Five steps to spiritual wellbeing
The following article was published in Dignity Dialogue sometime back:
Om
poornamadah poornamidam poornaad poornamudachyate
Om santi santi santiOm. That (supreme Brahman) is infinite, and this (conditioned Brahman)
is infinite. The infinite (conditioned Brahman) proceeds from the infinite
(supreme Brahman). (Then through knowledge), taking the infinite of the
infinite (conditioned Brahman), it remains as the infinite (unconditioned
Brahman) alone.
Om !
Peace! Peace! Peace!
Five
steps to
spiritual wellbeing
M G WARRIER
It is widely recognized that
mathematics, music and philosophy have inseparable links. Renowned philosophers
like Bertrand Russell integrated their knowledge of philosophy and the
analytical mind they possessed due their deep grounding in scientific thinking
and wrote extensively to help readers develop a rational and philosophic
attitude to life and derive sustainable happiness. Here
we simplify things further and try to know how five simple mathematical steps
can be used with ease to understand the way to reach a state of spiritual
wellbeing. The steps are add, subtract, multiply, integrate and divide.
Add:
Good friends, good books, good
thoughts, good memories, good recipes, good exercise, good habits and good teachers
(this list is illustrative, make yours based on your experience and needs).
Identify a member in the family, a friend, a teacher, a book or a magazine who
or which you think easily gets connected to each of these additions and accept
him/her or that as your teacher to guide you when in doubt. You can have more
than one Guru for one subject and replace a Guru when you find a better one.
Subtract:
Everything/everybody that is
opposite to what you add, but with one rider. The rider is you do not discard
or remove any of them without giving them an opportunity to change. Change for
good. This opportunity, many a time, may not be within your resources to give.
The moment you realize your limitation get them out of your own way to well
being, for good.
Multiply:
Multiply the good things in your
life. This would be done much easier, once you have successfully completed
steps one and two. A simple method to achieve this is to use the power of
observation to your advantage. Keep your eyes and ears open and from all
sources receive any positive thought that would support the good thoughts, good
friends and other good things you have accepted for yourself:
‘Aa no bhadrah kratavo yanthu viswatah’
Meaning, ‘let noble thoughts come
to me from all sides’.
Integrate:
Now, you are well equipped to
understand the oneness of universe and to understand the significance of Om. Here it
would not be out of place to quote an upanishadic stanza which explains the imperishable
nature of everything that matter:
Poornasya poornamadaya
poornamevavasishyate
From the above, we can gauge the
importance given to the infinite power (or power of the infinite!) by our
masters and the deep understanding they had about the power and existence in
gross form. Because Om
precedes and succeeds many Vedic prayers, some western scholars find similarity
with the word ‘Amen’, meaning, so be
it.
An in-depth attempt to know more
about ‘Om’ will take one to the vast
areas of India’s spiritual heritage and make one simply admire the scholarly
efforts of authors of Vedas and Upanishads to condense the entire knowledge,
existence and power and bring into one syllable, and meditate on that for all
the needs and explain to humanity that everything, past, present or future and
what is beyond the three periods of time is verily ‘Om’. Mandukeya Upanishad contains a treatise on Om explaining all these in more detail.
The Upanishad also speaks of four
parts contained in Om , namely, ‘Vishwa’ (waking state), ‘Taijasa’ (dream state), ‘Prajna’ (deep sleep) and ‘Turiya’ (the unaffected, final bliss
state)
From another angle, or analyzing
the constituent syllables of Om
differently, the sounds ‘A’, ‘U’ and ‘M’ which converge into ‘Aum’ or ‘Om’ are respectively supposed to represent ‘Vishnu’(God of protection), ‘Siva’(God
of annihilation and peace) and ‘Brahma’(God
of creation).
It may not be just coincidence
that the three English words, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, which
define the almighty, all start with ‘Om ’!
Swami Vivekananda while
explaining Raja-Yoga, had this to say
about Om :
“.. .. In making a sound we use
the larynx and the palate as a sounding board. Is there any material sound of
which all other sounds must be manifestations, one which is the most natural
sound? Om
(Aum) is such a sound, the basis of
all sounds. The first letter, A, is the root sound, the key, pronounced without
touching any part of the tongue or palate; M represents the last sound in the
series, being produced by the closed lips, and the U rolls from the very root
to the end of the sounding board of the mouth. Thus, Om represents the whole
phenomena of sound[1]
producing. As such it must be the natural symbol, the matrix of all the various
sounds. It denotes the whole range and possibility of all the words that can be
made. Apart from these speculations, we see that around this word Om are centered all the different
religious ideas in India ;
all the various religious ideas of the Vedas have gathered themselves round
this word Om …..”*
No wonder, Rasul Pookuty, while
accepting Oscar for sound mixing, made a special reference to Om and India .
Every time we meditate on Om, let us also look inwards and
contemplate, with a view to understand more about Om.
Divide:
Share your experience, knowledge
and wealth with your less privileged fellow beings.
Result:
We will find that the burden of life is much
lighter than we imagine and as part of the whole existence, our job is just to
be in attendance and do our duty.
My own personal view is that this
aspect, we can learn with ease by
observing other species of living things (animals, plants etc). Only we,
humans, complicated things by planning for the future, over-exploiting nature
and hoarding things beyond our need and worst of all by inventing money.
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