Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

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RANJIT SINGH KUMAT
tells us that “Self” has a much wider and a much deeper meaning than is commonly comprehended. It has its own psychological, philosophical, ethical and spiritual connotations and dimensions. In Shri Kumar's work we see enlightened and illuminated Self beyond narrow confines of selfishness and arrogant ego. Indeed, we begin to perceive “Self” through Shri Kumat's essays in Self realization. “To be in oneself is 'kaivalya', the highest knowledge and wisdom,” say Lord Mahavir and Lord Buddha. That is also the message of Yoga-Vashishtha and the seer Patanjali's teachings. And that is the veritable convergence of the Vedic' and 'Shramana' mainstreams. In the words of J. Krishnamurti one of the most eminent rational thinkers of the twentieth century, "If you have not read many books and have very little information, that is not ignorance. Real ignorance is having no knowledge of yourself, no perception of how your mind works, of what your motives, your responses are. Conflict and suffering will exist as long as I do not understand myself. Therefore, understanding self is much more important than knowing how to overcome sorrow and conflict. Surely my search is utterly futile. My action has no meaning. The last thing we want to know is ourselves. Yet that is the only foundation on which we can build. Most of us are totally unaware of ourselves. We do not observe, very few of us do, our own thoughts and feelings. The fact is we must begin to see clearly the process of our thinking, feeling and acting. The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-Knowledge has no end. It is an endless river.”
The question is ultimately related to issues like: "Who am I, Whence I came? What is the purpose of my life?” Shri Kumat shows that Self-awareness and Self-knowledge are not an obscure unrelated and irrelevant pursuit. That pursuit of Self-Awareness is germane to the universal human pursuit of happiness. It is a thoughtful, existential pursuit beyond the mental and the material. It is a pursuit which is at the heart of human life. It has profoundly cultural, philosophical and scientific dimensions. This book is therefore about that quintessential understanding of existence, of life and death, of Here and Hereafter. These are fundamental issues of moral philosophy, and of physics as well as metaphysics. These are not mere denominational questions; nor are they religious questions in any narrow sense, although it is in the bosom of each religion and its scriptures that this existential question has been addressed, explored, explained and interpreted. Those explorations, explanations and interpretations are important to us in the understanding of ourselves, the life we live and values we cherish. Shri Ranjit Singh Kumat delineates the route