Atma Nivedanam

What is Ātma Nivedanam?

In a very generic term "Ātma Nivedanam" can be simply translated as "Surrender."

Is that sufficient? No. Let us dive deeper into it.

It consists of two words. Ātma and Nivedanam.

Let us first look into the second word - Nivedanam. Nivedanam means an offering. When we offer something to someone, we ensure that it is clean, prepared in a very sacrilegious manner, untainted with any inharmonious vibrations and while offering we also ensure that we offer it with 100% willingness without any expectations.

Let us look into the first word - Ātma. The general meaning is soul or spirit. Now the spirit or soul is ever pure, untainted, unbiased, unprejudiced, non-judgmental. There are no thoughts to the spirit. It is eternal. However, every Atma / soul / spirit is associated with a body or if not the body some identifications with any thought processes where it gets tainted.

Now the term Ātma Nivedanam is not a noun, instead it is a verb - an action, a process where the intensity can vary from 0% to 100% based upon the conditional thinking of any individual soul. It all depends upon the extent and intensity of the entanglement of that soul with its thought processes or the conditional thinking.

Hence, Ātma Nivedanam involves a process of offering of our thoughts, thought processes, ideas, opinions, identities - all unto the Absolute without any anticipation in return. It includes even the thought of offering also.

In actual practice when the process of Ātma Nivedanam happens 100%, the soul enters the realm of Nothingness and merges with the Universal Spirit. 

A metaphor of wave and ocean is being used to further explain this. Let us say the wave keeps thinking that it is a wave and not the ocean, then, what it all has to do is stop thinking that it is a wave. Because, it is never separate from the ocean. What all the wave has to do is stop thinking. The wave has to offer its thought process of thinking that it is the wave, then the Ātma Nivedanam happens and it will realize that it is never separate from the Ocean. What is stopping the wave is the thought or the thought process. Letting go the thought process is Ātma Nivedanam. As long as the wave has it itself as its reference point, it will think itself as a wave and it will be in the delusion that it is a wave. The moment it changes its reference point to the ocean, then it will see itself as a part of the ocean and not separate from the ocean. Ātma Nivedanam helps us changing our reference points from body and mind (thought processes) to that of the Spirit.

Human beings live 99% of the time "a life of comparison." This is the main problem of so many wants and desires. If one can anchor onto the soul, then 99% of worries vanish just like that. Then, Ātma Nivedanam can happen or else it is again an identity which would be directing in fulfillment of a wish that has arised in comparison with someone else's life. When the unnecessary and false reference points are avoided, then it becomes easy for Ātma Nivedanam to happen.