Understanding the SELF

Understanding the SELF  This article is based on the teachings of Guruji V Ravi. Any mistake mistake kindly kindly pardon pardon me for lack of understanding.  The title itself itself will give us an Idea of what what this article article is all about. To understand who we are we need to have a clear understanding of how we came into e!istence.  The entire entire universe was actually created created out of nothing. nothing. "eaning the planets stars stars and sentient beings like us are the resultant of nothingness. This nothing was termed by our Rishis as #ara $rahman or "aha %hunya &as per $uddhism'.  Then out of this this nothingness nothingness the %()* &$rahman' &$rahman' came into being. It is not important for to know why the %()* came into being as this will not help us to get us nowhere. %ince the %()* is always perfect and because of this perfection it remained inert hence to get the process of +reation move forward "aya,%hakthi &kinetic enery' was created out of this %()* and this "aya used the energy of the %()* and started with the process of creation by creating souls &Tiny $rahman of the larger %()*' and surrounding around it so that it can interact with the e!ternal world.  To  To interact with the outer world world -rst there there was a necessity necessity of a +onsciousness +onsciousness "ind "ind Intellect and (go to understand understand and discriminate discriminate activities. $ut the +onsciousness cannot e!ist by itself hence it reuires a body to perceive its surrounding and interact with it. /hen the body reacts with the e!ternal factors the mind starts reacting to the stimulus on a continuous basis. /hen this happens the pure consciousness that is pervaded by %()* is slowly corrupted. "eaning the "ind perceives e!ternal information for the sake of preserving the body the "ind triggers commands to the Intellect Intellect acts on this and is moved +onsciousness +onsciousness and -nally (go is given the command to act on the stimulus.  This action creates impressio impressions ns in our sub sub conscious conscious mind. /hen an Impression Impression is created in our sub conscious mind the pure consciousness pervaded by the %()* is corrupted. /hen this happens on a continuous basis our consciousness is devoid of  purity that it possessed earlier. 0ence the link between the "ind and %()* is forgotten forgotten due to constant interaction with the e!ternal stimulus. stimulus. %ince there is constant interaction of mind and e!ternal factors the mind keeps reacting and creating more and more sub conscious impressions in our mind hence impressions further gets accumulated and consciousness is devoid of essence of %()*.

1nce an impression is created in the sub conscious mind it is bound to resurface again in order to clear it out from our mind. This creation of impression and resurfacing of the same is nothing but 2arma. %ince we are always interacting and creating new impressions the impressions will not get e!hausted within the life time of a person. 0ence when the person dies these impression gets attached to %()* and moves out of the body and gets into another body &by being born again' to e!haust and e!perience these impressions. %o this cycle keeps continuing and hence our consciousness is always impure and because of that we forget the e!istence of the %()* within us. This ignorance is the root cause for all the problems in our life. This leads to creation of karma and rebirths. 0ence to avoid this cycle of birth and rebirth our Rishis came with concept of %()* reali3ation and G14 reali3ation which is nothing but cleansing of our mind and consciousness. This techniue is nothing but a sort of reverse engineering of the thought process. *irst we have to understand what makes us to react with the outside world and what actions create these impressions and hence perform actions in such a way that new impressions are not created and we e!haust the impressions &karma' which is already there in our mind from many births. 0ow do we do all these things it only through our mind we can do this. /e have work through our mind and thought processes. 5nderstand the signi-cance of our thoughts as our thoughts are responsible for creating impressions &karma' in our mind. %o how do we work with our mind will be the ne!t uestion. Ideally we should start changing our life style by showing restraint in our life. 1ur thoughts should always be positive and our actions should always be good. This forms foundation for us to tame our mind and make it to think beyond the day today problems of the life. 1nce we start thinking with positive thoughts and good actions. There is cleansing of the mind and consciousness. *urther leading a highly restrained life couple with positive thoughts and actions all the times will be di6cult for general people like us. 0ence there is a reuirement for mind to be protected all the time. This protection for the mind is provided by chanting mantras. "antras generate reuired vibrations in our mind and strike at appropriate places in our body so that our mind is not in7uenced by the e!ternal stimulus. (ven after protecting the mind to tame the mind we need to take control of it or at least we should have a capacity to make our mind not addicted to anything. 0ence to enable more control over mind we proceed with #ranayama &breathing e!ercises' this helps the mind to be still and further facilitate to enforce more control on the mind.

*inally once we are good at pranayama we should proceed with meditation. It is here that we work on our mind and thought processes. All the other activities are reuired just to make us more euipped to analyse discover and cleanse the thought processes and proceed towards purifying the consciousness. /hen the consciousness consciousness starts getting puri-ed the %()* starts pervading again in our mind there by link is again established with our mind. #urest form of conscious will clearly understand that body and mind that have been created are just the product of the "aya and it is this which has made us to forget the source source of the e!istence by making us to interact with the e!ternal world and trapping us in the process of rebirths. /ith purest consciousness &purest awareness' we will reali3e that the %()* is present in our body itself and at this stage we are %elf Reali3ed.