Friday, March 28, 2008

Blissful Morning

Anywhere in the world, the first thing that comes on TV in the morning is news. The newspaper boy comes and delivers it early in the morning. Infact in many countries, some kind of abridged version of the newspaper is given free to people in public transport like buses and subways.

That is the first thing that we generally do.. get ourselves updated with news from around the world. And that is the reason why so many channels, whether they are news channels or entertainment channels, show news only during the morning time slots.

Now coming to the contents of what we receive during the morning hours... war in some country.. so many people killed.. petrol prices rising.. inflation rates rising.. economy slowing.. more unemployment.. so and so defeated someone to get rank 1.. etc. etc.

If we carefully analyze the news, most news if not all, continuously adds to our negative feelings. If there is an act of terrorism somewhere, we start feeling hatred to that group. If someone defeats someone else, we get angry about the defeat. If inflation rate, property prices, petrol prices are rising, there is an immediate sense of sadness, fear or anger in us. Whether or not our feeling like that affects the concerned party, I don't know but one thing is for certain - we are continuously feeding ourselves with negativities.

Let me tell you something really scientific. It has been proven scientifically that there is continuous electrical activity that happens in our brain and different kinds of brain waves are generated. Of particular interest are alpha and beta waves. Beta waves are generated when we are in a state of stress, tension or in more general terms when we are in a state of continuous activity. Alpha waves demonstrate the creativity aspect of ourselves. Our ability to learn and grasp things is affected by these waves. These are the soothing waves. They bring deep peace and calmness in us. The brain wave patterns of children shows alpha waves mainly and for adults, it is beta waves. That is the reason why children are more creative and pick up creative things like music, painting, arts, languages etc. faster than adults.

Now here is the most important point - in adults, the brain wave patterns are predominantly alpha waves during morning time. It simply means that in the morning, our natural tendency is to be calm and blissful. But what do we do? We continuously feed ourselves with junk.

This precisely the reason why in Vedic culture the morning starts with a chants called Suprabhaatam. In all temples in India, the first thing that they play are these chants. As discussed in our previous post on chants, the sounds that are generated while reciting chants have tremendous effects on us. In India, especially in villages, we see temples playing these chants on loudspeakers. This is done so that early in the morning when we wake up, at least for a few minutes we can experience the deep inner peace and silence. Same goes with why simple rituals and prayers or puja are done early in the morning. All these are tools for us to enter into a deep silence and experience that bliss.

Only now science is studying the brain wave patterns. The importance of 'Brahmi muhurtam' or morning time is very well researched and described in Vedic scriptures thousands of years ago by enlightened masters and there was lifestyle that evolved on these concepts. In many parts of India, especially in villages, people still follow them and live blissfully with whatever they have.

We so called 'modern' people have the tendency to ridicule ancient practices such as this, calling them baseless, illogical and unscientific. We boast of our sophisticated city lifestyle but all this lifestyle is doing is to keep us continuously in a state of tension, stress and surround us with negativities.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda describes how beautifully people live in Indian villages and describes Vedic lifestyle as way to infuse life into everything we do. There is a beautiful meditation Swamiji asks us to do early in the morning. As soon as you get up, touch every part of the part, from head to toe and express love and gratitude to each and every part. Touch and tell each part - thank you and I love you. You will simply see how your body reacts especially when we do it early in the morning.

So, enjoy the blissful morning sun with peace and calmness...

1 comment:

Kowsalya Subramanian said...

Aparna,

I discovered your blog while searching for swami's schedule in April. I am so happy I have met a person atleast virtually who is in contact with Swami. I have been subscribed to Nithyandha newsletter for the past one month and the word from master are inspiring to say the least. I used to consider myself as agnostic till last month but now I feel very drawn towards Swamiji.

Do let me know if you know of any devotees living in chennai. I am based in chennai.

Kowsalya