How Vedanta can help you deal with fear and anxiety

Suppose you are going through a lot of troubles, trapped in a tragic situation and you are feeling so helpless amidst all the difficulties. What will happen if you suddenly wake up to realize that it was just a dream, a nightmare? Won’t you feel so relaxed after knowing that whatever tragedy was happening with you was not real but it was just happening in a dream?

According to Vedanta, there are mainly three states of reality: waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Waking life(Jagrat) is where we experience physical realities, dreaming life(Swapna) means the world of only mental thoughts and dreams without physical experience and deep sleep(Sushupta) is the state where physical and mental existence disappear. While we dream, we think that it is real. Only when we wake up, we realize that it was just a dream. Similarly, waking life is also like a dream. This can be experienced by simple logic that whenever we remember past, the past moments appear like a dream. The only difference between a dream and waking life is that things get repeated and have a long effect in waking life whereas it is not so in a dream.

Now comes the fourth state called “Turiya” or “Atman”  or “Pure Awareness” which is beyond all the three states of realities and can be defined as the awareness which witnesses everything which happens in these three states. And our real nature is “Turiya ”or pure consciousness state which is the real light in which all the other three states shine forth. Now knowing that whatever happening in waking or physical life is so temporary or transient, we become free from all mental trauma that we suffer from.  If we realize ourselves as pure awareness or Turiya which transcends all the boundaries of the material world then we can attain ultimate peace called as Sat-Chit-Anand or Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

To realize our own nature which is nothing but pure awareness Vedanta suggests three methods: Listening, Contemplation and Meditation. Here listening means listening to the discourses of Vedanta which are generally talks on Upanishad about the ultimate truth. It can also be done by reading such Upanishads or other spiritual texts which are written by enlightened masters or contain the discourses given by them.  Contemplation means contemplating on ultimate truth. Meditation means making mind one-pointed and to realize “ Pure Awareness” within ourselves.

With the Vedantic approach, one can deal better with the worldly problems as one’s mind is no more consumed with fear and anxiety. Vedanta is so much relevant today as the whole world is facing such an existential crisis.