Spiritual Living

What We’re About

Welcome to spiritual living in a Crazy, Screwy, Nutso World.

What we are going to do is redefine every aspect of what “spiritual,” “living” and “crazy, screwy, nutso World” is. “In a” stays.

We are going to talk about the basis of everything. Why you are here, what your life purpose is, what a mistake is, how to decide what to do and what you want in life.

We are going to give you a whole bunch of secrets, 15 or 20 secrets. “Secrets” means “things you don’t know about.” They will be scattered throughout the book and it is your job to find them and to value them and to appreciate them. That means, every time you read something in this book you did not know, that’s one of your secrets. Keep count, if you want. Or don’t, if you’re lazy. It’s up to you.

One of the frustrating things about reading a book is you have no way to ask about something you don’t understand. We’ve thought of that, as come up with an answer: you can ask us questions! Go to our radio interview website at http://TheSimplestWays.com, look for the link for questions for David Adelson -me. Use that link to ask your question.

Everything You Need To Know

It’s not much; just an example of ideal life on which to base your life.

We’re going to start with an overview. It’s a Story. It’ll show you how certain Laws of Nature behave. Or misbehave. Depending.

It’s a great story—I’d love to see a Hollywood Special-Effects version. For now, close your eyes & listen. Wait. It’s a book, you can’t do that. So try this: close your eyes and read. (Yeah, that’s the ticket.)

The Ramayana comes from India, and is either Indian mythology or non- mythology, depending on your beliefs. It shows how certain laws of nature act and respond. People have superpowers —called “sidhis” and pro- nounced “cities.” There’s all kinds of valor, of characters doing the right thing simply because it is right—remember that? Some guys, of course, are bad, evil, mean, and rotten. Well, it’s a story!

Now sit back, put on your reading glasses, dim the lights, it’s storytime:

Once, long, long ago, in a different time of the world (a different Yuga) there lived a demon, a wonderful woman, and a hero.

It’s the story of how Vishnu was born as Rama, a prince. How he wins the hand of Sita, how he kills the demon Ravana who has taken over the world, and how Vishnu/Rama restores heaven on earth and peace every- where, with no sickness or poverty or commercials on TV: It’s absolutely marvelous and is just the kind of thing we could use today.

So what happens in the beginning is that Ravana (who plays the bad guy if you will) gets a boon that he can’t be killed by devas, gandharvans, celes- tial nymphs—almost any type of being in creation, except he forgets to mention people/humans (because he thinks we’re like, ants).

With the boon in hand, Ravana starts wreaking havoc everywhere, kicks all of the small “g” gods out of heaven (wind, snow, sun, moon), so all the laws of nature can’t do their jobs anymore. So chaos reigns.

All of these small gods are unhappy, sad, depressed, upset, annoyed, oth- erwise put out, so they go to see Vishnu, who is a big “G” God and who says, “Since Ravana forgot to mention humans when he made his wish list, I will be born as a man and kill this churlish fellow.”

At that time, there’s a king on earth name Dasaratha who has three wives but no kids. He does a spiritual performance to encourage pregnancy, with the nectar of that performance going to his three wives with an extra por- tion going to his first wife, who gives birth to Rama. Kaikeyi, the second wife, gives birth to Bharata, while Dasaratha’s third wive gives birth to Lakshmana and Shatrughna. The four brothers become great friends, with Laksmana and Rama virtually inseparable, as are Bharata and Shatrughna.

Nothing happens for a long time; they are growing, enjoying life in the palace. Everyone loves all of the four boys, but especially Rama.

After Ravana kicks all the small “g” gods, all those laws of nature, out of heaven: his people (called Rakshasas) roam everywhere reeking havok. Of course, the righteous – who are trying to restore balance with their teaching, actions and spiritual practice – can’t because all the rakshasas (demons) are heckling them, spilling drinks and blood on the sacrifices, tickling them with feathers and annoying them– so the sages and pundits can’t finish their meditations, prayers, or yagya/ceremonies.

When Rama is 15 or 16, the great sage Vishwamitra visits the palace. He asks the King Dasaratha if Rama can come out and play, and protect his sacrifice. “But he’s just a boy! My boy,” says Dasaratha.

The advisors all tell Dasaratha Vishwamitra is here for Rama, it’s a great blessing, Vishwamitra wouldn’t let anything happen to Rama, and besides, it’s the right thing to do. So Dasaratha agrees to let Rama go.

The first day out, walking back to where his hermitage is, Vishwamitra starts giving Rama and Lakshmana all these superpowers. The ability to walk forever without getting tired or needing rest, the ability to go without food or drink indefinitely without getting thirsty or hungry. The ability to pick winning lottery numbers. Cool stuff.

They run into a demon that Vishwamitra has Rama disburse or dispense with, and when Rama does, Vishwamitra gives Rama fabulous weapons as a reward - such as a quiver that never runs out of arrows and arrows that are incredibly powerful missiles that fly in circles, render their target paralyzed, split huge trees— amazing stuff.

Every step of the way Vishwamitra is encouraging and giving great gifts to Rama and Lakshmana.

When they get to Vishwamitra’s hermitage (ashrama), Vishwamitra starts a long, several day yagya/ceremony/sacrifice. For it to work--it’s like a spell--once he begins he can’t stop. He starts to do it, and two demons show up and start razzing with noisemakers and making funny faces. But just as they begin, Rama shoots one of them, killng him instantly. An ar- row to the chest of the other sends him flying 400 miles away. Powerful missles! The hit-in-the-chest-guy is named Maricha, remember that, it’s on the test– ‘cause he makes a guest appearance later in another episode!

Vishwamitra finishes his sacrifice, ecstatic he was able to complete it. Wanting to reward Rama (Vishwamitra is such a noble sage), instead of taking Rama straight back to Ayodya, he takes him to a neighboring king- dom. There King Janaka is holding a contest to see who will win the hand of his beautiful daughter Sita.

Sita and Rama see each other before the contest begins and it’s love at first sight: of course it is, Sita is none other than Laksmi, Vishnu’s heavenly wife! Neither Rama nor Sita know that, though. Then the contest begins: the challange is to string the bow of Shiva, another big “G” God! After several days, no one has even been able to lift the bow, let alone string it!

Then Rama steps forward, lifts it with one hand, loops the string over one end, bends the bow to slip the string on the other end, pulls to hard, and “CRACK,” the bow breaks!

It is said the “CRACK” is heard throughout the whole creation. So Rama wins the hand of Sita.

There is a big celebration during which all four brothers get married, not just Rama. After all the celebrating is over, Vishwamitra heads home, and a huge procession, with Dasarathra, his queens, and family (who all came to the weddings), with Rama, Lakshmana, Sita, servants, soldiers, a base- ball team, and others head back to Ayodya.

Along the way the great sage Parasharama shows up, who everyone
is afraid of because he wiped out the all the warriors in the world 20+ times just because one of them insulted his father! (Talk about holding a grudge.) Parasharama challenges Rama, saying Rama couldn’t have bent the bow of Shiva. “Here is Vishnu’s bow, let’s see you do it again,” he challanges, handing the bow to Rama.

Rama strings it as easily as slipping on sandles, aims it at Prarasharama and says, “Ho-Ho, the shoes on the other foot now!” Parasharama gives up his tapas (extra-good karma), and dissappears into the sunset, having fulfilled his job of returning Vishnu’s bow to Vishnu!

Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, the King, queens, and everyone go back to Ay- odya. Calendar pages blow away as years go by while everything is pretty- gosh-awful-good. After a while, the king has a feeling to pass the reigns
of the kingdom on to Rama; everyone loves Rama and the king is thinking about retiring. Since everyone is looking forward to having Rama as king, all of Dasaratha’s Advisors tell the king to go ahead and install Rama on the throne.

Dasaratha tells Rama to go prepare, to do the religious strictures to prepare to be crowned, which includes prayers and fasting all night.

So Rama goes and does as he is told. But while Rama is busy with this purification process, one of the servants goes to one of the other queens, Kaikeyi, the mother of Bharata, and convinces her that Bharata should be king instead of Rama. The servant reminds Kaikeyi of some boons (“Get- out-of-jail-or-whatever-you-want-when-you-want-it” coupons) the king gave her in the past for saving his life on a battle-field once. The thing with boons is, you have to give the receiver of the boons (boon-holder) whatever they want!

After the servant convinces Kaikeyi, she sets the King up when he comes to her—up until now, she has been his favorite wife. Reminding Dasaratha of her boons, she tells the king she wants to collect on them now, and this is how she wants it: Instead of Rama becoming king, her son Bharata (who is away visiting an uncle) shall be crowned king, and 2), Rama is to be ex- iled to the forest for 14 years to make sure he doesn’t challenge Bharata’s crown. Bharata has no knowledge of this and when he returns will have nothing to do with this.

Dasaratha has no option but to go along with this.

Rama is very even about the whole thing. From his side, he doesn’t care if he becomes king or gets sent to the forest, as long as he is honoring his father and doing as his father asks.

Sita chooses to go with Rama as does Lakshmana. Within days Dasaratha passes away out of grief from losing and shaming Rama.

Bharata refuses to take the throne but agrees to govern in Rama’s name from a neighboring city, if Rama gives him his sandals, saying, “I will do everything in your name, using your sandals to represent you.”

So Rama, Lakshmana and Sita go into the forest where they live quite hap- pily, having only a few adventures for most of the 14 years.

Of course, Rama being Rama, offers and protects all the ashrams in the forest while he is there. Towards the end of the 14 years a Rakshasa (de- mon) woman shows up, has a love-at-first-sight-experience with Rama, falling head over heals in love with him. She, thinks he is just adorable; tells Rama that she loves him so much that she will kill Sita so that she can have him.

Lakshmana cuts off her nose, disfiguring her and sends her away. For some reason, she takes that as an insult, pouting, whining, throwing
tantrums. She causes a big stink and gets some of her relatives who are nearby, 14,000 of them, to go kill Rama. He wipes them all out in an afternoon.

Not content to cause the death of 14,000 of her family and friends, the pouting, disfigured Rakshasa woman then goes and tells Ravana, the king of all Rakshasas (“I just wanted revenge,” she told reporters later.) Ravana, you’ll remember, is the cause of all the distress in the world, chasing the gods out of heaven, and causing Vishnu to be born as a man—Rama— just to kill him. Not knowing about this, Ravana decides the best way to get back at Rama is to kidnap his wife Sita, who is really beautiful and a solid “10” and get her to marry him, Ravana. Yup, that’ll do it, thinks Ravana.

So he devises a plan to kidnap Sita, which he does with the help of Marichi, who gets killed in the process.

After chasing Marichi (shaped as a beautiful, rainbow-colored deer) and killing him, Rama returns to his hut to find Sita missing, gets very upset, yells at Lakshmana, then forgives him. Not knowing what happened, Rama asks the forest, and all the plants and trees point in a particular direction. Using that as a guide, Rama heads off in the same direction Ravana took Sita and gives chase. Since Ravana is in a flying car and Rama is on foot, it takes about a year for Rama to find and rescue Sita.

During that year, Rama teams up with Sugriva, helping him become King of the monkeys. Sugriva’s Prime Minister is Hanuman, a great devotee of Rama and a major hero in the story, who does many miraculous and magical things in the process of helping Rama find and rescue Sita.

In fact, it is Hanuman who actually finds Sita is by leaping hundreds of miles across the ocean to Sri Lanka, the home of Ravana. After finding Sita, Hanuman, assuming the shape of a small, miniature monkey, tells Sita that Rama is looking for her. Sita is relieved and excited, and Hanuman heads back to tell Rama where Sita is being kept so Rama can come back and defeat Ravana.

In case you’re wondering, Sita never gives in to Ravana. He pleads with her, offers her jewels, the #1 wife spot of all his wives, then threatens her, hiding her away with terrible (and terrifying) guards as her only companions. So Hanuman learns then as do we all, that Sita has never succumbed to Ravana’s advances and that she is still chaste and pure, even though she is living in the house belonging to an enemy.

Hanuman goes back to the other monkeys, and they all go get Rama and Lakshmana. They come back to the ocean, build a magical bridge in seven days that is a mile wide and hundreds of miles long to get to Sri Lanka, where Ravana is. A few Rakshasas leave Ravana and join Rama. Next
is the fight scene: huge battles between the Rakshasas on one side, and monkeys, bears, Rama, Lakshmana on the other. The battles last for many days.

At one point Rama loses consciousness. Everyone freaks on his side. Hanuman is told that there is an herb that will revive Rama, but it only grows on a certain mountain. Hanuman leaps across the ocean to find the mountain, can’t figure out which herb it is, doesn’t want to make a mistake, picks up the whole mountain and brings it back to where Rama is. Then Vibishana, one of the Rakshasas who joined Rama and is the one who knew the remedy, picks the herb and uses it.

Hanuman picks up the mountain, leaps back across the sea with it, and returns it to its proper spot. He does the same thing a few days later, grabs the mountain, brings it back, saving Rama.

There are a whole lot of magical things that happen. It is very amazing. And eventually, Rama does indeed kill Ravana, and restores Sita.

But having rescued her, Rama appears indifferent, telling her she can go wherever she wants, just not with him. Of course, she hasn’t been pure during all this time to be turned away now. Sita tells Rama if he won’t have her, she’ll just “walk into the fire,” which is the Vedic equivalent of hari-kari. Rama says, “go ahead,” so she does. But she doesn’t get burned!

Instead, Sita is carried out of the fire by Agni, the small “g” god of fire. As he carries her, all the other gods come out of the fire too, including Brahma, the Creator, Indra, the King of the gods, and all the small “g” gods come out, congratulating Rama, praising him for killing Ravana and restoring heaven to them. They tell him they are not surprised that he did it because of who he is.

Rama replies, “Well, who am I? As far as I know, I’m just a man.” But he is actually Vishnu, one of the three greatest gods in Indian tradition. Brahma praises him, giving him a boon. Rama says all he wants is for all those who died helping him to be healed and brought back to life. So that happens and everyone is great.

Using Ravana’s flying car, Rama takes the monkeys back home to their kingdom. Rama praises them and thanks them for their help by giving them titles, land, winning lottery tickets and more, so they are all very happy.

Rama then takes Sita back to his capital, Ayodhya, with Lakshmana. Bharata meets them there and Rama is crowned actual King and Bharata gives him back his sandals and retires. Rama then rules for 11,000 years of Heaven on Earth: there is no sickness, no poverty, no criminal activity of any kind, the seasons come in time, the rains come in time, the crops are abundant. It is said that during Rama’s rule, there is such prosperity one can find jewels just lying in the road. It’s a fabulous time of heaven on earth.

Which is actually what we aspire to, at this time in the World.

So that’s a very quick rendition of the story of the Ramayana. It’s a very large three or four volume epic with thousands of words, lots and lots of events and stories and worth reading. But for our purposes, this is enough.