Soul Consciousness – Do I walk or fly in my spiritual path?
Theoretically it is explained
that Soul is a point of energy located at the centre of forehead –
hypothalamus. According to Psychology - Canon-Bard Theory of emotions - there
is a point of consciousness at the hypothalamus from where all the emotions and
signals of the whole body movements are controlled. In spiritual practice, it
is said to consider yourself as a soul and remember the Supreme Soul, the God
(the Father/Leader/Guide of all the human souls) to make our soul pure - free
from karmic accounts. And karmic accounts are nothing but the thought that we
think and later become actions. The more we become pure (free from thoughts),
more virtues emerge within, making us virtuous (happy and divine) in nature.
It is by being in soul conscious
or being aware of our true nature, we can naturally remember God. The more we
remember God, we become God-like in nature. God-like means satchitanand, one
who is free from false identities, conscious of self and always blissful in nature.
Even though God has the greatest responsibility of sustaining and keeping all
souls of the world happy, peaceful and loving all the time, still, if all souls of the world suffer, God never cries
or become sad but He has mercy for all and fulfill His responsibility without
coming under stress or tension but always remaining blissful.
Ultimately, to remain peaceful,
happy, blissful and to settle our karmic accounts, we have to remain soul
conscious all the time. How it is possible in practical? Based on our learning or the information given to us, we feel we have to renounce the world and
relatives to experience soul consciousness. But in reality, to experience our
true nature, we have to just know how to remain detached from our mind when we
want and remain attached to the mind when it is required. Renounce the world,
then their thoughts, then experience awareness of soul is one way. The other
way is to detach from your mind and naturally you remain your self. The people,
world and things, you don’t put effort to move away from them individually.
You-soul saves lot of energy by not focusing on people, person and things
individually. What Gurus and Scriptures say is also true but it is like
reaching the destination by different routes but the easiest and simplest path
is always available to the ones who make effort to understand. It is like how
we want to travel, by walk or bus or train or sea or flight. We all know
travelling to a destination (walking a spiritual path) is a great effort but we
also know if we take a flight (with understanding), there is no effort in
travelling.
Many type of spiritual actions
what we are involved, unconsciously detach the mind from our self to give a
glimpse of our self. We can find, the experiences (qualities of self) make us
detach from the thoughts/mind. By doing devotion, we surrender everything to
God and keep our mind free from thoughts. By doing Kriyas, we focus on what we
do, being remain in the present/by being aware of breath, we keep our mind free
from the thoughts of past or future. By having love for God, we experience the
blissful nature of God and keep our mind free from thoughts. By doing spiritual
service, we accumulate blessings or good vibrations or good karma to combat
with our own mind of negative thoughts/karmas. And those who cannot detach the
mind by themselves happily can be made to experience the nature of self by
great pain or sorrow, the very example is the patients who are psychotic (eg. Schizophrenia)
in nature. The illness / mental disorder is nothing but a defence mechanism
they use themselves to detach from the mind due to the sorrow/repeated thoughts
that they cannot bear. People who smoke or drink use to detach their mind by
intoxicants which ultimately ruin them both physically and mentally.
It is said you control your mind
and you control the world but in reality you cannot control anything in this
world, but you can only allow someone or something to remain as it is/they are,
including the mind. The truth is, we never take control of our mind but we take
control of our own self and all other (mind and its thoughts) loses their power
on their own. Where you, the Soul focus on, there the energy flows and when you
don’t focus on your mind, instead you focus on your own self, mind loses its
power. It is said Soul experiences sorrow, pain, sadness but it is also
instructed to experience everything being a detached observer. Really speaking
Soul can do both. If it wants, it can experience the pain and sorrow as per the
theory and laws of association. And if it wants, it can remain a detached
observer like God, always experiencing bliss irrespective of whatever happens
to His most Beloved Children. It is like sugar, which does not lose its
sweetness even if it is thrown in mud or broken into pieces.
Victor Frankl’s (who has a record
of 100% prevention of suicides in schools of Vienna and is also an expert in counseling
to prevent suicides) Existential therapy
of Humanistic psychology gives importance to meaning in life (which sustained
him in spite of the tortures of Nazi concentration camps) like love for wife or
children or responsibility to carry-out some actions in life to overcome the
difficulties of life. But those who are single and who does not have much
responsibility to care for, even they can find a meaning in life by feeling
lightness, love and being loved by their own nature and selfless love of God,
by realizing the true nature of Self. So, What is natural nature, how we can
experience our true self so that I, the soul never focus on something which
takes away all my energy.
The True nature of Self can be realized
by giving time for self. Nowadays that is the most demanding part of life. We
have been taught from childhood days to live an active life, happy life,
serviceable life, fruitful life, more income generating life, luxurious life,
life of social respect and achievement but we were not taught that all this happiness,
service, luxury, achievement are to be focused on realization of the self, our
true nature. Because once we realize and maintain the awareness of true nature
of self, then we become God-like, in the sense that, we can overcome all
situations of life by experiencing a blissful detached, easy going, loving
sweet nature. But this can be attained only by understanding and
experiencing it by our own self not by someone else, that’s where the trouble
stays. To understand and experience, we need to give time for our own self, in
other words we need time to do/think nothing and keep quiet.
At least to understand and
experience our true nature, initially, we have to give time for ourselves doing
nothing. In fact doing nothing is only for the world, but for our inner self,
we are going to be more alert, more active and do more churning, being in
solitude. Without this we cannot understand our true nature of self. Once we
understand and experience the sweetness, the lightness, the unlimited-ness, the
true nature of self, then we don’t need more solitude, we can remain in solitude
anywhere at any place with any noisy surrounding or with any number of crowds.
How to practice doing nothing,
thinking nothing to become self-aware?
1. Spend
time (at least one hour) in solitude during early morning hours 4 am or 5 am or
2 am when we wake from the middle of deep sleep/rest or any time you wake up.
2. When
you don’t have to do anything, sit and stare the wall, or image or any
non-moving object
3. Staring
is not focusing, but seeing with lot of relaxation(of body and mind), so that
after looking at an object or wall for some time, your mind will not have
anything more to think, it will become blank, becoming just an observer, not
thinking anymore about anything.
4. When
you become an observer, you can understand that you have detached from your
mind.
5. You
can feel the silence, blankness but you know you are observing. Many a times we
experience this observer stage when we get tired of thinking. Although it is
more powerful stage, sometimes, it seems to be boring.
6. But
the true nature is sat-chit-anand. Being an observer, we have experienced sat
(true nature), chit (awareness) but anand (bliss) not yet.
7. When
we continue with the detached observer (free from attachment of mind), then we
experience the lightness, sweetness, along with the stage of observer. Now it
is complete sat-chit-anand.
8. This
true nature of self (satchitanand) once we experience it being a detached
observer, then it becomes easy to stick to this awareness by doing all actions
throughout the day. And you feel the lightness, happiness, time to time attach
and detach of self from mind will keep the satchitanand flowing continuously,
this will make us naturally remember the True God, the Father, enabling us to
settle our karmic accounts (waves) of thoughts then and there, as and when it
appears (and disappears) as waves in the ocean of mind.
9. Although
the clouds of thoughts/tension/sadness appear in front of the Sun (self)
continuously, internally you will not lose the light (awareness) of Sun at any
point of time.
Many a times, it is said to see
others as soul, in fact looking others as souls is only a thought, of course a
positive thought which will not take us into more expansion of thoughts. But as
we stabilize more in our spiritual awareness (detaching ourselves from our mind
whenever we don’t use our mind), we never see/imagine others as soul but we
focus more on our inner self awareness and although we see others by mind,
their image never imprinted on our self. I (mind) look but I (self) don’t look
at others because I am aware of my own self not focusing on my mind. It also
happens like this: I(mind) hear but I (self) don’t hear, because I (self) remain
detached to the mind.
Hence, the real soul conscious is
to become aware of our true nature even if our karmic accounts (thoughts) are
not settled. We learn to live with our karma(mind) but not influenced by it. I
use my mind whenever required and other times, I know it exists but I focus on
my own awareness of sat-chit-anand making me live an independent life not
depending upon external person or situation to influence me although my mind
gets influenced by them.
And this is real Raja Yoga, I
become the master of mind and all the senses that was controlled by the mind.
And I remain indifferent to mind - all people, objects and situations that
appear as waves in the ocean of mind. And if this is experienced by all of us,
then we can also make others to experience the same, liberating everyone from
the thoughts of suffering, pain and ultimately save them from depression,
anxiety and suicidal tendencies.
