Allah Om - The Keys Of A Vibrational Universe

I am excited. The kind of excitement one feels when a key piece of life’s jigsaw puzzle falls in place. The process of discovery is strange and never really linear, one unrelated concept can lead you to discover an answer to the most pressing question on your mind. There is but one condition for learning and discovery - keeping an open mind.

The other day someone was describing the meaning or rather the philosophy behind the Hindu chant ‘OM’. Now before I go any further, OM is a word made popular as a meditative chant in the western world, but actually it is the foundation stone for the religion we know as Hinduism. What is interesting is that OM precedes all prayers, all mantras. Whether someone is paying homage to Shiva, Vishnu or any other deity, it always starts with OM. Hindus believe that OM encompasses the entire universe. Not many know why, but as is the case with all religions on this planet they have been told so they believe, the process of discovery in most religions has been stunted a long time ago by dogma. OM is above and beyond the gods and goddesses they worship.

Anyways, coming back to the original track of this article, what caught my attention was when they started describing the vibrations emanating from this word. OM as it is written in Sanskrit comprises of 3 parts aa, oo and mmm. Now let’s conduct a little experiment – say aaaa a few times and identify where you feel the vibrations, you will feel a resonance in your belly. Now say ooo, now the vibrations can be felt in the chest. And last, say mmmmm and you will feel the resonance in your throat.

This got me thinking. As a Muslim, Allah is the name by which God prefers to be addressed. Surely the name of the Almighty cannot be simply a word derived from Hebrew and Aramic languages. It has to have a far greater significance than that.  So I started experimenting with the vibrations of the name. The vibrations for aaaa were the same, obviously in both OM and Allah, centered in the belly. Then comes LLLLLAAAA, strangely, I felt the resonance in my chest, just like oooo in OM. In anticipation I tried AHHHHHH and guess what? The throat was the centre of resonance this time.

I was floored that the vibrations of both words were identical. In Sufi practices the vibration of AHHHH is made more pronounced by chanting Allah Hu. But this was not the end of the discovery, but the start. Over the years I have spent many hours reading about Law of Attraction and one of the basic tenets is that our thought vibrations attract our physical reality. If our thought vibrations are at a low scale i.e. fear, anger, helplessness etc. we attract those realities. If on the other hand, we are able to raise our vibrations to happiness, faith, love, compassion, then we start attracting realities which give us more of such experiences. 

It is a vibrational universe, and the String Theory of Quantum Physics confirms this. In a lay man’s words, the universe is comprised of one-dimensional objects called ‘strings’. The variations of oscillation or vibrations of these strings give rise to various particles. Simply put if strings vibrate a certain way they become electrons, if their vibration is different, they could be neutrons etc.

So thoughts are vibrations and it is a vibrational universe. The Master and Creator of the universe is God.  This means the name of God must encompass within it the key to accessing the higher vibrations. If His name does not bring you peace, joy, love and compassion, then it can only mean two things; one, it is not the real name; or two, you are chanting it wrong without feeling the vibrations. I believe that Allah and OM are not just words, they are the key to unlocking the universe. They are designed to help you reach the highest vibrations possible, hence enabling you to manifest in your reality all that is positive, be it health, wealth or happiness.  In other words your prayers are answered.

I have not really experimented with any other names by which God is known in other religions simply because I really don’t know much about them.  If you practice other religions please do feel free to experiment with the title by which you address God. In the meantime, if you are working on the Law of Attraction and working on raising your vibrations try chanting OM or Allah. Obviously it is easy for Muslims and Hindus. We don’t have to select, Muslims will chant Allah and Hindus will chant OM. But the rest of the world will need to select one which appeals most to them.  Don’t keep chanting without feeling the vibrations, it won’t have any affect at all. But if you do it right, you will feel a kind of inner cleansing that is hard to describe. The negativity seems to fade and it is hard to feel hopeless and stressed.

It may seem strange that I am taking examples of two seemingly opposite religions. One worships multiple gods and the other is the absolute bastion of monotheism.  Perhaps because the fundamental texts of both these religions have not undergone editing and transliterations like the others have, which is why it is easier to identify the core concepts of these religions and arrive at the truth behind them.  The truth cannot be changed. The truth is absolute. So if one finds the truth in one religion it is then easy to try and find parallels in others.  Religion is enduring and that which endures cannot be just an amalgamation of rituals and stories. For something to endure it has to be based not only on universal principles but also mysteries which can only be understood as mankind evolves its understanding of science and the nature of the universe we inhabit. 

Never in the history of mankind have we been so knowledgeable or have made such strides in science. We are perfectly poised to seek the hidden codes of our religions. It is now time to seek out the truth. We may not understand everything, because our knowledge is still limited and as it expands so will our understanding of religion.  Unfortunately, we have become so obsessed with our rituals and trying to prove to each other why they are wrong and we are right. We have defied the very reason why religions were sent our way – peace, harmony and love for all.

Islam and Hinduism - Different religions with common elements

There are 2 problems when writing about ancient religions – first they are ancient and second they are religions. Over millennia the mythology of ancient religions becomes more important than the core of the religion itself. Its followers adhere to these myths as if they were real and the followers of other religions target these very myths as the basis of their claim that their religion is nothing more than a bunch of lies. This problem takes on another dimension when the ancient religion is Hinduism and a Muslim tries to understand the truth behind the myths and find common truths between Hinduism and Islam. This is what I am attempting to do and hence opening the door to criticism from both Hindus and Muslims.

 I have always maintained that every major religion practiced on this planet had one Divine Source. If that was not the case Allah would not have said that He sent 124,000 prophets. They were sent to every civilization, every community starting from Adam and ending with Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). If this is the case then the source of every religion has to be Divine inspiration, and if this is so then not only the message but the components of all religions also have to be the same. Let’s just examine one aspect of Hinduism – the concept of multiple gods which are known as Devtaas. For practitioners of monotheistic religions especially Islam this is the very basis on which it is rejected as a false religion since our belief states that God is one and one only. But we need to go beyond the current belief system of Hinduism and examine what a Devtaa really is.

Devtaa simply means ‘the shining ones’ i.e. ‘of light’ and they basically control every aspect of our natural world such as fire, wind, rain, crops etc. According to Hinduism there are about 330 million of these devs. The ancient Aryans starting worshiping these devs because to appease them meant that the natural order of their world was maintained. Whether they should worship them or not is another debate, but what I’m interested to know is if devtaas really exist and does Islam recognize them? I came to the conclusion that Islam also recognizes devtaas. Devs are known in Islam as Malaaik or angels as we commonly refer to them in English.

Islam tells us that angels are made of ‘light’ which is precisely what dev means. In Islam too we are told that the angels have been assigned specific tasks by Allah in order to keep the universe in order. Muslims believe that angels are too numerable to be able to count them. The 330 million figure does not really mean that someone sat and made a list and counted all devtaas physically, its simply a number which emphasizes that they are too many to be counted by us.

The concept of Jins is also present in Hinduism, there they are called Asur. These Asur are the beings which are forever at war with the devtaas and spread malice, doubt, greed and general evil in this world. In Islam too the ‘shaitaan’ or evil jins are responsible for causing human beings to plunge into doubt and darkness, the chief shaitaan being ‘Iblis’ or the Devil as the west call him. If we know of angels and jins through Quran and our Prophet (PBUH), then how come the Hindus have been saying the same things for thousands of years before us? This would mean that the source of their knowledge would have to be the same i.e. Allah. Which means that some of His prophets must have been responsible for the establishment Sanatana Dharma (or Hinduism as we now call it).

Muslims and other followers of monotheistic religions can argue that the practice of worshipping these multiple devtaas is wrong and which is why they need to convert to their religions. Actually their religious texts also point to one God or Ishwar, but somehow the worship of devtaas became the established practice. But when a religion comes into being before writing itself, then chances are that the message will get contorted over the millennia. Which is why God kept sending his messengers to ensure constant updation.Next  time someone dismisses Hinduism as complete fiction they should remember that it isn’t. Religion itself has nothing to do with what its followers do to it.

 

Law of Attraction and Religion

Recently there has been a lot of focus on the Law of Attraction especially since the book ‘ The Secret’ was published. The basic tenet of this philosophy is simple – you manifest in your reality that what you think about most. In other words humans have the power to create the reality of their lives just by thinking about it. This usually causes great alarm to the religiously inclined, because what it means is that the power lies within humans rather than an external force i.e. God and that of course is heresy.

However Law of Attraction is not actually about thinking and manifesting, it is about thinking (stating a desire) and then allowing it in our lives and the bulk of our work is in the allowance not the thinking aspect of this law. But still the question remains, is it contrary to our religious beliefs? When I first started to study the Law of Attraction, like most people I too had many questions and concerns. Over time as I studied it more in-depth, I found that religion actually provided a medium for this law and rather than being at cross purposes, they complimented each other.

The first big question that emerges in everyone’s mind is if all we have to do is think then where does prayer come in? My counter question to that is why do we pray? It is of course to ask God for something – be it a material desire, salvation or just a state of protection. In fact whenever we pray we fulfill the first step of the Law of Attraction i.e. stating our desire – we let the Universe know what it is that we want.  The act of praying or asking God is of no use whatsoever unless you really and truly believe in God. It is our belief that gives strength to the prayer. When we pray in essence we hand over our requests to God knowing that He will somehow make them true for us.

This process of letting go or handing it over to the Universe is critical for desire manifestation according to the Law of Attraction. As I mentioned earlier the bulk of our work is to allow our desires to manifest. To the novice this may seem like the easiest thing in the world but to the initiated it is the most difficult aspect of LOA. You see the Universe does not respond to our words but to our emotions. In other words we don’t attract things in our lives by thinking about them rather we attract circumstances, things, events which closely match our predominant feeling. The most important aspect of allowance is to feel predominantly happy, optimistic or joyous. The longer we are able to maintain this state of joy, the quicker the manifestations will be. Vividly imagining as if your desires have already manifested and seeing yourself enjoying them also helps but on the flip side constantly thinking of when they will materialize actually delays the manifestations because the predominant feeling is that of waiting and the attention is on the absence of what you desire. Waiting and focusing on the lacking will generate more waiting and lack.

Now let’s get back to religion. You see the whole point of praying is to let go of things and let God take care of them. If our belief is truly strong then the act of praying should bring us relief from all negative emotions and make us content in the knowledge that our prayers are being answered. However, most people are never able to cross this line of faith. They constantly worry about when and if their prayers will be answered thus actually delaying the allowance and then wondering why God does not answer their prayers. He will if you move out of the way! If you don’t really trust Him then why go through the motions?

Every religion has a set of rituals designed to bring contentment, peace and joy.  Being a Muslim the act of Salaat 5 times a day for me is Allah’s way of ensuring that we not only take stress busting breaks but also that we completely forget our worries during that time and enter into a state of bliss. After all if your faith in God and your rituals do not make you happy then there is something very wrong in your personal belief system – I said personal belief system because religions cannot be wrong, people who follow them usually are.  

If you truly practice religion the way it was meant to be then you use the Law of Attraction to your advantage if not the Law of Attraction will keep working against you. Just look at the state of our country and the Ummah as well. We spend most of our time in blaming, being angry, hating, and being generally unhappy and what are we manifesting as a result? We are attracting and manifesting circumstances which make us angrier, more miserable and helpless. 

Of course even for those who are masters of the Law of Attraction sometimes seemingly random events occur in their lives or they are faced with unforeseen challenges. The avid LOA fan will tell you that at some level of your sub-conscious you attracted these things in your life. However my take is slightly different. I believe that God puts us in these situations so that not only does our resolve and character strengthen, but that our desires grow as well. Life would be pretty boring if we all had the same level of desires, usually a tragedy in our lives provides the spring board for noble and grand desires.  Therefore these events are what is sometimes described as ‘ contrast’ or situations where we can come to a decision as to what we want next in our lives.

It is easy to discard any idea without the slightest investigation, usually because when we are faced with two seemingly contradicting philosophies we become extremely uncomfortable emotionally. The easier route to take is just negate the one that is causing the turmoil. The more difficult and noble approach is to go through this discomfort, examine your own beliefs, find the truth behind both ideas and then build a bridge. 

Its All A Myth

All religious traditions have 3 things in common; they all help their followers find inner peace through a path of righteousness, each has its own rituals and they all contain their own specific mythologies. Objectively speaking no one really has a problem with the core essence of any religion i.e. the central message. Every religion teaches its followers to adopt the noblest of human characteristics – truth, serenity, justice, peace, sacrifice and simplicity. I have not come across a religion that teaches anything to the contrary.

Rituals are the identity badges of every religion. It is the rituals that people follow which enables us to differentiate between these traditions, hence they are unique for every religion. When followers of one religion criticize others they usually launch their attack on the basis of the rituals that a religion follows.

Mythologies are stories that are associated with a religion and can be loosely termed as the ‘history’ of that tradition. I would like to clarify here that contrary to popular belief a myth does not mean a lie – a myth is a traditional story usually involving supernatural characters. Many rituals are spawned from the mythology of that particular religion. A number of rituals are designed to help preserve these mythologies so that people never forget their origins. But mythologies are much more than just history passed down through the generations in a narrative form. They embody the wisdom of the ancestors passed in an easy to remember narrative.

Of all the ancient mythologies I find those of the Vedic tradition i.e. Hinduism the most interesting personally, simply because unlike the Greek and the Romans, Hinduism is considered to be the most ancient of all practiced religions and since I am from the sub-continent I find it easier to understand and study. What fascinates me about these myths is the attempt of the ancient people to pass on their knowledge of geography, medicine, history and the arts to their descendants through fascinating imagery.

Take for example the story of the sacred river Ganga. Ganga was the daughter of the king Hemavat ruler of Himalaya.  All his daughters were turned into rivers except Parvatti who became Shiva’s consort. Ganga was taken to the heavens to purify it after the Asuras had polluted it.  She was asked to come down and flow on earth by Bhagirtha. The sins of Bhagiratha’s ancestors had polluted the land and there was chaos and famine everywhere, after years of prayers and meditation he finally managed to bring Ganga down from the heavens. But if Ganga were to come straight down earth would not have been able to sustain its force hence Shiva intervened and Ganga first flowed onto his head and then made her way down to earth through his hair.

For non-Hindus this is fantasy at its peak, but look more closely and you will find a complete lesson on basic geography. In Sanskrit Hem means snow and hence Hemavat was snow king whose kingdom was Himalaya which means snow abode. All his daughters were fated to become rivers including Saraswati and Ganga, which as any school going kid now will tell you  makes perfect sense as we know that these rivers start in the Himalayas as snow, therefore in essence these rivers are the daughters of king of snow who rules over the snow abode. The river Ganga does not really start as a large river from a single point of origin, although the main river can be traced to Gomukh where the glacial melt water flows down into a stream which down course becomes the mighty river. However there are several streams and rivulets along the Himalaya which contribute their waters to Ganga. So to say that Ganga flows down from the locks of Shiva is a metaphor to describe the hundreds of streams which flow down to the river. A geography lesson narrated with imagery.

The sins of Bhagiratha’s ancestors had brought a terrible plight to his people who were dying of starvation due to famine. Again this is a way of not only making people understand that water is essential to life but that our reckless behaviour can have a long lasting effect on our future generations   a lesson we still haven’t learnt unfortunately). Clean water nourishes the land and provides a balance essential for its sustainability. As with all religions the ritual surrounding this myth has become more important than the real meaning of the story. Each year millions of people ritually ‘cleanse ‘ themselves by bathing in the waters of Ganga which itself is now fast becoming the most polluted river on the planet.  The ritual has become bigger than the lesson and this is not just in Hinduism, in every religion we see examples where rituals are being adhered to with fervour without a real understanding what they are meant to commemorate.  Muslims pray 5 times a day - the ritual is supposed to help focus their thoughts, relieve stress and surrender themselves to Allah but little of this really happens, while the body is postulating the mind is thinking of what one is going to be doing after the prayer is over, all worries, all problems all thoughts are still very much in play and surrender is the last thing on people’s mind.

There is no getting away from the fact that as long as we are alive we will be living in a diverse world. Religious diversity is a fact and those who either ignore this or try to eradicate it are living in a fool’s paradise. We have to understand that to believe in a religion and to respect it are two different things. I may be practicing one religion but that does not give me the right to negate or be derisive of others. If we take a little bit of time to understand the mythology of any religion we will be able to understand the wisdom behind it and no one can really argue with wisdom.

None of us can really deny the essence of any religion because they are the same. We can all respect other religions if we try and understand what their myths are really trying to say. And as for rituals - we can all agree to have the right to be different from each other. Perhaps then the world will become a more liveable, beautiful place. But this is only possible if we all take a step towards understanding and respecting each other rather than running in the opposite direction every time we come across a belief that is contrary to ours.

Death Wish

It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that I’m not really an ambitious person. For someone who has spent most of their life in corporate corridors training people who can’t wait to get to the top, it is no easy fact to accept. For a long time I felt there was something wrong with me – some form of mental illness perhaps? I look around at the people I know and they all seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere, to gain something, to be something, and I seem to be the only one just strolling down this path, having no burning desire to achieve anything specific in my life. I could find nothing in my life to which I could attach my happiness – when I get …I will be happy, when I become…I will be happy or when I go ….I will be happy. No such statements really spring up in my mind. It’s not that I have achieved utter bliss, there are a lot of things wrong with my life but somehow I know that in spite of all the imperfections I will survive and I although I want things to change, I can’t really find the fire within me to make an all our effort to do so.

Since this ‘condition’ was not normal I tried to analyze what exactly was the root of this problem. During this psychoanalysis I discovered one thing – I really believe in my immortality. I believe that the soul is eternal and I’m currently on a journey in this physical body. Since this is for me a transient phase I don’t really have the pressure of getting things done within my lifetime. I’m a tourist and as such I’m just soaking in the experiences of this journey, I am not putting the pressure of an itinerary on this trip. Having made this discovery about myself I realized that I was lying when I said I had no ambition – I did, but not one for this current physical life.

Now some of you may think I’ve gone all religious and have started to collect reward points which will get me to Heaven. Not really. I want 3 things to happen when I die. First I hope that there will be that moment of clarity when I can finally understand what my real place in the Universe is and why I was made to undertake this journey. The second is a free pass to roam the Universe. I wish my spirit could journey through the vastness of this Universe and witness its wonders. I want to see galaxies spiraling in space, I want to see a nebula where new stars are being formed, I want to see a Quasar in action in short I want to see first hand everything that I cannot while I’m in this physical body. The last thing I would like to happen when I die is to be able to answer questions which have been baffling scientists for so long – what are the other dimensions which exist other than those of time and space which we experience? What was before the beginning of the Universe? What happens after the end of our Universe?

Most people would say that I should be more concerned about making it to Heaven and making sure I don’t end up in Hell, but perhaps my definition of Heaven is a bit different. Sitting in a garden eating and drinking all day long is not really such a motivator for me, my idea of Heaven is knowledge. There are those who would be quick to term this as heresy or blasphemy since the religious texts specifically mention a garden as the final destination of the good and pious, however, I have a different take on this. We spent years trying to understand poetries written by masters and yet we are stupid enough to think that a text sent down by God himself can be understood at a literal level? If as we Muslims believe that Allah himself has promised to preserve the Quran till the Day of Judgement, then isn’t it obvious that as our civilization evolves we would understand the depth of the layers that each word contains?

The success of a religion is dependent on the validity of its message through the millennia and its ability to speak to mankind as it keeps evolving its level of knowledge. For people who lived 2000 to 14000 years ago in an arid and barren land an incentive of lush gardens ample water, milk and honey would be the best to entice them towards good – that is what they could relate to, what they could understand, hence that was the description of  Heaven. However that doesn’t really mean that Heaven is a particular location somewhere up in the skies. For all we know, we may just end up as pure consciousness in another dimension, a concept we are only now beginning to marginally understand. Anyway, this is not really about Heaven or Hell, this piece is about my desires.

So my life is without ambition, but I have a few desires for after I die. Having said that I realize that to say I have no ambition is not entirely true. My ambition or burning desire is to get to the truth and that perhaps is not possible while we are in this physical existence.

Lead me from untruth towards the truth

Lead me from darkness towards light

Lead me from mortality towards immortality

This is a beautiful prayer which perhaps defines my desires very well. The fact that it is in Sanskrit will make some squirm, as they will immediately jump to the conclusion that if its in Sanskrit then I’m leaning towards Hinduism. However these lines do not really mention any god or goddess, in fact it is a plea from a student to his teacher. Besides, belief in a religion and understanding other religious texts are 2 separate things. Surely if just by reading about other religions your own belief starts to waver, then your faith was weak in the first place.  The Sanskrit version is:

Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya

Thamaso Maa Jyothir Gamaya

Mrithyor Maa Amritham Gamaya