SOHAM

Ordinary sleep and dreamless sleep are two different things. Ordinary sleep ( nidra ) is full of dreams and dream means others because dreams are always about others. In ordinary sleep your ego or individuality is operative and hence the dreams. Thus, sleep is nothing but one of the states of your mind because mind is your ego or individuality. Sleep or nidra is not oneness. Sleep belongs to duality because in sleep ‘others’ exist. Dreamless sleep, on the other hand, is without any dreams because in dreamless sleep your ego or individuality is not operative. In dreamless sleep, you exist without ego or mind. Dreamless sleep is thus not of mind but is beyond mind and that which is beyond mind is beyond duality. Thus, dreamless sleep is oneness. In dreamless sleep, there is no ‘others’. Dreamless sleep is also known as sushupti. Sushupti is your natural state because in sushupti there is no duality. In sushupti what exists is only one reality or just the existence.   Now, yo...

To say that you should watch or you can watch your thoughts while you sit in for meditation is not correct. This is because meditation and mind (thought), like two sides of the coin, cannot exist together. Thought is nothing but mind and mind is nothing but a mass of thoughts. Thus, when meditation is, mind is not and when mind is meditation is not. In fact, the very objective of meditation is to dispel or suspend thoughts. So, if you are watching your thoughts then know that you are not meditating. Thought means you have strayed away from meditation and mind has taken over.   The truth is that you can never watch your thoughts. You only realize, post-facto, that you were in thoughts which you wrongly label as watching thoughts. Meditation is awareness. Meditation is consciousness and so long you can maintain your awareness or consciousness ( sajagta ), thought can never arise. Thought or mind can arise only when the real ‘you’, I mean, that awareness or consciousness, is not th...

This body which we are so much in love with and yet upon death we are so much scared of the same body that we do not want to be with it anymore and want to consign the same body to the flames as quickly as possible. Why this is so? Isn’t it the same body which we loved and lived with our whole life? What has, then, changed now which has changed our attitude towards this body?   The way we treat the body, post-death, makes it obvious to us, that this body, per se, is not the reality. Further, we also know, not experientially but intuitively, that reality is ‘something’ else because that ‘something’ really made the difference in the way we treat the body pre and post-death. That ‘something’ when it was present in the body, the body was alive and the body moved around. Now, because that ‘something’ has disappeared from the body and hence, we have pronounced it as dead.   Thus, we all know, again intuitively, not experientially, that ‘something’ which is the reality is, for...

Moon is a reflection because it reflects the light of the Sun. Moon does not have its own light. Moon depends on the Sun for light which itself is the source. Now, moon imagining the reflected light of Sun to be its own light is ignorance. Moon’s living in the ignorance or mistaken belief that he is all; he is the source of light, is what illusion ( bhranti) or maya is. Thus maya is living life in ignorance i.e. being ignorant of one’ reality and instead living life under one’s own assumed or make-believe reality. By living under this illusion, the moon would not only live a false life, but would also not make an attempt to seek and thus would never know the reality that the source of his reflected light is not him but the Sun, without which it would not even have been able to reflect the light.   The above may not be true for the moon but is certainly true for the man because whole of the humanity is living life under a mistaken belief, under an assumed or imaginary identity ...

Every day we pass through a short death in the form of our sleep. Sleep and death are not too different. The only difference between the two is that sleep is a short death and death is a long sleep. Except that both are same. In both the cases the being (chitta) is not lost and hence you wake up again, for sure. After sleep, you wake up in the same body but after death you wake up in a new body. The sleep falls between the two waking states and death falls between two births. The last thought will be your first thought as you wake up from sleep – you can try this tonight and see it for yourself. Similarly, the last thought at the time of death will determine the quality of your next birth. Sleep is unconsciousness and death too is unconsciousness. We never come to know as when we entered into sleep because we fall unconscious before sleep and the same unconsciousness will happen to a man before his death. He will never come to know as when he entered into death as he never comes to k...