To understand Vedantic health, we may have to go through this term threadbare. First, we need to know the Vedanta and then, Vedantic Health.
Vedanta :
The word Vedanta is a Sanskrit compound word which can be treated as:
Veda+Anta = “knowledge” + anta = “end, conclusion”: “the culmination of knowledge” or “knowledge” + anta = “essence”, “core”, or “inside”: “the essence of the Vedas”.
Paul Hourihan writes, “Vedanta, one of Hinduism’s six main systems of thought, is a scientific approach to religion and religious truth. Only principles at the beginning; and Universal Truth and laws discovered and handed down by the rishis, the ancient Vedic sages. The main Vedantic texts are: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma or Vedanta Sutras. This ancient philosophy of India is also readily found in the teachings of Buddha, Shankara, Ramakrishna -Vivekananda. It is open ended, a vast cathedral of thought encompassing both the personal and impersonal approaches to divine realization.
Simply we say, Vedanta means “The chief Hindu philosophy, dealing mainly with the Upanishadic doctrine of the identity of Brahman and Atman that reached its highest development a.d. c 800 through the philosopher Shankara”. It is “The system of philosophy that further develops the implications in the Upanishads that all reality is a single principle, Brahman, and teaches that the believer’s goal is to transcend the limitations of self-identity and realize one’s unity with Brahman.”
It can be termed as a spiritual tradition explained in the Upanishads related to the self-realization one understands the ultimate nature of reality (Brahman). Vedanta which implies “the end of all knowledge” – by definition is not restricted or confined to one book and there is no sole source for Vedantic philosophy. It is based on immutable spiritual laws that are common to religions and spiritual traditions worldwide. Vedanta as the end of knowledge refers to a state of self-realization, attainment, or cosmic consciousness. Historically and currently Vedanta is understood as a state of transcendence and not as a concept that can be grasped by the intellect alone.
In defining Vedanta, the following terms have been used particularly:
• Upanishads
• Self-realization
• Brahman
• Cosmic consciousness.
Upanishads
The Upanishads are Hindu scriptures having core teachings of Vedanta. They do not belong to any particular period of Sanskrit literature: the oldest, such as the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, date to the late Brahmana period (around the middle of the first millennium BCE), while the latest were composed in the medieval and early modern period. The Upanishads realize monist ideas, some of which were hinted at in the earlier texts, and they have exerted an important influence on the rest of Hindu and Indian philosophy.
Self-realization
Self-realization may refer to Atman Gyan, a Hindu concept that acknowledges that one’s self is identical with Brahman, or Psycho-synthesis, an original approach to psychology that was developed by Roberto Assagioli to include spiritual goals and concepts.Meditation has been a spiritual and healing practice too in some parts of the world for more than 5,000 years.
Brahman
Brahman is a concept of Hinduism. Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. The nature of Brahman is described as transpersonal, personal and impersonal by different philosophical schools. In the Rig Veda, Brahman gives rise to the primordial being Hiranyagarbha that is equated with the creator God Brahmā. The trimurti can thus be considered a personification of Hiranyagarbha as the active principle behind the phenomena of the universe. The seers who inspired the composition of the Upanisads asserted that the liberated soul (jivanmukta) has realized his identity with Brahman as his true self.
Cosmic consciousness
Cosmic consciousness is the concept that the universe is a living super-organism with which animals, including humans, interconnect, and form a collective consciousness which spans the cosmos. The idea bears similarity to Teilhard de Chardin’s conception of the noosphere, James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, to Hegel’s Absolute idealism, and to Satori in Zen. It is reminiscent of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious.
Cosmos refers to the universe as a whole, which is conceived to be an orderly, harmonious system; a complex orderly self-inclusive system; inconceivably extended in space or time. Consciousness refers to the complete alert state of the mind, and its sensory systems. Often considered the upper state of existences, in which self-awareness and individuality originate within the brain.
Various religions and concepts of existence accept the idea that a cosmic consciousness exists, and through various forms of conditioning of the body, it is possible to interconnect with this cosmic consciousness and interact with it.
Vedantic Health
We all are well assured that for a few decades have revolutionized the pattern of life everywhere. The advancement what modern civilization has achieved has not only solved the basic necessities but also made the life more comfortable. But the competition has increased the mental stress resulting into the increased numbers of psychosomatic and psychological health problems posing a great challenge to the modern treatment systems. It is here that Vedantic health science makes a vital contribution to the comforts of the life.
Though the modern pathies are affecting almost all the traditional systems of treatment everywhere, the research is on for experimenting with and including in the treatment of health relevant complicated and incurable problems, and diseases, the principles and techniques available in various other systems prevalent in different parts of the world.
Aloof from such research, Vedantic health system has proved itself most effective in saving man from the fatal hands of contagious, psychosomatic, psychological and infectious diseases. It is the system which fosters harmony in the body, mind, environment, and self-consciousness. It can be called a complete system of physical, mental, social, and spiritual development. Although Vedantic health system has been used in India over thousands and millions centuries for treating various health problems and diseases by enlightened yogies, it has started gaining recognition world over. Now, there is scientific evidence for the preventive and curative beneficial effects of this system. But it needs a lot of patience.
Actually, Vedantic health is a concept under which those who pursue the doctrines as embedded in Upanishads for maintaining their physical as well as mental health with the ultimate object of getting relieved of their tensions and improving the prospects further. There are a number of remedies available, emphatically driving towards the nature but without ignoring the basic needs of life in a more simple way. To attain his goal, one has to adopt a certain pattern of life with full purity of means and outcome.
The purity of means and outcome is meant to the fact that whatever the outcome is expected out of the work-out that must not be on the cost of others, that must not be injuring other’s interests but target should be to improve oneself and it would be better if your activities in such process is better for other segments of the society also and the universe as a whole. Such intention would definitely lead for true pleasure of life.
Be Happy – Achieve Pleasure Of Life Through Vedantic Health.