Vastu House in a Vedic City

Today we moved into a beautiful Vastu house in Maharishi Vedic City. A Vastu design follows a branch of the Vedas called Sthapatya Veda. Vastu houses are supposed to be completely aligned with all the laws of nature, and are considered health- and fortune-giving. Vastu is named after Vastu Devata (god) who is supposed to give health and wealth. Vastu houses are distinctive in how they strictly align with nature, and with the movement of the Sun, with East being the most favored direction.

1746 Joy ave

Maharishi Vedic City was incorporated in Iowa by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a township in about 2001, with the express purpose of establishing a Vedic way of living. Said to be the first Vedic village since the Vedic times, it is a small city with its own mayor. It is an experiment in government by natural law. The layout of the town is designed completely according to Vastu guidelines.  Most of the residents of the city are white. These white desis, as I call them, are completely Vedic at heart. They are all long-standing practitioners of Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi techniques.

We are a rare family of Indian origin living in this Vedic city. It will be a nice experiment for us to discover the health and wealth giving power of Vastu homes, and Vastu devata! Stay tuned!

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“Don’t give me this bliss s**t”

A good friend recently said,”do not give me this bliss s**t”. It is all a mind game, he said. Another good friend said, “you say you live in bliss, but I don’t see you so.” Both of these people are longtime friends from India, intellectuals with PhD degrees, who are comfortably settled in the US.

To the first friend, I said that there are over 700 scientific published studies that show the benefits of meditation, and that one can enjoy good health, happiness and bliss. That did not convince him. So, I spoke from personal experience, and how my moksha experience led me to write my book ‘Moksha’. That did not convince him. Come to our town and if you do not feel peace in your heart, I will pay you a substantial sum of money. That got him going. In essence, he said that Moksha is a very big thing, and it cannot be achieved by a simple process. He said he had been meditating off and on, and he did not get any benefit. His mom meditated all life and did not reach anywhere near there. I said it also depends upon the strength of desire, and one cannot will the desire. He said that desire alone cannot produce anything. So, I felt best to let go of the argument, and let him take his own time to be ready.

To the second friend, I said that bliss is an intensely subjective experience, and there is no way another person can experience it. One just have to believe it or feel it. Also, that bliss experience can come and go, depending upon continued practice of meditation. I also said that I was given the Maharishi award recently for bringing bliss to the community. I could see that he did not believe my story on Moksha and therefore had not bothered to read my book even though he had it.

Moksha book cover

I feel that most people are completely conditioned to no-pain-no-gain theory. If bliss is that good, it must take a lot of time and expertise and effort, they argue. However, bliss is an effortless accomplishment. Bliss is our true nature. One does not need a complicated process to achieve it. However, one does need a strong desire for it, which would overshadow other worldly desires. I feel that not everyone has the desire to escape the stresses of modern life, and reach out for  their god-given gift of bliss. The book is an attempt to inspire that desire in others.

 

Brahm Vidya

Brahm Vidya … by Dr. Anil Maheshwari

Total enlightenment is akin to becoming Brahm, the ultimate non-dual reality that is the source of all creation. Brahma is referred to in Vedanta as Aham Brahm-asmi, as the ultimate divine reality of every person. Brahm is unmanifest reality, that includes within itself silence and dynamism, and knowledge and action. Brahm includes within it all the states of consciousness including those represented by the five senses, as well as five basic elements of earth, water, fire, sky, and air.

The Brahm state can be experienced through constantly transcending the surface reality in a consistent and deep manner. Brahm can manifest itself in any number of ways. The descriptions of attaining Brahm state are diverse and infinite. They are described in many kinds of transcendental or sometime fantastic imagery that one see when one is floating in that state. The way to transcend is to ‘paschya’ or see; thus a seer is one that relentlessly tries to ‘see’ the ever-deeper reality, till one directly perceives the transcendent reality. The ancient seers were able to ‘see’ the totality of the universe in their own physiology, and they represented the sounds they saw in abstract but highly structured verses that formed the sacred scriptures.

Brahm is described in the Vedas, which are a structured representation of primordial sounds. The first sound of the first Veda, Rig Veda, is ‘Aa’. This sound contains within itself the totality of Brahm. Thus Brahm is as if coiled into a single primordial sound, like DNA and proteins are. The Aa sound is then elaborated into the first verse of Rig Veda, which is expanded into the mandala, and then into the other Vedas. Thus Vedas could be considered to be written in some sort of a recursive manner.

The literal representation of each sound is scientifically representative of the shape of the mouth when uttering that sound. Thus the vedic alphabet (Sanskrit) is highly phonetic, i.e. every sound is written just as it is spoken. Thus ‘Aa’ is spoken with the mouth wide open, and is represented as such.

There are primordial sounds in every language. The sound ‘Aa’ is found in every language. It is the easiest and the most natural sound. The first sounds coming out of a baby’s mouth as ‘aa’. It is the easiest and the most effortless sound to produce. When one is struck by wonder, the sound that comes out from the mouth is also the primordial sound ‘aah’. Other common primordial sounds are ‘ee’ and ‘oo’, and ‘um’. There are a few other such sounds like Ri and Lri also, but they are composites of these basic sounds: aa, ee, oo, um. Some of these sounds show up as vowels in languages.

The most sacred Vedic sound is ‘Om’. It is a composite of Aa, Oo, and Um. The sound ‘aa’ represents infinity value of reality, and the ‘um’ sounds represents a point value. Thus in chanting the sound of Aum in the right sacred manner, one begins with invoking the infinite unmanifest universe and ends with the collapse of the unmanifest universe to a point value. This point coincides with the beginning of the manifest universe and is represented by the letter ‘Ka’, the first consonant. The consonants are non-primordial sounds that take more effort and a more elaborate physiological arrangement to produce. Every language has vowels and consonants.

It takes wisdom to re-acquire one’s innocence after entanglement in the illusion of the maya-ic concept of external world as real. The most innocent of people, and babies, see wonder in many things, and are thus in divine or Brahm state. With constant practice of transcendence, and living a sattvic healthy life, one can begin to get glimpses of it. The Brahm state is all bliss all the time, and thus worthy of seeking with one’s full heart and mind.