Cosmic Roots
17 Mar
By Sangeeta
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A Rainbow - A sign from heaven?
When you read the article ‘A quick look at Ayurveda principles and goals’ on this site, you will get to know how old Ayurveda is. The two famous Vedas, Rig and Atharva, mentions Ayurvedic ways of longevity, surgery and healing. Known as the ‘science of life’, Ayurveda also teaches the ‘philosophy of living’. It always targets the cause of a disease; it does not just try to cure a disease only by its symptoms. And what are the ‘causes’ of disease? – the transgression against our inner wisdom and transgression against the laws of Nature. Therefore, any disease is either:
a. physical in origin – due to excessive eating, excessive use of the senses, ignoring the seasonal cycles and ignoring the growing age.
b. karmic in origin – due to performing incorrect actions, either in past lives, or this life, or both combined.
When rebirths started getting recognized as the ‘truth’ in India around the 8th century AD, then it got slowly digested by people that the part of us that dies is the physical body. What does not die is our ‘Antakarana’ (a psychic instrument consisting of the mind, ego (Ahamkara) and intellect). Till we attain ‘Moksha’ or liberation, this Antakarana stays with us in every life, meaning, in every birth.
As I was saying, ‘the causes’ of disease is removed by Ayurveda by correcting the transgressions and re-establishing our three components – Physical (body), Astral (mind) and Causal (soul).
The Vedas have stated that in the karmic cycle, human birth is the most difficult thing to attain. The Vedas also state that our body gets renewed after every seven years with an exception – diseases would persist; it will not change every seven years. The reason stated by the Vedas is factual – it is impossible for us to make a transition into a whole state or cognition from our separate and experimental selves. We are like prisoners; we are imprisoned in the cycle of past and future, and entrapped by space and time.
Then what should we do? A question that I have answered many a times – we must remain calm and still in our true nature; we must concentrate in our activities and observations; we must let go of hearsay memories and beliefs that are unverified. In brief, we must live simple and be simple – this is actually our ‘aatma’ (conscious self) as mentioned in the Vedas.
To facilitate our life’s journey, each of us possess an aspect of Antakarana – the Ahamkara, or the individual ego, or the individual self, and this Ahamkara comes in us from the time of our birth. With multiple rebirths, or one birth after the other, this Ahamkara gets refined. Each life is a journey of the aatma towards attainment of knowledge.
Karmic factors affect our birth, and Ahamkara registers each behavior from the inception of life. When this Ahamkara gets displaced, or fragmented, or moved from its main seat, it gives rise to ill-health. Therefore, to attain holistic health, we need to nurture the wounds of the ego and live in the present. Here, Ayurveda plays a vital role – it corrects the transgressions and re-establishes our mind and soul.
Copyright © 2011 SangeetaAyurveda.com
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‘Ahamkara’
I never heard of Ayurveda before I got this assignment to maintain this site. I am surprised such an old method of treating a person and diseases have not become well-known in the USA.