Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

YAJNAM :  1. THE CULTURE OF BHARATHAM (INDIA) --- TATTVAM :  (THE ESSENCE)- Srimad Bhagavadgeeta: Chapter-3. Slokam-9. "Yajnarthat-karmano-nyatra     lokoyam    karmabandhanah; Tadartham    karma    kaunteya    muktasangah    samachara." Meaning : "The world is bound by actions other than those performed for the sake of sacrifice; do thou, therefore, O son of Kunti (Arjuna), perform action for that sake (for sacrifice alone), free from attachment."  When we are born into a particular set up of circumstances which we call a family, all the conditioning factors of the family are also born together with us. The tradition of the family grows when we grow. The pattern of our character and conduct is entirely determined by the idealogical background that is at the very basis of the structure of that particular family. We are born not merely in a family but also in wider circumstances calle...

Ordinary psychological experience is usually marked off from a life of spiritual insight. The path of the pleasant is differentiated from the way of the good. What the senses report to us need not necessarily be the true or the good. Often they give us false intimations and involve us in tantalizing mirages which recede from us as we try to approach them. It is because of this unfortunate predicament that we go on experimenting with one object after another, seeking final satisfaction, but do not find it anywhere. This fruitless pursuit continues until thinking of benefit in terms of separateness discovers its own futility and gives way to a search for peace in terms of more and more integrated realms of being. The individual expands to the family, the family to the community, the community to a wider society or the nation, the nation to the whole world, and the world to the cosmos, wherein the process of expansion finds its limit and begins to turn inward into the centre of ex...

Dharmam : The highest law is accordingly conceived as Dharma based on Rita and Satya. Rita and Satya are two terms that occur originally in the Vedas, signifying the eternal cosmic order and the same as manifest in the diversified world. Dharma is nothing but one's duty as an individual stationed in the cosmos, as its integral part. This at once explains by implication one's duty towards family, society, the nation and the world at large. The fulfilment of this Dharma is expected to be achieved not in a slipshod way or by leaps and bounds, but in a gradual manner following closely the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Material welfare, the enjoyment of desires and relations to society are given due consideration and are equally regulated by Dharma which, at the same time, works with Moksha or the ultimate realisation of the infinite as its aim. Dharma is the ethical value, Artha the material and the economic value, Kama the vital value and Moksha the infinite val...

The mind, in the Vedantham philosophy, is conceived not as any independent entity opposed to matter, as is the case in several systems of Western philosophy, but is understood to be an aspect of the material principle itself appearing in a more rarefied form.  The psychology of the Vedantham is a highly scientific methodology evolved out of the fundamental concept that the supreme reality is Absolute Consciousness and anything that may seem to be opposed to it can only be a phase of itself.  The fivefold base of objective perception, viz., sound, touch, form, taste and smell, is found to be inseparable from the reciprocally related to the senses of knowledge working under the direction of the mind.  The theory of the Vedantham is that the mind, constituting mainly the functions of understanding, thinking, feeling, remembering and willing, is the resultant of the collective totality of the purified forms of the essences of the five substrata of sensations en...

Every action, viewed in this light, becomes a symptom of the restlessness of the relative consciousness in any of the human sheaths in which it is enclosed.  There is an unceasing attempt on its part to break boundaries, to overcome all limitations and to transcend itself at every step.  The environment called life in which it finds itself is only an opportunity provided to it to seek and find what it wishes to have in order to exceed itself in experience in the different stages of evolution.  The universe is a vast field of psychological experience of multitudinous centres of individuality for working out their deserts by way of objective experience.  The universe is another name for experience by a cosmic mind, of which the relative minds are refractive aspects and parts.  The desirable and the undesirable in life are nothing but certain consequences which logically follow the whimsical and unmethodical desires of the ignorant individuals who ...

Not only the body and the senses but even the self conceived as a limited individual centre of consciousness is a process of intense activity, moving, changing and evolving incessantly. The individual self is the basis of knowledge as well as action. Due to confinement to a spatial existence, the individual self is dominated over and harassed by certain urges felt within itself, pointing to certain external objects and states.  The desire for food, clothing and shelter, for name, fame, power, sleep and sex, often appears in the human individual as a violent force which cannot be easily subdued or even intelligently controlled. These deep-rooted urges are an immediate consequence of the self's restriction to a dualistic perception of the world and an arrogation of ultimate selfhood to itself, while the truth is otherwise.  The individual has a morbid habit of unconsciously asserting itself as the centre of experience and considering the other contents of the univers...

The philosophy of the Vedanta makes a distinction between existence as such and the experience of any type of existence.  We may say, if we would like, that a fact or an existence is absolute so far as it goes, and a subjective experience of it is relative.  Human life is a psychological process, and not an immutable existence. A knowledge of the functions of the mind is essential to understand life in its fullness.  In the observation of the mind we can have no instrument, such as the ones we use in observing, measuring, examining or cleaning outward things.  The mind is the student as well as the object of study, when life as a whole is the theme that we wish to investigate and comprehend.  In a famous image given in the Kathopanishad, the inner self of man is compared to a lord seated in a chariot, the body to the chariot, the intellect to the charioteer, the mind to the reins, the senses to the horses pulling the chariot, and the objects ...