Divine Musical Offering

The musician and the raga are like the priest and the deity. Each morning as the musician sits down to practice, the soulful lyrics and the rhythm rouses the raga’s divine force quite like the ceremonial prayer performed in a temple to ‘awaken’ the deity.

Like the priest, the musician first purifies his own mind, body and soul and seeks his guru’s blessings before he begins to sing. As the temple precincts are washed before the daily prayer ritual, the place where the riyaz is performed each day is cleansed likewise. The priest first 'calls' the deity, what is known as the 'aavahan' with mantras and invites Him to be seated in the idol. While bathing the idol, and before starting the puja, the priest decorates the idol with vermillion, ash, sand wood and silk cloth. So does the musical as he concentrates within himself and sings the initial movements of the raga in deep devotion, invoking the deity of the raga, rousing it awake.

To the chanting of mantras, the priest 'appeases' the divinity present in the idol, treating God as guest and offering one by one, water, milk, honey, perfume, flowers, incense, sweets and fruit and the light of the oil lamp. Similarly, the musician now mouths the lyric like a mantra appeasing the raga's deity by awakening its mandela or mystic svara configuration, note by note, to compose cyclical musical movements in the raga.

As the paragraphs of the raga are sung, in cycles of initiation, elaboration, and conclusion, they expand its presence and aura giving it life and a spiritual extension and each. This is called aaalaap -from aalaapnaa spaces between them, create a heightened presence of the raga's divine presence. The raga's veneration is of the Lord, in the process awakening cosmic love, both in the musician who is singing and in the listener who is present. The word 'raga' means 'LOVE'

The priest then narrates the story of the Lord, to the deity, chanting the many names of
God. The puja ritual intensifies to a climax as the mantra chanting goes on and the Lord is fanned amidst the ringing of bells and the blowing of conches. At which point the Lord begins to shower His blessings on all. in the same way, the raga, too, reaches an ecstatic peak, pitch or crescendo when the musical intensifies its story, composed from its own inner nature into paragraphs of the aalaaap unfolding its intense beauty and loving nature.

Composing in the raga is a very specialized task. The prabandha, composition or structural arrangement of all tree - raga, tala, and bandish or lyric - is in unison, and the musician composes pieces which are expanding wholes within wholes, inevitably evolving geometries of musical dialog with the self.
Each paragraph has assonance and variation by way of contrast, but it also artfully formulates constant answers or resolutions only to continue the process into the next paragraph or cycle of composition. Both processes are the externalization of the intense internal process going on.

In the temple the priest now symbolically showers the consecrated water on all those cian who has achieved laya or union with the raga. The musician who has achieved laya or union with the divine core of the raga symbolized by the heightened 'drut' or fast portion of the singing now showers the blessings of musical prasad on the audience.

Depression as Blessing

A recent research study found that traits like sadness and defeatism define depression but they have their positive side, too. The research conducted by the University of Basel, Switzerland, says depressive individuals perform better than their normal peers in decision-making tasks.

What is depression? Depression is a symptom of deprivation. When you think that you are seriously lacking in something that you earnestly desire, this thought is bound to lead to depression. Depression is not a physical phenomenon; it is psychological in nature. If you feel that you have gained what you wanted to gain, that will give you a sense of satisfaction. But when you feel that you have failed to achieve your goal it leads to depression. In the first case, your life very soon comes to a full stop, but in the second case your life goes on, punctuated by commas.

Unpleasant experiences are painful but they make a necessary contribution to advanced intellectual development. Without undergoing this kind of experience, no one can be a super achiever.

A survey undertaken earlier entailed studying the lives of one hundred super achievers in order to discover their common features. It observed that one common trait of all these super achievers was discontent.

Discontent not only leads to an unending passion to achieve some prospective goal but it also engenders an unremitting urge to achieve more and more. Thus it becomes the master key for a high degree of success, whatever the field of action. Where contentment puts a full stop to everything, discontent pushes you on a non-stop journey. This is the greatest advantage of depression.

History has always shown that those living in carefree comfort, and not therefore a prey to despair, have generally failed to achieve any notable success; in contrast to those who beset by adversity, have fallen into depression only to emerge subsequently as super achievers.

If, according to the law of nature, the journey of super achievement pursues a painful course, you are bound to keep to that course. In this case, you have only two options; either achieve super success by paying its natural price, or die without ever knowing super achievement

Nature has demonstrated this fact in several ways. For example, if you want a glass of apple juice, you have to crush an apple. This applies to anyone who wants to be a super achiever: He is to oblige to tread the thorny path prescribed by nature because, without fulfilling this condition, no one can reach his desired goal.

It is a fact of life that one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth is fated to live out his life as an average person, whereas those who are born without this silver spoon contrive to achieve great success.

In the beginning, depression seems to be a curse but in the end, depression turns out to be a blessing. In fact, depression is only a temporary phase of life. It is in no way permanent. Depression is like a tedious journey. During this journey, you may be tired or bored, but when you reach your destination, you experience total happiness and satisfaction.

Deeds for the Progress

Meaning: The line of Athervaved 20/92/5 says us that – O God! May we, along with our sons, daughters, brothers and friends, always be involved in deeds for the progress of the soul?

Message: To go ahead for personal and spiritual progress, it is necessary for us to have within us the courage to fight against difficulties and lack of facilities. Man should give more emphasis on increasing his willpower instead of increasing the material means. In real progress there is not as much contribution of means and situations as of thinking and ambitions. The proper blend of all these is possible through profound resolve.

All the members of the family must make a firm resolve for spiritual progress and undertake their daily work. With that their personality will become excellent and the family will be uplifted. The formation of man’s personality is the result of his own insight, engrossment and velour, and is much more important than many other achievements in this world. One has to give an introduction of one’s willpower, daring and vision and one has to go in the opposite direction to the one adopted by common people regarding morals and methods. The common people are involved in achieving prosperity and praise in return for a price, while, on the contrary the spiritual persons have to satisfy themselves with little under the policy of ‘simple living and high thinking’ and also face the ridicule, non-cooperation and opposition from their colleagues.

One, who wins on the spiritual front, may not receive cheap praise, may suffer from want in material comforts, but becomes vitalized through the continuous grace of God. Only some rare individuals are lucky enough to achieve deep contentment and the glory of leaving behind an ideal worth following. Greatness is achieved only with idealism in thought, character and conduct.

Every member of the family must strive for spiritual uplift in individual life in this way. This itself is the education of good conduct. What kind of behavior should we have towards our own and others, those of the same group and those of the opposite group, with friends and enemies, known persons and strangers, with external enemies and internal enemies (like anger, lust, greed, attachment etc)? Only they are able to achieve the proper answers to all these questions and doubts, who are constantly engaged in the uplift of their soul. Man’s life is formed according to the results of his deeds. With good deeds he achieves progress and with bad deeds his moral downfall occurs. The Vedas teach us to constantly increase virtues in us and give up bad tendencies. In this way the life will become pure and excellent.

In a happy and prosperous family, all members should behave in this way. It is the special responsibility of the parents to provide the children the experience of excellent behavior and be helpful in their spiritual uplift.

All the Family Member should be Laborious and Happy

Meaning: According to the line of Athervaved 7/60/4 – all the member of the family should earn and be happy. They should not be upset with hunger and thirst nor should they be afraid of each other.

Message: We may not have money or wealth, we may not even be in a position to give anything to anyone, but we are always capable of one thing and that is cheerfulness. We can constantly get the benefit of virtue and contentment by distributing cheer. If you include cheerfulness in your nature, develop a sense of humor, and then wherever you be, you will be spreading cheer and whosoever comes in your contact will feel pleasant and will be impressed.

In its purest form, cheerfulness is a state of mind which depends on inner culture. There are innumerable men who keep smiling in poverty and can laugh whole-heartedly in troubles. People with a generous and balanced personality are able to laugh in any situation. They know that human life is full of facilities as well as difficulties, favorable and unfavorable circumstances. Up to now no such man has been born who received only facilities and favorable circumstances and had never to face any troubles. In the tales of our ideals Ram and Krishna, there is a description of only struggle against difficult situations in their entire lives. Whatever the great men of the world, they all have smilingly fought adverse situations and have turned them in the right direction by changing them.

The same is the basis for a happy and prosperous family. In every family, the situations of happiness or unhappiness, troubles and hardship arise. A man who keeps on weeping over his troubles, adversities and hardships will always be unhappy. If he keeps comparing himself with more prosperous people, then he will be continuously angry over his bad luck, and will express his frustration with every person in the form of anger. His entire life will be like a symbol of mental imbalance.

As against the above, the person, who compares himself with a person of lower status and is contented with whatever he has achieved, then he will always be cheerful, he will always feel that whatever he has got by the great grace of God is much better than what millions of others have got. In addition God has given us that something for which millions of people hanker. Such person will consider himself lucky. Only persons with refined temperament are blessed with this mental attitude. Such men find joy everywhere and have tremendous faith in people’s goodwill.

The family of people with such thinking always has a happy and peaceful atmosphere. Even by bearing hardships, but living with love and contentment they cooperate with one another. This creates an atmosphere of freedom from fear and worry and through that the path to everyone’s financial, social, religious and spiritual progress is opened up.

Transcend All Identities

If we human beings are mortal, then how is it that we desire eternal existence, knowledge and bliss? Human beings devoid of the attributes of existence, knowledge and bliss, logically cannot express the desire to live in this world eternally, to attain complete knowledge and complete bliss.

Beyond the existence of the physical body, you can directly feel the existence of mind, intellect and perverted ego. As we are of a finite nature, our mental and intellectual capacities are also finite. The existence of perverted ego can be perceived by the presence of specific thoughts such as thinking that one belongs to this or that country; this or that religion; that one speaks this or that language or belongs  this or that group - whatever it may be. It may be questioned whether after death of the physical body there is the existence of any such nationalist, religious or language groups - in fact, it may be pertinent to ask whether everything is destroyed or if there is the existence of a subtle body consisting of mind, intelligence and perverted ego or even beyond that the existence of an eternal entity.

Human birth is best due to endowment of the special quality of power of discrimination between good and bad and eternal and non-eternal. Physical bodies re in the grip of numerous births and deaths and are subject to many other drawbacks. This renders the physical body is non-eternal then the body's sense organs must also be non-eternal. Therefore, if there should be any eternal entity, it must exist beyond the comprehension of human material non-eternal sense organs.

In the Mahabharata, Arjuna was blessed with divine eyes, so that he may witness the Vishwarupa of Krishna a dazzled sight. Thousands were present at Kurukshetra when Krishna revealed His Virat form, yet Arjuna was the only one to see Him like that. Why?

The Supreme God is infinite; everything about Him is infinite. He has created countless species to a plan. If one accepts that human beings can determine their own cause by means of material senses, mind or intellect, then that will be a mentally or intellectually concocted thing. That will not be reality. If Reality is in fact Reality, then He must always exist. What is the Truth?

Why do we wish to be eternal? Why are we eager to learn and to experience bliss? We are a part of the Supreme - so we are like the Supreme in some respects. He is Sacchidananda and so are we. Sat in Sanskrit menas eternal life, chit is eternal knowledge and anand means eternal bliss. Soul is sacchidananda.

We were given this limited body to know our true identity. Our duty is not to hanker after temporary bliss, but to have eternal bliss. We have to find ways to realize our true identity to become servants of Sacchidananda. Since we are part of the Supreme Lord, it is our primary task to serve Him or to act in a way that pleases Him. Once we realize Him, we will also realize other eternal truths, and know that not only He but His Associates, too, do not take birth but descend.

Water is Life

Meaning: The line of Rigved 10/9/12 says us that - water is beneficial to man. By using it, the outer and inner dirt is removed.

Message: The glory of motherhood lies in the welfare of the children. A mother is always alert about her child's good health and good habit, and God knows how much hardship she suffers for the child's sake. A woman's life becomes glorified by children with good qualities and good habits and right from the time of conception to the child's birth and even thereafter her remaining life she spends for the welfare of her children. Similarly, God the Supreme Father keeps this world going with the desire for the welfare of His children. He gives happiness, like the happiness through a mother’s tender care, for all the living beings and makes arrangements for feeding them all. Among the innumerable types of help given by God, the importance of water is maximum and it is beneficial for all.

Water has been described as life and nectar in the Vedas. Water has wonderful health-giving medicinal properties and it can remove a number of diseases. Ayurved recognizes the great importance of water for the treatment of diseases. The percentage of water in man’s body is 70 percent, in the brain it is 90 percent and in solid bones it is 25 percent. Man’s body is made up of the five elements of water, earth, air, space and fire.

The entire beauty of this earth is because of water. The pleasant greenery, the beautiful fragrant flowers and plants, the trees laden with tasty fruits, ghee (butter-oil), milk, curds, butter, etc all this is produced through water only. When the water filled with the rare minerals of the mountains reaches the fields, the earth yields a golden harvest. All the works of the world are dependent upon the benevolence of water. The authority or supremacy of water is all pervading. Water possesses many great qualities and it is the nectar of our life.

By drinking clean and cool water all the dirt of the body is flushed out (through bowel-movements and urine) Ayurved mentions ‘usha-paan’ (i.e. drinking of water on getting up in the down) The man who drinks about two glassfuls of water, always remain healthy. This is because the bowels move and with the emptying of the bowels, the mind becomes cheerful, man develops a good appetite and the digestive system works efficiently. With ‘Usha paan’ many diseases and weaknesses are removed. If instead of drinking water with the mouth, practice is made of drinking water through the nose. It is extremely beneficial for the health. It increases the brightness of the eyes, raises the level of intelligence and drive away old age.

Bathing is extremely necessary for the cleanliness of the body. A daily bath is useful for strength, energy and health. A bath with clean and cool water removes dirt, perspiration and tiredness. It increases physical strength and luster and gives longevity. As far as possible, avoid bathing with warm water. Bathing with cold water is beneficial for the health.

Thus we can say that water is life itself.