For Seekers by Seekers

Prana is like electricity if air is equated to the wire carrying the electricity. Any movement/ action we see in either the external world or our internal body it is an indication of Prana. When the Prana is ‘gone’ the person is dead. Pranayama regulated the Prana in our body and makes it be in tune with external Prana.

Meditation is a much used, yet misunderstood word. Think of it as a ‘controlled laboratory’ environment to help us change our attitude & behaviors - without the risk of the real environment. This perspective will help one experiment freely to negative behaviors like anger with compassion.

Our true nature is happiness - without the six negative emotions: desires, anger, jealousy, greed, pride, delusion. We don’t always exhibit our true nature but demonstrate conflicting behaviors. This is actually the source of our unhappiness. And the only way we can become happy is to change something - either our internal true nature or external behavior. Since we can’t change our true nature, we must change our behaviors to be happy!

Purusha Sukta states that we are all (& also the entire creation) like in a dream sequence of THE CONSCIOUSNESS ENTITY that is eulogized as ‘Purusha’. Just as we create our dream sequences & rules of engagement based on our experiences and rearrange the sequences as per our wish, the Purusha also creates a much longer (~billions of years) of dream sequence, encompassing every possible living being, situation, experience. One of the players in that Purusha’s dream sequence, known as human being goes rogue! Because humans have been endowed with a mind that is able to think, exercise choice & demonstrate free will. Suddenly that human being is ‘lost’ in the Cosmic dream because of its mind. The human starts seeing the different creation, sequences, experiences and forgets its own true nature - as of that CONSCIOUSNESS itself! And, when the spiritual awakening happens to that human, (s)he will laugh off the entire life, just like you laugh off your dream after waking up!!

Kathopanishad says that our entire problem comes because we identify ourselves as somebody else than who we truly are. When we identify ourselves more closely with our body, we end up taking good care of the body which is not going to be with us beyond a 100 years; with our emotional mind then we are swayed to ups & downs of happiness/ sadness; with our intellect, then we are bothered about praise, criticism we get....but what if we realize we are not our body, senses, mind, intellect?

Our five sense organs are more powerful than our intellect despite the fact that intellect holds the reins of control to our five sense organs. Like fasting, it is as simple as making a resolution to not feed the sense organs with unnecessary inputs and training them. Over time, the sense organs will acquiesce. For this knowing our goal is important. If health is our goal, then we will automatically exercise restraint on what & how much we eat. Likewise with other sense organs too!

In Kathopanishad, human psychology is modeled as a chariot drawn by 5 sense organs - hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. The horses are driven by our intellect, the charioteer and the reins to control the horses is our emotional mind. The passenger is YOU, the individual personality/ ego. The passenger determines the destination and takes the help of intellect to go there. The intellect in turn communicates this through the emotional mind to the senses. If the horses, emotional mind decide by themselves where to go, then will YOU reach your goal? The path is strewn with distractions.....We should control our senses (think over-eating as an example), emotional mind (think anger as an example) and direct the intellect to decide correctly about our destination. But what is your goal? Is it comforts or happiness/peace? YOU decide.

Applying the scientific rigor of experimentation, analysis, evidence and repetition, we can clearly conclude that events can be the same but different people perceive it different. Same person can perceive the event differently at different times. Happiness happens when we change our mind attributes!

Holistic health is being healthy physically, emotionally, intellectually. Food, exercise, sleep for physics health. Resolving issues and not bottling it up or replacing negative, destructive emotions with positive ones during meditation are for emotional health. Removing ignorance, doubt or misconception about our goals, path to achieve goals and what is right/wrong is intellectual health

One that eats and procreated is known as living being. There are four different types of birth a living being can take - from a womb, an egg, moisture, seed.