The Rāmāyaņa (श्री रामायण)
Rāmāyaņa = Rāmā + āyaņa = it is the journey that has been walked by Rāmā. The word Rāmā means: ramayate iti rāmaH (रमयते इति रामः) which means the one who is always ever effulgent in Bliss. The word āyaņa means path. It is a path on which one can travel. There is one more meaning of āyaņa and it means advancing. If we look into the characters in the Rāmāyaņa as only persons, then we cannot learn anything from that except that certain incidents happened in history and we can use it only to tell bed time stories to our children.
The Rāmāyaņa and Mahābhārata are called as itihāsa's (इतिहास) which mean in simple terms as history. If they are just epics of history then what is the use?
If we look at the word itihāsa (इतिहास) the amarakosha (अमरकोश) says itihAsaH purAvR^ittam (इतिहासः पुरावृत्तम्) that means it is related to the events of the past. Now, when we mean past - is it the past which is some years earlier, or some centuries earlier, when is it? To what extent we have to look into the past? Are the Rishis indicating only at the past as a historical events that happened in one's life, or are they indicating somewhere else?
When we go deeper into this, it ends at the origin of the cosmos, i.e., it is very clear that the past in this sense is nothing but age old or sanātana dharma (सनातन धर्म). So, it is nothing but the age old dharma or duty of a soul or consciousness. Here I am forced to use the word soul just because if I don't use the word soul and use only the word consciousness, then readers may not understand it clearly. Hence, request the readers not to misinterpret the soul as some kind of object. Coming to the point, itihāsa means - the one which tells about the manifestation (vyakta व्यक्त ) of the consciousness (chaitanayam चैतन्यम्) from the unmanifested One (avyakta अव्यक्त). So Rāmāyaņa is the journey or the path that is taken by the individual consciousness to merge into the Universal consciousness. Rāmāyaņa depicts that the consciousness can dwell and be in the Bliss and none else and shows us the way that we all can travel so to effuse ourselves with that eternal Bliss and merge into Universal consciousness.
Rāmāyaņa tells us about how the individual consciousness manifests into many forms and how each part of the consciousness that is present in every manifested form is making an attempt to go back and merge into the unmanifested. This is the path of the every drop of ocean that has evaporated from its surface and the path it travels to merge into the ocean.
Rāmāyaņa tells us about how the individual consciousness manifests into many forms and how each part of the consciousness that is present in every manifested form is making an attempt to go back and merge into the unmanifested. This is the path of the every drop of ocean that has evaporated from its surface and the path it travels to merge into the ocean.
The three main characters in Rāmāyaņa and their meanings:
- Rāmā (रामः) = ramayate iti rāmaH (रमयते इति रामः) which means the one who is always ever effulgent in Bliss
- Sitā (सीता) = spirituous liquor (it is that drink of Nothingness in which Rāmā always dwells in)
- Hanumān (हनुमान): Life force that connects the Individual Soul with the Universal Soul.
When the aspirant (saadhak साधक) learns Pranayama (प्राणायाम) and understands the control of life-force, then by proper methodology (pranayama technique that allows to still the mind and takes beyond mind) unites Sitā (सीता) with Rāmā (रामः). The whole of Rāmāyaņa tell us about how an individual by learning life force control can return the consciousness from the manifested world (vyakta व्यक्त) to the unmanifest (avyakta अव्यक्त) or that eternal Nothingness (shunya शून्य).
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