Understanding Who Am I

When any thought arises, say that I want money. The first thing that we understand that, I want money. So if we analyze this further. This thought arises in my mind and then it proceeds to our intellect, Consciousness and finally ego to act on the same.

If, we go in the reverse order.  We can understand the Ego is acting based on the input from consciousness and it from the intellect and finally intellect is influenced by Mind where the thoughts are created.

Hence the source of all thoughts is our mind; it is here where we get information from the sensory organs to the mind and this mind creates thoughts. Mind and thoughts are the same as mind exists only for the sole purpose of creating thoughts.

Then further when we try to understand why are these thoughts created, we realize that these thoughts are created for me. Meaning the mind thinks “I need money”.

Who is this “I”, that the mind is thinking about? Mind usually associates its thoughts to the physical body and hence it thinks that “I - refers to the physical body”. But when the mind is made thoughtless or when we do not create thoughts in our mind then for the mind this body will not exist, but even at that time there is awareness in us. What is this awareness? This awareness is beyond the body as there are no thoughts, since thoughts are created when we interact with the external world. Further in this situation when the mind quiet and if it questions “Who am I”, then mind cannot associate ‘I’ to the physical body or even the mind (as it is quieted), as mind itself does not exist as there are no thoughts. Then who is this ‘I’? When mind is transcended by this way, then what is left? After this stage only awareness exists in our mind. What is this awareness and how does this feel? Will be the question at this point; is this the Brahman that we talk about?

How can I say this as I have not reached this stage of thoughtlessness; to achieve this stage meditation and protecting the mind is a very important requirement; During meditation mind can be made thoughtless, and once thoughtless we become aware of the emptiness due to the lack of thoughts.

These my understanding based on Guruji's teachings. Any mistakes is solely mine for lack of understanding

Understanding the SELF

The title itself will give us an Idea of what this article is all about. To understand who we are, we need to have a clear understanding of how we came into existence.

The entire universe was actually created out of nothing. Meaning the planets, stars and sentient beings like us are the resultant of nothingness. This nothing was termed by our Rishis as Para Brahman or Maha Shunya (as per Buddhism).

Then out of this nothingness the SELF (Brahman) came into being. It is not important for to know why the SELF came into being, as this will not help us to get us nowhere.

Since the SELF is always perfect and because of this perfection it remained inert, hence to get the process of Creation move forward Maya/Shakthi (kinetic enery) was created out of this SELF and this Maya used the energy of the SELF and started with the process of creation by creating souls (Tiny Brahman of the larger SELF) and surrounding around it so that it can interact with the external world.

To interact with the outer world first there was a necessity of a Consciousness, Mind, Intellect and Ego to understand and discriminate activities. But the Consciousness cannot exist by itself, hence it requires a body to perceive its surrounding and interact with it.

When the body reacts with the external factors, the mind starts reacting to the stimulus on a continuous basis. When this happens the pure consciousness that is pervaded by SELF is slowly corrupted. Meaning the Mind perceives external information, for the sake of preserving the body the Mind triggers commands to the Intellect, Intellect acts on this and is moved Consciousness and finally Ego is given the command to act on the stimulus.

This action creates impressions in our sub conscious mind. When an Impression is created in our sub conscious mind, the pure consciousness pervaded by the SELF is corrupted. When this happens on a continuous basis, our consciousness is devoid of purity that it possessed earlier. Hence the link between the Mind and SELF is forgotten, due to constant interaction with the external stimulus.

Since there is constant interaction of mind and external factors, the mind keeps reacting and creating more and more sub conscious impressions in our mind, hence impressions further gets accumulated and consciousness is devoid of essence of SELF.

Once an impression is created in the sub conscious mind, it is bound to resurface again in order to clear it out from our mind. This creation of impression and resurfacing of the same is nothing but Karma.

Since we are always interacting and creating new impressions, the impressions will not get exhausted within the life time of a person. Hence when the person dies these impression gets attached to SELF and moves out of the body and gets into another body (by being born again) to exhaust and experience these impressions. So this cycle keeps continuing and hence our consciousness is always impure and because of that we forget the existence of the SELF within us. This ignorance is the root cause for all the problems in our life. This leads to creation of karma and rebirths.

Hence to avoid this cycle of birth and rebirth, our Rishis came with concept of SELF realization and GOD realization, which is nothing but cleansing of our mind and consciousness. This technique is nothing but a sort of reverse engineering of the thought process. First we have to understand what makes us to react with the outside world and what actions create these impressions and hence perform actions in such a way that new impressions are not created and we exhaust the impressions (karma) which is already there in our mind from many births.

How do we do all these things, it only through our mind we can do this. We have work through our mind and thought processes. Understand the significance of our thoughts, as our thoughts are responsible for creating impressions (karma) in our mind.

So how do we work with our mind will be the next question. Ideally we should start changing our life style by showing restraint in our life. Our thoughts should always be positive and our actions should always be good. This forms foundation for us to tame our mind and make it to think beyond the day today problems of the life.

Once we start thinking with positive thoughts and good actions. There is cleansing of the mind and consciousness. Further leading a highly restrained life, couple with positive thoughts and actions all the times will be difficult for general people like us. Hence there is a requirement for mind to be protected all the time. This protection for the mind is provided by chanting mantras. Mantras generate required vibrations in our mind and strike at appropriate places in our body, so that our mind is not influenced by the external stimulus.

Even after protecting the mind, to tame the mind we need to take control of it or at least we should have a capacity to make our mind not addicted to anything. Hence to enable more control over mind we proceed with Pranayama (breathing exercises) this helps the mind to be still and further facilitate to enforce more control on the mind.

Finally once we are good at pranayama we should proceed with meditation. It is here that we work on our mind and thought processes. All the other activities are required just to make us more equipped to analyse, discover and cleanse the thought processes and proceed towards purifying the consciousness. When the consciousness starts getting purified the SELF starts pervading again in our mind there by link is again established with our mind. Purest form of conscious will clearly understand that body and mind that have been created are just the product of the Maya and it is this which has made us to forget the source of the existence by making us to interact with the external world and trapping us in the process of rebirths.

With purest consciousness (purest awareness) we will realize that the SELF is present in our body itself and at this stage we are Self Realized.

This article is based on the teachings of Guruji V Ravi. Any mistake kindly pardon me for lack of understanding.

Positive Thinking for Overcoming Grief

What is positive thinking?

This question has many answers and we can discuss about the same days together.

Simple way of looking at positive thinking is "Identifying opportunity at the time of Despair, which other people fail to see"

Why this is required?

To answer the above question I can give you an example. Suppose one suffers from a Chronic life threatening illness say Cancer, the person now has two options to lead his life. First one being he can curse about his life as to why it turned like this? Why should he suffer when others are happy and become cynical about life.

What good can we find in this approach towards? None!

Neither the person is happy nor the people around him are happy. Also this type of  outlook always invites more problems in life as negative thinking invites negative experiences.

I'm not saying that it is wrong to grieve. But we should accept what is happening to us, only then we can move forward in this life both on physical and spiritual plane.

Our life is so well designed that we have very little control over major events in life (lie marriage, birth, death etc) as law of Karma decides upon these factors and we have taken this birth just to settle the Karmic account, once Karmic account is settled we realize God and liberation can take place.

But the negative approach towards life always makes us to accrue more undesirable actions which leads to accruing more Karma. This will lead to Rebirth and more suffering.

On the other hand if we look at this in a positive way.We will realize that death is part of life and its natural and we cannot control death as Karma is responsible for deciding these things. So if one realizes birth or death is not in our hands, our mind is released from the agony of this impending event.

Once we realize this we are no long bothered and in fact we can think how best we can lead our remaining life. So that the person and people around him/her are happy.

We look at life in a new dimension and see how we can contribute positively.

The above points are my understanding of positive thinking and what I have heard from learned people. This may not convince everyone, but wanted to share my thoughts as this may be useful.

Happy New Year 2015

I would like to wish all happy 2015. May this year shower divine grace on all for happy and prosperous year ahead

Worship Grama Devata (Deity of the locality that you stay and also deity of locality that your ancestors were actually from)

Grama Devata (village deity/guardian deity/Tutelary deity or  Patron deity) are responsible for protecting the family who stay in a particular locality. 

Usually these deities are responsible for safeguarding its devotees from unforeseen problems in life.

Offering respect to the deity here is very important and going to its temples are important at the beginning. 


Later mental contemplation of the deity is sufficient.

Many of these deities acts as a protective energy from Black Magic and other problems

Temporary Hiatus

I'm on a temporary hiatus, as I'm introspecting myself. So future postings will be done, when I feel like posting.

Apologies for this 

Importance of Praying to Family Deity

This is the on of the three articles that I will write about importance of praying to Family deity, Grama devata (deity of the area that you reside at) and Ancestors (Pitru's)

This article deals about family deity.

It is always important that we pray to our family deity as this is the deity that will look after us at the times of trouble.

Family deities are really important as they usually guard us from unforeseeable problems and also protects us from severe karmic debts.

If a person is born under the family where the deity is Shiva, it means that the natural protector of that family is Lord Shiva and praying to Lord Shiva will help them to get over the problems of day today life

It is important to understand that Family deity are the first source for protection for us, it protects us from many problems be it physical or psychics. It safe guards people from negative energies.

It is easy to please our family deity than any other deities. As we are born in that clan/family of the deity.

Usually families have 2 family deities one male and other female. It is important we pray to both the deities, but if you want to take up any sadhana/anustana etc, it is much quicker to female deity of the family.

Annual fire sacrifices (homam) to our family deity will help the family in ensuring the grace and protection of the deity.

It is always good to take the name of our family deity before we do any activity, this if done with belief and trust on the deity will always ensure grace of the Deity

Any spiritual progress will depend on the grace of the family deity, if the person does not have the grace of the deity he cannot progress spiritually.

That's the reason why our family members insist us to pray to our family deity.

It is interesting to note that when Black magic is performed on a person firstly the tantrics ties the family deity and only then they go ahead with abhichara (black magic)

But if proper prayers are offered to the family deity from the beginning, the deity will protect us even from these issues or will guide us to overcome the problems

Chanting of family deities name is the best practice that one can adopt as this will ensure grace of the God and assures both material and spiritual growth.