most times. There are cases where other people who may claim that the person simply vanished from their vision and the next moment the person appeared from some other direction, walking towards them.
Whereas from the point of view of the person undergoing awakening, He actually jumped up the stairs, jumping several stairs like a cheetah and making his way up to the terrace in a matter of seconds and then taking a free fall from there. He then gets up unscratched and walks back towards the people who are wondering where this sick man had disappeared.
Now, there are many more supernatural things that he undergoes. Almost all the experiences shall challenge the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. The spirit is beyond all these laws. When the body vibrates, at high frequency, none of the laws shall apply.
In a Nutshell
Spiritual Experience can be indeed dreadful for the person undergoing it as well as for their loved ones. However, one needs to understand that time, faith and courage are the genuine friends that come in aid at such times.
