ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

When you assume an attitude of gratitude, your ego cannot dominate you.  This is because when you are grateful, you are grateful to someone other than yourself.

DOOR WITHIN A DOOR

The first door is our decision to become a spiritual aspirant.  The first door's second door is our acting on that decision.

FOUR YOGAS

Vedanta emphasizes self-effort.  It encourages us to realize God within by the practice of four yogas.  These four "methods" orient the tendencies that we already have and lead us to God.  A harmonious balance of the four is the ideal.

Bhakti yoga is cultivating a devotional relationship with God through worship, prayer, and ritual.  Here, our emotions are given a "God-ward turn."

Jnana yoga is approaching God through reason and discrimination.  Our miseries in life are caused by our seeing difference everywhere, but with jnana yoga we break through this delusion, seeing oneness everywhere.

Karma yoga refers to selfless service to others.  By working in this spirit, we worship God within us.

Raja yoga, the yoga of meditation, is at the heart of all of the yogas.  It is attuning the mind to God through concentration and meditation.

SRI AUROBINDO

Commonly known as Sri Aurobindo, Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) was a Bengali political extremist who became a noted yogi.  He was the son of an English-educated, Western-oriented Bengali doctor who sent him to Britain at age seven for his education.  While studying at Cambridge, he was isolated from all Indian influences, to the extent of becoming "denationalized"as he put it.  When he returned home at age twenty, however, he set about recapturing his Indian heritage.  To begin with, he learned Sanskrit and read the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita.

Aurobindo entered the civil service, but as anti-British agitation grew, he joined the nationalist movement.  When he tried public speaking against the British, though, his extreme shyness got the better of him.  This was when a holy man advised him to empty his mind of all thought so as to receive spiritual inspiration.  His mind blank, he went on to speak often, as the spirit moved him.

He then began experiencing a series of intense spiritual experiences, so that by 1910 he was driven to renounce politics in favor of the ashram.  He was much influenced by his fellow Bengalis, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, but would not say that his own system, fully developed as it was becoming, was superior to theirs.  His system was what he termed "Integral Yoga," in which, as he said to his disciples, "Knowledge, Bhakti, light of Consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works--meditations, adoration. service to the Divine, all have their place." 

His greatest work, Life Divine, is a highly complex presentation in which he lays out his thesis of the divine energy at work everywhere.  This energy, he purported, manifests itself in an ascending order in matter, through various stages of life to consciousness and finally to supraconsciousness.  It is through yoga that man will transcend his fragmentary knowledge of the universe, and his individual consciousness.

GOD AS UNDERTOW

There is this ever-present undertow.

RESPECT FOR ALL RELIGIONS

Vedanta teaches respect for all religions.  As a Sanskrit hymn puts it:

As the different streams
Having their sources in different places
All mingle their waters in the sea,

So, O Lord, the different paths which men take
Through various tendencies,
Various though they appear,
Crooked or straight,
All lead to thee.

WORD OF CAUTION

We  must be careful not to get in our own way.  In Vedanta, there is the Way of Knowledge, whereby we are to learn the fundamentals of the faith.  But it is too easy to get lost in a forest of details.  If we are academics, that is one thing, for in such a case we are required, indeed if we teach the subject, are paid to know every aspect of it.  But if spiritual enlightenment, awakening, is our aim, too much knowledge can block our progress.  Too much information can take us in the wrong direction, lead us to what we never intended.

LIFE AS APPROXIMATION

We are in a perpetual state of approximation, which is to say that we are forever becoming something else.

The reason for this, of course, is because we are time bound. But if we are works in progress this way, if we are not now what we will ultimately become, what is it that we are progressing toward, are becoming?

By way of the Atman in each of us, we are becoming Brahman. We are the drop of mist from the ocean returning to the ocean.  But, alas, it takes time, even as it is inevitable.

ONLY PURPOSE

Ramakrishna taught that Vedanta is a search for God within ourselves, and that we should not think of ourselves as needing to be "saved."  We are never lost, he said.  At worst we are living in ignorance of our true nature.  "Find God," he said.  "That is the only purpose in life."

NEED FOR MEDITATION

In his essay "Self-Surrender," Swami Prabhavananda states:  "When you fall in love with someone, your mind dwells on that person, no matter what you may be doing, all day long.  That is how we should love God.  Every day, we must fall in love with Him afresh, in a new way.  Human love wears out and ceases, but love of God grows.  One does not tire of it.  It is always a new thing.  It gains in intensity.  To cultivate this love, we must try to be conscious of God continually, and this is only possible if we practice regular meditation."

REFLECTED CONSCIOUSNESS

The everyday consciousness of the everyday mind is termed "reflected consciousness," which means that it is a reflection of the broader, witnessing consciousness, the watcher.

LIFE AS CONSCIOUSNESS

The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says that a good way to experience the Now, the present moment, where life really happens, is to simply feel the energy in one's body, to simply focus on the flow of energy from head to toe.  This energy is what a person truly is in this moment. 

This feeling of energy is life itself which in Vedanta is the Brahman.  But if life is the Brahman, then life is also consciousness, for the Brahman is consciousness.  This, however, is not the everyday consciousness of the everyday mind, but the witnessing consciousness behind it all, where life watches itself be life.

NOT FROM NOTHING

From the Chandogya Upanishad:

When Svetaketu, at his father's bidding, had brought a ripe fruit from the banyan tree, his father said to him, "Split the fruit in two, dear son."
"Here you are.  I have split it in two."
"What do you find there?"
"Innumerable tiny seeds."
"Then take one of the seeds and split it."
"I have split the seed."
"And what do you find there?"
"Why, nothing, nothing at all."
"Ah, dear son, but this great tree cannot possibly come from nothing.  Even if you cannot see with your eyes that subtle something in the seed which produces this mighty form, it is present nonetheless.  That is the power, that is the spirit unseen, which pervades everywhere and is all things.  Have faith!  That is the spirit which lies at the root of all existence, and that also art thou, O Svetaketu."

NOSE TO NOSE

A fly lands on a mirror.  He stands there nose to nose with himself on the other side of the mirror but does not see himself.  All he sees is the mirror.  In the same way, we stand nose to nose with the Atman, but we do not see him.  All we see is the relative world.

LEGACY OF IGNORANCE

Pure, eternal joy and peace are to be found only in union with the Atman.  Alas, though, our ignorance keeps us from that union. 

Ignorance may be thought of as ignore-ance, where we ignore the Atman for the world of the senses.  What remains is a gray, confused longing for happiness which we keep turning to the external world to satisfy.

But poor substitutes for happiness is all we wind up with, despite our efforts to convince ourselves that the substitutes are valid and genuine.

In place of eternity, we hold on to what is only relatively enduring. 

Instead of purity, we value what is only relatively pure. 

In place of true joy, we cling to what is only temporarily pleasant.

What little satisfaction we have quickly fades, though.  Ignorance has betrayed us, as it always must, once more.

Which is when, turning sadly away, our eyes fall suddenly upon some new object of sense-attachment and desire, whereupon our hopeless search goes on.

FALSE IDENTIFICATION

Ignorance, according to Patanjali, is false identification.  We identify with the non-Atman, i.e. the world of the senses, rather than with the Atman.  This basic act of ignorance leads automatically and promptly to millions of acts by us just like it.  When we ignore the Atman within us, we ignore it everywhere, so that rather than seeing the universe as unity, we see it as multiplicity.  It is not multiplicity.

BEHIND THE EYES

We don't see with our eyes but with the eyes that see our eyes, the Atman. 

As the Kena Upanishad puts it:  "At whose behest does the mind think?  Who bids the body live?  Who makes the tongue speak?  Who is that effulgent Being that directs the eye to form and color, and the ear to sound? 

The Atman is the ear of the ear, mind of the mind, speech of the speech.  He is also breath of the breath, and eye of the eye. 

Having given up the false identification of the Atman with the senses and the mind, and knowing the Atman to be Brahman, the wise become immortal."

KARMAS STILL PLAY OUT

Despite our awakening into Brahman, which is the purpose of this life, our past karmas, good and bad, continue to play out.  Prabhavananda gives the example of a person who takes his gun and goes out hunting, only to have compassion and abandon the hunt.  This, though, does not erase all the times he stayed on the hunt and took all those shots.  This is why an illumined, saintly person may still know misery in his life.  It is consoling for him to know, however, that since his awakening he is generating no more karmas.

DHARMA OF DISCONTENT

There is a purpose to unhappiness.  When we are unhappy, which we are even when we are happy, we want to know why.  The reason is because life is impermanent, transient, in flux, ever changing.  Realizing this, we then want to know if there is relief from it, if there is something that is permanent, abiding, eternal, changeless.  Here, the spiritual quest begins, as it is meant to begin.

THE WORD "GOD"

For convenience, the words "God" and "Brahman" are used interchangeably by Vedantists, even though what the words refer to are not the same thing.

"God" in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for instance, means a divine something that is separate from us and that is only one thing.

In Vedanta, "God," meaning Brahman, also refers to a divine something, but it is not separate from us and is not just one thing.

BEST APPROACH

There are those of us who hold that spiritual awakening is inevitable, that it is only a matter of time before each of us experiences it.  Awakening happens of itself, we say, and there is nothing we are supposed to do to aid it.

This is true insofar as the Atman in each of us is drawn to its source, the Brahman, like the needle of a compass is drawn to a magnet.  The Atman, however, has great difficulty in making this connection because the "dust," i.e. the relative world, the "particulars" of the empirical world, is so thick that the awakening can be stifled from happening.

Ramakrishna taught, by contrast, that we can facilitate the awakening, can brush away the dust, by "yearning" for God, which is to say by actively seeking God.  The combination of our longing for God and the Atman's attraction to God is, according to Ramakrishna, the best approach to take.  It assures that the awakening will occur in this lifetime rather than in a later one.

LED ASTRAY

By identifying with our senses, we are led astray.  The Bhagavad-Gita describes the process:

Thinking about sense-objects will attach you to sense-objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life's only purpose.

Life's only purpose is, of course, union with the Atman which is Brahman.  The word "discrimination" here, incidentally, means what it does in Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination.  It is one's ability to discriminate between those activities that lead to union with Brahman and those activities that do not.

WHERE

Where have you been all your life?

WHY LIFE WILL END

There will come a time when life on earth is not enough.

OLD PHOTOS

The wonder of the Internet, and especially of Facebook, is how old photos turn up of "sacred" places of ours, such as our hometowns.  The trouble is, some of these old photos show us how our towns looked before we were there.

Before we were there?

In our hearts we always want to believe that our towns have been and will forever be exactly the way they were when we lived there.  How dare they have a history apart from us. 

But alas we realize that there was a time when our hometowns did not even exist, and a time is coming when they will be gone without a single trace.  Just like ourselves.

SELF-ENQUIRY

Ramana Maharshi advocated self-enquiry as the principal means to gain insight:  Enquiry in the form of  "Who am I?" is the principal means, he said.

The answer to the question "Who am I?" is found in one's own heart, but also in four Vedas:

To begin with, "Consciousness is Brahman," in the Aitareya Upanishad of the Rig-Veda. 

Secondly, "I am Brahman," in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of the Yajur Veda. 

Thirdly, "That thou art," in the Chandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda. 

Fourthly, "This self is Brahman," in the Mandukya Upanishad of the Atharva Veda.

These statements in the Vedas are called "mahavakyas," translated as "great sayings."  A mahavakya is a concise Vedantic formula, or mantra, pointing out the oneness of the individual soul with Brahman.   

CARL JUNG ON RAMANA MAHARSHI

"The goal of Eastern religious practice is the same as that of Western mysticism: the shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self, from man to God. This means that the ego disappears in the self, and man in God. It is evident that Sri Ramana has either really been more or less absorbed by the self, or has at least struggled earnestly all his life to extinguish his ego in it."--Carl Jung in his foreword to Ramana Maharshi's book, The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi.

The word "self," as Jung uses it here, refers to the so-called "True Self," the "Observing Self," or the "Witness," in other words the Atman.

Unlike Sigmund Freud, incidentally, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being.

MEDITATION VS. AUTOHYPNOSIS

Meditation is not autohypnosis as some have argued.  Swami Prabhavananda explained that autohypnosis or autosuggestion makes you see what you want to see, whereas meditation makes you see something that you don't expect to see.  Autosuggestion produces different results in different people.  Meditation produces the same result in all people.

HUXLEY DRAWN TO KRISHNAMURTI

Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, novelist Aldous Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with writer/lecturer Gerald Heard, novelist Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.

In later years, though, Huxley was drawn to the teachings of J. Krishnamurti.  As Isherwood describes the situation, "Aldous and Prabhavananda were temperamentally far apart.  Prabhavananda was strongly devotional.  Aldous was much more akin to his friend Krishnamurti, who was then living in Ojai, a couple of hours' drive from Los Angeles.

Krishnamurti expounded a philosophy of discrimination between the real and the unreal; as a Hindu who had broken away from Hinduism, he was repelled by devotional religion and its rituals.  He also greatly disapproved of the guru-disciple relationship.  Krishnamurti," Huxley pointed out, "never meditated on 'objects,' such as lotuses, lights, gods, and goddesses, and even believed that doing so might lead to insanity."

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY REVISITED

In his 1945 book entitled Perennial Philosophy, novelist Aldous Huxley states that "rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." In the Introduction to the Christopher Isherwood-Swami Prabhavananda translation of The Bhagavad-Gita, Huxley summarizes the four fundamental doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy.

First:  the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness--the world of things and animals and men and even gods--is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Second:  human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference, they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning.  This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third:  man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul.  It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth:  man's life on earth has only one end and purpose:  to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.