Waking up to a dream

Everyone at some point or the other questions what is real in this world. Why things dont work as we expect? How to achieve everlasting happiness? What is the goal of our life on earth? As I was plagued by these questions, I began reading everything I could lay my hands on which remotely covered this topic. 

I have read about the three different schools of thought dvaita (duality), advaita (non-duality), vishishta dvaita ( qualified non-duality) 

Qualified non-duality says that living beings are different from non-living beings and both are different from God and the ultimate aim of human life is to attain Moksha...  I reject this as it is not giving me any other opportunity rather than spending my life in service of God. 

Duality says that each one is different from other God from humans, human from another human, human from non-living beings(matter),  God and matter, between matter and says that each of them depend on God for their existence. It says that humans are bound by Maya and sadhana through Vishnu Bhakti is only way out of it. I reject it due to the same reason as Vishishta Dvaita

Non-Duality doesnt differentiate between anything as says that we are God and everything else is an illusion. Till here it is empowering but it also says that we should understand that the nature of world is misery and we should have eternal longing for Moksha. This  theory was good and empowering but that final line that life on earth is miserable and hence we should long for Moksha makes it unusable in this world. 

(Source: Wikipedia)

After reading all these, I felt that nothing has a rational framework of living on earth, all that they say is that we should always work to attain Moksha.. 

Then I had a chance of going through all the ways of attaining Moksha.. I read the books by Vivekananda about Karma Yoga, Gyana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Raja Yoga...Each one says it as 

Karma Yoga: If we do our work without any expectation or attachements with the results, we will ulitmately reach Moksha (taught by Krishna to Arjuna in Bhagavat Gita). It looks good but very difficult to follow as we always tend to associate with the results. 

Bhakti Yoga: If we just surrender to God and love him with all we have, then we will get Mukti.. This path is followed by lot of people like Annamayya, Meera bai etc.. but it doesnt have worldly relevance to me. 

Raja Yoga: Its source is from Patanjali's Ashtanga yoga. 

The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga are:

• Yama - code of conduct, self-restraint
• Niyama - religious observances, commitments to practice, such as study and devotion
• Āsana - integration of mind and body through physical activity
• Pranayama - regulation of breath leading to integration of mind and body
• Pratyahara - abstraction of the senses, withdrawal of the senses of perception from their objects
• Dharana - concentration, one-pointedness of mind
• Dhyana - meditation (quiet activity that leads to samadhi)
• Samādhi - the quiet state of blissful awareness, superconscious state.

(Source: Wikipedia). 

This looks like a good way to go, if we have a good guru and we leave everything in the world to work on it. 

Gyana Yoga: It says by observation you will know what is true and what is untrue and you will attain the knowledge to live in this world and attain Moksha.. As seen it doesnt tell anything but asks you to find out based on observation and thought.. And I went ahead with this way....

I didnt find anything which answered this question and I found that I was looking through the lens of objective reality. When I became of aware of the concepts of subjective reality . It says that we are living in a dream world which is created by us and us only. My world is created by me. You are also part of my creation only, you dont exist by yourself but you are part of my consciousness and hence if I want you to exist and if I wish otherwise you will not... I am not my body but something greater than that and if I raise my consciousness to that level, then I will understand that I am in a dream and it is through my body that I am acting in the dream. The dream may end at any time but I will be there. Hence I need not be afraid of anything. Everything is my creation and hence with my thought I have the power to change it.  This is the thing proposed by Buddha. This looks like an empowering model but if we truly believe it then I was thinking of applying it in this world to achieve what I want looks so ridiculously simple as just having a thought about this. I am going to explore this thinking for a while and let you know of the results. 

All we have to do to get that power to is wake up from the dream and understand... 

Karma Yoga -Advaita Vedanta

I have been reading about Advaita Vedanta from some time of the last year.Recently I read a book called 'Karma Yoga' by Swami Vivekananda, which lays before us, the way of attaining Moksha by doing the right work. What it says is
> No work is superior or inferior. Every work should be done with utmost devotion but without identifying that you are doing.
"Karmanye vadhikaraste,
Maa phaleshu kadachana,
Maa karma phala heturbhu,
maate sangostva karmani."
It means that, you have the right to do work, but not on the results of the work, you are not the reason for the results of your work, and that doesnt mean you should stop working.

which indirectly means that you should do the work which is destined to you... More on this in the next paras.


> You may feel that you are helping the world, but actually in helping the world, you are actually helping yourself.
> All Hindu scriptures, end saying that the whole world is just maya and our aim is to get out of this world. Same with karma yoga. they say that if we do our work without attachments, we will realise that our aim is attaining Moksha itself and you will reach it.

I thought that if attaining Moksha was the only aim of life, then what sense does it do all this work without going through the direct path for Moksha? i.e Jnana Yoga , by doing tapas.. I discussed the same with one of my friend who claimed he has a different understanding of how to interpret that. After lot of discussion we came at this conclusion:

The world is destined to be something. Similarly we are also destined to do something and we cannot change that. But advaita says 'You are that'. How is that? We have to attain the end goal of Moksha only if we do whatever we are supposed to do, i.e we complete the task destined to us. The problem is that we dont know what is that? We dont know what is our destiny. Now he is where, 'You are all powerful' concept comes - You can decide what you want to become and trying taking steps towards going there. You will get omens either validating you and you will feel motivated to continue on that path and reach your destiny or you will get omens indicating you what you are doing is not right... Then you have to understand the cause- effect relationship and correct the cause which caused this effect and you are ready to go further to your destiny. If you cant pick up the omens and correct them soon, then you will even get further omens and you will feel like you are not able to do what you wanted to do. But actually you are not able to read the omens and hence you are feeling that. This will make you feel lost and out of control because if you realise it soon, you will correct it soon. You will ultimately realise the mistake, correct it and then only you will go forward to reach your destiny.

To put it in an another way, you will anyway reach and do what you are destined to do. If you understand and work towards reaching it reading the omens and adjusted our work to that, we will feel that we are in control of what we are doing and we will reach our destiny on a flowery path. If we dont understand the omens and are not going on the right path, we will get thorns on our way which will make us understand and again put us on the path to reach our destiny. You will encounter as many thorns as you are willing to take, i.e how soon you understand the lessons given by that thorn. If you dont take the lesson from that thorn, another thorn will come to teach that lesson and we feel miserable. So we examine each thorn carefully for cause effect relationships and set ourselves right for reaching our destiny on path of least resistance.