On Celebrating Mediocrity

A growing trend I am noticing nowadays, after having experienced the intense activism of the Nithyananda Sangha, is the way everyone is my old world is comfortable with mediocrity.

While I am all for appreciating the small things in life, I am seeing there being an undercurrent of "having given up on the big things of life". 

Poverty - "we don't know how to fix it". War and cruelty - "too big for us to do anything about". Corruption - "India is never going to change".  Westernization and depression among our kids - "They will struggle and and find their own way. Didn't  we?".  "But did you see the beautiful flowers growing in our garden?". Seems innocuous. Almost cute and maybe even profound. But underlying the apparent appreciation of life is a deep rejection of it and resigning to a life of mediocrity. 

I do not find it cute. I find it dangerous. In the name of acceptance we are leaving a life of struggle and shallowness to our children and preventing them from the possibilities of living a life that is so much greater than what we are setting them up for. Surely they deserve better and so does our world. 

Rewrite Your Future!

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Advaita as Infinity

Non duality - Advaita - is not oneness or monism. It means there is no two. Not one either. It is infinite. It is that the infinite comes within your experience! This is the experiential expression of Advaita. That is why the Sanatana Hindu dharma allows all of us to become Gods without anyone needed to police. All of us are Gods. You just have to establish yourself into the state of completion. Hindus do not believe in ONE god. Advaita does not support the concept of one God. It allows for infinite Gods. All of them infinitely powerful. Without the need for any supreme Godhead. Only this experiential expression answers all the questions that comes up with all the philosophies. Including agnostic philosophies such as Buddhism and atheistic philosophies such as Caravka.. This is one of highest experiential expression of Advaita which is the core of Sanatana Hindu Dharma. Hinduism does not believe in one God. Not multiple Gods. But infinite Gods. Without requiring with any single Godhead to regulate. 

I break the myth of oneness. The myth of a supreme personality of Godhead. The necessity of the supreme personality of Godhead. The whole Hinduism and humanity is going to be revolutionized by this understanding! 

No debate can be solved. Which argument leads to further possibility. And which allows the possibility further exploration should be final word or the winner. Debate is not for a solution. But for the final word. 

Infinite Gods. Infinitely powerful. Without requiring any single personality of Godhead ruling or guiding. This will lead humanity to the next level of understanding. This solves all the fights. All the debates. All the controversies related to God. I name this experiential expression as Nithyanandam! 

It is not that all are equally powerful. All are infinitely powerful. It is up to each one to express that power. With this experiential expression start re-cognizing all the questions you gave up on. This is not a philosophy. It is the experiential expression of infinity. 

-- Sri Nithyananda Swami
Inner Awakening Program
Bali, Indonesia, 8 Dec 2013

Hinduism 101 for Atheists: Part 1

Om Sahana Vavatu Sahanau Bhunaktu. Sahaveeryam Karavavahai. Tejas Vinavati Tamastuma Vidhwishavahai . Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi. May He protect both of us. May He nourish both of us. May we both. acquire the capacity (to study and understand).  May our study be brilliant. May we not argue with each other. Om peace, peace, peace. 

God in Hinduism is not a grumpy old man with a white beard living on the clouds who controls your life and the universe as he pleases. Confusing the word God as used in the Old Testament with the Vedic concept of Brahman in Hinduism by early European translators is one of the biggest reasons for misunderstanding Hinduism, its Gods and Goddesses and its living incarnations. In the rest of the article, for the sake of simplicity, I am talking about mainstream Hinduism as it exists today rather than the hundreds if not thousands of schools of thought that really make up the collective of Hindu network of religions.

Confusing the word God as used in the Old Testament with the Vedic concept of Brahman in Hinduism by early European translators is one of the biggest reasons for misunderstanding Hinduism.

Though Hinduism worships God in a number of forms - and ultimately in every life form and in every part of creation - Brahman fundamentally is nameless and formless. It is pure consciousness and bliss. Experiencing this consciousness - and hence your permanence - is the goal of life as per Hinduism. The basic statement Hinduism makes is that consciousness pre-dates matter. However, consciousness can associate itself with matter - appearing to but ultimately not really being bound to it. This is why Hinduism is not at odds with evolution - like some atheists continuously assume and challenge. The body itself might evolve in whatever way, but the consciousness that chooses to work through the body is the one that gives it it's life, intelligence, intuition, creativity and so on to the extent that the biology of the body permits its expression.

 We'll come to the proof or the basis of all this later on.. But at-least if you are questioning or making fun of a religion, please make fun of the right religion. Most of the atheists'  problems with religion are related to Christian and Islamic concepts and theories.. and or about caste-ism and denigration of women which are problem that span all religions in India and in fact in different forms - subtle (if you identify with that culture) or not so subtle (if you are looking at it as an outsider) - in all cultures around the world. I could spend the next many years posting Stalin/Lenin jokes because communists are also atheists. But it wouldn't be quite helpful.. or even funny after a point.

Gods and Goddesses in Hinduism - One God? No God? Same God? Many Gods?

Coming back to Hinduism, the various forms of Gods Hindus worship are symbolic representations of energies and qualities that help you move towards a better experience of life and eventually move towards the experience of Brahman. Some of these Gods might have been real individuals who expressed those qualities at the time they lived and have hence come to be known for it.. For instance, talking very hypothetically, Gandhi might at some point be worshiped as a God representing the principle of non-violence. None of these individual attributes are absolute in all circumstances though - and that is why there are so many stories that show people the limitations as well as the value of each of these Gods. For instance, there is a story of Brahma (the God of creation.. not Brahman the pure consciousness) and Vishnu trying to reach Shiva's head and feet respectively and failing. The story is symbolic of explaining how you cannot reach the state of pure consciousness merely through material wealth (Vishnu) or the intellect (Brahma). It does not mean the Gods are fighting in a petty way as people assume. Lakshmi represents the concept of wealth as an overflowing abundant flow while Kubera represents wealth as static accumulation of material. Shiva amongst other things represents the concept of causeless auspiciousness - the understanding that life is complete and perfect. And so on.

Worshiping is not the same as prayer. Worshiping is enabling your own self to express the energy represented by the form. You are the God who answers your prayers.

Hindus worship these forms because worshiping (wrongly translated as prayer) is a very powerful method of imbibing the energy (or the concept) represented by that God. It is a very easy yet very effective way to program your subconscious because the subconscious reacts to the human form much more easily that when imbibing an abstract concept. This is why, for instance, the currency bills carry the face of a person. People are found to be many times more likely to detect counterfeiting with faces than with any other generic picture. 

The various aspects of the Gods such as  their many hands, the weapons they carry, Ganesha's elephant face etc symbolize different powers and abilities once can acquire. They have been designed in such as way that meditation on the form of the God - even without intellectually understanding each symbolism - helps you imbibe the concept behind it very deeply.  For instance, while one can explain the principle of feminine energy and power over a 6 week course to someone, just looking at the form of Goddess Durga gives them that experience. 

Puranas: wrongly translated as Mythology

The stories of the Gods and Goddesses are not allegorical or imaginary like the western mythologies. They are poetical representations of history. The Hindu seers recognized that the Universe operated on patterns that repeat at every scale. For instance the concept of creation, destruction and sustenance are applicable to the constructs of the mind, our bodies, and to the external universe at large. It also applies to social structures and families and so on. So typically the historic stories of Hindu puranas (wrongly translated as mythology) also represent some of the constructs or patterns of the philosophy.

Sometimes they are modified to more clearly represent a concept. For instance if you go through these talks you will see the symbolism behind the Mahabharata war (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAL1nSjMVk) or Ramayana as seen from the point of view of the journey towards enlightenment. But that itself does not mean that the stories are completely from someone's imagination to represent the concepts. The more likely scenario is that they are historic. But maybe a little embellished or made more poetic in parts. The trick is to recognize which is which. But unfortunately that requires a little bit of patience and some familiarity with the fundamental philosophy.  Many things that people assume to be exaggerations are actually factual. 

 The Spiritual vs The Material 

But beyond form worship through forms, Hinduism has this core part which is spirituality. Spirituality is fundamentally based on the thesis that human beings can directly experience this Brahman or pure consciousness inside them - and if I can just get a little ahead of myself - AS them. (There are different schools that talk about how close you can get.. but for the sake of this introduction those are advanced topics that we can defer). Moving towards experiencing the conscious part of you - as opposed to the programmed mechanical structures  of YOU - the body and the brain - is the goal of Hinduism. 

The side effects of becoming more conscious are, among other things, creativity and intuition since you can find breakthroughs beyond simple logical extensions to existing thought. And this does not refer to being creative just to find new scientific discoveries. It can be a part of finding ways to resolve day to day conflicts or problems in your family, or society or your company. So basically the spiritual path, Hinduism believes, is not at odds with any other so called material way of life. The stress is on the space from which one operates - whether it is bound by the past emotional traumas and incomplete cognition.. or whether it comes from a space of consciousness and free will. There are some traditions that use austerity (which is not poverty) as a way to stay conscious - but living in poverty is never the ideal life that Hinduism promotes.

Hinduism does not distinguish the spiritual from the material. However it does have a concept of dharma.  

Dharma is not morality

Anything that moves you towards experiencing more and more consciousness is dharmic (wrongly translated as Good). This can be different for different people based on where they are in evolution. For instance, for a person A, learning to be truthful can make him more conscious because lying has become a pattern in him. For another B saying the truth might have become a compulsive behavior and hence breaking that pattern is dharmic. This is one of the reasons why dharma in Hinduism is not so easy to define and causes conflicts both internally and outside. The idea of dharma is very closely related to each individual's path towards becoming more conscious and may differ from someone else's ideas.  For the mathematically inclined you can approximately think of morality as a absolute position and dharma as a first or second order derivative. So whether you are moving in the right direction towards your innate nature is more important than where you are.

 The western civilizations whose rules of right and wrong are based on social good define it in absolute terms. Hinduism also recognizes actions that need to be done for social stability. And it also recognizes deep patterns - collective delusions - that are common across people in a particular society. For instance say the idea of money.. or fear of the sky falling on the head and so on. And these may provide the basis for dharmic rules that apply to a large part of a specific society. But these rules change over time (or yuga to yuga) based on the mental constitution of society at that point. More on that later when we talk of incarnations.

But ultimately the concept of dharma is personal in Hinduism.  Hinduism really does not preach morality and Dharma is not morality. 

Shraddha vs Faith

The Hindu word Shraddha does not mean faith. Hinduism does not require one to have faith blindly. But.. it does require one to have Shraddha. Shraddha is the stability to try something authentically. To give an analogy, when someone says that there is a bus that goes to Mysore that stops every hour a few streets away. Shraddha is making the best effort to get out of bed, go there, wait for the maximum of an hour and take the bus. But when you do all this, if you do not find a bus, then it is not required of you to imagine a bus standing there. 

Now the question most people have is that they do not trust enough to even try what is said. Maybe in the past they have been cheated .. or they have not tried authentically and hence not seen the results. And this has happened many times. But moving ahead even in this situation by not giving up on yourself and others is Shraddha. Note that this is not specific to spirituality alone. The concept of Shraddha applies to any endeavor that your take up. For, the opposite of success is not failure. The opposite of success is giving up. Shraddha is the principle of not-giving-up..

 Coming up next..

Part 2

• The Role of a Guru - or enlightened master - Precise solutions vs All Encompassing Answers
• Who is an Incarnation or an Avatar. What are Yugas
• Miracles

Part 3

• Hinduism and Society 
• Sati, Child Marriage, Caste System, Status of Women etc
• Festivals and Celebrations
• Role of Rituals, Homas

Part 4

• Evolution of Hinduism - Why no wars have been fought to spread Hinduism
• Death and Reincarnation and Karma
• Swarga amd Naraga (Heaven and Hell) are Psychological not Geographical
• The Origins - How did it all begin? aka Theology - And why it possibly matters least.

From the teachings of Avatar Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

Thinking of Amitabh Bachchan - The Real Anti Faith Bill

Or Why the Anti-Superstition Bill is Extremely Dangerous to Hinduism?

The Maharashtra Government issued the ‘Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance’ in a hurry on August 21, 2013 succumbing to pressure from certain groups in the wake of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar being shot dead by unidentified assailants as an knee jerk reaction.  This is hardly the way to bring legislation which has been contested over the past 7 years!  Surely something is not straight forward about it.. 

The main purpose of the bill is to take control of what you can believe in or not believe in. On what is considered science and what is superstition.  The bill is just the first step.  It is now your job to prove what you believe in.

Pretty soon they can close down temples and take away the gold they have because the atheist authors of the bill believe that God is a superstition.   

I can't explain the ridiculousness of the bill except by showing an analogy. Using the Anti-Faith Bill as basis, I have made a new bill to address the more immediately social problem of Amitab Bachchan fans on the rampage in India..

I present to you the Thinking of Amitabh Bachan Bill. It has 9 clauses which are punishable offences as per the law. (And for all those who are not too familiar with sarcasm, note how the crimes are punishable irrespective of whether the person committing is "Thinking of Amitabh Bachchan" or not)

1. Thinking of Amitab Bachchan and chopping someone with a knife into extremely small pieces.
2. With the objective of pleasing Amitab Bachchan kidnapping kids and selling them as slaves
3. Make financial profits by collecting money for an Amitabh fan club taking money from people and then buying jilabis instead (Note that creating an Amitab Bachchan fan club itself is perfectly alright as long as he is dead). The stress is on buying Jilebis
4. In the pretext of appreciating Amitab Bachchan do something gruesome or inhuman such as sacrificing people or torching competing movie theaters 
5. Trying to act like Amitabh Bhachchan or encouraging someone to act like Amitabh Bachchan and potentially making a fool of yourself.
6. Create fear in people by claiming that you or someone else is Amitab Bachchan  and make them pee in their pants .
7. Accuse a woman (see we are pro women!) of being anti Amitabh Bachchan and restrict her routine
8. Claim that a differently-abled (see we are pro people with disabilities!) person is actually Amitabh Bachchan in disguise and make him act in movies
9. Pretending to be Amitabh Bhachchan and as a result of this managing to get a man/woman/differently-gendered person laid

And borrowing from the supporters of the Anti-Faith bill, here is why the government should pass the "Thinking of Amitabh Bachchan" bill:

Why are people protesting against these innocent laws?? Don't they realize that killing people and torching them or cheating  is bad? What kind of society do we live in?   I can't understand how people seem to think that these laws are against Amitabh Bachchan?  We only condemn the actions done on his name. Not the actor himself. We got a letter from his publicist asking about whey he was being discriminated against like this and the other actors are not being talked about. Don't you know that there are many people who could potentially be called Amitabh Bachchan and not just him? Why does he feel singled out?

And don't worry we'll create new bills with a cross product of all the other actors and actresses on one side and the entire IPC code on the other (except for all the Catholic and Islamic actors - because you see no one can do any crime once they think of either of them). Should keep us and the media busy for a long long time! Talk of job security. YES! 

Here are some outrageously uninformed comments from Narendra Dhabholkar, the author of the anti-faith bill, related to Hinduism:

1. Observing fast is a mental bondage due to which people of this country have lost their will to bring change in self.
2. How can God, who cannot have bath on His own, shower you with good fortune?
3. Performance of Satyanarayan puja’ is superstition !
4. Education based on science is required to break 5000 years old Indian traditions

There is nothing in the bill that cannot be handled by existing IPC laws on murder or cheating.

Clearly  the hidden - or not so hidden - agenda of the Bill is to destroy Hinduism. Because the authors of the  bill feel that faith in anything but what western science currently knows of is superstition. All they have done is take existing crimes and add any Hindu faith before it to taint the belief.


What are the consequences of this bill. Not just as the ordinance was issued ... but as it was envisaged.. and as they want it to be.

1. You cannot charge money for conducting a Homa - because you are exploiting someone for a superstitious belief
2. You will not be allowed to provide a horoscope matching service or print out horoscopes
3. All temples can be shut down because God is a superstition. All the Gold in the temples can be taken away. I believe this is one of the main motives behind the bill ! 
4. It is OK to kill animals by truckloads and eat them.. even hunt them... make leather garments and fur coats out of them.  But if you say a prayer before cutting an animal up you could go to prison. Unless you are a Muslim of course, then you can kill goat by the millions.
5. If I do an Hindu astrology show on TV you can be arrested. But the millions of people who are exposed to Sun Signs and Moon Signs and Love Signs are OK because those have a Christian origin. 
6. Many of what they call superstition - spiritual healing, water divining, talking to spirits etc - are real powers mentioned in our scriptures and are much more common than we are led to believe. But now all those people will become criminals and their population will disappear- much like the American Native Indians did. 

The bill is an attempt by atheists to destroy Hinduism. The bill is a sugar coated virus trying to appear to be a social reform bill. All Hindu's should oppose the bill and all variations of it.

Hinduism is born of the faith in the statements of the ancients masters and scriptures that a higher consciousness exists and that human beings can continuously be in touch with that consciousness and that miracles happen all the time outside the purview of what can be proved scientifically. Having this faith and spreading it is protected by article 25 of the constitution of India.  The people who believe in atheism and that everything in the world is pre-ordained or random and that life has no meaning are trying hard through this bill to pull down the foundations of Hinduism. The bill is a  virus which is sugar coated to look like a social reform attempt. And anyone who feels they are a Hindu should oppose this bill and all variations of it.

Below is the stupid crap that got issued instead as an Anti Superstition ordinance in Maharashtra. And to top it all the Karnataka government wants to pass it here too - and the draft version of that is even more directly aimed at Hinduism.

1. Under the pretext of removing a bhoot (ghost) from a person’s body, tying that person with a rope or a chain or a stick, assaulting them or asking them to drink water soaked in footwear, hang the person to the roof, pluck their hair, ask them to touch heated objects or force them to conduct sexual act in the open or force the intake of urine or stool.
2. Make financial profits by displaying so called miracles. Cheat and terrorise people with the aid of such miracles. (This means that miracle per se is not an offence. Also, talking about the miracles from the past, telling stories of Dnyaneshwar and how he made a buffalo recite Vedas is perfectly alright). The stress is on making money.
3. With the objective of attaining supernatural powers, do something or ask others to do something that might cause injuries or risk to life.
4. At the pretext of searching for hidden treasure or water source do something that is inhuman, gruesome and ask or encourage or suggest for human life as prashad. (Some argued that existing laws were strong enough to deal with such murders. But murdering is different from encouraging. And the encouragement is not for killing of a particular person which amounts to culpable homicide but any human life which otherwise cannot be a punishable offence under the law).
5. Create a feeling of fear by giving an impression of having supernatural power or pretending that someone else has such powers or threaten that evil will befall if he/she doesn’t obey the person having such powers.
6. Creating suspicion about a person claiming that he/she performs black magic through which he/she carries evil practices and makes life difficult for that person or declare that a person is a Satan or form of Satan.
7. Beating up a person or have a procession of a naked woman saying she is a witch or restrict her routine.
8. Threatening to invite a ghost and creating fear in the mind and misguiding people by claiming to cure a disease with the help of mantras by preventing medical aid.
9. Preventing medical aid and instead claiming to cure a person bitten by snake, dog or scorpion by chanting mantras or by tying threads or similar things.
10. Claiming to change the sex of the foetus in the womb by inserting fingers.
11. Giving an impression that one has supernatural powers or that the devotee was his/ her wife/ husband or paramour in past birth thereby indulging in sexual activity with such person. Having sex with a woman yearning for a child claiming to make her pregnant with supernatural powers.
12. Claiming that a differently abled person has supernatural power and using him or her for business purpose.

Atheism, Religion and Hinduism

Why is Hinduism not just another religion?

Atheism makes the terrain of life in to a dry dessert. The all encompassing franchise based religions make life into vast tracts of agricultural land that all look the same. Hinduism is a tropical forest - it is the collection of a vast number of precise solution traditions such as Siddha, Tantra and so on.  That is why it defies being understood. That is why it is often approximated and called to be "a lifestyle".

How to be out of misery? is the question. All compassing answers are useful for debate. But not useful for moving forward. To move forward you to know precisely what to do next.  Buddha's answer that all misery happens because of desire is all encompassing. So is the Vedantic statement that everything around you is an illusion. But it does not take you to the next step of what to do. Because there is no practical way to get rid of all desire. Many people spend their lives only dealing with all encompassing answers and feel cheated because their life is not transformed.

Mediocre minds cannot allow anything they don't understand to exist. The bulldozing and destruction of the collective of precise solution traditions just because they don't fall into a framework is the greatest damage done to humanity

-- Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Swami' Nityananda Talks On Finding the Right Solution
Sept 24, 2013

Another analogy that came to mind was..

A stranger comes to town and tells everyone that he has found a huge cave with treasure hidden in the forest far far away and can tell them how to go there.

The atheists tell him that he is lying and that they don't do anything without proof and they will not believe anyone because they have been cheated before. Some of them are lazy and out of laziness question why one should go after treasure in the first place.

The religious people instantly believe him.. but instead of going for the treasure they start planning on how to spend the money.. And at the end feel cheated because they are now deep in debt and there is no money. Every now and then, they beg from the stranger and get a little money from him.

The spiritual person believes in what the person says... but only so much as to start journeying towards the treasure. Yes it is belief.. but eventually getting the treasure is the proof. On the path, the rough directions given by the stranger may help you get started.. but they may be out of sync with it what is present now.

Hinduism is really the signs on the road and the people on the way who can direct you to the right path as you journey. It cannot be codified.. because it is not a fixed thing. It is what each person finds and the guides and sign posts that help them move through the current area they are in.. and more towards to the goal. That is why we say we have 33 crore Gods in Hinduism. Because each one's path in Hinduism is a unique Sampradhaya and each God represents that unique and wonderful journey.

Sad State of Hindutva Today

I happened to meet a so called Hindutva leader and thinker over last weekend.. And it got me thinking. I now understand why Hinduism is weak. We do not have leaders who can stand up. We have leaders who are scared. Even if you are an intellectual and don't what to fight physically, you need to show courage in your speech and eyes. Instead I saw defeat and self loathing. Both covered up in and attempt at intellectualism. A defensive and apologetic approach to life.

No wonder Hinduism is in such a terrible shape. With leaders like this, the followers can't be too much better. As Vivekananda said. We need MEN. And that is what we are lacking..