Ask Thom Anything – Rainbows, Young Meditators, Soma Bandits, Moksha & Nirvana

Ask Thom Anything –  Rainbows, Young Meditators, Soma Bandits, Moksha & Nirvana

[00:00] Q – What is the significance of rainbows?

This might not be a great question, but I’m just so fascinated by them. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of rainbows?

[00:11] A – Indra Dhanush And Rainbows

Yes. In Sanskrit, we say Indra dhanush. Indra, I-N-D-R-A, is the sound that nature makes when it is celebrating and expressing the intelligence responsible for, amongst other things, rain. Indra. Indra. It’s the sound that Nature makes.

This is the way we describe it. It is too facile for us to say it is the name of the rain god. It’s very facile, not descriptive enough for our very sophisticated Vedic worldview. Listen to the way I describe it. Indra is the sound that Nature makes when intending for that consciousness responsible for bringing about rain. It’s a sound. Indra. Indra. We can say it’s a name, but name isn’t good enough, because why?

Table [taps table]. That sound “table” has absolutely nothing to do with this form that I’m tapping here. You could sit in your least excited state and think, “Table, table, table,” over and over again, and you’d get absolutely nothing. Mesa in Espanol. Same. Sorry. It might remind us in language of that thing, but it won’t create this thing.

In Sanskrit, every word is onomatopoeic, every sound, every word. So we have a saying in Sanskrit, Nama rupa sahitam bhavati eva. Nama rupa sahitam bhavati eva. Nama, means the name of a thing. Nama rupa, the form of the thing. Nama rupa sahitam. Sahitam means infinitely correlated. It’s translated as together, but we lack more sophisticated language, infinitely correlated. Nama rupa sahitam bhavati, is the state of Being. Is or am or are. State of Being, Bhavati eva, indeed. Name and form are infinitely correlated, indeed.

Indra, so Indra, and then Dhanush. D-H-A-N-U-S-H. We’ve heard this word, similar word to this in Dhanurveda. So there are four Vedas, Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, and each one of these Vedas has its own Upaveda, subordinate Veda. The Upaveda of Rigveda is Ayurveda. The Upaveda of Samaveda is Gandharvaveda. The Upaveda of Yajurveda is Dhanurveda. And then the Upaveda of Atharvaveda is Sthapatyaveda, architecture. So Dhanurveda.

Dhanurveda. When we say we want to say a bow, like the instrument of archery, the stick that is bent, that has a string keeping it bent, and then it turns it into a launching device, things can be launched from it, a bow, a dhanush. It’s a Dhanush, but when we put a V on the next word, there’s a rule of flow that makes it turn into an R, Dhanurveda. The Veda of the Dhanush, the Veda of archery, is Dhanushveda, but you can’t say Dhanushveda, because of a rule of grammar. It has to be Dhanurveda.

[04:08] Becoming A Rainbow Maker At Home

So when we say rainbow, we say Indra dhanush. Indra dhanush Indra dhanush is the rainbow. It’s the bow of Indra. Indra bending the bow.

Now, what happens when you bend white light?

I’ll tell you, it turns into a rainbow. It creates a spectral array. So when white light comes into a colorless light, comes into a prism, the prism fragments the light, it bends the light, and you get to see the spectral array in that it creates a prism.

So the combination of the drops of rain of Indra, which are all millions of little prisms, followed by the light going through them and bifurcating into a spectral array, Indra danush, the bow of Indra. And so this is the Vedic way. We could talk about it all afternoon, but that’s probably enough for now, just to get a start on it.

It’s considered to be an art form to cause rainbows to come into being. Anybody who’s feeling a little lackluster, if you want to get luster instead of lackluster, then be a rainbow maker. And you can go to any hippie shop, any optic shop, any shop at all, or you can go on the World Wide Web and look up rainbow makers, and get started on making some rainbows, and your life will be less lackluster.

You hang those little things on strings, or if they are big prisms, stick them on the windowsill, and when the sun shines through there, you get the spectral array all over your house, even if you have rooms into which sunlight can’t go because it’s too far and around an angle, if you have rainbow makers, the rainbows will go into that room.

And you have one on the east, if you have an east and that’ll get you the Eastern morning Sun rainbows. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, south is next. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, it’s north, because in the southern hemisphere, the Sun, of course, crosses the northern sky, and this in the 

Northern Hemisphere, the Sun crosses the southern sky. And then west the setting Sun.

Good to have rainbow time around the house, and then any time that you’re a little lackluster, there’s nothing that will fix you up than the Indra danush, faster than an Indra danush.

There’s even an exercise, a Vedic exercise, whereby you take a prism, or any kind of prismatic object, and you make a rainbow out of it, and you let the light shine into each eye in the whole spectral ray.

So on one end, you have infrared, then red, and then that segues into all the other colors of the rainbow, and it ends up at the opposite end in the indigo, the deep, deep blue. And you let the blue and all the colors of the rainbow go past one eye, and then you do it with the other eye.

You give the eyes a little dazzle with Indra danush, and you’re just fixed up for the rest of the day. Or you can just have them ambiently sitting around your house, sparkling away everywhere. It’s a highly recommended Vedic thing. Good question.

[07:53] Q – How can we inspire more young people to meditate?

More than a question, I was wondering if you could say a few words to inspire the youth to meditate, because with everything you’ve said, for me, it’s kind of obvious why everyone should do it. And as someone who started meditating really early in life, like I get the benefits, but I feel like in general, there is curiosity, but at the same time, something’s missing there for them to do it.

[08:29] A – The Destiny Of A Non-Meditating Adult

For all young people, there’s some moment of shock that arrives when you look around at all the adults that surround you in your life, your parents, people older than you, in shops or in places that you go, teachers at school, professors at university, family members and all of that. And the shock moment comes when you realize they’re all stress bags.

And you look at them and you just think, My God, am I going to become one of those? And how am I going to avoid becoming one of those? And I can tell you how to avoid it, because there are so few inspirational people that as a young person, you can look up to and think, I want to be that.

Because mostly what you see around you, if they’re even 10 years older than you, as you look and say, I definitely don’t want to be that, whatever that is. I don’t want to be that, or that, or that, or that or that. I don’t see anything I want to be. And so how to become something other than what it is you’re seeing all around you, and you are on your way to becoming that?

If you don’t meditate, you’re on your way to becoming a stressed adult who is stuck in the ever repeating known, stuck in their ways, stuck in 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, stuck in old, irrelevant thinking, no freshness, no creativity, no innovation, no inventiveness. Stuck, stuck. Stuck.

If you don’t want to become what you see all around you, go right away to my website, look up how to learn Vedic Meditation. Find a teacher and get rescued from that desperate destiny which is going to be your destiny if you don’t learn to meditate.

If you want to be a really unusual adult who young people look at you and say, I want to be like you, if you if you would prefer to be someone who’s inspiring to the youth when you become old. And by the way, the older years are coming for you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Becoming older is happening to absolutely everybody every minute.

[12:42] Vedic Meditation Helps You Become An Exceptional Adult

So if you, if you don’t want to be an encrusted, old, predictable adult who is like everybody you see around you, and you’re on your way to that, there’s only one way that you’re going to break away from that destiny, and that is to have a program where every morning and every night you completely get rid of all the stress chemistry and awaken that giant brain of yours and keep yourself highly relevant, refreshed every day. Twice a day, completely refreshed, and then you’ll be somebody who the younger generation, who will come up behind you, will look at you and say, out of all the 1000s of people I’ve seen who’ve aged you’re the one I want to be like.

So that’s my inspiration to you. The young people need to have a very clear examination of the world around them, of people who are older than them, and get a real impression about what’s coming for them if they don’t meditate.

What’s making everybody like that that you see around you older? Almost without exception. maybe one out of 100 might be an exception, but 99 out of 100 are just stress bags. What’s the one common thing that’s making them all that way? They don’t meditate. That’s the one common thing that’s making them all that way.

So if you want to be an exceptional adult, you have to do the exceptional thing, learn to meditate, practice it every day, and make yourself into an iconic citizen. Don’t be predictable.

[13:01] Q – What is a soma bandit?

I sometimes hear Vedic meditators mention soma bandits, and I’ve heard it mentioned in a question on the podcast. Can you please explain what a soma bandit is?

[13:14] A – Attention Robbers

Yeah, thank you for raising the subject. And for those members of my audience who’ve never heard the phrase soma bandit before, I’d like to explain a little bit what it means.

Soma. Soma is a Sanskrit word that’s been used in the West. In fact, it was hijacked by the Greeks to mean body, but the Greeks got it from the Indians via Alexander the Great. That’s a whole story I’ll go into on some later occasion.

Soma, in Sanskrit means consciousness as flow. Consciousness as either a pool of consciousness or consciousness flowing directed to consciousness soma, and so we have a certain degree of consciousness, which means attention, the capacity to attend to a thing. And if somebody is a bandit, that somebody who is doing a hold-up, like a stick-up, all they want is your soma.

They don’t actually particularly make any effective use of your attention. They just enjoy the attention, but they’re not collecting the product that they are robbing you of. They’re robbing you of attention. They’re more like a sieve, you know, like you pour water into a sieve and it just goes right through. Nothing collects there.

So somebody who thrives on robbing the attention of others because it feels good for them to be attended to, even though they don’t make any practical use of the attention that you give them. Then in the Vedic kind of vernacular meditators often refer to this kind of person as a “soma bandit,” means somebody who is just robbing your attention and doing nothing productive with it. 

It’s a waste of time and a waste of your energy.

Now fortunately, for those of us who practice Vedic Meditation, we can replenish our soma infinitely, because every time we sit and meditate, we top up the tank, we fill up the soma tank. And so there’s plenty of it available, but it doesn’t help anyone who is perhaps addicted to robbing other people of their consciousness to be rewarded in that behavior.

And so it’s good to have a policy not to be an enabler of soma banditry, and there are 100 ways of gently removing yourself from the equation and getting out of interaction with such a person. If all they’re doing is wanting your attention, but they’re showing no evidence of them using your attention in any productive way, then you know, minutes are passing, hours are passing. How many hours and how many hundreds of hours have we given to this kind of banditry?

We have better things to do with our consciousness, and so we don’t have to be rude. There are very skillful ways, and I’m sure you can think of lots of creative ways that you can absent yourself from the situation. And even better than that, is to see it coming and avert the danger which has not yet come.

But if you do have to use those skills, then, if you’re a meditator, you’ll be super creative about how to get out of that situation. Listen, not reward some of banditry.

[17:50] Q – What is the distinction between moksha and nirvana?

Could you please explain the distinction between moksha and nirvana?

[17:56] A – Breaking Of Shackles vs Liberation Of Potential

Two Sanskrit words which have entered the language of people who are engaged in spiritual quests, nirvana. Nirvana.

And you know, I want to make a distinction for all the young rockers that we’re not talking about the famous grunge band. Nirvana was the description that was given by the Shakya Muni, the historic Buddha, for the experience that he had when finally sitting under a bodhi tree, he attained to moksha.

Moksha, M-O-K-S-H-A. Moksha is another Sanskrit word, and although both of them mean liberation, moksha means the liberation into unboundedness.

Nirvana has, as a word, has some subtle implications that are a little different from simple moksha. So think of moksha as being the breaking of shackles, the breaking of fetters. When you have been locked in by something, and you break that, that’s referred to as moksha, you’ve been unlocked and released. You’ve been released.

Nirvana has all of the same implications in Sanskrit that we give this word in English. Liberation doesn’t just mean that you are being freed from something that has bound you. It does have that, of course, but it also can mean the liberation of inner potentials. It can mean the release into active, conscious use of what had been latent.

So the activation of that which is latent is liberation of potential, and then to become liberated from something,.this is really where the word moksha is a little bit more very specific. So moksha doesn’t really talk about the liberation of potential. Moksha simply refers to the unlocking.

[20:24] A Changing Sense Of Inner Identity

But let’s talk about what we’re being unlocked from, for a moment so we understand moksha properly. Moksha is very often a term that’s used to describe enlightenment someone has attained to, moksha.

So let’s look for a moment at what that is in the common experience. One gains a sense of identity from the experiences one has in the regular waking, dreaming, sleeping, repetition of these three consciousness states day after day from childhood, and experiences occur, and as those experiences occur, impressions are made inside the inner self, inside one’s ego structure as to what it is that I am.

“I am this, that. I think this and that…” and gradually, over a period of time, we begin to get a sense of identity which is made up of all the most consistent elements of the of the cloud of thoughts that we’ve most consistently had most recently.

“I am this cluster of thoughts,” a thought cluster. “What do I think about this, let’s say politically? What do I think about this, environmentally? What do I think about this in terms of nourishing myself? What do I think about…” and so then we develop a consistent, mostly consistent thought cluster, which is our sense of identity.

“I know who I am because my most recent thought cluster already has pre prepared statements to make about Taylor Swift, or about politics of the day, or about what’s happening in the world, or economics, or what your plan is for retirement, or whatever.”

And we recognize that an earlier thought cluster, let’s say the thought cluster of a decade ago was a different thought cluster. You know, I may have had some thoughts back then that I still have today. So those are my more consistent elements of identity, but the me of 10 years ago likely at least 50 or 60% of the thoughts that I was having in my then thought cluster are different to the thoughts I’m having today in my most recent thought cluster.

So what this means is our inner sense of identity is going through change all of the time, and it’s very ephemeral. What is that? What are the character… what is the character of these thoughts that fly through our minds?

[23:21] Rediscovering the Non-Changing Self Through Vedic Meditation

Now we learn Vedic Meditation, and a consistent phenomenon begins to occur that is not subject to change. We regularly experience a layer of our inner Being which is absolute. It’s a state that is not subject to thinking.

It’s a state that’s not subject to body sensations. It’s a state that’s not subject to phenomenology. There is no phenomenology. An experience of pure Being is an experience of capital T, capital A, The Absolute is The Absolute.

And that non-changing unboundedness starts to become a regular feature of my inner sense of Self. “Who am I? Well, I’m not merely the thoughts that I’ve had, most recently, the thought cluster. I am having thoughts, but I seem to be something that is beyond just the most recent thought cluster.

“I am the capital K Knower. I am the Knower, the witness of the thoughts. I am identifying with The Absolute. The Absolute is the unmanifest phase of the Unified Field. I’m identifying with that which is the source of all this change.

And so now I’m beginning to become liberated from the shackles of my identity being dictated to by just whatever most recent thoughts I’ve had. Instead of the recent thought cluster being the enforcer of identity, there’s something new and that unshackles me.

It makes it possible for me to have a sense of Self that is not bound by merely the circumstances of the world that most recently happened in my thoughts about those things. I have a sense of Self, a layer of me that is literally non-changing.

But it’s not non-changing as in stubbornness about a particular idea is not an idea. It’s a backdrop experience of absolute Beingness, which is a silent witness of all of the ever-changing phenomenology. This is moksha.

Moksha is liberation from the tyranny of having our identity locked into whatever we’ve been thinking most recently, something greater than that.

So this is what’s referred to as moksha. Buddha took it a step further and referred to it as the liberation of all the inner potentials, not only liberation from the tyranny of everyday thinking, but liberation of our full potential.

And so Nirvana has a more rich and broad meaning compared with moksha. Moksha just break the shackles. Nirvana, liberation of everything that comes from inside as a consequence of that breaking of the shackles.

Jai Guru Deva..