Swami Chinmayananda - A Manual Of Self Unfoldment

TWO WORDS

When a new born baby enters this world of endless space all around, it suffers from the crunching atmospheric pressure and therefore feels lost, confused, confounded and even utterly miserable. Even more poignantly conscious would be the confusions, discomforts which a seeker must feel when he first enters the spiritual world. He has left the comforts of his egocentred, desire prompted, lust-seeking world based upon his sense of possession, ownership and vanities, but he has not yet arrived in the world of understanding, let alone the experience of the rhythm of the Self Divine.

As the child grows and picks up more and more understanding of the world around him, it grows to be more and more at ease with the endless worlds of things and beings. So too, the seeker can discover his inner peace and joyous enthusiasm only when he continues his diligent enquiry, discovers and learns to perceive the logical rhythm and the scientific contents of this apparently crazy confusion of happenings and equally brutal behaviour of things and beings around him.

Life is a tragedy to those who feel; life is a comedy to those who think, sings the poet and it is so true! In order to understand nature and her behaviour, material scientists have been observing the objective phenomena and studying them diligently for centuries. The is of yore pursued a different system of study. They turned their attention on the subjective Self and studied the world around them from the subjective standpoint. This subjective study constitutes the science of Reality (brahmavidy). This is the theme and content of Vednta.

I must congratulate r Kerala Varma Thampuran, secretary of Chinmaya Mission, Bangalore who has so intelligently compiled the fundamentals in my own words, gathering them from my books and recorded talks, published or pronounced during the past twenty or more years. I congratulate r Thampuran especially because of his high sense of purpose that seems to have prompted him to undertake this compilation.

Chinmaya Mission is in a big way now entering into a very tender and delicate arena of work. To impart ideas and ideals of Vednta, in all their uncompromising mysticism to the modern educated teenagers of the world is a highly sensitive and supremely delicate art. I could not have entered into this sacred arena of work without a team of sensitive workers well poised in their own inner understanding and chaste in their spiritual dedication.

Now the time has come and I prescribe this textbook for their study and as guidelines for their group leaders. While reading through the manuscript I have tried to gear it up to make it exhaustive, clear and effective to the modern university educated, scientific minded, emotionally secular and intellectually arrogant, sceptic young boys and girls of the world.

In preparing this manuscript while I was at New York and Boston, many dedicated, enthusiastic boys and girls helped me. Central Chinmaya Mission Trust of India and Chinmaya Publications (West) of California are extremely grateful to them all.

SWAMI CHINMAYANANDA

Transliteration and Pronunciation Guide

In the book, Devangar characters are transliterated according to the scheme adopted by the International Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912. In it one fixed pronunciation value is given to each letter; f, q, w, x and z are not called to use. An audio recording of this guide is available at http://chinmayamission.com/scriptures.php. According to this scheme:

PUBLISHERS NOTE

Knowing others is intelligence, but knowing ourselves alone is wisdom. Our modern society is obsessed with understanding and mastering the outside world. Through science, we have gathered a vast bank of knowledge. We have devised political and economic systems to control the workings of the world. With this knowledge and control over the outside world, we remain unhappy, unfulfilled and restless.

Our experience clearly shows us that this knowledge of the world outside can never give us the joy and peace that is our deepest desire. We must turn therefore to the only other thing ourselves. When we try to understand ourselves, delve into our mind and try to discover the true ground of our being, all conflicts are resolved, leaving only refreshing joy, inexpressible peace and boundless perfection.

It is to help us discover this perfection in us that Pjya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda spent his whole life travelling around the world and teaching. His many books, articles and discourses have been distilled into this one book, Self Unfoldment . Here seekers are guided step by step in the process of inquiry into oneself and shown the path to that ultimate knowledge.

We are very happy to present to you this revised edition of Self Unfoldment , which includes diacritical marks for non English words. Many thanks to the Chinmaya Prakashanam team for their efforts in bringing out this book.

Date:
01.01.2010

Discover the Secret Strength

It is the privilege of man to achieve greatness. Success should have been his habit, and yet, we find millions upon millions suffering in their disorganised life, the agonies of failures.

In our modern society, for every successful man we watch hundreds who are disappointed, dejected and broken down. As on a grinding stone, people get themselves crushed in the competition of the modern material world and its market place. Yet, all the spiritual literature of the world, unanimously declares that this need not be the tragedy of the human race if the individual members know the art of diligently using their own abilities and efficiencies.