From the Unreal to Real - Upanishad

ASATO MAA SADGAMAYA
Thanks to: http://archives.amritapuri.org/bharat/mantra/asatoma.php

asato maa sadgamaya
tamaso maa jyotir gamaya
mrtyormaa amrtam gamaya

Lead me from the asat to the sat.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad — I.iii.28)

This is true prayer—the seeker’s admission of his sense of limited-ness and his heartfelt cry for assistance in transcendence. It is not a prayer for the things of the world. It is not a prayer for food, shelter, health, partnership, riches, success, fame, glory or even for heaven. One who recites these three mantras has realized that such things are full of holes, soaked in pain and, even in abundance, will forever leave him wanting. It is in this full understanding that one turns to this prayer.
The essence of each of these three mantras is the same: "O, Guru, help me free myself from my sundry misunderstandings regarding myself, the universe and God, and bless me with true knowledge." It is in this spirit that devotees regularly chant these mantras twice daily, both at the conclusion of the morning archana and after the evening aarati.

The first mantra, asato maa sadgamaya means, "Lead me from the asat to the sat." In fact, it is best to not translate sat (nor its negative counterpart asat) for, as with many Sanskrit words, sat has many meanings; not only are most of them applicable here, their deliberate combined import provides a depth that no one of them could hold independently. These co-applicable meanings include: existence, reality and truth. (Co-applicable meanings for asat being: non-existence, non-reality and untruth.) We often speak of religion or philosophy as a search for Truth. But only in India’s philosophy of Advaita-Vedanta has the concept of "truth" been so meticulously and successfully dissected.
According to Advaita, for something to be considered true in the ultimate sense, it must be true not just at one given moment, but always be true — true in all three periods of time: the past, present and future.
In fact, Advaita goes one step further. It says: if something does not exist in all three periods of time then it does not truly exist, it is not ultimately real. Thus, truth, existence and reality are one and the same. That reality, Vedanta says, is what we call God.

The universe and its things are in a constant state of change. The planets are in constant motion, their positions in relation to each other and the other astral bodies are in continuous flux. The seasons similarly are ever-shifting. Scientifically, we can easily understand that our bodies (and the cells within them) come into existence, are born and then go through periods of growth, sustenance, deterioration and death. In fact these six modifications are part-and-parcel of everything in creation. On the level of emotions, we move back and forth between happiness, sorrow and anger. Even our intellectual convictions rarely stay fixed for very long. Therefore, according to Vedanta, we cannot call this world ultimately real. It is not ultimately true. Ultimately, it does not exist. It seems real etc. but it is not. Such a thing is called asat.

The seeker giving voice to this prayer has come to understand the finite nature of all the objects of the world, and he wants the Guru to guide him from the asat to the sat. He is fed up with depending on things that are not real. Why? Because just as the sandcastle is always washed away by the tide, dependence on the asat always ends in pain. sat is our True Self— the blissful consciousness that ever was, is and ever will be. Being beyond time, this consciousness can never be washed away by time’s tides. In fact, sat is there as the essential part of all of the asat objects. It is a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were. When speaking about the ultimate reality, Sages say it is of the nature of sat-cit-ananda: pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss.

The second mantra — tamaso maa jyotirgamaya — means "Lead me from darkness to light." When the Vedas refer to darkness and light, they mean ignorance and knowledge, because ignorance, like darkness, obscures true understanding. And in the same way that the only remedy for darkness is light, the only remedy for ignorance is knowledge. The knowledge spoken of here is again the knowledge of one’s true nature. Currently, in the darkness of our ignorance, we believe ourselves to be bound and limited. But the Guru and the scriptures are telling us that, in truth, we are not, never will be and never have been bound. Eternally we are sat-cit-ananda. The only thing that can remove our ignorance regarding our true nature is spiritual education at the hands of a True Master. At the culmination of such an education, light floods the room, as it were; darkness vanishes.

The final mantra mrtyormaa amrtam gamaya — means: "Lead me from death to immortality." This should not be taken as a prayer to live endless years in heaven or on earth. It is a prayer to the Guru for assistance in realizing the truth that "I was never born, nor can I ever die, as I am not the body, mind and intellect, but the eternal, blissful consciousness that serves as the substratum of all creation."
It is important to remember that, with all these mantras, the leading is not a physical leading. The Atma is not something far away that we have to make a pilgrimage to, nor is it something we need to transform ourselves into. Atma means "self". We do not need to transform our self into our self. Nor do we need to travel to it. We are it. The journey is a journey of knowledge. It is journey from what we misunderstood to be our self to what truly is our self. What the mantras really mean is "Lead me to the understanding that I am not the limited body, mind and intellect, but am, was and always will be that eternal, absolute, blissful consciousness that serves as their substratum."

The first step in attaining the knowledge for which one is praying when one chants these mantras is satsang: listening to spiritual talks, reading spiritual books and being in the company of spiritual seekers and, most importantly, spiritual masters. We need to continuously be fed the knowledge that our true nature is the Atma and not the body, mind and intellect. Through satsang, our attachment to the asat gradually lessens. Slowly as we understand that everything in the world — all worldly relationships, all worldly things — are ever-changing and impermanent, our attitude towards the world changes. We gain detachment. As we become more and more detached, our desires also naturally decrease, because we know that the things of the world are impermanent and cannot bring us lasting happiness. As the desires decrease, the mind becomes less and less agitated. It obtains serenity, stillness, peace. Then, with this stilled, subtle, penetrating mind we can finally come to realize our true nature.

In Vedanta, heaven—or rather heavens—are accepted as part of the lower reality. Unlike in other religions, going to heaven is not professed to be the ultimate goal of life. According to Vedanta, heaven can be likened to a vacation resort. After death, if one has done enough good deeds in life, one can go to heaven for a very long time. But eventually he will have to return to the earthly plane. Thus even though one may be in heaven, he is still bound and mired of ignorance to his true nature.

As it says in the Bhagavad-Gita:
From Brahma Loka to the lowest world,
all are places of misery wherein
repeated birth and death take place O Arjuna.
But one who comes to me, O son of Kunti,
never takes birth again. (Gita 8:16)

The human goal according Vedanta is Self-realization. The Atma is the ultimate reality. When one realizes one's true nature, one attains spiritual fulfillment in this life itself. Then, upon death, one does not go to any heavenly abode but simply merges into the supreme reality.

THE KALPATARU TREE

May I share with the readers, Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya's excellent essay on
"Desire under the Kalpataru Tree" in which he quotes extensively from the Mahabharata: http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/076.htm and explains how we in our wish-fulfillment efforts, have to pay a high unanticipated future-cost and why we have to be wise in wishing for anything.

At the end of this very well-written article, the author concludes:
"This, then, is the picture of 'Desire under the Kalpataru': Desire, if powerful, does get fulfilled, but brings in its wake a price to be paid which, more often than not, outweighs the gratification experienced through fulfillment of the desire. [....] It is Yayati who sums it up in words of deceptive simplicity that go straight to the mark:

Desire never ends,
Desire grows with feeding,
Like sacrificial flames
Lapping up ghee.
Become the sole lord of
The world's paddy fields, wheat-fields,
Precious stones, beasts, women...
Still not enough.
Discard desire.
This disease kills. The wicked
Cannot give it up, old age
Cannot lessen it. True happiness
Lies in controlling it. (Mahabharata Adi parva, 85.12-14)

The experience of Vyasa's Yayati is echoed by a great epic poet of the occident John Milton, in 'Paradise Lost':

...They, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with lust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes.

This is the existential experience which pervades the Mahabharata and which Vyasa, the oriental seer-poet, envisions as an outcome of man's fascination with the Kalpataru. Vyasa creates a marvelously eidetic picture of this symbol in the words of Krsna in the Gita (15.1-3):

Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree
Rooted above,
whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;
the knower of this fig-tree
is the knower of the Vedas.
Its branches reach out below and above,
its flowers are the objects of the senses;
below the ground flourish more roots,
giving birth to action.
You may not see its real shape,
nor its end, birth and existence.
Slice this fig-tree with non-attachment".

=============================
My Note:
For an illustration of Yayati's statement: "Discard desire. This disease kills" and Oscal Wilde's ironical observation:."When the Gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers" , you may like to read the strange, scary story of "The Monkey's Paw" "

Miscellaneous:

The Kalpataru had kindled in us a spark of fire by granting our first wish and this has now grown into a blazing fire which consumes us and we are unable to control or extinguish it.
We generally do not know what is ultimately good for ourselves. Instead of leaving it to the Lord to grant our needs, we demand from God the granting of our desires, like a petulant child not knowing: "Mother knows best". The result, according to Oscal Wilde:
     When the Gods choose to punish us,
     they merely answer our prayers!
     To have all our prayers answered might be a curse!
Therefore, the Wise surrender to the Lord's Will, believe with great faith that He best knows what we need and accept what we receive from Him as Prasadam.
Krishnaswamy
============
The Kalpataru Story as told by Sri Ramakrishna, retold by Pradip Bhattacharya:

The Wish-Fulfilling Tree

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Hinduism/2000/08/The-Wish-Fulfilling-Tree.aspx# 

BY: Pradip Bhattacharya  (Reprinted from Indianest.com with permission.)

One way of gaining insight into the cosmic doctrine of karma is through the parable of the Kalpataru, the wish-fulfilling tree, narrated by Sri Ramakrishna:

Into a room full of children at play walks their uncle, who, of course, knows better. Laughing at their preoccupation with make-believe games, he asks them to go out to the massive banyan tree, which will grant them whatever they wish! The children rush out, stand under the branches of this huge tree that cover the sky, and ask for what all children crave: toys and candy. In a flash they get what they want, but along with an unexpected bonus: the built-in opposite of what they wished for. With toys they get boredom; with candy, tummy aches.

Sure that something has gone wrong with their wishing, the children ask for bigger toys and sweeter candy. The tree grants them their wishes, and along with them bigger boredom and bigger tummy aches. Time passes. They are now young men and women and their wishes change, for they know more. They ask for wealth, power, fame, sexual pleasure--and they get these, but also cupidity, insomnia, anxiety, and frustration/disease.

Time passes. The wishers are now old and gather in three groups under the all-encompassing branches. The first group exclaims, "All this is an illusion!" Fools, they have learnt nothing. The second group says, "We are wiser and will wish better next time." Greater fools, they have learnt less than nothing. The third group, disgusted with everything, decides to cop out and asks for death. They are the most foolish of all. The tree grants them their desire, and with it its opposite: rebirth, under the same tree. For, where can one be born, or reborn, but within this cosmos!

All this while one child has been unable to move out of the room. Being lame, he was pushed down in the scramble and when he dragged himself to the window, he was transfixed watching his friends make their wishes, get them with their built-in opposites and suffer, yet compulsively continue to make more wishes. Riveted by this utterly engrossing  lila of desire and its fruits, a profound swell of compassion welled up in the heart of this lame child, reaching out to his companions. 

In that process, he forgot to wish for anything for himself. In that moment of spontaneous compassion for others, he sliced through the roots of the cosmic tree with the sword of non-attachment, of nishkama karma. He is the liberated one, the mukta -purusha.

WHAT IS GOODNESS? - by TAGORE

The question will be asked, "What is goodness? What does our moral nature mean?"
My answer is that when a man begins to have an extended vision of his self, when he realizes that he is much more than at present he seems to be, he begins to get conscious of his moral nature. Then he grows aware of that which he is yet to be, and the state not yet experienced by him becomes more real than that under his direct experience.
Necessarily, his perspective of life changes, and his will takes the place of his wishes. For will is the supreme wish of the larger life, the life whose greater portion is out of our present reach, most of whose objects are not before our sight.
Then comes the conflict of our lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes with our will, of the desire for things affecting our sense with the purpose that is within our heart. Then we begin to distinguish between what we immediately desire and what is good. For good is that which is desirable for our greater self. Thus, the sense of goodness comes out of a truer view of our life, which is connected view of the wholeness of the field of life, and which takes into account not only what is present before us but what is not, and perhaps never humanly can be.
--Rabindranath Tagore, in Sadhan

ON CONSOLING

Over the years, I’ve tried to find simple ways to help ordinary people know what to do and remember how to be when in the company of someone in sorrow. A simple acronym, SALT— as in the salt of tears—emerged as a teaching tool to help learn by heart four basic premises for support. Four chapters in the book, a chapter for each letter, are dedicated to illustrating each skill:

• See them.
• Allow them.
• Listen to them.
• Trust them.

If you can simply See those in grief without acting on the urge to do something right away, you have taken the first step toward helping them to heal. Your unconditional compassion, without criticism and without your own projection, will Allow them to do what they need to. They may need to talk; your best response would be to Listen generously, without interruption, without asking questions or telling your own story. And finally, Trust that within them is everything they need to traverse this difficult path. They do not need your rescue. They need your quiet, steady faith in their resilience. -Marianna Cacciatore http://mariannacacciatore.com/introduction.htm

Let us welcome Change, the essence of life.

When we stand still in space,
we part the air and,
as we move,
air moves in to make it whole.
We have other reasons for moving;
but the wise ones move
to make things whole.
Movement is the essence of time;
the whole world moves with it
in one direction -- forward.
Our physical body moves with time --
growing, ageing, decaying.
Our mental image of our 'Self'
should grow with time, not decay,
maturing like the fruit on a tree.
It is then harvested by the creator
not to be born again.
In our every day life,
we shall be happy if
we move to integrate. For,
move, we have to.
Let us not get attached to the space
of power, pelf, position that
we temporarily occupy, and always
remember that we have to move on.
A movement with resentment
brings in bitterness, division and misery.
Moving willingly to integrate,
leaving the space we occupy,
brings in fullness - Ananda, Bliss-eternal,
Sat-chit-ananda.

Pancha Kanyah - Ahalya

The “Magic Suggestiveness” of Pancha Kanya
An exploration into some aspects of classical Indian feminism
http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/175.html
by: Dr (Mrs.) Ralla Guha Niyogi

(Original article on Pancha Kanya by Pradip Bhattacharya is at: http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/panchkanya/pk01.htm )

Extract from Dr.(Mrs.) Niyogi's article:

The author’s independent research reveals that Ahalya being turned to stone is the Katha-Sarit-Sagara version, expressing the male backlash of a largely patriarchal society [PK, p.23]. Valmiki’s Ahalya, like the heroine of Aparna Sen’s remarkable twentieth century Bengali film, Paroma undergoes, “not an actual physical transformation, but “a psychological trauma [involving a] ‘freezing’[of] the emotions… making her socially into a non-person”. When Rama and Lakshmana socially recognize her by touching her feet in salutation, her “self-respect and status in society [is restored] so that she truly live[s] again”, [PK., p. 23].[19] The fact that she is regarded by the Prince of Ayodhya as “blameless and inviolate” shows that the ancient concepts of virginity or morality were quite different from that of subsequent ages. Thus, the goddesses Ishtar and Aphrodite, too, were regarded as virgins, though later they were considered ‘immoral’. Ahalya, the foremost of the five Kanyas projects the essence of feminism by independently and willingly undertaking a daring act by yielding to her kutuhala or curiosity and thereby she transcends the limits or confines of her gender, asserting in the process, her strong individuality. It is this “dangerous” power of self-assertion in Ahalya that is sought to be curbed by her husband, Gautama.
Ahalya’s consequent acceptance of Gautama’s wrath and her acquiescence to his sentence of temporary segregation from society may be regarded as her awareness and acceptance of existing societal norms and traditions. Thus, she may not be regarded as a “failed Kanya” as the author asks – on the contrary, she exhibits the equivocal position of women in India, portraying “a more complex and perpetual negotiation taking place between women’s culture and general culture”.
As Gerda Lerner states :
Women live their social existence within the general culture and, whenever they are confined by patriarchal restraint or segregation into separateness (which always has subordination as its purpose), they transform this restraint into complementarity (asserting the importance of woman’s function, even its ‘superiority’) and redefine it. Thus, women live a duality – as members of the general culture and as partakers of women’s culture.
Ahalya is perhaps one of the earliest known exponents of “women’s culture” in a largely patriarchal society. Her kutuhala also leads to a partial fulfillment of the feminine jouissance, a word which to Helene Cixous denotes intense, rapturous pleasure present in women, and which Luce Irigaray interprets as a combination of the corporeal and the celestial. Significantly, Ahalya’s act differs from Irigaray’s interpretation as she seeks merely a corporeal union with a celestial being, but she nevertheless displays a variation of Irigaray’s concept of jouissance, for her union with Indra excludes any yearning for motherhood. Jouissance or ananda, in this case, reinstates a woman’s existence as an individual, feminine entity, and she is looked upon as such by her lover :
The female jouissance would [ascribe] to women freedom and a kind of mobility or fluidity … It would be possible only if women have their …. own jouissance, which they could feel …. , and undertake the upward journey necessary for their survival.
Ahalya’s independence of spirit and her desire for union with Indra may be regarded as an instance of women’s need “ to move freely [around] … an axis which grounds them in the earth and connects them to the heavens”. Gautama’s wrath at his wife’s transgression reiterates women’s “lingering status” as the “secondary sex” in Indian society which prevails even today, prompting modern intellectuals to “figure out a way to change [this] dominant [patriarchal] culture”. Ahalya thus emerges as “a metaphor for patriarchy, exploitation and society’s double standards. In the trap of modernity – science and progress … women… are expected to be superwomen.”25 Rabindranath Tagore’s poem on Ahalya, short stories, television programmes, various Bharatnatyam performances on Ahalya’s life and Dr. Pratibha Ray’s Oriya novel Mahamoha which won the Sahitya Academy Award, describing Ahalya’s journey from transgression to transcendence, continue to reinforce the essence of dynamic femininity that this first Kanya represents, which makes her pratah-smaraniya.

LIFE-PATH AS ELLIPSE

In the sixteenth century, most people believed in the ideas of the ancient astronomer Ptolemy, that all the planets, Moon, and Sun orbited around the Earth. Then in 1543, Copernicus proposed the idea that the planets and the Earth orbited around the Sun. Half a century later, Johannes Kepler sought to refine the Copernican system and truly understand how the planets move around the Sun. He studied observations of Mars recorded by his mentor, Tycho Brahe. Kepler used Tycho's observations to guide the creation of his theories. This was a radical departure from the thought processes of his era. In 1609, he published his Law of Ellipses and The Equal-Areas Law. He had succeeded in using a scientific method to create a simple, elegant, and accurate model to describe the motion of planets around the Sun.
Previous theories of the Solar System, including those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, believed that the orbits of the planets were perfect circles. Kepler was unable, however, to fit Tycho's observations with circular orbits. He rejected the ancient idea of circular orbits and discovered that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. An ellipse is a closed, curved shape that is defined by two foci. It is a like a flattened circle ; if both of the foci of an ellipse are at the same point, an ellipse becomes a circle! If you think about it, the relationship between an ellipse and a circle is like that between a rectangle and square.

An ellipse has two axes. The long one is called the major axis, and the short one is called the minor axis. (Astronomers often use the term "semimajor axis" for this). That's just half the length of the major axis!
The shape of an ellipse is measured by its eccentricity, a mathematically determined property. The "flatter" the ellipse, the greater the eccentricity. A circle, for example, has an eccentricity of zero since both foci are at the center and the distance between them is equal to zero.
As the ellipse becomes flatter and flatter, the foci get farther from the center, the distance between them larger and the eccentricity will approach, but never equal, one.
In the picture alongside, the first (top) ellipse has an eccentricity of 0.7 and the second one has an eccentricity of 0.5
Our individual life-paths may also be visualized as ellipses with the individual Ego at one focus and the divine soul at the other focus. Our aim in life should be to move towards the center and shorten the distance between the two foci, so that the eccentricity is reduced considerably and the Ego comes very near to and under the influence of the One who created and sustains all life.
(Pictures: from http://www.astro.illinois.edu/projects/data/KeplersLaws/ )

When the ellipse is considered as depicting our life-path, its two foci are: our Ego deriving its energy from the mind and the Lord who is ever-present as the Soul at the heart center. An ellipse can be drawn with two pins at the foci, a loop of string, and a pencil. The pins are fixed at the foci and a loose string is passed around them. A pencil is placed on the paper inside the string and the string is made taut. If the pencil is moved around so with the string kept taut, its tip draws the figure of an ellipse since the sum of the distances from the pencil to the pins remains constant, which is the property of the ellipse. The nearer the two pins are to each other, the greater the ellipse will be like a circle. When the two foci coincide, the ellipse becomes a circle.

Our philosophy states a similar truth. Due to agnyana (ignorance), not knowing our true connection with the supreme soul's constant presence within us, we depend wholly on knowledge derived from the Ego. We thus move farther away from our spiritual center wandering about wildly in an ever-widening orbit, increasing our eccentricity. Our life becomes erratic like that of a comet and we get burnt out.
With developing awareness of the true picture, we can move nearer to the other divine centre within us, avoid this fate and create a life-path that has progressively less eccentricity and approaches a perfect circle – a wholeness which the Upanishads proclaim as Poornam.

In this context, we may note that Gita Slokam Ch.18-61 speaks about the heart centre:

ईश्वरः सर्वभूतानां हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति।
भ्रामयन्सर्वभूतानि यन्त्रारूढानि मायया।।18.61।।
Ishvaraḥ sarvabhutaanaam hṛddeshe arjuna tiṣThati.
bhraamayan sarvabhhutaani yantraaruDhaani maayayaa..18.61..
61. The Lord dwells in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, causing all beings, by His illusive power, to revolve, as if mounted on a machine.
In his sanskrit commentary, Sri Ramanuja explains (English translation by Swami Adidevananda):

Lord Vasudeva, who is the ruler over all, lives in 'the heart of all beings,' i.e., in the region from which arises all knowledge which is at the root of all secular and spiritual activities. How and doing what does He exist? He exists enabling, by His Maya (power), 'all beings who are mounted, as it were, on the machine Prakrti' in the form of body and senses created by Himself, to act in accordance with their Gunas of Sattva and others. It was already expressed in 'And I am seated in the hearts of all. From Me are memory, knowledge and their removal also' (15.15) and in 'From Me proceed everything' (10.8). The Srutis also proclaim 'He who, dwelling in the self' (Br. U. Madh., 3.7.22).He now explains the way to get rid of the Maya
[in the next sloka: “Take refuge with all your heart, by every disposition of your body, senses and mind in Him - the ruler of all, who has become your charioteer out of compassion for dependents, and who orders you, 'Act thus' and so on.]