NRI first generation MD, Swami Raamachandra founder of Mahatma Consciousness

Los Angeles, Nov. 16, 2008
By Dilip Butani

Swami Raamachandra, 30 year old founder of Mahatma Consciousness, is a first generation Indian-American who has always been attracted to spirituality from a young age. He began practicing meditation at the age of 8 and is an expert on topics related to yoga, meditation, and spirituality. He has an MD degree from George Washington University in Washington DC, and he lectures frequently on topics related to philosophy, spirituality, and the psychology of human achievement. A fine sitar and tabla player, he is highly regarded as a motivational speaker and spiritual counselor.

As per Swamiji, meditation is a systematic way of becoming aware of your awareness. It is a way to create lab space to allow the mind to know what it is. For awareness is not an abstract phenomenon. Awareness is not something difficult for the mind to construe, but in fact it is very simple and very real. It is you in the most candid way. Meditation is not an art of thinking about the abstract. Many people think this is what meditation involves. In reality, abstract thought is contemplation. The actual practice of meditation though is much different. It is much simpler and is about getting to know one’s mind in the truest sense. It is about bringing stillness into one’s life. Its goal is to help one gain perspective about one’s mind in a deep way. It is a way of getting in touch with your inner core.

Explaining further Swamiji says, meditation is actually the easiest thing to do; that is why it is the most difficult. Meditation is purely about you knowing yourself. It is a practice of knowing who you are. Human beings have a tendency to complicate life. We get caught up in our circumstances neglect the essentials in life. For example, one of the essentials is learning to breathe properly, you don’t need a doctorate degree to be able to just breathe well. It is actually a very natural and common sense thing. The problem is that we look over it as something that we don’t need to worry about. We neglect the basics and forget the power they have on our life. What we need to do is simplify matters. This can be accomplished through meditation. When the mind is still, the mind can perceive itself. If the mind is restlessness and distracted, it is unable to understand its own habits and tendencies.

Being able to meditate is a valuable skill to have. It can enable you to be your own therapist. It allows you to develop the skill of observation to monitor all the things happening in your life. Good teachers of meditation know that there really isn’t anything extraordinary to externally teach. Real teachers of meditation know that real knowledge of spirituality comes when you become your own teacher. For meditation is not about anyone else except you. Advanced practitioners of meditation don’t live like recluses. They live in the world with all its ups and downs. Skilled meditators practice meditation throughout the day. They see every experience in life as a movement of consciousness. The difference between them and normal people is that they don’t lose touch with themselves. They preserve their identity through all of life’s challenges. They remain aware of every fragment of consciousness that plays itself out in the world. Most people in life live and react to the circumstances. They lose track of themselves in what they do and they neglect the simple tasks that really matter in life.

Swamiji’s organization had a different approach for meditation. First step is the appreciation of the mindset of most normal people, followed by devising a curriculum that allows people to unfold themselves in a step by step fashion. Swamiji says ‘we look at meditation from a very practical point of view, we realize that life cannot be renounced in this day & age and we are inevitably tied to the affairs of the world in almost everything we do. What we really need is equipoise and balance in handling life. This skill is not something that comes from Divine luck. It is something that we can acquire in a methodical way.
More information about meditation and organization may be obtained by e-mailing to swami.raamachandra@gmail.com.

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Swami Raamachandra, MD degree from George Washington University- founder of Mahatma Consciousness