Well, let us talk about one of oldest philosophy in the world - the philosophy of the Vedanta. It is also refereed to as the Hindu philosophy. The name 'Hindu' was given by people who were drawn from the rest of the world to ancient India for its various treasures. Vedanta literally means "Veda + antah" i.e. the conclusion of the Vedas. There is not a single starting point of Vedanta philosophy. Its the work of thousands of men over hundreds of year. It has undergone great deal of evolution after its inception somewhere in 1500 BC (there are controversy about this date) to reach its present and most elegant form. Vedanta had been considered in India the purest of all thoughts that can lead man to salvation or to the true realisation of the self. We will be saving the discussions about the history of the Vedas and Vedanta for a latter post. Let us now focus on the key points of the Vedanta.
The main theme of Vedanta philosophy is self realisation. If you sit quietly for a few minuets and concentrate on the fact who you are, you will get confused! You will feel that you are a combo of body and mind! You will feel that you are nothing but a very complex structure of flesh, blood, bones, skin, mucus and a subtle something called the mind. However, all of these entities are ever changing, and you still feel that the 'you' who used to bunk classes in childhood and the 'you' who used to argue with your boss in your prime, are the same. Have you ever wondered why this happens? Well, scientists will tell you that some very complex structure of proteins, called the memory, does the trick. But think twice! You do not have the memories of the moment you were born, or memories of your early days of life, but that does not mean that you were not there at that time. You can find the feelings of mine-ness (self-ego) even in a toddler. So, something must be there deep within us that never changes. That is our true self, Atman (our soul), as the great sages say! Ohk ..ohk..I know its very difficult to digest this 'soul' thing as we only realise that there is something fishy called soul when we watch horror movies! And they seem to be very nasty objects! But consider another example. We have five sense organs and lets assume that we are in a fish market of Kolkata buying some mouth watering hilsa and prawns. If you have ever visited a fish market in Kolkata you will know what I mean. For those who have not-these markets are hell of a noisy having all kinds of bad odours mixed with the flavours coming from numerous varieties of fresh fishes. Your all five sense organs are detecting all different noisy signals and yet in that chaos you can purchase your favourite fish and come home to enjoy it. Have you ever wondered how we complete this task? Man, your are doing the extremely difficult job of separating the different signals and then correlating them instantaneously with each other to form a complete perception of reality. And how we do it? For this to happen there has to be a all prevailing coherence inside the brain or inside us that binds the different parts together just like a thread in a garland. This coherent part is considered as the 'Atman' in Vedanta philosophy. Atman is never changing. Its everlasting constant. It can be compared with the screen in a theatre, which never changes, but on which the projections of everything else makes the complete picture or the movie.
But then the question that automatically comes is "why we don feel our true self?". Dear, this is because of Maya! Maya is something that prohibits us from seeing the true reality. Simply put Maya is nothing but ignorance! Let us try to understand how! Consider a spoon full of common salt. We know it as some white crystalline stuff that taste salty. This is Maya! But is that all? Is only that the true reality of common salt. Anybody who have had basic lesson of chemistry will know that common salt is nothing but the combination of sodium and chlorine atoms. People having higher level of knowledge will know more that salt is made of nothing but electrons, protons and neutrons. Scientists having even higher level of knowledge will know that there are only quarks and leptons and empty space in salt. And string theorists who are considered to have the highest level of knowledge in modern physics will tell you that there are only strings of energy in salt and nothing else. Ancient Hindu sages will say common salt is nothing but Brahma (the universal consciousness or God!). So you see the veil of Maya is gradually lifted up by the light of knowledge. The entire universe is defined within Maya! Our body, our mind, our surroundings and everything else that we feel with our sense organs are solely defined within Maya. The concept of Maya is very important in Vedanta Philosophy. Maya makes us feel that we eat, we laugh, we play, we die etc. But when we gain the ultimate knowledge, the veil of Maya is torn, and we wake up from the dream that we are currently in. We realise that the common salt is no different from us, and we are no different from god! In Vedanta its said like "I am everything (aham brahmmashmi)"! Here you must note that as long as we see the dream, the dream is real for us. As long as we are in Maya, it is real for us.
So, what happens when we are enlightened by the ultimate knowledge? Unfortunately Vedanta saya it is "Abanmansagochora", something that our mind can not perceive, something that cant be described in language. It is something that cant be understood, it has to be realised. No one can tell what it is like. There is a small metaphor regarding this. Once a small cube of salt decided to describe how sea water feels like. So he went down into the sea to taste it. But as you can understand, the moment he descended into the water he completely melted away. So he was no more in a position to describe how sea water feels like to his fellow friends. And its the same with us. The moment we achieve self realisation we get mingled with the universal consciousness called the Brahma in Vedanta. Dear, we and our father(God) are same.
Ok, so how do we achieve self realisation? Vedanta has given us clear indication about that also. These ways of self realisations are called Yoga. Yoga means connection - connection between our Atman and Brahma. The form of Yoga popularised by modern day Gurus are just the initial part of this true yoga which is useful to make our bodies strong and pure.
There are various yogas - karma-yoga, bhakti-yoga, gyana-yoga. We have to use any one or any combination of these to achieve self realisation. Karma-yoga tells us to do our everyday karma or work as duties to God. We should not do work expecting for the result. We should completely denounce the expectation of the outcome of our karma. Bhakti-yoga tells us to completely surrender ourselves to God. Complete dependence on God is the key point in Bhakti-yoga. And gyana-yoga is self realisation through the practice of knowledge that this whole universe is Maya.
The ultimate aim of our life, according to Vedanta, is self realisation. Unless we realise ourselves we will be going again and again through the cycle of life and death. Once we gain the ultimate knowledge we will be immortal. I conclude this page with the prayer from Brihadaranyak Upanishad --
"asata maa sadgamaya, tamasa maa jyotirgamaya, mrityurma amritamgamay."
"Oh god, please take us from ignorance to the path of knowledge, from falsehood to truthfulness, from mortality to immortality".
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