A New outlook of life

By making the number of in-breath counts equal to out-breath counts -- and by holding the water-vapour-like-prana (blur and odic) just inhaled along with air in the solar plexus -- it is possible to effortlessly maintain concentration and willpower on a particular task for any desirable amount of time. Experienced this fact recently and realized its practical importance.


The only barriers that makes us lose focus from being awareness -- and force us to end up being the mind with its 60,000 useless thoughts we get on an average everyday -- and thereby prevent the "will" at the solar plexus to manifest "willpower" are

1. Mental Arguments with oneself or others.
   
2. Engaging mind in sexual fantasies.
   
3. Consuming Non-vegetarian food / those veg food which grow below the earth.

That way we don't add more into the subconscious dross -- and end up removing stuff from it.

If this is followed correctly -- it becomes easy to detect the other barriers due to the newly acquired siddhi -- which is the power of observation. The other barriers that i came across were

1. Thoughts/Beliefs implanted by society/parents in those early childhood days. These are tightly wired into our subconscious makeup - and some of them are plain erroneous.
2. Our very intellect which brought us till here in life and its associated novelties.
3. Strong Opinions/thoughts of people around us.

The intellect -- which is responsible for the "inner talk" in our mind can lead us on and on. Due to its being subtle in nature -- its more difficult to keep track of it and subdue it. In fact it may be happening this very moment as you read this post and you could still be unaware of it. But by a strong motivation and sheer will it quiets down eventually.

Thoughts, beliefs and goals that we have formed for ourselves in the past probably due to influence of family/relatives or sometimes books/novels also play an important role from capturing awareness in the mess of consciousness. One has to be there to understand what these subtleties mean.

Bottom-line is the more you remain the "watcher"/"awareness"/"energy", whatever you call it the more knowledge you receive in every minute of the day from this great University of Learning called Life.

Lord Krishna who recently celebrated His birthday in our home says these beautiful words in the Bhagavad Gita

When the yogi, by practice of yoga, disciplines his mental activities and becomes situated in Transcendence--devoid of all material desires--he is said to have attained yoga.


One should engage oneself in the practice of yoga with undeviating determination and faith. One should abandon, without exception, all material desires born of false ego and thus control all the senses on all sides by the mind.


From whatever and wherever the mind wanders due to its flickering and unsteady nature, one must certainly withdraw it and bring it back under the control of the Self.


The stage of perfection is called trance, or samadhi, when one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.

As a lamp in a windless place does not waver, so the transcendentalist, whose mind is controlled, remains always steady in his meditation on the transcendent Self.


Steady in the Self, being freed from all material contamination, the yogi achieves the highest perfectional stage of happiness in touch with the Supreme Consciousness.

Hare Krishna

The Donkey and the Carrot

The title describes the way we live life daily in the conscious mind. We get an experience, feel it for a while and wait for the next. We believe the next emotion / experience experienced will be the highest in our life. No matter how many emotions we experience, the next set of those emotional experiences will be the high point of our entire life, and we are sure of it! That is the conscious mind.

This way the conscious mind carries us minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, life after life. Novelty is its nature and ramification is its result. We can always find in the conscious mind some distraction to please us, to intrigue us, to dominate our awareness of other states of consciousness. And we don't have to look very hard to find it.

When we are in the conscious mind, we are like a donkey with a carrot in front of our nose. We are always walking to try to get that carrot. We are never satisfied, and we are never happy. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

While in the conscious mind -- We see people, we reason and relate our own condition with theirs, we feel sad when we find them to be in a better state "relatively". "Relative agony" is the key word which we follow unknowingly in our conscious mind. No matter how fortunate we have been, we feel unlucky when we discover that we find someone who is "relatively" more fortunate than ourselves, we feel ourselves as unlucky when we discover that we find a friend marry someone who is "relatively" well off or if we never got one, we say "they are so lucky -- wish i had that kind of luck too", no matter how much we earn we feel unlucky when we learn about "relatively" better hikes to a friend in a neighboring company. When we live in the conscious mind, we only surmise. We make guesses. We are never quite sure if we are right. That is the conscious mind, the part of you which you dare to think is real. It leads us on and on and on, life after life after life after life after life after life after life.




The mystic's goal is to control awareness while he is in the conscious mind -- to know where he is in consciousness. When he finds he is aware in the conscious mind, and the five senses have become his ruler, he then controls his awareness within the conscious mind itself. There are many way he does this -- breath control, enquiry, remembering and pondering on a chosen ishta devata (diety) etc.

A beautiful method below from my guru about how to control mind on the conscious plane.

There is a Saivite hermit, the venerable Markanduswami, living in a humble mud hut in Sri Lanka. He is very old, and was for many years a disciple of Jnanaguru Yogaswami. In fact, his every utterance is a quote from his guru. One afternoon at his hut he described Yogaswami's approach to dealing with thought during meditation. He said, "Yogaswami said, 'Realize Self by self. You want to read this book, that book and all these books. The Book of Infinite Knowledge is here (pointing to his chest). You'd better open your own book.' The prescription he gave me to open that book is this: 'When you are in meditation, you watch the mind. Here and there the mind is hopping. One, two, three,...a hundred. In a few seconds the mind goes to a hundred places. Let him be. You also watch very carefully. Here and there this mind is running. Don't forget Self for a second. Let him go anywhere, but if he goes to a hundred places, you must follow him to a hundred places. You must not miss even a single one. Follow him and note, He is going here. Now he is going there.' You must not miss even a single one. That is the prescription Satguru Yogaswami gave me to open this inner book. He said, 'Watch very attentively and learn to pick up things coming from within. Those messages are very valuable. You can't value them. Realize Self by self and open this inner book. Why don't you open your own book? Why don't you make use of it? Why don't you open your own book? What an easy path I am prescribing for you!' "

People with Willpower

There are many individuals on earth who have consistently lived life such that their awareness was a manifestation of willpower. They consistently attain their dreams and desires one after another. Such individuals are functioning on the manipura chakra - the realm of willpower. Their focus on a project can last as long as they want it to -- to drive the project to successful completion.

It is such people who become successful in meditation and self realization -- my guru says.

Examples of such folks whom i have witnessed in life are : Bjarne Stroustoup (C++ inventor), James Gosling (Java Inventor), Donald Knuth (Author of the book -- considered as the marvel of computer science called "The Art of Computer Programming"), Bill Gates (Founder of Microsoft), Rutherford (famous physicist), Randy Pausch (The Carnigie Mellon University Professor who recently passed away due to cancer)

Mr Randy Pausch explains how to attain life's dreams by giving his own life as an example. Mr Pausch is one of the key guys responsible for the Alice Project. He was a Virtual Reality expert and has contributed a lot to Electronic Arts (EA) the company which develops 3D games such as Road Rash, The Sims -- all of which are successfull. Some of the technology from his and his students work was used in the Spider Man III movie as well.

More about him his life here

Below is the famous lecture he delivered at Carnigie Mellon University called as "The Last Lecture"

Perceiving vs. Judging

There are a few people whom i have come across in my experiences of life -- who prefer perceiving to judgment. When someone comes to us with a problem or when life offers problems -- there are two classes of people classified based on how they respond to the circumstance

• Those who use the intellect and 'known' ways of man to tackle the issue. When the problem is being explained or showing up they go to the past/history to find out if they know how to solve it based on past experience.
  
• The creative souls, who look at the problem like a baby looking at the piece of plaything for the first time. They talk less inside them and outside to the world, they perceive and don't judge. The intellect is present but takes a back seat. Intuition takes the front seat.

The people who belong to the latter are the ones who can come out with creative - out-of-the-box solutions. They are not at majority in the society - but they do exist. People like Albert Einstein, Lalu Prasad Yadav are some examples.

Why Lalu Prasad Yadav? -- Well i was watching this show on TV sometime back -- "Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hain" hosted by Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh is by default a very intellectual well read guy, and when he tends to do the show there is a lot of talking he does and quick witted responses from him to entertain people. But on the last day of the show -- Lalu was supposed to be on the hot seat. A sense of calm prevailed as soon as Lalu started answering Shahrukh's questions. It was like Shahrukh frames a question and explains it for like 2 minutes and Lalu answers it after a few seconds of pause in a short answer lasting less than 5 seconds. Lalu won around 50,00,000 Rupees from the show answering every answer correct. Its not by surprise that he has become the most preferred Railway minister and converted the industry into profit making machine from a loss making one. Various Top IIM institutes and B-schools today take Lalu's Railway management system as a case study in their MBA programs. Lalu according to me is a creative and evolved soul. One of those few fellows who has tuned himself to the river of life. He just really doesn't care if people make fun of him, he attends all the shows he is called to without a sense of superiority or ego and manages to win them and hearts of the people in his own style. He is an example of those rare folks who take life as it comes and face difficult experiences positively. My mom later told me that she has read somewhere that Lalu had once proclaimed to few of his friends and close associates that Lord Siva gave him His vision once. Whether this is true or not - but lalu definitely is an evolved soul from the point of view of my perception.

Another Lady who i know to have this sense of intuition / calmness of mind is Sai Mata of Nooliveedu Village -- a staunch devotee of Sathya Sai / Shirdi Sai Baba.

People who function in the intuitive states of mind, who live two thirds within are closer to the perfection, the lifes goal -- Self realization than those who are not.