Hari om parents,
We tried a format where every student in the class recited one of the morning prayers we normally do every week.
Some students shared their research on Swami Vivekananda and Adi Shankaracharya. We discussed some of these points.
We then recapped last week's class by getting students to answer following questions:
Give 2 examples of the Law of Consequence as it applies in this life?
What is reincarnation?
When your body is changing, What is not changing?
How long will this cycle of birth & rebirth continue?
In the recap, we talked about the unchanging self as the body changes and how the Atma passes from one body to another. The cycle of birth & rebirth continues till we reach Bhagwan having achieved highest perfection. This is called Moksha.
The unchanging entity as the body is changing is called "I"-ness. This remains the same as the body is changing. It remains the same even as we take rebirth. So, between the manifested states when the birth is taken there is an unmanifested state. Just like the electricity in the bulb lights up the bulb when it is there. So, electricity is in unmanifested state and gets manifested when the bulb is plugged in.
In our class discussions, we compared this with the law of conservation of mass. Mass cannot be created and destroyed. Similarly, Atma is there and it either manifests or is unmanifest. However, it can never be created or destroyed.
The change has to be seen with respect to the changeless. We are seeing our bodies change but it is with a backdrop of the changeless. We are taking multiple births against a backdrop of the unchanging Atma. We were discussing this with respect to a story of a villager who has never seen a movie in a theatre. When he goes to the theatre and starts watching the movie. It is difficult for him to understand where the screen is till the movie stops. The white screen is the unchanging backdrop on which the movie was playing. This backdrop allows for the movie to play - it allows for any movie to play. Once he realizes this, he knows that every movie projection needs this backdrop even though he cannot actually see the screen.
Similarly, it is very difficult for us to realize that the unchanging self is the substratum needed for the changing external world. Once we realize it then any external changes will not affect us as much.
We then did an exercise for - "Analyze, Detect & Fix". We shared the short biography of Swami Chinmayananda in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tcZDhegdKq114IFlCAes_GFLDeGF3IfH29pkGnss_g4/edit?usp=sharing . The class was divided into 2 groups where we asked each group to make 2 slides with 3 sections namely Analyze, Detect & Fix to describe critical stages in Swami Chinmayananda's life where he corrected himself. This exercise is to apply the Law of consequence to our lives. If we find what we are doing now can have adverse consequences then we need to Analyze ourselves, Detect the issues and Fix them. The class was short of time and we asked them to complete this and present it in the next class.
In the last 15 minutes of class we started planning for a group event. The students discussed and decided to present a play. This will have 3 scenes. The outline of this has to be done first and the 3 scenes are going to be written by the students based on the outline. Each scene will be done by a sub-group responsible for that scene. The conversations for these are happening in the students whatsapp group.
regards,