Om! Self-surrender ¬ Atman Nityananda

Self-surrender 

 Surrender to God's will is the most powerful means to accept life just as it happens (what life brings us to experience), to live in peace, love and plenitude, to dissolve the ego (all egoic tendencies) and to attain God-realization, i.e., to establish ourselves in conscious union with the Absolute Consciousness or God.

 Surrendering to God (self-surrender) means offering our body, mind, intellect, heart and ego to God and taking everything as God's will. It is keeping our mind and heart steadily focused on Him through repetition of His name or otherwise. When we take life experiences as God's will for our benefit (I am not referring to our ego benefit but our spiritual growth and the realization of Oneness with God and life), it becomes easier to accept the challenges, difficulties and adversities. By accepting moment by moment what happens, we do not give space to the ego to react and make us identify with its mental and emotional reactions and be under their dominance. As a result, egoic tendencies are weakened little by little and we enjoy the silent peace within us.

 Of course, complete self-surrender from the very beginning of our journey is not possible since the rajasotamasic ego is very strong and we identify with it. Self-surrender is gradually developed through purity of mind, the increase of sattvic quality in the mind, the development of sattvic virtues and skills, and the development of devotion, love and faith in God. In the measure that purity, sattvic virtues, love and faith in God develop, our surrender becomes deeper and firmer.

Have perfect trust in God. Do total surrender unto Him. Place yourself in His loving care. Do this with your whole heart and mind, with perfect confidence and faith. Worry not about your future, about money, about your health. He will take care of you. You will have plenty, immense strength and wonderful health.

Egoism and desire are obstacles to self-surrender. Slay these two enemies of self-surrender ruthlessly.

    ~ Swami Sivananda

 

258. The self-surrender is truly made by him who always has the feeling, ‘Let all things happen according to your will. In all respects, I am bound to you.’

262. The ripe devotee must pass his time, patiently enduring whatever happens to him, whether pleasant or unpleasant or otherwise, without yielding to sorrow or joy, with his heart absorbed in Him.

263. When the ego dies, having been swallowed by divine grace, the devotee’s self-surrender becomes true and complete.

~ Excerpt from the book ‘Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad’ -The Supreme Science of the Self, taught by Sri Ramana’

 

Om! A pure mind is Brahman itself ¬ Swami Sivananda

A pure mind is Brahman itself

¬ Swami Sivananda

A pure mind is Brahman itself. Just as camphor in the presence of fire is turned into fire and absorbed in fire when burnt, so also a mind when purified becomes of the nature of Brahman. Just as water in the presence of salt, when a lump is placed in a basin of water, becomes saltish, so also mind in the presence of Brahman, when purified, becomes of the nature of Brahman..

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Brahman is Absolute Consciousness. Brahman is Satchitananda (Absolute Existence, absolute Consciousness, absolute Bliss)

Om!.The essence of Non-duality (Advaita Vedanta) - Atman Nityananda

The essence of Non-duality (Advaita Vedanta)
by Atman Nityananda

There is only one absolute non-dual reality (without parts, form, time, space and cause). There nothing else beside That nondual reality. This nondual dual principal it is called Brahman and in relation with the human beings it is called Atman.

This Atman or Brahman is pure Being, pure light of Consciousness and pure Bliss. This nondual reality is what we really Are.

The identity of the apparently individual Consciousness (called Atman) with the absolute or Universal Consciousness (called Brahman) is clearly affirmed by the great sentences -Mahavakyas of Upanishads):‘Aham Brahmasmi’ (‘Brahman I am’), ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ (‘That you Are’), ‘Ayam Atma Brahma’ (‘Atman is Brahman’).

We are That reality doesn’t mean that we as an ego entity we are That nondual reality, but that We, as the apparently individual Consciousness are the absolute nondual Consciousness (the nondual reality).This non-dual reality, is self-existent, self-luminous (awareness itself and aware of itself), indestructible, changeless, immovable, without beginning and end, ever present, peaceful, blissful, free and complete. It is called also as Sat-Chit-Ananda (absolute Existence, absolute Consciousness and absolute Bliss).

The innate power of this nondual reality called Maya creates this multiple universe of innumerable forms and the Jivas (embodied souls, human beings).

Sattva, rajas and tamas are the fundamental powers (qualities or gunas in Sanskrit) by which Maya creates the universe and all forms. The nature of Maya and the nature of the nondual reality are incomprehensible, beyond description and mental concepts.

The universe created by Maya is a superimposition on That nondual reality which is unperceived by the senses, but fully experienced in a pure awaken sattvic mind. We are in essence this nondual reality. The apparently individual Consciousness We are, is identical with universal or absolute non-dual Consciousness.

The factor that creates the illusion of separation and duality is the ego and the rajas and tamas qualities that operate through the ego and the mind.

The lower rajasotamasic ego veils the non-dual reality and makes us identify with the instruments (body, prana, mind, intellect) and regard as our self the physical body and what there is in the body (vital energy, mind, intellect / prana, manas, buddhi).The lower rajasotamasic ego causes a mutual identification between the nondual reality or Consciousness and the instruments.

Due to this mutual identification, the qualities of the body, prana, mind and intellect are superimposed on the nondual reality and the ‘qualities’ of the non-dual reality are superimposed on the instruments.

So, when the body is hungry, we feel that We are hungry, when the body is tired, we feel that We are tired. Οn the contrary, although we as a body we are going to die, we feel that this body will never die because the deathlessness of our essential nature (the non-dual reality) is superimposed on the body.Similarly, the states of the mind are superimposed onto our essential non-dual nature and the opposite.

Due to this superimposition, we take the states of the mind as our states, thus we think, I am clever or stupid, I am miserable or happy and in the contrary we take the awareness, the bliss and the love of the Consciousness that belong to the mind (and the body as well), so we feel as a body mind entity, I am aware, I love, I am blissful.

Self-realization or liberation is the disidentification from the instruments, the realization that the nondual reality is our identity (what We really are) and the cessation of the illusory perception that we are different and separate from the nondual reality, created by the ego (i.e. the cessation of duality).

Liberation or Self-realization happens by the complete dissolution of the egoic mind and the ego itself and the equality of buddhi with the Consiousness due to continuous identification of the mind with That (by meditation or Self-enquiry /Vichara).

In the state of liberation, it is experienced, in all places and all circumstances, effortlessly and without a break the peace, bliss, plenitude and freedom eternal of oue essential nature.

Nirvana and ego - Sri Aurobindo

Nirvana and ego

What then is Nirvana? 

In orthodox Buddhism it does mean a disintegration, not of the soul – for that does not exist – but of a mental compound or stream of associations or saṃskāras which we mistake for ourself. 

In illusionist Vedanta it means, not a disintegration but a disappearance of a false and unreal individual self into the one real Self or Brahman; it is the idea and experience of individuality that so disappears and ceases, – we may say a false light that is extinguished (nirvāṇa) in the true Light. In spiritual experience it is sometimes the loss of all sense of individuality in a boundless cosmic consciousness; what was the individual remains only as a centre or a channel for the flow of a cosmic consciousness and a cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. 

But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. 

The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. 

Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine. But this we can do in the world and in life.