Free will (Mahabharata)

Let us analyse few instances from the epic Mahabharata and try to understand how free will works.

Arjuna -> Jayadratha vadha: After Abhimanyu was slain in Chakravyuha by Kauravas, Arjuna vowed to kill Saindhava (Jayadratha) the next day (before sunset when the war ends) or kill himself if unable to do so. Krishna asked Arjuna as to why he made such a vow without consulting him or his brothers. Arjuna said that I have you by my side and victory will be with us.

Every event that happens post this proves how Krishna helped to make the vow (made out of free will) come true. Krishna asked Daruka (the charioteer of Lord Krishna) to prepare his chariot and keep it ready if needed so that he can fight. That night Krishna took Arjuna (in a dream) to the abode of Lord Shiva to get the blessings and the Astra (Pasupata).

This message (vow) reached Kauravas and the entire army planned to protect Jayadratha. The next day almost got over by the time Arjuna could reach Jayadratha and Krishna had to create the illusion of Sunset minutes before the actual sunset so that Arjuna could use that short time to kill Jayadratha.

Karna -> Shakti Astra: The Astra given by Indra, in return of Kavacha kundala, to Karna, was to be used only once to kill any one warrior (Arjuna). But Karna did not use it on the battlefield against Arjuna. This is intriguing as to why the most important weapon wasn't used to gain victory. Not that it was missed or wasn't part of the strategy, as we see this was always discussed in the night time and Karna wanted to use it the following day. On the battlefield, Krishna avoided a direct battle between Karna and Arjuna but the even more important thing is that the thought itself was stupefied.

Gandhari -> curse: After the Kurukshetra war Pandavas come to meet Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. Gandhari afflicted with grief wanted to curse Yudhisthira, but rishi Vyasa intervenes and stops her from giving the curse and advises her to show restraint.

After this Gandhari and others head to the battlefield where Krishna was cursed by Gandhari saying the Yadava dynasty would come to an end.

We see three scenarios of freewill here, one being aided for completion, one stopped at the thought level, and the third at the action following a thought. So what is the difference between them? Killing Saindhava might not be important but since Arjuna made the vow it had to be accomplished or it would hinder the bigger scheme of things. Similarly, Karna killing Arjuna would weaken the Pandavas and would lead to Dharma not being established. Finally, if Gandhari cursed Yudhisthira it would be a bad example for anyone trying to establish dharma and ending up cursed. Yadava dynasty coming to an end was part of the bigger plan so a curse related to that will make it easier.

So the bottom line would be if free will is completely going against the bigger scheme of things it would end up being hindered. Being on the side of Dharma and closer to God should aid it.

The relative time

You cannot understand something unless you experience it.

Rishi Vishwamitra, who was a king before becoming a brahmarsi, has meditated for thousands of years as described in Ramayana. The immediate question which would come to anyones mind is how can a human meditate for such a long time, and the question of food follows. The food thing is clear like surviving on fruits initially and then on air and then on nothing (not even the breath). Lets address the time part of it here. 

Einstein's general theory of relativity which states how time is different based on space is accepted and proved experimentally. "When spending few minutes in a very strong gravitational field (planet close to black hole) is equivalent to years in a weak gravitational field (Earth in relative scale) the same can be extended to the deep state of meditation." 

Let's come to the actual experience part. Meditation during a solar eclipse is considered powerful. You can get more information here (link). The last Solar eclipse which happened in June was a time wherein I desired to get more spiritual knowledge. Whenever I have meditated I was never able to go beyond 25 minutes. On the day of eclipse, I started with mantra chanting an hour before the core eclipse time and reserved meditation for the specific time window. I meditated during that time window and by the time it ended I felt like the usual 20-25 minutes have gone by, but the time elapsed was 45 minutes.

The connected Universe

Sleeping during the daytime has always been a fulfilling experience. During moonrise on March 6’th, I could feel this surge of energy coming from the top of my head into my body. I felt this should be the healer for my body. As I woke up these thoughts came up in my mind.

The Universe is a singularity as per the Vedas. Duality starts with the idea of myself and the rest of the Universe. If both were connected well enough then whatever happens in the other half should have it’s reflection in the first half. Let's try to understand this through my recent experience of illness.

My last visit to a doctor before 2020 was some 11 years back. I never had any illness except for mild cold and cough at times. December of 2019 during the Solar eclipse time I had the urge to chant health mantras. Any chant during eclipse is considered to multiply its effect. I chanted health mantras as I wanted to get the perfect health, which as I look back does not seem normal as I was always healthy throughout. Around the same time, I had a mild cough which looked different from the earlier ones I had. 

The year ended and 2020 started normally. January 5’th was the date I had a fever with cold and cough. Just took a pill and expected it to go in a day. Fever and cough persisted for two more days. I visited a doctor and got an X-ray and it seemed to show some fluid accumulation in one of my lungs. Got advice to get admitted which I ignored and took the medication as prescribed, later in the day. The fever subsided in a few days but the cough persisted. Whole of January ended with multiple tests and doctor visits only to find nothing pointing to the root cause. The covid thing was catching up and getting noticed meanwhile. Towards the end of January my lungs ached and it continued to February. 

The second bout of fever happened the same day a covid case was detected in the city I live in. It lasted 2 days. The healing was slow and continued through March and April. The whole timeline seems to match with the macro covid pandemic. As I feel fully healed I see the virus is not as strong now and the world is opening. 

Let's come back to the two halves. Let one half be the Earth and the other half the rest of the Universe. What was happening to the rest of the Universe (let’s consider the immediate solar system) starting December 2019. We had a Solar eclipse and all the planets between Rahu and Ketu. Eclipse is an important event in Astrology. For naysayers who do not believe in Astrology the pandemic was predicted in August 2019 itself. The whole point is, within the one universal entity where you draw the boundary. Is it me and everything else, is it the Earth and the rest of the Universe and so on.

The Observer

In this blog we will try to understand two very important concepts, which can be seen as a mix of science and spirituality. Science tells us that the observer has an effect on the observed. We will go further and improve upon this. This brings us to the concepts below.

1. Without the Observer there is nothing observed.
2. Observers decide the reality.

A simple example to understand the observer effect. Lets assume a classroom with students and a video camera inside it. Whoever has put the camera is the observer and the students are the observed. Lets take 3 scenarios. Case 1: The camera was placed by one of the students. In this case the affect it has on the students would be minimal. Case 2: Teacher has placed the camera. The affect it has on students would be higher now. Case 3: College principal has placed it. The affect would be even more. So the observer is clearly affecting the observed. We will use this [example] to clearly understand things. Now let's understand the same from a spiritual perspective.

One of the stories from Mahabharata, about Sati Savitri explains how humans have the power to  rewrite their destiny. Savitri marries Satyavan who is destined to die in a year. When the time comes Yama the god of death shows up to take Satyavan. Savitri pleads Yama all the way until she gets her husband's life back.

One of the things about the stories in our Puranas is that every story has a takeaway. As the stories in our school books have a moral attached to them the stories from scriptures have a universal truth embedded in them. You can change your destiny the way Savitri changed it in the story. Let's analyze the story further from the observer perspective. Who are the observers involved here. Savitri herself and Yama, the god of death. If Yama were not to be there there would be no concept of death(concept 1). Yama comes to take Satyavan whereas Savitri doesn't want that to happen. The discussion goes on until the reality is decided(concept 2).

Why do we not see such things happening in our lives. Someone about to die and we see Yama and try to stop him. One important concept that we missed out here is the level of observation. The observers are at various levels of consciousness [Teacher, Principal, College founder etc]. Savitri was at a level of consciousness wherein she could see Yama who is at a higher level of consciousness compared to humans [like the best student getting a chance to meet the college founder].

Let's make things simpler. You cannot smell what a dog can or hear how a bat can or see what a eagle can. Extending it, as humans we do not understand what beings(you may refer to them as gods)  at higher levels of consciousness are doing to us because our senses are so limited. Only when we grow in consciousness can we see/know/affect things directly.

Let's take a situation to understand this clearly. You were healthy all your life leading a healthy lifestyle until now and suddenly things start changing, your health is down all at once. How do you explain this. Use concept 1. Someone is bringing about these changes in your life. Of course it could be yourselves if you weren't leading a healthy lifestyle. If it were someone visible to you it would be great but as explained earlier our senses cannot see everything. So what if you cannot see the bacteria with your naked eye, use a microscope(tool) to do that. What could be the tool here - Astrology.

The planets [teachers] are at a higher level of consciousness compared to humans [students] and the observation made by them to our lives affect us. So what to do now. Use Astrology to know which planet [teacher] is doing the observation and affecting us and then do what Savitri did - please the observer [teacher]. Planetary rituals come in here. This could be a temporary solution for this problem. But what is the permanent one, it's growing in consciousness [discipline].

This could be applied anywhere. You could be making lots of money and there could be a planet behind helping you achieve that. Once that planet stops the observation and another takes over(planetary dasa) things could change dramatically and you could not be doing that good anymore. Everyone sees ups and downs in their lives. It could be a change of observer. So know the observers to know the reality.

Mantras are one way of adding an observer. You are having relationship problems and do not know what to do. There could be some observer doing that. Do the mantra which has the power to fix relationships. The energy will come in as an observer to change the reality.

One more example could drive home the point. Shirdi Sai baba as an observer was at a higher level of consciousness and whenever devotees came to him with their problems he could simply solve them. It's like the reality getting changed with a new observation made.

Consciousness

In this blog I will try to explain how consciousness is the basis for the Universe. Lets start with examples.
you see a beautiful painting, and ask 'who has painted this'. You hear a beautiful voice and ask 'whose voice is this'. You see a beautiful nest and ask 'which bird has built this'. To simplify the point, you look for reasons for everything and assume there has to be someone behind every creation. Now extend the same. You see the Universe around you. Ask the question 'who has created this?'. What is the answer that we have from science 'It formed on its own, with lots of forces like gravity etc involved.' Now take back this answer and apply it to the examples we took earlier. The artist moved the brush and gravity made him move his hand in a certain way and the painting was done. Similarly the bird just put wood sticks together and some electric brain signals made it do that way, leading to that nest. You do not agree to this because you see some order in that nest/building/painting and you understand order does not come from randomness.

Now we are assuming that there is no order in this universe. Just take an example. When will the next Solar eclipse be seen in India. You might need telescopes and lots of complex calculations to come to the answer. But you can find the answer using just the astrological chart. Take any panchang and you would find the list of eclipses for the next few years. So the motion of planets is not random, but precise. Similarly you would find randomness across galaxies but there is some order in that. Lets remove the randomness of creation with few examples. Kali yug spans 4,32,000 years and Dwapar yug is twice that. There are 84 lac kinds of living species. You can know more from the Vedas.

Now lets get into the crux of this. You are at a painting competition, observing various artists carrying out their work. They start with a white sheet and paint something initially. As they continue we might find randomness in the painting at times. We assume he is painting something but he might be painting something else altogether. What do we understand from this. The painting is already there in the mind of the artist and its just the execution which is happening in front of us. Now extend this. "The Universe is already there in the mind of the creator and its just the execution which we are experiencing."

So you might find a chimpanzee turning into a human, but the human was the one planned.

You might find all the above things theoretical but the rishis have proved this beyond doubt. They could get to the consciousness of the creator, using just their mind, and have known the secrets of the Universe. We need not do that as we have their work gifted to us as scriptures. So we just need to understand and use their knowledge for our benefit, without any questions asked. Lets take an example. Its said in the scriptures that if a person is able to open his third eye, he would know the past, present and future. Now you might understand what opening of third eye could mean. Its equivalent to reading the artist's mind. The artist might be another person but the creator is there within you.

Space & Time - Now we will use the painting example to understand space and time. The artist has something in his mind and what we see on paper is just a reflection of it. The sheet of paper can be assumed to be space and time being the time taken by him during the process of painting. So space and time have come into picture for us as a viewer but for the artist it was always there. We would be caught in this space and time if we keep looking at the sheet of paper. Going further Space & Time come into picture only at the material level. For example you cannot measure time using carbon dating when there is no carbon.

 

Lets understand levels of consciousness next with an example. If you wish to go on a tour to some country you might have to arrange all by yourself, getting tickets, planning the journey, accommodation, food etc. Now if the president of India wishes to go on a tour what is required. Its just the thought of visiting the place. Extend this, at the level of divine consciousness, you need not worry about the execution. The thought manifests itself. Patanjali's yoga sutras talk about how you can gain super normal powers with Yoga. The definition of yoga, would make things clear. Yoga : Union, of the human 'mind' with the divine.

 

I hope you have got some understanding about this. We will see later about growing in consciousness and understanding divine consciousness.

Soul dynamics

OM. In this blog I will try to explain the soul and why it goes through birth/re-birth. The soul [atma] is the purest or unmanifest form of the Universe. Whatever we see/feel around [matter] is its manifestation. So God [param atma] is the complete soul.

The purest form has no specific characteristics or to simplify it has everything but highlights nothing. So any manifestation of it has to be in polarities. We can take examples like male/female, good/bad etc. When needed the purest form can manifest to any form. And when everything is taken back we are just left with the complete soul.

Lets simplify life as we see, into 2 forms. One is the matter and the other the soul. The body we possess is the matter and the soul brings it to life. If there is no soul the body would have no importance. So the soul is the one that brings us to life and it has a purpose in doing so. The purpose is to get back to its purest form. So where did the soul attach with the impurity. It did so in the previous birth to be clear. When some living creature dies, the soul leaves the body taking all the memories of the life it had. So the memories stay with the soul and when it incarnates again [re-birth] we can get to those memories using Past life regression. The soul chooses the reincarnation [re-birth]such that it can pay off karma, fulfill any desires attached to it from past life etc. So if the karmas attached to the soul were good it would lead to a good birth or viceversa.Whatever is happening to you is due to your own deeds.

Religious texts simplify all of this with the concept of heaven/hell and ask us to be pious and perform good deeds. If we go deeper we would just come to know that Heaven/Hell are just conceptual and all of this is being taken care of by the soul and the memories attached to it. In this process of paying off karma in a birth, we do some new karmas and attach to them. So the birth-rebirth cycle continues. The cycle would end when you do not attach to the karmas you do and realize that soul is the truth and all of life is maya. Unless we get the atma gyan we would be caught in this cycle.

Lets take 3 examples.
1. Assume you aren't beautiful in this life and you have attached to it so much that the memory is the strongest of all of yours. The soul has to get rid of that
after your death. Lets assume the soul comes to life as a peacock in the next incarnation, it would address that memory. So the soul chooses births accordingly.
2. We have heard of sages in our scriptures who had the power to curse. How did that work. You do something unbearable to someone. First of all, the karma registers itself in your mind and that needs to be addressed. Lets assume the curse from the sage was, you end up in your next birth as a crow. So that birth is needed for remorse and purification of the soul.
3. Astrology says that the 9 planets are controlling us, but if we see truly all these planets are under the control of the Sun which isn't moving anywhere. To extend from it, the memories are taking us for a ride whereas the soul is stationary. So attaining moksha is just giving control to the soul and not let the memories control it.

The souls were the purest in their initial incarnations [krita yug, treta yug] and as time passed and the birth/rebirth cycle has gone a long way, the souls attached to so much that, we just see the attachments instead of the pure soul.To complete the picture the memories are taking us through the birth/rebirth cycles. This is at the individual level. Similarly at the cosmic level God's memories are taking the Universe through cycles. So when the materialistic end comes the souls retreat and bring an end to all the matter. And when the polarities join there is only perfection, the complete soul. OM.

The Truth

In this blog I? will try to explain life & universe as a whole from the vedantic perspective. I have taken 3 analogies for the same.

a. River: Lets take a flowing river. It goes through mountains, plains and forests before mixing with the ocean. Rivers have their own names but once they join the ocean they are inseparable. Now lets look at the identification before. We have named them according to our wish. Given water from a river, we cannot name the river from which it was taken. That is the crux we need to understand. Lets take a flowing river, it looks beautiful as it flows across the plains and mountains. Now take a glass of water from the river, put it into a packet and leave it at the same place. It would take the same path as the water. Now the packet is the body we are into and the water is the soul [atma]. The river is following the same path as it used to before. It looks different for us now due to the packet that was put in there. The flow looks beautiful if we just look at the water, but once we start looking at the packets the beauty reduces, as the packet tumbles and floats irregularly with the flow. The packet reaches the ocean at the end of its journey. This is a single packet, now take n packets and tie them to one another randomly, few tightly and a few loosely. As we see more packets around we just see chaos in an otherwise orderly flow. The packets are the relationships we are into. If one of them moves slowly it reduces the other packets speed. Imagine someone in your family falling sick.

The ocean gets many packets from various rivers. Now the cleaning starts. The packets are taken back and put back into the rivers at an appropriate place [karma]. You can think of this whole process as the birth/re-birth cycle. How can this end. You have to understand the truth from within the packet. The flow will continue but you only see water around, instead of the imaginary packets.


b. Astrology: I was reading a book recently [http://old.garudabd.org/books/] and the topic of discussion was Astrology and how it evolves from the unity. The polarization starts with unity and it separates to two. We can take an example. Suppose you find a snake somewhere, you might just think about the venom it carries. But venom is required to make its anti venom. Venom with some transformations gives the anti venom. So if we see "venom/anti venom" is a polarity and if we mix them there is unity [perfection]. Lets see polarity in astrology and how opposites attract to reach perfection. Lets take the well known Sun Signs. Assuming you know nothing about them, lets assign each month a sign for ease. We get 12 signs as the 12 months. Lets take January and look for its opposite. You might assume December, but it isn't as they are next to each other. Make a circle with the 12 months and you would find that July is the opposite of January. Similarly November opposites May. Scorpio and Taurus are the 2 sun signs and their symbols Scorpion and Bull. If you watch Disocvery or Animal planet you would never see a bull roaming around on its own. You would find it always in a herd. Similary a scorpion is never seen in a group. So the polarity is here. One wants to be without company and the other with loads of company and they attract eachother to gain perfection. It's like you are only seeing one side of the coin and you need the other to complete it. If you take the venom to be the Scorpio Sun sign then the anti-venom will be the Taurus Ascendant[astrological term]. 2 becomes 3[cardinal,fixed,mutable signs] and so on it continues.

So if we meet someone who balances the imperfection within us we find compatiblity and if not we feel the incompatibility. If we can come over the imperfections within us, we find the World to be perfect, having just the oneness[Advaita].


c. 1 0 and infinity: Most of Vedanta revolves around getting us to The Truth which is the oneness of the Universe. We don't see/feel the oneness around us. We see ourselves and the materialistic world around us. So the link is missing somewhere. We will try to understand the same here. Lets represent the oneness by 1. We ourselves are represented by 0 and the world around us as Infinity[inf]. 0 and inf, both are part of 1 as said in the scriptures. To understand the truth we can proceed by analyzing one of these three [1 0 inf]. Vedanta gives more importance to 0 and its connection to 1 whereas Science revolves around understanding inf. Suppose you have a cold and you have to cure it. There are 2 ways - do nothing [0] or keep taking all kinds of medicine [inf], the end result would be the same. It cures itself in 7 days [1]. Going the inf way would give relief to an extent. So whatever you do or do not the end result would be the same here. Lets take anything and we would have to go to infinity to find the answer. Something like what is the best exercise regime for anyone. There is 2 ways. You exercise and feel the changes within you [0] or read books and get info about various exercises [inf]. I find people eating all sorts of food without any health problems and people exercising regularly but facing health issues, so there is something else going on altogether[1]. So the result cannot be as expected, always. So, we either look at the bigger picture [1] or get stuck with 0 or inf. So either change yourself or
try changing the world you would come across the truth, which doesn't change, in the process.

Relative truths change, like I am a human now[time based - in this birth]. I have named this blog 'The Truth' because the absolute truth is the one that never changes no matter what. There is no concept of I?, there is only 'The Truth'

This is most likely the last post for this blog.