What Are the Vedas?

What are the vedas?

The Knowledge Available to Everyone

In short, the word Veda means “The Knowledge,” capital T, capital K, The Knowledge. The Knowledge is that vibration which exists deep inside the Unified Field itself.

[00:01:02] That Unified Field of consciousness, which is the basis of all forms, all particles, all phenomena. That one indivisible, whole consciousness field, when coming into manifestation from its unmanifest state, has a vibration, and in that vibration, which is cognizable by anyone who can regularly allow their awareness to familiarize itself with that deep inner silence, that vibration, when cognized by someone turns into what we call Veda.

[00:01:39] And so Veda means The Knowledge, and The Knowledge is not authored by anyone. In Sanskrit there is a phrase about Veda that says “apaurusheya.” Apaurusheya in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, means not authored by anyone.

[00:01:59] It’s not authored by anyone. It doesn’t have an author. It’s available absolutely to everyone.

What Should I Do Now?

[00:02:04] And so what is it? It’s knowledge about the totality of all the laws of Nature in their combination, in their function, isolated laws, and laws all together integrated in one awareness, which gives an individual an understanding of what is spontaneous, right action.

[00:02:28] That is to say, “How do I know what to be doing at any given time?” This is the great quandary, isn’t it? That, “Here I am. I’m a conscious being. I have choices evidently and the time is passing. There’s a limited amount of time for which these bodies exist.

[00:02:48] “And during which time I can carry out some kind of activity to make a life that has some impact. A life that is worth remembering. A life that is memorable. A life that has made a positive contribution to the evolutionary process, not just for myself and my closest ones, but for all those who surround me, who are concerned with one’s daily life.

[00:03:16] “What should I do now? What is the most evolutionary thing for me to be doing right now?”

The Mechanism of Desire

[00:03:22] Veda itself states that rather than attempting intellectually, purely intellectually, to figure out the answer to that question, says go deep within yourself, touch on that layer, which is the vibrant field of Veda. And that capacity to spontaneously move into the correct field of action will come to you from within.

[00:03:50] Interestingly, the Vedic, and the word Vedic is an Anglicised way of using Veda as an adjective. The real word in Sanskrit would be Vaita, but nobody would understand that so we turn Veda into Vedic.

[00:04:06] The real Vedic worldview is there’s no commandments. There’s no set of behaviors. Basically what Veda insists upon is that we raise our consciousness to the highest possible level, taking our awareness to that most expanded state where Veda itself is vibrant in our awareness.

[00:04:32] And then one is spontaneously guided by that totality consciousness into individual behaviors. And that guidance takes place through the mechanism of desiring.

Dharma

[00:04:46] Very interestingly, when we want to know, as we’re gaining greater and greater, more expanded consciousness, “What is it that’s evolutionary to do?” for someone who meditates, the answer is, “You’ll find a certain proposition to action very charming, and you’ll find other propositions to action not as charming as that, or perhaps even aversion laden.”

[00:05:08] And so Veda does not set out in a book, “This is what you should do. This is what you shouldn’t do. And so on and so forth.” And we’ve seen problems with this in other worldviews where, for example, someone is told, “Don’t kill anybody,” but then in another part of the same scripture, it says, “God’s very happy when you kill bad people, if they’re Philistines or whatever.”

[00:05:33] And so killing, what’s the answer? Do you do it or do you not do it? Sometimes God likes it. Sometimes God doesn’t like it. And this leaves people with a lot of quandary about what is actually supposed to be done at the human level? What is our personal role in the evolution of things?

[00:05:54] This is another word in Sanskrit. The word is dharma, D-H-A-R-M-A, dharma. Dharma means your personal role in the evolutionary process. Your personal role in the evolution of things. What is the most evolutionary thing for you to be doing at any given moment?

Self-Referral Knowledge

[00:06:16] Veda has the answer. You go deep within yourself and you allow your awareness to merge and become one with that deep inner silence, and when it comes back into manifestation, the answer, in terms of thought, in terms of desire, in terms of action, becomes vibrant in your whole Being. And then you’re able to act with certain knowledge that you’re bringing about an evolutionary process.

[00:06:50] So this is really Self-referral knowledge. When we use the word Self, capital S, Self. By referring back to the deep inner Self, we’re referring back to that layer of us, the Vedic layer, which is the home of all the laws of Nature. It’s the home of, and source, of all the evolutionary forces in the whole universe.

A Unique Approach to Morality

[00:07:17] And so we have an unique approach to, if you like, morality and that is that rather than telling you what it is, we teach you a technique.

[00:07:31] A simple mental technique that you close your eyes for 20 minutes, twice a day, allow your awareness to settle down into that deep inner silence, and touch upon that layer, which is going to help you understand what your personal dharma is. Your personal role in the evolution of things is for any given moment.

[00:07:54] And so this really empowers you, and instead of there being a structure of people who are there to tell you what is Vedic and what isn’t Vedic, you have your own access to that deep inner home of all the laws of Nature and it expresses itself through you. It’s the place where our individuality and our cosmic Nature meet.

Overloads of Experience

[00:08:19] Now, this is all very highfalutin, and that is to say, if that’s all a little too much for people, then we can also say it from this particular angle. Each of us wants to be the best that we can be. Each of us wants to bring maximum creative intelligence, energy and intelligence to every thought and every action.

[00:08:42] Each of us wants to be someone whose actions not only do not harm the interests of others, but who advances the interests of others. We want to be like that. That seems to be our human nature.

[00:08:54] What is it that stops us from doing it? Well, it’s an accumulation of overloads of experience that we’ve had in the past.

[00:09:03] These overloads of experience, too much of this and too much of that, shock experiences, changes of expectation, disappointments, all of that, sadness, anger, fear, all of these things that come with the process of living a life, accumulate inside the mind and then translate into the body as physiological stress. Stress has a chemical substrate and we end up with a lot of stress.

Unbinding You From the Past

[00:09:31] So Vedic Meditation, looking at it from this perspective, allows the mind to settle down to its least-excited state, and in that least-excited state, the body gains levels of rest that are unprecedented. This unprecedented level of rest, many times more restful than sleep, allows the deepest-rooted stresses to dissolve, to release and relieve in the system.

[00:09:55] And then each day, as you accumulate a little stress, with your regular twice-a-day practice, you release and relieve all of those stresses.

[00:10:03] And what this does, is it unbinds you from the past. It unbinds you from having to behave in ways that are no longer relevant. That once upon a time, it may have been relevant to behave stressfully because the stress situation was there.

[00:10:21] Now that situation’s gone. And for us to continue to react as if the dangers are there with fighting and fleeing activity going on in our nervous system, just makes most of our behavior kind of irrelevant, and uses up a tremendous amount of energy and blocks our creative intelligence.

[00:10:40] So the removal of that obstacle is the specialty of Vedic Meditation. And then again, coming back to my original proposition, allowing the mind to settle down and to unify with that unbounded Unified Field.

Universal Human Knowledge

[00:10:55] This is what the Veda brings as a promise and although, in modern times, it is something that is associated with India, because one group of Indians were particularly good at maintaining the knowledge of all of this, the Vedic tradition, but they themselves will state this is universal human knowledge.

[00:11:18] And it’s not only Indians who discovered the Veda. The Indians are just the ones who have called it the Veda. And so it’s called Veda in Indian language, but in other languages we also can see certain ways that this could be expressed.

[00:11:35] In Latin the same thing, the Veda, is referred to in Latin, in the Judeo-Christian theology, as the Sunnum Bonum, the Good Good. That layer of individuality that makes contact with Universal Consciousness.

[00:11:54] And we can see this through different language expressed in the highest consciousness states of people from all cultures, from all nations. The Veda is the Sanskrit way of stating this, but this is really speaking to the truth of life of humanity.