SOME THOUGHTS ON ATMA-105

[Guest guest]

Loving SAI RAMs,

Our essential nature is the All-pervading Reality. Owing to our ignorance, we identify with our matter vestures( Kosas and Sareeras) and become a limited personality. If ,however, we withdraw our identity with these limiting factors we get liberated gradually from their shackles. Finally, through single-pointed meditation we regain our original Divine nature. When we identify ourself with the body we live as a mere physical being gratifying our sensual demands. When we grow out of our attachments to our body and identify ourselves with our mind, we live as an emotional being. In this state we we are not satisfied with mere sense gratifications. Our mind thinks about the welfare of others. Similarly, by shifting our attention from body and mind to our intellect we grow with the ideas entertained by our intellect. Following the same reasoning ,if we cross our physical, emotional and intellectual barriers, we become one with the Atma within and find our own Self pervading everywhere. At the time of Self-realization, a total merger of gross, subtle and causal bodies with that Transcendental Rality takes place.

 

 

The merger of the individuality with the Reality has been compared by Acharya Sankara in his Atma Bodha to a mixture off water with water. When different volumes of well water, tank water and river water etc. from different unlike containers

are mixed together they lose their individuality and become one homogeneous mass of water. The Katopanishad speaks of the Unity of the Self thus:- " As pure water poured into pure water becomes pure water only, so becomes the Self of the sage who realizes the Brahman " . Before we realize the Self the physical body is known to be totally different from Reality. But on realizing the Self, we become one with the absolute all-pervading Reality. In that state of Supreme realization, the physical body has no independent existence since it also becomes one with the Reality. Acharya Sankara has compared the merger of the mind-intellect equipment with the Reality to that of

the light with light. When there are two sources of light in one are, the light energy emitted by them, though separate from each other, blend into one light. Before Self-realization, the mind-intellect are considered to be distinct from the Atma and yet at moments of utter devotion to the Lord and subtle contemplation upon Reality, the mind and intellect seems to gain glimpse of the divine experience. Even though the mind and intellect are separate and distinct from Reality, they merge with Atma. On attaining Self-Realization, the mind and intellect become one with the Reality; for there exists nothing but the Absolute Reality in that transcendental experience.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian