Wednesday, September 3, 2008

How to realize God

Sri Aurobindo says God can be known in 3 forms. One is His universal form the virat, the other His immanent form or the antaryamin and the third is the individual soul a spark of the Divine. In other words these are God's transcendent, immanent and individual forms.No one can know God in any way other than these three. Now what is the procedure? Man is trapped by the five senses and the mind. He cannot see beyond mind and senses. If we can go beyond mind we can experience God. Mind and senses are called Prakriti. Prakriti works through three gunas the sattwa,rajo and tamo gunas. God is Purusha who is beyond prakriti yet supporting it. God is changeless, Prakriti is change. God is support of creation. Sakti or prakriti does creation. This is Kali dancing on immobile Siva.Ultimately Purusha and Prakriti are one and the same, the Ardha nareeswara. It is a different state. To know Purusha one has to transcend Prakriti first. That is, one has to go beyond the five senses and the mind. All the methods we employ like prayer, japa, meditation,worship etc are mere efforts to achieve this end.

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