Ahamkara (your Mother, my Mother) Happy Mother's Day?

[Guest guest]

Sat Nam,

The following is taken from "Prakruti" by Robert Svoboda. This is

just a taste of the wealth of Knowledge on Ayurveda that is available if

you're willing to go "out of your way". Ahamkara is the I-former. "I" in

it's truest, cleanest sense and not about ego centricity. It also bears

some light on what real fear is good for as opposed to neurotic fear

which has no use at all. (Prajnaparadha) Read on.

Salud,

Dharam

 

Not all who go before the Great Mother's chair get past with only a

stare.

Some, she looks at their hands to see what kind of savages they were.

-Gary Snyder

 

Ahamkara

 

Each of us maintains separateness from other living beings for as long

as Nature permits us to remain alive. Nature gives us the space bounded

by the skin and the digestive tract to call our own. Every thing outside

the skin is part of the environment. You are a part of my en-vironment,

and I am a part of your environment. Nature is the sum total of all

individuals and their environments.

Inside your digestive tract is material which was originally part of

your environment. Once it had its own separate existence, its own

in-dividuality; now it is on metabolic probation, attempting to pass the

digestive exams to become a part of you. Should your gastro-intestinal

tract rupture, some of this material will escape into your body cavity.

Because your body can recognize it as alien a tremendous reaction Will

occur, which if allowed to progress will kill you very quickly.

Should your external skin fail to do its job, as might occur after

severe bums, alien marauders will enter your system, which may also

result in your demise. We owe our continued day-to-day existence to the

ad-mirable fortitude of our twin boundaries, the external skin of the

body and the internal skin of the gut.

Diseases are beings with parasitical intentions. Some have collective

bodies, like worms, bacteria and viruses, and show signs of collective

consciousness just as social insects like ants and termites do. Other

dis-eases have no bodies of their own and "take possession" of an

organism in order to express the compulsions of the individual

existences. Still others, entities like cancer, are created within the

body. Whatever the intruder, cure occurs when the alien personality is

expelled from the or-ganism and the host's innate personality returns to

normal.

Aliens are unwelcome in a healthy body. An unbalanced system en-courages

improper digestion of food, which produces physical and men-tal toxins,

called "Ama" in Sanskrit. Ama acts as food for parasites, and encourages

them to thrive in the organism. Indigestion develops be-cause of poor

eating and living habits, deliberate, willful indulgence in unhealthy

practices which are collectively called "Prajnaparadha," or "crimes

against wisdom." Indigestion prevents nutrients from reaching the

tissues, and weakens the host's immune defenses.

The aura is the first line of defense against parasitical beings. The

second line of defense is formed by the skin and the gut. A third line

of defense, the immune system, awaits to intercept and destroy any

par-asites which somehow find their way past the first two defenses. The

immune system, which communicates with both the skin and the gut, is a

sense organ, a "sixth sense" for intruders. It is an intricate web of

T-cells, B-cells, antibodies and lymphokines, a system of fascinating

complexity all controlled by a single boss: Ahamkara.

Ahamkara ceaselessly identifies itself with each of the trillions of

cells in the body. Your Ahamkara constantly reminds every one of your

cells of its identity as a sub-unit of that grand and glorious entity

known as You. The Ahamkara ensures that only those cells which swear

allegi-ance to its overlordship are allowed to remain alive in the body.

All al-iens are hunted down and ruthlessly slaughtered, and all

rebels-mutant or cancerous cells re mercilessly executed as a warning to

other cells who might dare to resist your rule.

You can remain alive, safe inside your castle, only so long as your

Ahamkara serves as your garrison governor. When she is injured, alien

beings may find a weak spot in your defenses and strike you down. When

she, the warder who forces your cells to slave away for you,

re-linquishes, her charge, all the inmates are free to go their own

ways, and you die. She is your wife, your lover, your friend, your guide

and ad-visor, and your servant. She is your all-in-all. Above all, she

is your mother.

Ahamkara is feminine because she is a fraction of the Divine Mother

Goddess Nature. She is your wife because she is always with you, bonded

in the marriage of body to mind to soul which is you. She is your lover

because only the power of her love can bind all your cells to-gether and

induce them to function in concert as a unified being. She is your

friend because she is always there to sympathize with you, She guides

and advises you regarding your self-interest. As servant, she

tire-lessly slaves away to keep you running.

Most important of all these aspects is her relationship to you as

mother. The "I am" principle aggregates to itself all the building

blocks which form you: the Five Great Elements which create the body,

the sense organs, and the mind. You are born because of the "I-former,"

so she is your mother. The ancient Rishis knew this well, and worshipped

their own Ahamkaras as mothers in order to enter into loving

relation-ships with them. India is a motherland because the Rishis in

their tran-scendent wisdom recognized the creative importance of Mother

Nature, Even Adi Shankaracharya himself, the originator of ten sects of

renun-ciate monks who shun all normal human interactions, mandated

wor-ship of the Goddess in all his monasteries.

Diseases arise when Ahamkara is afflicted and immunity weakens. The

Sanskrit word for immunity is Vyadhikshamatva, which translates

literally as "forgiveness of disease." You retain your health only so

long as you are willing to forgive your stresses, shrug off adversity

and adapt

to new situations. Resistance to change always impedes the workings of

the immunity. An old Sanskrit proverb tells us, "Kshama cha janani”: the

essence of motherly love is forgiveness. Damage to the Ahamkara--mother

weakens our innate forgiveness and predisposes us to disease.

Treatment of Ahamkara is the ultimate medicine. India's sages have long

known that good spiritual health is a prerequisite for good physi-cal

and mental health. Spiritual health is a dynamic balance between a

strongly integrated individual personality and the cosmic personality of

Nature, a balance which is possible only so long as a being remembers

its debt to Mother Nature.

Only immortal beings can be completely healthy, because only they have

so empowered their own Ahamkaras that no alien being can ever invade

them. India's ancient Rishis performed long penances to completely

awaken and control their Ahamkaras, and they became im-mortal in

consequence. Because they wanted to communicate their ex-periences to

others, they established the system of philosophical "seeing" which

students of Ayurveda use to look at embodied life.

When the wise Rishis examined their own experience and consulted

their intuitions they realized that human consciousness, will and

iden-tity must be fragments of Nature's own consciousness, will and

iden-tity. The subtlety of their faculties of perception allowed them to

contact Nature and communicate with Her directly. One of the first

things they learned concerned the structure and origin of the universe.

 

Nature told them that first exists

 

Pure Existence

 

which experiences desire for manifestation, and splits into

 

Consciousness and Will

which then mate together. Their offspring is

 

Intellect

 

which is the power of discrimination.

Intellect then evolves into

 

Ahamkara

 

Which is the "I-former." The universe fills with numberless little

bundles of intellect with individuality, all searching for a means of

ex-pression. According to their innate predilections these

Ahamkara--bundles manifest as:

waves of kinetic energy, Rajas material particles of potential energy,

Tamas and subjective consciousness, Sattva

 

-To Be

Continued