Roadmap to God - Part 2 "The Background"

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What is the theoretical Background of my earlier post  in the Brahma-Sutras and other Vedic Texts?

Well, Vedic texts are extremely vast to say the least. I am reading them over the weekends just for the passion about the subject. In my humble reading of the Vedic texts, the closest theoretical background which I found was the “Shad-Darshan” 



  • Mimansa Darshan
  • Vedanta
  • Nyyay Darshan
  • Sankhya Darshan
  • Vaisheshika
  • Yog.
  • Jainism
  • Buddhism




Each of these philosophies is again extremely vast, all of them have their dedicated followers and needs a lot of serious practice to understand. In fact ongoing research happens in Top Philosophy departments world wide about this. The little I tried to read for myself, I learn that atleast 5 of these Astik schools of philosophy have defined their ultimate Goal as “Moksha/God realization”

We will elaborate on these in a separate post and also about  which is the one school of philosophy which doesn’t necessarily think Moksha is the ultimate goal.



Everyone is ultimately destined to get Moksha in some or the other lifetime. Think of it as a timeline. This lifetime is just one short 80 year timeframe we are spending on this timeline in this particular body/mind. We have spent many earlier and will spend many ahead. The spiritual progress we make in one life carries forward with us and we get a headstart in next life. That’s why we hear stories of Great Saints like Gajanan Maharaj, Sant Dyaneshwar etc started showing signs of great wisdom at a very young age. Because they were carrying their spiritual progress from past lives and were close to Moksha.







But then what prevents us(the common person like me and you) from attaining moksha earlier?

As far as I understood from my little understanding of Vedanta, the thing which prevents us the most is “Aham अहम्” i.e. Ego. This अहम् doesn’t allow us to think that we are much more than this body/mind.

We all have ego. If I think about myself, well, just a small observation tells me that I am full of ego (just like all of us are, no exceptions). My profile on this blog itself reads a lot about ME (ego) and conveys that I worked in multiple countries in dream jobs in Hot sectors. I know no one cares, but I feel proud of it and want to ascertain that I am very intelligent. This is EGO. Earlier the profile included even more achievements, which I purposefully reduced later to just 1 sentence and I don’t yet feel like removing that because I associate it with my identity. I have an ego about my Mind. But mind is just another depreciating asset which will loose its sharpness with age and time. Some people might have ego about body which will depreciate with age. So this EGO about our body/mind complex does not allow us to realize that we are pure Brahman/the cosmic energy itself......We are so much more than this body/mind.... Unless we can let go of this ego, we cannot realize god/moksha. This ego takes us away from surrendering to God.  So I am definitely not yet ready for moksha....! 

This is just my example and we all have this Aham/ego in exactly the same proportion. I am sure the readers can relate with me. I felt brave enough to recognize and put it in words. I consider its a good step towards Adhyatma (God).

We all have this EGO and we think that our materialistic achievements give us our identity. This is the exact mistake we all make. Thats why the other key towards moksha is Vairāgya (वैराग्य)  - (Link to my article on it).  We get bounded by these materialistic things of the body/mind complex and never think about the "Grand Goal" which we can rather pursue.


May be NOW is a good time to think about it......?

 

In the next part of my post (part 3- The Intro), we will see how the Bhagvad Gita guides us in this journey by giving us a roadmap.


To be Continued......

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