Friday, July 26, 2013

Steps to Realization - Vivekananda



Steps to Realization ( A class-lecture delivered in America )

First among the qualification required of the aspirant for Jnana, or wisdom, come Shama and Dama, which may be taken together. They mean the keeping of the organs in their own centres without allowing them to stray out. I shall explain to you first what the word "organ" means. Here are the eyes; the eyes are not the organs of vision but only the instruments. Unless the organs also are present, I cannot see, even if I have eyes. But, given both the organs and the instruments, unless the mind attaches itself to these two, no vision takes place. So, in each act of perception, three things are necessary--first, the external instruments, then, the internal organs, and lastly, the mind. If any one of them be absent, then there will be no perception. Thus the mind acts through two agencies--one external, and the other internal. When I see things, my mind goes out, becomes externalised; but suppose I close my eyes and begin to think, the mind does not go out, it is internally active. But, in either case, there is activity of the organs. When I look at you and speak to you, both the organs and the instruments are active. When I close my eyes and begin to think, the organs are active, but not the instruments. Without the activity of these organs, there will be no thought. You will find that none of you can think without some symbol. In the case of the blind man, he has also to think through some figure. The organs of sight and hearing are generally very active. You must bear in mind that by the word "organ" is meant the nerve centre in the brain. The eyes and ears are only the instruments of seeing and hearing, and the organs are inside. If the organs are destroyed by any means, even if the eyes or the ears be there, we shall not see or hear. So in order to control the mind, we must first be able to control these organs. To restrain the mind from wandering outward or inward, and keep the organs in their respective centres, is what is meant by the words Shama and Dama. Shama consists in not allowing the mind to externalise, and Dama, in checking the external instruments.

Now comes Uparati which consists in not thinking of things of the senses. Most of our time is spent in thinking about sense-objects, things which we have seen, or we have heard, which we shall see or shall hear, things which we have eaten, or are eating, or shall eat, places where we have lived, and so on. We think of them or talk of them most of our time. One who wishes to be a Vedantin must give up this habit.

Then comes the next preparation (it is a hard task to be a philosopher!), Titiksha, the most difficult of all. It is nothing less than the ideal forbearance--"Resist not evil." This requires a little explanation. We may not resist an evil, but at the same time we may feel very miserable. A man may say very harsh things to me, and I may not outwardly hate him for it, may not answer him back, and may restrain myself from apparently getting angry, but anger and hatred may be in my mind, and I may feel very badly towards that man. That is not non-resistance; I should be without any feeling of hatred or anger, without any thought of resistance; my mind must then be as calm as if nothing had happened. And only when I have got to that state, have I attained to non-resistance, and not before. Forbearance of all misery, without even a thought of resisting or driving it out, without even any painful feeling in the mind, or any remorse--this is Titiksha. Suppose I do not resist, and some great evil comes thereby; if I have Titiksha, I should not feel any remorse for not having resisted. When the mind has attained to that state, it has become established in Titiksha. People in India do extraordinary things in order to practise this Titiksha. They bear tremendous heat and cold without caring, they do not even care for snow, because they take no thought for the body; it is left to itself, as if it were a foreign thing.

The next qualification required is Shraddha, faith. One must have tremendous faith in religion and God. Until one has it, one cannot aspire to be a Jnani. A great sage once told me that not one in twenty millions in this world believed in God. I asked him why, and he told me, "Suppose there is a thief in this room, and he gets to know that there is a mass of gold in the next room, and only a very thin partition between the two rooms; what will be the condition of that thief?" I answered, "He will not be able to sleep at all; his brain will be actively thinking of some means of getting at the gold, and he will think of nothing else." Then he replied, "Do you believe that a man could believe in God and not go mad to get Him? If a man sincerely believes that there is that immense, infinite mine of Bliss, and that It can be reached, would not that man go mad in his struggle to reach It?" Strong faith in God and the consequent eagerness to reach Him constitute Shraddha.

Then comes Samadhana, or constant practice, to hold the mind in God. Nothing is done in a day. Religion cannot be swallowed in the form of a pill. It requires hard and constant practice. The mind can be conquered only by slow and steady practice.

Next is Mumukshutva, the intense desire to be free. Those of you who have read Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia remember his translation of the first sermon of Buddha, where Buddha says,

      Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels. 
      None other holds you that ye live and die, 
      And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss 
      Its spokes of agony, 
      Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness.

All the misery we have is of our own choosing; such is our nature. The old Chinaman, who having been kept in prison for sixty years was released on the coronation of a new emperor, exclaimed, when he came out, that he could not live; he must go back to his horrible dungeon among the rats and mice; he could not bear the light. So he asked them to kill him or send him back to the prison, and he was sent back. Exactly similar is the condition of all men. We run headlong after all sorts of misery, and are unwilling to be freed from them. Every day we run after pleasure, and before we reach it, we find it is gone, it has slipped through our fingers. Still we do not cease from our mad pursuit, but on and on we go, blinded fools that we are.

In some oil mills in India, bullocks are used that go round and round to grind the oil-seed. There is a yoke on the bullock's neck. They have a piece of wood protruding from the yoke, and on that is fastened a wisp of straw. The bullock is blindfolded in such a way that it can only look forward, and so it stretches its neck to get at the straw; and in doing so, it pushes the piece of wood out a little further; and it makes another attempt with the same result, and yet another, and so on. It never catches the straw, but goes round and round in the hope of getting it, and in so doing, grinds out the oil. In the same way you and I who are born slaves to nature, money and wealth, wives and children, are always chasing a wisp of straw, a mere chimera, and are going through an innumerable round of lives without obtaining what we seek. The great dream is love; we are all going to love and be loved, we are all going to be happy and never meet with misery, but the more we go towards happiness, the more it goes away from us. Thus the world is going on, society goes on, and we, blinded slaves, have to pay for it without knowing. Study your own lives, and find how little of happiness there is in them, and how little in truth you have gained in the course of this wild-goose chase of the world.

Do you remember the story of Solon and Croesus? The king said to the great sage that Asia Minor was a very happy place. And the sage asked him, "Who is the happiest man? I have not seen anyone very happy." "Nonsense," said Croesus, "I am the happiest man in the world." "Wait, sir, till the end of your life; don't be in a hurry," replied the sage and went away. In course of time that king was conquered by the Persians, and they ordered him to be burnt alive. The funeral pyre was prepared and when poor Croesus saw it, he cried aloud "Solon! Solon!" On being asked to whom he referred, he told his story, and the Persian emperor was touched, and saved his life.

Such is the life-story of each one of us; such is the tremendous power of nature over us. It repeatedly kicks us away, but still we pursue it with feverish excitement. We are always hoping against hope this hope, this chimera maddens us; we are always hoping for happiness.

There was a great king in ancient India who was once asked four questions, of which one was: "What is the most wonderful thing in the world?" "Hope," was the answer. This is the most wonderful thing. Day and night we see people dying around us, and yet we think we shall not die; we never think that we shall die, or that we shall suffer. Each man thinks that success will be his, hoping against hope, against all odds, against all mathematical reasoning. Nobody is ever really happy here. If a man be wealthy and have plenty to eat, his digestion is out of order, and he cannot eat. If a man's digestion be good, and he have the digestive power of a cormorant, he has nothing to put into his mouth. If he be rich, he has no children. If he be hungry and poor, he has a whole regiment of children, and does not know what to do with them. Why is it so? Because happiness and misery are the obverse and reverse of the same coin; he who takes happiness, must take misery also. We all have this foolish idea that we can have happiness without misery, and it has taken such possession of us that we have no control over the senses.

When I was in Boston, a young man came up to me, and gave me a scrap of paper of which he had written a name and address, followed by these words: "All the wealth and all the happiness of the world are yours, if you only know how to get them. If you come to me, I will teach you how to get them. Charge, $5." He gave me this and said, "What do you think of this?" I said, "Young man, why don't you get the money to print this? You have not even enough money to get this printed!" He did not understand this. He was infatuated with the idea that he could get immense wealth and happiness without any trouble. There are two extremes into which men are running; one is extreme optimism, when everything is rosy and nice and good; the other, extreme pessimism, when everything seems to be against them. The majority of men have more or less undeveloped brains. One in a million we see with a well-developed brain; the rest either have peculiar idiosyncrasies, or are monomaniacs.

Naturally we run into extremes. When we are healthy and young, we think that all the wealth of the world will be ours, and when later we get kicked about by society like footballs and get older, we sit in a corner and croak and throw cold water on the enthusiasm of others. Few men know that with pleasure there is pain, and with pain, pleasure; and as pain is disgusting, so is pleasure, as it is the twin brother of pain. It is derogatory to the glory of man that he should be going after pain, and equally derogatory, that he should be going after pleasure. Both should be turned aside by men whose reason is balanced. Why will not men seek freedom from being played upon?

This moment we are whipped, and when we begin to weep, nature gives us a dollar; again we are whipped, and when we weep, nature gives us a piece of gingerbread, and we begin to laugh again.

The sage wants liberty; he finds that sense-objects are all vain and that there is no end to pleasures and pains. How many rich people in the world want to find fresh pleasures! All pleasures are old, and they want new ones. Do you not see how many foolish things they are inventing every day, just to titillate the nerves for a moment, and that done, how there comes a reaction? The majority of people are just like a flock of sheep. If the leading sheep falls into a ditch, all the rest follow and break their necks. In the same way, what one leading member of a society does, all the others do, without thinking what they are doing. When a man begins to see the vanity of worldly things, he will feel he ought not to be thus played upon or borne along by nature. That is slavery. If a man has a few kind words said to him, he begins to smile, and when he hears a few harsh words, he begins to weep. He is a slave to a bit of bread, to a breath of air; a slave to dress, a slave to patriotism, to country, to name, and to fame. He is thus in the midst of slavery and the real man has become buried within, through his bondage. What you call man is a slave. When one realises all this slavery, then comes the desire to be free; an intense desire comes. If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man's head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggles for freedom of a man who really understands that he is a slave of nature.

We have now seen what Mumukshutva, or the desire to be free, is. The next training is also a very difficult one. Nityanitya-Viveka--discriminating between that which is true and that which is untrue, between the eternal and the transitory. God alone is eternal, everything else is transitory. Everything dies; the angels die, men die, animals die, earths die, sun, moon, and stars, all die; everything undergoes constant change. The mountains of today were the oceans of yesterday and will be oceans tomorrow. Everything is in a state of flux. The whole universe is a mass of change. But there is One who never changes, and that is God; and the nearer we get to Him, the less will be the change for us, the less will nature be able to work on us; and when we reach Him, and stand with Him, we shall conquer nature, we shall be masters of these phenomena of nature, and they will have no effect on us.

You see, if we really have undergone the above discipline, we really do not require anything else in this world. All knowledge is within us. All perfection is there already in the soul. But this perfection has been covered up by nature; layer after layer of nature is covering this purity of the soul. What have we to do? Really we do not develop our souls at all. What can develop the perfect? We simply take the veil off; and the soul manifests itself in its pristine purity, its natural, innate freedom.

Now begins the inquiry: Why is this discipline so necessary? Because religion is not attained through the ears, nor through the eyes, nor yet through the brain. No scriptures can make us religious. We may study all the books that are in the world, yet we may not understand a word of religion or of God. We may talk all our lives and yet may not be the better for it; we may be the most intellectual people the world ever saw, and yet we may not come to God at all. On the other hand, have you not seen what irreligious men have been produced from the most intellectual training? It is one of the evils of your Western civilisation that you are after intellectual education alone, and take no care of the heart. It only makes men ten times more selfish, and that will be your destruction. When there is conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed, because intellect has only one state, reason, and within that, intellect works, and cannot get beyond. It is the heart which takes one to the highest plane, which intellect can never reach; it goes beyond intellect, and reaches to what is called inspiration. Intellect can never become inspired; only the heart when it is enlightened, becomes inspired. An intellectual, heartless man never becomes an inspired man. It is always the heart that speaks in the man of love; it discovers a greater instrument than intellect can give you, the instrument of inspiration. Just as the intellect is the instrument of knowledge, so is the heart the instrument of inspiration. In a lower state it is a much weaker instrument than intellect. An ignorant man knows nothing, but he is a little emotional by nature. Compare him with a great professor--what wonderful power the latter possesses! But the professor is bound by his intellect, and he can be a devil and an intellectual man at the same time; but the man of heart can never be a devil; no man with emotion was ever a devil. Properly cultivated, the heart can be changed, and will go beyond intellect; it will be changed into inspiration. Man will have to go beyond intellect in the end. The knowledge of man, his powers of perception, of reasoning and intellect and heart, all are busy churning this milk of the world. Out of long churning comes butter, and this butter is God. Men of heart get the "butter", and the "buttermilk" is left for the intellectual.

These are all preparations for the heart, for that love, for that intense sympathy appertaining to the heart. It is not at all necessary to be educated or learned to get to God. A sage once told me, "To kill others one must be equipped with swords and shields, but to commit suicide a needle is sufficient; so to teach others, much intellect and learning are necessary, but not so for your own self-illumination." Are you pure? If you are pure, you will reach God. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." If you are not pure, and you know all the sciences in the world, that will not help you at all; you may be buried in all the books you read, but that will not be of much use. It is the heart that reaches the goal. Follow the heart. A pure heart sees beyond the intellect; it gets inspired; it knows things that reason can never know, and whenever there is conflict between the pure heart and the intellect, always side with the pure heart, even if you think what your heart is doing is unreasonable. When it is desirous of doing good to others, your brain may tell you that it is not politic to do so, but follow your heart, and you will find that you make less mistakes than by following your intellect. The pure heart is the best mirror for the reflection of truth, so all these disciplines are for the purification of the heart. And as soon as it is pure, all truths flash upon it in a minute; all truth in the universe will manifest in your heart, if you are sufficiently pure.

The great truths about atoms, and the finer elements, and the fine perceptions of men, were discovered ages ago by men who never saw a telescope, or a microscope, or a laboratory. How did they know all these things? It was through the heart; they purified the heart. It is open to us to do the same today; it is the culture of the heart, really, and not that of the intellect that will lessen the misery of the world.

Intellect has been cultured with the result that hundreds of sciences have been discovered, and their effect has been that the few have made slaves of the many--that is all the good that has been done. Artificial wants have been created; and every poor man, whether he has money or not, desires to have those wants satisfied, and when he cannot, he struggles, and dies in the struggle. This is the result. Through the intellect is not the way to solve the problem of misery, but through the heart. If all this vast amount of effort had been spent in making men purer, gentler, more forbearing, this world would have a thousandfold more happiness than it has today. Always cultivate the heart; through the heart the Lord speaks, and through the intellect you yourself speak.

You remember in the Old Testament where Moses was told, "Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." We must always approach the study of religion with that reverent attitude. He who comes with a pure heart and a reverent attitude, his heart will be opened; the doors will open for him, and he will see the truth.

If you come with intellect only, you can have a little intellectual gymnastics, intellectual theories, but not truth. Truth has such a face that any one who sees that face becomes convinced. The sun does not require any torch to show it; the sun is self-effulgent. If truth requires evidence, what will evidence that evidence? If something is necessary as witness for truth, where is the witness for that witness? We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.

The field of religion is beyond our senses, beyond even our consciousness. We cannot sense God. Nobody has seen God with his eyes or ever will see; nobody has God in his consciousness. I am not conscious of God, or you, or anybody. Where is God? Where is the field of religion? It is beyond the senses, beyond consciousness. Consciousness is only one of the many planes in which we work; you will have to transcend the field of consciousness, to go beyond the senses, approach nearer and nearer to your own centre, and as you do that, you will approach nearer and nearer to God. What is the proof of God? Direct perception, Pratyaksha. The proof of this wall is that I perceive it. God has been perceived that way by thousands before, and will be perceived by all who want to perceive Him. But this perception is no sense-perception at all; it is supersensuous, superconscious, and all this training is needed to take us beyond the senses. By means of all sorts of past work and bondages we are being dragged downwards; these preparations will make us pure and light. Bondages will fall off by themselves, and we shall be buoyed up beyond this plane of sense-perception to which we are tied down, and then we shall see, and hear, and feel things which men in the three ordinary states (viz. waking, dream, and sleep) neither feel, nor see, nor hear. Then we shall speak a strange language, as it were, and the world will not understand us, because it does not know anything but the senses. True religion is entirely transcendental. Every being that is in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the senses; even the little worm will one day transcend the senses and reach God. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe. A hundred times man will hurt himself, a thousand times he will tumble, but in the end he will realise that he is God. We know there is no progress in a straight line. Every soul moves, as it were, in a circle, and will have to complete it, and no soul can go so low but there will come a time when it will have to go upwards. No one will be lost. We are all projected from one common centre, which is God. The highest as well as the lowest life God ever projected, will come back to the Father of all lives. "From whom all beings are projected, in whom all live, and unto whom they all return; that is God."

Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda_-_Vol_1.pdf

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Thyagaraja Bhakthi

mAru Balka - Sri ranjani - Adi


Tyagaraja as an intimate devotee, asks Rama why he was not replying him. But soon he was happy to realize that Rama was in his heart only.
PmAru balka kunna vEmira mA manOramaNa ||Why don't you reply me, Oh my beloved Rama.
APjAra chOra bhajana chEsitinA sAketa sadana ||Did I worship characterless and dishonest persons, Oh Lord of Saketa.
CdoorabhAra mandu nA hridayAravinda mandu nela konu
dAri nerigi santa silli naTTi tyAgarAjanuta ||
I thought your abode Saketa is far away
Now I realize that you are in my heart only
I am happy, Oh Lord of Tyagaraja.

manasA eTulO - malaya mArutam - roopakam

In this Kruti Tyagaraja blames himself for not listening to his own request to spend time in the devotion to Rama. He also requests his mind not to waste time in evil thoughts.
PmanasA eTulOrtune nA manavini chE konavE Oh! ||How can I bear? Why don't you listen to me? Oh my heart.
APdinakara kula bhooshaNuni, deenuDa vai bhajana chEsi
dinamu gaDupu manina neevu vinava dEla guNa viheena ||
When I ask you to spend your day praying Rama, the jewel of the Sun dynasty, why don't you listen? Oh my wicked mind.
CkalilO rAjasa tAmasa guNa mulu kala vAri chelimi
kalasi melasi tiruguchu mari kAlamu gaDapa kanE
sulabhamugA kaDa tEranu soochanalanu teliya jEyu ilanu tyAgarAju mATa vinva dEla guna vi heena ||
In this Kaliyuga, don't spend your time moving in the company of the aggressive or the indolent.
Why don't you listen to Tyagaraja's words? They reveal the path to uplift yourself easily.


manavi Alakinchara - naLina kAnti - Adi

P
manaviAla kincha rAdaTE
marma mella delpeda nE manasa ||
Oh my mind, why don't you listen to my appeals?
AP
ghanu Daina rAma chandruni
karuNanta rangamu telasi nA ||
I'll reveal the inner nature of the compassionate and great Rama.
C
karma kAnDa matA krushTulai bhava
gahana chArulai gAsi chendaga
kani mAna vAvatAruDai
kani pinchinAdE naData tyAgarAju ||
Many misinformed persons with the sole aim of achieving greatness, performed austerities and vedic rituals. Thus they continue to entangle themselves in the cycle of births and deaths. Rama took incarnation on the earth as a human being to demonstrate how righteousness and compassion alone are ideals for the mankind.

NOW Meditation (Kaala Samadhi)


Read every step and be in silence for a minute



Step 1
Relax your body and settle.
Relax your face and smile
Watch your breaths.
Follow the exhalation to the end point.
Stay there


Step 2
The place where you are right Now
God circled on a map for you
The beloved has bowed waiting there
knowing You were coming…
~Hafiz


Step 3
How can I dwell in the past or future,
when the light of the Beloved shines only Now.
~Rumi


Step 4
Forget all your concepts.
All that you have learned in the past about truth is false.
You will forget all of them too.

I tell you truly, everything you now see
will vanish like a dream.
~Rumi


Step 5
Life is Now.
There was never a time when your life was not now,
nor will there ever be
You cannot find yourself by going into the past
or planning for future.
You can find yourself only by diving into the present.


Step 6
“I wish I could show you Now
when you are lonely,
the astonishing light of you own being.”
~Hafiz


Step 7
Close your eyes, Fall in love, (with Now) Stay there.
Let silence take you to the core of life.
Silence is the language of God.
All else is poor translation!
~Rumi

Now be Silent.
Let the One who creates words speak.
He made the door,
He made the lock, and
He also made the key.
~Rumi


Step 8
Take refuge and
fall into the boundless blissful lap
of infinite silent presence of NOW.




Now is the Time

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.


http://allspirit.co.uk/hafiz.html

I AM THAT I AM



(Extracts from david Godman's article)
The differing opinions among theologians on the meaning and significance of 'I am that I am' have primarily arisen because no one can be really sure what the original Hebrew meant. Everyone agrees that the original phrase 'ehyeh aser ehyeh' is derived form an archaic Hebrew form of the verb 'to be', but there the agreement ends. One school of thought maintains that since in Hebrew the present and future tenses are identical, ehyeh might mean either 'I am' or 'I will be'. One variation of this theory has God say 'I am what I will be', meaning, 'What I am now is what I will always be'. Others have postulated that ehyeh is not 'I am' but 'I cause to be'. Thus, instead of saying, 'I am that I am' God is saying, in effect, 'I cause to be whatever comes into being', or something similar. This explanation has found much favour among the Christian theologians who prefer to see God as a creator rather than as pure being.

There is yet another theory which does not depend on grammatical niceties. In the ancient semitic world – we are here talking about more than 3,000 years ago – it was widely believed that anyone who knew a name had power over the being so titled. According to this theory, when Moses asked God for His name, God declined by giving the evasive answer 'I am what I am'. Proponents of this theory maintained that if He had revealed His true name, whatever it might be, it would have given Moses some power or hold over Him, and that would have been unacceptable because it would have diminished His transcendental omnipotence.

In modern times such a theory sounds amusing rather than plausible, but it cannot be denied that in the Old Testament era names were zealously guarded for precisely the reasons given in the preceding paragraph. After Jacob had wrestled with the angel in the story I have already told, he asked the angel for his name, but the angel refused to disclose it, possibly fearing that Jacob might use it to gain some power over him (Genesis 32:29). In another interesting story, Manoah, the father of Samson, asked another angel of God:

'What is your name, for we shall want to know it when your words come true?' The angel of the Lord said to him, 'How can you ask my name? It is a name of wonder.' (Judges 13:16-19)

Those who believe that God was merely being evasive when He said 'I am that I am' are in a minority for most authorities concede that the significance of the name is contained in the meaning of the word ehyeh, usually translated as 'I am'.

Though God clearly refers to Himself as 'I am' in Exodus 3:14, and though He specifically stated in the next verse that this was the name by which He wanted to be remembered, this was not the name that the Jews subsequently used. They preferred the name Yahweh, which is the third person singular of the present tense of the same archaic form of the verb 'to be'. So, instead of referring to Him as 'I am', the ancient Jews and the compilers of the Old Testament always called him Yahweh, meaning 'He is' or 'He who is'.(9) 'I am' was too holy a name for the Jews to use, and even the euphemism 'He who is' was so sacred and holy to them, it was never spoken by ordinary people. Only the high priest of the temple was permitted to say it out loud, and even he was only permitted to utter it once a year on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

So how did the Jews get round saying the name of Yahweh when they read the scriptures or spoke of Him? They used two further euphemisms: 'Adonai', meaning 'Lord' or merely 'Shem', which means 'the name'. In the ancient Hebrew script there were no vowels, only consonants, and so Yahweh was written YHWH. Whenever the Jews came across this sacred combination of letters, they ignored the correct pronunciation and instead said 'Adonai' or 'Shem'. This habit eventually caused, inadvertently, the name Jehovah to come into existence. On some manuscripts written about a thousand years ago, when vowel sounds had begun to be added to the consonants, the vowels of the word Adonai were interspersed between the consonants of YHWH to remind readers to say 'Adonai' rather than 'Yahweh'. When these manuscripts were translated into English, the translators, ignorant of this convention coined the word Jehovah, which they thought was a correct rendering of the word. This is still the most common rendering of Yahweh in English, even though it is now known to be incorrect. So far as the Jews are concerned, Jehovah is a meaningless non-word; the real name for them remains Yahweh, 'He who is'.

Most English translations of the Bible have opted for the euphemism rather than the real name itself, even though there is no prohibition in Christianity against pronouncing the divine name as 'Yahweh'. The name YHWH occurs about 6,800 times in the Old Testament and is most commonly rendered in English as LORD, usually printed in capital letters. Thus, for example, when God speaks in the preamble to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2), He says, in English, 'I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt…'.

Though the divine name Yahweh appears thousands of times in the Bible, there is no evidence that the Jews conceived their God to be immanent being. Theological speculation of any kind was alien to the ancient Jews and there is no indication in the Old Testament that they thought of God as a formless abstraction. Rather, they conceived of Him anthropomorphically, attributing all kinds of human traits to Him. Nor is there any evidence that the Jews of the biblical period thought that the aim of life was to attain union with Him, or partake of His being in any way. YHWH, for the Jews, was a transcendent being who had to be worshipped, placated, served, and above all, obeyed. He was separate from His creation, rather than immanent in it, and so far above and beyond the creatures He had created that, none of them could ever dream of uniting with Him or even approaching Him. For the Jews, 'knowing God' meant having a personal relationship with Him in a totally dualistic way.

The only Jews who used God's revelation of Himself as 'I am' to develop both a theology of God and a spiritual practice through which He might be directly experienced were groups of mystics who followed a tradition known as Kabbala. They evolved intricate cosmologies, deriving them from a mystical exegesis of Old Testament texts, and broke with traditional Judaic thought by proclaiming that man could approach YHWH and in His presence commune with His beingness.

There is another crucial area in which Bhagavan's teaching differ fundamentally from those of both Judaism and Christianity. Bhagavan taught that 'I am' is not merely the real name of God, it also the real name and identity of each supposedly individual person. Extending the notion to its logical conclusion, Bhagavan maintained that if one could become aware of one's real identity, 'I am', then one simultaneously experienced the 'I am' that is God and the 'I am' that is the substratum of the world appearance. The following quotes are typical and summarise his views on the subject:

It [I am] is the substratum running through all the three states. Wakefulness passes off, I am; the dream state passes off, I am; the sleep state passes off, I am. They repeat themselves and yet I am. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 244)

The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realisation. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 226)

'I exist' is the only permanent self-evident experience of everyone. Nothing else is so self-evident [pratyaksha] as 'I am'. What people call self-evident, viz., the experience they get through the senses, is far from self-evident. The Self alone is that. Pratyaksha is another name for Self. So to do self-analysis and be 'I am' is the only thing to do. 'I am' is reality. 'I am this or that' is unreal. 'I am' is truth, another name for Self. 

From "Day by Day with Bhagavan", 22nd March, 1946

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The Gospel of John
Chapter 1
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. He was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
4. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5. And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.
8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
10. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
11. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believed in His name.
13. who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Greek word Logos is used in the initial Greek and Latin translations but the Aramaic version is in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke and as Vik Alexander, (who traces his cultural heritage directly to the Syrian Orthodox Church and it’s people), explains in his excellent and authoritative video, that the original Aramaic version of the Bible uses the word Brasheeth, used both in the beginning of Genesis and the beginning St John’s Gospel.


Such things as the Kabbala , like yoga and other Eastern Initiations and paths ( including advaita) are understood by those qualified to tread such paths. In the English biography approved by Bhagavan ( ‘Self Realisation. Life and Teachings of Ramana Maharshi’ by B. V. Narasimha Swami) there are many references to Western and Christian Traditions. Later revisions by others of this fine English language biography have removed many of the elements that indicate that the Maharshi was not giving a specifically Hindu teaching but a universal teaching for modern man transcending religions or beliefs or philosophical creeds and differences.

Brasheeth, the first word in Genesis and John - a video commentary by Vic Alexander.