Teachings of Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru and Spiritual Experiences of Devotees
A View of Santhigiri Ashram
Saturday, November 19, 2011
The Importance of Spirituality for Success in Life
Monday, November 7, 2011
The Great Spiritual Trunk Road of Guru Centric Spirituality
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Spiritual Significance of Full Moon Days
Gurucharanam Saranam
The Spiritual Significance of Full Moon Days
Mukundan P.R.
Pournami, the full moon day, how serene and blissful is that day! God has created this day for spiritual enrichment. The brilliant rays of the moon and the sun saturate the creation on full moon days helping the spiritual efflorescence of all souls. The harmful influences that trouble and hinder the spirit become subdued during pournami. The spiritual significance of ‘sadhana’ on pournami is quite an old tradition. The Hindus, Buddhists and Jains undertake vows, rites and rituals on full moon days for spiritual enlightenment as well as the appeasement of ancestral spirits. It is well known that the great Buddha got enlightenment on a full moon day. The ancient sage Vyasa, who compiled the Vedas, was born on a full moon day. This day is celebrated as Guru Purnima throughout India.
The concept of the sun and moon has great significance in Indian spirituality. According to the Rigveda, life originates from the copulation of luminous lunar light molecules (mentioned as soma) and the vaporous dust on the earth in a unique blending of cosmic rays from the sun, planets and stars. The Big Bang Theory is based on the theory of Relativity, the gravitational pulls between atomic particles, the simulations and permutations that create certain fundamental matter-molecules and gaseous energies; all these lead us to the theory that the origin of life is from the interplay of cosmic substances and energies diversely inherent in the astral world – the sun, moon, earth, stars and constellations. The soul of man pulsates in synchronization with the cosmic rays percolating down the solar system, 27 stars (nakshatram) and 12 zodiacs. The moon represents the creative energy in living beings.
Pournami prayers help to cleanse the soul. In Santhigiri Ashram, devotees observe three days ‘vritam’ (vow of abstinence) and perform round the clock prayers on full moon days to get rid of their karmic and ancestral ills. In the night of pournami, the devotees, clad in white and chanting the Guru Mantra, carry lamps and ‘kumbhams’ and circle round the Ashram in a bright procession. It is repeated in the evening, at midnight and at the following dawn of the full moon day. Married couples are advised to undertake special prayers on full moon days for begetting good progeny. When vows and prayers are observed as instructed by the Guru, noble souls could take birth through their sacred bonding on the day of pournami.
Spiritual elevation is possible only when we get rid of the spiritual blocks as well as karmic and ancestral debts. Pournami prayers observed under the enlightened Guru helps the soul in the curing of these spiritual ills. Ignorant of the spiritual ill effects of black moon days, the downtrodden communities do ancestral rites mostly on dark moon days dictated by tradition. An example is the ‘pitru bali’ performed in Kerala on dark moon day in the month of karkidaka (July-August). Auspicious will be the results if a person does the ancestral rites on full moon day, not otherwise.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Evolution of Spirit
Evolution of Spirit
Swami Navananma Jnana Tapaswi
Santhigiri Ashram, Thiruvananthapuram
Indian spirituality explains that everything in the world has its own qualitative status. The evolutionary process of sentient and insentient beings is due to the movement of time and the interaction of nature. This also is the basis of ‘form’ (unique shape) and ‘quality’ in nature; to put in other words, how every living being differs from one another. The differences in the ‘form’ and ‘jeeva’ are due to variations in the quality and vice versa. This in-depth spiritual view of India considers that everything is in the track of evolution at its various levels.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Secret of Guru-Disciple Spirituality
Gurucharanam Saranam
The Secret of Guru–Disciple Spirituality
By Swami Navananma Jnana Tapaswi, Santhigiri Ashram
Guru-Disciple Spirituality is a discipline to be learned by individuals in their life. It is not a matter of rituals; it is a way of life through practice. Therefore, there should be an authority to learn from. Spirituality is not a philosophy to be learned from books. Instead of books, the spiritual philosophy is decoded through the way of action (karma) and the status embedded in the spirit is known.
As the law of science defines – ‘for every action, there is a reaction’, the bodily action is considered as a reaction of the energy status of the spirit and vice versa. As the law of nature presents, every thing is part and parcel of the canvas of the nature and is the exhibition of different spiritual statuses in different forms. That is why in the world everything exhibits its own quality being the nature incorporated in the concerned bodies or materials. Whatever the energy status manifested through different bodies, it has a basic instinct which is subject to changes. This Will of the Ultimate is applicable for human spirits also. That is why Indian spirituality says that human beings are animals having ‘ashta raagas’ (eight-fold cravings) and the capacity to do ‘mananam’ (capacity to think). That means the capacity to think about time. To think about time means, think about the past, present and future. Therefore, the evolution of the spirit from the level of human happens through the development of knowledge or ‘jnaanam’ (ultimate spiritual realization).
But each and every individual with a spirit lives on this earth through the evolutionary track of the spirit which is embedded with a quality accumulated till now. Spiritual status of the individual is determined according to the karmic instincts in the spirit earned through different incarnations. Spirituality has to free the individual from these basic instincts and limitations. This is possible only when an individual is capable to do action (karma) with an appropriate knowledge so as to nullify the bad effects carried by the spirit. This appropriate knowledge is considered as dharma and this is to be learned from the embodiment of dharma – a Seer.
The very traditional concept of Upanishad was this learning process. It means, sit beside the Guru and learn the secrets of life from the mouth of the Guru. This is the very live practice of sharing the good and bad or the pleasure and pain with a person who is an authority of the spirit, i.e. an Aatmajnaani. Aatmajnaani, being an evolved spirit, by perfecting all karma and dharma and hence freed from them, is considered as the very incipient status of a Guru. In the above said state, the spirit attains ‘ashta aishwaryaas’ – the eight-fold fortunes. This is the level which transcends the status of devi-devaas (celestial gods) when the spirit attains the planes of rishis (the abode of seers), sanyaasis (the abode of ascetics), jnaani (the abode of perfected seers) and the state of bhakta (the abode of ardent lovers of God) reaching where the spirit becomes eligible for mukti – liberation. Such a spirit which has attained liberation is considered as the ultimate Guru.
In Sanatana Dharma, the Guru is considered as the embodiment of Brahman, the Almighty and termed as Brahma Jnaani (knower of Brahman). And the Brahma Jnaani being a trikaala jnaani (perceiver of three-fold time), is the authority to guide one towards mukti (liberation) from the spiritual stages beginning from man, deva, rishi, sanyaasi, jnaani, and bhakta. Whenever a person gets such a Supreme Guru for God realization, it is the way of dvaita to attain advaita, i.e., to attain the formless attribute-less state through the medium with attributes. This is the noble concept and true practice of Guru-Disciple order, which bestows God realization. When a disciple is lucky enough to lead life with such a Guru and do his duty combining bhakti (devotion) and the power of vigilant concentration (yogabala) that becomes the natural way of spirituality. Hence this Guru-disciple relationship is the very natural, true way of life by blending karma, yoga, jnaana and bhakti and which flows uninterruptedly through the advancement of disciples and their spiritual perfection. This is the very secret of Guru–Disciple spirituality.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The True Light of God
Gurucharanam Saranam
Mukundan P.R.
The man with the power of clairvoyance slowly opened his eyes and said: ‘When I observe your life, I see a bright light, which is very rare. It is the true light of God. I am able to see the essence of all souls who come to me. But I have never seen such a Blessed Light with any other people’. Shaji and his wife looked at each other in amazement when the clairvoyant said this.
The clairvoyant’s wife also was sitting with him in the small room with portraits of gods and goddesses. The couple had gained the power of clairvoyance after returning from a long pilgrimage to the famous Palani Hills, the temple town connected with Lord Subramanya. Apparently, during their long spiritual wanderings, the husband and wife had met some spiritual masters or had become possessed by spiritual entities who gave them the power of reading the minds of other people and their soul imprints. They performed their meditations and conveyed the extra sensory perceptions to the occasional visitors who came to them seeking special information or guidance for resolving perplexing problems. The middle-aged couple belonged to a farmer community and led a rustic life in a village near Kottayam in Kerala.
Shaji and his wife had made a few visits to this clairvoyant couple with the puzzling questions of their life. The couple would sit in the small prayer room and reveal everything about a family, its problems, the past and present and suggest suitable remedies and rituals. Shaji was a devotee of Subramanya, known also as Karthikeya, the son of Lord Siva. A chemical engineer, Shaji lived in Kottayam with his wife and small daughter. His brush with spirituality came when he was in service at Kozhikode.
One day Mata Amritanandamayi came to the city. Shaji joined hundreds of other people who went to see her. She hugged the assembled people and he also got a hug from her. He felt the spiritual vibration of the hug. At that time, spiritual curiosity was only in a budding state in him. So he had not taken to spirituality as a passion in life. However, a change occurred when an acquaintance brought him a few publications of Santhigiri Ashram. Normally, he would have just stashed them up somewhere. But these books caught his mind. He felt attracted to them. He read them again and again and felt a wish to visit Santhigiri Ashram at Thiruvananthapuram.
It was the calling of his spirit. Soon the opportunity came and he went to Santhigiri Ashram. His wife along with their little daughter accompanied him. His wife had delivered the child with an agonizing medical problem. She had the problem of fibrosis. The delivery took place after a nine-month medical confinement with the fear of risk factors. Somehow, the delivery took place and the doctors categorically ruled out the possibility of another child and advised removal of the uterus. The visit to Santhigiri Ashram had coincided with this period of trauma. Though Shaji was very inclined to follow the rituals and prayers at the ashram, his wife stayed back from all this. She refused to enter the Prayer Hall and just stared at him while he did his prayers. She said that she was not willing to take a human being as God.
In the meantime, arrangements were being made for the hysterectomy (operation to remove the uterus). Just when the date for the operation was being confirmed, Shaji mulled over the possibility of an Ayurvedic cure for fibrosis. He had heard that Ayurveda was effective for curing some diseases. So he decided to stall the operation and seek an Ayurvedic remedy. The desire for sons and daughters is an incurable problem with worldly people. Marriage is not an arrangement for mutual convenience in life, as it has become in Western societies and lately among married couples in India. In the frenzy of making the insecure life secure, for most of the working couples, the birth of a child has become the last priority. However, the trend is slowly reversing. People have begun to realize that they want children to inherit their hard-earned wealth and possessions. This is only a material aspect. Very few are really aware of the spiritual aspects behind the necessity of having progeny. A child birth is some sort of a bridge between the living souls and the dead, in the sense that it is linked with the genetic chain and astral fields of the living in the fulfillment of the life mission and aspirations of the chain of souls in a genetic tree.
Shaji was not prepared for a never-again situation about childbirth and therefore did not want his wife to undergo the operation as advised by doctors. He thought of undertaking another visit to the
Ashram. As usual, his wife sat outside the Prayer Hall while he prayed. Her mind was in a dilemma. It is the duty of a wife to follow the ways of the husband. It is her dharma to be of support to the husband in all his auspicious endeavors! But how could she compromise on her faith and rational beliefs?
After a few months of their return from the Ashram, Shaji’s wife conceived again. This time, she did not experience the problems associated with fibrosis. She felt normal throughout the pregnancy and in due course delivered a boy child. It was a stunning experience for the couple in view of the prognosis of the doctors and the traumatic experiences during the previous pregnancy.
Now the family visited the Ashram with the newborn. Shaji’s wife for the first time entered the Prayer Hall and prayed with her husband. There was piousness and sincerity in her approach. She prayed in front of the Guru – in the main Prayer Hall, in the Parnasala of Guru and in front of the only portrait of Guru at Sahakarana Mandiram kept for public worship in the Ashram. She bowed reverently in front of the Sishyapoojitha, the Gurusthaneeya (Guru Apparent), and sought her blessings for the newborn.
Shaji noticed the change in his wife. He thought it was probably due to her happiness at the birth of a boy, that too without any traumatic troubles like the last time. However, the truth was not that simple, as disclosed by his wife later. During their visit to the Ashram just before she conceived for the second time, his wife had made a prayerful resolve sitting outside the Prayer Hall. She had taken an oath on that day that if she could get a second child, a son, she would accept Guru as God and worship Him as the Supreme. The Almighty Guru heard her prayers and granted her desire, not to reveal His power of miracle or divinity, but to save a family from spiritual waywardness and guide it to a new faith fragrant with love and spiritual experience.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Obsolete Spiritual Legacies and Dogmas
Gurucharanam Saranam
Obsolete Spiritual Legacies and Dogmas
Mukundan P.R.
If the present age is witnessing unprecedented clashes and turmoil arising out of socio-economic disparities, religious fundamentalism, plunders of nature and natural resources, it is because man has failed to comprehend the original spiritual script of the Creator. Unless humanity understands the correct spiritual perspective behind life and Creation, which has an un-patentable universality, the world will, as we see today, go on in opposite directions giving torment to the inhabitants of this planet. How can there be multiple truths of Creation about a single universe, the single human family? Diversities have come due to the narrowness and ignorance of people and societies. Spiritual homogeneity, therefore, is going to be a vital aspect in the new millennium.
Nature has supported whenever such unifying spiritual movements took place; and it destructed too the societies which stood against this. India is an example; against the eternal egalitarian monotheistic teachings (Sanatana Dharma) of Sri Krishna, Sri Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak and many others, when India chose to follow the Brahmin centered caste theory and polytheism (popular Hinduism which follows Vedic rituals for propitiating gods) God Almighty sent messengers in other parts of the world like Moses, Jesus and Prophet Mohammed. The social forces that emerged out of these spiritual movements crushed and pillaged the spiritually and socially fragmented India. India became a subject country under colonial rulers.
The planetary system revolves around unalterable cosmic truths. So too are the spiritual truths behind man’s life and evolution. It is because of its eternal, universal nature, the rishis and sages called these laws as Sanatana Dharma, the eternal spiritual laws. Time is one of the fundamental aspects in this. Time is the other name for evolution, perpetual change. It means that humanity has to constantly evolve to higher spiritual truths spun by the wheel of time. Man’s refusal to accept this truth and his clinging to particular sets of belief systems born out of the necessities of a distant past is the cause of present turmoil and conflicts. Human lungs are gasping for the fresh breath of a new, all embracing culture and spiritual experience. However, the spiritual and cultural overlords want to chain this new age under obsolete spiritual legacies and dogmas.
Mankind has become culture conditioned forgetting the immense potential for spiritual discovery in this glorious age of Kali. If the Muslims and Christians are clinging to the medieval spiritual experiences of Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed, the Hindus are living with a prehistoric spiritual culture of Dwapara and Treta yuga, blissfully unaware that in this time zone (Kaliyuga) changes occur in the methods for spiritual realization. The object of worship in the Dwapara and Treta yuga were the devas, the celestials, but in the Kaliyuga, because of the evolving yuga cycles, mankind evolves one step higher in the spiritual hierarchy. Every yuga has a unique spiritual authority through whom this spiritual transition takes place. People in this new millennium will reject all religious dogma and seek truth.
The souls are guided to the ultimate truth of the Almighty through the ladder of cyclic astral changes as exemplified by the cosmic time concept - Manvantara time order mentioned by the ancient Indian sages. The great spiritual debacle of India lies in the mix up of Vedic idolatry with the path of the spiritual masters of India, who followed monotheism. And only monotheism can be the true basis of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion of mankind. The priest class of India, who is not even five percent of Indian population, will never agree to such a proposition, because that will take away their status as a special people, superior to the natives. It is the racial discrimination of Vedic Brahmins, which fragmented Indian society and brought the country to such disgrace, past and present, and perished it!
The second great sin of Vedic Brahmins is that they kept Indian spirituality under the celestial gods (devas), ignoring the spiritual leadership of the great rishis and sages who incarnated from time to time. India always stood for spiritual discovery - God realization through Guru-Disciple order, which is the path shown by the sages and for which India is well known. But the Brahmins stood in between and led people to Vedic ritualism and deity worship establishing themselves as its unquestionable authorities. Honest Hindus should realize this mess up, this spiritually treachery if they wish to see their glorious country prosper spiritually and socially. But how could it happen! Hindus are under the deep spell of a dirty sleep for ages.
The basic problem is people are not well familiarized with the concept of spiritual hierarchies. If one spiritual aspirant experiences an angel, deva or demigod, they think that they have attained everything in spirituality. There are millions and millions of such spiritual beings in the astral world, who can manifest in front of us. They can be channelized and some of them can give us enormous power to perform miracles. Patanjali advises the seekers to be extremely cautions of such celestial beings, because the aspirants might get misled from the path of God realization. Gods and angels are astral beings, in between God and the human world. They are like stranded travelers who have put up camps on the path and depend upon the upcoming seekers.
Today the Hindus, be it a Brahmin or Sudra, are unable to distinguish between the Sanatana Dharma of the Rishis and the outdated Vedic tradition. Almost all Hindus are ignorant about this spiritual pollution of India. Even the pundits of Hinduism are unable to distinguish this truth clearly. Of course, the wisdom of the Rishis are scattered in the Vedic literature in an inseparable way, like water in milk, which is confusing the spiritual aspirants for thousands of years now. This has to change and people must realize the truth. It is time that the Hindus begin to think, lest they be subject to the most grievous wrath of the Almighty.