The Prophetic Character

I love the month of Rabi ul-Awwal, and look forward to hosting and attending Milad celebrations, marking the birth anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad. Milads are effective in increasing one’s love for the Prophet whom the Quran exalts, calling him the exemplar for humanity and mercy for all the words.

The twelfth of Rabi ul-Awwal, the third month of the Hijrah, Islamic calerdar, is both the day Prophet Muhammad came into this world and left for the Hereafter. On the same date he arrives in Madina, the hijrah, migration happened from Mecca marking the beginning fo the Hijrah calendar. This month invites reflection on the prophetic personality.

Rabi-ul- Awwal, literally meaning ‘the first spring’ symbolizes birth and renewal. A time when the Lord splits open the earth to reveal His bounty within, without which His servants could not subsist. More importantly, it is the season of beautiful moderate weather, free of bitter cold or stifling heat. It reminds of the prophetic call to moderation and his repeated warnings of extremism, ‘Moderation. Moderation! For only with moderation will you succeed.’

Prophet Muhammad inspired with the words, ‘I have come to perfect noble character.’ Ayesha, his wife once commented, ‘His character was the Quran.’ Prophet Muhammad said the bankrupt ones are those who despite good deeds of prayer and worship, abuse one another treat neighbors badly and lack good character.

The prophet’s character was based on moderation in spirit, generosity, justice, dignity, moral excellence, humility, bravery and firmness in the face of death, good fellowship, sympathy for others detachment of the world and constant fear of the Lord. He chose poverty over wealth, sleeping on the floor with a bed made of stuffed palm fibres.

The most forgiving of people, the Prophet never sought revenge despite 13 assassination attempts on his life. He told his followers not to respond to persecution with aggression assuring that Allah rewards those who exercise patience. He remained sympathetic to those who had left Islam due to persecution from their families and no sanctions were issued against them. Ubaydullah Ibn Jehsh, who migrated to Abyssinia with the first batch of Muslim immigrants, converted to Christianity. He abandoned his wife Um Habiba, the daughter of Abu Sufiyan whom the Prophet later married. None of the Muslims took any action against him and he died upholding the Christian faith. When the prophet settled in Madina, he made it clear that he wanted relations with the new society to be egalitarian.

When the Prophet entered Mecca, he encountered his staunchest enemies. These people who had inflicted so much suffering on him and his followers expressed their desire to be treated nobly. The Muslim army readied for revenge, but the prophet did not allow it saying, “Today I shall say to you what prophet Joseph said to his brother, ‘You may leave. No reproach this day shall be on you. May God forgive you, He is the Most Compassionate’. Laying great emphasis on the heart Muhammad spoke of it as a repository of knowledge, sensitive to the needs of the body. He said that wrongdoing irritates the heart for it perceives wrong action and is designed to be in a state of calm.

Strive Firmly

The line of Rigved 10/117/4 says that — "Those who do not repay the debt of their obligation, who are stingy about giving their service to others, nobody in this world is their well-wisher. Therefore, man must always be generous by nature.

Man is but an infinitesimal part of the vase creation of God. God has created innumerable, countless living species of animal-life and plant-life and among the plants various shrubs, trees, vegetables and medicinal plants and herbs. He has also crated water, earth, sky, wind, Sun, Moon, stars etc. Among all these he has created the human-body with a special aim. Only because of the wonderful grace or benevolence of the Supreme Father this divine creation, i.e. the human body, has obtained the best skills. Whatever has been created in the world is for his use and consumption. Even though we know this fact, we show stinginess in expressing our gratitude to Him. Instead of being grateful to Him, we become proud ourselves.

God's directive is 'tyaktena bhoonjitha ma grudhaha' which means consume with n attitude of renunciation and do not be greedy. But we want to have everything and every moment we are immersed in selfishness. First and foremost we must express our gratitude to that vast Almighty and as directed by Him we should work for the welfare of all by giving up selfishness.

Man cannot be aloof even in the day-to-day life. Every time he receives cooperation from one or the other, and therefore he has been able to achieve this much progress. No matter however much insight and capacity we possess, it is almost impossible to do anything without others' cooperation. We should liberally express our thanks to all our associated, big or small. Without making any distinction of young or old, high or low, we should try to repay them to the maximum extent for their help. Those who show stinginess in this are committing grave sins and are permanently deprived of God's grace.

It is unfortunate that man always thinks that his ultimate objective lies in nourishing his body, indulging his senses, loving the family members and relatives, and as such, he spends his entire life in these only. Trapped in these worldly affairs he neglects the values of life and receives society's contempt. In times of his need, nobody comes to serve and help him. Nobody is his well-wisher. Even the society condemns a man who does not thank others, does not cooperate with others and is always immersed in his own world.

We should strive to firmly establish our ideal values of life and should not be miser in expressing our gratitude for the cooperation we receive from various living beings from our birth to death. We should try to be of maximum service to them in return for all the obligations. It is our supreme duty to express our gratitude to God, our Supreme Father.

Na sa sakhaa yon a dadaati sakhye

sachaabhuve sachamaanaaya pitvaha

apaasmaatprey yaanna tadoko asti

prunantamanyamaranum chidichchhet (Rigvved 10/117/4)

Sex and Salvation

Salvation is the dewstination. Love is the way. However, sex provides three interesting detours – procreation, recreation and creation – There was a public uproar and he has since been rested. The swami, in his earlyu thirties, would have gotten away with what is perhaps the result of a hormonal surge had he not vowed to be, well a swami. Literally, a swami is someone who is a ‘master of his senses’. Popular culture tends look up to a saint or swami as some kind of divine entity.
Strangely but true, ther is very little room for sexual adventure on the path of salvation. Yet, Nature whole heartedly designs a 30-odd-years-old man’s body for what Nature needs to do; propagation of the species.Nature puts forth several smart promotional schemes to get this job done through its species. The physical and physiological pleasure associated with the sex surge is the soft packaging for the hard nuts and bolts reality of giving birth to a baby. It is difficult not be seduced by this pleasure when all our senses converge to draw us to it. Leonardo da Vinci  puts this procreation and the members smployed there in are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, Nature would lose the human species.”
When the contraceptive pill arrived, sex evolved from the basic need of procreation to sex for recreation. The inventive human mind was apparently able to checkmate Nature’s ploy of painful procreation by recreating the pleasure of sex without producing a result. This is somewhat like sniffing around in a pastry shop with the intent to do just window shopping. Nature made sure that the residue of recreational sex remains as sensory impressions in the mind in the form of vasanas – burning embers waiting for the next gust of passion to flare up. These vasanas arew potential desires tha incarnated themselves at the opportune moment.
The real challenge for human evolution was then to put out the embers odf vasanas that transported sex in the head from where it actually belongs. This challenge of transforming sex for procreation into sex for recreation has been productively met by saints, explorers, artists, writers, inventors, innovators and wealth creators. They lifted the sexual energy from their thoughts and emotions and expressed them in their creative works. While saints like Buddha, Krishna, and Christ created new maps of human consciousness; explorers like Galileo and Columbus redrew maps of our physical world.
On the path of salvation celibacy is not a prerequisite but a consequence – an effortless by product of creativity. Celib acy is a kind of flowering of consciousness and not a moral given, as most sermons would have us believe. It is easier to cover a raging fire with a piece of cloth than to contain libido with sermons. A celibate is like an auster tree in winter that to flowering and stands to rejoice as an enthralled witness in having completed the cyclee of creation. The human consciousness scripts the whole journy from being the cteatures of sex to the Creator Herself. The “fallen” swami, like any one of us, is somewhere on the path. I would just let him be.

Preparing for the Journey

The first guru of yoga was Shiva and parvati was the first disciple. It is said that when humankind began to forget its potential for spiritual realization. Shesh Nag, the serpent king and the carrier of Vishnu. Incarnated as Sage.  Patanjali and wrote the yoga sutra.
Though the purpose of yoga is Self-realisation, there are various by products as you move up the ladder towards realization. Here you embrace the inner and outer realities for a perfect harmonious balance; the important point is that you do not intellectually understand inner and outer realities but experience them. Yoga is an experience and not a subject of the intellect. Yoga works on all aspects of a person – physical, vital, mental, FINANCIAL, EMOTIONS, PSYCHIC AND SPIRITUAL. Only when all the aspects are in a state of balance does a being experience liberation and perfect harmony. The aim of yoga is kundalini awakening for liberation from bondages. A practitioner of yoga goes through three phases.
The first stage assumes that the practitioner is a normal person who is attracted to various aspects of the physical world; that he wants to enjoy everything and miss nothing. He wants to live life to the fullest. Yoga says, why not? Go ahead, enjoy and go beyond, do not suppress your desires, go and sail in the ocean of life, but do not sink in it. Be like the boat, which is in the water but the water is not in it. It sails through the ocean and misses no part of the ocean and yet completes its journey, experiencing the ocean in totality.
The first stage of yoga deals with very simple asanas and pranayamas; these are preparatory for the journey ahead; your vehicle, that is your body, is taken through physical purifications with the aid of yogic asanas, pranayams and shatkarmas. The emphasis is on purifying yourself. A by product of yogic practices is a light body, a clear and active mind, great physical and mental strength and balanced emotions. You feel as if you have been overhauled, and have gained a new body.
Now you are ready for the intermediate practices on the physical plane that make your limbs supple and your bones strong so that you can do long hours of meditation. Only when an asana is perfected do you feel bliss and stillness in that posture, which is indicative of you having thoroughly gone over the yoni, the level of existence. Now your mind is prepared for controlling thoughts and emotions. You are getting ready for awakening the kundalini. You are preparing for the advanced stage through total experience and ananda. By the time you have reached here, body and mind are in perfect harmony. You have total control over body, mind and spirit.
The next step is advanced yoga. You are ready to awaken the kula kundalini or the force of creation, which lies in a semi-dormant state in your mooladhar chakra. The guru gives you shaktipath; the mother, the kundalini, awakens and begins her ascent. You are given mantras for various levels of evolution. You are introduced to the energies controlling creation and are told how to harmonize  yourself with them. You are taught the five states of matter and how to become one with each state. The advanced level is a level of pure bliss and ananda. This you will achieve with the help of a suitable guru.

Know your Value System

Every choice we make has consequences, whatever obvious or not. What seems a great choice at the moment may perhaps have negative consequences later on? A holistic way to approach choices and consequences is to examine our personal value system.
There once was mountaineering team that had prepared for three years for a competitive clime. When they finally began, somewhere after the second camp they came across a seriously injured climber in need of medical assistance. Those were the days of no cell phones. One of the members of the team, seeing the dire situation, and obviously out of a strong value system, decided to drop out of the climb and help to bring down the injured person. No amount of pleading from his team convinced him to do otherwise. And their argument was that “we have our own agenda and this case is of no concern to us”.
If you have been brought up to be caring as soon as a situation presents itself, you are prompted to action. Take the example of someone with a hundred-rupee note on a busy street corner looking desperately for change today for an auto rickshaw and getting refused by people around/ As  soon as you see this you know you have the required change as well as the willingness to relieve another person from difficulty and anxiety. You also know that you might one day be in the same situation. “Do unto others what you would like them the Golden Rule, because it is an eternal value.
So you approach the person, respond to the need and walk away. You feel good about yourself because there was congruence between your value system and the choice you made.
What is this ‘congruence?’ It is a match between value and action. Sometimes we are faced with choices that are not congruent with our value system; extreme ones are like having to perhaps pay a bribe for something that is our legitimate right.
How we respond to a situation depends on how strongly we wish to uphold our personal value system. It helps if you take time to write down a set of values that you believe in. Then comes the real test, of living the value. The strange thing is that, whenever we make a commitment to ourselves, all sorts of situations pot up to test us.
Making a good living, being peaceful, helpful, sharing resources – these are all values. Out of these values we make choices and take action. Interestingly, every choice we make has a price. In the case of the mountaineer he paid the price of not reaching the summit, with all the successes that could have followed; perhaps also of having let down his team. He let all that go for saving a life.
Values determine our action preferences and priorities. When asked why he had done this, the young mountaineer’s response was, “If I had let that young man die, no matter what success I achieved, I could not have lived with the thought for the rest of my life.” A rabbinic text encourages us: “in places where there are no human beings, be one.”
The yogic scheme of yamas talks about values that are connected with interactions with others. Another is the four-fold maîtri –karuna –mudita -upeksha or universal friendship, compassion; joy in others’ happiness and consideration for others. If you add these two sets you get a comprehensive value system that can stand the test of time and you will notice that all spiritual traditions are in conformity with these.

Examine Success and Failure

What is success and what is failure? We understand that to be successful is to arrive, to get somewhere; and so we worship success. When a poor boy grows up to become a multi-millionaire, or an average student becomes the prime minister one day, he’s feted for being successful.
Is success an absolute or is it an idea we pursue? Because the moment one arrives, there’s always a point further ahead at which one has yet to arrive. In the pursuit of success we are faced with challenges and conflicts. Even when you have ‘arrived’, there’s no rest for you because now you want to go still ahead; you want more. The pursuit of success is the desire for ‘more’ and a more is not an intelligent mind; on the contrary, it’s a mediocre, stupid mind, because its demand for ‘more’ implies a constant struggle in terms of the pattern which society has set for it.
What’s contentment, and what’s discontent? Discontent is hankering for ‘more’ and contentment is the cessation of that struggle; but you cannot come to a state of contentment without understanding the whole process of the ‘more’ and why the mind demands it.
If you fail an examination, for example, you would perhaps take it again. But by themselves, examinations and your performance in them don’t really reveal your true worth. Passing an examination is largely a feat of memory or it may be a matter of chance; but you strive to pass your examinations and if you don’t succeed, you keep at it. With most of us it’s the same process in everyday life. We’re struggling to achieve something, and we’ve never paused to enquire if the way we are dealing with it is the right way. It’s only when we have understood the significance or insignificance of wanting ‘more’ that we cease to think in terms of failure and success.
We’re all so afraid to fail, to make mistakes not only in examinations but also in life. To make a mistake is considered terrible because we’ll be criticized for it. If we’re afraid of making mistakes, we’ll never learn. The ideal of success is held up for us to follow; and success is always in terms of respectability. Even the saint in his so-called spiritual achievements must become respectable, otherwise he has no recognition, no following.
So we’re always thinking in terms of success, in terms of ‘more’ and the ‘more’ is a relative ideal dependent on what prevailing social norms consider to be respectable. If you do not live up ot that societal ideal, you are likely to be called a failure. But if you love to do something with all your being, you are then not concerned with success and failure. However, very few have the evolved perspective that allows them space to think this way. The whole concern of an intelligent person is to see things as they are intelligent person is to see things as they are and understand the problem –which is not necessarily about bracketing action in terms of being oriented towards success or failure. It’s only when we don’t really love what we’re doing, that we think in those terms. Didn’t a wise person say; “Success is a relative term; there’s nothing absolute about it?”
What we think of as success today might be thought of as failure in another time and situation and vice versa. It would be in our best interest to view both what we call success and failure as relative states, and so treat both success and failure with equanimity.

MEANING OF COLOR

All animate and inanimate matter has an atomic structure in which electrons and protons are in constant motion. This motion creates an energy field which has electrical and magnetic vibrations. This energy field around the body is called 'Aura'. Aura is therefore such an integral part of the body that it should be taken as an extension of the body. Because the atoms of animate life are more active and vibrant, the auras of living things are more pronounced than those of inanimate things.

Most of us experience aura in our daily life, whether we know about it or not. For example, you instantly like or dislike a person, depending on whether your auric vibrations match or does not match with that of the other person. This explains the theory of 'love at first sight', which occurs because the chemistry of two persons is identical; it may not necessarily mean that the two persons have been acquaintances in previous lives. It may or may not be so. Similarly, you feel more comfortable with certain smells, sounds and colors, according to aura matching. Certain other smells sounds and colors are unbearable to you since their auric vibrations are exactly opposite to those of yours. In the company of some people you feel energized, while being around certain other people you feel drained. You sometimes feel it, when someone is staring at you. On entering certain rooms you like to stay there, while other rooms offend you in some way and make you angry.

The existence of aura is a fact accepted by science today. Scientists agree that there is a physical field around us, which has infrared energy electrostatic and electromagnetic radiation. Although opinions of people do not always agree, the existence of colors and consciousness in an aura is now commonly acknow3ledged by people of all beliefs. The more healthy and spiritual you are, the larger and clearer would be your aura. The stronger the aura, the greater the defense power against outside forces. The weaker the aura, greater chances of getting tired very soon, and being manipulated by others.

Just as Newton discovered seven colors hidden in white light, clairvoyants and psychics see these seven basic colors and many others in the aura. A complete analysis of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual personalities is possible through the observation and analysis of colors in an aura, just as is done in numerology. The aura even contains the history of the past and predictions for the future. Auras are not created by light, but light is required to see them. Auras get larger in sunlight and smaller in dim light.

Anyone can see the aura and its colors with sustained practice and patience. In fact, we all have some psychic powers as children, which slowly fade away as we grow wiser in the ways of the world. Emotional attachment sometimes triggers the sight of an aura. Some people have reported seeing the aura of a loved one, because they care intensely about his/her welfare, while some have reported seeing the aura of a weak and tired person in a room with many people in it, though the auras of others were not visible to him/her. It seems that the auras grow and get enlarged in intense situations.

The human aura surrounds the physical body nearly in the shape of an egg, and it has energies of two kinds: physical and subtle. Physical energies from the body are comprised of electrical, magnetic, heat, light, sound and electromagnetic fields, and these fields are measurable. Subtle energies come from six subtle bodies we possess, forming six layers around the physical body (which is the seventh). Each layer corresponds to a specific function in life. The seven divisions also correspond to the seven chakras or energy vortices in the body.

The angle rods should now be held loosely in the fists or through straws with the two longer sections facing directly in front of you. Relax the mind as much as possible. Decide on the positive and negative responses of the rods. Generally we assume that if the rods go apart from each other, it is the sign of yes, and their crossing each other is the sign of no. But we have to tell this to the rods before starting the experiments. If we do not say anything to the rods, then any response, called dowsing, will indicate the outer boundary of the aura. Ask the person under experiment to stand with his/her legs and arms slightly spread. Stand about 30 feet away from the person holding the two rods in front of you. Move forward slowly until the rods begin to respond. Take a pause and move forward more slowly until the rods either cross over or move apart from each other. This is the outer edge of the person's aura. Note the distance from the person, and with this as radius, you can draw a circle around him to indicate the field of aura. The same radius will be found when experimenting from any direction. The aura may appear very large, but it is the inner layers which you feel, when it comes to feeling the aura. A comparison of the radii will classify people according to their spiritual evolution.

 Our conscious mind is normally only aware of that upon which it is focused, that is, organized brain activity, and that which can be experienced through the five senses of touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. The subconscious mind aware of energy interactions from both sources - the five physical senses and beyond. All the interactions can be brought into the conscious through relaxation methods, such as hypnosis meditation, radiesthesia, etc. Organized brain activities radiate beta waves and control only ten percent of the body and brain activities. Relaxation methods radiate alpha wave patterns, and control about 90 per cent of the body and brain activities. The autonomic nervous system, which regulates the sensitive organs of our body, is directed by the subconscious. Interactions of outside agencies with our auric field are transmitted through our skin to our body and brain. A pendulum acts as a bridge between our subconscious and conscious minds. It is an amplifier. The subconscious mind, through the sympathetic nervous system, stimulates involuntary muscle action and thus causes the pendulum to move. However, we must learn to keep our emotions our, for this translation to take place. You can buy a pendulum from a shop or make one of your own. It is good to use a crystal since it has greater sensitivity to subtle forces, but any object such as a ring, a button, a cork, etc, can be used.