Pearls of Wisdom ~ Azhaikindran Arangan Episode June 26th 2012

"maRam suvar mathiL edutthu maRumaikkE veRumai pooNdu, puRam suvar Ottai mAdam puraLum pOdhu aRiya mAttIr" says Azhwar. Azhwar describes the body. What constitutes this body? Well, there is blood flowing inside and is made up of the flesh, skin, bones with 9 holes.

"maRam suvar mathiL edutthu" says azhwar. In order to survive, given that one must indeed eat something and need a place to live and cloth to cover the body, the human will still not hesitate to develop his body at the cost of even troubling the other. 



"maRam suvar mathiL edutthu maRumaikkE veRumai pooNdu" - forgetting that there is another world and there is someone called the bhagavan "puRam suvar Ottai mAdam puraLum pOdhu aRiya mAttIr". So many scientists have dawned upon this planet, discovered and described other planets such as Mars and the Sun for example. But our Upanishads describe about the body ("sharIram"). Scientists were searching outside and philosophers were searching inside. If someone were to ask who we are, we would usually say we are the body and this body is mine. But the way of Vedanta mentions that the body is composed of 5 kOsams (elements). By virtue of food intake , the body grows and being prithivi, one of the five kOsam is called the "annamayakOsam". Like a thuruthi, the body is constantly letting the air in and letting it out. If we are to find out if someone has life within, we test to see if there is the breath coming in and going out, therefore this is called as the "prAnamayakOsam". When we hold our hand beneath the nose of a person and find out if he is not breathing then we pronounce him dead. The meaning of somebody who is dead, the equivalent word in tamil is "satthupoitar", actually the part of the "sat-chit-ananda", meaning the "sat" has left the body. This "sat" leaving the body has slowly come to be called as "sethupoitar" in general parlance. After the body there is the annamayakOsam, then there is the prAnamayakOsam, then the mind, then the arivu and beyond this is the anandam. Based out of these 5 kOsams, the body has been constructed say the Vedanta and the jNana scriptures. There they ask whether you are the body and then answer that you are not the body. When we are performing pooja to the swami, we burn the agarbathi which has a small fire burning at its tip and if this tip touches our hand accidentally it burns like anything. We apply burnol to that and we try to get that healed. One day after our prana has left the body, they are going to burn the body in a crematorium. They bring so much fire and pour in to burn the body, yet the body does not feel a thing. The other day a small agarbathi tip burnt him so much whereas now he never feels anything. If one is shut in a room with no air, he cannot stay for long, but one day he is buried inside the mud. If he is indeed the body, he should complain that his body is burning or his body is stifling without air when he is buried inside the mud. The body is just an instrument but not all encompassing. Beyond the body, the existence of the prana is also not noticed. In a particular home there is someone who is sleeping nicely and snoring. Even while sleeping there is a thief who comes in, opens the cupboard and steals away all the gold jewels, silver vessels kept inside and even if there is food left he even eats that and goes. When the inmate of the house wakes up from sleep in the morning he is shocked to see all that has happened. Did this inmate die in the night, no, he was very much alive and breathing. If his breathing was stopped, then he is indeed dead. In this case the breathing is very present, but he is not aware of what is happening around him. So one cannot say that the prana is the atma. The prana is moving yet he is unable to be aware of what is happening. Sometimes the body is there, yet not aware of anything happening. Say one has to get operated in the head and his skull has to be broken. A drug is administered and his mind becomes dead. Even if his skull is cracked open and bolts and nuts are fixed, he is completely unaware. If he was indeed the mind, then all that was happening to him must be known. Thus the body is very much there, yet known to him. The prana is moving around, yet not known to him. The mind is killed by drugs or liquor yet not known to him. The Arivu or intellect, no need to ask as when I am sitting here with a wall separating me from the other side and If i am asked what is happening on the other side, I will not know about it. Intellect is bound to a place. If someone asks what did you do 10 years ago, I have to think and answer and not sure if I would say that right, as I forget it. I also do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, neither for myself nor for the other I will not know what is going to happen. Since the intellect does not know what happened yesterday, nor tomorrow and is bound by the place and things around, how can we then say that intellect is the atma. Intellect is not the atma, neither is the mind, nor is the prana or the body. Then the anandam is enjoyed by the mind. One person who is often sitting in dhyanam and he feels an anandam, while listening to the discourse he feels an anandam, performs a bhajan and feels an anandam and the moment he comes out of these activities, his anandam reduces. If the anandamayakOsam was indeed the atma, it should have been permanent and not temporary. So Vedanta clearly states that the atma is none of the five. Here we said "puRam suvar Ottai mAdam", vedantis say that you are made up of the 5 kOsas. 

When we go to the yogeeswarars they say you have mulAdharam, swAdhistAnam and six chakras are present in your body. They say that If we go on to the top of the head there is a 1000 petalled lotus flower. There is a nAdi called sushumni. That nadi when going about in idagala / pingala and joining in the ajnA and then bursting forth from out of the center of the head, one can see the amrutha swaroopam of the bhagavan in the heart. Do not just think you are the body as within your body are all these yoga chakras and if you are able to raise these chakras up, what will happen is that the astamA siddhis will come to you - anima, mahima they say. You can make yourself as light as a feather, huge as an elephant and so on. Not only that, the yogeeswarars claim that there are five prAnas going around your body. What are the five prAnas? Today the doctor puts a stethoscope on the heart and checks the heart beat, checks the breathing etc., the prana is the air that comes out from the lungs and moves upwards. This prAna is the most important of the five pranas. The prAna that leaves from the lower part of the body is called apAnavAyu. Then there is a prAna called udAna which, for the upAsaka, the upanishads say, is that prAna which starts from within the inner tongue, where there is a hole and through that hole this prAna comes over to the head and travels outward to reach the vaikunta. Then there is a prAna called vyAna. Some people hold their legs and cry out that the vAyu has been caught within the legs and also they say that in the hands there is air being caught. There is a prAna flowing all over the body and this is what the yOgis term as the vyAnan. Keeping the body stable with the heartbeat and blood pressure is the prAna called samAnan. Thus there are these five prAnas going around the body. Within the 84 lakh lifeforms, by and large the elephant, cow, goat etc are some of the four legged beings, others such as the snakes, millipede crawl on the ground, but how come the man is standing up vertically. This is because the prAna and the apAna is balanced equally for the human. To what extent the apAna goes down, there is an equal extent of prAna going up and therefore well balanced and the human being is able to stand up straight on his two legs. So they have said that this is not just a body but there are 5 kOsams, 5 chakras and 5 prAnas. In certain upanishads they also mention that just like the onion peel there are 16 avaranams within the body.

If a man performs any form of punyam or good deeds, karmAnustam or the greatest yAga, lots and lots of charitable acts he still travels around in the three worlds. They are the Bhu, BhuvahA and SuvahA which are below the Sun. The rest of the worlds are the worlds of jNana, either the paramapadam of vaikuntam, the worlds of those performing the tapas which is the world of tapas or the worlds attained by brahmacharya. The highest worlds attained by tapas, brahmacharya, bhagavath upAsana are the worlds of jNana as distinct from the worlds of the karma. These worlds of jNana are indeed above the Sun whereas the worlds attained by means of karma are below the Sun, namely the bhu, bhuvahA and SuvahA. When performing the bhashyam of the upanishads this very great thing is told in a very simple manner and very beautifully. This Sun is a mahath upAsana. In each of the human body there is a Sun as well as the tEjas which is the atma and the Sun being the jNana.

When asked where the atma resides, it is mentioned by Vedantis that it is slightly right of the chest. This is where the atma, brahmam or the bhagavan is. The Upanishads ask - the jNana indriyas essentially the eyes, nose, ears, mouth are higher in the body, whereas the karma indriyas essentially the legs, thighs and yOni are downward. The jNanEndriyam is above the atma stAnam and the karmEndriyam is below the atma stAnam, likewise in the universe the worlds attained by jNana are high above the Sun and the worlds attained by karma are below the Sun. When we often read the charithrams of the mahans, we often hear them telling that they saw the devas flying high in the sky and see them moving about in the skies here and there. The Upanishads ask, where would the devas move about? The Upanishads answer - from the viewpoint on the earth, when you look at the sky and find how far the birds fly and beyond the highest point that the birds will fly is where the devas move about. The transition of the devas is at that height. If one is always praying to the bhagavan and performing namasankeerthanam, the worlds he would attain are beyond the Sun. 

Do not think of the namakeerthanam as something ordinary and simple.

In the Srimad Bhagavatham, look at both Jadabharathar and ajAmila. Jadabharathar performed severe thapas. Leaving everything and living in a forest called pulahAsramam, controlling his mind and senses, he performed dhyAna and tapas. But in his end of days, his attachment with a kid deer was so much that he was born as a deer in his next life. ajAmila had done wrong in no ordinary terms, but he cried out Narayana and attained vaikuntam itself. Jadabharathar who had faced so much difficulty performing severe tapas got his jNanam in another janma only whereas the wrong-doer ajAmilan attained liberation in the same janma. Vasisthar even today has not attained Sri Vaikuntam, he is still existing as a rishi in the saptarishi mandalam. Even Dasaratha is existing in the Swarga, say the puranas.

But the namakeerthanam which we can perform so easily can give us the world of the jNana. The worlds that can be attained by jNana, the worlds that were attained by those who had jNana and this world of the highest order exists above the Sun. We said about the Vedanta, in which it is mentioned that you do not have to do anything, you discover and find out "WHO ARE YOU?". The Vedanta says, "I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the intellect, I am not the prana but I am indeed the indestructible atma" which is what you need to think and discover. Vedantis tell you that to do pranava japam or brahma vichAra it is enough and no need to do anything more. Just as the pranava japam and brahma vichara being enough for the Vedantis, likewise the namakeerthanam is enough for the bhakthas. If one can make himself say the nama of the bhagavan for 24 hours with his tongue, the bhagavath darshanam for him will certainly materialise and this is certain. Namakeerthanam being a very easy and simple method and indeed the most illustrious path, Azhwar keeps saying this again and again in the TirumAlai, "aRanchuvar Agi ninRar aranganArkkuAt cheYAdhE puRanchuvar kOlam seidhu puzhkouwak kidakkinrErE"
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