by Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL No. 37
March. 2004

ATTEMPTS TO DESCRIBE BRAMHAN - Part 11

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

QUESTIONS FROM THE READERS

QUESTION 1 from –Sri K VENKATESWARAN

I am told that the vedic systems like pranayama have great healing powers and ensure good health. Although I am not a regular meditator or great believer, yet I have been doing breathing exercises very regularly for more than a year now. I find no significant improvement. What you have to say?

ANSWER: The answer to your question lies hidden in your question itself. It is a fad of the modern world that a few yogic exercises and practices are the panacea for everything from physical wellbeing to body-building etc. At least that is what the mushrooming yoga classes and most commercial exploiters of yoga would like the world to believe. They give it fancy names and market it as a commodity.
Yogic postures (asanas), breathing exercises (pranayama) are integral parts of "Yoga" and not isolated medicines for therapy. Unless they are done under the concept of yoga, their value reduces greatly.
What is Yoga? It simply means linkage. Linkage with what? Linkage with that ultimate consciousness. (chetanaschetananaam). What ultimate consciousness? The consciousness of Bramhan or the Lord, God, Allah, Truth or whatever name you may give it. It is the spiritual consciousness we are talking about.
Therefore unless the God consciousness is being practiced by you and has taken root in your mind, intellect and ego-self (antahkarana), you are only fooling yourself by saying that you are doing yoga. Small, temporary benefits will definitely be there, but the real benefit will miss you.
Breathing in and breathing out is not enough. Every creature can do it. But the consciousness within you enlivens the breath and charges it with the power of the life force. The breath becomes purified. The level of your consciousness determines the measure of benefits one derives.
This is not to say, that one should keep away from yoga unless one has fully developed god consciousness. It means that unless one simultaneously and deliberately engages himself in meditating practices with definite view to establish this linkage, yoga becomes a mere pastime and can not be very effective. As one takes up the other elements of the eightfold yoga, (the astangayoga of which asana and pranayaama are integral parts) like dhaaranaa (conceptualisation) and dhyaana (meditation), the real benefits get manifested in the body and mind. You discover bliss.
Thus one should never underestimate the power of daily maditation and the spiritual exercise of building up god-consciousness. God consciousness or spiritual consciousness enlivens all yogic practices, lifting it up from mechanical efforts to the level of unlimited power, the effective power. That is the essence of everything.

QUESTION 2 FROM SRI UDIT ARORA

There is so much talk and media coverage now-a-days about stress, especially the way it is affecting young children during competitive examination times. What is your advice?

ANSWER: Yes, we read, see and hear so much about it now-a-days. When was stress not there in our day today living? It is a natural symptom of a state of mind at a particular trying time. It is an aspect of disharmony in our life, which we resent.
There are two angles to stress. One is elimination of stress before it develops and the other is coping with stress when it has already taken its hold on us. The first one is achievable when the mind has acquired a very high degree of understanding and steadiness (Dhriti or sthitapranjnata). That is the outcome of many years of sadhana or spiritual practice and is not expected from all, let alone the children. It is the second angle that is the common man's problem.
Again, a certain degree of stress as some people wrongly believe, may be welcome by everyone as it spurs one into positive action. But eventually stress always eats into your vitality, your creativeness and is always a hindrance to development.
It is intriguing that we worry so much about what to do with stress when one of the most potential and by far the best known antidotes against stress is known, and was developed and refined in this part of the world, thousands of years back. Our mindless acceptance of alternative concepts in the name of keeping pace with times, has successfully wiped out this knowledge and its importance from our minds.
Our ancient seers, inspite of their spiritual wisdom, were also subjected to stress, like any human being at any age is. Stress is universal and does not spare anyone. Therefore they also deliberated and found out the cause and remedy of this debilitating influence which attacks the mind.
Stress, they knew, can not be eliminated. It can only be handled and its harmful effects reduced. Their wisdom, borne out of personal experiments (tapasya), found the solution. Their answer was 'meditation'.
Meditation (one of the integral elements of the eightfold yoga practice - the astanga yoga ) works like magic when practiced as it is meant to be. There is nothing known, which is more beneficial than meditation in fighting stress. When we indulge in swallowing medicines, or resort to changing a food habit here or a sleeping habit there or such trivia to combat stress, we only fool ourselves.
But the misconception about meditation needs also to be understood. We have been discussing at length this topic on the pages of AHWAN (see previous issues on the topic) and the readers should be aware of what is meditation and the preparations required for it. But what is important is that, meditation is not like a pill to be swallowed only when your mind has developed damaging stress. Yoga is a way of life and meditation has to be an integral part of living style. Those who believe in this and practice it, experience the steadiness of mind in all situations. If others are hit by stress at gale force, they experience only a mild uncomfortable breeze blowing over them, which can be handled and tolerated.
Can children benefit from it? Most certainly they can.
Talking about examination stress, which students reel under, everybody starts talking about it (especially teachers and parents) only a few days before the tests and we hear no more about it once the examinations are over until the next time. It is a kind of annual topic for media, schools and parents.
An unprepared child never benefits from any amount of talk or last minute therapy. Any forced attempt to tackle stress at a time like examinations, only aggravates stress, or numbs the mind. Under both such conditions, the mind loses some degree of its potential power and is never at its best when it is most required to be at its peak. Not surprisingly, most of our children under-perform in the examinations. The full potential of most children remains untapped.
When this happens, it exposes a serious lacunae in the manner in which we live life now-a-days. It shows that neither the parents nor the teachers have taken the trouble of moulding and preparing these young minds to cope with a problem that is inevitable in life.
It may take a long long time, before we realise that yoga and meditation need to be made a part of the upbringing of children for their wholesome development. How many homes, how many institutions today teach our children subjects such as mind control, the purpose of life, the tenets of righteous living and similar subjects of such importance? We have created a system that produces a greatly confused generation, with unstable foundation and prone to mere survival and early burn-outs. Why should we be surprised then, when we hear of increasing social maladies like criminal outbursts, suicides etc?
The unfortunate part of it is that the remedy is not unknown. The so called modernity may scoff at it, but developing life under the protective umbrella of spiritual consciousness from the formative ages of life is the only way life is meant to be lived.
To blame the system, is simply to hide the problem under the carpet. For the parents and teachers to recognise the importance of a conscious effort to ensure that the child receives spiritual education from the beginning and living with it, is the way to the child's wholesome growth.
Is it such a difficult thing? Far from it. In the ancient gurukula system of learning, the spiritual bias was totally blended into the very practice of student-hood. The parents provided this base in the early formative ages and then the teachers took over and continued. Granted that times have changed and environment today is different. But when a good thing is known that develops the body, mind and intellect, and makes better human beings out of our children, is it prudent to ignore it?
Spiritualism for young minds is not a fad. Children who grow up in that kind of environment are better equipped to face life's problems. A balanced mind, a healthy body and sharper intellect are the characteristics of a yogi. A yogi is simply a human being who is spiritually conscious. The level of consciousness may differ, but every one can practice yoga and experience its benefits.
The Bhagavad Gita says "Yoga karmasu kaushalam". If one is a yogi - meaning thereby spiritually conscious-, any work he undertakes, he does it well. The faculties of body, mind and intellect, remaining at their peak, automatically produce their best.
Simple steps of learning, simple practices to follow, if undertaken in the beginning and continuously, under proper guidance, will leave no room for anxiety and stress counseling etc at the eleventh hour.