The Effulgent Soul

Everyday in retrospection I am struck by a thought, a thought which makes me inquisitive to find out my raison d'etre. I try to find an answer and someone replies from within, that I am as radiant as the shining sun, as beautiful as the moon, as enchanting as the peak of the tallest mountain and as peaceful as the silence after a stormy night.
I ask then, who are you and are you within me and the inner voice replies, that I define existence, I define you, and you must search for me. A strange answer to a never ending question. As my mind seems obfuscated and grapples with this strange thought, the voice continues to reveal itself.

I am the soul, I do not have a beginning or and end. I am infinite and you are a part of me. You can define me as energy, infinite energy, the sum total of which remains constant. I can be proved as omnipresent because energy is everywhere, even a book on a table has energy, on account of the potential energy it has due to its mass and height above the ground. I know it sounds strange but may be you never thought from such a perspective.

To exemplify a bit more, just look at your body. It is full of energy, each and every part of it. It is just that in this physical world, your body dissipates energy and needs incessant replenishment. But it ultimately depends on energy in some form or the other. Therefore you come in contact with your soul, that is me, every moment in your life. It is just that the process is so natural that this never catches our attention.

If you have prayed anytime in your life, then who do you think you are praying to? Is it that God that you believe in or some supernatural phenomenon? Whatever be your answer, the truth is that when you pray, you inspire yourself. When you pray from your heart for someone, there is a sense of divine serenity, never felt before. This experience emanates from within you, your prayer has inspired your mind to get closer to the soul and believe me that depending what mind prays for and the intensity with which it prays, can make a difference. So the point is that you are the soul yourself, it is just that you are in a state of oblivion, in a state of partial truth. You are a form of energy and the everything you do involves energy. So you can never escape the truth, that you are a part of me, a living force with lesser energy levels as compared to the soul and the entire purpose of your life is getting back to the soul.

I am not a king or a queen who sits somewhere in heaven above you. I do not have a specific form and I am capable of taking any form. I am everywhere after all, in everything you have seen or felt so far. I am energy, I am an experience supra to all experiences that you have had. I am love that you experience, I am the warmth that a mother feels when she feels the breath of her child on her cheeks, I am happiness that you experience after a sacrifice made in honour of someone, I am the courage that sits in you like the inner fire, I am the determination that tells you to try once again despite a 1000 failures. I am not an object of desire, like a blonde girl, rather I am the cause for your existence.

I will always exist, and you will also be there forever but not in the same form you visualize yourself. At last, it says that find yourself, find me, make yourself aware of the truth. Then one day you will find me, and will never want to return from that state of truth because you will be overwhelmed by the sheer joy of discovering the truth.

Come to me, your source. Because when I will come, your ego will melt and there will be love with no strings of quid pro quo. You body will heal and your mind will merge with me. We will be like the flame and the light, spread light and warmth while we burn together "(just like a candle burning). Come to me, come to me, come to me.

The Mystical Mind

Mind has always fascinated people because of its mystic nature. It is always full of thoughts that keep bombarding it like the atoms in a hot gaseous substance. Its response to events in our life and its never ending desire makes it one of the most complicated aspects of our life. Let us try and explore it from a different perspective. I would like to clearly state that the thoughts below are out of my personal experience.

To explain the behavior of mind let me compare it with an Operating System scheduler. For those of you who are new to the Scheduler concept, I will put it this way; A scheduler is one that enables you to use a web browser and listen to an audio at the same time. It appears that it is handling both activities at the same time but it is not. A very important feature of the scheduler is that performs a task and then detaches itself and carries out the next task.

Our mind works on the same lines as the scheduler. Our life is made up of events and mind reacts to them. It takes up an event, acts on it and then detaches and moves to the next event. The problem arises when mind attaches itself to an event and is not ready to let it go. This can be called attachment. Like love could be an event in our life and loosing the person we love could be another event. Mind holds on to these events and is unable to overcome the past. As mind still holds on to the past events its efficiency to handle the present ones decreases. It is due to this reason that attachment in any form is always an obstacle. We must train our mind to become an observer, that is it should not get influenced by the circumstances, rather it should perform its job and then detach from it. An observer does not get attached to anything and is neutral. An observer has no inclination towards good or bad and is like a witness who must state the facts with a sense of impartiality.

A brilliant method to train our mind to detach is through meditation. As one meditates there will be a continuous flow of thoughts and our mind may get carried away by each one of them. So before sitting to meditate tell yourself that today I feel like an observer, unaffected by the circumstances occurring in life. Once this is done, get ready to meditate. As your mind enters the meditative state, you will experience an an avalanche of thoughts striking your mind, but just see them passing by as if you were watching a caravan from a a great distance. Gradually a sense of satisfaction will prevail that will lead you to a state of rest and peace. With continuous practice your mind will learn the art of detachment.

Events keep occurring and demand a response from our mind. These events, either from the past or present generate thoughts and this is what mind feeds on. Thoughts are energy waves that effect our mind. As these thoughts waves hit our mind, depending upon its state it either generates a positive or negative response.

To understand everything better let us consider the Mind and Soul Diagram given below:


In the above diagram, mind is shown as revolving around the soul because mind and soul are interlinked. Mind is a part of the soul while the Soul can be considered as the ultimate source of energy, that is omnipresent. This energy can neither be created nor be destroyed, that is, the sum total of energy always remains constant. It is just that this energy keeps transforming from one form to another. Nature provides umpteen examples of energy transformation, like the solar energy being converted to electrical energy in photo voltaic cells or the solar energy being used by plants for photosynthesis.

Soul has a very high energy level which cannot be measured. The amount of energy is infinite and our body is incapable of handling so much of energy. Just imagine , what would happen if you could feel the heat of Sun inside you, your body will burn. Therefore the soul lowers its energy level which gives birth to a mind. So the source of mind is the soul and it is at a lower energy level as compared to the soul. Our mind incessantly tries to regain the lost energy level, trying to get back to its source.

Why do you think our mind is always after something or the other or why does it search for happiness? It is because when a mind is happy, its energy levels rise up and it is more closer to the soul. But the problem lies in attachment, if we keep holding onto temporary objects of desire, our happiness will also be short lived. Once this object of desire is gone we become sad, lowering the energy levels and we are back to square one. So our mind is held up in this vicious cycle and in order to overcome this try to find happiness in something that you believe is everlasting.

A mind's quest for happiness and peace in this life can be justified as trying to attain the deficit energy level (difference in energy between the soul and mind). As mind raises its energy level it comes closer to the soul and when the deficit is met it experiences unification.

In the Mind and Soul diagram, the Soul is the center point , just like the Sun and mind revolves around it, like the planets. Mind takes energy from the soul as planets take energy from the sun. It also follows a closed loop around the soul on account of the interaction between two forces as explained below.

It is known that Sun exerts a gravitational force on the planets and the planets have a force perpendicular (on account of their velocity) to this gravitational force that makes them follow an elliptical path around the sun. In the same way soul exerts a force on mind, inspiring it to increase its energy levels. This in turn generates a desire for peace and happiness. Mind also has a perpendicular force (on account of the events affecting it ) that disturbs its state of equilibrium and makes it to follow a closed loop around the soul.

Mind also undergoes an oscillatory motion caused on account of the thoughts bombarding and displacing it from the equilibrium position. Mind incessantly tries to regain its state of euilibrium, the state of a single thought prevailing. The above diagram also shows the distance (radius) between the soul and mind, which is an indicator of the difference in energy levels between the two. It can be said that the objective of life is to bring this distance to zero.

The Mind and Soul diagram opens up a new topic for discussion, the Soul. My next blog will describe soul as the ultimate source of energy.