Bhuma Vidya Peetham  ​

Bhuma Vidya  for ease of life

Bhuma Vidya of Chandogyopanishad takes us through the gradual path of realisation.​

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There are many stories in Upanishads that focus on various faculties and components of a person. When these faculties are discussed at universal level or virat purusha, the aim is to understand the workings of several systems at macro level. When these faculties are discussed at micro or individual level, the aim is to understand the workings at the level of an individual, thing or a small aspect. Many such stories start with a lower faculty like one jnanendriya or karmendriya assuming the role of karta. Then with some example or experiment it takes us to realise a higher faculty like mind as superior boss. Going further, the story takes us to seeing some other higher faculty like chittam holding much bigger role as karta than one jnanendriya or the mind. The exploration goes on like this till one finds a real karta. Then, one realises all sorrows and pleasures of life are due to wrong view of a lower faculty feeling as karta in a much bigger perspective and scope than what actually it is. While sliding down the glacier, when an avalanche forces one down the stream, the person may slightly be able to turn his hands or head and alter the course of his falling down a little bit. But the kind of control he holds is very limited and he realises his inability to act in the presence of a higher force.

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This is something like a floorshop level executive in a company assuming his role as the real performer and thinking about his boss as the one just sits doing nothing and takes all the credit. Even the supervisor above him may think about all his pains and contributions to the company and feel middle level bosses above him do just post man job of carrying down the commands from the top and giving the feedback from the shopfloor to the top. There is some fact and so much of ignorance in this type of thinking at each level. The fact part contains the ground reality of the importance of even the lowest rank teammate and his/ her contribution. The ignorance part contains the inability to completely understand much powerful and subtler forces as the real kartas.

 
When we move up, we know the lower faculty is responsible only to the miniscule portion of what it feels as karta and most part of the real karta lies in its higher faculties. This is the gradual path of realisation explained in the Bhuma Vidya of Chandogyopanishad. Rishi Sanat Kumara imparts this knowledge to the great scholar Narada and tells this as the formula to get rid of the sorrows of life and achieve familiarity and actualisation with more subtler and controlling layers of our own reality. More subtler layers are indeed higher level of controllers of the actions and activities seemingly initiated and performed by the grosser layers of our being. This gradual realisation first ensures the knowledge of existence of a higher layer. Then gives steps and excercises to experience the higher layer. Then it helps us to identify ourselves with the higher layer. At each such step, we experience a micro realisation of our ignorance till that point. The gradual melting away of sorrows due to our identification with a lower or grosser faculty happens simultaneously.

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