Life - A philosophical analysis!
Hello All,
Namaste! Hope all of you had a good weekend where you were able to have a peaceful time and chill out with family, friends, and relatives. Last few weeks we were dealing with Mythology, why not this week go back to some Philosophy? Before that I want to mention, I just started using the platform Quora, one week back where people ask questions and other people answer. You can search me as Jayasree Padmanabhan (Swaroopa Blog).
Now, why am I mentioning Quora here? Once I started answering questions the single most question I was asked was about Life, such as what is life, what is the purpose of it? How can we know our purpose? So thought, today let us deal with the topic of life. Anyway, all of us are living it. So shouldn't we have more of an idea what it is and how to capture its essence fully?
Just a disclaimer before proceeding with the post. As the subject is Philosophy, the article can become pretty deep at times. Hope my dear blog readers will be able to understand it. If any stories come to mind, I will try to use it. So let us start.
a, Life as atoms: According to what I perceive through my intuition and some research, we are not just the physical body we seem to be. Yes! We look solid and all muscle, bones, and blood. But underneath that, we are pure atoms, with electrons whizzing around the nucleus. Every single cell of us.
Now another point to consider is, even the plants and animals are made of atoms. Even the stone that I can see outside is made of atoms. So what is the difference between an inanimate object like a stone and animate objects like animals and humans? The difference is the rate at which the atoms vibrate in an animate and an inanimate objects. Atoms in an inanimate object vibrate at a lower frequency compared to that of an animate object.
I also have read that the pure soul, which all of us have, vibrates at a very high frequency so that from a physical point of view where our body atoms vibrate at a lower rate, we cannot know that such a soul exists inside us (Or does it even exists inside us or outside??). We can only perceive what vibrates at our rate of vibration. So even though we feel we are just the physical body, we are much more than that. So this is from an atomic perspective. Now let us go to another entirely different viewpoint.
b, Life as realms or planes: This is the next way life can be viewed. Being in a seemingly(!!) solid body, we always think of this material plane or realm. Now, what is a realm? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a realm is 'a region of activity, knowledge or influence'.So when we do activity, knowledge or influence in our physical life, the area of influence is the physical realm. There are other realms as well, which we can only know by intuition or an inner knowing.
i, Physical realm: In our normal life or realm, we are born, become babies, toddle through our toddler years and become a teenager. Later we become adult and get an education, a great or good career, marry, have kids and spend our life here in the earthly plane. All the above said activities or influence are on our physical or in more philosophical terms, manifested realm.
This is finally how anything, whether it is a baby, studies, job or a career, comes into existence as a physical reality. It can be touchable or non-touchable. Say a baby or a toddler we can take in our arms and cuddle. Even a teenager and an adult we can hug and show our affection. But education or a career, we cannot touch physically. We know it is there, we have become more knowledgeable, which comes out as fine words, thoughts, and actions whether for an education or a career. In both cases, the touchable thing is the paper money that comes to our hand, which we can touch and use that money to buy other touchable things like furniture or a house. So this is the realm, which we experience with our five senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing.
Now all the realms we are going to discuss hereafter are not to be touched by these five senses but can be sensed. There may be many other realms, but as of now, I have an intuition of only these.
ii, Mental realm or plane:
1, Conscious realm: This is the plane of our conscious mind. This we cannot sense with any of our five senses. But we know we have a mind. That is the one thing that differentiates us from plants and animals. Animals even though have a mind and do what they feel like, they are not aware that they have a mind.
But humans, we are different. We know we have a mind and we are aware of it. This is the conscious realm. Whatever things we do on the internet (except for the physical typing, printing, faxing etc) everything happens in the mental realm. This is the realm of thoughts, ideas, intuition, perceptions, and viewpoints. But I do feel ideas and intuitions also come from more realms as well, which we will discuss later.
So how does the conscious plane work? Let us take an example. We see that milk is over in our house. Now that realization gets the mind involved. The mind lets us know, the milk is over, it has to be bought otherwise there will be no milk for the kids, for coffee or for tea. So it tells us to go to the car or bike or scooter, drive it, go to the store, get the milk and come home. Even though driving the car or literally going to store and getting the milk is a physical thing, the directions and the decisions come from our mind.
Even thoughts and ideas get activated in the mind. So conscious mind is a huge asset or a disadvantage in life the way we use it. If we use it as a tool with the inner Self, driving it to get our intentions done, it becomes an asset. If the mind is the one controlling every waking second of our life, without a say for us in it, it becomes a disadvantage. But with our inner awareness, we do have the power to control our mind and the underlying thoughts.
2, Subconscious realm or plane: Many us don't have any idea about this plane. We just realize that we have a physical body and the thoughts. But according to neuroscientists, only 5-10% of our mind is conscious. The remaining 95-90% is the subconscious mind. Also, it seems it is very smarter compared to what we think it is. The line that separates the conscious and the unconscious (I have seen unconscious and subconscious interchangeably) mind is called the line of consciousness.
Okay, now what is this subconscious useful for? Let us think of a person taking a driving lesson. First, he has to figure out how to hold the steering wheel, how to use the brake, accelerator, how to put the signals, how to turn on the headlights everything. Also first when we learn driving, we have to drive very consciously as we have not yet learned the trick of driving. So here it is a conscious process.
But once we learn driving well, the literal action of driving is taken to the subconscious mind. So the turning of the wheel, pressing the brakes or the accelerator, and the process of driving itself becomes literally semi-conscious. This is because the normal process of driving is taken up by the subconscious mind and the driving becomes much faster and easier. But in case something unexpected comes in our pathway, like a stalled truck, the conscious mind is suddenly brought into control and we suddenly press our brakes. This is the same with swimming as well as cycling.
Now, what is the great thing about the subconscious? Once anything by repeated actions of the conscious mind is slowly put into the subconscious, it will make sure that thing gets done, whether it is driving, swimming, cycling, going after a goal, pursuing our passion or anything with the mind. As it takes up the major part of our mind, its power and potential are enormous.
Now the three planes described here are the planes that happen in this material realm. Are these only the realms? How about if there are two more realms? (There may be many many more, as of now I am only aware of two more.)
iii, Spiritual realm: This is a realm we can only know by intuition. As of now whatever I am going to write is from my very own intuition. Can I prove it? No! These points I can only intuitively know. Even thinking does not work as this is the realm of intuition. The inner voice, intuition or the clues that come from images or pictures come from this realm. Is there any way for us to access it? The only way is through the intuition or inner voice.
I suspect all the spiritual teachers like Jesus, Buddha, Paramahansa Yogananda, Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi and all others inhabit this realm. My intuition is that even our very own ancestors inhabit this realm. (Not sure, most probably there may be two separate realms for the masters as well as the ancestors, who knows?) But are they in the physical form? No! Most probably they are like pure souls being they're vying to guide us in this jungle called life.
So humans who are not listening to this inner voice or intuition are missing totally this realm and the guidance from there. Remember, these are enlightened souls and very wise at their guidance. According to what I have read many of them have come to the earthly plane lived a life, gathered the wisdom, so that they can guide the poor souls who are stuck in the mud of the earthly realm. I think these enlightened souls may also guide us when we meditate or commune with nature.
But here also our very own free will is involved to listen to the inner voice, not listen to the inner voice, accept the advice or ignore it. Finally, the choice to take what action is always in our hands and totally under the control of the free will.
iv, Divine realm: Finally, I think this is the topmost realm where the divine beings if they are there, as well as the energy in the form of the divine, occupy. This realm, from our physical realm is almost unreachable Meditation may be the only way.
Both the spiritual as well as the divine realm may be only accessed through our consciousness and through the mental plane with meditation, yoga, quiet contemplation and communion with nature. So the physical and mental planes of conscious and subconscious mind are the earthly realms. But the other two are totally from the intuition.
One more point, I think of these five realms as the points on the number 8, where the bottom circle is the physical and mental realms and the top circle as the spiritual and divine realm with the junction of the two circles being the curtain of physical life that separates them.
As I mentioned before almost everything I have written in this post is from my pure intuition. Am I crazy? Maybe! But what if it is true? Then can't we access that fine guidance that is there always available in a second, inbuilt for our very own path? Think about it. ;-))
Next, there is one or two more way life can manifest. This is the way of using our mental planes of thoughts.
c, Life from the point of thought: As we have discussed many times before, our thoughts make our reality. The thoughts many times we send intentions into the Universe and this comes back to us as our reality. Whatever we see around us is indeed made by us intentionally or unintentionally.
So from this point of thought what should we do? As we have discussed before every one of us is very unique and each of us come with our sacred life purpose. Many times in the race called life we forget or don't pursue it and many times the pull of the heart is ignored. As discussed before along with the sacred purpose we also have inbuilt guidance available. Only we need to access it.
How to do that? Start giving attention to our inner voice or intuition. The proper guidance comes from there. How to access it? Using meditation, nature walks or quiet contemplation. Intuition later becomes thoughts in our mind. Once we access the thoughts, we can select what we want for our life, put the intention out to the Universe and start taking the proper actions. The Universe being our partner in co-creation brings us the people, places, and circumstances for us. Along with the intentional actions we take, we put our sacred purpose into action and work on it with the help of the Universe.
Isn't it just plain beautiful? Instead, we walk through our life without listening to our inner voice, doing whatever comes in front of us and fully jumping into it without any inkling about the consequences. Here one more thing to note is that we should not select whatever that appears in front of us. The universe can bring any number of things. We have to be wise, have discernment and select only that, which we specifically want for our life.
So here our free will and the wisdom to choose only that we very much want in our life is totally important. We need to be extremely selective and use our free will. Otherwise, we will ask for a kitty cat and the Universe will bring us a ferocious lion!! :-))
d, Life as the balance between masculine/feminine aspects: We have already discussed a lot on the divine masculine and feminine aspects. Life also is a balancing between these two aspects. Only an individual who is balanced with these aspects can take proper actions for his/her life.
If the divine masculine is overpowering, then the person becomes arrogant, egoistic and selfish. If the divine feminine overtakes a lot, then the person becomes meek, modest and people pleaser. Both are not good for our life. A balance between the two sides, where we can take the needed actions is the correct way.
e, Life as a Soul: I almost forgot about this point. There is also the realm of the soul, from where also our intuition, inner voice, and guidance can come. As of now, I have no clue how the spiritual realm and the soul realm works together. But who cares? As long as we get our inner guidance that's all we should care about. Somehow they work together. If we go and try to prove all these, we may be just wasting our precious and limited time on this earthly realm to do our sacred purpose. So we should only concentrate on that.
In conclusion: All the above said points along with many more, which I may not be able to portray, taken together is our life. But what do we do? We just consider the physical body and think we are alive and do whatever we want with life. But if we consider all the above points and live an authentic life fully standing on our soul purpose, our Swaroopa or authenticity will shine through. May all of us capture our Swaroopa and live a very purposeful life.
Let us conclude with a quote from the famous western mythologist, Joseph Campbell.
I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday! 😉
Next week: Life - Do we have a purpose?
Note: Images from Wikimedia Commons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".
All rights reserved to the author (SwaroopaStargazer) and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of the user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds for their service for subscription. I don't collect or intend to collect user data to sell or provide to third-party applications. Regards,
SwaroopaBlog.
Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions and viewpoints shared here are that of the author/owner only. Even though the author/owner will try to research well before posting the information, the author/owner of this blog does not make any portrayal of the accuracy or correctness of the content on this blog or the links provided. The author/owner will not be liable for any omissions or inaccuracies occurred. The author/owner will not be liable for any damages or losses due to the use or display of this blog. These terms and conditions can change at any time. This blog is purely for informational purposes only.
©SwaroopaStargazer and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity.
Namaste! Hope all of you had a good weekend where you were able to have a peaceful time and chill out with family, friends, and relatives. Last few weeks we were dealing with Mythology, why not this week go back to some Philosophy? Before that I want to mention, I just started using the platform Quora, one week back where people ask questions and other people answer. You can search me as Jayasree Padmanabhan (Swaroopa Blog).
Now, why am I mentioning Quora here? Once I started answering questions the single most question I was asked was about Life, such as what is life, what is the purpose of it? How can we know our purpose? So thought, today let us deal with the topic of life. Anyway, all of us are living it. So shouldn't we have more of an idea what it is and how to capture its essence fully?
Just a disclaimer before proceeding with the post. As the subject is Philosophy, the article can become pretty deep at times. Hope my dear blog readers will be able to understand it. If any stories come to mind, I will try to use it. So let us start.
a, Life as atoms: According to what I perceive through my intuition and some research, we are not just the physical body we seem to be. Yes! We look solid and all muscle, bones, and blood. But underneath that, we are pure atoms, with electrons whizzing around the nucleus. Every single cell of us.
Now another point to consider is, even the plants and animals are made of atoms. Even the stone that I can see outside is made of atoms. So what is the difference between an inanimate object like a stone and animate objects like animals and humans? The difference is the rate at which the atoms vibrate in an animate and an inanimate objects. Atoms in an inanimate object vibrate at a lower frequency compared to that of an animate object.
I also have read that the pure soul, which all of us have, vibrates at a very high frequency so that from a physical point of view where our body atoms vibrate at a lower rate, we cannot know that such a soul exists inside us (Or does it even exists inside us or outside??). We can only perceive what vibrates at our rate of vibration. So even though we feel we are just the physical body, we are much more than that. So this is from an atomic perspective. Now let us go to another entirely different viewpoint.
b, Life as realms or planes: This is the next way life can be viewed. Being in a seemingly(!!) solid body, we always think of this material plane or realm. Now, what is a realm? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a realm is 'a region of activity, knowledge or influence'.So when we do activity, knowledge or influence in our physical life, the area of influence is the physical realm. There are other realms as well, which we can only know by intuition or an inner knowing.
i, Physical realm: In our normal life or realm, we are born, become babies, toddle through our toddler years and become a teenager. Later we become adult and get an education, a great or good career, marry, have kids and spend our life here in the earthly plane. All the above said activities or influence are on our physical or in more philosophical terms, manifested realm.
 |
| Humans in the physical realm Image courtesy- Pexels.com |
This is finally how anything, whether it is a baby, studies, job or a career, comes into existence as a physical reality. It can be touchable or non-touchable. Say a baby or a toddler we can take in our arms and cuddle. Even a teenager and an adult we can hug and show our affection. But education or a career, we cannot touch physically. We know it is there, we have become more knowledgeable, which comes out as fine words, thoughts, and actions whether for an education or a career. In both cases, the touchable thing is the paper money that comes to our hand, which we can touch and use that money to buy other touchable things like furniture or a house. So this is the realm, which we experience with our five senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing.
Now all the realms we are going to discuss hereafter are not to be touched by these five senses but can be sensed. There may be many other realms, but as of now, I have an intuition of only these.
ii, Mental realm or plane:
1, Conscious realm: This is the plane of our conscious mind. This we cannot sense with any of our five senses. But we know we have a mind. That is the one thing that differentiates us from plants and animals. Animals even though have a mind and do what they feel like, they are not aware that they have a mind.
But humans, we are different. We know we have a mind and we are aware of it. This is the conscious realm. Whatever things we do on the internet (except for the physical typing, printing, faxing etc) everything happens in the mental realm. This is the realm of thoughts, ideas, intuition, perceptions, and viewpoints. But I do feel ideas and intuitions also come from more realms as well, which we will discuss later.
So how does the conscious plane work? Let us take an example. We see that milk is over in our house. Now that realization gets the mind involved. The mind lets us know, the milk is over, it has to be bought otherwise there will be no milk for the kids, for coffee or for tea. So it tells us to go to the car or bike or scooter, drive it, go to the store, get the milk and come home. Even though driving the car or literally going to store and getting the milk is a physical thing, the directions and the decisions come from our mind.
Even thoughts and ideas get activated in the mind. So conscious mind is a huge asset or a disadvantage in life the way we use it. If we use it as a tool with the inner Self, driving it to get our intentions done, it becomes an asset. If the mind is the one controlling every waking second of our life, without a say for us in it, it becomes a disadvantage. But with our inner awareness, we do have the power to control our mind and the underlying thoughts.
2, Subconscious realm or plane: Many us don't have any idea about this plane. We just realize that we have a physical body and the thoughts. But according to neuroscientists, only 5-10% of our mind is conscious. The remaining 95-90% is the subconscious mind. Also, it seems it is very smarter compared to what we think it is. The line that separates the conscious and the unconscious (I have seen unconscious and subconscious interchangeably) mind is called the line of consciousness.
Okay, now what is this subconscious useful for? Let us think of a person taking a driving lesson. First, he has to figure out how to hold the steering wheel, how to use the brake, accelerator, how to put the signals, how to turn on the headlights everything. Also first when we learn driving, we have to drive very consciously as we have not yet learned the trick of driving. So here it is a conscious process.
But once we learn driving well, the literal action of driving is taken to the subconscious mind. So the turning of the wheel, pressing the brakes or the accelerator, and the process of driving itself becomes literally semi-conscious. This is because the normal process of driving is taken up by the subconscious mind and the driving becomes much faster and easier. But in case something unexpected comes in our pathway, like a stalled truck, the conscious mind is suddenly brought into control and we suddenly press our brakes. This is the same with swimming as well as cycling.
Now, what is the great thing about the subconscious? Once anything by repeated actions of the conscious mind is slowly put into the subconscious, it will make sure that thing gets done, whether it is driving, swimming, cycling, going after a goal, pursuing our passion or anything with the mind. As it takes up the major part of our mind, its power and potential are enormous.
Now the three planes described here are the planes that happen in this material realm. Are these only the realms? How about if there are two more realms? (There may be many many more, as of now I am only aware of two more.)
 |
| Realms represented using the number 8 By Julien1311 [Public domain], from Wikimedia Common Alterations to number 8 by Swaroopa |
I suspect all the spiritual teachers like Jesus, Buddha, Paramahansa Yogananda, Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi and all others inhabit this realm. My intuition is that even our very own ancestors inhabit this realm. (Not sure, most probably there may be two separate realms for the masters as well as the ancestors, who knows?) But are they in the physical form? No! Most probably they are like pure souls being they're vying to guide us in this jungle called life.
So humans who are not listening to this inner voice or intuition are missing totally this realm and the guidance from there. Remember, these are enlightened souls and very wise at their guidance. According to what I have read many of them have come to the earthly plane lived a life, gathered the wisdom, so that they can guide the poor souls who are stuck in the mud of the earthly realm. I think these enlightened souls may also guide us when we meditate or commune with nature.
But here also our very own free will is involved to listen to the inner voice, not listen to the inner voice, accept the advice or ignore it. Finally, the choice to take what action is always in our hands and totally under the control of the free will.
iv, Divine realm: Finally, I think this is the topmost realm where the divine beings if they are there, as well as the energy in the form of the divine, occupy. This realm, from our physical realm is almost unreachable Meditation may be the only way.
Both the spiritual as well as the divine realm may be only accessed through our consciousness and through the mental plane with meditation, yoga, quiet contemplation and communion with nature. So the physical and mental planes of conscious and subconscious mind are the earthly realms. But the other two are totally from the intuition.
One more point, I think of these five realms as the points on the number 8, where the bottom circle is the physical and mental realms and the top circle as the spiritual and divine realm with the junction of the two circles being the curtain of physical life that separates them.
As I mentioned before almost everything I have written in this post is from my pure intuition. Am I crazy? Maybe! But what if it is true? Then can't we access that fine guidance that is there always available in a second, inbuilt for our very own path? Think about it. ;-))
Next, there is one or two more way life can manifest. This is the way of using our mental planes of thoughts.
c, Life from the point of thought: As we have discussed many times before, our thoughts make our reality. The thoughts many times we send intentions into the Universe and this comes back to us as our reality. Whatever we see around us is indeed made by us intentionally or unintentionally.
So from this point of thought what should we do? As we have discussed before every one of us is very unique and each of us come with our sacred life purpose. Many times in the race called life we forget or don't pursue it and many times the pull of the heart is ignored. As discussed before along with the sacred purpose we also have inbuilt guidance available. Only we need to access it.
How to do that? Start giving attention to our inner voice or intuition. The proper guidance comes from there. How to access it? Using meditation, nature walks or quiet contemplation. Intuition later becomes thoughts in our mind. Once we access the thoughts, we can select what we want for our life, put the intention out to the Universe and start taking the proper actions. The Universe being our partner in co-creation brings us the people, places, and circumstances for us. Along with the intentional actions we take, we put our sacred purpose into action and work on it with the help of the Universe.
Isn't it just plain beautiful? Instead, we walk through our life without listening to our inner voice, doing whatever comes in front of us and fully jumping into it without any inkling about the consequences. Here one more thing to note is that we should not select whatever that appears in front of us. The universe can bring any number of things. We have to be wise, have discernment and select only that, which we specifically want for our life.
So here our free will and the wisdom to choose only that we very much want in our life is totally important. We need to be extremely selective and use our free will. Otherwise, we will ask for a kitty cat and the Universe will bring us a ferocious lion!! :-))
d, Life as the balance between masculine/feminine aspects: We have already discussed a lot on the divine masculine and feminine aspects. Life also is a balancing between these two aspects. Only an individual who is balanced with these aspects can take proper actions for his/her life.
If the divine masculine is overpowering, then the person becomes arrogant, egoistic and selfish. If the divine feminine overtakes a lot, then the person becomes meek, modest and people pleaser. Both are not good for our life. A balance between the two sides, where we can take the needed actions is the correct way.
e, Life as a Soul: I almost forgot about this point. There is also the realm of the soul, from where also our intuition, inner voice, and guidance can come. As of now, I have no clue how the spiritual realm and the soul realm works together. But who cares? As long as we get our inner guidance that's all we should care about. Somehow they work together. If we go and try to prove all these, we may be just wasting our precious and limited time on this earthly realm to do our sacred purpose. So we should only concentrate on that.
In conclusion: All the above said points along with many more, which I may not be able to portray, taken together is our life. But what do we do? We just consider the physical body and think we are alive and do whatever we want with life. But if we consider all the above points and live an authentic life fully standing on our soul purpose, our Swaroopa or authenticity will shine through. May all of us capture our Swaroopa and live a very purposeful life.
Let us conclude with a quote from the famous western mythologist, Joseph Campbell.
 |
| Quote from Joseph Campbell (Mythologist) |
Next week: Life - Do we have a purpose?
Note: Images from Wikimedia Commons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".
All rights reserved to the author (SwaroopaStargazer) and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of the user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds for their service for subscription. I don't collect or intend to collect user data to sell or provide to third-party applications. Regards,
SwaroopaBlog.
Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions and viewpoints shared here are that of the author/owner only. Even though the author/owner will try to research well before posting the information, the author/owner of this blog does not make any portrayal of the accuracy or correctness of the content on this blog or the links provided. The author/owner will not be liable for any omissions or inaccuracies occurred. The author/owner will not be liable for any damages or losses due to the use or display of this blog. These terms and conditions can change at any time. This blog is purely for informational purposes only.
©SwaroopaStargazer and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity.
![By Julien1311 [Public domain], from Wikimedia Common](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Huit.svg){kind=link}
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