confrontations with sprituality

Out of the dustbin

My confrontations with sprituality

I have been listening to Swami Guruparananda's classes on aparoksha anubhuthi for the past few months. I could not listen to them continuously due to my weakness in concentration. It is very difficult for me keep my enthusiasm and motivation going without any external support. I should really pray for my Guru’s grace to guide me in the right path. 

                I came to know of Swami Guruparananda through my college mate and best friend jayachandran who has always been my mentor in my spiritual quest.  Though  I was attracted towards words like yoga, meditation, pranayama etc, the affinity was naturally a response towards the modern trend. I did not realize then spirituality was the only path that I should pursue. Due to my family environment and the way I was brought up I was into this money making and saving for future business (not to mention still I am doing the same, though with a clarity of vision).  So I believed what I followed was real spirituality. In adhering to the disciplines recommended by the so called modern guru’s I thought I could attain enlightenment.  Then jayachandran  introduced me the vision of Vedanta. Although I have heard about the word Vedanta, my impression about Vedanta was not healthy largely due to image created by the elders surrounding me. They used to say it is varattu Vedanta ( dry and useless), and Vedanta only talks about mayavada and one cannot gain anything from it. To support this belief the swamis of Vedanta are not attractive like the modern gurus. Their wardrobe doesn’t contain more than half a dozen saffron dhothis. They always speak in a monotonous tone and seem to follow Hinduism’s  superstitious beliefs. Not to mention the criminal swamis and anandas getting arrested for sexual harassment resemble the larger group anandas.  Any swami’s name ending with an ananda tend to create an immediate feeling of nausea and allergy. So obviously you want to keep yourself away from them.

                But when jayachandran introduced me the vision of Vedanta I could see an entirely different perspective to it. He convinced me to listen to swami guruparananda’s and swami Omkarananda’s Vedanta classes. When I tried to listen to them initially they appeared to me as boring and as a time waste. But I always trusted my friend’s  clarity of thinking and I have reaped lot of benefits whenever I followed his suggestions. one important example I can give here. I used to suffer a lot with nose block since my child and ever since i arrived in the Maldives i developed a problem of sneezing. i have tried pranayama for more than one and  a half year, took nose drops for years with little or no effect. especially i had numerous horrible nights fighting my nose block and sneezing giving headaches to my wife.

    I was very excited when Jai introduced me to acupuncture. he was learning acupuncture at that time and he had strong conviction about its remedial properties. He even tried to stop my mother from undergoing an operation for back problem. he said if she could take this treatment for a fortnight she will be completely cured of her back pain and an operation would be unnecessary. Call it orthodox, name it disbelief, she went on with the operation. I personally did not believe acupuncture could cure major problems like that either. But when he also had same problem like mine and cured himself with the aid of acupuncture, I was really delighted.