While tracing the contours of the philosophical ideas of a Vedic seer, it is to be borne in mind that these ideas are the products not so much of reasoning as of seeing. Reasoning here only follows seeing. This is the common feature of almost all the ideas put forth by the Vedic seers who are seers, rsis first and thinkers only next. It is little truer of Dirghatamas whose life history hinges on the problem of how he happened to see. – The philosophy of Dirghatamas by Satya Prakash Singh

Myths are things which never happened but always are. - Sallust

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” -
Italo Calvino

Hanuman - An Introduction

In a caste-ridden society like India, the affection of the high born prince Rama for a lowly but devoted monkey fired the imagination of people...

Hanuman's 'monkeyness' ensures that his awesome power does not intimidate. He is earthy and tangible not ethereal or transcendent. Through him, the divine comes within reach. Hence, the popular North Indian saying: first Hanuman, then God, pahle Hanuman, phir Bhagvan.

- From Hanuman - An Introduction by Dr Devdutt Pattanaik.

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of performance in Bharat, that ancient civilization now known as India. Performance infuses the culture still, as is apparent from from its innumerable forms of music and dance, its active celebration of festivals, and its engagement with images and icons, both on the altars and in the streets. All forms of performance are not created equal in this or any culture,but its centrality in Indian life cannot be challenged. - Susan L Schwartz in Rasa - Performing the divine in India.

Esoteric symbolism of Aditya Hridayam

The Aditya Hridayam of the Ramayana could be a reference to the heart lotus that Ramana Maharishi refers to as the seat of the soul. The heart lotus is on the right side of the body (and corresponding to the left brain) which is the solar side in yoga physiology, thus it is aditya in nature. Hridayam is of course the heart. So the lotus heart Ramana Maharishi that laid so much emphasis on in his teachings could well be understood as the aditya hridayam.

This heart lotus according to Ramana Maharishi is the supreme seat of the self, the consciousness from which everything else emerges. Once this is realised the ego is eliminated. If the Ramayana be read as a an allegorical tale of the supreme awakening of the infinite I consciousness (Ram) eliminating the limited, contracted egotistic existence (Ravan), then the Aditya Hridayam which the sage Agastya teaches Ram in the Yudha Kandha of the Ramayana can be read as a symbol for the awakening of the lotus heart and the supreme I consciousness after which the yogi remains immersed in the infinite consciousness-energy field and ceases to identify with the conditioned egoistic existence. Ram is the knowledge of the cosmic self that removes Ravan, ignorance born out of egotism.

There are also references to this in the Bhagvad Geeta, ‘Cutting this doubt in the heart, born out of ignorance by the sword of knowledge of the Self, arise, O Arjuna, and engage in Yoga, ‘ and again, ‘Spilt is the knot of the heart; the doubts are removed.’



The Sri Ramana Gita published by the Ramana Ashram explains the significance of the heart lotus, ‘The body is the embodiment of ignorance, conditioned by time and space and characterised by inertness. It is suffused with the light of the notion of ‘I’. Its dealings of knowledge and action, like I know, I do etc. result only from the origination of the I activity. Therefore it is proper to infer that the place of the I-activity, the root of all activities of knowledge and action, pertaining to the body should also be somewhere, pertaining to the body....

Although egoism is surpassed by the I-activity, and all activities having their root in egoism resulting in the culmination in the I-activity, there is nothing wrong in indicating a location as the practice of tracking down to the root of the I-activity culminates in the accomplishment of the Brahmanic state in the form of the throbbing I. As regards the I activity, the bodily site conditioned by time and space, called heart is pointed out. As the true form not being conditioned by time and space etc., being the supporting base of the origin of the I activity is self accomplished there itself, in the groundless, in the unsupported, it becomes established that the same is also the location of knowledge, in the form of the I-throbbing. Thus become appropriate the authoritative statements that proclaim that the knowledge located in the heart itself destroys the ignorance located in the heart....

The place is on the right portion of the chest; not the left side. From here effulgence flows through Sushumna to the Sahasrara.’

One can see that this is a reference to the realization of the atman removing all limited thought constructs which obstruct the same.

- Swetha Prakash