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Knowing the Paramatma

CHENNAI: How does one know the Paramatma? The Paramatma is the cause of everything and resides in everything as antaryamin. It is witness to everything.

He created the five elements, each of which has its own characteristics, the five ‘karmendriyas’ and five ‘gnanendriyas.’ But these do not function separately.

There is an element that unites them all, and that bonding element is God, said B. Sundar Kumar. God created the world and during the pralaya He takes the world into Himself.

An analogy would help illustrate the point. When a mud pot breaks, it is cast away, and mud being biodegradable mingles with the soil, from whence it came.

Similarly, the world that came from God goes back to Him. But God Himself has no origin. He is primordial.

Sometimes we say we had dreams in sleep. We are awake, asleep, or in deep slumber, or in sleep punctuated by dreams. But even when we sleep, we do not lose our memory. What if we lose the memory of even the most elementary things we have learnt, through habit, say, brushing our teeth for instance, or eating? Life would become chaotic. But we are saved from such a fate, because we have a memory that stores all the learned behaviour.

What is this memory? Even when one is asleep, there is One who is awake. And that is the Atma, which is witness to all states: wakefulness, sleep or dreams.

Our limbs and body parts do the jobs assigned to them, because of God who resides in everyone of us as antaryamin.

But the mind keeps us from knowing the Atma, which is in a state of composure. It is never in one place, but flits from one thought to another.

When we speak of a heavy heart, what we mean is the mind burdened with varied and unnecessary thoughts. The mind is heavy and has to become light.

Then the Atma will shine through. Once the mind gets a sample of the Atma, it will want more.

Narada, because he served the devout people, got a glimpse of God.

He was given only a glimpse. This was to motivate him to redouble his efforts.

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