Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

In our cultural evolution or value evolution, Vedas are the first texts that we can think of. We cannot say when the Vedas were evolved because they are so remotely away from us in the prehistoric past. We are all living upon the earth. If you ask the question where from earth has come, it has only come from above. We may have been born of the earth but the earth itself has emerged from the surrounding areas and wherever we go and stand on the earth we cannot see anything below, we can only see above. Below it will be maximum 6 or 6.5 feet and we strike the ground. So, our forefathers started looking above and then started praising the super human powers and sources. This is how the Vedas began. Hymns and praises addressed to the super-human powers.

After sometime, they felt it is not sufficient if you go on praising. You should also offer them something. Suppose a guest arrives in your house and you go on talking to him, enquiring, spending two, three hours and don’t offer him anything to drink, will you be satisfied and will it be alright for him? But how to make an offering to the super-human powers which are more in their imagination? That is how they invented fire and a ceremonial altar. Igniting the fire in a ceremonial manner, make it blaze forth, and offer whatever is combustible, burnable and reducible into ashes. They chanted various holy mantras which generated a note of piety in them. But it went on for some time and they were not happy. Because they are offering something, actually it is meant for the super-human sources, powers. But they are offering it into the evident, prathyaksha fire. Does it reach the destination? They were not very sure. So it was more for self-satisfaction rather than any interactional affair. Moreover to perform these elaborate rituals is also very tiring and the body will not be able to do it once you grow up older and older. So they retired from it, receded from it and they used to contemplate upon whatever they wanted to do.

When the recession or withdrawal took place from the external interactions and the world, automatically there was a drastic and a colossal change. Their thoughts, their ambitions, their preferences, their prejudices, the so called impurity, delusion and the lack of clarity, all these defects came to their surface and they addressed them one after the other. The mind and the intelligence became pure and clean and that was the time they were able to discover and uncover a number of truths about life, world, creation, creator and the like. This phase is called the Upanishads where various kinds of enquiry are set up and they started pursuing them.

In other words, it is a pilgrimage done by the Vedic seeker where the whole ground traverse is within their body, their own mind and the destination to be reached is also within the mind. So it was a pilgrimage taken up by the intelligence in the form of an enquiry and the dedicated pursuit of it until at last they were able to spot the Lord whom they wanted to see. Naturally it must become the inmost self - The Supreme Reality, the one substratum of every thought process, emotional process, activity and interaction.

By the time they reached the Upanishads, it became a very subtle and challenging program for the intelligence. Obviously, all will not be able to make use of it. I can show you a ceremony, teach you a ceremony and you can practice it. But I cannot show you my enquiry. I cannot open up my heart and tell you, this is how the intelligence pursues an enquiry, progresses and reaches the destination or goal. So it became a non-evident affair and therefore became difficult. Our Vedic thinkers did not stop their thinking process at that time. They thought, “How can we still make this great truth and the felicity it brings available to the people?” That is how they started writing in the epic style. The entire epics are a narration based upon time, place, personality and events. Whenever you write something you have to say where it took place, when it took place and with reference to whom, and what all episodes or anecdotes were there. So the entire epic narration is based upon these four factors – time, place, personality and event.

The first epic is Ramayana which revolves around Rama, the Prince and King of Ayodhya where his father was involved, step-mother was involved, his wife was involved, brother was involved and gradually Ravana was involved, Shoorpanakha was involved, Vibheeshana was involved, Hanuman was involved, Sugreeva was involved and you know, all these things are a beautiful narration. Through this narrational process, they started inculcating the values necessary for the human mind and intelligence. 

Ramayana was written very early. And over the period of time they found that Ramayana does not answer all the needs of human life. Ramayana describes a beautiful and mutual brotherhood. Suppose the brothers differ from you and some of them are unfriendly and even cruel, you cannot abandon your life. Anything in life has to be met and overcome or assimilated. That is how the Mahabharata came. By the time Vyasa Deva was there, six generations from him downward were before him and two generations above him. Eight generations stood out before him telling what is the behavior of people, what is the character of people, how does the inner quality give rise to external behavior and interaction, and how belligerent it can be, how destructive it can be, how colossally degenerative it can be. Human society will not remain like a granite block; it is constantly subject to transformation.

So the Krita Yuga passed, the Treta Yuga came, the Dwapara came, at the end of Dwapara, cousin brothers started fighting between themselves. This fight was necessary for the survival of the society and for establishing of an ethical administration, an ethical conduct. That was the time people started understanding that the individual behavior does not rest with himself. It will assume a permeation and so many people will fall in line with him. So you find, the majority of our society siding Duryodhana and a lesser number alone standing with Yudhishtira. Veda Vyasa says, whatever is in the world is in this Mahabharatam and whatever is here, that alone is in the world.

About the Mahabharata writing, something more important and sublime is there. The Vedas were restricted in their availability. A tradition goes that all cannot read Vedas, women cannot read etc. it came up. So in Mahabharata, Veda Vyasa was resolving this crisis.

Stree – women, Sudra, dvija bandhonaam – people born in the higher groups but they do not have the intellectual affinity or development to read the scriptures and follow them. For all these people, the Vedas and the Upanishads were distant, not accessible. Now to make them accessible and to get the same worth available to the ordinary people, he wrote Mahabharata. So, whatever is the knowledge and the exposure, the enlightenment provided in the Vedas, you will find it in the form of a narrative in Mahabharatam.

As a Mahabharatam, it is a narration of human life, human character, human behavior, character in display and human interaction. Interactions also are twofold. It is the behavior of the subjects and the people, the behavior of the rulers on the other hand. So, he was discussing the behavior of the ruled as well as the ruler and presenting all the types of distress, conflict, disharmony, discomfiture, paradox, everything before us. In order to write it, Veda Vyasa had to be very, very impersonal because he was writing the story of his own descendants. Being present before them, he has seen the maximum of agony that could be caused by any descendent. Can you imagine? When he was narrating the behavior of Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana, it was his own descendants. He cannot take a partial attitude either towards Pandavas or towards Kauravas, at the same time he has to disclose the truth. Throughout Mahabharata, the message is, where there is value enrichment there alone there can be sustainable victory. And the value enrichment helps you in gaining appropriate measure of wealth and in employing or utilizing the wealth for gratifying and fulfilling your desires. The purpose of wealth is to fulfill your desires and make the mind free. That freedom is called Moksha.

So throughout these epic narrations there is a constant effort to inculcate in the minds of the readers and the listeners a fourfold human objective. One is righteousness which should govern the whole of your life and through righteousness, acquisition or amassing of wealth, second Artha, and the third is using the wealth to fulfil your desires and by that process, make the mind free and rest on its own essence, that self-realization aspect.

Any value if it has to be taught, it has to be taught with reference to persons on the one hand, places on the other and various events and instances and especially in the form of dialogue between two people. Then it becomes an authority. Krishna spoke to Arjuna, Bheeshma spoke to Yudhishtira and this was the result. Prahlada was spoken to by Hiranyakashipu, Rama was addressed by Vasishta, Pareekshit was relieved by Suka Muni, everywhere you will find it is a conversation. I have one sentence which I wrote many, many years back. Personal stories are the prevailing influence in humanity every time. Personal stories are the prevailing influence in humanity every time. This is what our people have done. and they have done it so successfully that for the past thousands of years, this Ramayana and Mahabharata has molded the history of our country. It has offered inspiration, ideal, compulsion, persuasion, commitment, dedication, sacrifice and what not. Any instance in life you will have a precedent in our epic. There cannot be anything new, how to deal with any situation is mentioned there. So beautiful is the narrative, Ramayana as well as Mahabharata, Mahabharata particularly, if it is translated in any world language properly, that will still remain the best of literary piece that, that language can produce.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.