The author reflects on guiding a loved one’s final moments, emphasizing inner awareness and spiritual liberation through Vedic counseling, with a focus on transcending the self to achieve peace and fulfillment.
A Vedic Counselor’s Perspective on Life
“In the vision of Vedanta, a person, by virtue of his own essential nature, is totally, absolutely, pure and free. Compassion, love, giving, and sharing are all dynamic forms of this absolute happiness (aananda). You are limitless, fullness, complete, lacking nothing.”- Swami Dayananda Saraswati
My Nānijī
Nānijī would lovingly start every conversation with “Sai beta, please share with me a few words of spiritual wisdom…” I would respond, “Nānijī, keep your mind on ‘Om’”. In her last few months, Nānijī could not even digest daal water. She would burp loudly during our conversations, mostly listening to my voice telling her to keep her mind on her Higher Self – her “I am.” We never discussed the topic of death directly, but Nānijī knew that it was near and all she wanted to do was rid herself of the immense suffering her body was going through. I reminded her often that she was neither the body nor the mind; that she was beyond these two that caused suffering; that she was pure love, infinite, ever-present awareness – the “I am” that vibrates in the “Om.” In this state of mind, her last moments were not consumed with questions or attachments to the material world she was to leave behind, but rested on her deeper, Higher Self.
Nānijī and I also practiced forgiveness meditation where over the period of several weeks we learned to forgive those who have hurt us. I could feel that as Nānijī neared the end, she was more free, lighter – she divested herself of all of life’s experiences and settled in her Higher Self; her mind was consumed in looking up at the Divine rather than holding down on to the material plane. One day, while sending her healing energy in my meditation, unbeknownst to me, Nānijī passed away in her sleep. She finally merged with the ever-present, indivisible, infinite awareness.
Vedic Counseling
I share this story because I was engaged in a form of counseling that I didn’t know existed: Vedic counseling. After much reflection on how I engaged with Nānijī, I decided to explore Dr. David Frawley’s (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) course on Vedic counseling. I became a Certified Vedic Counselor and began my formal journey into Vedic counseling with the hope that I am able to become a compassionate guide to others in their time of need, particularly those nearing death. In time, I developed my own Vedic vision on life drawing from my practices in yoga and study of Vedanta as well as learning from numerous teachers.
Dr. David Frawley explains that Vedic counseling can be understood as dhārmic guidance on right living, right action, and right awareness. It draws upon Vedic knowledge rooted in Vedic Sciences such as Ayurveda, Yoga, Vāstu, Jyotiṣa, among others, and provides life guidance to those in need so that they may access the unlimited wisdom, energy, and vitality inherent within themselves while connecting to the universal intelligence that helps them move beyond their human constraints (Frawley, Kshirsagar, the Art and Science of Vedic Counseling). Vedic counseling then is counseling of inner observation into our internal reality and a Vedic counselor sets in motion a deeper process of observation and investigation in the individual with the goal of awakening an already-present deeper intelligence (Frawley, Kshirsagar, the Art and Science of Vedic Counseling).
As I reflect on my conversations with Nānijī, and others who I had spent their last moments with, I found that my guidance has organically always led to a focus on the changeless element of experience, the ever-present, indivisible, infinite awareness of “I am.”
“I am” – A Contemplation
Consider the following contemplation from spiritual teacher and philosopher, Rupert Spira:
“Look around the room you are sitting in and reading this article. Look at the objects, what’s on this table, the table, the walls, the chair, and so on. Now bring your attention away from the objects in the room and bring your attention to the space in the room. Have you ever contemplated this space? Have you ever thought of this space or brought your attention to it? Perhaps the only times you become aware of this space is when you move into an empty home or when you move out, but in between, you fill it up with various objects.
Now bringing your attention to the space in the room, ask: is this space limited to the four walls? Remove the four walls and what happens to that space? You realize that the space in this room pervades this room but is not limited to this room. Relatively speaking, it is infinite. When the building is taken down, the space will remain exactly as it is, as it has always been. (Spira, The Place of Refuge). Similarly, the self or awareness of yourself pervades the body but is not limited to the body. It is utterly intimate with itself, but it has no personal qualities or limitations. It is infinite. It is not located in a body or mind, but you notice in your direct experience that the awareness with which all experience is known, like the space, is not located in any particular experience. (Spira, The Place of Refuge). It has always been there. Everything, including the body and the mind, the experiences you have in your life, all appear in that awareness.”
Similar to the space with all the objects in it and similar to the way we identify with only those objects but not the space within which they are in, our lives are always qualified and colored with the “I am” with thoughts, feelings, sensations, or perceptions. Notice that all those objects of thoughts, feelings, sensations, or perceptions that follow “I am” all appear, exist for a time, and vanish, but “I am” remains. (Spira, The Place of Refuge). In fact, this awareness of “I am” has always been there.
Take a step back from your experience and step into this “I am.” Contemplate this “I am” and soon you discover that the body and the mind is what we are aware of; it is not what we are. (Spira, The Place of Refuge). In other words, the awareness of “I am” precedes all objects and content of experience. It has always been there. This awareness, this presence of awareness, is the most important thing we can understand about ourselves. This awareness is so caught up and mixed with experience that we have forgotten this “I am.”
Be with this “I am.” I am. When a thought arises, ask: are you aware? And you find that the “I am” is aware of that thought but a thought is not aware of itself. When a feeling arises, ask: are you aware? And you find that “I am” aware of that feeling but a feeling is not aware of itself. In this way, you find that no object of experience is aware. And then you ask what is it that is aware of experience? And you find yourself back in “I am” – the knowing and being that is “I am.” Keep going back to this “I am.” (Spira, The Place of Refuge). Stay there. (See also Kavitha Chinnaiyan, Svatantra Institute, Bliss Meditation)
Role of a Vedic Counselor
Our entry into the world is pervaded by duality. From the moment we are born, we are conditioned with the subject-object relationship. As a result, we already begin our lives from a place where we feel limited, incomplete, so we start seeking and resisting. We desperately try to feel whole and complete in our daily activities and relationships. This feeling of separation ultimately leads us away from the one reality — that single, indivisible, reality behind all the objects and people that derive their apparently independent existence. (Spira, An Introduction to Non-Duality). This sense of separation ultimately brings disharmony between ourselves and the world. A Vedic counselor is one who understands that sole reality and guides an individual to an understanding that they lack nothing, that they are already complete.
The apparent separate self or ego, an illusory self (real but not what it appears to be/an arising in awareness) mixed with objects of experience, is sometimes in need of practices or instruction. (Spira, The Place of Refuge; also see Greg Goode, Standing as Awareness). The Vedic Sciences are practices and techniques that facilitate the individual to arrive at the recognition of “I am.” Ayurveda is the Vedic Science for well-being of body and mind; Jyotisha is the science of time and energetic effects of cosmic bodies on the mind; Vastu is the science of space and directional influences,; and other sciences lead us to the vision of Vedanta, which is the philosophy of awareness. (Frawley, Kshirsagar, the Art and Science of Vedic Counseling).
These Vedic Sciences are the preparation ground to allow one to arrive at the “I am.” (Spira, the Way of Surrender). These Sciences provide processes and solutions to the suffering, needs, questions, and fears of this separate self. (Spira, the Way of Surrender; also see, Chinnaiyan, Shakti Rising). They cater to the separate self’s unique needs before finally resting in the awareness “I am.” A Vedic counselor identifies a particular Science or a mixture of these Sciences and sets in motion the processes to help that separate self dissolve into awareness. Ultimately, the Vedic counselor facilitates an individual to take a step towards themselves, to go home to themselves, to be simply with the knowledge of themselves, to surrender to themselves and open up the possibility of the dissolution of their apparent separate self or ego, that illusory limitations that the separate self acquires from thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving and so on, into the infinite, ever-present awareness that they already are.
Every investigation or surrender to dissolve this separation that causes so much suffering results in coming back to ourselves where we simply live and be aware of our being, of the “I am.” This is the death of the separate self before the death of the physical self.
The End of the Illusory Separate Self
Visualize yourself on your deathbed. You’ve been told you have three days to live. What would you be contemplating about? What would you want to be thinking about? How would your mind approach the moment? Will it grasp for all that content of experience it has gathered over this lifetime or will it divest all that experience and go straight to the unblemished, essential self? Consider the contemplation on “I am” we just discussed. Would it change how you approach the last few days, hours, minutes, seconds in your mortal coil?
As I reflect on Nānijī’s physical end, and the physical loss of so many other friends and family over the last few years, I find myself constantly reflecting on death. Particularly, on the death of the separate self, and all its illusory limitations, before the death of the physical self. Consider the possibility of having the separate self die well before the physical.
The Sufis call this “dying before death” and Vedantans call it “liberation while living” (jivanmukta). What is meant by this understanding is that when the mind constantly dwells in the “I am” instead of the qualified, colored experience that contracts that “I am,” the mind finds itself in the open, in spaciousness, clarity, and peace; in other words, it is restored to its pristine, unconditioned state. As the body deteriorates in various ways, the mind remains illumined in the knowledge of “I am” – that true self, infinite, ever-present awareness. Many of us fear death, but when we have the capacity to clearly investigate our separate self with a healthy body and mind – especially when that body and mind are healthy now - we can immediately get in touch with ourselves deeply. That is, instead of constantly identifying with experience and desperately holding on to it – the experience of thoughts, feelings, perceptions that say “I am old,” “I am wrinkly,” “I am losing everything” – return back to the one constant, changeless element that has always been there no matter your age: the awareness of “I am.” Keep your attention there. See where this takes you. Does it liberate you from the fear of dying? Remain there.
We find that no matter what happens to this body, the death of identifying with experience, the illusory separate self, gives rise to the birth of peace that is already our being. In this way, when the moment comes when the body is finally done, all that shines in our minds is our knowledge of “I am” – the pure, peaceful, ever-present awareness that has always been there – that awareness that has preceded our birth and that awareness that continues after our death.
**My sincere thanks to the teachers that continue to shape me: Shri Guru, Bhairava Baba, Shri Atmananda Krishna Menon, Shri M, Rupert Spira, Sri Ramana Maharishi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Greg Goode, Dr. Kavitha Chinnaiyan, Dr. David Frawley, and all those numerous beings who continue to teach and guide me.
Image Credit: JS