Why are we born ????

What is the purpose of our life ? Is it just to spend our life studying, getting married, having children, grandchildren, turning old and then dying? Is this all we come to earth for – to learn, struggle, reproduce, make property, enjoy life and then go back? What about those who are born abnormal at birth time itself? What about those who do not lead a normal life? Who told us to live the way we do? Who programmed this kind of life style of self preservation in our psychic? Is that all we are supposed to do?

There has got to be some higher reason for our coming to this earth. God could not have sent us on earth to simply enjoy life and then go back. There appears to be some hidden, secret agenda behind every creation on earth and since we all are unique, the agenda is also uniquely different for each creation of God.

The biggest gift that God/Universe has given us is our faculty to ‘forget’. How complicated it would be if we remember each and every event of this life, past lives and afterlife? If we do not forget, we will not be able to get over our sorrows and our losses. Our soul remembers all. However, in human body we forget that we have any soul at all. The greatest treasures of the world have been found hidden in unimaginable, difficult and yet reachable places. Similarly, the Divine Power of Lord is hidden deep within our soul but we cannot reach it because we have forgotten all about it.

Have you noticed that we are never content with what we have? If our one desire is fulfilled another desires comes up and the cycle goes on. There comes a point in life of a human being when he sits down and thinks that though I have got everything I wanted still I want something ‘more’. In trying to find out what that ‘more’ is we end up fulfilling more material desires and still find something lacking. If we introspect more at this point we will find answer to our actual reason for coming to this earth – which is to know ourselves and to know our creator. To know that we are actually ‘soul’ wearing different ‘body garments’ and our soul is tiny spark of that Divine unseen Power that we call GOD/Brahma/Universe.

But in our normal day to day life we do not think on those lines. Mostly ‘soul’ and ‘body’ is discussed when some one dies. These theories are explained to comfort the relatives of the bereaved and people go back home hoping and believing that nothing of this sort will happen to them or their loved ones or that they will cross the bridge when storm comes. But then why do we have to wait to suffer ourselves to learn this biggest lesson of life? Why cannot we stop and try to understand this mystery in the beginning itself? We all wait to get retired to introspect on the issue thinking that we still have lot of time with us.

In our free time we perform some exoteric religious practices – like going to our place of worship on some specific day, bowing at altar morning and evening, keeping some fasts to please God. Do you think it really works? Are these not mere rituals if we do not perform these rituals with ‘intense feelings’? At esoteric level all major religions in the world speak of that single power controller, a divine unseen form of energy of bright light from which the life begins and in same the life ends. It is like we all have one destination to reach. Only the routes & methods followed to reach the destination are different depending upon what religion one follows or believes in.

What we study in academic books only tells us about how this physical world functions. Religious books tell us about how universe functions. But how do we coordinate between the earthly and universal functions is something we have to realize ourselves. Science has revealed that all matter is made up of energy and at its smallest visible (invisible to naked human eye) form it is not joined to anything. There is a space in between. None has been able to find out what is that energy made up of and what is that space made up of. We are fooled by what we see. There is so much which we do not know despite so much technological advancement. Even our human body is combination of biology(different organs) and chemistry(reactions of different hormones). What is it that is giving life to it? When a person dies, the body is still here but what is it that goes out?

Why cannot we try to understand, feel, realize and see that specific life giving part(soul) inside our body when we are alive? If we cannot fathom our own soul how can we understand the bigger spirit – GOD?

God gave us free will to break free from pursuing this law of self preservation at some point of time in our life to get to know ourselves. Some break free at early age, some in youth age, some in middle age but most of us want to break free in old age when our so called worldly responsibilities are over. But by this time, our body is not healthy enough, our energy is depleting and some of us may not be lucky enough to survive that long. What a waste of life we have made then? It is said that sometimes it takes many lifetimes to understand and to break free from pursuing Self preservation to tread on the path of Self realization and ultimately God realization.

We all are at different levels of soul development and tied up with individually unique prarabdh and karma. This cycle will not stop if we keep on living life only for ourselves and our kiths & kins. The moment we realize what we are made up of and why we are here, we are free from karmas. Karmas are created as long as we think ourselves to be different from God. The moment we realize that God in within each and everyone of us, the pain and pleasure can no longer control us. We start to feel love for each and everyone and are finally free. But then it is easier said than done.

As per ancient Hindu philosophy there are different levels of understanding. Theory, reading or listening is first part. If we remember the same and think consistently on something we have read or heard, we start to contemplate on the same till we practice it. Ultimately, we assimilate this knowledge and get another new layer of understanding from our own experience and we finally realize what we learnt or read. If we start to understand our knowledge about soul in this manner, a day will come when we will be able to see, feel, listen and talk to our own soul.

Meditation is another important tool to get to know oneself. The great Indian Saint Shirdi SaiBaba said that barring our name and body what is left is our soul - the feeling of consciousness - the feeling of being alive. This is our soul. It is our true self.

Our soul talks to us regularly, guides us and reminds us of our purpose of taking birth but we are so lost in outside world that we do not want to look inwards. We just cannot sit alone for long. We are enjoying materialistic world. Sitting all alone, doing nothing makes us shaky and mad. Many workaholics feel this is wastage of time. It is not. Lord Buddha got enlightened during that moment of nothingness – the void – the moment when we are absolutely free of any thought. Weak man would say, ‘I am not Buddha’. But then who is stopping us from becoming like Buddha? We ourselves are creating hurdles for us. If we say that something is difficult then it becomes our reality and thus realizing our own soul becomes absolutely impossible.

Our soul is linked to the divine Spirit. If we cannot listen to our own soul, we will not be able to listen to God’s voice which is constantly emanating through the universe because our own frequency is not tuned precisely to be able to listen to it. During meditation, people have heard lot of such messages, sounds, seen visions which are beyond comprehension of a physical human mind. This happens because during meditation our frequency fine tunes and catches up with the universal frequency and we are able catch the same as per our own capability. The more we meditate the more we are able to catch from the universe and this continues even when we are not meditating. Gradually, our intuitive sense becomes strong and we become aware of our own increasing ‘knowingness’. The universal knowledge is symbolic, secretive and subtle. In moments of solitude, so many secrets are revealed which are beyond recognition of our physical five senses. It is up to us to maintain and continue this internal spiritual communication with universe despite continuing to live in material world.

For listening to our own soul, we need not give up on our worldly duties. Lord Krishna has said that we can connect with our own creator while carrying on with our day to day activities provided we have faith in HIS existence and we are sincerely regular in our efforts. If we have to take ten steps towards God, we have to initiate the journey towards self realization by taking that all important first step. Then the Lord/Universe will take the rest of nine steps towards us because HE knows how difficult it is for a householder, living on earth, to break free from the law of self preservation and to tread towards acquiring self knowledge.

The crux is that Universe listens to our earnest requests and responds to our faithful efforts even though we may not realize it immediately. But we are rewarded with enormous ‘retirement benefits’ in afterlife. No effort made towards spiritual pursuit goes waste. Are we eager to take a journey inwards and tap at the overflowing reservoir of treasure full of universal/God knowledge hidden within our own beings ?

Vandana Ritik
New Delhi

Life is a Game

Life is like a Game of Monopoly. We trade with money borrowed from Universe for purchasing house, building, hotels, property etc. We also invest on ourselves, our academic learning, growth and attaining a status in Society which makes us feel good.

But when the game of life is over, we go back to God empty handed. We cannot even take our body with us. All that we earn and make here on earth no longer belongs to us. Someone else takes over.

We take re-birth to feel like 'owner' & enjoy the pleasure of the Game again and the cycle goes on till we understand that it is just a game of illusion(God's Maya). The moment we realise this divine truth, we are merged with Divine Spirit and we are not born again.

Vandana Ritik

How to feel God ?

In earlier traditional Hindu Schools, apart from regular curriculum, young children were taught about omnipresence of God. Children were told that God is always watching them no matter where they are or what they are doing. God is aware of all that is happening inside as well as outside us. This ensured that young minds do not indulge in wrongful acts or thoughts from early age. The thought that some universal powers is their watchdog, stopped them from doing any wrong to others. Thus God was operating through their physical bodies correcting them at every wrong step. All actions and thoughts carried out by the human body in this kind of state is actually the WILL of God, i.e., God is the DOER. The person is a mere puppet/ instrument in the hands of God.
In the present modern world, things have changed dramatically. A persons takes out some time to think of God only after he is free and has some time spare from the worldly chores. The person selects a time of the day e.g. morning or evening, or a day e.g. Sunday, Monday etc. During this selected time, the man prays to God, lights few candles or incense sticks, listens to or reads some holy discourse etc and is satisfied. Some even do meditation. Then back to worldly duties.

This change in the attitude of the modern human today sets him apart from the earlier human in the sense that today the man thinks that he is the DOER. Thus he thinks that he is separate from God. In his quest to make his own destiny, the man has gone so far that he has stopped listening to his own inner voice i.e., God’s voice.

This has happened because the new age academic and technical education has completely over shadowed our traditional learning which formed a very strong foundation to our overall persona in childhood itself. Spiritual education is no longer on the curriculum of modern day schools. Today schools are busy generating technocrats and intellectuals who know more about outside world than inner self. The minds is very analytical and always in a state of reasoning. The emphasis today is to develop our skills so that we can earn our livelihood comfortably. But what about our inner thirst.

Our inner core understands all our troubles and obstacles. As our inner core is connected to the Supreme divine, it is always guiding us to take right action in any given situation for the benefit of all and ultimately the SELF. The inner voice cannot be heard, understood or trusted if the physical mind is always in state of reasoning and applying logic. If only we could listen to that perfect inner guidance.
The best way to listen to our Inner voice/ God’s voice is to always feel the presence of God around us. While eating, walking, reading, going to work, watching TV etc we should always feel that God is beside us, just like our shadow. Always be in mental conversation with God. Constant remembrance of God will do wonders to our personality. This will give us enough discrimination to differentiate right from wrong. We will soon understand the futility of meaningless gossip and passing unnecessary judgement on the character of others and thus will be speaking less and criticizing less.

This happens because God starts to work through us and brings about internal change is us. Conserving our energy in positive manner gives us clarity of thoughts and frees our mind from worldly clutter. Having attained peace of mind in this manner, the mind can now easily discard worldly logic and be fine tuned to listen to the inner guidance and act as per its directions. When we are acting as per directions of God we can never go wrong.
Vandana Ritik

Body, Ego, Soul & Spirit

Imagine a bottle filled with water and floating in an ocean. Now try to understand this. The bottle is our Body. The water inside is our Soul. The water in ocean is the higher Spirit or Universe.

All the time we think that we are the bottle, the outer covering. This is because of presence of ego which helps us recognise our bottle i.e, the body. Ego lives as long as body is alive. This body will have a name, color, creed, religion, family, relatives, friends. The body will experience all the pleasures and sorrows in the illusionary world alongwith other bottles floating in the ocean. The body will live, interact and will have social life. Thus the body with the help of physical mind will start having desires, possessions and more desires. Now the feeling of 'I'ness and 'My'ness will arise and ego will start to grow and the growth will be of such a magnitude that the body will be not be able to see the clarity of water/soul inside. The bottle will be so engrossed competing and floating with other bottles that ultimately the water outside will also become invisible to it. Now the bottle will only see the other bottles but no water.

In every bottle the color of glass is ego which alerts us to take necessary measures time to time to keep it fit. As long as ‘spirit’ is inside us we cannot ignore the body because the ‘water’ inside us knows that it is not different from the water outside. It is only body which cannot see the water inside and outside due to its overgrown ego. Just because you cannot see, it doesnot mean that it does not exist. The water is all around us. It is just a matter of being aware of the truth and make efforts to find it.

For a body to experience the human life and creation around, presence of ego is must. The darker the colour of bottle the denser the state of ego is in that individual body. The dark colored bottle will take longer time to see and realize the clarity of the inner ‘water’. Inflated ego creates desires, possessions, separatedness and ultimately pain.

All the activities taken up on behalf of the body represent our material life while all the efforts made to bring out the brilliance of the soul within represents our spiritual journey. The spiritual journey is nothing but removing the veils of ignorance of this reality and to finally experience the ‘oneness’ of water inside and outside and bottle being a mere illusion.

Ego represents our false fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) while Spirit represents love. The journey of the soul is to realise that fear is illusion which was created because of presence of body. Once we understand this illusion/Maya we realise that universe is nothing but love. Fear is nothing but absence of love.

Once we become aware and conscious of this role of ego, it would not take long to make the ‘bottle’ colorless, transparent, shiny and ‘one’ with the water outside.

A balance between material and spiritual life is must if we want to live a happy and contented life.

A wise man lives on the earth without losing sight of his space and place in the universe.

Vandana Ritik

Learn to Enjoy Life

Often we don’t enjoy our day to day activities because most of the time our mind is preoccupied in thinking & analyzing about past and worrying & planning about tomorrow.

It gives us peace to find reason behind every happening in our life otherwise we continue thinking about the issue till we finally get some logically convincing reason. We are baffled if we do not find any reason behind any occurrence in our life. It makes us powerful to know that we have control over happenings in our life. This feeling of ‘knowingness’ makes us feel elated. It gives us a sense of achievement.

No wonder when we are in trouble, most of the time our prayers are mostly centered on seeking answers from God about why we are faced with unfavorable circumstances. Its mostly ‘Why Me?’ And then we want to know the timing ‘When’ this situation will end. In the process we forget about our present life and our daily doze of fun, laughter and enjoyment.

Our analyzing and reasoning mind has our future chalked out well in our mind. If we are sure how our future will turn out, it gives us peace. However, most of the time things do not happen as per plan and our doubting mind will not let us rest in peace. This is the nature of mind. Have you noticed that once we have got what we wanted, the mind starts craving for the next desire and again it is without peace till it gets the same and the cycle goes on. We all know how we feel if the desire is not fulfilled.

Therefore, if we stop worrying about what has already happened earlier in our life and stop too much planning about our future, we will be able to enjoy our life today without any burden. Sometimes it is better not to know the reason behind happenings at all. It is easy to live life without any worry about tomorrow.

Just enjoy life as it comes. Enjoy early morning chirps of birds, rising of sun, feel the coolness in the air on your cheeks, enjoy having parents, enjoy chatting up with spouse, enjoy playing with children, enjoy patting the pet and so on. Thank God for what we have in our life instead of worrying about what we do not have or have lost in our life.

The crux is that if we are not enjoying our present moment than every luxury and facility that we have in our life is useless. Sometimes it is good to be ignorant. Leave worries to the all pervading God. Spend atleast 10 minutes of the day with yourself. Stop the daily grind, smile, smell & feel the beauty of countless 'Roses' God has very kindly filled our life with.

Vandana Ritik

New Delhi

Journey of Soul

Our body is like tip of an iceberg. Hidden underneath is deep, vast, mysterious, unfathamable knowledge and glory of the SOUL.

Have you ever felt a very strong connection or feeling of ‘knowingness’ in your very first meeting with a person? Even with a known person, the feelings generated within us are not same all the time. If someone really loves and appreciates us deeply we will know it even without exchange of a single word. Similarly, we will understand the unfriendly vibes of the other person. How does this happen?

There are many reasons for this kind of feeling. One of them is presence of energy circle around our body which we know as aura. Our thoughts affect our aura and as a result our surroundings. We may enter a very small & unkempt home, yet we feel air of warmth in the air. This is because the habitants of the home feel positively about each other despite lack of space. Traces of their mutual warmth and individual aura can be felt even in the aura of their Home. The same could be missing from a big, spacious, neat and clean home if the members of family remain aloof and indifferent towards each other’s feelings and sentiments. The love, togetherness and mutual dependence of habitants on each other converts a House into Home sweet home where we like to wind up after a hard day’s work and find the peace instantly.

On deeper level, our behaviour patterns towards each other are based on our soul patterns. We vibe very well with people with whom our soul pattern matches. We all are on our own individual soul journey and our final destination is to realize and merge with the oneness of The Supreme Holy Divine Spirit we call God. Our each lifetime and its happenings are already pre-planned and pre-ordained keeping this goal in view.

Life after life, the soul changes body, picks up & assimilates the sanskars (impressions) collected in each life time and adds on to its own growth called soul/ spiritual progress. As a soul passes through many lifetimes, it gains knowledge and maturity. In every lifetime, the soul will be meeting all kinds of souls – souls with equal, more or less level of spiritual progress. WE feel most comfortable and understood with people whose soul vibrations are almost on same level as us. We often say that ‘so and so understands me so well’. However, the comfort and understanding level dissolves as soon as vibrations of one of these souls changes or the purpose for their interaction in this lifetime has been achieved.

In each lifetime, the soul is required to interact with other souls and gain experience and knowledge needed for its growth in that lifetime. The duration of this interaction with other souls varies depending upon mutual requirement of souls. In simple terms as soon as our one kind of learning is completed, our interaction with souls involved in giving us that learning is no longer needed e.g. changing school, job, home, relation breakups, separations etc.

We have heard of best friends no longer on good terms. The reason is that the soul vibrations are no longer the same. One of them has either spiritually progressed or otherwise. Their soul vibrations are not matching any longer and they need to move on to other souls for learning further lessons of lifetime.

Life situation changes and we change. Our past sanskars catch up with us and destiny takes us to those places, persons, situations and problems which are essential for spiritual progress of our soul. This change is continuous over the entire lifetime.

No person comes into our life or any happening takes place in our life without any reason. We understand and gain biggest mastery in our lifetime challenges through our so called enemies, tragedies, accidents etc. Faced with difficulties, pain, grief, when a soul struggles to come to terms with the life, it gains a lot in terms of experience, compassion, strength, purity, wisdom, peace, development of character etc and adds that on to its spiritual progress. Wise men have advised us to bless our enemies for this reason.

During tough time our faith in God is tested. Such situations make us realize that howsoever we may want, nothing is in our control. Religious texts are full of explanations regarding God being doer of everything. During such a time we understand the futility of selfish and centered behaviour of each and all. During such time we understand why scholars over the years have been advocating the practice of forget and forgive due to benefits being derived there from. Therefore ‘enemies’ present us challenges to overcome and progress and ‘friends’ provide love, peace, comfort and strength needed to overcome these challenges.

Thus there are no accidents or blunders. Things happen and changes take place perfectly as per laid out plan of our life. Blue prints of our lives are prepared long before our birth. Before a soul takes on a body it already knows its life plan. However, lesson has to be learnt thoroughly so the memory of life’s blue print fades as we enter the atmosphere of the earth where the frequency of our human body vibration is altogether different and dense. It is said that dim memory of our heavenly existence is alive in our physical mind till 6-7 years of age. As we get more engrossed in learning earthly knowledge and activities, the partial memory is completely erased.

If we stay close to God, we will always be working and progressing as per our life plan easily and smoothly. Sometimes, people seek company of Guru who tries to revive the forgotten memory.

It is always advisable to stay away from company of negative people who have strayed away from God so as to avoid any hurdles and delays in journey of our own soul. Our ancestors have advised us to interact with people of similar or higher status than us for this reason. Here our wise ancestors have been referring to interacting with people who are a match with our soul vibrations, whose sanskars match with our sanskars (or are higher up) so that our spiritual progress can be hastened. But, we have instead understood status as worldly/ financial /social/ economical, which is totally absurd.

Great saint Kabir belonged to economically weaker section but spiritually he was so very advanced, his status was so very high. Our birth in any country, color, caste, community etc has nothing to do with our spiritual progress. We will always find persons matching our soul vibrations in opposite class, community etc because of similarity in our soul-progress.

Our success and achievements on earth do not ensure our success in the eyes of God. Similarly our losses and sufferings on earth does not always imply some previous bad karma. Sometimes tough situations come up in our life to hasten our spiritual progress. These are already part of blueprint of our lifeplan. Success in spiritual life, on soul level is an altogether different journey and it has nothing to do with the success, name, fame that we gain in our earthly life.

In eyes of God we are all born equal but at different stages of soul-progress. In our journey to reach perfection, universal law helps us perfectly as per our individual need and requirement. The journey is from fear (of being a human) to love (of being God). The only precondition is to Feel Like God and Stay Close to God no matter what the circumstances in our life are. Our success is assured because the universal law is perfect and impartial.

Vandana Ritik
New Delhi