Gospel of Vedanta:-Tell me, friend, who has filled the sky with the clouds? Who holds the stars in the firmament? Who holds the canopy in the form of the sky? Who moves the mind, prana & the senses? Who has give the sweet fragrance to the flowers? Who pumps the blood from the heart to the arteries? Who converts the food into & blood into seminal energy & milk? That supreme intelligence which is at the back of all these name & froms & phenomena is Brahman, the Absolute, the Infinite, the supreme Being who is existence absolute, knowledge absolute & bliss absolute. It is eternal, perfect, pure, self-luminous. It is self-delight & self-knowledge. It is bodiless & formless. It is all-pervading, all-full, imperishable. It has neither beginning nor end. It exists in the past, present & future. It is self-existent. It is the source for the body, mind, prana, senses & the Vedas. No one can deny it, because it is the inner Self of all beings. BRAHMAN IN VEDANTA:- The Vedas exclaim from time immemorial “Existence is One; sages call it by different names,” (Rig-veda 1 – 164- 146). God, Brahman, Allah, Ishvara, Jehova, Ahurmazda, etc., are one. I offer my worship to that Supreme Being — the One eternal, homogeneous, indivisible mass of bliss & intelligence — whom sages describe in a variety of ways because of the diversity of their intellect. How can one describe the glory & Brahman? Even the Vedas have sung in praise of Him only according to their limited capacity. No one has been able to find out his beginning or end. He walks without feet, grasps without hands, hears without ears, sees without eyes, tastes without a tongue, smells without a nose, feels without skin & talks without a mouth because He is a mass of pure consciousness. He is all-pervading. He has hands, feet, eyes, heads & faces everywhere. He is beyond the reach of mind & speech & cannot be approached by argument. He is the Unknowable, the source for this world, Vedas, mind, body & prana. Brahman, Ishvara & Jiva:- Brahman, the supreme Reality, that is one & indivisible, infinite & eternal, is the substratum of Ishvara. Through maya. There are different ways of describing Ishvara. Through maya Brahman manifests as Ishvara; when Brahman is associated with the inscrutable power of shakti it is called Ishvara is also referred to as the cosmic reflection of Brahman. Through ignorance, Brahman appears as the Jiva. Another definition is that Ishvara is the collective soul & Jiva is the individual soul. However, all this is appearance only & not a reality, as Brahman is one & indivisible. The jiva has a sense of ‘I’- ness & ‘mine’-ness in the physical body at all times. He falsely superimposes the body & other limiting adjuncts (which are not-Self) upon himself & identifies himself with them. This identification constitutes bondage. The freedom from this identification is moksha (liberation). That which causes this identification is avidya, nescience. That which removes this identification is vidya. Attainment of knowledge of the Self eradicates this avidya & its effects. The essence of liberation is the attainment of Supreme Bliss & removal of all kinds of sufferings. The Knower of Brahman:- The miseries of samsara are beyond description. Ignorance is the root-cause for all human sufferings. It is very hard to suffer birth, old age, death & disease. If a man knows Brahman there is immortality for him. If he does not know Brahman he is caught in the round of births & deaths. Therefore, real aspirants who thirst for liberation abandon the erroneous notion of ‘I’ & ‘mine’ & turn away with disgust from this world, as everything here is perishable, illusory & transitory. They practice meditation on the Self & behold Brahman in all objects of this world, movable & immonable. They realize the oneness of the Self or unity of the Atman in all & become Brahman Itself. The Mundaka Upanishad says, “He who knows that highest Brahman, becomes Brahman Itself.” Mind & the Three States: Mind is not a heavy thing. It is like a light diffusible gas or vapour or fume. When a scented stick is burnt the fumes pervade the whole room in a minute. Even so the mind pervades the whole brain as soon as it emerges out of the causal body from deep sleep. If you put a grain of musk or potassium permanganate in a very large basin of water, it gets itself diffused in the whole water. Even so the mind gets itself diffused in the brain. During meditation the aspirant sometimes enters into a half sleepy state. This is called tandra. He begins to doubt whether he was meditating or sleeping. If one is really meditating his body will be light & his mind will be cheerful. If he is sleeping the body will be heavy, the mind dull & the eye-lids heavy. The slight interval between deep-sleep state & the waking state is called the state of quiescence of mind. Similarly, there is an interval between the waking state & the deep-sleep state. In the former, the mind is coming out with the experience of deep-sleep; in the latter, it is going into the recesses of the heart with the experience of the worldly objects. In these two intervals the mind is free from thoughts & attraction or repulsion.