Moon in Gemini
'The Lord is in all beings and the entire Universe is in Him.'
- B¨hat Par¢ºara Hora ¹¢stra
The meditation techniques included in this book are to be practiced only under the direct supervision of an ordained teacher of Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam and in consultation with your personal physician to determine your fitness and ability to do the techniques. They are not intended to be a substitute for medical attention, examination, diagnosis or treatment. If someone tries these techniques without prior participation in the meditation programs of Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam and without the direct supervision of an ordained teacher of Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam, they shall be doing so entirely at their own risk; neither the author nor Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam nor Nithyananda Publishers shall be responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Universal Truth
If you look deeply, if you look beyond mundane life, beyond the day-to-day life we live… If you contemplate on a night sky… you will see that the most intimate and complete relationship man owns is the relationship to the Universe. In fact, it is man's ultimate relationship: he takes birth, lives and merges back into it. Nothing happens outside of it; even his enlightenment happens in it. Just as the child grows in his mother's womb, man evolves in the cosmic womb. He is the microcosm of a tremendous cosmic macrocosm. Therefore, all components of man, from the grossest to the subtlest, come from the universe: his body, his mind, his energy and his very consciousness are elements of the cosmos. Universe and man are indivisible. Whatever happens in the Universe resounds in the human consciousness, and whatever happens in the human consciousness resounds in the Universe. Both are a unique consciousness.
The Great Vedic Astronomy
Man has been deeply fascinated by the Cosmos since the beginning of time. Early cultures worked on understanding the phenomena that happen in the sky; they observed them in order to understand what role the sky played in their lives. From these attempts, the science of astronomy was born.
In this field, the ancient Vedic contribution is well known. The earliest references to astronomy are found in the §g Veda, which are dated 2000 BC. Around 500 BCE, ¡ryabha°a, a great astronomer, presented a system that showed the earth to spin on its axis and considered the motions of the planets with respect to the Sun. He also discovered how the lunar and solar eclipses occur and was the earliest to discover that the orbits of the planets around the Sun are ellipses, just as Copernicus and Galileo concluded a thousand years later. He even determined the diameter of the Earth to be 5,000 yojanas, approximately 36,000 km, which is very close to the actual figure.
These traditions related these objects and their movements to natural events such as rain, drought, seasons and tides; they related them to auspicious or inauspicious occurrences on planet Earth. Jyoti¾a, the science of Vedic astrology, took birth out of observations and perceptions based on these astronomical phenomena. The first astronomers were actually §¾is and sages, who understood the sky was a divine happening; they identified celestial objects with energies and Gods and connected astronomy to astrology.