Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

24/12/2018 I. Q: 1.When was Hinduism founded? A: The word ‘Hinduism’ originated due to historical and linguistic circumstances, and refers to what more properly be designated as Bharatiya-dharma, or Sanatana-dharma. There is no personal founder for Hinduism. People who follow the faith or religion which goes by the name of Hinduism hold that the foundation of this outlook of life, or way of living, is eternal, since the way of life is an expression of the basic law operating in the universe. In fact, what popularly is known as Hinduism is a practical and ethical manifestation in day-to-day living of what should be considered as the inviolable law of existence, both in its immutable form known as satya and operating form known as rita. Hence, the name Sanatana (eternal or ever-present) associated with this inclusive ‘attitude to life’. Q:2. Where was it founded, and who founded it? A: Hinduism is not believed to be founded in any place, since it has no founder. Q:3.What

27/11/2018 5. Repeatedly Lord Krishna extols righteousness. The greatest Bhakta is—not one who goes on rolling the beads, with selfishness, lust, anger and greed enshrined in his heart but—one who is endowed with all auspicious qualities, and who is devoted to the welfare of humanity. Lord Krishna does not define Jnana as scriptural erudition or an intellectual appreciation of philosophic truths or the capacity and cleverness to string words together and to indulge in vain debating. He defines Jnana as the sum total of the best of virtues. Read the thirteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, you will understand this clearly. The Lord says: watch for these qualities in a man. If they are present, he is a Jnani, a saint; you can safely follow him and adopt him as your spiritual guide. If they are absent, avoid him, even though he may be an expert in the play of words and has learnt the whole of the Vedas and Sastras by heart. For, if you find that a tree is full of mango-fruits,

17/10/2018 4. It is very easy to deal with the rank materialist, the man of openly vicious nature, the human brute; his unrighteousness is patent and it is easy to convince people of the need to keep away from him. Such vicious people are not as many as those who are extremely vicious at heart, whose conscience is enshrouded in ignorance, and through whose veins flows the deadly venom of selfishness, greed, lust, anger and egoism, but who knavishly presume an authority to teach people, to guide people along "the path of righteousness." Often, the devil quotes scriptures; and it is to the common man to detect the tiger masquerading in the garb of a cow, before it is too late to save himself. It is by the rescue of Dharma from the clutches of these mis leaders of mankind that the Lord has truly fulfilled the self-imposed task of restoration of Dharma. Mercilessly He exposes these hypocrites by defining Jnanam in terms of ethics. He has given a completely revolu

27/09/2018. 3. The third—the doctrine of the impermanence of the world—is a stern warning against your setting too much store by the things of this world. The greatest treasure you acquire is but straw! The least that you do to the Lord immanent in all around you is the key to inexhaustible treasure. The things that you acquire are of this world which will pass away; but by the service you render to God immanent here, you are watering the plant of immortality. Remember; the things that you possess and the whole world, not only this world which is but a mere speck of dust in this universe, but the universe itself, not only this but countless universes that constitute creation—are but objects of a passing dream of the Supreme Being. Grabbing them is like catching hold of a cobra mistaking it for a rope to tie round the waist as belt. Great is the misery of one who takes the world as reality and runs after the pleasures of the world. Supreme Bliss is the prize that awaits one who,

07/09/2018. 2. Though the thundering revelation of the Immortality of the Soul Sri Krishna warns man not to deceive himself by trying to ignore the law of Karma, the law of rebirth, and the law of retribution. The Soul within him does not die with the death of the body; and, so long as it does not liberate itself by attaining Jnana, it is bound to reap the harvest of the seeds it has sown in its several births. The Jiva which imagines that it is the doer of an action is bound to it by an invisible thread called attachment. The action is a rubber-ball with a long rubber-band attached to it which is given to the children to play with. One end of the band is tied to the finger of the child and it throws the ball on the ground; and the ball promptly rebounds to the child’s hand. Similarly, every action performed by you with the idea that you are doing it and with a desire to attain a certain end, is bound to rebound on you sooner or later, in this birth or in another. Death

13/08/2018 1. Salutations to Lord Sri Krishna, the sweetest manifestation of the Supreme Being! Sri Krishna is regarded as the Purna-Avarata of God. He was perfect in every respect. God is all-pervading; Sri Krishna’s life-on-earth, too, was all-comprehensive. Study Srimad Bhagavatam and the Mahabharata. You will understand what a multifaceted diamond Sri Krishna was. He was a wonderful child, divine boy, resplendent youth, dearest friend, mighty warrior, wise administrator, sweet comrade, master of diplomacy, protector of the meek, death of the wicked, preserver of Dharma, clever strategist, humble servant, obedient pupil, dutiful son, loving husband and Supreme Guru. These and countless others are but aspects of His Immanence as Krishna. Above all these, He is God who, in his own transcendental nature, is the Lord of lords, the father and mother of all creation, the very Soul of all that exists. He is the substratum of all existence. He is the Reality, immortal, eternal, infini

31/07/2018 12. For this purpose--the purpose of overcoming these unavoidable limitations of our personality--the remedy is to contemplate on the lives of saints. What a difficult but ideal life, saint Tulasidas lived? What a hard and painful life all our saints lived, inspite of the great obstacles placed on their path by the vast majority of the public! How difficult it is to be a man of God, can be known only when we study the lives of saints. To be a man of God, is to be a fool in the eyes of the public. This seems to be a necessary outcome of turning one's face towards God. "Yasyaham anugrihnami tasya vittam haramyaham"--"When I want to shed My grace on any person, I deprive him of all his pleasure-centres," is a famous statement reported to have been made by Lord Narayana Himself as recorded in the Srimad-Bhagavata. What are our pleasure-centres? We know them very well. The greatest fortress of our pleasure is our own personality-consciousnes

13/07/2018 11. I shall conclude with a prayer and a request. We are humble seekers, we are not Masters. We are small people trying to follow the footsteps of great Masters like Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, in our own humble faltering way, trying to raise our minds to true devotion to God. In this attempt, let us be honest to ourselves. This is my prayer to my own self and to all. Honesty of conscience is the watchword of a Sadhaka. Honesty of conscience has a very important significance which we have to make note of. Many times we may look honest, but we are not really honest in the deepest core of our feelings. Then it upsets the whole structure of our endeavour in the life spiritual. Because, spiritual life is nothing but the life that we lead in the bottom of our being, and not the life that we live in our rooms or in our offices or colleges or factories. What our conscience speaks is our spiritual voice. And if our conscience is not honest and pure, well, you will see the s

20/06/2018 10. So the Epic of Ramayana is a long meditation on the superior manifestation of God in the form of Sri Ramachandra. Terror was Rama, thunderbolt was Rama--says Valmiki. But butter was Rama, a rose petal was Rama, all compassion was Rama--says the same sage Valmiki. In anger, Rama was fierce like fire,--fire comparable only with the fire during the dissolution of the cosmos, and at the same time nobody could be so compassionate, good-hearted and simple as Rama himself was. This is the dramatic contradiction of personality which Valmiki introduces into his Epic, to bring out the greatness of the divine personality. What are the characteristics of great men? They are harder than a diamond but softer than a lotus-petal. The great Masters are harder than a diamond and, therefore, you cannot do anything to them and they will never budge from their principles. You cannot shake them by your powerful logic and argumentation. This is only one side of these great Masters. T

03/06/2018 9. What are we doing now? It is something like building a house with four walls without any ventilation and sitting inside in pitch darkness while the sun is shining outside in all its might and glory. The sun has come up wanting to enlighten the whole world with its lustre and force. But we live in a dungeon covering ourselves with a blanket and closing our eyes so that the energy and the light of the sun may not have any effect on our personality. This is what we do in our relation to God and in our relationship with the forces of the universe. The forces of the world are just here, within this hall, wherever we are. They are not far away in the skies. You can keep yourself open to them or keep yourself shut to them. Thoughts which are directed to the body and to the centre of the personality called the ego, prevent the entry of universal forces into our personality, so that the more important we look in our own eyes, the more impervious we are to the en

14/05/2018 8. One of the central questions in your spiritual diary should be, 'What am I in the eyes of God?' But this question is never put and you do not want to know the answer. You always wish to know, 'What am I in the eyes of people, in the eyes of my neighbours, in the eyes of the public? What does the country think about me? What do the vote-givers think about me? What is the international opinion about me?' Never for a moment you think, 'What does God think about me'. Let this be your contemplation. The moment you begin to know what God thinks about you, you will not speak afterwards; your mouth will be hushed. It will be hushed for two reasons. One reason is that you would look so small and insignificant and a nothing and all your importance vanishes in toto, when you compare yourself in His light. The other reason is that you would feel lifted up into a state of joy that the time has come for you to realise your true duty as a human being, whi

01/05/2018 7. I will now give an outline of the background of the writing of the Ramayana and the purpose behind the Epics of Bharatham The other more important aspect relevant to a Sadhaka or seeker of Truth is that Sri Ramanavami, the birthday of Sri Ramachandra, is a day for divine contemplation. It is an occasion for intensified contemplation on the Spirit, God, or Sri Rama, as we call Him. It is a day of self-control and an occasion to raise our emotions, feelings and understanding to the level of the understanding of Valmiki or Tulasidas or Kamban, or of Sri Rama Himself. These contemplations are processes by which Consciousness, our own Self establishes relationship with the powers of the cosmos. The observation of the birthday of Sri Rama or the celebration of Sri Ramanavami is not a day of mere rejoicing or feasting, but a day of spiritual contemplation and self-restraint, by which we become en-rapport with the forces of the world. What was the power of Rama? Why was

10/04/2018 6. It was not at all given to Rama to proclaim Himself as Narayana. That was not the purpose of the Avatara at all. It was to defeat the purpose of Ravana who had a poor opinion of human beings. Being a demon, he thought that human beings and monkeys were only a morsel of food for him. On account of this, he deliberately omitted to include men and monkeys in the list of his possible future enemies, when he asked for boons from Brahma. "May I not have death from any one, Gods, Kinnaras, Kimpurushas, Daityas, Danavas, all superhuman beings"--was the boon he asked. But he never said anything about monkeys and men. He thought: "They are only food for me, what need to fear them." Now, this neglect, this contemptuous attitude of Ravana towards aspects through which God could manifest Himself and does manifest Himself was the occasion for God Himself to teach humanity that He can work miracles even through the lowest of His manifestations. And the othe

29/03/2018 5. In the Ramayanam, we have such a contradictory picture of the personality of Rama, presented by Valmiki, where we are asked sometimes to look upon him as the perfected man and sometimes as a Perfection of divinity itself manifest. It is in the Yuddha Kandam of Valmiki's Ramayanam, (I am not talking of the Tulasidas Ramayanam because that has a different approach altogether) for the first time, we have a proclamation divinity of Rama, where Mandodari in deep sorrow over the death of Ravana, her husband, exclaims that it is Narayana that has come as Nara which fact is unknown to Ravana and due to his ignorance, he has mistaken Rama for human being. The contradiction which Valmiki brings out is that while he puts these words in the mouth of Mandodari, he puts a different type of statement in the mouth of Rama himself. When the whole theme is over, the drama has been played, Brahma comes and speaks to Rama, "Thou art Lord Narayana, Thy play in this wo

14/03/2018 4. i. In the Srimad-Bhagavata, one among the eighteen Puranas, at the very commencement itself, we are told that Vyasa felt the necessity of composing the Mahabharata and the Srimad-Bhagavata. And for a similar reason, was the Ramayana composed. We believe what we see with our eyes, what we hear with our ears, what we perceive with the other organs, and what we feel from our hearts. We are incapable of believing anything else. ii. Pure principles, though they may be eternal facts, are incapable of evoking the emotion of man. Hence, even the elite and the intelligentia of mankind today think of God in the Epic parlance, and not in the Upanishadic parlance. When you and I think of God, we think of the Epic God only and not the Upanishadic God or Vedic God. The meaning is that we think of a humanised relationship between ourselves and the Creator. iii. When we dehumanise the Creator or take Him above what the human mind is capable of conceiving, the

09/03/2018 3. i. We have two Epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, just as in the West they have two Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two parallel movements of Epic stories, known as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, give us a complete picture of the process of the advancement of the human soul towards its Perfection. It is not to be taken as a surprise that the culture of Bharatavarsha is a culture of the Spirit, so that anything that is said and done or believed in, is directly or indirectly connected with the march of the Spirit to the recognition of its Perfection. We have no other culture here except the culture of the Spirit. A connecting of the visible phenomena with what underlies the phenomena, is the significance of the Epics. And these two master-strokes of genius given to us by Valmiki and Vyasa, in the form of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, give us the religion of India. ii. There were some over-enthusiastic orientalists in the West parti

25 Feb, 2018 My dear countrymen, Namaskar. Let us begin today’s Mann Ki Baat with a phone call. Phone Call… Thank you very much for your phone call. My young friends have asked me many questions related to Science; they keep writing on quite a few points. All of us have seen that the sea appears blue, but we know from routine life experiences that water has no colour at all. Have we ever thought why water acquires colour in rivers and seas? The same thought occurred to a young man in the 1920s. The same question gave rise to a great scientist of modern India. When we talk about Science, the first name that strikes us is that of Bharat Ratna Sir C.V.Raman. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his outstanding work on light scattering. One of his discoveries is famous as the Raman Effect. We celebrate the 28th of February as National Science Day since on this very day, he is said to have discovered the phenomenon of light scattering, for which the Nobel Prize was confer