Mind : ( 24/10/2012. )

                                                       Ramana Maharishi IN THE CENTRE OF THE CAVITY OF THE HEART the sole Brahman shines by itself as the Atman (Self) in the feeling of `I-I'. Reach the Heart by diving within yourself, either with control of breath, or with thought concentrated on the quest of the Self. You will thus get fixed in the Self. I have been saying all along that the Heart Centre is on the right side, even when learned men differed from me. I speak from experience. I knew it even in my home during my trances (samadhi). Again during the incident recorded in Self- Realization, I had a very clear vision and experience. All of a sudden a light came from one side erasing the world-vision. I felt that the heart on the left had stopped and the body became blue and inert. Vasudeva Sastri embraced the body and wept over my death, but I could not speak. All the time I was feeling that the Heart Centre on the right was working as well as ever. This state las

Helping others physically, by removing their physical needs, is indeed great, but the help is great according as the need is greater and according as the help is far reaching. If a man's wants can be removed for an hour, it is helping him indeed; if his wants can be removed for a year, it will be more help to him; but if his wants can be removed for ever, it is surely the greatest help that can be given him. Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever; any other knowledge satisfies wants only for a time. It is only with the knowledge of the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever; so helping man spiritually is the highest help that can be given to him. He who gives man spiritual knowledge is the greatest benefactor of mankind and as such we always find that those were the most powerful of men who helped man in his spiritual needs, because spirituality is the true basis of all our activities in life. A spiritually strong and soun

                                                                            Ramana Maharishi FREEWILL AND DESTINY ARE EVER EXISTENT. Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it. Why are you concerned about it? Why do you pay attention to it? Freewill and destiny last as long as the body lasts. But jnana transcends both. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Whatever happens, happens as the result of one's past actions, of divine will and of other factors. There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny, and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent. The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one's helplessness and saying all the time, `Not I, but Thou Oh Lord' and giving up all sense of `I' and `mine', and leaving it to the Lord to do what he li

In addition to meaning work, we have stated that psychologically the word Karma also implies causation. Any work, any action, any thought that produces an effect is called a Karma. Thus the law of Karma means the law of causation, of inevitable cause and sequence. Wheresoever there is a cause, there an effect must be produced; this necessity cannot be resisted, and this law of Karma, according to our philosophy, is true throughout the whole universe. Whatever we see, or feel, or do, whatever action there is anywhere in the universe, while being the effect of past work on the one hand, becomes, on the other, a cause in its turn, and produces its own effect. It is necessary, together with this, to consider what is meant by the word "law". By law is meant the tendency of a series to repeat itself. When we see one event followed by another, or sometimes happening simultaneously with another, we expect this sequence or co-existence to recur. Our old logicians and philosophe

The pinnacle of yoga is the absorption of the mind in the object of its concentration. The whole technique borders upon an attunement of the subjective consciousness, in its wholeness, to the structure of the object of concentration. Normally, the object is severed from consciousness so that it exists as an independent, material something, totally incapable of reconciliation with the nature of consciousness. However, under the scheme of the Samkhya, it does not appear that in the perception of an object the consciousness stands entirely independent of the influence exerted by the object upon itself or, on the other hand, the attachment and the relationship which it wishes to project, for some extraneous reason, in regard to the object itself. According to the Samkhya system, the object is totally independent of the subject which is consciousness, the object being a mode of prakriti and the consciousness being the Purusha manifest through an individuality when it is engaged in an act o

                                                                       Swami Krishnananda Chapter 1:  The Vision and Its UnfoldmentWe have in our daily life rarely an occasion to be alone to our own selves and bestow adequate thought on the manner in which we conduct ourselves in the world, or the way in which we live at all. A spontaneous impulsion carries us through the day and the night, and all this goes under the designation of a reasoned-out procedure of a purposeful existence. But it is evident that there is not much of a rationality in this propulsion to living, whose pressure we feel every day, if only we can withdraw our minds into our own selves for a few minutes and investigate into the extent to which our daily conduct and activity are rational or reasoned procedures. A habit that has been driven into us by the pressure of circumstances can adumbrate a light of reason in its own way, though a conscious direction is difficult to discover in its ways. Ne

                                                        Swami Krishnananda The discipline of yoga culminates in meditation, dhyana, which is the subject of the sixth chapter of the Bhagavadgita. The art of yoga is principally the process of self-integration by degrees through the levels of the constitution of one's personality, such that when we reach the point of meditation proper there is a total concentration of the whole of one's being in the direction of the whole of that which one aspires for through this discipline we call 'yoga'. Last time we noted that essentially this is a technique of communing the lower self with the higher self, and I endeavoured to briefly mention the characteristics of the higher self and the way in which we have to understand what this term means. It means many things, and in every sense of the term it has to be taken into consideration when it becomes an object of meditation – gradually by stages. We can today take up the practic

                                                          Poojya Swamiji What is spiritual excellence – its nature, scope and potency? Normally, the coveted aim before an earnest spiritual seeker is to know the Supreme Truth himself, to actualize it as a personal living experience, and thereby to become ‘fulfilled’. The path followed is essentially of self-absorption and withdrawal from world involvements to transcend the dwandwaas (dualities) posed by the mind and to reach a state of oneness of vision and experience. Samyak darsanaBrahma-jijnaasaa. The only function, if at all, he will take up thereafter is the dissemination of spiritual wisdom for the benefit of seekers and the afflicted. But, this does not mean that spirituality has its application only to this field. Or, comprehensive vision is the zenith to which he reaches through. By the might and grace of spirituality, the external common causes like immediate and long term social and national needs, as well as evol