Sower and the Seeds

“Jesus said, Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure.” ……… Saying 9 Gospel of Thomas

The light of wisdom that emanates from the teachings of Jesus has to be spread. The disciples are the evangelizers of this wisdom and Jesus in this saying forewarns of the need for caution in the methodology to be employed. There are four situations that Jesus illustrates as possible scenarios.

He uses the powerful example of a sower sowing seeds.
Seeds that fall on the road are gathered by birds. There is a powerful symbolism in this example. A road is a predetermined path and refers to an inflexible and dogmatic mindset and any seed of wisdom that is sown will be hijacked immediately towards an interpretation to an existing perception herein beautifully described as being gathered by birds.

Some seeds fall on the rock. Jesus indicated that you need to address and impart wisdom only to those who have an open mind. The rock symbolizes an impenetrable consciousness. This may result from a total lack of desire to know anything spiritually empowering due to a consciousness rooted in ego dominated materialistic living. To such individuals the words of wisdom just bounce off and do not take root.

Some seeds fell on thorns and they were chocked and the worms ate them. Thorns in plants are ordained as self preservative devices against predators. A consciousness indulging in physical and material self preservation will resist all exterior approaches as immanent danger, it will only intake all its sustenance from its root which is in the terrestrial realm and superficial aggregations. This is explained by Jesus in Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 13 verse 22: “The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”
In Proverb 24 verses 30, 31 the state of a person who is not vigilant and does not prioritize his actions towards spiritually bearing fruit, is compared to a field that has been overrun by weeds and thorns. “I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins”

Finally the seeds that fell on good soil produce a bountiful crop. There are two important meanings in this part of the saying. The first is that when wisdom finds a receptive consciousness it fructifies and thrives. For wisdom to find a resting place you need two agents namely; a sincerely seeking soul (good soil) as the primary agent and the divine act of sowing the seeds of wisdom as the secondary agent. The second is the significance of “sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure”.
Value sixty is assigned to the Hebrew letter Samech (ס) and relates to the Ouroboros, which is that serpent biting its own tail. In Kabbalah, Samech, the Ouroboros, relates to that Ray that we call Okidanokh, the Ray of Creation that emerges from the Unknowable Divine. This is the integrative aspect of individual consciousness with the divine. This is the ultimate harvest.

Love to you all

Rhythms of the Universe

“O son of Kunti, I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and the moon, the syllable Om in the Vedic mantras; I am the sound in ether and ability in man.”……..Bhagavad-Gita 7:8

“Rhythms of the Universe”, a musical project to "sonify" the universe by renowned contemporary percussionist and Grammy award-winning artist Mickey Hart caught the attention of Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Hart presented his composition using supernova (an exploding star from which all the heavier elements of our body and the earth are made) and other astrophysics data during the Cosmology at the Beach Conference held Jan. 11-15, 2010 in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The conference is cosponsored by Smoot after he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2006.
When a star goes out with a bang as a supernova, scientists on earth gather the electromagnetic waves from these stellar explosions to learn more about the universe, from understanding its birth 13 billion years ago, to determining what the universe is of made of, to predicting how it may eventually end. Light and Gamma ray from the exploding star are electromagnetic data, but with a very high frequency. What the project did is turn it into sound by slowing down the frequency and 'stretching' it into an audio form. Both light and sound are all wave forms -- just at different frequencies. Our goal was to turn the electromagnetic data into audio data while still preserving the correlation to the original data. The sound that was produced was a deep vibrational rumble, punctuated with deeper, louder sounds -- almost what one would think an earthquake sounds like.

When I read this news in ScienceDaily my thoughts immediately went to Rig Veda, where the worship of Agni, the primordial energy, is the main theme. In Rig Veda Book X chapter 71 verse 4 it says:

“Yet certain ones, though seeing, may not see her,
and other ones, though hearing, may not hear her.
But to some the Word reveals herself quite freely,
like fair-robed bride surrendering to her husband.”

The word is the manifestation of the divine in the created universe and to scientist though they might see an occurrence such as the death of a star for them it is nothing but a bright star which has suddenly lost all its mass and even they can not fathom the true nature of its current energy state. To common men who hear of this event we do not comprehend the meaning of this occurrence both at the macro as well as at the micro level. But to a true seeker the permanence of the Divine consciousness, as Agni, which inhabits every atom in the universe and which reveals itself in the innermost depth of one’s consciousness there is a glorious revelation of unchanging permanence.

In Atharva Veda Book IV Hymn 1, dealing with Cosmological and mystico-theological doctrine, the saying is:

Abiding by Cosmic Order, he fixed as his seat
the mighty firmaments of Heaven and Earth. ………………..
Just as the luminous day is born from light,
so may the radiant singers shine far and wide!

These words very aptly capture the essence of what Cosmologists, Musicians and ancient seers understand; namely the revelation of cosmic order in the cosmos and its manifestation through light and sound. Every object in the cosmos shines and sings the glory of the innate Divine energy that sustains them.

Love to you all!

Bridge to the Divine

When we try to comprehend a deep mystery or a genuine doubt that arises in our heart, we tend to use our rational thinking as the tool for finding an answer. While the rational mind is a useful tool, its zone of operation is mostly limited to our own comprehension and experience in the space-time domain we inhabit. With all modern scholarship pointing to the availability of past knowledge in our evolved consciousness, we find that there are ever increasing questions the rational mind poses as we probe further.

Yet the beauty of human creation is such that we have the innate capacity to comprehend deep mysteries as we are capable of transcending the limitations we have discussed earlier through an inner journey of elevating our consciousness to a higher level. This exercise has to be one of a personal endeavour and even the most enlightened teacher or Guru can not help us. This is the reason that when Arjuna wanted to reach out to perceive the universal form of Krishna, a unique process is set in motion.

First of all there is a realization that there is a higher potentiality hidden in the human incarnation of Krishna. Then, there is a belief that he has the capacity to transcend his current limitations to perceive the higher reality. Finally there is an earnest desire to reach the state of elevated consciousness.
The following text from Bhagavad-Gita comprehensively articulates the process of attaining a higher state of consciousness and its non-temporality and non-locality.

“O Arjuna, whatever you wish to see, behold at once in this body of Mine! This universal form can show you whatever you now desire to see and whatever you may want to see in the future. Everything—moving and non-moving—is here completely, in one place.” …..BG 11:7

The undifferentiated and omnipresence nature of the Divine and its location in the being of the observer, though there are limitations, is beautifully brought out in the following verse.

“Your form is difficult to see because of its glaring effulgence, spreading on all sides, like blazing fire or the immeasurable radiance of the sun. Yet I see this glowing form everywhere, adorned with various crowns, clubs and discs.” …………..BG 11:17

As long as Arjuna is in the mode of an observer there is a subject-object duality. This duality is purposely ordained for without it there is no subjective experience to tell. Therefore this intricate experience in trying to reach the ground of Divine essence can well be explained by what the great German Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart said in one of his sermons:

“… The union of the soul with God is far more inward than that of the soul and body…. Now, I might ask, how stands it with the soul that is merged in God? Does the soul find herself or not? To this I will answer as it appears to me, that the soul finds in the point where every rational being understands itself with itself. Although it sinks in the eternity of Divine essence, yet it can never reach the ground. Therefore God has left a little point wherein the soul turns back upon itself to be a creature ….”

These are the two levels at which higher Self-awareness operates as the manifest and the Divine but ultimately you are the bridge to the Divine.

Love to you all

Blazing Fire of Material Existence

“The spiritual master is receiving benediction from the ocean of mercy. Just as the cloud pours water on the forest fire to extinguish it, so the spiritual master extinguishes the blazing fire of material existence. I offer my respectful obeisance unto the lotus feet of my spiritual master.” ……… (Śrī Gurvaṣṭakam, Verse 1)

The invocation was composed by Srila Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura, who appeared in the middle of the seventeenth century, is a great spiritual master in the Krishna consciousness chain of gurus and disciples. He says, “One who, with great care and alteration, loudly recites this beautiful prayer to the spiritual master during the Brahma-muhurta obtains direct service to Krishna, the Lord of Brindavan, at the time of his death.”

What is the meaning of this saying? As many of you may know the ‘Brahma-muhurta’ is the auspicious time, about two hours before sun rise, when there is a harmonious balance of energies both in the biosphere and in the hormonal energies in the body and it is deemed to be the best time for meditation and pranayama (controlled breathing).
The spiritual master does not refer to any third person but to our own true inner nature, beyond all the Viritis (modifications) that alter our Divine nature. We may be taught by the best of Gurus but if there is no self involvement all external knowledge would be a waste.
As Meister Eckhart, the great German Christian mystic says “A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
The invocation is the eradication of these coverings. This is the benediction that we receive from the very same Divine consciousness with which we are trying to merge. We can call it by any name Divine consciousness, Krishna consciousness or Christ consciousness etc,.

In Matsya Purana, it states that Vishnu disappeared, and for a hundred years there was a terrible drought on earth. These hundred years signifies the life of a person in this world and Vishnu being the symbolism of the Divine Consciousness, his disappearance denotes the material nature in which we live with total absence of spiritual aspiration. The drought led to famine and people died of starvation, symbolizing spiritual death. Meanwhile, the sun blazed in fury and burnt up the entire world. This is the true representation of how we experience the blazing heat of ever present vacuum in happiness when we live to derive happiness form creatures and created material entities. The Purana then goes on to explain the gathering of seven clouds which extinguishes through rain the total material nature. (in this paragraph, the words in italics are from the Purana)
The rain that extinguishes the forest fire is the Vidya or knowledge of our true nature by which we are saved.

This is the reason Krishna says “After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes, and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare.” …………… (Bhagavad-Gita 7:19)

As the sun starts it journey every dawn, this prayer contemplated for its deep meaning and recited within our heart, may begin our day’s journey with a desire to move closer to the higher consciousness to which we are always called.

Love to you all

Grounding Yourself

Kris Cahill, a psychic healer in an article written by her says “Did you know that there is a tool you can use to make yourself safe and relaxed, release anxiety, depression, stress, pain and fatigue, let go of the past, make your body happy and calm, and allow you to manifest what it is you want to create? Plus, it won’t cost you a dime, and doesn’t have any unpleasant side effects!

This tool is known as ‘grounding’, and has been around for eons. It’s safe, free, and available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Having grounding for yourself can create stability and safety for your body. This makes it easier for you to feel well in your body, which then makes it possible for you to have enough energy to create your life.
Grounding is taught in many beginning meditation classes. Being able to have grounding first makes it possible for other techniques and information to be safely taught. Grounding makes things real, makes your body real, and makes it possible for you to manifest what it is you want in your life.
Grounding makes it possible to release energies that get caught in you that are not yours. This makes it easier to heal yourself, by letting go of harmful energies that can have a negative effect on your body. Having a tool that allows you to let go is nothing short of miraculous. Grounding itself is a miracle.”

Well it is easy to articulate this process of grounding but practicing it requires a broader understanding why we get into all the tangle and twists that blocks our energy flow. It is important that we realize that the energy within us is a given potential which is designed for a natural evolution to higher order and complexity as we grow and live our lives. This evolution of our internal energy domain is purely in the spiritual realm. But we make the fist mistake of thinking that this internal energy is physical. If we realize that the spiritual manifests itself as the physical then we would not have the problem of over indulgence. If we are totally rooted in nature as a new species, with no ego-mind dominated emotions or thoughts, then this type of maturing is possible. But due to evolutionary, socio-cultural and peer pressures, a continuous modification happens within our energy fields. These pressures are all encompassing in whatever we take in as resources for our enrichment, like education, parental grooming, our relationships and the bodily nourishments that we intake. This understanding is the starting point or grounding in our healing through realization and contemplation."

Grounding is something that one can never be taught but a state one can be guided into realizing. The biggest scars we carry in our energy fields are the imprints from the past and the fears of the future. If we are able to surrender ourselves to the Divine plan, in the realization that we are an integral and inseparable part of the cosmic energy field or as I prefer to call it the Cosmic Consciousness, then we can rest easy with all that happens to us. It is this positive attitude that there is a predestined plan for each one of us and nothing on earth can change this and that we must flow like a river for our own well being. This attitude is not fatalistic in nature but one in which we must consciously engage in active contribution, through thought and action, in abiding with the action of the Spirit, through enriching the self, humanity and the ecosystem. This is the true meaning of the Genesis verse “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so.”……Genesis 2:30

Here the true meaning for ‘food’ is ‘sustenance’. Not a selfish motive of sustenance of one’s body but a holistic perspective. Man, because of his superior consciousness, has been assigned the role of a sustainer or co-creator.

Love to you all

Real and Successful Prayer

The ecstatic prayer of a mystic is no way superior to the agonized stumbling of a sinner weighed down with guilt and deformed by a lifetime of estrangement from God.
Both attempts represent the upward striving of created nature to find rest in God; both are real, both are "successful." ………… Michael Casey

What a beautiful saying! First of all what is success? Normal definition is the capacity to achieve what one wants. It is not a final aim that is determined from outside of one self. It is an internal desire of achievement. Hence to evaluate prayer as being successful is to evaluate the intention which is generated from within. All intentions are derived from ones mind and hence from ones conscious action through thought. Or stated in another way the origination is human consciousness. This is the reason Casey says that the only perfect prayer is the realization that the very state of our being is a perfect outcome of God’s action which represents our total surrender to God.

Jonathan Edwards, a great American preacher and theologian, says “The true spirit of prayer is no other than God's own Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the saints. And as this spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings. It naturally leads to God, to converse with him by prayer.” This is the point that Casey makes when he compares the prayer of a mystic and that of a sinner. Both are lead by the spirit to move towards the same Godhead.

Prayer must then be seen as tuning into the very ‘will of the Father’. As true sons it is only through unflinching faith and an understanding that our being, in whatever condition in a temporal and terrestrial dimension we may be, is the divine intent. True success of prayer is the aspiration to be in tune with the divine will. This is the reason that the great mystic Julian of Norwich says “This is our Lord's will... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large.”

The Indian Tantric mystic Osho says “Remember, if you pray to ask for something, it is not prayer. When you pray to thank him for something, only then it is prayer. Prayer is always a thanksgiving. If you ask for something then the prayer is still corrupted by desire. Then it is not prayer yet — it is still poisoned by dreaming. Real prayer happens only when you have attained to yourself, when you have known what God has given to you already without your asking for it. When you realise what you have been given, what infinite sources have been given to you, a prayer arises you would like to say to God, ‘Thank you.’ There is nothing else in it but a pure thank you.” Though this is a very strong statement, it captures the essence of real prayer.

I have earlier done a post on the emptiness of words in our prayer (see ‘Prayer of Silence’). Through inwardly focused contemplation, let us aim to listen to the voice of the divine. This voice is the muted vibration that produces a state of perennial gratitude in our being.

Love to you all

Communion and Confirmation

Today I have been invited for the first communion of my cousin’s son. This is not the first time I attend such a festivity. The significance of celebration of first communion and the meaning behind the Christian sacrament of Communion is buried in the ritualistic rigmarole and has become for many pious Christians an event when the devotee believes that God comes through the miracle of the Eucharist into their very heart from somewhere out there.

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss depth psychologist and son of a Lutheran pastor, wrote two essays on the significance of the Holy Mass which every Catholic must read. He says in these essays that the sequence of the Holy Mass is beautifully organized to evoke a deep mystical participation in the heart of the worshipper. Now I can understand this better than any other time in my life.

When we were young children (50 years ago) we had to fast for twelve hours before the Holy Mass and abstain even from drinking water during the last one hour. This was the physical preparation and cleansing. When we entered the church the light of the candle, the smell of the incense offered and the sounding of bells prepared one’s senses for the holy presence. As soon as the Mass started the act of contrition was said and forgiveness was sought for all the sins of commission and omission. This was to cleanse our human and ego-centred consciousness, a process of emptying one self of the worldly or human attachments. The scriptures are then read and a small message given by the celebrant to prepare the mind and the intellect for the impending union. In the offertory the human nature, symbolized by the bread and wine, is offered and the priest offers these with the invocation for the divine to accept these offerings. The sacrament of the Eucharist is the symbol of the divine accepting the human offering through an act of transubstantiation. Before we approach the divine for its presence to take residence in our nature, peace is invoked among all present. This peace is to signify the absence of conflict in our perception of all humanity as an equal creation of the divine. The communion symbolizes the act of the divine transforming the human through a process of inner transformation; a reminder that our true nature is divine. Then the mass comes to an end with the message to ‘go forth’ in our divine nature.

This is the beauty of this ritual and the casual way in which it is approached today on a daily or weekly basis is appalling. If there is no inner transformation then the whole ritual is a farce and devoid of any significance.

I have addressed children who have received first communion and I tell them that when they receive first communion it is like someone who has built a new house and has opened the windows for the first time to let in the life giving sun’s rays to enter the house. You not only open one window but you also open a window in the opposite direction so that there is cross ventilation and the air freely moves to energise the inner chambers of the house. The sun’s rays and the refreshing air symbolize the presence of the life giving element of Christ and the sustaining Spirit of the Holy Spirit. In the olden times first Communion and the sacrament of confirmation were given on the same day. This has a deep significance as the divine transformation of the human can not be complete without the sustaining wisdom to comprehend this reality through the Holy Spirit. It is the responsibility of the parents and god-parents, who are supposed to be the wisdom parents, to educate the children of this great mystical participation.

This is my message to all who approach their first communion and confirmation and to all who participate in the Holy Mass.

Love to you all

Discernment for Spiritual Elevation

“And he said, the person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!”……Logion 8 Gospel of Thomas

Though this saying of Jesus appears simple, there are three major elements that need to be understood.

First, Jesus defines what is to be truly human. The purpose of human creation when understood from an inner perspective is one of discernment. The capacity given to us, just as the whole wide open sea is available to the wise fisherman, is one of infinite potential. In our lives we constantly haul in a rich harvest of knowledge but the purpose of this knowledge must be to propel us towards our higher potentialities and not to drag us down with unwanted baggage of trivial acquisitions. This is the point that Jesus brings out in the choice that a wise fisherman is always faced with.

The second point that Jesus brings out is that as a creature we are limited, just as the fisherman and his boat in the vast ocean. If we start collecting the unwanted neither will we be nourished properly nor will be assured of our safety as an overloaded boat can easily capsize in a turbulent sea.

The third and deeper meaning of the saying is that just as the discarded little fish have the potential to survive and grow through this act of ecological responsibility the individual act of discernment and needed choice will ensure the nurturing of the cosmos and its consciousness to fully develop and evolve. Jesus says; “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”….Matthew 22:14.

This clearly means that esoteric teaching is not for all to digest. Only those who have the right type of spiritual maturity (the fine big fish) can be selected for receiving the teaching

This imprint that one makes through his act of discernment will cascade down to other souls in their nourishment.

There is another mystical aspect of the saying when studied from a linguistic and kabbalastic perspective. In Aramaic, nun means ‘fish’. The mem, the waters of the sea, is the natural medium of the nun, fish. The nun ‘swims’ in the mem, covered by the waters of the ‘hidden world’. Creatures of the ‘hidden world’ symbolize lack of higher consciousness or Avidya (ignorance) as declared in Vedic philosophy. Unlike fish, land animals, revealed on the face of the earth, symbolize possession of higher-consciousness.

‘A person is like a wise fisherman’ constantly drawing the nun out of the mem symbolizes the elevation of one’s consciousness from a state of ignorance of one’s true nature into a higher level realizing our divine nature.

So it is not surprising that this saying comes immediately after Jesus talks of the dual nature of bestial and human and the need for us to annihilate the bestial nature rooted in ignorance.

Love to you all

Intention or Intonation

Commenting on texts of Veda dharma Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Swamigal brings out the fact that you must not go wrong in the enunciation or intonation of a mantra. If you do, not only will you not reap the benefit but might draw upon yourself a result contrary to the intention. So the mantra must be chanted with utmost care. He sites the story told in the Taittiriya Samhita (2.4.12) to demonstrate this important facet of mantra recitation. The story goes as follows:

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Tvasta wanted to take revenge on Indra for some reason and conducted a sacrifice to beget a son who would slay Indra. When he chanted his mantra, "Indrasatrur varddhasva. . ", he went wrong in the intonation. He should have voiced "Indra" without raising or lowering the syllables in it and he should have raised the syllables "tru" and "rddha"(that is the two syllables are "udata"). Had he done so the mantra would have meant, "May Tvasta's son grow to be the slayer of Indra". He raised the "dra" in Indra, intoned "satru" as a falling svara and lowered the "rddha" in "varddhasva". So the mantra meant now: "May Indra grow to be the killer of this son (of mine)". The words of the mantra were not changed but, because of the erratic intonation, the result produced was the opposite of what was desired. The father himself thus became the cause of his son's death at the hands of Indra.

The gist of this story is contained in this verse which cautions us against erroneous intonation.

If the mantra differs by intonation, letter or another way while chanting, that mantra will become VajrAyudham(thunderbolt) and torment the YajamAnan(performer of sacrifice) who chants the mantra, just as the wrong recital of the 'indrashatru' phrase did.

What was the weapon with which Tvasta 's son was killed? Not Indra's thunderbolt but the father's wrongly chanted mantra.

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I am not an authority to go into an etymological or philosophical discussion on the above story or the terrifying end result when operating outside a specific scholarship under the tutelage of a renowned guru. But what I feel that needs to be addressed is that the intention of a mantra recital is totally excluded from the above position. I feel that the Samhita (collection of texts) was intended to communicate a greater dharma of 'intention'. When individual consciousness acts in its ego state which is in contradiction with the cosmic principle, which here is represented by Indra, the annihilation of the action of the self (ego consciousness) becomes inevitable.

This is strongly demonstrated in how the cosmic principle overrides through the same agency of the individual consciousness, the final outcome of reciting the mantra.

The word Dharma is derived from the root Dhr - to hold - and its etymological meaning is - that which holds - this world, or the people of the world, or the whole creation from the microcosm to the macrocosm. It is the eternal Divine Law of the cosmic order. The entire creation is held together and sustained by the All-powerful Law of God. Practice of Dharma, therefore, means recognition of this Law and abidance by it.

I am not repudiating the fact that the purpose of the mantras are primarily in the domain of the vibration in the energy levels both in the cosmic as well as in the chanter’s domain. But the intentions are primary if not even though you may succeed through energy alteration in establishing a desired result, there may result a negative karmic imprint in the individual consciousness.

As per the genealogy expressed in Shrimad Bhagavatam chapter 6.6.38-39 Tvasta was the son of Aditi of Suriya dynasty or the supreme Godhead from whom Lord Narayana descended and Tvasta was one of the twelve sons of Aditi representing the twelve astrological principles or the manifest aspect of cosmic consciousness. It is impossible for a manifestation to override its own substratum.

This I think is the primary dharma teaching in this story.

Love to you all

Immensity of Silence

A man once asked Rumi “why is it you talk so much about silence” and he replied “The radiant one inside me has never said a word”. This is reflected in Rumi’s poem “The Taste”

"A walnut kernel shaken against its shell makes a delicate sound, but
The walnut taste and the sweet oil inside makes unstruck music,
Mystics call the shell rattling talk; the other, the taste of silence."

The value of silence was well understood by sages and mystical poets.
In this post I would like to bring to the readers the value of silence as perceived by some renowned spiritual leaders.

Once when Colman Barks (who had done a major work in translating Rumi) had a dream about Shams Tabriz (the great evangelist of Rumi's works), he was shown a cave which had internal pathways which led to an inner chamber and was called Rasa Shamsi (a Sanskrit word that was presented to him in this dream meaning ‘essence of Shams’). He was shown a central chamber and along the wall, in niches, many illustrious beings were seated and in the centre there was a chair like a throne. As he sits on the floor a man rises and admonishes that as an appropriate opening they sing in a strong voice. But Barks stood up and said “No silence is better” and the dream ended. To Barks it was the bedrock of silence which dominated the mysterious conversations (sobbet) between Rumi and Shams.

Carl Jung, the great Swiss depth psychologist and Gnostic initiate, was most creative in Bollinger tower. He associated this place with healing power of being quiet. He says “Solitude is the fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words”. From 1923 till his death in 1961, Jung spent his time in this tower and was guided by an inner Gnostic called by him Philomon. In a stone plaque he renamed his home as ‘Philomon’s shrine’.

The cave or tower of silence symbolism has been reflected in the Upanishads. To illustrate this deeply understood concept of the true inner self Katha Upanishad says: “Atman, smaller than the small, greater than the great, is hidden in the cave (hearts) of all living creatures. A man who is free from desires beholds the majesty of the Self through (silence) tranquillity of the senses and the mind and becomes free from grief.”…KU 2:20

Jiddu Krishnamurthy says "Silence and spaciousness go together. The immensity of silence is the immensity of the mind in which a centre does not exist. Always to seek for wider, deeper, transcendental experience is a form of escape from the actual reality of “what is,” which is our self, our own conditioned mind. A mind that is awaking, intelligent and free, why should it need, why should it have, any “experience” at all? Light is light; it does not ask for more light.
Meditation is not a means of an end; there is no end, no arrival; it is a movement in time and out of time. Every system, method, binds thought to time, but choice-less awareness of every thought and feeling, understanding of their motives, their mechanism, allowing them to blossom, is the beginning of meditation. When thoughts and feelings flourish and die, meditation is the movement beyond time. In this movement there is ecstasy. In complete emptiness there is love, and with love there is destruction and creation."

Love to you all

Immortality – the Immanent Nature

“Having thus spoken, Isis first pours out for Horus the sweet draught of immortality which souls receive from the Gods, and thus begins the most holy discourse. Heaven, crowned with stars, is placed above universal nature, O my son Horos, and nothing is wanting to it of that which constitutes the whole world. It is necessary, then, that all nature should be adorned and completed by that which is above her, for this Order could not proceed from below to above. The supremacy of the greater mysteries over the lesser is imperative. Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order, as being absolutely determined, and inaccessible to the idea of death. Wherefore, the things below lament, being filled with fear before the marvellous beauty and eternal permanence of the heavenly world. For, indeed, a spectacle worthy of contemplation and desire were these magnificence of heaven, revelations of the God as yet unknown, and this sumptuous majesty of night illumined with a penetrating radiance, albeit less than that of the sun, and all these other mysteries which move above in harmonious cadence, ruling and maintaining the things below by secret influences.”

The above writing is from the book of Hermes Trismegistus known as “The Virgin of the World”.
The Sacred Books of Hermes is an admirable compendium containing the laws, science, and theology of Egypt and were declared by the priests to have been composed during the reign of the Gods, preceding that of their first king, Menes.

I chose to write on this passage, in the very first post for the year 2010, for its insight and great wisdom regarding a relevant proto-Christian Cosmo-theology.

Isis is the Virgin-Mother of Horus. She is "the woman clothed with the sun" of the land of Chem. In the litany apostrophizing her, she is the "Immaculate Lady," "Queen of Heaven," "Illustrious Isis, most powerful, merciful and just," titles transferred entire or with slight change to the Virgin-Mary. (See Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, II, 209, for comparison of litanies). And not only was the adoration of Isis restored under a new name, but even her image standing on the crescent moon was adopted by the Christians, while her well-known effigy with Horus in arms has descended to our time in the many pictures of the Madonna and child.

Horus was the last in the line of divine sovereigns in Egypt. A tablet describes him as the "substance of his father," of whom he is an incarnation and identical with him. This is amplified by Hermes Trismegistus as Horus being fed with the ‘sweet draught of immortality’.

What follows this saying is the great truth of how order has descended form above into lower creation or order. When one looks up into the cosmos he perceives, what appears to be a, chaos. But this perception is due to the limited consciousness of the lower created order which is subjected to idea of death and impermanence. In reality the higher order, which is now being discovered through science, is possible only through a permanency and unchanging singularity. In his wisdom Hermes Trismegistus says that this deep insight is the revelation of the "God yet unknown".
The interconnectedness between the higher order or the cosmic consciousness and the lower order observer consciousness is beautifully brought out in the last portion of the quoted passage. The majesty of the heavens and all the associated mysteries resulting from our observations, such as the existence of dark matter and energy as 96% constituent of the universe, are the root cause for our existence. It is the secret yet very permanent influence of the cosmos that drives our individual existence upon this earth.

This realization is that which has driven many leading scientists and cosmologists to become ardent supporters of a universal or cosmic consciousness as the fundamental substrate of created order.

With this thought let us begin the New Year and grow in love (attraction) for all creation.

Love to you all

Manifestation as God’s Thought

“We are interdependently co-arising collapsed possibility waves transiently manifesting as space-time events in God's mind. Agree? Or in Simpler non quantum version - We are on/off thoughts in God's mind manifesting as people, things and events. There is only God.”…………….. Deepak Chopra

The higher aspect of meditation in achieving enlightenment is the principle of Vaishvanara Vidya.
Isolated meditations on different conceptual entities were considered by the great teacher, Ashvapati, the king, mentioned in the Chandogya Upanishad, as defective. If you meditate on any specific thing, you are excluding something thereby. You cannot think one thing without excluding something else. The thought that something is excluded from the thought ‘that something is being concentrated upon’ is also a thought. Exclusion of the thought of some object from the thought on which the concentration is carried on is not possible because the thought that something is excluded persists, while the intention is not to think of the excluded object. It is like a story: someone told ‘When you drink milk, do not think of a monkey’; then every time the milk was taken, monkey only came to the mind. A strong will to impose exclusion results in an equally strong attraction towards that which is excluded. This is the dynamics of the mental process. All thoughts result from certain frame of reference combined with accretion of memories or impressions.

There is no such thing in the history of the cosmos that one thing can be excluded entirely from the other. We can not study the solar system in isolation without the effect the Milky Way Galaxy has on its orbit around the Galaxy. The idea of exclusion is futile, because to exclude another thing from one thing, the mind that excludes should be present in that object also which is excluded. This is a trick that is played by the mind.

This is why the great teacher Ashvapati mentions to the six great sages who went to him for learning the art of meditation on the Atman that they are all defective. He asked questions, ‘O Great Sages!’ On what do you all meditate?’ They gave different answers. Various, different, totally
isolated concepts were the objects of their meditation. The king said, ‘you are all making two mistakes: one thing is that the thing that you are meditating upon is outside you; this is one mistake; the other mistake is that the thing on which you are meditating is in one place only’.

If we try to contemplate on an entity in one place only then a natural corollary is that there is some other entity in some other place. Hence Vaishvanara Vidya teaches the totally inclusive meditation.
As Swami Krishnananda says in his commentary on ‘Brahma Sutra’; “If this meditation through the Vaishvanara Vidya process becomes intense, you will no more be there as a meditator of the Vaishvanara because of the Inclusiveness of the same. It is an All-Consuming Fire and you will not be there to behold It. You will be reduced to the Fire Itself.
Then what remains? A big blaze of Self-Identity, Universal in its nature. We cannot speak much thereafter about this, but if this Universal Conflagration of the Fire of Vaishvanara can engulf us, thrice blessed we would be and it will lead us to Sadyo Mukti; you become liberated at once.”

This is what Deepak Chopra says in both scientific and metaphysical terms.

Love to you all

Conquering our Animal Nature

Jesus said, “Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.”……….. Logion 7

The Logion 7 of the Gospel of Thomas is a tough saying to understand as there is a very deep Gnostic and esoteric content that is being delivered by Jesus.
In every human soul there is a constant struggle between the, human consciousness induced, free will and the divine destiny for which we are born in this world. The struggle is heightened by the Ego dominated decisions that we take in our spiritual progress. The action of the self can very well be explained by the action of the three Gunas as propounded in Vedic philosophy. These three Gunas are Rajas, Tamas and Sattva. While Sattva is the Guna of spiritual evolution, Tamas (inertia) and Rajas (passion) are the prime cause of spiritual degradation. Rajas and Tamas are needed in one’s life but they have to be balanced in right proportion to propel one towards attaining the Sattvic Guna. Animal nature is predominated by the Rajasic and Tamasic Gunas.

An animal is rooted in whole of its life in a gross body-bound existence; its life is confined to the satisfaction of hunger, thirst, sex and sleep. That is animal life. Sex is there, because the law of biological evolution requires that the species should not become extinct. Therefore, for the continuity of the species, reproduction is indispensable, and for the process of reproduction, sex activity becomes an inevitable part of the biological, physical animal. Thanks to the reproductive process in the biological, evolutionary scheme of things that life on earth, ordained by some mysterious superconscious being, continues. So, these characteristics of sex, hunger, thirst and sleep form the root nature of life on earth. The whole life is nothing but a constant effort to satisfy hunger, thirst, sex and sleep and this is present in the animal man. So far, it is all right. Its presence is no dire calamity or disaster. But, if it becomes the more dominant part of your life-style, then it becomes a dangerous predicament, because you have reached a level where the biological evolution has brought you to the peak point, where quite another aspect of evolution is supposed to commence. This is the evolution of consciousness towards a higher self.

Hence for a man to eat a lion means that he partakes of the animal nature in his existence but transforms it into his own higher nature. This is similar to the vegetable or fruit one eats and the vegetable or fruit has now become human flesh and bone. Jesus says that the Rajasic quality that has been now assimilated in the metabolic act is indeed lucky as it has now been elevated to a higher nature.

In contrast, if we allow our animal nature to dominate our life, then we are reduced to a lower nature of existence. Tau Malachi, writing his comment on this saying says that there is a constant struggle between Nefesh Behamit (the bestial soul) and Nefesh Elokit (the Godly soul). This is a concept adopted from Gnostic Kabbalah.
In Gnosticism, Yaldabaoth, the lion headed demiurge, is the symbol of fallen Gnosis or wisdom as opposed to Sophia which symbolizes divine wisdom.

Hence this saying clearly instructs us to aspire towards conquering our animal nature, of being rooted in an act of sense gratification, and elevate our consciousness towards a higher plane of existence.

Love to you all

Peace of Christ

The day after tomorrow we celebrate the feast of Christmas. Christ messages had strong undertones about peace. It is interesting to study the background of the word peace from a linguistic, historical and wisdom tradition perspective.
The Aramaic word that was used by Jesus was ‘Salaam’ which then took the form of ‘Shalom’ in Hebrew. The word ‘Salaam’ continues even today in the Islamic and Sufi traditions. The city of Jerusalem was named thus because it was intended to be the ‘city of peace’. ‘Ur’ is the word in Aramaic for city and ‘salaam’ for peace.

Shalom, in the liturgy and in the transcendent message of the Christian scriptures, means more than a state of mind, of being or of affairs. Derived from the Hebrew root ‘shalam’ – it means to be safe or complete, and by implication, to be friendly or to reciprocate. Shalom, as term and message, seems to encapsulate a reality and hope of wholeness for the individual, within societal relations, and for the whole world. ‘Shalom Aleichem’ in Hebrew and the Arabic ‘Assalamu Alaikum’ means ‘may you be well’. Here the word ‘well’ is an all encompassing state of well being. It covers the four areas of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual potentialities of any individual being greeted.

The Gospel of John is perhaps the only canonical text which tries to evoke the deeper elements of Christ ministry. In this Gospel there are five times the word peace is mentioned as spoken by Jesus, twice before his death and thrice after his resurrection. I will quote these passages for reference:

• “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” …….. John 14:27
• “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”……. John 16:33
• ……. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”………. John 20:19
• Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."…. John 20:21
• ………. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”……… John 20:26

The importance of peace as a gift to a spiritual seeker, that is for anyone aspiring to become the Son of the Father, is vividly brought out as peace is chosen over the gifts of this world and all the teachings of Christ is for the ultimate purpose of attaining the inner peace which is so essential for realizing our true identity as being one with the Father. The Spirit manifestation of Jesus after resurrection always invoked the ‘peace greetings’.

Given this context it is important that we understand the meaning of peace. Peace is the state of harmony and balance of both the body and spirit. This is the reason that today Chakra healing always addresses the balancing and free harmonious flow of energy through the Sushmana, Pingala and Ida nadis. In all his teaching Jesus insists on a balanced way of life irrespective of whether it be eating, drinking, fasting or physical purification in the physical arena or in the purification of the spirit through forgiving, sharing, praying and worshiping. We are answerable only to inner spirit that dwells in us. “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”….. Luke 12:3

Jesus was the prime mover of individual consciousness from a moral domain to an ethical sphere.
Moral was imposed through laws of the old covenant and this was what Jesus witnessed in his lifetime and his teachings and through a new covenant, He targeted at invoking the ethical behaviour dictated from the pure consciousness of the indwelling Father to achieve inner harmony and completeness. Let us in this Christmas season make a beginning towards a purely inner cleansing so that we may attain a true vision of the Father through Christ consciousness.

May the Peace of Christ be with you!

Attaining Inner Tranquillity

We are in the festive season of Christmas and the overwhelming message this season brings is that of peace. Peace is not an isolated attribute that stands outside of one’s personal ambit. The Buddhist concept of peace has three dimensions. These are: inner peace; peace in the community of humankind; and ecological peace or peace with the Earth.

Once the Buddha standing on top of a hill with his disciples exclaimed; “Indeed, this world is burning with many and various fires. There are fires of greed, fires of hatred, fires of foolishness, fires of infatuation and egoism, fires of decrepitude, sickness and death, fires of sorrow, lamentation, suffering and agony.”

The three areas which give rise to suffering or lack of peace are; greed, hatred and ignorance.
Here, the myopic impulse of "greed" indicates uncontrolled desire for, and attachment to, material comforts, for wealth, power or fame. Desires of this kind aggregate and multiply without cease, and since their fulfilment, cannot bring true and permanent happiness; a person in their grip is condemned to continual torment and aggravation.

The deluded impulse of "hatred" describes such emotions as resentment, rage and envy which are triggered when our egocentric desires are not fulfilled. Unless controlled, this escalates into various forms of annihilation and aggression. Simply put, the misleading drive of hatred is the violence that grows from an egocentric view of life.

"Ignorance" refers to wilful ignorance of reality, or the true nature of life and the cosmos. Thus it is the deluded impulse that generates disharmony and revolt against the principles that govern the true nature of the cosmos. The wisdom which illuminates and reveals the true nature of the cosmos is referred to as "enlightenment," while this kind of wilful ignorance is referred to as "fundamental darkness" because it clouds and obscures the light by which we might see things in their true nature. Of all the deluded impulses, Buddhism considers ignorance the most fundamental.

Jesus came to remove this ignorance in the world. Judaic spirituality had lost its fundamental grounding due to influence of the ritualistic worship, pagan influence due to captivity and slavery under the Babylonians and Egyptians and the intellectual onslaught of Greek thought. The Buddha came to remove the ignorance introduced due the caste dominated Vedic knowledge dissemination. The fundamental richness of Vedic spirituality was lost in the rigmarole of rituals and caste domination. This is the reason the true spiritual Vedic tradition considers Buddha as an incarnation of the cosmic principle, Vishnu.

To have peace on earth every individual needs to have inner tranquillity. Tranquillity of mind comes from having successfully transcended greed, hatred and ignorance."

For those of us who follow Christ as our spiritual guide, his life and his words, deeply interpreted through the scriptures, are the tools for bringing inner peace.

Love to you all

On 23rd December there will be a more in depth post on “Peace of Christ”

Prayer of Silence

So high above all things that be
Is God uplifted, man can dare
No utterance: he prayeth best
When Silence is his sum of prayer.
…Thinkest thou, foolish man,
that with thy clapping tongue
Praise of the silent Godhead fitly can be sung? …… Angelus Silesius

The great Polish Christian mystic, physician and poet writes these beautiful words in his book “The Cherubinic Wanderer”. Man has a very limited view of the divine especially when he feels the need for a communion to convey his innermost feelings. The ability to use language, while it has enhanced the development of knowledge of the manifest creation, both in understanding its nature as well as in the act of controlling it, woefully falls short in communicating one’s inner state of emotions and feelings to a perceived power that has the ability to respond in a positive way towards alleviating a current state of need to one of fulfilment. Language is an evolutionary tool in the development of the human brain and hence the human mind. But mind itself is the field of action of consciousness in evoking thoughts for which language gives expression. The etymology of the word ‘evoke’ clearly points to the direction of action. Evoke comes from the Latin word ‘evocare’ which means ‘to call out’. When we need the attention of an external sentient being, we call out but when we need the attention of something of inner nature we need to ‘invoke’ and invoke comes from the Latin word ‘invocare’ which means ‘to call in’. This is the reason that the great mystic says that only foolish men resort to clapping tongues to call the divine.

Carmelite spirituality is based on Lectio Divina. It is the most traditional way to grow in an intimate relationship with God and it is by means of this relationship that we are transformed and rendered capable of living the Divine word in all its fullness. A monk in the 12th century described the fundamental elements of Lectio Divina: - read the Word of God (lectio); reflect on the Word (meditatio), respond to the Word from the heart (oratio); rest in the Word (contemplatio).

The process of contemplation changes the human ways of thinking, loving and acting into divine ways. Our human ways are very limited and so when we read the Word of God, we are limited by our experience of life and by many other factors. It is said that one can find in the Bible reasons to support any position. It is therefore not sufficient just to read the Bible; our way of looking at things must be purified. When we meditate on the Word of God, we try to understand its meaning and what message it may have for our lives but when we do this, we are still limited. Our little world must be enlarged and our minds reformed according to the mind of Christ. When we pray from the heart, we are still using human words. Our words and thoughts, no matter how beautiful, are still human words and thoughts and it is therefore necessary that they too be purified by the Word of God. This is a divine dialogue and not a one way communication.

St. John of the Cross wrote that God spoke one word and that word was His Son; this Word God repeats in an eternal silence and in silence must it ever be heard by the soul. Lectio Divina moves towards silence. When our words and our beautiful thoughts are no longer sufficient, only silence can give an adequate response to the Word of God.

Love to you all

Karmic Consequences

His disciples asked him and said to him, “Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?” Jesus said, “Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.”………. Logion 6

Continuing in the series of commentaries on the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, in this short note let me bring out a fundamental facet of truth that needs to be appreciated. The disciples question is primarily in the mode of living but restricted to the sensory disciplines, which is no doubt important for any spiritual aspirant. This signifies the current preoccupation of mankind. We are always under the influence of our material world both exterior and interior. This is the reason that we assume that controlling the senses and disciplining the body would be sufficient to advance in spiritual living. The radical shift needed from the Mosaic Law-oriented-ritualistic spirituality (which was primarily installed to bring together the twelve tribes of Israel who had been under the slavery of Egypt, into a coherent society in a new land), into a spirituality that was focused on the individual to be liberated from their own ignorance of authentic Godhead, was the messianic mission of Christ. It is not that we have to belittle the mission of Moses and his law keepers, the Pharisees and Sadducees. They inherited the disciplining ways and the ritualistic rules as authentic spirituality from a social perspective. This we see in all organized religions even today. But Christ was on a different mission. This is the reason that he goes beyond the question of his disciples. His answer reveals an entirely new dimension of action, one that is oriented beyond the senses and in the realm of one’s consciousness.

The advice he gives his disciples reflects the advice of the Buddha in which the primary threefold classifications of right path are in the area of wisdom, ethical conduct and right concentration. In these three domains can be fitted every action (by way of body, speech, and mind) that will have karmic results (a.k.a. reaction). Wholesome and unwholesome actions will produce results and effects that correspond with the nature of that action. It is the right view about the moral process of the world and one’s existence as an integral element in it that is important. Apart from disciplining the body, about which the disciples ask him. The right speech and the right intension are of paramount importance.

The last part of Jesus saying here is very powerful and reveals a great ontology. The belief in an external God sitting in judgement over man was not the message of Christ. He already defined the location of the kingdom of heaven as something at the very core of one’s existence. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” …… Luke 17:21 The individual consciousness, being an integral part of the Cosmic consciousness, is a transparent domain wherein there is no place for concealment. All our conscious actions as living, acting and thinking individuals leave a karmic imprint and it is regarding this revelation that Jesus talks to his disciples. The reason that we have a limited view of the role of individual consciousness is because we isolate it through ego-centric perception as “I am the doer, I am the thinker etc.,” Gnostic Christianity did not believe in eternal damnation but in reincarnation, which to say the journey of the soul or individual consciousness through diverse levels in many existences towards an ultimate evolution to merge with the undifferentiated and unsullied Universal consciousness which is true definition of Godhead.

Love to you all

Budding at Reference Potential

Here ‘Reference potential’ has to be defined or else it leads to a gross error. ‘Reference potential’ means neither positive nor negative with respect to a given value (the reference can be constantly elevated but it is still known as ‘Reference potential’). This given reference potential with respect to humans is the Karmic potential with which we take birth. Through a life in our current manifestation there is a natural capacity to transcend to a higher reference level by reaching into our higher level of consciousness. Through this the reference is constantly elevated. The act of free will has the capacity to alter this potential, through either polarity (positive or negative), in a non-harmonious mode, contrary to the Cosmo-karmic intended aggregation.

“The Tathagatha avoids the two extremes and talks about the Middle Path.
What this is, that is; this arises, that arises.
Through ignorance, volitional actions or karmic formations are conditioned.”….. (Samyuktagama, Chapter 12)
This ignorance of which The Buddha speaks is the false knowledge that all actions have to have an ego/mental origination.

Hence this warning s issued in verse 36 of Tao Te Ching. “……………..To destroy something, lead it to its extreme. To preserve something, keep to the middle……………”

“Although we speak of opposites, they are not truly antagonistic elements. All opposites are part of the same entity. Like a two-headed snake, which is the symbol of Gnosis in Kabbalah, opposites are two parts of the same whole. Like the symbol of Yin-Yang, they define one another, as black defines white. They alternate with one another, as war alternates with peace. Whenever any phenomenon reaches its extreme, it will change toward its opposite, just as the darkest night begins to change toward dawn, and the coldest winter is followed by glorious spring. ………….. This is the wisdom of the middle ground. Followers of Tao change a situation when it reaches its apex. By joining their efforts to a new situation that is just budding, they attain perpetuity”………….. Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Though this explanation has been adequate, it needs a little more elaboration of what we want to achieve through this process. Every act in our life has to be oriented towards a greater fulfilment of our true potential. Many times we are driven by a desire to increase our capacity, whether it is physical, mental or emotional, so that we think of ourselves endowed with a capacity for superior performance in our life journey. This notion could be highly contrary to the way we need to deploy our potentialities. Take for example the body building regimen of a Mr. Universe contest. This tends to be an exercise which results in a compromise in other human faculties. This is true in all our acts of cultivating our given potentialities. By appreciating the interdependency of all our potentialities (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), we need to nurture our potentialities by raising the entire middle ground or reference plane. This involves our appreciation of our interdependence with all creation at a cosmic level.

Love to you all

Dilemma Regarding Dwelling

King Milinda had a series of dialogues with the venerable sage Nâgasena and one of the dilemmas that he tries to resolve deals with a man’s dwelling place.

“Venerable Nâgasena, the Blessed One said:In friendship of the world anxiety is born, In household life distraction's dust springs up, The state set free from home and friendship's ties, That, and that only, is the recluse's aim.”

But on the other hand he said:

“Let therefore the wise man, Regarding his own weal, Have pleasant dwelling-places built, And lodge there learned men.”

The question of Milinda is “Now, venerable Nâgasena, if the former of these two passages was really spoken by the Tathâgata, then the second must be wrong. But if the Tathâgata really said: "Have pleasant dwelling-places built," then the former statement must be wrong. This too is a double-edged problem, now put to you, which you have to solve.”
Sage Nagasena’s answer in the original text deals with the fact that both statements are those of The Buddha (Tathâgata) but the first was in the context of a subjective necessity when one undertakes an ascetic life and the second statement was in the context of the Sanga or community living wherein a pleasant dwelling place populated by wise men becomes necessary.

A deeper understanding of these two statements of the Buddha from any individual’s spiritual journey in this life becomes mandatory in today’s world. It is the mind which is the primary dwelling place and the two sayings address the necessary action of an individual with respect to conditioning one’s mind.

If one chooses the path of Raja Yoga, relationships and material possessions are the impediments if they are predicated to the self. When one starts to posses or cling to any worldly entity viritis (modifications) happen. Swami Satchidananda says “Every thought, feeling, perception, or memory you may have causes a modification, or ripple, in the mind. It distorts and colours the mental mirror. If you can restrain the mind from forming into modifications, there will be no distortion, and you will experience your true Self.” Hence this is addressed more to the mental domain.

If one chooses the Jñana Marga, the ambiance of learning and the need to populate one’s mind with empowering knowledge devoid any constraints becomes necessary. Here again the important meaning for the dwelling place is the inner sanctum wherein true wisdom finds a dwelling. This is what the Buddha indicates in the second passage cited by King Milinda.

In summary, the vital need for renouncing (does not mean casting away but means not clinging to) the outer dwelling which is the physical body and nurturing the inner sanctuary (which is the Spirit) through wisdom is the path to spiritual ascendancy.

Love to you all

Clothed in Love

In continuation of the post I did on the importance of the physical senses as being the primary portals through which man must aspire for higher consciousness, I present the thoughts of some eminent spiritual leaders of the past in how the process of transcendence can be initiated in our earthly manifestation.
In his commentary on the “Odes of Solomon” – Swami Nirmalananda Giri quotes the Zoroastrian sage, Kaspar, who said: “Man was a thought of God, formed in the image of the Septonate (seven sages), clothed in the substances of soul. And his desires were strong; he sought to manifest on every plane of life, and for himself he made a body of the ethers of the earthly forms, and so descended to the plane of earth. In this descent he lost his birthright; lost his harmony with God, and made discordant all the notes of life. Non-harmony and evil are the same; so evil is the handiwork of man” through the body which the Essene teacher Elihu called “the body of desires.”

The esoteric and Theosophic writings in the "Aquarian Gospel of of Jesus Christ", an apocryphal text states in chapter VIII verse 7-9, “The lower self, the carnal self, the body of desires, is a reflection of the higher self, distorted by the murky ethers of the flesh. The lower self is an illusion, and will pass away; the higher self is God in man, and will not pass away. The lower self is the embodiment of truth reversed, and so is falsehood manifest.” Its is the body of desires that separates us from God by turning us outward away from the inner kingdom of God toward the transient world and creating in us a myriad desires, none of which cannot be fulfilled because nothing in the world can ever be possessed, but only grasped and eventually lost.

There is, however, another body, the “body of union” that is the immortal spirit. Regarding this the Essene teacher Salome said: “Now spirit loves the pure, the good, the true; the body of desires extols the selfish self; the soul becomes the battle ground between the two.” Those who ensure the victory of the spirit over the flesh are the ones who truly love God, for true love results in the union of the lover and the loved.

Hence this process of conflict is the field of Kurukshetra wherein the two aspects of the self are in constant struggle. Let us listen to Sun Tzu’s advice in the ‘Art of War’: “Warfare is the way of deception”. It is exactly through this principle of deception that the lower self, through its myriad illusions, wins the battle. The senses which are the beneficiary agents of perception need to be constantly informed of the deception to which they are being subject to. The best way of achieving this is to feed them gratification at a higher plane which they would be able to grasp in a progressive manner.

Man has been created as an altruistic being capable of infinite love. Do we not feel an elation of joy when we behold happiness in our own children? The bond of love is the bridge through which happiness of the self can be realized through happiness of others. This is the reason that selfless service for happiness and well being of others and the nourishment of the ecosystem brings joy to a subject of this love relationship.

Let us cloth ourselves with love for all that we behold and through this magical garment we will experience a move towards our higher self.

Love to you all

Manifesting the Hidden

Jesus said, “Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest” …………Gospel of Thomas Logion 5

The picture on the left shows the scattering impact of a droplet of water which hits the rising water drop of a previously fallen water drop. It is a magical image of sculptural quality. Thousands of water drops fall during a light shower on a puddle of water and we never take the time to notice what we see in this picture. To see the magical effect one has to slow down. Without extremely slow motion photography this image would be missed out. Even much more gross images escape our attention because we are always in a hurry with our worldly preoccupations. As we are discussing the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, it is necessary to emphasise the importance of sensory inputs in our spiritual life. Last week, Pope Benedict XVI told the gathering of hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and Film directors, held beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine chapel painted by Michelangelo that he wanted to “renew the Church's friendship with the world of art”. “Beauty ... can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God,” Pope Benedict said. Nature and the Cosmos talks to us through the senses, this is the reason that we have an exhilaration when we behold something beautiful or smell an intoxicating perfume of a flower or hear a beautiful recitation of a chant. But for many of us, brought up on Christian value system, a distortion has set in because we are taught that the sensory inputs leads to sin. ("If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."...Matthew 5:29)
Yesterday I did a half day session in a convent where I was addressing young girls preparing for their ascetic life on "The Role of Second Chakra in Ascetic Life" and my message to them was to use the body and the God given senses to feel the beauty of creation. Today the consumerist world thrusts highly distorted images and as Pope Benedict XVI said last week “Too often... the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful... it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy”. But an unpolluted sensory input is a primary gateway towards higher consciousness.

Imagine the relationship of a man and a woman closeted together often discussing intensely, to the observer in Bethany it would be presumed two intimate people sharing their thoughts. This is the reason for the apostles bitterly complaining about the intimacy of Jesus with Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Philip or in the logion 114 of Gospel of Thomas. To a discerning individual the meeting of Logos and Sophia and not just two physical entities would be revealed. Translating a sensory input through one’s own consciousness is the stage at which distortions start setting in. If the conditioning of one’s consciousness is unsullied, a highly cosmic view emerges from every input that we receive.

Jesus statement “For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest” points to the fact that all perceptions are within the grasp of one’s own consciousness and as we move from the region of a consciousness driven by the gross body towards a consciousness derived from our subtle body and astral or spirit body, which are integral existence of all creation, the kingdom of God becomes manifest.

Love to you all

Creation through Alignment

“As God creates, so man creates. If man gives a certain concentration of will, the Shapes and ideas created in the Mind become subjective. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of his Will the form becomes concrete, visible and objective, the Man has learned the Secret of Secrets. He is a Magician.”
Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, had a great insight when she wrote these words in her monumental work “Isis Unveiled”.

In his book “Theosophy: A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom” Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn, explains the above passage as follows:
“She makes it clear that this power is built on the conscious control of the substrate of the material universe. She states that the key to all magic is the formula: "Every insignificant atom is moved by spirit." Magic is thus conditioned upon the postulation of an omnipresent vital ether, electro-spiritual in composition, to which man has an affinity by virtue of his being identical in essence with it. Over it he can learn to exercise a voluntary control by the exploitation of his own psycho-dynamic faculties. If he can lay his hand on the elemental substance of the universe, if he can radiate from his ganglionic batteries currents of force equivalent to gamma rays, of course he can step into the cosmic scene with something of a magician's powers. That such an ether exists she states in a hundred places. She calls it the elementary substance, the Astral Light, the Alkahest, the Akasha. It is the universal principle of all life, the vehicle or battery of cosmic energy. She says Newton knew of it and called it "the soul of the world," the "divine sensorium." It is the Book of Life; the memory of God, ---since it never gives up an impression. Human memory is but a looking into pictures on this ether. Clairvoyants and psychometers but draw upon its resources through synchronous vibrations.

According to the Kabbalistic doctrine the future exits in the astral light in embryo as the present existed in embryo in the past . . . and our memories are but the glimpses that we catch of the reflections of this past in the currents of the astral light, as the psychometer catches them from the astral emanations of the object held by him.”

This explanation was written in 1930 and we can see the struggles it has with concepts and technicalities though the fundamental process of how the human agency, through its mental faculties, participates as an extension and tool in the divine creative act. With today’s contribution from various disciplines in science, we have a better understanding of the great insight which Madame Blavatsky writes about.

The dark matter and dark energy of the cosmos, the Morphic fields of plant biology, the M-Theory of unification of all forces of nature all point to an underlying energy, which is not in the electromagnetic spectrum (and so it is not gamma rays or currents produced due to neurons in the brain), as the prime causation or implicate order of all creation. David Bohm, the great Physicist, coined the word ‘implicate order’. Due to the nature of interaction that is possible between man, as the being with the highest level of consciousness in the evolutionary ladder, and the implicate order itself from which he operates, a continuous evolution towards higher awareness is made possible. This awareness is the creative potential from which new forms or the future emerges. In making this statement one should accept with humility that he is not creating ex-nihilo but only aligns his individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness, which is seen in a state of continuous evolution when viewed from a creature perspective. This we call magic. In reality all these ripples in the implicate order are magnified to magical proportion only when we are observing as creatures, but in the universal implicate order there is only unchanging equipotential.

Love to you all

Sway of Mystical Poetry

Some of the most ancient poetry was sacred poetry and song as a vehicle for sacred teachings. The Vedas of India, for example, are sacred verses that are traditionally chanted. It is said that they are not merely descriptions of doctrines, but revelations of Truth. The Quran and its mesmerizing chant in the original Arabic held sway many believers during the time of the Prophet and later in the development of Islamic Spirituality. The Sufi movement understood this dimension and tried its best to elevate the Islamic tenets to a higher level than what is delivered through rituals and diktats. These texts had the power to transform consciousness because of the fact that these verses are a homogeneous mix of spiritual and life empowering truth with an auditory tuning to touch the inner most realms of one’s consciousness. Truth was not revealed by mere words but by a process of aligning the whole physical dimension of one’s existence to the words and content of the poetry or verse so that there is a transformation at the most subtle level of the physical structure’s makeup. According to this tradition, poetry is not merely a fanciful and pleasant play of words and sounds that might evoke some surprising images or emotions, but a direct manifestation of a deeper reality that has the potential to radically transform us and shift us out of fixed modes of awareness.

Thomas McFarlane, author of “Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel sayings” writing on this subject says: “Moreover, it is said that all existence manifests in this way from a fundamental seed syllable or vibration, OM. As the Mandukya Upanishad says, This eternal Word is all: what was, what is, and what shall be, and what is beyond eternity. All is OM. The Greek word poesis (related to our words poetry and poem) means simply making or creating. The divine poetry is thus the divine creation, which is the world made manifest through the act of divine speech, such as in Genesis where it brings heaven and earth into existence. The world is God’s speech, God’s poem. As Meister Eckhart puts it, the simple being of a stone is the speech of God. It, and everything else, is the divine OM. When we begin to sense this, then we become the poetry.”

It is consciousness giving expression and this is for this reason that when we read any sacred verse in its original language the feel is totally different from reading a translation where only the dry meaning is transmitted.
For example reading the great Tamil bakthi (devotional) poem of Thiruvasagam in its original gives you a natural surrender to the divine. The same feel cannot be generated when we read the translation by G.U. Pope in English. Another classical example, from my own experience, is when we listen to Sankara’s composition to ‘Annapurani’ sung in the original Sanskrit. Invariably throughout the song one gets an elevated feeling of consciousness. There are many example including listening to the Our Father prayer being recited in the original Aramaic or listening to the Gregorian chant of the Latin vespers in a Gothic cathedral.

Poetry is the language of the soul and this is the reason that most wisdom traditions used poetry and music to touch the soul of the initiates.

Love to you all

Limitation has Success

“Limitation has success…..Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong a man’s life needs the limitation ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. ……….. Hexagram 60 of the I Ching (Wilhelm Baynes version)

Today we live in a world were the sky is the limit. Any sales promotion aims to excite this possibility that the owner of the product promoted can attain the impossible be it fairness of skin in a week or flat stomach from beer belly in two weeks. The examples are large and cover every segment that you can imagine.
The ancient wisdom of the I Ching captures the fallacy of unlimited options in the well being of man.

In the societies of the past due to the inherent limitations of population, travel and knowledge itself, the need to preserve skills in knowledge, trade and tasks enabled man to narrowly focus on the core competencies that one had. A hunter honed his skills to provide for the community, a trader and his caravan gathered the best of products and bartered wares to please the customers. The native Indians of North America used to kill only few buffalos in a year for food and hide for the entire community. In the industrial age, mass consumerism has led to the unlimited exploitation of all type of resources.

In her book “Wisdom for Better Life” author Debi Davies writes: “Learning to create and practice appropriate boundaries in all aspects of life is important for everyone. Creating proper boundaries in relationships, as well as work and recreational environments, enables people to be fulfilled rather than drained. Boundaries become our protection as well as our map for proper interpersonal behaviours. People must respect our boundaries and we, in turn, must respect theirs. Setting and understanding boundaries in day-to-day life will help you develop into a fair, productive and self-confident individual who is able to give and receive in relationships your entire life.”

There is a need for setting up a boundary at the physical, emotional and intellectual level in our lives. In the physical plane, let us take our diet today. For many individuals the diet has no relation to the work he or she does or their personal life style. People having sedentary life style eating a high calorie diet are sure to have degradation of health. Emotional boundaries are equally important. This determines the impact of our feeling on others and also the impact of others feelings and disposition towards us. In professional man management, emotional attributes of an individual play a significant part. Intellectual boundaries are determined by one’s gift of skills either endowed or acquired during one’s life. Setting up this boundary has to take into consideration the maximum leveraging one can attempt to gain through pursuit of information, knowledge and external wisdom. Today’s experience of many individuals in the ‘world wide web’ is a good example of the extent to which loss of focus can occur. In seeking spiritual empowerment today many start chasing all that appeals to instant gratification, as though these are ready made packages for instant Nirvana. A typical case is how Yoga is promoted in the west.

In conclusion we can appreciate the wisdom of the Hexagram, which was the oracle of the East, by the insight it provides towards betterment of our lives.

Love to you all

Isolation During Transcendence

“Although the world rewards insensitivity with the spoils of war, it takes more courage to surrender than to numb. So often the most 'damaged' people are actually the most advanced and feeling souls. They feel everything and are more strongly impacted by the disparity between an authentic life and the falsified energy of the world” …..Jeff Brown from his book “Soul shaping: A Journey of Self-creation”

When you are rooted in your authentic self the one inevitable experience that one has is the sense of utter loneliness. This truth can come only out of real experience. This leads us to define what we mean by authentic self. Human life has two distinct dimensions. They are; the life that is lead as a response to the way we are perceived by the culture and community and all the relational responses that we have of ourselves through our senses. Broadly this could be defined as a life lead in our waking consciousness conforming to socio-cultural norms. The other is the inner life which is a product of our innate seeking for something more meaningful and something that seems to be missing when we are oriented in the worldly plane. This higher living is driven by moral values, empowering knowledge and ethical behaviour which are to be found and acted upon through an intuitive journey.

These two lives are not segregated but are enmeshed in the human psyche. It is only through our worldly experience that we transcend to a higher plane of authentic living and an authentic life has to be lead in this world which is the ground of being. This is reason that Jeff Brown brings out the sensitivity of people who lead authentic life to issues around them. They are severely impacted by the injustices meted out to their fellow beings and to the environment. They perceive the interconnectedness of all creation. As Lynne McTaggart says in her book ‘The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe’: “Our natural state of being is in relationship, a tango, a constant state of one influencing the other. Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated from each other... By the act of observation and intention, we have the ability to extend a kind of super-radiance to the world.”

In order to move towards living an authentic life a process of transcendence is required.
Joseph Chilton Pearce says in his dialogue with Duncan Campbell in 'Living Dialogues' “Transcendence is the ability to rise above and go beyond limitation and constraint. Our inability to rise beyond and go beyond our current limitation and constraint leads us to all of our violence. We have in this life a choice between two things: Either transcendence or violence. And there’s nothing much in between. Culture depends on violence. Culture breeds violence. And culture thrives on violence. Gil Bailie (He was a follower of Rene Girard, the great French philosopher, who did his life’s study on the effect of culture and the way culture preserves itself through violence), who was the author a book called ‘Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads’ says: “And of course all of this is very anarchy… it’s anarchistic. It’s anti-cultural. To be anti-cultural is to be virtually anti to every single aspect of what we think of as civilization”…..”

The spoils of this violence are the fodder for the masses to perpetuate the culture of seeking pleasure and materialistic living and people who transcend will feel the isolation and alienation that I mentioned at the start of this article.

The choice is ours to make. Whether we want to be comforted and lulled by the ‘falsified energy of the world’ or we want to be ‘the 'damaged' people who are actually the most advanced and feeling souls’

Love to you all

Spirituality of Uzir Beg

The Culture of Orissa, Jagannath Culture, is based on the non-sectarian ideology that welcomes every religious and non-religious believer to its fold to receive the blessings of Lord Jagannath. Salbeg, though Muslim by birth, is the brightest star of the Orissan sky who enlightened the Orissan society by his devotional bhajanas, jananas and chaupadis. In this 21st Century, he is still being reckoned as one of the brightest literary figures of Orissa.
There are certain other contemporary literary figures who were unfortunately forgotten in our society, but who deserve special and renewed attention. One such Bhakti poet is Uzir Beg. Uzir Beg had written a few devotional bhajanas in reverence of Lord Krishna. His writing is simple and melodious, and can touch the heart of every human, irrespective of their religious beliefs. His anthology on Lord Krishna is very famous, and in current stressful life it can give solace to mankind.

God belongs to all mankind, but to achieve their own narrow goals, men divided God. God never differentiates men or the basis of belief, but rather takes all mankind as his own creation. In this way Lord Ram was born in Tretaya Yuga, Lord Krishna in Dwapara Yuga, and in course of time in different yugas, Buddha, Jesus, and Prophet Mohammed were born in order to maintain peace and harmony on this earth.*

Poet Uzir Beg understood the finer meaning of these religious preachers.
It is because of an intuitive experience that God can only be seen as an inner manifestation of Universal or Cosmic consciousness. If we are rooted in the external iconic symbolism or narrow agenda of exploiting society through altered concepts of divinity that we run into human segregation on the lines of religion.

If divine consciousness or Paramatma is universal then all forms of its perception must be universal. This has been given different names such as Krishna consciousness or Christ consciousness or the enlightened state of Satori in Buddhism or the ‘state of ihsan’ in Islam, based on socio-cultural context. Much literary work is devoted to the concept of Cosmic consciousness in Vedic literature and this is referred as rasa. The concept of rasa is clearly explained by the following text:

“That substance we have previously called the supreme and purest truth is celebrated in all the Vedas by the name “rasa” or nectar. This one and undivided rasa is the principle known as the Supreme Brahman; It is the abode of limitless bliss and the ultimate understanding of God’s glory.
This single undivided truth manifests as the Shakti and the Shaktiman, which are not separate truths, but only appear to be so through the action of vizeSa (perverted reflection). The Shaktiman cannot be perceived except through His Shakti, which is divided into the three functions that manifest all the universes.”
…………….Harinama Cintamani: Chapter 15

Let us promote this universal understanding to truly comprehend that the only one true divine is in all and is Sat-Chit-Ananada.

* With due acknowledgement to “Uzir Beg: Forgotten Bhakti Poet of Orissa” by Mohammed Yamin

Love to you all

Effectively Casting the Net

“And He said unto them, cast your net on the "right" side of the boat and you shall find what you are looking for. And the disciples did, and they were unable to draw in their Nets for they were filled with a multitude of Fishes.” ………. John 21:6

In the life of Ascended Masters such as Jesus, we always look for the miraculous to confirm their elevated state as people with the highest level of spiritual consciousness. They in turn perform miracles not as some cheap trick to confirm their status but to convey deeper meaning that could elevate the consciousness of all who witness such miracles, especially their closest disciples, but also for posterity through recorded sacred history. The words in the Bible are important when it comes to understanding the full implication of any event or message. If Jesus wanted to just perform a miracle, he would have simply said “Lower your nets again and you will find what you are looking for” but he says “cast your net on the right side”. This is the second time that Jesus performs a miracle involving catching fish and hence it had a very specific purpose.

In the first miracle, the capacity of Jesus and through his teachings, his own disciple’s capacity to move from the physical level of catching fish, which is a resource for physical sustenance, to the new ascended level of harnessing Christ consciousness to augment their own higher consciousness, is being highlighted.
This is the reason that Jesus says “………, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” ……….. John 10:38
Being in the Father is being at the very source in which true likeness we are created. This is the purest form of Divine or Cosmic Consciousness.
He also confirms that anyone can achieve this higher level of spiritual consciousness and even exceed the level from which Jesus was operating. For he says “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” ……. John 14:12

The second miracle happened after his resurrection and when the Apostles and disciples were at their wits end to understand the mystery of Christ. They were waddling in the muddy and murky waters trying to find some meaning in the events that have taken place. They had an idea of a physically invincible Christ and this miracle is to tell them that they are fishing for meaning in the wrong side. They would be able to find answers if they start to fish for understanding in the “right” side of their own consciousness. “They were unable to draw in their Nets for they were filled with a multitude of Fishes.” The meaning conveyed here is that comprehending the full Christ consciousness is a Herculean task and this realization is portrayed by the act of Peter recognizing Christ on the shore.

Love to you all

Deploying Polar Opposites

“Knowing what cannot be known--What a lofty aim! Not knowing what needs to be known--what a terrible result! Only when your sickness becomes sick, will your sickness disappear. The Sage's illness has become ill, his renunciation has been renounced. Now he is free and every place in this world is the perfect place to be”……….. This is the 71st verse of Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu.

These few lines give us a mode of a living that is spiritually driven.
The lofty aim of life is to know what is unknown. The very act of seeking the unknowable is the beginning of wisdom. This needs a redefinition of ‘the unknowable’ because if an entity is unknowable, how can one ever attempt or succeed in knowing. The ‘unknowable’ is that which can not be known through a current level of perception. The path of knowing leading to the knowledge of the unknown has a dual dynamics, one is the forward push of the seeker and the second is the regress or descending of the ‘unknowable’ towards the seeker so that it comes into his ambit of comprehension. This is the reason that in the Proverbs of Solomon it says: “In the discerning heart, wisdom finds a resting place”…..Proverbs 14:33.

Being satisfied with what we know at the surface level and by “not knowing what needs to be known” leads one to a terrible result of poverty of the spirit.

Lao Tsu now explains how the polar opposites are to be employed for eradicating all negative aspects of one life. The sickness becoming sick or the illness becoming ill and the renunciation being renounced are all attributes that can only be altered by redeploying the same attribute. {The double negation which is employed tracks the mathematical postulate that multiplying two negative integers give us a positive integer (-1 X -1 = 1)}.

True freedom results from loss of identity. As I had explained in an earlier blog post, the word ‘identification’ comes from the Latin root ‘idem + facio’ which means ‘same + make’. The attachment of perceived reality to be your own through identification is the root cause of lack of true knowledge. The progress of knowing stops with this step of identification and appropriation. Once this block is removed then it is possible to progress towards higher ‘unknowables’.

As St. Augustine says in his “Confessions”:
“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late have I loved you. And behold, you were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for you. I was deformed, plunging amid those fair forms, which you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you – things which, if they were not you, were not at all. You called and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed and shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odours, and I drew in breath – and I pant for you. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

Once this malady of attachment, which is equated to sickness by Lao Tsu, is erased or even moving from renouncing external materiality to a real inner renunciation of all sense oriented perceptions as stated by St. Augustine, takes place, then only you find the highest knowledge within your own heart that truly liberates.

Love to you all

Meeting to Depart

"Blue mountains lie beyond the north wall;
Round the city's eastern side flows the white water.
Here we part, friend, once forever.
You go ten thousand miles, drifting away
Like an uprooted water-grass.
Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer!
Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend!
We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
While our horses neigh softly, softly . . . . " ………Li Po (701-762 CE)

Li Po, the great Chinese wandering poet, had the capacity to bring out, in simple poetry, great insights into the process of life. Every moment of our lives, we are constantly witnessing a meeting and a departing. This event of meeting and departing starts with our being born into this world and confront our own existence in a new level of evolving consciousness. This journey ultimately comes to an end in our death. The ‘Blue Mountains’ lying to the north mystically portrays our own unfathomable beginning at a higher consciousness level but now seen in the east, a polarized dimension, where we exist as a flow of white water signifying the turbulence of our earthly sojourn.
Every moment of our existence there is a meeting and parting of people, knowledge, emotions. Though some of these entities come back, if we carefully examine them we will find that they are modified due to their own travel and experience in their journey. Let us as an example take the emotion of love. In each stage in our life, the character of love, even towards the same object, its shade, intensity, meaning and purpose, gets continually altered. This is the reason that Li Po says of his friend that he would ‘go ten thousand mile, drifting away’. The floating clouds are the best example of the impermanency of existence which is very similar to the thoughts of the wanderer as the words and actions that issue forth from such thoughts have no permanency in its impact.

This raises the big question. What is the purpose this journey? The permanency of possession is an ego driven thought. It is the ego that seeks to possess and hold on to its experience under a false sense of comfort or fulfilment. If we let go, in this process of experiencing or encountering, there are two benefits that we derive. One there is no suffering in departing or letting go and the other is that in the knowledge of inevitability of this short encounter and our brief relation to all that we come across, we tend not to impose our will upon the object of encounter thus allow the natural order to take its course. In the Gospel of Thomas, in the shortest yet most powerful saying, Jesus says “Be a passer by”….. Logion 42

Especially in our relationship with the ecosystem and our role in human society, the inevitability of meeting to depart and our responsibility to empower rather control or exploit must be borne in our minds. People who lived in the pre-Cartesian dimension, that was before we were told that nature was there to be plundered, were basically no different from us. They had the same positive and negative human attributes, but the results of human profligacy were contained by the natural order of things, which transcended technological and political sophistication and even religious disposition. Excess in the natural order was contained because it was biodegradable. When old civilizations, however opulent, profligate, greedy, or brutal, died, the forest just grew over them. They left no pollutants, damaging poisons or nuclear waste. By contrast, and assuming we survive as a species and are permanent fixtures in this creation, we are heading at a hypersonic speed into a blind alley.
Slow down, let go and enjoy the ride!

Love to you all

Into the Sea of Darkness

Edgar Allan Poe, whose 200th birth anniversary the literary world is celebrating this year, wrote in his short story “Eleonora”
“I am come of a race noted for vigour of fancy and ardour of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -– whether much that is glorious –- whether all that is profound -– does not spring from disease of thought–from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi." (This translates from Latin “ventured into the sea of darkness, in order to explore what it might contain")

I had earlier written a blog on the death of Pop icon Michael Jackson titled the “thin dividing line” highlighting the blurring of the border between genius and madness. This article highlights a different approach where one knows that in his pursuit of knowledge or insight one may be called mad, this should not deter him or her from the persistent action of unrelenting search. The opening paragraph in Poe’s work positions the hero in this category. The position in the story is the permanency of love for Eleonora, sealed with an eternal oath, as the indelible and perennial state of existence in the emotional domain. Despite the physical death and separation of the ever lovable Eleonora in the valley of multi-coloured grass and the soothing ‘River of Silence’ holds the hero of the story to an invariable space-time existence, an imposed change into the unknown far from the quiet of the valley into the King’s court, exposes him to Ermengarde, a maiden to whose beauty the hero’s whole recreant heart yielded at once. There is a darkness that envelops the soul as it is torn between the oath to his older love and an emotional need to hold on to the new found object of adoration and the ineffable light that answers the hero’s turbulent heart is through a dream. A familiar and sweet voice, saying:
“Sleep in peace!–for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto Eleonora.”

This story is something that we all live through in our lives especially in our mental domain. A social and parental conditioning in our earlier life, a comforting infatuation of external, imparted knowledge which appears so thrillingly beautiful, that we dare not venture beyond. Most of us live in this ‘River of Silence’ forever till death takes us away. We do not want to leave our Eleonora, the beloved, though she is dead. We have to venture out and dare to dream. This is the voyage into ‘mare tenebrarum’ the sea of darkness. There we may find our new love, Ermengarde.
This is the beauty of life where we allow space for an expansion of our being and this can happen only when we venture beyond the multi-coloured grass valley and river of silence into a space where there is cacophony and mind numbing and challenging darkness. Out of this cacophony and darkness we can wean out a new existence, a singular match of sound and light, wherein we find higher truth.

Love to you all

Dark Death Dealing Deity

In Bengal the festival of Deepavali coincides with Kali Puja.
Having spent ten years in Kolkota, I can not forget the devotion of Bengalis for Goddess Kali. She was the instrument of mystical experience for Swami Paramhamsa Ramakrishna.
Swami Vivekananda, the great disciple of Ramakrishna, writing the poem “Kali, the Mother” portrays very grotesque and bone chilling image of the Divine Mother, Kali.
Alan watts, the twentieth century Zen philosopher, in his discourse on ‘Images of God’ says that Eastern philosophy and religion had understood the deep essence of God beyond the anthropomorphic trappings so rampant in Western monotheism and point to the imagery of Goddess Kali as the primal understanding of the cosmic nature of the divine.
He quotes the famous episode of an astronaut who returned from a long space flight and he was asked if he had seen God and he said ‘Yes’. He was then asked ‘What is he like?’ He said ‘She is Black’. This is the cosmic understanding of deep space away from the solar system. Many astronauts have had mystical experience when in space and some have devoted their life to spiritual seeking after these experiences. Ed Mitchell, the astronaut of Apollo 14, had this experience on his return from the moon on 9th February 1971.

What is the significance of imagery of Goddess Kali?
Kali's fierce form depicts awesome symbolism. Her black complexion symbolizes her all-embracing and transcendental nature. Says the Mahanirvana Tantra: “Just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her”, the primal void from which all came into existence. Her nudity is primeval, fundamental, and transparent like Nature — the earth, sea, and sky. Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all Maya or ‘false consciousnesses’. Kali's garland of fifty human heads that stands for the fifty letters in the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes infinite knowledge.

Her girdle of severed human hands signifies work and liberation from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth show her inner purity, and her red lolling tongue indicates her omnivorous nature — “her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavours'.” Her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness and the eight bonds that bind us.

Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, — the three modes of time — an attribute that lies in the very name Kali ('Kala' in Sanskrit means time). The eminent translator of Tantrik texts, Sir John Woodroffe in Garland of Letters, writes, “Kali is so called because She devours Kala (Time) and then resumes Her own dark formlessness.”

Kali's proximity to cremation grounds where the five elements or ‘Pancha Mahabhuta’ come together, and all worldly attachments are absolved, again point to the cycle of birth and death. The reclined Shiva lying prostrate under the feet of Kali suggests that without the power of Kali (Shakti), Shiva (the transformative principle in creation) is inert.

With this deeper cosmic understanding let us approach our worship.

Love to you all

Inner Sabbath – A Singularity

Jesus said, “The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one.”………. Gospel of Thomas Logion 4

This saying is potent with meaning which appears to evade us on the surface. Jesus is telling the disciples a continual comment of reaching the Kingdom through realization of the true nature of oneself. Jesus, in this saying, is not talking about a man of advanced age going to a baby who is seven days old and asking for a discourse on empowering knowledge. The true meaning of this saying is that in order to attain immortal life in the spiritual domain, human consciousness which has been contaminated through a long life in this materialistic world and which has become encrusted with trappings of pleasures through the senses, must go inward to the time of emergence of the pure consciousness in this physical body.
The seven days stated as the age of the immaculate child signifies the completion of the Genesis process of physical creation. This is the consciousness that resides in the fully created primal Adam (Adam Kadmon), the primal androgynous human and the ultimate created consciousness where in there is a divine perfection. This perfection is the eternal rest of the Sabbath on the seventh day. As Tau Malachi says “here the Master is speaking of entering into repose and seeking the wisdom of the Divine presence and power that enters the holy abode on the Sabbath”

This may sound a very tall order for common man. The moments of intuitive experience are often ignored by us as against a perception of their non occurrence. This asking the ‘child of seven days’ is experienced in our daily lives as experiences less intense than the "peak event" and are widespread, perhaps universal.

Paul Tillich, the twentieth century American Theologian and Philosopher, speaks of encounters with ‘true reality’ rather than unitive moments or mystical experiences: “Suddenly, true reality appears like the brightness of lightning in a formerly dark place.” Or, he continues, it may slowly appear “like a landscape when the fog becomes thinner and thinner and finally disappears. New darknesses, new fogs will fall upon you, but you have experienced, at least once, the truth and the freedom given by the truth.”

At the age of 33, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that he once had a moment of 'perfect exhilaration' while crossing a common (apparently Boston Common) at twilight: “Almost I fear to think how glad I am . . . Standing on bare ground,--my head in the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing, I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

Monoimus, the Arab, a great Gnostic (who lived somewhere between 150 - 210 CE) recommended an inward search for truth: “Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as a starting point. Learn who it is within you makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my soul, my body!” Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. . . And if, you carefully seek this out, you will find Him in yourself [as both] one and many things after the likeness of that one singularity. . . .”

Jesus concludes this saying that due to this process, what we considered as primal becomes irrelevant and all experience moves towards a singularity of pure bliss.

Love to you all

Fallacy in Methodology

My friend in Facebook, Francois Buisson, asked me regarding my take on Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s philosophy and I wrote to him that Jiddu's philosophy centres around the concept which he put out in his speech in Ommen, the Netherlands, on August 3, 1929 “truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path”.
Though he had his roots in Theosophy, he departed to a self propelled seeking more in line with Buddhism where ‘attaining pure land’ can be achieved only through one's own chosen methodology and this process is unique to that individual.
There creeps in etymological fallacy when words such as ‘path’ and ‘truth’ are encountered in philosophical discussions. The concept of a path immediately takes one to boundaries and predetermined layout and this is the meaning that is implied when Jiddu talks of method of grasping or approaching ‘truth’.
A path taken by an individual while climbing a mountain peak can vary depending on your physical strength, stamina, climbing skills and how well you are equipped. In theory we have an infinite number of paths to the peak if there are infinite numbers of people aiming to climb the peak. In practice there are defined paths based on the experience of past climbers and the daring approach of one pioneer. This is what the role of religion should be in attaining the ultimate goal of one’s spiritual life. It should be a path not the only path. What has happened over a period of time is that the very peak you wanted to climb has been falsely located at a much lower altitude due to the vested interest of the custodians of the path. The path takes priority rather than the peak itself.
Jiddu’s condemnation results from this aberration and he recommends that each one of us becomes a pioneer and we find our own unique path. (While this is subject to criticism due to the assumption that everyone is an expert climber, this methodology should be addressed only to the expert climbers or the spiritually adept). Vedic methodology provides space for such variance through what are known as Bakthi, Karma, Jnana and Raja marga (Way).
Next comes, the definition of the goal, the peak. If after more accurate survey we find that we have another peak which is higher than the one which had earlier been defined as the tallest and loftiest then the target shifts. Hence defining the highest peak to be scaled becomes a knowledge dependent entity.

Truth itself is not a definable commodity but that which approaches the absolute reality, that beyond which there is no cause and effect or any form of emanation, or as Nagarjuna defines, at which stage there is no ‘dependent arising’. The pure land is the state of ultimate abode in Chinese Mahayana philosophy. In effect, being born into the Pure Land is akin to achieving enlightenment, through escaping samsara, the Buddhist concept of ‘the wheel of birth and death’. To reach this ultimate stage which is hidden from our perception we need to progress through many stages of having climbed the highest peak only to realize that there is another loftier one than one on which we are standing. To this new peak there could be a totally new path from the base camp.
This is the reason for Jiddu calling for a pathless open approach as against a rigid system to allow the inherent divine force, in each seeking individual, to take control. An organized universal methodology completely negates the role of karmic accumulation or the action of the indwelling divinity.

Love to you all

Cheating Death

In three days we are going to celebrate the festival of Deepavali.

Yama Deepdaan is the first day of Diwali celebrations in North India and Gujarat. It is also known as Dhanteras.
Legend has it that a 16-year-old son of King Hima was destined to die on the fourth day of his marriage due to a snake bite. A girl agreed to marry the unlucky prince knowing his ill fate. The young bride was confident of her spiritual wealth and decided to save the prince. On the fourth night, after their marriage, she refused to let him sleep. She collected all her jewellery, ornaments, and also the gold and silver coins in the palace and placed them in a heap at the entrance of door. Then she lit innumerable Diyas (lamps) all over the palace. To keep her husband awake, she narrated tales and sang songs.

At the stroke of midnight, Lord Yama, the God of Death, reached the palace in the guise of a snake. But Yamraj’s eyes were blinded by the dazzle of the Diyas. This prevented him from entering the room where the young bride and prince was sitting. When the attempts to enter the room failed, Lord Yama hid near the ornaments and coins, thinking that the prince might come there to look at the valuables. But the clever young bride did not allow the prince to venture out and soon sun appeared and Lord Yama returned disappointed.

As usual the legend has a deeper meaning for each one of us to move to our real purpose in life.
Visitation by death is an inevitable fact of life. All that is created must move towards dissolution or dispersion. The third law of thermodynamics also states the same and hence the entire heat energy which is the signature of created matter must ultimately move to the absolute zero temperature. This is the eternal death of this creation or Brahma’s night or the domain of Yama. This is the physical aspect of one’s life but there is also the spiritual dimension. Though there is no death of atman or the soul, in its embodiment in creation there is a process of contamination which occurs due to a lowered level of divine consciousness and the life purpose is to purify one self of the accumulated karma so that the process of rebirth or samsara can be eliminated. Death signifies another beginning and defeating death means the process of unification of the created with the creator.
Lighting the lamp to ward of death symbolizes the higher knowledge or enlightenment.
The jewellery ornaments, and also the gold and silver coins in the legend are the created realities to which the self gets attached. This is the reason that though Yama is dazzled by the light of wisdom he hides near the created reality waiting to trap the created consciousness when it approaches this false reality. Yama taking the form of a serpent, which in all spiritual tradition symbolizes wisdom, is the earthly and sense oriented knowledge that leads to lower level of consciousness that poisons one's spiritual life.

As we start the season of celebration let this thought reside in all our minds. Kama (desire) and Artha (wealth) are only a means of livelihood but should be moderated by Dharma (right conduct) and we need to move away from its false sense of permanency to focus on our life's real purpose, which is to defeat death and attain divine union.

A very Happy Deepavali to all of you.

Deep Faith and Blind Belief

The following portion of a poem is taken from the Masnavi Book III of Jallaudin Rumi.

Little is known by any one but the spiritual man,
Who has in his heart a touchstone of vital truth.
The others, hovering between two opinions,
Fly towards their nest on a single wing.
Knowledge has two wings, opinion only one wing;”

It is common knowledge what a strong conviction can do to individuals. It gives enormous strength in whatever activity that one engages in and the needed resilience to strive to complete the task that is driven by that conviction. Opinion on the other hand is shallow. Opinions are subject to change but knowledge rooted in inner realization is the bedrock of one's actions and existence. This is beautifully brought out by Rumi while reciting the story of a man who prayed in all earnestness for food as he was of poor health and could not earn a living and how God heard his prayers and a cow walked into his tent to become his food.

We have today innumerable tools on how to deploy the “law of Attraction” and how the cosmos is there waiting with its abundance to provide us with whatever we want. Many a time we reduce this principle to material or the physical level.
Here the words of Rumi give us the precondition for this principle to become active in us. He qualifies that “Little is known by any one but the spiritual man”. A spiritual realization becomes mandatory as knowledge is rooted in vital truth.

What is this truth that Rumi speaks of? It is the realization of interconnectivity and interdependence off all creation. It is also the inner knowledge that we are the same energy as is all creation from which we have been created. This knowledge gives us an irreversible thrust towards our higher potentialities as symbolized by Rumi relating to the flight of a bird with two healthy wings. Such realized individuals are equated to Angel Gabriel, who was the messenger of God, symbolizing a knowledge flow from a higher realm to the creation. This knowledge insulates one from ego contamination. This knowledge makes the spiritually realized shielded from duplicity and alienating opinions.

This is as the Holy Quran says “Then is one who walks fallen on his face better guided or one who walks erect on a straight path?”… Sura 67: 22.

The straight path is the path of this inner knowledge. So strong is this knowledge that nothing can dislodge a person. Rumi again says:

“Nay, even if sea and mountains should cry out,
Saying, “Thou art mated with error,”
He would not relapse one jot into vain imaginations,
Nor would he be grieved by the reproaches of his foes.”

This is rudimentary difference between faith and a belief. Hence faith must be based on knowledge, if not it is blind belief subject to the vagaries of moods and emotions just as the buffeted bird with one wing trying to take flight.

Love to you all

Longevity of Union

Today is the Hindu festival of Karwa Chauth in Northern parts of India. This is celebrated as Varalakshmi Vratham in South India on the last Friday of the bright fortnight of the moon in the month of Ashadha, also called Adi, which corresponds to the English months of July-August, when married women fast and offer puja for the longevity of their husbands.

The legend behind the festival is the story of Virvati.
Once there lived a pious woman named Virvati. She was the only sister of seven brothers and she was married to a prince. She used to fast for the welfare and long life of her husband on Karva Chauth.
Young Virvati was a weak and fragile woman and she could not bear hunger. But still she kept the fast. Virvati’s brothers did not like her suffering. But she was not ready to break the fast without watching the rising moon. Virvati’s brothers then thought of a plan to alleviate the pain of their sister. They decided to create the rising moon. For this they created a huge bonfire and put a big screen to make it look like the rising moon.
Virvati saw the fake rising moon created by her brothers and believed it to be the real moon and broke her fast. But before she could consume the entire food a messenger came with the news that her husband met with an accident and will die soon. Realizing her folly she sought the blessing of a old woman who foretold that she will not be widowed and tended to her husband for a year and nourished him back to full health.

For those discerning souls who want to know the deeper significance of this festival and the legend behind it, I dedicate this post. Marriage when viewed from a holistic dimension transcends all physical attributes that one experiences at the mind-body level. While the mind-body level is the platform on which the relationship starts and is very vital throughout one’s life, it is in the merging at the consciousness level that provides lasting peace and happiness. This is easily manifest in our experiences especially after a long term relationship of intense love for each other, how one can almost read the other’s thoughts or feel a pain when the loved one suffers. There can be other non local consciousness level experiences like telepathy or strong physical presence when separated from each other.

In this story of Virvati, there is a translation of the love, from that of the seven brothers for the only sister prior to her marriage, to a new level of love of greater intensity through the medium of her prince husband. Consciousness is created to flow towards its higher potentiality. The wedding of Virvati to the prince signifies this shift namely; brotherly to marital love, denoting a shift from a lower potentiality (non-creative)to a higher one (creative). The degradation or the reverse pull to a lower reality is denoted by the concern of the brothers and the fake reality that is created through the fake moon. The altruistic consciousness of Virvati is deluded through the manipulation of a self preserving act emanating from a lower level of consciousness. Ultimately the correction takes place through the medium of Divine grace and blessing and service to the higher self signified by the blessings of an older woman and the service Virvati renders to her true purpose of existence and perpetuation in the current reality.

While the festivity has its important social dimension, its spiritual dimension becomes important to those of us who can think and act beyond ritualistic faith. The fasting does nourish our body but the prayer for the longevity of the husband should be a prayer of longevity for creative potential of both husband and wife so that they can become highly realized consciousness in their purpose of creation and earthly union.

Love to you all

Knowing the Kingdom

Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.” ………… Logion 3

Continuing the interpretation of the various sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, Christ clearly articulates the location of the ‘Kingdom of God’ which is more in tune with Advaidic proposition.
First of all we should understand what the word ‘Kingdom’ means in the context of Christ saying.
Christ divine nature is manifest in this understanding through apriori knowledge of the cosmic and universal nature of the domain of God’s existence. This must take us to the Genesis and it is the primordial light of the beginning of Genesis (1:3-4). Most scriptural and Bible scholars still resort to another abstraction which is namely ‘light’ as the domain of the God’s domain. This I feel is only a slight improvement from a more earthly term ‘Kingdom’.

With the advances in our understanding the nature of reality, today there is universal acceptance that an energy field pervades the entire cosmos at the very subtlest level. This has been called by various names. But one fairly acceptable name is consciousness. Consciousness transcends the four dimensional space-time and communications at near infinite speeds have been observed in the laboratory.(Dr. Cleve Backster experiment for US Army) also another Russian study points out that if you beam laser light through DNA a wave pattern appears on the screen behind. If you then remove the DNA from the experiment the wave pattern remains on the screen as if the DNA is still there. (Study of phantom DNA effect by Russian scientists Gariaev, K.V. Grigor'ev, A.A. Vasil'ev, V.P. Poponin and V.A. Shcheglov.)
Therefore a better term for ‘light’ could be ‘consciousness’. The entire creation is pervaded by Divine or Cosmic consciousness. This is the primordial stuff from which all creations come endowed with the same pure element but sullied through layers of conditioning as a result of our alienated perception through the action of the mind.

This is the reason that Christ points out the misperception and clearly states that the original ‘kingdom’ or ‘light’ or ‘consciousness’ is within you in as much as it is in every creation that is manifest to our human senses. It can not be contained by space-time or any other physical attribute. The extreme position of this understanding is the philosophy of Advaita propounded by Sankara.

Christ further qualifies that this knowledge is of primary importance as this knowledge based living gives us the right to be called Children of the living Father because in our deeper existence, not in the physical plane, there is no death and the divine consciousness merges with created consciousness to make us immortal. This is the reason Jesus says “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”...... Logion 1 
Finally the lack of this knowledge leaves us undernourished and we live only in the physical and material domain to experience degradation and dissolution. A poverty that is self imposed due to our lack of understanding our true nature.

Love to you all

Limited and Yet Limitless

Nature that fram'd us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend,
The wondrous Architecture of the world:
And measure every wand'ring planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless Spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

My friend on the Facebook, Kevin Walker, did a note, posting a portion of the play “Tamburlaine the Great” by Christopher Marlowe, yesterday. The note is reproduced above. This triggered my thought on the culpability of the human race in assessing its given capacity during the earthly existence.
Describing the character of Tamburlaine, commentators write “Majestic and eloquent, with the ability to conquer not just kings and emperors but the audience of the play, Tamburlaine is one of the most important characters in Elizabethan drama. He is the source of the poetry that made Marlowe famous, and he can be both captivating and repellent because of his brutality. The key to his character is power and ambition, of which Tamburlaine has a superhuman amount, as well as the willingness to use any extreme in order to be triumphant. Unconcerned with social norms or everyday life, Tamburlaine views himself in relation to the gods, and Marlowe uses him as a tool to ask philosophical questions such as what is the furthest extent of human power and accomplishment, and whether this is significant in comparison with heaven.”
We are very arrogant in our thinking and this arises from the premises of a total lack of understanding our own true nature and where we fit in the design of things in the cosmos. We assume that rational and intellectual pursuit can take us to limitless understanding yet the greatest minds of science have humbly accepted the fallibility of their rational and scientific thinking.
Albert Einstein, probably the greatest scientific mind whose intuitions have influenced practically every arena of science, clearly positions man’s place in the cosmos and says:
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space (the limiting dimension). He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest ... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty (a limitless potential).” {italic text mine}

Mental and intellectual aspirations have limitation. This incessant pursuit leaves one worn out and the ‘sole felicity’ which means the ‘only happiness’ is a temporary euphoria which we chase relentlessly. This is why great spiritual leaders have advised a ‘no mind’ approach to perennial happiness.
“Passions consist of conceptualizations. The ultimate non-existence of these conceptualizations and imaginary fabrications--that is the purity that is the intrinsic nature of the mind. Misapprehensions are passions. The ultimate absence of misapprehensions is the intrinsic nature of mind. The presumption of self is passion. The absence of self is the intrinsic nature of mind. ………..(Buddhism). Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti 3

Love to you all

Sulphur, Salt & Soul

“Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”
…….. Genesis 19: 24-26

Good scholarship of Bereshit - Genesis, the Jewish Tanakh or Bible, indicates that the writing was very esoteric and was meant to be interpreted to achieve deeper knowledge of Self-realization.
All alchemical processes are of evolutionary nature and the evolution must move forward towards the highest goal of purification.

Sulphur was regarded as an expression of the fiery element. Most alchemists took it as the basis of their principal processes. This sulphur was referred to, in mysterious phrases, as a stone that is not a stone, a stone so common that everyone sees it but nobody notices it. It had revealed to seasoned initiates as a method of roasting copper with sulphur in order to produce gold. Copper symbolizes a metal of good conduction of the transformative energy so that the pure heat of the soul fire can be transferred with the highest efficiency. Sulphur was produced from realgar, disulphide of arsenic, which was found in the gold mines. This mutual co-existence is symbolic of the non-differentiated aspect of the constituents of the process and the final product which is of highest value. It was considered only reasonable that the use of such initial products must have gold as the final product.
The purpose of destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, through brimstone or Sulphur, should not be perceived as annihilation but a transformation from a lower state of existence to a higher state of life in the spiritual domain.

Salt is the third element in the trinity of the alchemical substances in the Great Work. As mercury is the water aspect, sulphur is the fiery aspect, so is salt the form aspect (salt is a crystalline form, or crystallized energy). So it is also a name for the ‘prima materia’, for the stone of the philosophers. The alchemists say that in its lower aspect salt is ‘bitter’. Here salt is symbol for knowledge and wisdom. Self-knowledge is bitter, painful. Sometimes they speak of the bitter ‘sea water’. As water or the sea stands for the soul, it is a reference to the same self-knowledge. The creative and transformative intelligence is coded into the ‘prima materia’ or primary cosmic consciousness.
Lot’s wife, being turned into a pillar of salt, is the symbolism of the storehouse of knowledge in the process of alchemy that has taken place. It is the blue print of the soul purification process of the humanity, symbolized by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. This knowledge is carried forward into the future through Lot, symbolizing the creative potential, and his two daughters, symbolizing the wisdom potential, in an unsullied manner as Lot’s daughters get one son each through Lot when he is drunk, symbolizing an elevated state of consciousness. The word drunk is often used in the Bible to indicate intake of intoxicating knowledge.
In Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."… Logion 13

Past should be used as storehouse of empowering knowledge so that we can refine our lives to a higher state of spiritual existence.

Love to you all

Symbolism of Descent of Ganga

In Valmiki Ramayana the descent of Ganga from the heavens is portrayed with the following myth.

Bhagiratha prayed to Brahma so that Ganga that was contained in a jar in the domain of Brahma, could be released to flow down to the Earth so that it may wash the ashes of his ancestors so that they may obtain liberation. Brahma said, “It cannot be released with a wish and prayer. When Narayana (Vishnu) takes Vamana Avatara (Dwarf incarnation – See my post "Festival of Liberation”), he will take the Visvarupa (Cosmic form); and his feet will touch all the three worlds and his toes will topple down the jar that contains Ganga and the Ganga will flow down.”

Bhagiratha took many births and waited for the Vamana Avatara. It took place, and the toe of Vishnu, in his cosmic form, toppled the Jar and it turned upside down. The whole thing fell down. And Brahma said, “Now it will go to the underworld because its force is such that you will not get the Ganga here on Earth. It will go to the nether regions. So you must do something to prevent it from going. Then he [Bhagiratha] prayed to Lord Siva to hold up the Ganga in his Jeta (matted locks). Then Siva released it through his hair. Even then Ganga came with such force, and it flowed through the Ashram of a sage called Jahnu. He was so angry he simply took the Ganga and swallowed it. Then Bhagiratha prayed to Jahnu to release it. Then he released it through his ear. Because it [Ganga] came out of the ear of Jahnu Rishi, she is called Jahnavi. Then it flowed, and it flowed through the ashes of the ancestors and then they were liberated.

This innocuous myth has a great cosmology built into it. The Ganga is the symbol all creative energy that makes up the Cosmos. Originally it is contained within the creative principle here symbolized by the jar that contained the Ganga and was in the domain of Brahma, the creative consciousness. The unmitigated release of this energy would have gone from one potential (of creation) to its negative potential (of annihilation).

In current Big Bang cosmology we are provided irrefutable proof that the initial inflation was contained so that fundamental particles such as Quarks could form. Siva as the transformative consciousness plays the mitigating or attenuating role in this symbolism. The controlled release of the creative potential over the cosmic background is seen today in the COBE (Cosmic Background Emission). This was responsible for the formation of the universe. What flows through the matted lock of Siva consciousness is the 'Matter consciousnesses' (consisting of 'matter' and 'Dark matter'). He still holds back the 'Pure Energy consciousness' (Dark Energy, which is 75% of the whole universe)

The role of Jahnu is the segregation of the manifest and unmanifest consciousness in the form of Matter and Dark matter in the creative domain(but both of which are the constituents of all manifestations in the universe). What is released through Jahnu is only the material manifestation.
(Jahnavi, the name given to Ganga in the Earthly domain, in Sanskrit means daughter of Jahnu. It is the birthing potential of the material universe that is released)

The cosmological aspects of creation, from pure energy potential, were understood by the architects of ancient Puranas.

Love to you all

Seeking True Self Awareness

Sometime back I had done a post on the first Logion of Gospel of Thomas and promised that this will continue in future and we have created a group (ESL Group) in Facebook for discussion. This post is on the second Logion.

Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over all."

This is one of those sayings in Gospel of Thomas that I consider closer to the verba Iesu (words of Jesus) than the canonical parallel. The tension here appears to be on the world "troubled." That tension disappears when Logion 2 is taken in the spoken text and language in which it was delivered, Aramaic.
Jesus did not speak Coptic. He probably spoke little Greek. Semitic idiom is lost when translated to Greek and ‘Coptic Thomas’ is two translations and two cultures distant. The versions of this saying
from ‘Papyrus Oxy 654’ and Clement can be reconstructed:
“Let him who seeks continue to seek until he finds, when he finds, he will marvel; when he marvels, he will reign; and when he reigns, he will rest.”
In Aramaic, the parallelism between seeks/finds; finds/marvels; marvels/reigns; reigns/rests seems to be so typically Yeshuine style and Aramaic rhythm.*

When seeking is at the mind level of a concept, the mind itself is the limiting factor. The human mind operates in a rational and linear fashion. It is also dualistic in its approach to comprehending reality. This leads the goal to be isolated in nature from the self and open ended in attribute. When the goal is open ended, the process of seeking or the deviance from any desired goal becomes impenetrable mystery. This state of our own inadequacy is beautifully explained in Bhagavad-Gita in chapter 11: 53,54:
“The form you are seeing with your transcendental eyes cannot be understood simply by studying the Vedas, or by undergoing serious penances, or by charity, or by worship. It is not by these means that one can see Me as I am. My dear Arjuna, only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and can thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding”
The 'undivided devotion' is the constant seeking that all mystics were engaged in.

In a recent Tamil film, a comedy clip is based on a mind dominated search. In this episode the comedian meets a ferocious character with a large sickle who has ordered, at the pain of death, two other persons to search the ground for something he has lost. The comedian enquires from the menacing character what they are searching and he replies that they are searching for that which he has lost. When he enquires what is lost he replies it is the item for which they are searching. This is an unsolvable challenge or conundrum. But during this search if they find a diamond then they will marvel at the find because of the element of surprise and the value of the find. This is the exact situation when one embarks upon a spiritual search for true self awareness. There is an innate desire to look for something that this material world is not giving us. When we embark on this search the goal is indefinable but as we progress the very act of constant search leads us, through a divine consciousness which is in us, towards a goal of immense value. This is the Holy Grail.

Beyond this stage there is nothing to attain and hence we have the ultimate conquest and reign over our own consciousness and through it the entire universe which is result of our consciousness. This is the final Sabbath, the rest in eternal bliss or Satchidananda. (Sat means true essence, Chit means consciousness and ananda means bliss.)

* http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gthomas/message/1571

Love to you all

Nature of Human Evolution

“Considered cosmically, the Mystery of the Sun is contained in the nature of this evolution of humanity. The Divine-Spiritual Beings connected with his origin were united with that which — up to that important turning-point in his evolution — man was able to perceive in the Sun. These Divine-Spiritual Beings have separated from the Sun and have left there only the part of them that has died, so that the bodily nature of man can now receive through the Sun only the power of dead thoughts.” ………..  from ‘Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts’ by Rudolf Steiner

The words above are highly mystical in nature and come from an author who had a deep experience and insight into the process of human evolution beyond the physical level. The emphasis in studies of evolution has had a major focus on the physical dimension and only certain philosophers and spiritual masters had addressed the vital element of the life sustaining force which also is an active and indispensable partner in the process of human evolution.

I want to focus on the thoughts of Rudolf Steiner in this post. He had categorized human evolution in three major categories as evident from his writing.
“Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World.”

A deeper study, with today’s science and technology, reveals that what drives the development and evolution of the 100 trillion cells in the human body, the mind or intellect which is the attribute of the soul nature and his attribute of buddhi or higher knowledge due to his spirit nature can all be all traced to one universal plenum which is Cosmic Consciousness. The understanding so far is that this Cosmic Consciousness exhibits itself as physical or sensory consciousness in the physical domain, a combination of physical and sub-consciousness (dream consciousness) at the mind or intellect level and in its pure form at the spirit level.
But current understanding from science points out that at the cell level, in plants, animals and humans, the operator is the cosmic field of consciousness which are given different names (such as morphic field in plant biology, universal unconsciousness as Jung call it or the Supermind as Aurobindo terms it). Hence the entire evolution is being driven in this cosmic field of consciousness.

Having put the frame of reference into more current context, now we can understand the deep insight of Rudolf Steiner. Prior to the transition in evolution from primates, early Homo species and then to Homo sapiens to the current level of spiritual man, man in his consciousness perceived divinity in the Sun. (It should be understood that this evolution is not an all embracing evolution of the species but currently restricted to a very small percentage of humanity.) This is the reason that Sun worship was very common in Pagan and other early spiritual practices. Once man realized his spiritual nature and started a journey towards the in-dwelling spirit, what he receives from the sun is the energy that only keeps his physical entity alive. This is through the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. These energies are also operating in the consciousness field and this is the reason that Steiner calls them ‘dead thoughts’ as the Sun’s energies operate in the physical domain and has no more utility in the spiritual plane.

This is the 100th post and so I wanted to share something close to my heart which is a deeper understanding of our spiritual nature through the operation of Cosmic Consciousness which in turn drives our evolution.

Love to you all

Mohawk Thanksgiving Prayer

Wise men of the six-nation confederacy of the Haudenosaunee (the original people of Northwest United States), also known as the Iroquois, have passed down through the ages the teachings of the Great Peacemaker. A millennium ago, they had been warring tribes, caught in vicious cycles of attack, revenge, and retaliation, when the peacemaker came across Lake Ontario in a stone canoe. Gradually his words and actions won them over, and they accepted the Great Law of Peace. They buried their weapons under the Peace Tree by Lake Onondaga (near Syracuse in upper New York stae) and formed councils for making wise choices together, and for self-governance. In the Haudenosaunee, historians recognize the oldest known participatory democracy and point to the inspiration it provided to Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and others in crafting the Constitution of the United States.
Mohawks are one of the tribes in the six nation confederacy. Their understanding of healthy living in peace and harmony with fellow beings and the eco-system reflects in the prayer they used to recite.
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The People
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
Now our minds are one.

The Earth Mother
We are all thankful to our mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Enlightened Teachers
We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. We send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers.
Now our minds are one.

The Creator
Now we turn our thoughts to the creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the creator.
Now our minds are one.

Closing Words
We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
Now our minds are one.
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What a beautiful prayer and very much needed to heal the world today.
Acknowledgement to citation by Joanna Macy in Shamballa Sun, Nov. 2007. pp.50-51.

Love to you all

Song of transcendental unity

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

This is one my most loved mystical poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the title of which is ‘Brahma’.
In his later life from being a pastor, he turned to a spiritual path greatly influenced by the Vedas and Bhagavad-Gita. His essay “Over-soul” demonstrates his philosophical thinking and articulates his view of this dichotomy between phenomenal plurality and transcendental unity:

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”

All mystics longed for this transcendental union. A good example is the vision of St. Theresa of Avila as portrayed in the picture. Saint Teresa's love of God and her desire for spiritual union with him found expression in a mystical vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear and sent her into a trance. The erotic intensity of her vision is vividly suggested in the image by Teresa's swooning expression and languid pose, and by the deep folds of drapery, which convey her agitation.

The only way words can convey this state of union is through poetry, which has the unique character of presenting itself in an esoteric form to a discerning mind.

Love to you all

Cleansing through Fasting

We are in the holy month of Ramadan and it brings to our mind the need and necessity of fasting.
In Quran the verse that prescribes fasting also reminds us that it is a timeless spiritual practice and was prescribed to those who came before us.

In Exodus we find that: Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights while he was on the holy mountain with Divine Presence.
We read in the New Testament in the life of Jesus Christ how fasting was part of his inner practice as well: Jesus went into deep retreat and seclusion in the wilderness where he fasted for forty days and forty nights. And the tempter came and whispered to him: “if you are elect one of God, command these stones to become bread.” But Jesus answered: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone...” (Matthew, Luke 4:1-4)

Sufi master Vilayat Inayat Khan said, “One cannot bring to perceive the subtle levels of reality without first quieting the grosser vibrations of the outside world. Everyday reality is so striking that one has to make a conscious effort to downplay it in order to see the other reality that lies behind it.”
The Sufis says, the apparent (zahir) is the bridge to the real (haqq).
In Quranic metaphor we find when God created Adam; He breathed His Divine breath into his body. Probably inspired from this, Rumi compares the human body with the reed flute which has nine holes skilfully arranged and are played by the mysterious flute player. We need to become hollow so that the divine breath can flow through us and make sweet music. Purification of the body through fasting is a step where our body become less dense and more receptive.

In the Islamic wisdom tradition, though fasting's exterior is abstinence from food, drink, love-making for a prescribed time, but its interior is fasting from everything that is a hindrance to be mindful of God and that is against the natural disposition of human ideal, virtue (fitrah). There is fasting of the tongue not to speak abusive language, unnecessary speech and similar for ears and all part of the body. These inner components of fasting are as important as the fasting from food and drink.

We find in the Hadith: The Prophet said, "Whoever does not give up forged speech and negative actions, God is not in need of his leaving his food and drink"
“A keeper of fasts, who does not abandon lying and slandering, God cares not about his leaving off eating and drinking.”

In Rumi's words:
If your mind and stomach burn with the fire of hunger,
it will be like a heavenly song for your heart.
In each moment that fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils
and carry you a thousand steps towards your goal.

(With due acknowledgement to Sadiq Alam’s article “Inner dimension of Ramadan”)

Love to you all

Festival of Liberation

Today we celebrate the festival of Onam in Kerala. This festival gives us a great opportunity for spiritual renewal.
A legend has it that King Mahabali was a devout worshipper of Lord Vishnu. He was sincere, honest, just and a good ruler. But he had one weakness — ego. He had conquered all the three worlds and posed a threat to the Devas (Gods), Asuras (demons) & humans. And to eradicate his pride and redeem his beloved devotee of this one sin, Vishnu came to earth in the form of a dwarf Brahmin named Vamana. 
The king in his pride asked the Brahmin what he wanted for he could give anything. Vamana asked for three paces of land and the king agreed. To humble him Vishnu, as Vamana showed Mahabali that he is just a puny creature in front of God's universal stature. 

Mahabali, who was a man of principles, realized God's purpose and offered his head for Vamana's footstep, as he was sent to another world. This fatal step proved a blessing in disguise for the good king — the foot salvaged and released him from the recurrent cycle of birth and death. But Vishnu granted him a boon and Mahabali asked that he return to the people, he loved so much, every year. This day of return is celebrated as Onam.

The 20th Paasuram (stanza) of Andal Thirupavai, a great Tamil devotional poetry also praises the deeds of Vishnu in his Vamana avatar in the following lines:

“Oh Valiant Lord, who removes the trembling of the thirty three (crores of) gods, by going to battles (on their behalf) and by being in front of them (in such battles), kindly awaken from sleep. Oh Lord, who cares about our protection, and is fully equipped with enormous strength and valour! Oh Lord, blemishless and pure, and the One who defeats with vigour your enemies! Kindly awaken………………… May You give us a fan, a mirror and Your Lord as well, and at this time itself, may You help us to take our (ceremonial) bath....”

This Paasuram is a supplication to Andal, the mother Goddess, to wake up the divine from his rest for the protection of his people as well as to provide the needed state for receiving the Lord, A fan, which signifies a means to withstanding and mitigating the energy of the divine presence and a mirror, which signifies a method of perceiving through reflection in the manifest the unmanifest wholeness. This is similar to the special vision Lord Krishna grants to Arjuna when he reveals his universal from. The final supplication is for help in purification of the self through a ceremonial bath, signifying preparing the inner self for divine presence.

That is why Onam is celebrated by a ritual bath, wearing new clothes and resolving to lead a new life of truth, piety, love, and humility.

Happy Onam!!!
Love to you all

Sanctuary in All Creation

“As the World-Honoured One was walking with a congregation he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, "This spot is good to build a sanctuary." Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, "The sanctuary is built." The World-Honoured One smiled.”

………….Zen ‘Book of Equanimity’: Koan 4

Limitless in your divine choice,
A lowly entity you take to hand,
Then moulding with infinite wisdom,
You shape a colossal golden body,
A chalice of virtuous attributes,
You then plant and nurture him,
A mastermind in his own domain.
Every creation a purpose serves,
No matter how insignificant its role be.

Upon reading the above sited Koan from the ‘Book of Equanimity’, I wrote this verse. Koans send powerful messages to the seeker of truth.
Sanctuary has multiple meanings. A sanctuary is the consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar. An animal sanctuary is a place where animals live and are protected. In modern parlance the term is used to mean a place of safety. The Buddha, walking with his disciples, probably meant to indicate a place for the sangha where the protected atmosphere can be conducive for the teacher and the taught, a sacred place for seeking one’s own enlightenment.
It takes the divine mind of Indra to understand the meaning of what the holy one was trying to convey. In a simple and everyday act of making a blade of grass to sprout, he demonstrates the meaning that there need be no specific space-time to realise the absolute truth.

Coming to the verse, all creations are essentially from the very same fundamental constituent; namely vibrating energy. There are only 35,000 types of genes in every human being but yet the complexity of this life form is incomprehensible. Right from the genius of Einstein to the evil dictator of Hitler, from the spiritual masters like Jesus to the demonic Autocrat like Idi Amin, it is the same combination of genes. Yet the level of consciousness is so different.
Yeast, a lowly substance and a very simple life form, contains approximately 6000 genes which is one sixth of the human genome. Examine the functional spread at these two ends of the spectrum and we are left awe struck. But every creation has a purpose and discrimination based on the role we play is worst alienation that can happen to intended divine or cosmic plan. A blade of grass sprouting takes as much divine intervention as that is required for a disciple to achieve enlightenment.

Knowing this great truth the Buddha smiled.

Love to you all

Conditioning Verbal Action

If you are tempted to reveal
A tale to you someone has told
About another, make it pass,
Before you speak three gates of gold.
These narrow gates: first, “Is it true”
Then, “Is it needful? In your mind 
Give truthful answer. And the next
Is last and narrower, “Is it kind?”
And if so reach your lips at last
It passes through these gateways three,
Then you may tell the tale, not fear
What the result of speech may be.
…….. Ancient Arab saying

In his teachings the great Buddha said:
“And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, 'Come & tell, good man, what you know': If he doesn't know, he says, 'I don't know.' If he does know, he says, 'I know.' If he hasn't seen, he says, 'I haven't seen.' If he has seen, he says, 'I have seen.' Thus he doesn't consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of any reward. Abandoning false speech, he abstains from false speech. He speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world. Abandoning divisive speech he abstains from divisive speech. What he has heard here he does not tell there to break those people apart from these people here. What he has heard there he does not tell here to break these people apart from those people there. Thus reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, he loves concord, delights in concord, enjoys concord, speaks things that create concord. Abandoning abusive speech, he abstains from abusive speech. He speaks words that are soothing to the ear, that are affectionate, that go to the heart, that are polite, appealing & pleasing to people at large. Abandoning idle chatter, he abstains from idle chatter. He speaks in season, speaks what is factual, what is in accordance with the goal, the Dhamma (teachings), & the Vinaya (Discipline). He speaks words worth treasuring, seasonable, reasonable, circumscribed, connected with the goal. This is how one is made pure in four ways by verbal action.” ….. Anguttara Nikaya 10.176

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean’…….. Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.'” … Matthew 15:10-20

Let extreme care be taken as to what comes out of our mouth, for no power on earth or in heaven can erase the effect it has on the receiver. Let our speech be like the narrow beam of light, highly focused and effective.

Love to you all

Symbolism of Lord Ganesha

Today is the festival of Ganesh Chathurthi.                                                         A day to worship the God who removes all obstacles.During my recent visit to Norwich, U.K, my daughter and her troupe performed a dance drama “Shiva’s third eye” in classical Bharathanatyam style. The story is very relevant to today’s festival and tells how Ganesha got his elephant head.
The story goes as follows:
“Though Ganesha considered as son of Shiva and Parvati, the Matsya Purana, Shiva Purana, and Skanda Purana ascribe the birth of Ganesha to Parvati only, without any form of participation of Shiva in Ganesha's birth. 
Once, while Parvati wanted to take a bath, there were no attendants around to guard her and stop anyone from accidentally entering the house. Hence she created an image of a boy out of turmeric paste with which she was preparing to cleanse her body, and infused life into it, and thus Ganesha was born. Parvati ordered Ganesha not to allow anyone to enter the house, and Ganesha obediently followed his mother's orders. After a while Shiva returned and tried to enter the house, Ganesha stopped him. Shiva was infuriated and severed Ganesha's head with his trishula (trident). When Parvati came out and saw her son's lifeless body, she was very angry and sad. She demanded that Shiva restore Ganesha's life at once. Unfortunately, Shiva's trishula was so powerful that it had hurled Ganesha's head so far off that it could not be found. Finally, an elephant's head was attached to Ganesha's body, bringing him back to life.”

There is a great spiritual revelation in this story.
First, Ganesha symbolizes a pure Sakthi (energy) creation. It denotes that every creation is untainted and pure. This is the ‘Original Blessing’ that Christian mystic Matthew Fox talks about in propounding his philosophy of creation.
Second, Ganesha fails to recognize the divine arrival (consciousness) in the act of denying access to Shiva, the true consort of Sakthi (Parvati). This is the ego dominated state of consciousness which becomes rooted in action oriented awareness.
Third, Shiva’s act of decapitating Ganesha denotes the removal of the ego dominated human mind. The human mind has become conditioned through evolutionary consciousness not to recognize the divinity that is present close to us and within us. True divine action totally eradicates the ego, symbolized here by the human head being dispatched to a location where it can not be found and
Fourth, is the act of bestowing of an elephant head by Shiva, the deity who bestows higher and transformative consciousness through his third eye. 
The myths involving Elephant have profoundly influenced humanity through history. In depth psychology, dreams filled with Elephant carry messages of transformation and spiritual power. Elephant in one’s dreams can signify the emergence of one’s Highest True Self. The Self, deep within the Collective Unconscious, only emerges when one has done one’s shadow work and integrated the contents of the Unconscious with Conscious Mind. This cannot be done by oneself, but is a sign of the Grace of the Divine and gift of Love of the As Above.

This whole episode is a beautiful depiction of transformation towards higher consciousness. This is the reason that Ganesha is offered a primal place of worship so that he removes all the impediments due to our ego so that we can approach the divine for offering our supplications.

Love to you all

Curse of the Fig Tree

“Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked. Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.".” …. Matthew 21: 18-22

This is one of the difficult passages to explain in the Bible. A number of questions come to our mind.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, the Neuro-cardiologist and author of books like “Biology of Transcendence” says “it’s interesting that, Jesus never, he never cursed either the Pharisee or the phonies on the one hand nor did he curse the Roman soldiers on the other. He cursed the barren fig tree. What does this mean? All he asks is that you take your life force and you give it to the life force.” Bearing fruit means living to one’s full created potential.

The Pharisees were doing what they are supposed to do namely; uphold the Laws of Moses to the letter as they were taught. Though they could not elevate themselves beyond literal interpretation they were giving their life force to the assigned role. The Roman soldiers and Governor were doing their job of imposing the rule of Rome in the territories they had conquered. The fig tree symbolises every created consciousness. But the fig tree, according to the Jewish Encyclopaedia a symbol of the coming of the Messiah, was created to bear fruit so that it could seed a veritable growth of divine consciousness. Once it had failed to comply with it ordained destiny, its existence is meaningless. This is the reason that Jesus imposes a curse on the fig tree. 

The conversation that follows with the apostles is of great importance. Every human being has a dual purpose in his creation. The first is the evolution in the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual domain towards a higher potentiality (human role). The second is the altruistic role of an empowering agent of change of humanity towards a higher level of consciousness (divine role of drawing all creation to the Godhead). Jesus’ curse and making the fig tree wither demonstrates the operation of the second role of weeding out non messianic elements from creation. This is the role of every true apostle. We have the responsibility of what John the Baptist did in preparation for Jesus ministry. 
“It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"-- "a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'” …… Mark 1: 2-3

Every negative element in our lives, the fruitless trees and the mountains of impediment in our spiritual progress, can be rooted out if we have deep faith in our ‘creation assigned’ messianic role and if we constantly intercede, through inner awareness, to the spirit that dwells in us all.

Love to you all

Song of the Chosen One

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. 
From now on all generations will call me blessed, 
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. 
His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; 
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 
He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 
He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” 
…… Luke 1: 46-54

Him none by hearing know; He knoweth no decay;
He hath no kin; naught asking, heareth all!
While people of the land beheld, here on this earth
to me, a cur, He gave a royal seat;
To me, a dog, all things not shown before, He showed;
all things not heard before, He caused to hear;
And guarding me from future ' birth,' He made me His.
Such is the wondrous work our Lord hath wrought for me
………. Tamil poem Thiruvasagam Ch 3: 28

Both the songs glorify the spirit whose awareness makes the ordinary into an extraordinary entity.
The first song by Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the spontaneous outpouring of joy and gratitude when she greets her cousin Elizabeth. Elisheva, the Hebrew name, means “my God is abundance”. The abundance of blessings and privilege that Mary has received is vocalized through this song. When one opens the door of a room that has burning incense, the smell immediately pervades the entire ambience. So also when we open up our heart’s door to the ever present Spirit there is a fulfilment that only a person who has the keen inner awareness can sense.
This is the reason that the great Tamil poet Manikavasagar sings “Him none by hearing know”. This is to imply the utter futility of seeking the divine through our worldly senses.
It is only divine grace that finds us. Even to lead us to the door which has to be opened to let the divine fragrance to migrate into one’s soul, the divine wisdom has to guide us.

In this world we have immutable laws of nature such as heat always flows from a hot to a cold object when brought in contact. So also water flows from a higher to a lower plane. This is the reason that Spirit chooses the humble and lowly state of a person to be a prerequisite for operation. Mary says “for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant ……… he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” and Manikavasagar says “To me, a dog, all things not shown before, He showed; all things not heard before, He caused to hear”

15th August is always celebrated in the Christian calendar as the feast of “Mary’s Assumption”
The elevated state of Mary, both by the divine spirit and by the church today, is because of her humility and the willingness to let go so that the divine plan can become operative.
This is what we must do in our own lives so that we can sing along with Manikavasagar “And guarding me from future ' birth,' He made me His. Such is the wondrous work our Lord hath wrought for me”

Love to you all

State of a Divine Lover

“Happy are the days of them that are infatuated by love for Him, whether they be sorrowed by separation from Him or made joyous by His presence.
They are mendicants who fly from worldly sovereignty; in the hope of meeting Him they are patient in their mendicity. Oft have they drunk of the wine of anguish; be it bitter, they remain silent. In the remembrance of Him patience is not bitter, for wormwood is sweet from the hand of a friend.
They that are captive in the coils of His love seek not to escape; they suffer reproach, but are monarchs in the seclusion of their meditation, and their way is not known. They are like the temple of Jerusalem, splendid of which is the interior, but whose outer wall is left in ruin.
Like moths, they burn themselves in the fire of love. Their beloved is in their breasts, yet do they seek Him; though near a fountain, their lips are parched.”....from Gulistan by Sadi (1184-1283)

The state of a divine lover is enumerated in various spiritual traditions. The longing for Krishna by the Gopis (cowherds) is beautifully depicted in Gita Govindam by Jeyadeva. The Song of Solomon eulogises the beauty of divine wisdom (Sophia). Though there is joy and sorrow through association or dissociation from the Godhead, it is only in removing oneself from the trappings of this world and becoming a mendicant or beggar in the eyes of the material world, one can reach a state of feeling the presence or absence of the divine alter ego.
In this state of existence anguish becomes a bitter potion and patience and silence are stages of preparation for the ultimate encounter with the divine. The bitter vinegar that Jesus drank symbolizes the rejection by the world of a spiritual seeker and the silence before the Roman authority a deep void between the illusion of earthly existence and the true nature of the Spirit.
Sadi beautifully captures the state of the divine lover as one who is pleasurably captures in the entwining coils of God’s love. The seclusion they achieve in meditating upon the Lord is the equivalent of the dance of the Gopis in Brindhvan, the Rasa Lila which takes place in the heart of every true devotee. It is an inner state or beauty. The last two sentences in the above quote; “Like moths, they burn themselves in the fire of love. Their beloved is in their breasts, yet do they seek Him; though near a fountain, their lips are parched” can be understood better if we look to Narada Bhakti Sutra 23, which says “displays of devotion without knowledge of God's greatness are no better than the affairs of illicit lovers” 

We can learn the deeper meaning of this Sutra from the Srimad-Bhagavatam. We learn that all the Gopis had spiritual bodies. This is another proof that Krishna's pastimes with the Gopis are supramundane. When Krishna played His flute in Vrndavana on the full-moon night of the autumn season, the Gopis went to Him in their spiritual bodies. Many of these Gopis are eternal companions of Krishna, and when He exhibits His transcendental pastimes within the material world, they come with Him. They are like the moth that singes itself in the flame and is desirous of becoming the flame.  
But some of the Gopis who joined Krishna’s pastimes within this material world came from the status of ordinary human beings. By always thinking of Krishna as their beloved, they became purified of all material contamination and elevated to the same status as the eternally liberated Gopis. These are the categories of souls that are longing for union that are near the fountain yet with parched lips.

Love to you all

Ultimate Consumer

The Eater (is Brahman), because both the movable and immovable (i.e. the whole Universe) is taken (as His food). …. Brahma Sutra I.2.9 

In Prasna Upanishad, Sage Pippalada answer the first question put to him by Kabandhi on the nature of birth of all things. The sage’s reply also explains the verse sited above. 
He said: 
“The Lord of all creatures became desirous of progeny. He deliberated on knowledge. Having brooded on that knowledge, He created a couple – food and Prana – under the idea, “These two will produce creatures for me in multifarious ways.” ….Prasna Upanishad 1:4 .In Sanskrit 'rayi' means matter or food and is feminine and 'Prana' means life and is masculine. 
The emergence of duality of the Godhead is explained. Food and prana are defined the role of the consumed and the consumer. 

A passage from the Kathopanishad can now be taken up for discussion. We read in Kathopanishad I.2.25: 
“Who then knows where He is, to whom the Brahmanas and Kshatriyas are (as it were) but food, and death itself a condiment?” 

This text shows by means of the words ‘food’ and ‘condiment’ that there is some eater. Who is this eater? Is it the fire referred to in as eater: 
“Soma indeed is food, and fire eater”………….. Brihadaranyake Upanishad I.4.6. 

Or is it individual soul referred to as eater “Two birds living together, each the friend of the other, perch upon the same tree. Of these two, one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, but the other simply looks on without eating.”… Mundaka Upanishad III.1.1. 

Swami Krishananda in his commentary of this verse says: 
“The two birds are the Jiva and Isvara, both existing in an individual compared to a tree. They exist together as the reflection and the original. They both manifest themselves in different ways in every individual. From the characteristics of the Jiva it is possible to infer the nature of Isvara, and from the nature of Isvara it is possible to determine the potentialities of the Jiva. Both the Jiva and Isvara have a common substratum which is Brahman and which is the reality of both.” 
Hence the eater is Brahman and the food is the totality of manifestation. 

This is the reason that the Brahma Sutra mentions the ‘what is movable and what is immovable’ as the two aspects of manifestation namely; Jiva and Isvara. Jiva is moved and moulded aspect of creation while the Isvara is the in indestructible aspect of the same creation. The entire universe is re-absorbed in Brahman. All things movable and immovable are here to be taken as constituting the food of Brahman while Death itself is the condiment. The eater of the whole world, the consumer of all these things in their totality can be Brahman alone and none else.

This thought is reflected in Jesus saying "No one comes to the Father; but through me" .... John 14:6. Most often this is explained as a process of salvation but the deeper truth is; Jesus is the material manifestation of the divinity which is the Father. All material manifestations have a destiny of final merger with divinity which has created it from itself. This is again beautifully explained in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene "The Saviour said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots." .... Ch 4:22

Love to you all

Truth – A Divine Process

“My dear one, do not be overly troubled,
No one can burn the truth....
The words symbolize my marvelous Godhead.
It flows continuously
Into your soul from my divine mouth.
The sound of the words is a sign of my living spirit
And through it achieves genuine truth.
Now examine all these words---
How admirably do they proclaim my personal secrets!
So have no doubts about yourself.”                                                                                                                       
……. Mechthild of Magdeburg

Mechthild was a German medieval mystic and Benedictine Catholic nun who, in the thirteenth century, had a great insight into true spirituality. She wrote ‘The flowing light of the Godhead’ and the above passage is taken from this book. It is said that she was the inspiration for Dante to write ‘The Divine Comedy’

The above passage reflects the anguish of all true seekers and their experience of being marginalized and discarded. This fate was suffered by even the most enlightened souls. Most prophets of the Israelites were cast out and had to fend for themselves. This is the reason that Jesus says “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”… Luke 9:58                                                                       
Realized Truth is a difficult entity to digest as the current status of the human psyche blocks this new level of consciousness. Every person who understands a deeper level of truth immediately becomes isolated from the mainstream due to non conformance to existent perceived reality. In modern times, this rejection happened to Galileo, Bruno, Teilhard Chardin and many more scientists, philosophers and thinkers. This is why in her vision Mechthild is consoled by God “My dear one, do not be overly troubled, No one can burn the truth....”

Truth is not a commodity. It is a plenum of existence from which the divine spirit flows. It is the outpouring of spiritual essence into all creation and manifestation. From a potency of existence into an actuality of form. This is the reason that the ‘word’ which is pre-existent in thought is given a form or meaning only in utterance through the ‘sound’ and is given as a process map for divine communication. This is the simple way of putting it in a human language. As the recipient of divine communication, the human soul once aware and tuned to this fundamental process, realizes in its innermost being what the sound and the words really mean. The words are the cosmic potentialities and the sound or emanation is its deeper manifestations known only to a realized soul.

In the few lines, describing her vision in which God speaks to her, Mechthild reveals a great principle.

Love to you all

Message of the Thunder

Swami Krishnanada expounding on the three virtues set out in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says:

“On one occasion the gods, the human beings and the demons all observed self-restraint, Brahmacharya, Tapasya and austerity for the sake of gaining knowledge from the Creator. Having observed great austerity they went to Brahma, the Creator Himself, and said, "Give us instruction."

They went in Three groups. One group of the celestials, the gods, denizens of Indra-loka, paradise, who enjoy all sorts of pleasures, second the men of this earth plane, and third the demons, extremely cruel in their nature. To the gods he said, "I give you instruction. Listen! Da." He said but one word, "Da". "Do you understand what I say?" "Yes, we understand." "Very good! So, follow this instruction." Then he looked to the human beings, "Do you want instruction from me?" "Yes!" "Da," he said again. "Do you follow what I say?" "Yes, we understand." "Very good! Now go and follow this instruction." Then the demons were called and he said "Da" to the demons also, and the demons, like the others said, "Yes, we have understood what it is." "Go and follow this instruction." To all the three he told the same thing, but the meaning was taken differently by the different groups. "Da, Da, Da," he said. That is all he spoke.
The celestials, the people in paradise, are supposed to be revelling in pleasures of sense. They are fond of enjoyment. There is no old age there. There is no sweating, no toiling, no hunger, no thirst, no drowsiness and nothing untoward as in this world. It is all pleasure and pleasure, honey flowing everywhere in paradise. They are addicted to too much enjoyment. So the instruction to those people was Da-'Dāmyata'. In Sanskrit Dāmyata means, restrain yourself. Dāmyata comes from the word Dam, to restrain. Subdue your senses. Do not go too much in the direction of the enjoyment of the senses. That was 'Da' to the celestials. Kama is to be controlled by self-restraint.

Human beings are greedy. They want to grab everything. Hoarding is their basic nature. "I want a lot of money"; "I have got a lot of land and property"; "I want to keep it with myself"; "I do not want to give anything to anybody". This is how they think. So, to them 'Da' meant Datta - 'give in charity'. Do not keep with you more than what you need. Do not take what you have not given. Do not appropriate what does not belong to you. All these are implied in the statement - be charitable. Charitable not only in material giving but also in disposition, in feeling, in understanding and in feeling the feelings of others. So, to the human beings this was the instruction - Datta, give, because they are not prepared to give. They always want to keep. Greed is to be controlled by charity.

And to the demons, who are very cruel, who always insult, injure and harm other people 'Da' meant Dayadhvam - be merciful to others. The third 'Da' means Dayadhvam - be merciful. Do not be cruel and hard-hearted. Demons are hard-hearted people. They eat, swallow, destroy and demolish everything. Anger is to be controlled by mercy. So, these three letters Da, Da, Da instructed three types of individuals in three different ways. All instructions were conveyed by a single word only; a single letter, but the meaning was conveyed properly to the individual groups concerned.

These three groups are to be understood as three characters of individuals in this world, those who are blessed with intellect and good life, those who have material plenty and those who have power to dominate.
T.S. Eliot composed a poem “The Waste Land” to bring out this teachings of the Upanishad.

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, ethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

---------------------------------------------

Love to you all

Internal Navigator

“Your whole life has been a search for meaning, purpose, and completeness. You are aware of a sense within you that seemingly directs you as if it were a compass navigating your essence.This navigator gives you a sense of knowing; directing you away from the trappings of man’s religions and structured thinking. It is elusive to structural thinking. An in-between place that defies logic as humanity understands it. Your hidden senses tell you, that what your eyes see, and hands touch, is not all that there is. You look around in a distant way and then you listen deeply, breathe deeply, feel deeply and It is then that you know that there is a veil between you and some other place that holds an understanding to that which you are. Then, without seemingly knowing, you want, and need, to become one with IT. Do you remember?” 

  .......... “Handbook of the Navigator” by Eric J Pepin 

A sense of purpose envelops all creation. If we look at nature, there is a simple code of adaptation, survival and perpetuation of the species. As the level of consciousness and as intelligence increases in creation, there is higher and more complex drive apart from the basic three modes we mentioned earlier. Man is the highest level of evolution. 
Most of our actions, though seemingly are steered by the sensory inputs we receive, there is an innate  
intelligence and storehouse of knowledge that we seem to tap into. Evolutionary structure of the brain has adapted to the higher needs. The neocortex is the newer portion of the cerebral cortex that serves as the center of higher mental functions for humans. The neocortex contains some 100 billion cells, each with 1,000 to 10,000 synapses (connections), and has roughly 100 million meters of wiring, all packed into a structure the size and thickness of a formal dinner napkin. The cells in the neocortex are arranged in six layers, within which different regions permit vision, hearing, touch, and the sense of balance, movement, emotional responses and every other feat of cognition. The brains evolution has an inbuilt capability for transcendence. 

Man is continually evolving towards a higher state of consciousness.  

As Sri Aurobindo says: “The mind spiritualized, purified, liberated, perfected within its own limits may come as near as possible to a faithful mental translation, but we shall find that this is after all a relative fidelity and an imperfect perfection. The mind by its very nature cannot render with an entirely right rightness or act in the unified completeness of the divine knowledge, will and Ananda because it is an instrument for dealing with the divisions of the finite on the basis of division, a secondary instrument therefore and a sort of delegate for the lower movement in which we live. The mind can reflect the Infinite, it can dissolve itself into it, it can live in it by a large passivity, it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or less deformation, but it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite Spirit acting in its own knowledge. The divine Will and Wisdom organizing the action of the infinite consciousness and determining all things according to the truth of the spirit and the law of its manifestation is not mental but supramental and even in its formulation nearest to mind as much above the mental consciousness in its light and power as the mental consciousness of man above the vital mind of the lower creation. The question is how far the perfected human being can raise himself above mind, enter into some kind of fusing union with the supramental and build up in himself a level of supermind, a developed gnosis by the form and power of which the divine Shakti can directly act, not through a mental translation, but organically in her supramental nature.” 
This is what Pepin says in common language “You look around in a distant way and then you listen deeply, breathe deeply, feel deeply and It is then that you know that there is a veil between you and some other place that holds an understanding to that which you are” The regions the veil divides are mental and the supramental. 

Love to you all

Jesus, Justice, Jazz

"Only a life lived in the service of others is worth living.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
--Albert Einstein

On 23rd July ‘The Christian Post’ reported an event in New Orleans where 37,000 youth had gathered to celebrate the theme of ‘Jesus, Justice, Jazz’ through various activities. The organizers said that choosing New Orleans was very intentional as a place where our young people can learn the Christian value of compassionate justice. Each of the 37,000 attendees (most of whom are young people) at the July 22-26 gathering have paid their own way to a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina to work on about 150 community service projects – which include cleaning up neighborhoods, painting schools, rebuilding homes and running day camps. By the end of the event, they will have clocked more than 250,000 hours of community service. This is the need of the hour and how spirituality should be translated into action.

This theme could be applied any where to any cultural or religious milieu. It could be ‘Krishna, Karma, Kathak’ in cities or villages ravaged by natural disasters or fundamentalist violence or ‘Buddha, Bodhisattva, Ballet’ in societies where knowledge exclusion and dogmatic slavery are practiced.
Though, as I have been writing in my various articles, papers and post, that fundamental to change is a new level of individual consciousness rooted in true spirit empowering wisdom, It is only through collective social action that the new world order can be established.

The deep spiritual truth which emanates from divine masters, but which is resident in all humans is masked by our daily concerns and worldly attachments. The spiritual masters like Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad were like polished mirror which reflects the indwelling beauty in a lucid and untainted manner. The thread that connects this manifest knowledge to our own spiritual advancement is action. This is the reason that Apostle James writing to all the Mediterranean Christians says “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” … James 2:17
In Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says: “On the other hand, if a sincere person tries to control the active senses by the mind and begins karma-yoga [in Krishna consciousness] without attachment, he is by far superior.” …. Ch 3:7

As a social being man becomes an integral part of the created whole. In the face of injustice or suffering, nature of insensitivity from any individual is unpardonable. Again in Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says: “The intricacies of action are very hard to understand. Therefore one should know properly what action is, what forbidden action is, and what inaction is.”…… Ch 4:17
Jesus also demonstrates, in his parable of the Good Samaritan, the sin of inaction in the face of suffering.

This world and all its creation are crying out for right action in the face of injustice and man induced suffering. Let us become healers through our action in whatever capacity we can.

Love to you all

Sleeping Beauty

Today is the total Solar eclipse and we experience the sun going to sleep at an unusual time. This event evoked in my mind a stream of thought on the benefit of sleep of unusual nature.

We are all well aware of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”. Just to recapitulate the essential elements of the story; we have the beautiful princess,Aurora, the wicked fairy God mother, the curse that puts the princess to sleep and then we have the happy ending of the prince who wakes up the princess with a kiss.

Everyday I receive a news letter from Science Daily with the latest discoveries and research findings in the area of Biology, medicine and cosmology. Yesterday an interesting discovery was announced by a team who is a part of a large European project known by the name “Sleeping Beauty Project”. They are studying survival of species in extreme conditions. The discovery is that ‘Arctic springtails’ dehydrate themselves in order to survive the worst of polar ice, snow and low temperatures, which can easily reach -14°C. They shrivel up into small husks until, when conditions become more favourable, they re-hydrate themselves and re-emerge. This is the first study to identify the genetic basis for this physiological process. To generate the cold-induced gene expression profile of springtails, researchers compared gene expression in groups of the animals exposed to different environmental conditions. In the African plains, in the riverbed, certain species of fish lay eggs which have extremely hard shell which can survive drought of up to two to three years and hatch when the conditions are favourable.
Without going into specifics, what this indicates is the innate intelligence built into cells and genes, where ordered structure and survival emerges in creation. This is one of the premises for a select band of individuals for promoting the ‘Creation by design’ concept as compared to the Darwinian evolution by natural selection. When seen in isolation some intelligent gene expressions seem unique but if we really look at all creation there is abundant intelligence coded into life process in the most intricate fashion.

The fairy tale and the scientific discovery have a common thread. All creations are intrinsically beautiful like Aurora and come with an unsullied consciousness symbolised by the baptism of Aurora and the accompaniment of good fairies. But the threat of the wicked influence starts at the birth of creation and is only mitigated by a deep slumber that becomes a mode of survival. This is the symbolism of withdrawal of all sensory influences. This is truly reflected in nature.

As Joseph Chilton Pearce, the famous neuro-cardiologist, says that fighting a cultural or established social norm would only feed the needed survival energy to the very evil we are fighting. A wiser method would be to establish a new level of consciousness in individuals. This group of individuals would start fuelling a new network of change agents.

Externally one would observe a harmless sleeping beauty but the internal spiritual drive is operative to evoke a new level of consciousness and wake up at the right moment and in a new environment.

Love to you all

Right Mode of Asking

I bargained with life for a penny
And life would pay no more
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store

For life is a just employer
He gives you what you ask
But once you have set the wages
Why, you must bear the task

I worked for a menial's hire
Only to learn dismayed
That any wage I had asked of life
Life would have willing paid.

-- “My Wage” by Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Life offers us abundance in terms of her own bounties. Due to our own self knowledge we pre-judge the capacity for us to receive. Most often the receiving is associated with creation of imbalance. We always receive at the expense of somebody or something. The self predominates in any mode of acquisition, whether it be in love or life.

Today one of the most sought after new age mantra is ‘Law of Attraction’. A concept pioneered by many avatars of new age gurus. The book “The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne and other literature speak volumes on the concept that we are only a short step from obtaining whatever we want from life, money, health, power and relationships. This step is intention, a thought process. Like in all prescriptions for any remedy, the fine prints have to be read in detail to know how this wonderful secret can make you the man or woman you want to be.

To evoke the law of attraction and to make it operative as a cosmic link, a number of small steps are needed and it requires a broad understanding and slow process of assimilation to reach a stage where the thoughts can acquire the needed drive to open the portal or flood gates of universal abundance.

The first step is to realize the nature of reality of all existence. Deepak Chopra writes: “We are not onlookers peering into the unified field of separate, objective reality - we are the unified field. We can reach beyond the physical body and extend the influence of intelligence. Every thought you are thinking creates a wave in the unified field. It ripples through all the layers of intellect, mind, senses, and matter, spreading out in wider and wider circles. You are like a light radiating not photons but consciousness. As they radiate, your thoughts have an effect on everything. Your relationship to life is the same as that of one cell to your whole body. One cell can talk to your whole body. One cell can influence your whole body. You can talk to the whole of life - influence the whole of life. The whole of life is as alive as we are. The distinction between 'in here' and 'out there' is a false one - as if the heart disregarded the skin because it was not on the inside.”

The second step is building a harmonious relationship with all creation and this action removes the
mental categories and their associated tension and resistance. We learn from science that when two dissimilar metals are brought together, there is a barrier potential which can increase the resistance to electrical current flow. Similarly removal of identity of the self creates a zero resistance field and an unhindered flow in the seamless cosmic environment.

In the third step, the very act of attracting the resources abundant in the universe becomes an all pervading process because we become an integral part of the cosmic plan and will not be alienated to perceive resultant actions as not being beneficial or adequate for oneself. This is called surrender to the divine will but termed in modern terminology as ‘Law of Attraction’

As Jessie Rittehouse says beautifully in her poem if we are receiving less in life it is because we have asked for it and not because it is given to us. The tremendous meaning behind the words of Jesus “Ask and it shall be given” can be better understood in the light of this knowledge that we have today.

Love to you all

Language of the Soul

“Let your joy be the joy born of My Most Great Name, a Name that bringeth rapture to the heart, and filleth with ecstasy the minds of all who have drawn nigh unto God.
We, verily, have made music as a ladder for your souls, a means whereby they may be lifted up unto the realm on high.” …….. Bahá'u'lláh

The quote at the beginning of this post is from the Kitab-I-Aqdas, which is more of a set of instructions for a life rooted in spiritual consciousness for followers of the Bahai faith.

One day during my recent visit to my daughter’s home in Norwich, England, I had a unique experience. I strolled into the rear end of her garden and there in a small flower a bee was hovering with a typical buzz. It was extremely quiet, a total silence and no ambient noise polluted this divine sound of nature. Without realizing what I was doing I stood there and closed my eyes. As the visual distraction was removed from my perception, the buzz took on a new character. I could distinguish the modulation as the bee was flying around the flower and soon the concept of the bee being there also disappeared and the pure sound filled all my senses. It was no different from enjoying a symphony or being transported to a new level of consciousness through some Vedic chanting.

My thoughts, in the Norwich garden, later transported me to the Spielberg 1977 movie “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” where the medium of communication when the aliens arrive, is through musical notation because the scientists believe that the cosmic language must be based on vibrations of the energy field. The predominant energy present on earth for us humans is the air and vibrations in air are perceived by the human senses as sound.

Last week there was an article in Times of India in the ‘Speaking Tree’ column “In the Beginning was Sound”. Shri Shri Anandamurti, the author, says: “In the beginning, there was sound. The manifestation of sound is the subtlest; even more so than light. That is why the karnendriya, the ear, is considered as the subtlest organ. Acoustic expressions are of two kinds: one is the divine, or spiritual acoustic expression and the other is the physical. The sound you hear is the physical acoustic expression. The ordinary ear does not perceive the vaster spiritual acoustic expression in the divine realm, in the cosmic domain”. The ringing of chimes during meditation is to link and elevate perception from the physical to the spiritual level.

We are able to hear only a very narrow bandwidth of frequencies but the divine sound operates in the subtlest of planes with a vast array of frequencies in many dimensions (This is the basic tenet of Superstring theory in Physics). This is the reason that science is hitting a brick wall in trying to unravel the nature of reality as through our consciousness we cannot perceive these subtleties. It is only through an inner journey by going beyond waking and dream consciousness that one can attempt to savour the music of the atma. But the path can be initiated through melodic music as Bahá'u'lláh says:
“We, verily, have made music as a ladder for your souls, a means whereby they may be lifted up unto the realm on high”

Love to you all

The Essence of Divinity

Writing on his concept of God, Ashok Chopra, a columnist in Times of India says:

“I don’t look for Him and He doesn’t for me. I never found Him in any gurudwara, temple, church or mosque. But, I easily find him everyday in the music of a composer, in the voice of a singer, in the painting of a painter, in the writing of an author. He’s there in a monument, in a sculpture, in a piece of fashion garment, in a manuscript that lands on my desk for publication. I see Him in the innocent smile of that child standing half-naked with nose running in some far off village. I find Him in my friends who have taken me into their lives, their world, who are always there for me, who stand by me, who tolerate my various moods and eccentricities.
You can discover God by reconciling your different selves — the good, the bad and the ugly. Remember Graham Greene’s words: “...If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself...” I guard and protect myself from being influenced by the teachings and preaching of any baba, any guru, any mata, any moral brigade on how to be pious. For me, God is there within; certainly not in the distance, but here and now. I don’t waste time in prayers or in meditation. The only prayer to me is my work. My meditation is not to hurt anyone. It helps me have a clear mind. It gives me a good night’s sleep. And I enjoy the fruits of work to the hilt.”

In a more profound way, the great Indian mystic Aurobindo, in his essays on “Divine and Human” says:

“Yoga is not a modern invention of the human mind, but our ancient and prehistoric possession. The Veda is our oldest extant human document and the Veda, from one point of view, is a great compilation of practical hints about Yoga. All religion is a flower of which Yoga is the root; all philosophy, poetry & the works of genius use it, consciously or unconsciously, as an instrument. We believe that God created the world by Yoga and by Yoga He will draw it into Himself again. Yoga is the birth and passing away of things (“Yogah prabhavapyayau”).
When Sri Krishna reveals to Arjuna the greatness of His creation and the manner in which He has built it out of His being by a reconciliation of logical opposites, he says “Behold my divine Yoga” (“Pasya me yogam aishwaram”). We usually attach a more limited sense to the word; when we use or hear it, we think of the details of Patanjali's system, of rhythmic breathing, of peculiar ways of sitting, of concentration of mind, of the trance of the adept. But these are merely details of particular systems. The systems are not the thing itself, any more than the water of an irrigation canal is the river Ganges. Yoga may be done without the least thought for the breathing, in any posture or no posture, without any insistence on concentration, in the full waking condition, while walking, working, eating, drinking, talking with others, in any occupation, in sleep, in dream, in states of unconsciousness, semiconsciousness, double-consciousness. It is no nostrum or system or fixed practice, but an eternal fact of process based on the very nature of the Universe.”

Yoga stands essentially on the fact that in this world we are everywhere one, yet divided; one yet divided in our being, one with yet divided from our fellow creatures of all kinds, one with yet divided from the infinite existence which we call God, Nature or Brahman.

Love to you all

Identity of the Twin

The very first verse of the Gospel of Thomas goes as follows:

“These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down” And He said “Whoever finds the interpretations of these sayings will not experience death”

Almost all spiritual masters transmitted their deep insight through an oral tradition. Spontaneous dissemination which transcended space and time was their unique character. Jesus himself taught on the steps of the temple, in the field wheat as he was walking with the disciples and in the synagogue. Many scholars interpret ‘secret sayings’ as special messages that was delivered in secret to Thomas and they base their findings on one saying in the Gospel which says “….he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?”………”. But Jesus spoke always to all the disciples as evident from the narration of the Gospels. His transmission was mainly intended for the disciples for he knew that he can not reach out to all the people and it required a well prepared mind to take in what he was saying. Therefore the ‘secret sayings’ has relevance to the capability of the recipient. It can be equated to a radio transmission which is broadcast to all but can be received only when the receiver is tuned to the frequency in which the transmission is broadcast. It is inner preparedness and state of grace that is necessary to fully grasp the meanings of the saying. This can be equated to the Zen Koans which on the face of it appears to be meaningless but on deeper examination reveals subtle meaning.

The next emphasis is on ‘living Jesus’. Why does Thomas pronounce the aliveness of Jesus while the words are spoken? Tau Malachi, the modern Jewish mystic says: “the living Yeshua is speaking in secret within and behind your heart”. This is not a historic event when Jesus spoke certain words to his disciples but a present occurrence that takes place in all seeking souls which live in perennial Christ (divine) consciousness. In divine consciousness the physical name and form is transcended and physical existence or death becomes meaningless. It is the all pervading spirit that operates and as the spirit is immortal the consciousness in which it is operating imparts an immortal attribute to the source of this knowledge as well as to the recipient, hence the words 'living Jesus' and 'Whoever finds the interpretations of these sayings will not experience death'.

Underlying all the above analysis is the subtle message built into the very first verse. The final author of the sayings of Yeshua is Didymos Judas Thomas. Didymos in Greek and Thoma in Aramaic mean twin. If you have to write down the sayings of Yeshua in your heart and live by it, you also have to become the twin. The twin of Yeshua means you also become one with the Father. The double emphasis of the nature of the twin reveals a state “as above so below and as without so within”

Love to you all

Ocean of Immortality

While instructing the young Narendra, who would later become the great Swami Vivekananda, Swami Ramakrishna Paramahansa advices him in these words.
“Narendra, God is an ocean of nectar. Tell me if you will dive into this sea or not? Well, imagine that there is a bowl full of sugar syrup and you are a fly. Where will you perch yourself and drink the syrup? Narendra said, ‘I will sit on the edge of the bowl, extend my mouth and sip from there; for if I go farther, I will get drowned.’ Then Swamiji said, ‘My son, this is the ocean of Sachchidananda. There is no fear of death in it. It is the ocean of immortality.’ Only the ajnanis (ignorant) say that one should not have excess of the nectar of God’s love and prema. Is there a limit to the love for God? So I say to you: Immerse yourself in the sea of Sachchidananda.”

Swamiji calls the omnipresent Godhead as the ocean of Sachchidananda. Why did he choose this name?
You must go back to the answer given by young Narendra to commence this analysis. Narendra says “I will sit on the edge of the bowl, extend my mouth and sip from there; for if I go farther, I will get drowned”. This is the view of God held by the ignorant as well as by most religious traditions, where we see God as something external, that which is to be tasted, seen and experienced outside of oneself. When we do this we are limited by our capacity which is the product of our senses.
This is the reason that in the Bhagavad-Gita, when asked by Arjuna to reveal his universal form Lord Krishna says:
“But you cannot see Me with your present eyes. Therefore I give you divine eyes. Behold My mystic opulence!” ….. Ch: 11-8.
The great German Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart says:
“The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge”

Swami Ramakrishna admonishes the young student to immerse himself. This immersion into Godhead happens through a three step process. This process is Sat – Chit – Ananda. The first is to be bestowed with divine eyes through which we can perceive the universal truth (Sat means truth in Sanskrit). What does this mean? It means that we have to transcend to a higher level of perception by moving away and remaining unattached to what we normally see as reality. This is an intuitive process brought about by study, contemplation and single pointed meditation.
Chit in Sanskrit means 'to think' but thinking is the result of consciousness and therefore chit really means 'to be conscious of'. In the second step what are we conscious of? A new reality therefore a new consciousness.
Finally, the new consciousness is experienced as bliss (Ananda) that grounds one's being into this new reality. Why is this state called ‘Ocean of immortality’ because this new reality is an all encompassing singularity beyond space and time and never changing.
Meister Eckhart says:
“There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence”.

We are all embarked on this journey of imbibing this nectar. This the everlasting thirst of every soul which will never rest until it merges with its source.

Love to you all

Erasing the Thin Divide

Oscar Levant, a famous pianist and media star of the 1930s and ’40s, battled for decades against mental illness, surviving several painful hospitalizations. He once declared: “There is a fine line between insanity and genius. I have erased that line.”

The late Michael Jackson (MJ) erased the same line—and blurred many other distinctions in the course of his extraordinary career. In his death the pop icon leaves behind a very telling story of human life.
This story unfolds thus:

A talented child is what we are all born. This talent is a birth gift of God or divine creation that every child receives. Those of you who have read Stephen Covey’s book ‘The 8th Habit’ will know in much more clarity the totality of gifts that we receive at birth through the four intelligences (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual).
As we grow into young men and women, we sometime leave these gifts in their original packaging without ever bothering to open it or we open these gifts and fail to use them to their full potential. Many people have their own tainted view of what the gifts are intended for and remould them to suit their own perception of life’s purpose.

The physical intelligence bestows excellent health in everyone. You only need to look at a baby to realize the vitality and vigour. But as we grow we heap abuse on the body. The post mortem on MJ revealed the extent of abuse his body has been subject to. The culture of addiction to junk food through commercial exploitation and the unhealthy life style we go through in our lives constantly deteriorates the physical intelligence with which we are born.

The mental intelligence goes through a spurt of upgrade in the early stages of our lives. You can see it in children’s capacity for learning and this is the stage at which our individual talents become manifest and MJ was a pioneer in introducing a new genre of music and dance to the world. I was always fascinated with his moon-walk. The gliding motion while still rooted to the ground which to me today signifies the frictionless movement of life in a cosmic stream while still rooted to this grounded existence. The emotion that was created in millions of youth was an emotion of ecstasy. But as we progress we get distracted to the superficial values of appearances. There used to be a comedy show in the British television (1990-1994) called “Keeping up Appearances” which portrayed how people take extreme and rediculous measures to be seen as someone different from what they are. This was true in MJ's case. The quality of life degrades.

The emotional intelligence which is focused and nurtured through love goes through gross modification. MJ missed his childhood totally and all that went on in his marriage and the Neverland Ranch scandal was a shoddy attempt to seek authentic and unconditional love.

The ultimate result is that your spiritual intelligence which cannot be altered goes through a period of suppression. Always the spirit calls out to you and I was moved to read the interview which Deepak Chopra, who was good friend and mentor of MJ, gave after MJ's death. Deepak said that MJ was reading Tagore’s poems and was composing songs on climate change. This is the spirit calling out.

It is within our capacity to remain rooted to our true spiritual nature. We are all born geniuses with our different gifts. But it is easy to erase this divide between what is perceived as genius and what we term as insanity. All artificial modes of effecting any so called enhancements to our inherent talents are the tools with which we erase this barrier that prevents a genius from becoming insane.

There have been geniuses like Leanardo Da Vinci, Beethoven, Einstein and many more who understood this great truth and their contribution is none the less valuable.

Love to you all

Language of Nature

Therefore the greatest understanding lies in the signature, wherein man (viz. the image of the greatest virtue) may not only learn to know himself, but therein also he may learn to know the essence of all essences; for by the external form of all creatures, by their instigation, inclination and desire, also by their sound, voice, and speech which they utter, the hidden spirit is known; for nature has given to everything its language according to its essence and form, for out of the essence the language or sound arises, and the fiat of that essence forms the quality of the essence in the voice or virtue which it sends forth, to the animals in the sound, and to the essentials in smell, virtue, and form.
...... Jacob Boehme

During the tsunami of 2004 not one animal in the wild was killed. They seemed to have a mode of communication and perception of the danger. If we study the Empire Penguins of the Antarctic, after feeding for two weeks in the sea, the returning females can pick up its mate in a colony of over ten thousand birds. Dogs know exactly when the master is returning home.
Nature behaves in a very connected way. They are able to read hidden patterns in magnetic energy fields, minute changes in gravity and many other parameters to which we have become insensitive. They seem to operate in their everyday life on a broader blueprint of existence which is now called ‘Morphic field’. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, the Cambridge plant biologist, was the major proponent of this concept, through his Hypothesis of Formative Causation in the early 1980s. It is described as consisting of patterns that govern the development of forms, structures and arrangements.
In his book “Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999)”, Dr. Sheldrake analyses many case studies involving animals that go to provide unassailable proof of the heightened perception and communication in animals.

Why has man lost this ability in his evolved consciousness? This is mainly due to the rational mind dominated perception of reality. We fragment all our perceptions in a series of logical and sequential steps and reconstruct a reality. The cut and pasting process, in the structuring of reality, uses the glue of ego dominated and heavily altered consciousness. The moment we withdraw from the rational thought process and intuitively look for, as Jacob Boehme says, signatures in our awakened consciousness, a new reality becomes manifest. The native cultures and tribes had this capability as they lived very close to nature.

Let us listen to the language of nature through an intuitive journey into the very core of being.

Love to you all

Beauty Beyond Being

That, beautiful beyond being, is said to be Beauty – for
It gives beauty from itself in a manner appropriate to each,
It causes the consonance and splendour of all,
It flashes forth upon all, after the manner of light, the
Beauty producing gifts of its flowing ray,
It call to itself,
When it is called beauty.

The above words are classical expression of the sense of beauty in early western mystical tradition by Pseudo-Dionysius in his book ‘The Divine Names’.
St. Augustine testifies to the permanence and eternity of beauty when he writes: ‘Too late came I to love thee! Beauty ever ancient, ever new, too late came I to love thee’.

Human gaze is not a fixed view but of creative and constructive quality through which we perceive every object for its intrinsic as well as extrinsic value. The way we look at things has a great influence on what becomes visible to us. If a house has been closed for a long time then a film of dust settles down on the windows. Decayed residue gradually blocks out all the light. The same happens to the human mind. The moment it is locked up in straight-jacketed thinking based on socio-religious judgemental values, the light of divine wisdom gets blocked out. The beauty of creation and what lays in the inner most depths of manifestation becomes obscured.

Here the words of Dionysius can be appreciated. True beauty lies beyond the perceived qualities and aesthetic assessments of the mind operating in the domain of being.
For example when we look at a Galaxy we see what our eyes are able to comprehend. Therefore we have a limitation in seeing the spectrum of colours but for someone who can see in the infrared and ultraviolet, the picture is grander and evokes a sense of awe. The true manifestation to be appreciated must have an observer who can have attributes far exceeding those that is being observed. This will lead to a harmonious reception in the senses without any attenuation. This is the reason Dionysius observes that ‘It causes the consonance and splendour...’.

There is an uncanny symmetry between the outer and the inner world of man. All restrictive qualities of the mind driven by our evolved consciousness hinder the observation of true inner beauty. When we are able to liberate ourselves from the grid lock of time and memory, we can experience the ‘beauty beyond being’. This is the reason that Meister Eckhart, the great German mystic says: ‘Time makes us old. Eternity keeps us young’.

Love to you all

A Celtic Gayathri

This post comes on the summer solstice.

Hail to you, Sun of the Seasons,
Banisher of the darkness.
Hail to you, shining one of the sky,
Illuminator of the souls of each of us.
Hail, fire-dancer and earth awakener-
God of a thousand rays,
gilding the green-faced land
and shimmering on the timeless waters
of the mother's wisdom.
............The Celtic Book of Seasonal Meditation

We contemplate the glory of Light illuminating the three worlds:
gross, subtle, and causal.
I am that vivifying power, love, radiant illumination,
and divine grace of universal intelligence.
We pray for the divine light to illumine our minds.
............ Gayathri Mantra - A translation by Sathya Sai Baba

For the Celts, the summer season was the jewel of the turning year, and at its height was the midsummer solstice, the longest day when the Sun reached its zenith. The greatest Celtic fire festival took place around 21st June. It is thought to have been celebrated by druids gathered in the great monolithic circle of Stonehenge. They would greet the first rays of the sun with blowing horns, beating of drums and cheering. Bonfires were lit in honour of the Sun-god and staffs and wands were cut from sacred trees, symbolizing the sun energy imbibed wood as a potent tool of transformation. All their celebration was oriented towards celebrating the potency of the Sun-god. This day was the day of great triumph as the Sun-god overcomes the forces of darkness. This was also the time when the two great trees, the oak and the Holly, contended for the crown and the Oak triumphs in midsummer.

Celtic meditation for this season focuses on mother aspect of the Goddess, fertility, love and marriage, the Sun-god, solar energy and the element of fire. The divine power of the Sun, which was understood and venerated by the Celtic tribes, finds a parallel in the Vedic worship. In the Sanskrit Vedas, numerous hymns are dedicated to Surya/Mitra dev, the Sun personified, and Savitr, "the impeller", a solar deity either identified with or associated with Surya.

Even the Gayatri mantra, which is regarded as one of the most sacred of the Hindu hymns is dedicated to the Sun. The Sun-god in Hinduism is an ancient deity, worthy of immense worship. The Sun is referred to in Sanskrit as "Mitra" or "Friend" down to the invariable warmth, life-giving nature and optimism its light brings to mankind. He is called "Prati-Aksh Devta" meaning "The Seen Divinity" and worthy of much worship and reverence.

On this day, the druids also celebrated the journeying into the Otherworld, the Sidhe (the inhabitants of the mounds, similar to fairies). Though the Sun shines during the day its energy is retained and transferred during the night through the sustaining inertia of Mother Earth, This symbolizes the inner region of one's existence and the nourishment of both the manifest as well as the unmanifest.

Love to you all

Worship of the Divine Feminine

“O Goddess, remover of affliction, be gracious, be gracious, O Mother of the entire world. Be gracious, O Queen of the universe, protect the universe. You, O Goddess, are the Queen of all that moves and does not move.”..... Devī Māhātmya 11.2

"When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be". ..... “Let it be” song by The Beatles

Worship of the divine feminine is one of the most ancient religious expressions in India. It has become a truism among scholars of Hinduism that worship of goddesses has its basis in the Indus Valley civilization ( 2500-1500 B.C.E) or another indigenous Indian culture (Austric or Dravidian) rather than in the Vedic or Brahmanic tradition which was imported into the subcontinent during the second millennium B.C.E. by waves of Aryan immigrants. The general argument, stated with various degrees of refinement, is that the pre-Aryans, being concerned mainly with agriculture, worshiped female (and to a lesser extent male) earth deities who represented fertility, regeneration, and the processes of life and death. The Aryans, on the other hand, being nomadic cattle herders and warriors, worshiped primarily male sky deities. When the Aryans settled in India, the argument continues, they took up agriculture and gradually assimilated the indigenous culture(s); thus, the various philosophical movements and cults that came to be called Hinduism are a synthesis of Aryan and non-Aryan elements.

The early inhabitants of India, in the pre-Aryan era, worshiped the mother godess and the Naga, the snake which was the spiritual symbol of wisdom. The snake as the symbol of wisdom can also be traced to the Sumerian tradition, wherein the first episode of genesis in the Bible has its origin. Later the Sophia in Gnostic tradition symbolised the female wisdom of the cosmic potential which due to the action of the dimiurge (creator deity) descended to to the worldly manifestation. All these point to the need for us to pull back to the original state of recognizing the primary Sophia present in all creation especially in the human species and to fully empower this dimension to raise our consciousness to a cosmic plane.

Today the healing touch of the mother is needed much in this world which is ravaged by alienation from a state of being to a state of greed of having. The earth as the mother which abundantly provides its riches from its very being is the only source of our life.

Be it the ancient mantra of the Devī Māhātmya or the 1970 song of Paul McCartney, there is an inner urge in us to reach out to the divine mother in us, irrespective of the name or iconic symbolism that we may employ.

Love to you all

Defining a Heretic

Two men were on a cruise ship together and began to talk.
Finally one of them asked, “Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.”
I asked, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?”
He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too!
Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too!
What denomination?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too!
Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too!
Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Moderate Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too!
Are you of the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!” Are you of the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
I said, “Die, you heretic!”
(By the way this joke by Comedian Emo Philips is called “the funniest religious joke of all time!”)

As individuals we are steered by our egos and the ego operates through identification. Identification comes from the Latin root “idem” which means “same” and “facere” which means “to make”. The ego operates by the mode of identifying external objects and attributes as belonging to the individual. When we are children the first identification starts with ‘my toy’. At this point of time any toy will do but soon the toy acquires an attribute such as ‘my red remote controlled car’. The older we get we start personalizing more and more things in the material world and in our own personal attributes such as I am tall and handsome, I am successful in business, etc,. The entire thought process in the mind is driven by identification.

The joke sited above, though preposterous, is a good example of how every religion has evolved over its history. Heretic is one who does not conform to an identity as defined by ego and power dominated authority and nothing to do with fellowship of truth or life empowering practice.

In Islamic theology, the Shaytan and his minions are "whisperers", who whisper into the hearts of men and women, urging them to commit sin. This is where the desire to sin comes from, according to Islam.
The whispering is the constant voice in the head promoting thoughts and identities so that you are away from full awareness. A true heretic is one who operates away from a full awareness of our true spiritual nature and who is rooted in identities driven by the ego. Remove the identities and listen to your authentic self.

Love to you all

Law Beyond the Scriptures

The world of religion thrives on a judgemental mode of deliverance for its flock. The whole idea of good living is driven by what is right and what is wrong based on Vedic pronouncements, Manu Smriti, Moses Law, Islamic Shariat etc,.
Action is sequel to thought unless it is involuntary as when one faces danger. Involuntary actions are driven by our evolutionary consciousness such as survival instincts.
Thought again is conditioned by our nurturing to a large extent. This is where our morality and ethical behaviour takes root.
From early childhood we are conditioned by our parents and religious diktats as to what are perceived as right action.

A broader view was given by Buddha through his ‘Eightfold path’. Ethical conduct was prescribed through: right speech, right action and right livelihood. These three elements of conduct were preceded by right intention. This is where conditioning the mind to operate in the mode of empowerment rather than being judgemental becomes important. A robot can be programmed and controlled based on a set of instructions but man as a spiritual being needs empowerment to reach his higher potential. Each one needs an unique set of programmes based on one's own Karmic backdrop.

In the ‘Gospel of the Essenes’ an Apocryphal text, there is a beautiful saying of Jesus in response to the disciples asking him “We all do the laws of Moses, our lawgiver, even as they are written in the holy scriptures.”
And Jesus answers: "Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. I tell you truly, Moses received not his laws from God in writing, but through the living word. The law is living word of living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass, in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves. For I tell you truly, all living things are nearer to God than the scripture which is without life. God so made life and all living things that they might by the everlasting word teach the laws of the true God to man. God wrote not the laws in the pages of books, but in your heart and in your spirit. They are in your breath, your blood, your bone; in your flesh, your bowels, your eyes, your ears, and in every little part of your body. They are present in the air, in the water, in the earth, in the plants, in the sunbeams, in the depths and in the heights. They all speak to you that you may understand the tongue and the will of the living God. But you shut your eyes that you may not see, and you shut your ears that you may not hear. I tell you truly, that the scripture is the work of man, but life and all its hosts are the work of our God. Wherefore do you not listen to the words of God which are written in His works? And wherefore do you study the dead scriptures which are the work of the hands of men?"

This thought of Jesus is beautifully reflected in the words of Rumi.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.