The Paradox in Nirvikalpa Samadhi

Everyone wants to reach the state of perfection, of course perfection at the moment continues to be a relative term and in the nuances of human behavior there is a very thin line separating one level of perfection from the other. 

The sacred doctrines describe the ultimate state of consciousness, the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi as the perfect state. This state describes the merging of the self with Atman such that there is no individual self left. With heightened bhakti and complete love for the supreme this state is very possible to achieve as proven by a few men who have walked the earth. 

But what is this state, how do we describe a person who has achieved it. The most popularly understood approach to reach this state is when the Bhakta doesn't connect with the world around them any more, be it in mind or in body. From the social perspective, they have traveled so far into themselves that the world outside, the maya as we may call it, hardly matters to them any more. From the physical sustenance perspective, the physical body becomes so perfect that its mortal desires are either addressed internally by the body or killed purely by the evolution of the being. 

Lets take the case of self sustenance, it is the ability of the physical body to secrete Amrit within the head region and taste it frequently thus killing any external desire or dependency on food and water. And any other desire be it of the body or mind automatically dies, because the energies have been successfully channelized towards the single source of all bliss - realization of the Atman. 

And so we toil and toil hard, to reach that level of perfection, may be if not in this life we take the next and the next to get it right. We often resort to resignation than try to realize whether this path is ever possible. And with every chance we take, divinity shows the passage in rather strange ways to keep us continuously believing that we are getting there. 

But no one really told us what the rule book holds when we achieve it, the perfect state. We would almost love to be immortal. live for as long as we wished and enjoyed the fruits of living with the associated powers to get us health, wealth and happiness. But did we ever know that when a person really reaches this state, they no longer crave for that human body within which they live! The very body that we have been trying to "perfect" for all these years, centuries and lives is now something we want to or more importantly need to discard in order to move to the next level of highest spiritual endeavor. 

How contradictory this turns out to be that we struggled so much on something we ultimately choose to discard. It is the liberation from the ultimate maya, this human state that we need to achieve and Nirvikalpa Samadhi is that unreachable state that we need to get to. The human state is that last physical thing that we have to give up before we move it to the realm of the supreme. 

The thought still blows my mind! What are the great Gods really trying to teach us!

Sacred Map to the Secret Door of Heaven

Ganesha, Devi, Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma... we believe in them deeply, our lives are dotted with their repeated presence and we have grown up listening to stories about them and we have been taught that if we need help they are the ones who will give it abundantly. But do they really exist?

A faith so old and a population so vast have little to show for their real existence. Unlike Christianity and Islam which take their principles of faith from prophets and saints who once walked the earth and laid their philosophies for the world to follow, Hinduism has been backed by strange experiences of individuals who sang in praise of these divine beings who gave an audience to a lucky few. Our faith doesn’t make Gods out of saints but tries to look at the Gods in totality through the eyes of our great saints. And weirdly so, they nearly had the same experience. Whether it was Kalidasa or Shivaji or Ramakrishna or some wayside aghori or tantric, the explanation of Ma Kali's form has been rather consistent. Even more strange is that even the ancient Egyptians may have had a sneak peek of her divine form and called it Anubis the Jackal in their eagerness rather than wait it out through the experience to realize that its a Goddess they were looking for. 

All said and done, no matter how much we praise Science, given its shade bit easier to comprehend, we cannot write away ancient mythology that so richly describe these beings with super human strength from another realm who have invaded our hearts for generations and left us surrendering willfully to their divine needs with some hope of a blessing towards a more comfortable life which is off course very relative. 

So, do they really exist... I strongly believe they do and our ancients and even the artists today in their own shabby way have tried to maintain and represent their iconography as closely as possible. We have various treatise that describe in depth, not just their nature imbibed in various names associated with them but also the way they look and the way they behave and their skillful capabilities that is beyond human nature of what you and i possess. And yet they have been strongly depicted in near human forms, though they don’t carry the name "manusha" against them. They go more along the lines of "Deva".

There is a beautiful line on Lord Shiva... a description of him in his bija mantra:

Divyaya devaya digambaraya Shiva. 
The divine celestial who is white and pure, such is the beauty of Lord Shiva himself.  

Agreed... but where do we look? Clearly Lord Shiva doesn’t belong to this perceptive world of ours where what I envision is completely different from what you read as the workings of this universe. And yet, in this maze of illusion and clashing perceptions that make up our lives and entangle us so deep that we cant clear our heads of these cobwebs of stale thoughts of "rightful existence", there were still a handful of people who got lucky and described strange beings of divine beauty very consistently with no difference in anyone's perception. And from that they penned down their divine visions in words which took life in form and color and today we have these divine being turning into a breathing reality in our Puja rooms and in our temples. 

Clearly there is truth in it. When the Gods said "I am the divine truth" they meant that they exist beyond this perceptive world of ours. Its another story that we blame them for dumping us in it with no accountability that the pathetic way we lead our lives right now doesn’t call for any greater experience...but that is not the point. 

The point is we have established through our great saints that they didn’t proclaim themselves as Gods but tried to tell us about who the Gods really are and how we can reach out to them. But they didn’t give it easy... they set us a riddle. A deep thought provoking riddle. The riddle is to find the door that leads to that zone or world which lies beyond this earthly world of illusion. Our only hint is the pancha bhootas or the five elements that are integral to our worship of these great Gods. 

And so, let’s collect them all and see what we get. We worship the five elements through a complex set of activity which involves the offering of light, sound, water, fruit and flower. Fruit symbolizes earth while flower symbolizes wind [vayu]. Light symbolizes fire, water is clear and sound symbolizes ether. But this is not about symbolism as much as it is about the "real truth" embedded in the puja. 

Where does fire go when the flame dies? Where does sound go when it can’t be heard any more? Where does light go when we can’t see it anymore? Where does the human soul go when it leaves the dead body behind? They disappear and transcend into another realm but they don’t die. They may reappear in another form in another place but they don't die. What is that zone where they cheat us off our senses? Is that the gateway to the other world where our divine beings reside, silent and vigilant watching us searching around blind folded with no idea? 

It just increases the mystery of Hinduism tenfold, and it’s really our business to dig deep and read into the individual experiences of each of these great saints to understand who they experienced and what they felt. In their vision lies the key to that invisible door way where all these elements disappear, the secret map to which is given in our sacred pujas, our great rituals of worship that we take such pride in turning down as superstition. If we have Bhakti, we will find that secret door really fast... but if we consider the Gods as wish fulfilling trees, there is little chance of finding the invisible door to heaven anytime soon.

In The Presence Of Kamakshi Amman.

It was a bright Saturday morning and the crowd had begun to gather at the Kamakshi Amman temple, Kanchipuram. We waited patiently for our turn while I inquired about the best darshan possible. Once the negotiations were done we were moved to another queue behind the sacred shrine. 

Our turn soon came and we walked through the door that led to Her shrine. It was a good darshan for about fifteen minutes and we got a close(I should say very close) view of the Goddess. My mind just went blank, my thoughts ceased and I stared at Her, at Her shrine, at the peetham that cradled the Sri Chakra. I stared at it all and my eyes took in everything that my consciousness would allow. There was silence in my mind, no thought even dared to float by and none of the audience around me spoke. I appreciated the brilliance that silence can produce inside a packed garbha griha, oil lamps lit up Her beautiful face. There was peace between her brow, like She knew all and she had finally called me to visit her. It was the very same sacred spot from where the great Shankaracharya had given up His earthly existence. It was beyond time, the curtain of Maya hung thick between them and us, a curtain so heavy that it is not easy to remove. 

And then the spell broke, in the din a group of people were being moved out and the next batch had been readied. It was high on business as the priests ushered all of us out of the tiny room with no respect for the elderly folk. These were the blessed attendants of the Goddess and I would do anything to get their job, to be with Her and worship Her, like the great Shankaracharya did. It baffled me that this power center that I could see so clearly given its supreme effect on me, was completely lost on them. 

Here were two stark worlds, inter-spaced by noise and silence, by a thick invisible curtain of illusion that reflected the moment, when the brutal whip of Maya came striking down on us. How unfortunate we are that we carry the curse around our necks and dont want to let go towards that freedom, which is just a step away. The noise killed my ears, the people were as good as sheep being chased around by a group of ignorant shepherds who for some reason believed that they were the keepers of the faith. 

But I noticed one thing. Strangely, I had changed. I smiled at the Brahmin priest and thanked him for helping us get this darshan and he smiled back in acknowledgment. I felt no anger, no sorrow, no resignation towards the sad fate of Hindy temples, I felt at peace with myself as I carried Her smile in my mind. I was her temple and she had taken residence in my heart, in my mind, and transformed me. No brahmin priest belonged here, it was my temple and I was Her soul keeper. 

To the Goddess of love, who has taken residence in my heart, who has shown promise to raise this curtain of illusion, I am silent to the world but I carry your image, your smile, your love in my heart every day. 

What a brilliant Darshan that was!