![]() ![]() One day I thought, ‘May be I should do something to create a bridge between science and religion’. When I read more about science, I understood that many of the things which are in the religious domain are not accepted by science. Finally, I started to believe that God is one, formless but can show himself to devotees in the form they worship. I also read texts about Vedanta and self-inquiry but I could not understand them. I had also read a few mythological books including Skanda Purana and Shiva Purana. Then I started reading Bhagwad Gita and Periya Purnam (A collection of stories of 63 enlightened devotees of Lord Shiva). After seeing continuous failures in getting my mind to focus on a single object, I finally gave up the confidence that I could do it. ![]() I tried to do meditation often but ended up fighting with my thoughts and had no success in concentration. Samadhi is the highest goal of Yoga but it required years and years of practising meditation, doing asanas and pranayamas (exercises manipulating the breath). He was able to get the same results by doing sadhana in Christian and Sufi paths.Īfter a year, I started reading a book about Yoga and came to know about Ashtanga yoga, the eight limbs of Yoga in the path of attaining Samadhi. I was also impressed about the fact that Ramakrishna followed Christianity and Islam to see if they also led to the same goal of Samadhi. ![]() Ramakrishna used to say that if somebody shed tears in the desire to see God, then he would definitely see God in this lifetime and attain liberation (enlightenment).Reading this, I immediately shed tears after shutting myself in the pooja (worship) room. Reading this book increased my desire to see God in a physical form. This concept is same as salvation or the union with God in Christianity. The Indian word for spiritual enlightenment is Moksha, the event which frees an individual from the cycle of birth and death and makes him to be directly united with God. He considered the desires for women and gold to be the common obstacles to spiritual enlightenment. One thing he insisted was to stay away from women and gold. His words were filled with pearls of wisdom. I also read about the unbelievable stories of how he used to have visions of Goddess Kali and talk with her. I was fascinated about the trances that Ramakrishna used to go through, a state in which he was immersed in divine bliss with no consciousness of the outside world. He was considered to be enlightened but was not as famous as Vivekananda. Ramakrishna Paramhamsa was the guru of Swami Vivekananda. When I was about nine years old, I happened to read the book ‘Gospel Of Ramakrishna’. I was taught that Buddha attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree and I had no idea what it meant. The same year, I was also taught in school about Buddha. This was going to help to me to learn some advanced topics in the years to come. When I was seven years old, I could read and understand stories in children’s magazines written in Tamil. I had learnt to read very early in my life. Unknowingly, I had tried to do my first meditation this way. I used to sit with closed eyes for fifteen to thirty minutes every day when I was seven years old. Seeing those people in movies, I too tried to imitate them. They were shown to be sitting or standing with closed eyes in various positions for years with no food and water so that they can have such visions. In those early days, I have watched movies in which devotees performed Tapas (penance) to get a vision of God and to get their boons granted. I was told that it was possible if I prayed enough. Eventually, I began to fall in love with all these heavenly beings and had a deep desire to see them with my physical eyes. I showed more devotion than any of the other children of my age in my neighborhood. My early childhood days were spent in listening to stories of mythology and singing devotional songs. I was asked to pray to them to have my wishes granted and threatened to be punished by God if I was morally wrong. My grandparents taught me that God had a family with children who had God relatives. I grew up in a Hindu family which required me to believe in a personal God and his family of Gods. Finally, I will put the concept of spiritual enlightenment in a scientific perspective and try to explain it using the terminology of academic psychology. Then I will provide an honest unbiased review of both Sadhguru and Osho. I am going to walk you through the journey of my life and give you accurate description of the changes that I went through in my sadhana. In this post, I am going to talk about my spiritual journey and the two most influential people in my life, Osho and Sadhguru. ![]()
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