Religious Knowledge, Spiritual Vision

Religious Knowledge,
Spiritual Vision

Julian C. Lee Mickunas
COPYRIGHT 2011 JULIAN LEE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Aryans of the ancient Indian subcontinent propounded the Vedas and Upanishads through the inner knowledge gained by their inner voyagers, the ancient saints and rishis. Those who went within and found the all-satisfying, blissful God then wrote the Upanishads and many other religious scriptures.

Through their grace they laid out the ways that others could come to know the inner blissful, all-satisfying God as something as real as an object in the palm of your hand.

Their knowledge later manifested in Christianity, the great bhakti-yoga of the White Europeans. The Vedic rishis defined God in several ways. As Pure Consciousness, as Bliss (ananda), as the source of Creation, as the inner heard Aum (pranava), also experienced inner light (jyoti) -- nd a few other useful definitions as well!

Indeed, these are only a few of the definitions-of-God found in the Aryan Vedas and Upanishads, but some of the profounder ones. Let me give those God-definitions again. The rishis who wrote the Upanishads defined God as:

-- The source of exterior phenomena, or the "creator," whether postulated as a theory and only thought about, or personally known

-- Inner blissful sound (Aum) and light (jyoti) experienced by those who succeed in stilling their minds (succeed in yoga).

The average man can easily prove two of the above God-definitions to himself, as existent; as real. All have experienced bliss. All experience consciousness. (We swim in consciousness as a fish swims in water. To think "I am, I think" is to experience consciousness.) And a few, less average, experience and know the inner Aum and inner jyotii through chastity and assiduous yogic effort.

One of the absurd things about atheists, especially the juvenile, amateur variety running about today -- is the fact that they usually have not even studied religion, much less looked for these things within. The word "God" refers to a great variety of ideas, like the word "philosophy" refers to a great variety of ideas and thoughts. The modern amateur atheist -- and many of the professionals -- doesn't bother to specify which definition-of-God he is rejecting. He has in his head, apparently, some concept (perhaps gained from an unimaginative Sunday school teacher back in childhood) of God -- thinking "This is what the word God means, everybody knows." Then he proceeds to state his rejection of some Mickey Mouse idea from some particular religious sect or Sunday School teacher, and feels proud of himself. For example, most atheists are not even aware that God is defined as as such things as "bliss" in old and venerable religions.

Thus it is easy to say to the atheist-idiot, "God is bliss. I experience bliss sometimes. Thus I know God exists."

Atheism is, verily, the sandbox of neurotic children angry about past irritations or offenses from "religious" people etc. The typical atheist, moreover, has never sought for God. How should one expect to find something if he never seeks for it? Especially something mysterious or transcendental? Thus modern atheists are fools, neurotic, unimaginative men, and generally completely uneducated about the subject of religion. We have no need to bother with them. They have always been around. This site is for the God-seekers. Aum.

Thus the Aryan Vedas and Upanishads teach that we come from Bliss. We come from God; God is bliss; we come from Bliss.

It is for this reason, indeed, that all human beings continually seek bliss. Bliss is our original and true nature; thus all are seeking it.

The White Europeans, in their religion, preferred to speak of "joy." But bliss -- another English word -- simply refers to joy in a more essential, rarefied aspect, as if a finer distillation of joy, that is all. "Joy" refers to an aspect of bliss, perhaps, that is more robust, emotional, and accessible in human life. Thus there are many words that are synonyms for bliss: Joy, delight, wonder, gratitude, beatitude. Notice White Europeans, in their Elegant Bhakti-Yoga that is Christianity, also liked to employ the term "glory." One can find the words "joy" and "glory" in a great many of the Christian church hymns (bhajans.) "Glory" is, in fact, an allusion to the state of blissful beatitude found in religious worship, and not just a trait attributed to God. The Christian ancestors spoke of the "glory" of God when they experienced that glory within themselves. Thus "glory" has often been one of the White European words for their own bliss, found in God-worship.

The reason Christian hymns contain the words "joy," "wonder," and "glory" is because orienting one's self to God and seeking God gives these feelings: It gives bliss. The churches were the places where our ancestors went to experience religious joy -- and bliss -- as they worshiped God.

It is inevitable that any focus on God will produce bliss in the religious person. Because, as the rishis stated in the Upanishads, God is bliss.

These two go together always. Religion is the guidebook to spiritual knowledge left by those who attained it.

I have no wish here but to save my race and put them back into the Garden states.

If one is truly interested in spirituality, he will be interested in religion. Religions form, indeed, around those who get exceptional spiritual knowledge. This is as obvious as the sun.

Those who say "I'm spiritual but not religious" are foolish or have an unnatural disassociation with their own valuable spiritual-religious heritage, the heritage of their own saints. One has to be very religious about his practices and methods for attaining God, Who is the source of all spiritual knowledge. (Just as one must be 'religious' about getting skills or accomplishment in any endeavor.) And bodies of religious knowledge are intended for that very purpose: To give God-knowledge (spiritual knowledge).

Religion is that which diminishes man's suffering and increases his joy and capacity.

When men and women get spiritual knowledge, religions crop up to benefit man and show the way to that same knowledge. Religions are the maps and signs. Spiritual knowledge is the fruit. The spiritual seeker loves the maps and signs (religions) because they bring him to the fruit.

Those who say "I'm spiritual but not religious" are simply not that serious about their spiritual interests. They want a path of no discipline and no rules, thus they attain little. They look at the apparent contradictions or the flotsam-and-jetsam aspects of religion without a penetrating eye to see the eternal verities inside of them. They take a shallow view, and thus do not really comprehend religion.

Those who embrace religious disciplines -- continence, meditation, and austerities -- are those who get spiritual knowledge and spiritual ability.

Religion is a transient externality that directs us to the imperishable internal. Exterior scriptures, edifices, and ideas are for the purpose of directing us to the internal Imperishable and helping us to become established in that. However, the externals themselves -- scriptures, histories, stories, priests, places, and edifices -- are all part of the fleeting external world-dream. They ever-change. They are also, like the rest of the false outer world-dream, are only projections of yourself. However religion, because it directs you to changeless and imperishable God within yourself, is the choicest aspect of your externalized projections.

In any case, you get the religion you deserve, the saints and gurus you deserve, and the scriptures you deserve. All world-conditions that you experience are exactly what you deserve, and what you yourself have generated for yourself -- the nature of the entertainment, the nature of the politics, the nature of the mountains and sky, and the nature of the religions. Whatever the nature of the religions or philosophies floating about in your world-dream, and whether you consider them flawed or beautiful, ignorant or wise -- these are the religions you deserve. They are an aspect of your own self-created karma.

If exterior religions are perceived by you as flawed, this is a projection of your own impurities and flaws. If external religion are perceived as irrational, that is a projection of your own confusion. If they are perceived as ignorant, again your impurities and ignorance are projecting outwardly.

If there are no real saints in your world,
you have not become pure enough, as yet,
to populate your world with them.

If an outer guru has flaws or impurities and disappointments,
this is a manifestation of your own
impurities.

Religion is the map and instruction book to God-knowledge.
God-knowledge ends all problems and removes pain and limitation.

The most effective forms of religion involve
austerities (renunciation), stilling of the mind (meditation),
the devotional attitude toward the knowable God (bhakti),
and moral self-control.

A divine guru, a beneficial teacher, and beneficial scriptures
are all aspects of your higher self and better karma,
projecting outward for your own remembrance
and guidance.

You get the religion, scriptures, and gurus that you deserve.

There are three sacred things in the world and in human life:

The creative power (sex) is the first sacred thing.

Whatever whatever gives remembrance of God and the path back to God is the second. The second includes saints, pictures of saints,monks, priests, nuns, scriptures, rosaries, churches and untouched nature.

The more cultivated, satvic souls love untouched, pristine nature because it reminds them of the untouched, pure Brahman. But they also love the churches and religious heritage because it reminds them of the blissful, knowable God with form. Whatever reminds us of God is sacred, and so is the creative power of sex.

A sacred thing is treated with reverence, with respect, and used only within rules.

The third sacred thing is your duty to your family and people.

Those who attack the sacredness of sex, or the sacredness of religious heritage and God-reminding symbols, or the sacredness of our duty to family and people -- attack the people and their prosperity.

This comes easily for a man or woman who had a mother who loved them. So the mother is the first introducer of religious knowledge, an emanation of divine consciousness which teaches the baby and child to have faith in good things. This is the first religious knowledge of all human beings.

Faith also grows by meditating on good experiences and boons already received, and expanding them.

Faith also is born through simply analyzing one's sleep experience each night.

Faith is instinctive knowledge. Faith is a subconscious instinct for more and higher good sufficient to inspire search for more good. Faith is the hypothesis, theory or proposition (as any scientist begins with) that a thing is possible, with sufficient weight to at least test the theory. This is the starting level of religious knowledge, which is really the instinct to uncover and prove out one's own instinctively felt Good.

The Upanishads have simple and direct answers to atheists who vex themselves over a faith problem, or the problem that they must reject the possibility of any thing they they've not already experienced. (That latter stance obviously being an emotional fixation and irrational.) One is here:

"That Self is (first to be realized as existing, and (then) as It really is. Of these two (aspects), the real nature of the Self that has been known as merely existing, becomes favourably disposed (for self-revelation)."

The verse is saying that in order to experience God you must first entertain, mentally, the possibility that It may exist. Why should the Deity reveal himself to you if you can't even entertain the possibility of His existence? God doesn't need to convince you He exists. First open the door of faith or your instinctive knowledge. First open to the possibility. That is a law of the mind. The same verse is translated this way by Muller:

By the words 'He is,' is he to be apprehended, and by (admitting) the reality of both (the invisible Brahman and the visible world, a coming from Brahman). When he has been apprehended by the words "He is," then his reality reveals itself."

It's His nature not to force Himself upon anyone, or to force a fellow to have knowledge he is not receptive to. He allows us to entertain our own notions, and experience them, and live in whatever limitations we conjure. Why should a transcendental king be in some huff or hurry to convince the millions of stones, fools or dark minds that He passes that He exists? There are as many dark, small beings in the various worlds as there are stones and grains of sand. He would rather show Himself to the one who is seeking to, at least, entertain His existence.

The highest form of religious knowledge is bliss, and the various grades of bliss and joy. This bliss is from the Lord, who is blissful both in his formless state and his state with form as inner Aum, inner light, inner bliss, and various visionary conceptions. Bliss is one of the evidences of God, and one of the ways that He first shows His existence to the man or woman of faith. The bliss that is religious knowledge, and the religious knowledge that is bliss, fulfills man and woman. It also heals the body and mind and gives prosperity to the life. This is religious knowledge. Much of it is found in the European Christian heritage and the Aryan Yogic heritage.

We literally experience God's bliss nature nightly in the state of deep dreamless sleep and in the intermediate state of visionary dreams. According to the Upanishads, root of Christianity, this is the bliss of God or Brahman. The sage Ramana Maharshi stated that we are attracted to bliss because our true nature is bliss. All human beings seek bliss. All the various things they seek are really an attempt to regain bliss. The only difference in human beings is their notions and ideas about where it can be found; their strategies for reconnecting to bliss. Some strategies are destructive and relatively fruitless. Connecting to our own innate bliss via religious practices and knowledge is the wise path to regaining our own natural divine bliss. When the Bible refers to "the peace that passeth understanding" it really meant to say "the bliss that passeth understanding." That is, just as in deep dreamless sleep and dreams, it arises spontaneously from within ourselves with no external cause or support. It is the purpose of religion and religious culture to help men and women cultivate contact with that causeless bliss. This cultivation can be done in the Christian worship services and mass, and this cultivation of innate bliss was the attainment of many of the Christian saints.

The ancient Aryan Vedas state that God is bliss, and that the creation arises from that bliss of Brahman. We see a nightly demonstration of our blissful dreams arising from the more keenly pitched bliss of the state of dreamless sleep.

All seek heaven continually here. True heaven is to be known and gained here, now. If it does not become a permanent attainment here, it will not be a permanent attainment there. This world is the anvil upon which the obstructions between our minds and heaven can be hammered out.

Heaven is blissful, and bliss is heaven. Christ said "The kingdom of heaven is within you," and the Vedas teach that God's divine bliss and all-knowledge, synonymous with the Kingdom of Heaven, is also within. The purpose of religious rules and techniques is to help men and women become established in the inner kingdom of heaven here-now. In a practical sense, the religious devotee learns to be in contact with the blissful state of dreams and deep dreamless sleep, and that all-sufficiency and fearlessness, while here awake. Meditation practices (concentrated prayer) and worship practices (bhakti, such as devotional singing) are designed to effect that attainment of merging the blissful state of dreamless sleep with a conscious waking state. This is the attainment of the yogi and the Christian saint. They attain heaven here-now.

The second form of religious knowledge is the teaching of chastity that gives prosperity to the mind and life and brings a cessation of disturbance to the outer garden. When this knowledge is lost, religious knowledge dies, religions die, and man's prosperity dies. When this knowledge is regained, prosperity and happiness come back to man and woman. This is religious knowledge. This is religious knowledge. Much of it is found in the European Christian heritage and the Aryan Yogic heritage.

To the European peoples and their saints and the Aryan yogis, there are three sacred things: These are 1) The creative power (sex), and 2) That which gives remembrance God. The third is loyalty, duty, and service to one's family and people. By practicing brahmacharya a man sets his foot back on the path of sacredness, becomes fit for the other two, and gets spiritual knowledge plus worldly strength and protection for himself and his people. All is lost, for himself and his people, without his brahmarcharya. The Upanishads say:

This is true for both the king and the average man and his own world-kingdom. This is because the kingdom of every man is nothing but a projection or emanation from his own body, to its depths. Incontinence is the strip-mining of virtue and good from the body, which immediately manifests in the outer kingdom as evil, disturbance, invasion, corruption, and loss. Only sex with the wife, with procreation at heart, legitimizes the male sexual loss. This is religious and spiritual knowledge, the knowledge of the Christian European saints and the Aryan yogis.

Religious knowledge includes a number of moral laws and principles that establish social order, justice, and prosperity among men. This is religious knowledge. This is religious knowledge. Much of it is found in the European Christian heritage and the Aryan Yogic heritage.

Religious knowledge includes understanding of the true nature of the outer world-phenomenon, how it arises as body-based conditioning mixed with impurities and purity. This is religious knowledge. This is religious knowledge. Some of it is found in the European Christian heritage and the Aryan Yogic heritage. Religious knowledge brings the highest order of mundane knowledge, that is, all lower forms of material knowledge and insight associated with science. It is, indeed, the pure inspiration of the sat-chit-ananda that allows men to uncover secrets of nature. However, the men with the highest religious knowledge will not be obsessed with manipulating nature via egoic, desire-motivated manipulations. The knowledge of the mundane is an inferior form of knowledge that is illumined and enabled by religious knowledge, but which should be guided by understanding of the true nature of the outer world. The very power to know any outer thing is given by the light of Brahman behind the mind of a man. It is Brahman that illuminates outer knowledge. And this understanding is religious knowledge. Cultivation of that understanding brings a surfeit of outer mundane knowledge should a man desire it. (Love-of-God favors penetration of nature without harm.)

As religious knowledge grows, one feels a little bit of devotion. As devotion grows, his religious experience (bliss, protection, knowledge) also grows. Music, God-directed, cultivates higher devotion. The states of worship, and adoration are the highest human states. If you analyze the preoccupations and obsessions of all human beings, they are all seeking to get into these states by various means, even if for moments. The Sanskrit word upasana means "meditation practice" and also "adoration."

The Sanskrit word for devotion is bhakti and one who cultivates it is a bhakta.Christian saints were bhaktas. The attitude of devotion is the most fertile and fruitful field for the blooming of the flowers and fruit of meditation (described later). Felt devotion is the 2nd level of religious knowledge, and powerfully effective for spiritual knowledge. Devotion is, itself, spiritual knowledge.

Religious knowledge includes the subject of sex. In fact, it is only in religious knowledge that beneficial understanding about sex is found.
Aside from knowledge of the art of loving God or bhakti-yoga, sex is the second most important human subject.

This is because the world of materiality is run through with the sex impulse. The sexual impulse, along with Pure Consciousness, runs through everything in the material cosmos.

We incarnate and get bodies through the sexual impulse. This begins as our astral spirits are attracted to our karmically resonant parents as they procreate. We become able to enter into them only through their sexual act.
That higher astral plane where we come from before incarnating is itself an atmosphere of sexual energy.

Our bodies are then formed through the power of our parents' sexual union. In the sexual orgasm, men and women touch the bliss consciousness of Brahman momentarily. This is why sexual acts then become so addicting. Because the sexual experience is so blissful and a little spark of God, for the majority of men and women the experience of human love, sex, and finally orgasm becomes their de facto god.

But giving in to that desire without restraint is destructive. When we are children are bliss nature is spread throughout our bodies and lofting in our upper regions, in our minds. Children have their bliss more available. But then as we mature it descends and collects. The bliss once spread through our bodies and available to our minds as children collects in the lower areas. Then finally we access it again through the sexual act, discharge, and releases. But to choose to get our joy primarily from this has destructive consequences. It should be allowed for procreation in marriage, but then the man and woman should work to lift their energy and regain their steady bliss nature again.

For the male his sexual energy is the stuff of his consciousness and inner ground. The breakup of his inner ground manifests increasing duality in his outer world-movie, and disturbance to both personal and world conditions. This is the expulsion from the garden, continuing today. The female, too, manifests suffering through breakup of her inner ground as well as sympathetic world-destruction via the male, to whom she is metaphysically attuned. It is the role of religious knowledge to help men and women make sex their friend and not their destructive enemy.

Sex has even more astounding significance because it's proper handling is the secret to enlightenment and transcendental knowledge. The sanctified sexual energy, after a man and woman have created their family, becomes the road and ladder in this world to divine knowledge later, and siddhis. (Powers of mind.) By chastity, men and women learn how to stabilize themselves in conscious bliss instead of stealing brief moments that leave the male vitiated and the exterior world-dream tragically disturbed. By continence they also become able to transmit divine bliss and knowledge to others. The message of the Garden of Eden story in the Book of Genesis is that improper use of the sexual impulse disturbs the inner ojas and inner ground, basis of the world-garden. We eject ourselves from higher ideal world conditions via improper and unsacred use of sex, or sexual sin.

So again, aside from divine knowledge, sex is the second critically important human subject and it is to religious knowledge that we must resort to have proper understanding.

Because sex is so central to all of life, our handling of it has huge consequences for good or ill. Like any great power, it has the power for good or evil, according to the approach taken with it. Electricity channeled to intelligent places in intelligent ways gives man great benefit. Electricity out of its channels causes harm. The sun's light and power can either be beneficial or harmful. Water channeled through an irrigation system can give great bounty and well-being. Water running everywhere it shouldn't causes human damage. Gasoline in an engine, channeled through it's parts, can become a great constructive power. Gasoline spilled on the ground, or in places it shouldn't be, becomes poison. Sex is this way. Ignorant use of it makes it destructive; intelligent and dharmic approaches make it beneficial.

Religions that don't give clear and compelling guidance about sex are inadequate for humanity and for the White Europeans. In an atmosphere in which knowledge of sex is no longer clearly presented, in which the subject becomes merely "taboo" or uncomfortable, ignorant forces move in to become the "teachers" of sex.

The truth is that only a people's sages, priests, saints and moral teachers should teach a people about sex. Commercialists, pornographers, prostitutes, and pimps should not be the ones who teach a people about sex, much less perverts. This is the bizarre, diseased situation presently in the White European nations: Commercialists, pimps, pornographers, prostitutes, and perverts acting as the sexual instructors to the young White generation for material gain, as exploiters. Thus the destruction of the European peoples from this. Commercialists, pornographers, and perverts who undertake to teach our youth about sex, immediately corrupting them and misdirecting their life force, should be restrained and thoroughly rebuked.

A people's sages, priests, and moralists are the proper people to teach a people about this most important subject. Secondarily the parents and older family members as, in parents' own natural instinctive way as they raise their children, guided by the teachings of their priests and sages. Not pornographers, not the communist state, not the "public" schools, not homosexual activists. Sex has too much power for good, and too much power for destruction, to be left in the hands of the corrupt or the evil. No intelligent people will allow such elements to teach their youth about sex.

In fact, proper knowledge about sex is the province of religion, not pornographers. A vital and proper religion will give all necessary understanding about sex, such as to make sex a proper boon instead of a destructive and confusing power. If Christian churches do not give clear understanding about sex to the generations of youth coming up, including the connection of morality to the religious life of devotion and spiritual bliss of their priests, nuns, and saints, the church is failing them.

The sages of Aryan Vedanta considered sex to have two proper purposes: Procreation in marriage with wife, and sublimation (sacrifice) for divine knowledge and prosperity. It can either grow the prosperous family or it can grow divine knowledge and the flowers of a people's well being. All other channels and "uses" for sex are destructive to the people and ignorant.
The basic reason that sex is so central to everything -- animates our daily motivations and even runs through our dreams at night -- is that the God who made us, called Saguna Brahman in Aryan yoga -- is a sexual being. We can easily see this from His riotous and expansive material creation. We get our sexual feeling and potential from Him, the Lord. He made our male and female bodies like him in His male and female personas. Yogis and mystics find that in spiritual rapture, meditation, and samadhi that The Lord seeks to be their penetrator; he ever seeks full intercourse with His creation. Just as the union of the human male and female is productive of joy, substance and vitality (in the form of a child), the Lord's spiritual union with his devotees produces it's own fruit. Through that penetration of the devotee by the sat-chit-ananda of the Lord, fruitfullnes of bliss, divine knowledge, human knowledge, and new garden grounds are created for himself and others. However, only continence, which requires the renunciation of lust,makes the yogi or saint a worthy match to the Lord and able to learn these religious secrets.

When aspiring men restrain, direct, channel, and sublimate their sexual feeling they are actually taking hold of the energies of the Lord, as if wrestling with Him or trying to hold Him, or catch Him. Like wives are matches for their husbands, the religious aspirant full of the creative power and expanded consciousness becomes a worthy "mate" to the Divine Consciousness, to be penetrated by Him in mind and soul and attain divine knowledge.

As men and women become chaste, they then get on the platform of Brahman (Nirguna Brahman), or the unmanifest God. In a certain sense, the celibate yogi has conquered the manifest God. Yet Isvara Himself is the highest yogi, in the highest state of chastity while also being the most potent of all male beings (capable of creating endless universes). When men become chaste they get power to truly interact with The Lord, plus the point-of-view of the unmanifest Brahman, which has purview over the manifest. Thus chastity in the Aryan Vedas is called brahmacharya.

Chastity in men is the foundation for personal and intimate knowledge of the Creator Lord, plus the rise of insight and divine knowledge, plus the key to cultural regeneration. Chastity in sages is the source of beneficial religion that protects peoples and gives them prosperity, including the prosperity of happy families and a healthy birthrate. God blesses the moral people who treats sex -- the second most important thing in the world -- as sacred. Our White European grandfathers and mothers had both conscious and tacit knowledge about the sacredness of sex, kept it in sacred channels, thus the Lord protected and prospered them and even gave them new lands from their own undisturbed inner ground.

So, when men and women become regenerate and enlightened, they wish to use sex and experience sex in a religious way. They wish to experience it in a holistic way -- connected to all creation and all truth -- not in a disconnected, unconscious, or random way.
Sex is one of the three sacred things along with religious path markers and service to your people.

Chastity is, in fact, the highest form of sexual knowledge. As religious knowledge grows deeper, the aspirant understands the significance of moral purity and chastity, i.e. reserving sex as the seal on marriage and the power of procreation. Such chastity increases his religious experience (bliss, knowledge) which further grows his or her devotion. It also prepares them for fruitful meditation. Chastity is the third level of religious knowledge. It is easy to find the instructions regarding chastity in the Yogic scriptures. They also exist in the Christian scripture, though less clear in the text.

"The bright and pure Self within the body, that the monks with (habitual effort and) attenuated blemishes see, is attainable through truth, concentration, complete knowledge, and continence, practiced constantly."

"This Atman, resplendent and pure, whom the sinless sannyasins behold residing within the body, is attained by unceasing practice of truthfulness, austerity, right knowledge, and continence."

"This Soul (Atman) is obtainable by truth, by austerity (tapas), by proper knowledge (jnana), by the student's life of chastity (brahmacharya) constantly [practiced]. Within the body, consisting of light, pure is He Whom the ascetics (yati), with imperfections done away, behold."

"This self within the body, of the nature of light and pure, is attainable by truth, by austerity, by right knowledge, by the constant (practice) of chastity. Him, the ascetics with their imperfections done away, behold."

"By truth can this self be grasped -- by austerity, by right knowledge, and by a perpetually chaste life. It lies within the body, brilliant and full of light, which ascetics perceive, when their faults are wiped out."

"The Self is found by veracity, purity, intelligence, continence. The ascetic, so purged, discovers His burning light in the heart."

Given that sexual desire periodically arises in Isvara, Shiva, and saintly men and women the regenerate people learn to apply and use sexual energy in a religious way. The person with spiritual knowledge will use sex -- the most sacred thing on earth beside God tokens and duty -- in a religious manner.

The first religious use of sex is to channel it towards a holistic result, which is marriage, procreation, then various forms of spiritual sublimation. This means that sex is directed into the channels of courtship, marriage, childbirth and family creation which is Nature's purpose for sex. In the same way that a farmer keeps his irrigation in good repair, fixing leaks and making sure the water reaches the plants, a regenerate culture will create social systems in which sexual energy reaches its holistic goal and produces it's natural fruit. This is the first religious use of sex.

The second religious use of sex is to think of God before, during, and after -- offering up all its pleasure to the Lord in the same way the White Europeans have done with food and the pleasure of food. Thus in sex, the religious and regenerate person will connect it all to God, in mind, and not have it all to him or herself. That very sexual impulse is of the Lord, belongs to Him, and creates His profligate cosmos. In marriage this mindfulness brings sacredness to sex and greatly mitigates the damage it otherwise effects in the exterior world-dream. So, a spiritual couple (a religious couple) will think of God before, during, and after sexual experience just as they will think of God before, during, and after enjoying food. This is an aspect of Dharma that has been missing from religious teachings, including Christianity and all the other religious cultures. Restoring it will raise up the people.

The third religious use of sex is by containing it and sublimating it towards energy, accomplishment, family and personal prosperity, and then finally worship, meditation, and samadhi itself. A contained energy has the most power. The sexual energy within man and woman is part of what creates vision and outward manifestations of beauty in the world, just as the sap in trees is what creates flowers and fruit that seen externally. The sexual energy is like the winds that raise up visions before the mind. Thus it gives prayer greater power, and God-worship greater power. In the third religious use of sex, a husband and wife's sexual energy (or that of the single person) is directed Godward, and all the best visualizations of the mind, floated and wafted on those winds, are also offered to God in bhakti and bliss-prayer. The sublimated sexual energy is used to form vision and lift of vision and prayer to God.

Meditation is seeking to know the transcendental God. As meditation ripens, one comes to know God as both Saguna and Nirguna Brahman. The first knowledge of God, coming through meditation, is God's bliss. Then upon coming to know God, one develops real love for God and fulfills the "greatest law" spoken by Jesus. One can only love something that one knows. Thus meditation, in various forms, is the central path of Christianity and also the yoga of the Upanishads.

When Christians sing a religious song in church and feel joy in it, or delight, or rapture, or a lift of spirits -- this is in fact meditation and bhakti-yoga. Other forms of meditation are more disciplined yet that devotional singing is one of the highest kinds of meditation, should you give yourself to it.
The fertile field: If one has been developing faith since childhood, he is already on a firmer footing for meditation. A sense of expectancy and anticipation of greater good is highly conducive to meditation fruit. One purpose of conventional religion and church is to develop the faculty for faith so that aspirants may have the highest inner experience of God, later in meditation.

Also, if one has cultivated even a little attitude of devotion for God, whether in the form of a name, an historical personage, a guru past or present -- he/she is also in the best posture to begin meditation. The light and emotion of the inner God is emotional and devotional. When something becomes wet, it bonds easily with wetness. Water merges easily with water. When one is emotional and devotional toward God, he and she contact God easily.

Then meditation is the master key to the religious knowledge that is bliss, protection, and influence. It gradually gives all knowledge, all resolutions, all protection, and all powers.

Meditation is touched briefly here. It will be explained more in the later section on Yoga/Austerities, as part of commentaries on the Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali.

Bliss often dawns already with simple faith. It may have already dawned in childhood kneeling in church and doing the Christian devotional mudra, the anjoli mudra. It will have been felt in currents whenever feeling the attitude of devotion for God. But bliss increases by commencing meditation. This is bliss from the inner God, not based on any outer causes or conditions. Getting humans back into contact with their own innate soul-bliss is the purpose of religion, including Christian religion.

Bliss is the fifth level of religious knowledge, but can dawn early and at any time for the religious (spiritual) person.

Austerities are a spiritual technique for God-knowledge. The austerities imperative is found in Vedanta, Yoga, Christianity, and also the mysticism of indigenous peoples all over the globe.

Austerities are a sure method by which we can hammer out the difference between sense perception and divine perception. Austerities break the addiction and distraction of the sense and sense perception, thus allowing us to get a handle on the subtle Ineffable within. The yogis of India and the Christians, alike, practiced austerities for divine perception. Austerities are specified explicitly in the Vedic and Yogic scriptures.

Jesus Christ was clearly a practitioner of austerities that at least included fasting and solitude, and quite likely a practitioner of others, including meditation. His "eye be single" statement regards the meditation technique of the yoni mudra. Meditation itself is an austerity and the king of austerities because in meditation mind itself, the very enjoyer of sense perceptions, in renounced. In austerities we disengage with a lesser thing so that we can perceive a higher and better thing. We disengage with the gross to register the subtle; disengage with the dualistic to perceive the non-dual, and disengage with the tamasic to perceive the satvic. We also disengage with the creation to perceive the Creator, with austerities.

The Upanishads and scriptures such as Sankara's Quintessence of Vedanta are laden with specifications to practice austerities. The Yoga-Sutra states that the very first "action of yoga" is austerities. This is not because austerities are "preliminary" in yoga, but rather, they are of first importance. The Sanskrit word for austerities is tapas which refers to burning. In austerities we burn away sense attachment and burn away karma and impurities, stored in the body, that stand between us and divine knowledge. The following is the first verse in the chapter of the Yoga-Sutra that deals with the practice of yoga, by an Indian acharya:

"Tapas (Austerity Or Sturdy Self-Discipline -- Mental, Moral And Physical), Svadhyaya (Repetition Of Sacred Mantras Or Study Of Sacred Literature) And Isvara-Pranidhana (Complete Surrender To God) Are Kriya-Yoga (Yoga In The Form Of Action).

Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, Verse 2:1 of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, Translation and commentary by Swami Hariharananda Aranya

"Tapas, self-study, devotion to the Lord, are the yoga of action."

"Sankara on the Yoga Sutras," Verse 2:1, Translation by Trevor Leggett

"Devotion to the Lord" is the most common way that Isvara-Pranidhana is translated. Thus devotion to the Lord is indeed the second basic yogic activity.

The entire Yoga-Sutra, in practical terms, deals with meditation, the techniques of meditation, and the results of meditation on the Lord. This is because the goal of yoga -- interaction with and union with the Lord -- requires meditation. Moreover, because meditation is the most effective of all austerities. Thus the main subject matter of the Yoga-Sutra is meditation.
Yoga is actually a religion and the essence of religion, and is an address to the mind, not the body. Jesus Christ was a yogi and had mastered yoga. (Thus it is that an entire chapter of the Yoga-Sutra is devoted to miracles or esoteric powers like those performed by Jesus Christ.) The mind is the source of the body; the body is not the source of the mind. Thus mastery of the mind gives mastery of the body.

Now, understanding of the term "yoga" has been distorted and dumbed-down in the west recently.There is only one verse in the Yoga-Sutra that concerns the body per se, and that instructs that the spine should be erect and settled when practicing yoga (meditation). Some ancient Indian commentators use that verse to comment that a yogic posture is "mastered" when it can be held perfectly for three hours. To do this is very difficult, and it is in fact a very painful austerity. Out of Buddha's attempt to do that came his vipassana technique of meditation which purifies.

Body postures are a sub-specialty of yoga that developed as the result of shaktipat (baptism). Second, yogic postures are themselves intended as an austerity.This is natural to understand considering that austerity itself is a central yogic technique and indeed the first and basic technique. Thirdly, the postures were intended as a technique for enhancing meditation, including sitting for long sits. Tellingly, the yogic postures arise spontaneously in religious people who practice chastity, chanting or meditation, with an attitude of bhakti towards the sat-guru or the Lord (Isvara pranidhana). These spontaneously bodily asanas and mudras were in fact where the yogic postures were first found out! It is the Lord descending and dancing in the devotee. In yoga these are called yogic kriyas. In Christianity these are called variously such as "gifts of the spirit."

Both yoga and Christian culture have valued austerities. Because Christianity actually came from the Aryan Vedanta and Yoga, this is natural. Christian monastics have long practiced the austerities of celibacy (brahmacharya) solitude, chanting-meditation (prayer repetition or japa), fasting, and detached service (karma-yoga). In other words, yogic austerities of the genuine yoga have long permeated Christian monastic culture for 20 centuries, trickling down to the people, also, as ideals such as the Good Friday token fast and the all-important chastity ideals for the laity which created social order, strong families, a birthrate, and prosperity.

Christians have long practiced svadhyaya in their churches services in the form of religious singing. (Bhajans) This is a joyful kind of "austerity." It both concentrates the mind and stimulates feelings of bhakti. (Religious devotion.) But this will be discussed elsewhere.

Austerities for White Europeans who wish to enter the divine life should be:
-- Effort at chastity
-- Solitary times
-- Fasting at least one Sunday a month, then increasing to 3-day fasts
-- Out-loud repetition of prayer or sacred words (svadhyaya, mantra)
-- Quiet repetition of same (japa)
-- Times of silence, especially Sundays.

Every one of these six above have been a part of the Vedic and yogic culture of Sankaracharya, plus the European Christian monastic culture as well.

In summary: Austerities are central to both yoga and the European Christian tradition. Love your spiritual and religious heritage.

Siddhis are spiritual powers, including the ones listed in the Yoga-Sutra, which are similar or the same as the ones manifested by Jesus Christ and other saints. All devotees of God get siddhis in varying degrees. When you get close to the Power behind manifestation, you naturally take on Its nature, so this is inevitable. The ability to get prayers answered is a concept of siddhis common to the spiritual heritage of Christianity. As a man and woman deepen their meditation their experience of divine miracles will naturally increase.

Esoteric spiritual powers (siddhis) are a 6th level of religious knowledge. It is best to let them come or go on their own. But it is also natural to seek them in the quest to help the world, better one's condition, or favor loved ones. Any time a person prays to God for a boon or help, he is calling on
esoteric spiritual power. The mastery of siddhis are inherent to both the yogic and the Christian life, and a by-product of God-meditation. They are a sixth level of religious knowledge.

In the great bhakti-yoga of Christianity it is acceptable to seek and anticipate the use of siddhis. Siddhis start in small ways, and most people, even those not God-seekers of the moment, experience them at some time. When one has pre-cognition of an event, reads the thoughts of another, causes a particular thing to happen, or gets an intense wish soon fulfilled -- all of these are siddhis many have experienced. As noted elsewhere, the entire world and its phenomena are a manifestation of the siddhi power of the Lord and we, made of his essence, have this same power. Siddhi is the harnessing by the individual of the Lord's power of concentration, creativity, and grace.

The sat guru of the White Europeans, Jesus Christ, freely expressed siddhis as listed in the Yoga-Sutra. Related to this, the reason being He became a yogi (religious God-seeker and spiritual knower) in India during His missing years. This is obvious and apparent from His saddhu lifestyle, his siddhis themselves, and many features of His teachings which comport with Indian bhakti-yoga.

Christ stated to his disciples that they would do the same miraculous things, and by implication, indicated that this was not only acceptable but proper. This is because that Yogi was an incarnation of Saguna Brahman, the knowable God with attributes. That is to say,in yogic terms, that he was a manifestation of the original Person Isvara. God-with-form, the knowable God with attributes, loves His creation. Because the knowable Lord, Isvara, is full of potencies and shaktis, it is inevitable that his devotees -- his sons and daughters -- come into those same potencies, even though they do not seek them.

Whenever anybody, whether in the Christian tradition or some other, prays for some goal or desire in the domain of the world, he or she is pursuing siddhi power. He may see himself as intending it in his own right or through intercession of the Lord. Those who have love for anybody in the world will naturally pray for them, trying to assist or improve them in mind, just as the Lord does. Thus anybody who prays, or employs the mind for any effect is seeking siddhi power. Modern "spiritual" movements are full of the ideas of "manifesting," "positive thinking," affirmations, and creating by the power of their own minds. This is, indeed, the pursuit of siddhi power and nothing else.

The one who best loves the Lord and seeks the Lord becomes the master of siddhis. This is inevitable because the divine son or daughter must inevitably become like the Divine Father or Mother. Whatever we consort with, become intimate with, and love -- we become like That. This is a natural law and is unavoidable. The father loves to see his sons coming into his own abilities, his own nature, and his own powers. All father takes great delight in this, it is the father's fulfillment. That power of our own minds is sourced from the power of Brahman alone.

The very highest approach to siddhis is to love the Lord and to let It do what It wills. The highest approach, moreover, is to recognize that all vision originates in the Lord. If you have a beautiful vision it is handed down into your mind from the Pure Consciousness, Nirguna Brahman. Your ego did not create it. Modern "new age" mavens love to be thieves and leave out the Lord when they speak of"manifesting" and put their students through visualizations for the acquisition of desired objects or experiences. They encourage them to try for vision without understanding or acknowledging the Source of that vision. To a knower this is an embarrassing and somewhat ugly sight.

For any time you have had a great or luminous vision -- say the world in a pristine state before depredations, another untouched world, a sacred grove showering light,exalted human love, or a human community in a state of rarefied happiness -- whatever it is that was a vision you did not have before and your ego did not create it. It was a gift of your Atman, the Lord. The vision may have elements from your past or conditioning. But those original impression were themselves originally sourced from the Lord. Plus,the highest visions also contain the new and the ineffable. Recognize that all such vision is from the Lord, the Pure Consciousness. This is that same Pure Consciousness you merge with nightly in deep, dreamless sleep, and then which tosses down more dualistic but luminous and blissful visions and experiences in the realm of dreaming sleep. (All human beings experience Isvara-God nightly in the dream state and Brahman in the state of deep, dreamless sleep, covered by a thin layer of nescience. This is the teaching of the Aryan Vedanta.)

These visions come down to you, are given to you, by Atman which is beyond your conditioning or prior experience, are not the creations of the dense, piffling, brutish, and niggardly little ego. The ego merely eats and enjoys the vision-fruit of the Atman, tries to learn of grace from It, and receives faint impressions (memories) of these visions. To acknowledge Brahman as the real source of all the Visions which you seek to "manifest" by mental techniques is to place yourself on the best platform for developing siddhis. Those who do not acknowledge and celebrate God as the very source of the visions they love to entertain are errant children in the realm of mental power, prayer, positive-thinking, and siddhis.

We can see practical proof of this here: Those who make lists and visualizations, trying to manifest goals and thoughts, often succeed. And it is often true that the thing they receive is higher, better, and greater than what they had originally conceived of. That thing they finally see unfold usually has elements that are more abundant, more beautiful, and wiser, than the thing they had originally proferred to themselves. This is because God is a better dreamer than you, and God (Pure Consciousness) is the real Master of Vision.

All prayer-seekers have had this experience. Now, to drive it home, let us imagine ourselves in some dark void before the Creator Created worlds. But let us imagine that Adam and Eve were created, with no Garden as yet. Let us say that the Creator approaches them and says this:

"Hello Adam, Hello Eve. I am thinking of creating some place for you to live. I have a working name for it, "the Garden." I am not sure what to put there, or what it should be like. I want it to please you. Here, I want you two to make a list of features that you would like in a Garden World. Start writing, and tell me all your ideas."

We can easily expect that Adam and Eve, having to make this "wish list" of items they'd like in their garden, would come up with a paltry list. It would be a silly, limited list compared to what the Lord actually created for them. They would likely not even conceive of most of the astounding things that He placed there. Never mind the rarefied moments and graceful combinations of factors at dawn and sunset, the various creatures, the feeling after one rain, then another, etc. They would have come up with a woefully uncreative and limited list compared to what the Lord created with the pristine Garden.
In the same way, the ideas-of-good and blessing that our mean little egos cobble together by conscious will are always less than what the Lord is able to give, and wants to give. The same is always true for those who endeavor to write lists of desired blessings at any time. The Lord always has better Vision than yourself. So, love the Lord.

The sad flaw of modern "manifesting" mavens and "affirmations" teachers is that they love to leave out the Lord. They teach others to use their vision and try to greedily steal future passing experiences from it. Truly, they often do not recognize or acknowledge the One who is the very source of that vision. Or they may teach their students to seek connection to That, but again without acknowledging That much less thanking or loving That. They want to be a-religious men and not speak of the Lord, whether as Brahman, Isvara, God, or anything else. What deniers, what disloyal sons of the Creator, what craven and minuscule men. Wresting vision for yourself for manifesting this experience, or that object, without acknowledging the Source of Vision is mere banditry. And He requires so little acknowledgment to be responsive beyond their paltry visions. These people who will not acknowledge the Lord because of neurosis or religious confusion (spiritual confusion), will always get less, in terms of siddhis and manifestation of vision, than the lovers of God.

Truly the real knowledge of manifesting, positive-thinking, and getting fruit from affirmations comes from religion and nowhere else. It is simply denial or neurosis not to see this. But in religion we get the true and splendid knowledge of this subject, not the knowledge of mere metaphysicians, program presenters, book writers, or thieves. It was the God-loving saints who were the true experts in these subjects. All else is borrowed from them.

Now, because the Lord always comes up with something better than you cobbled together, the highest approach to prayer and siddhi is to simply get out of the way. Be in bliss, engage in interaction with the potent and fertile Lord, let the Lord do His and Her thing, be a receiver, follow His lead, then delightedly celebrate it with thanks. (That state of gratitude and celebration itself is a higher and more providential state than the state of seeing the manifested wish, to the wise.) In like manner some of the miracles that occurred in the presence of Jesus Christ (sat-guru of the White Europeans) happened spontaneously without His conscious will, as the play of God.

Meanwhile since we have minds like the Creator God (Isvara, in yoga), and we have will, and we have desires and even attachments like that creator God, we find ourselves on average days desiring to use our minds consciously to manifest wishes and make effective prayers for our loved ones and the world. In the great bhakti-yoga of the White Europeans, Christianity, this involvement in dualism is acceptable because their founder, Christ was an expression of the emotional, desiring God which is Saguna Brahman, or Isvara. He desires even more than we; he has more emotion than we; He prays even more than we can conceive of. He and his rishis (sages) and saints continually pray for us. He creates us and the worlds by His own concentration (tapas) and siddhi power. How can we not be like Him? Especially, how can we not fall in love with that all-potent and all-charming Father-of-ourselves, ever unique yet found to be more familiar than any other, and not become like Him? It is as absurd to refuse to employ siddhi power (prayer effort) as it would be to refuse to pick up your crying baby when it cries to be picked up.

With meditation on God understanding of the metaphysics and methods of siddhis spontaneously arises. It is inevitable for God-lovers. The religious issue becomes, always: What do you love more? God Himself (Bliss, Consciousness) or a passing manifestation in the transient world? The wise will become preoccupied with the Lord rather than preoccupied with siddhis. However, there is no real need to worry about this problem for those who are taught religion aright. When a man or woman encounters the sat-chit-ananda of God (pure being, consciousness, and bliss) they end up naturally preferring the Lord to passing manifestations of powers in the realm of duality.

Thus the fear and condemnation of siddhis often found in the yogic literature of India, such as even in the statements of Ramakrisna, is often overblown. Naysayers and "teachers pets" will poo-poo it and tell you they are "dangerous" etc. But when the Lord is once touched, fear dies. Why should the devotee say "I will never pray for anything but God knowledge." It is a good attitude starting out. But meanwhile he finds an ignorant, suffering, deluded world full of people needing help. Why should he not use prayer (siddhi) to help them, which is a better means, for the knower, than any other? A parent naturally tries to benefit and protect his children. That father or mother naturally ends up using prayer and siddhi power to do so. Do you think that the Divine Lord, our original father or God-in-the-form-of-Mother is not also praying for us too? And using her siddhi power to protect and benefit us? She is doing so at all times, just like a good mother here on earth. Then why would we not do the same at times?

Don't let unimaginative or fearful people, or those who merely want to ride herd over you without qualifications, to make you afraid of the power of your own God-given and devotion-steeped mind. They are simply fools who don't know what you know.

In the Bhagavad-Gita Krsna says that three types of men seek God, and that all find God. One of the three types is "the seeker of a treasure" or the one with a wish. The reason that type finds God is that he must go to God in order to get his wish fulfilled. He may come to God for an ulterior purpose, but then that contact changes him. He finds that God is, in fact, greater than his first goal. He comes to fall in love with God, gradually preferring Him over fulfillment of transient wishes (and their transient thrills) in the realm of phenomena. It is like coming to the king and his castle to get some little thing you thought was big, then finding out that hanging around with the king is way more interesting than that original little thing you wanted.

Thus there is no ultimate danger from siddhis for the person who approaches God for them. A second sort who finds God, in the verse, is the "man of suffering." He goes to God to help with his pain and trouble. The highest and best is the "man of vision" who knows that "God is all" and only wants God for Himself. Krsna says that this is his favorite, but the two other types evolve into this same type and become lovers of God through contact. So there is no fear in seeking worldly desires or prayer fulfillment, if one approaches God for them in any way. The Mother knows what to do with her sons and daughters, no matter their wish.

In the Yoga-Sutra a whole chapter is devoted to siddhis and explaining, very tersely, the technical means to them. If the path of God-knowledge did not include natural mastery of siddhis, this chapter would not exist. The Sutra would be absurd for listing so many of them and giving so much information about them if the knowledge was never to be used.

Note: The Sutra apparently does not convey that many of the mental techniques described are the happenstance fancies of particular sages at particular times. That is, they are not necessarily universal laws, but the techniques are often particular mental constructions of particular sages in the past. For example, making one's self light such as to levitate may be done by identifying perfectly with light substances such as features, clouds, or cotton down. This simply records some of the methods of mind uncovered by particular sages at particular times. A yogi could make himself float through the air just as well by mastery of some other thought-creation, such as identifying himself with some other thing. Yogic siddhis are, in fact, original creations of mind by the enactor. The "techniques" or "methods" used to effect them are, in fact, personal in the yogi and ever-creative in nature. The mind can be employed in a myriad ways to create a myriad of effects using a myriad of mental devices. The limits are only in one's own conditioning and the strengths and efficacies, relative to siddhis, are a function of your own conditioning plus merit.

But the significant point, from the Yoga-Sutra, is the statement "These are powers in the outward turned state, but obstacles to samadhi." This simply means that when the yogi is in the ordinary state of "seeing a world," these manifest as "powers" in that world. But any engagement with them, just as is any engagement at all with a seen "world," obviates and precludes being in the state of samadhi. One can't be doing magic or prayer-impacts in "a world" and at the same time be in nirvikalpa samadhi. That is all. The only warning aspect of this verse is sin the word "obstacles." So here we have the warning: As a man or woman develops prayer power and develops power of siddhis, his fascination and involvement with the external world may increase. Such powers make the world all the more engaging and interesting when he is in the outward turned state. Thus is the theoretical danger of siddhis.

But for those who contact the sat-chit-ananda of the Lord, or attain even savikalpa samadhi, they do not come into significant danger thusly. They see even siddhis and powers in external worlds as trash and straw.
Thus religious people (spiritual people) will naturally master prayer and miraculous powers. There should be no fear of it. However, it would be stupid to show them off, crow about it, or try to teach them to others. But this is obvious.
Intuition

Right intuition is a kind of siddhi and is inevitable and unavoidable in the God-lover because God knows everything. When you, through devotion, associate much with the all-knowing Purusha, you develop knowledge also.

Samadhi is the state attained by the yogic and Christian saints. It obtains inevitably and natural from a single-pointed devotional concentration on God. It takes great desire, practice, concentration, and devotion to achieve samadhi.

First, a dualistic level and a non-dualistic level. The first level is called savikalpa samadhi in yoga, or "samadhi with seed." This samadhi involves all grades of bliss including emotional bliss. It is a state of rapture and ecstasy, and all-fulfillment. One's only possible inner reaction is adoration. Generally in the first experiences of this samadhi awareness of the outer world vanishes, like in sleep, though one is not asleep. The breath stops and the heart stops naturally, and the body is infused with cool heat (prana).

We all go into an unconscious form of savikalpa samadhi in our nightly dream states, but without the great flow of prana that allows cessation of the heartbeat. It is the ability to pull in great amounts of prana, allowing the heartbeat to cease while keeping the body fine, that make it possible to cross over there consciously in the waking state.

In savikalpa samadhi there is awareness of one's self and of "other." That is, other things, people, visions -- the perceived. "Samadhi with seed" (sabija) means the samadhi leaves impressions of experience. The impressions are very satvic and blissful. Still, they are dualistic impressions. By experiencing samadhi one's natural karma upgrades and improves because of the quality of these impressions (samskaras) which burnish or overwrite the grosser dualistic impressions of the body-mind. In savikalpa there is still a clear "I" having experiences.

The second level of samadhi is called nirvikalpa, or samadhi without seed. "Without seed" (nirbija) means that no impressions of dualistic experience are created. The Pure Consciousness of Brahman alone, and It's spaciousness, light, power, and all-potential -- are alone experience. Some say that nirvikalpa is the ability to be in savikalpa yet sea the world and function in it. Some say it is the same as the state of turiya, in which there is no "other" and one experienced a highly-pitched, ineffably keen bliss, the exterior world is vaguely present but a blur, and the devotee is aware of only "a sense of I being" rather than "I." In this state the exterior universe is held within one's self as a state of potential only. We each go through the nirvikalpa state in deep dreamless sleep, yet covered by a film of nescience that is unconsciousness. Nirvikalpa is utterly conscious and is Pure Consciousness itself.

Devotees in either state of samadhi, whether known occasionally or established in it, are founts of good and bless those around them naturally or anyone who thinks of them.

The attributeless form of God is pure consciousness and bliss. It is also described by the sages as pure being. We all experience Being continuously, including the thought "I am." We swim in being as fish swim in water. Thus, God defined as pure being is something we all continuously experience. It is that Pure Being, ground of our "I" and ground of our mind, that enables us to give being to our thoughts and our externalized outer world-dream, just as we give being to nightly dreams. In this way our inner God makes our minds in "His image," i.e., as creators. This is each person's common experience.

Scriptures call the unmanifested, attributeless God Brahman. We merge with it nightly each night in dreamless sleep, thus we all experience the Brahman form of God nightly.

Thoughts are real and thoughts create all knowables and perceivables. Thus, if a man or woman entertains any concept of God in the mind, God immediately exists for them in that form.

God can take any form for the benefit of the devotee, in any form that a devotee can best relate to, including the guru. God can take a male or female form.

The religious God-seekers, the yogis and saints, personally know and experience the knowable God that is defined as bliss.
Blissful inner creative sound and light are other aspects of the knowable God. Religious God-seekers, yogis, and saints do experience God as inner sound (Aum) and light (Jyoti).

Just as a scientist can't ascertain a theory without entertaining it, trying it out, and testing its truth or falsity, God cannot be known without entertaining the possibility, searching, and fully trying practices that lead to God-knowledge.

The knowable form of God, with attributes, is blissful, all-giving, and all good. This is a mystery, a mystery that the non-Dual God is "all good." But seekers of the mystery find it's true.
Just as each person has a unique relationship with his father and mother, and a unique perception of what they are like; each jiva (soul, individualized identity) has a unique relationship with, and perception of, God.

Yet sages, yogis, and saints find similarity in the divine terrain and report similar things.

The knowable God (Saguna Brahman) is known by many names because God is many faceted. Also because different peoples knowing the same person or entity naturally give It different names. Also, because when we love a thing we enjoy having as many names for it as possible.

God is known by the fact that that It is fruitful, benefits beings, solves problems, and gives the garden states. All creatures know that god as bliss and it's various frequencies of joy. Yogis know that God as inner sound (Aum) and inner light (jyoti) and increasing bliss.

Salutation to That (Brahman) which is of the nature of consciousness,
from which the whole universe was born,
into which it gets dissolved,
and by which it is sustained."

"In the beginning all this was but the unmanifested (Brahman).
From that emerged the manifested.
That Brahman created Itself by Itself.
Therefore it is called the self-creator.
That which is known as the self-creator is verily
the source of joy; for one becomes happy by coming into contact with that source of joy."

"He is all-pervasive, pure, bodiless, without wound,
without sinews, taintless, untouched by sin,
omniscient, ruler of mind, transcendent, and self-existent..."

"Just as the sun, which is the eye of the whole world,
is not tainted by ocular and external defects,
similarly the Self, that is but one in all beings,
is not tainted by the sorrows of the world,
It being transcendental.

"In the space that is there in the heart,
is this Person who is realizable through knowledge,
and who is immortal and effulgent."

"(Brahman is to be meditated on) as contentment in rain;
as energy in lightning."

"O Lord...You are lie a resting house;
so you become revealed to me,
you reach me through and through."

"One is not subjected to fear at any time
if one knows the Bliss that is Brahman,
failing to reach which (Brahman as conditioned by the mind),
words, along with the mind, turn back."

In practice the word yoga has two genuine meanings:
The state of God-union (the state of yoga), and the techniques and practices that bring about God-union
(the practices of yoga). The practices of yoga all address the mind and emotions, and only secondarily the body. The primary techniques of yoga are meditation and austerities.

Yogic activity consists of purification by asceticism (tapah), japa, and devotion to God."

Because meditation is the central activity of yoga, and because meditation is the greatest austerity along with brahmacharya, meditation will be addressed in some depth in the "The Yoga Sutra, A New Commentary."

The two religious ideals of moral self-control
are perfect chastity, or sex only in marriage with husband/wife, with procreation assumed.
The one produces God-knowledge (spiritual knowledge),
the other produces children, family, then turns to God-knowledge later.

The World

The world is your own projection, just as in nightly dreams. As you purify yourself through chastity, meditation, austerities, and bhakti the world upgrades and purifies itself automatically.

The Flaws of the World

Flaws and sorrows seen in the world are direct manifestations of the impurities still existent in one's self, just as nightmares at night are manifested by impurities. One save the world by purifying himself and that is the only way one sees it improve or see it saved. Sexual sin, in particular, manifests negativity and disturbance in the external world-dream. This is the point of the Garden of Eden story.

The flaws of the outer world are manifestations of
your own impurity. These impurities are
lodged in the body, the mind, the astral body,
and especially the lower centers.

The personal impurity that produce world-flaws the most rapidly, and the most dramatically, is sexual lust. In particular, the sexual discharge (period) of the male is an inner earthquake, disruption and depletion of his inner ground (inner virtue), and creates the most dramatic and negative outer world changes. Through moral purity -- brahmarcharya as admonished by the Yoga-Sutra and Bhagavad-Gita, and celibacy as practiced by the White European priests, nuns, and saints -- the exterior world begins to upgrade, clean up, be stabilized, and return to it's Garden state. This is, in fact, the only way to return the world to the Garden state as the world and its condition is completely a projection of our own body-mind, and lust-sin is the original destroyer of its ideal conditions.

Love

Love is an aspect of bliss, the bliss of the lord.
It is an outpouring from the fullness of religious satisfaction.
(Divine satisfaction.)

Love and lust (sexual desire) are two different things.
They are not the same thing. It is absurd to confuse them. The two can exist together but they are different.

Lust

Lust is an impurity that especially clouds
the body at the lower centers,
and immediately creates tremendous downgrade
and disturbance in the outer world-movie.

The News

The news you need is sure to come to you, on its own.
God provides the right news, at the right time, to his devotee.
We don't need to cut down the forests to make sure we get the news we need.

Chastity

Chastity for a man is the foundation of his positive exterior world-dream (the material world in a positive state),
the foundation of his spiritual and religious knowledge,
and the foundation of his personal success.

Chastity in a woman is the foundation of the exterior Garden of Eden,
her good pleasure to God, and to the men of virtue.
It also makes all men around her grow to greatness,
and they truly revere her.

Spiritual knowledge begins to accrue in a man
the day he begins to make the effort at chastity.

The Male and Female Periods

The female period is well known. The male period (discharge of creative fluid) occurs upon his sex act and is called his orgasm.
The same demoralization and vitiation attending the female (in her period)
attends the male after his period.
Any male who has more than one period monthly is living beneath his
natural male station and his natural male capacities.
The male period is best had during sleep only.
This occurs naturally through the body's own will.

A man without control of his periods is in a degraded, ignorant state and the female is automatically and naturally a wiser leader than he.

A man with continence, with no more than one period per month is, in most cases, automatically and naturally wiser than the female and the better leader of her and society. Especially in wisdom questions bearing on society.

The female's strongest area of wisdom and teaching to the male is to teach him the love of children, and to act as his emotional conscience.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven states and hell states are relative conditions. Heaven and hell states, whether they last for moments or eons, are passing states. What didn't exist before and does not exist now cannot exist eternally. "The realm of relativity cannot contain absolutes." Heaven and hell states come and go here in earthly existence. We all know them. The male has a heaven state during his creative loss, and is cast into a relative hell state after he has his period, the woman also. This demonstrates the duality of heaven and hell states. But with religious life (spiritual knowledge) men and women attain higher and higher heaven states within, here now. If men can attain heaven here now, they will attain it certainly after death. The kingdom of heaven, which is within, is not for later. It is for attaining here and now, and becoming established in it.

How the World Improves & Upgrades

The exterior world condition automatically improves, heals, and upgrades through:
-- chastity
-- renunciation of the impurity of drugs, including alcohol

The two above are of dire importance.

-- meditation

Religious meditation -- concentration of the mind on God -- finally destroys all impurities and addictions, including the addiction to lust. It also destroys health problems.

-- fasting
-- less of the coarser food and more of the finer food
-- destruction or release of inner impurities in general

-- gradual dissolution and release of the dualistic mind and its conditioning

No person can manifest, create, or cause-to-be positive world changes
without chastity, destruction of impurities, and calming of the mind.
Outer world-flaws come from one's self, and from no other cause.

Ecological & Environmental Problems

Environmental destruction, pollution, over development, and overpopulation in one's outer world-dream are caused directly by one's personal sin, especially lust and for men, especially the sexual discharge. The more lust (stirring up of the lower three chakras) and the more sexual discharge, the more these four will appear in the external world. The more pure a man or woman becomes, the more these dire problems in the outer world-story dry up and fade away. The world is a projection from one's body. Pollution in the body, including chemicals and negative states of the mind, produce the conditions of the outer world. Lust and sexual discharge are especially involved with the manifestation of outer destruction, pollution, over development, and overpopulation. An intelligent man with his vision restored can see that these things flame up and increase as a direct result of personal sin. The same is also true for the woman, but the metaphysical dynamic by which this principle functions, for her, is different.

People who are the most immoral have the most dire environmental nightmares or outer news. End or attenuate lust and the entertainment of negative states and emotions and the Garden of Eden returns in one's outer world-dream automatically by metaphysical law. The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the pristine Garden of Eden referred to the temptation to sexual lust and the disturbance it creates in the outer world-scenario. Overpopulation by literal childbirth (as human beings pursue desire) is only a secondary, reflective "cause" of overpopulation. It is not the true cause, but a "story feature" of the mind. The true cause of overpopulation is one's own sin. Incidentally, one manifests (sees) lust-oriented persons externally when he stokes the lust in himself. (People having many children, etc.) But the cause of overpopulation in his world-movie is his own lust and discharge, and nothing else.

Whoever stokes or inflames the lusts of men and women casts them into hell and loss; casts them from the pleasant Garden.

Food

In the Upanishads it states that "he who eats not the remains of sacrifice verily eats sin." This refers to those who do not think of God when eating food. In truth, those who continually enjoy food without any thought of the creator or provider of the food draw down blight upon themselves. They lose their prosperity. This is the import of the Upanishadic verses and is in fact the truth.

Verses in the Upanishads state that God (Isvara, the Lord) is in fact food. (As well as resident especially in the sun, material father of our world, as one of His bodies.) Thus the waste of food is a particular sin. Meanwhile, our thought about God is very important to Him. He tolerates a great deal, and lets us get away with a great deal as long as our thought is with Him in the right way. But the personal God, Saguna Brahman and creator of the cosmos, has an emotional nature. Just as we do. He is offended by constant enjoyment of his Life and enjoyments with no thanks or regard. Even if he were to be detached from it and not care, an impersonal law operates anyway, just as those who offend or abuse a saint receive immediate karmic punishment even if the sage or saint intends none.

Because the Christianity of the White Europeans contained the very impulse of the ancient Vedas and Upanishads (Christ being a yogi and satguru), the idea of devoting food to God developed in White European culture. It took the form of "saying grace," that is thinking of God prior to eating, in the form of a prayer. One of the reasons that the White European nations prospered and attained eminence was the simple fact that they long ate "the remains of sacrifice," that is, they ate only after dedicating food to God prior to eating meals in a conscious prayer. They need to now return to this profound and cosmic practice which delights the Lord of Life.

Not only should the food first be "offered" to God prior to eating, even better, one should think of God during the eating and, as if, share the pleasure with the Lord. That is growing into the full spirit of this principle. In addition, one should think of God the giver afterwards, and direct gratitude to Him. If the peoples do this, life will improve.

In the very same way, sexual enjoyment of the marriage bed should be offered to God through the thought of God and the offering of it. This mitigates much negative karma and brings us closer to God. The male should think, "God is the true Alpha Male, the Chief of the tribe, all women really belong to him. He is the true enjoyer, I share this experience with him." In both eating and enjoying the procreative act, the White Europeans should keep God in mind. Much positive change and protection will then descend upon them. In fact, when enjoying any thing at all, especially immensely delighted by any experience such as music, the beauty of another, or a landscape it is a powerful practice to think of God right then, and "share" it with Him, as if enjoying it together with a friend. You will all find this is true and your real, felt relationship with the one True Person will grow and He will reveal Himself to you as your true friend. This is a tremendous bhakti practice. Always think of God thankfully when enjoying any thing, and like a child who has found something wonderful outside and wants to share it with his mother, bring it to God within, as if letting Him listen through your ears, see through your eyes, feel through your touch. And do it with food and eating, steadily. God will give your people prosperity again.

The Past

The past is only one more aspect of the malleable outer world-dream. When you read a storybook a "past" is often created by the author. You, yourself, supply your outer world stories with various pasts. Just as exterior conditions continually change, the "past" is found to also continually change. The "past" is just our own mental projection just like the rest of the exterior samsara. This is why it is found to continually change -- as new "facts" or factors arise that change the implications of "past events." Your past is nothing but a projection of your own karmic state and its purity/impurity. As you purify yourself you are supplied with a more and more auspicious "past story." This insight penetration of the samsaric miasm is easily is easily attained by the continent male. All auspicious and beneficial "past facts" will be supplied to the lovers of God who practice chastity.

The Land

Outer lands are projections of the inner land. Outer "undiscovered countries" are a projection of one's inner moral virtue and based upon it. As one ravages his inner ground through sexual sin or drug pollution, his outer lands become ravaged and polluted. When one regains chastity and inner purity through God-meditation, the inner lands are restored. This leads to the return of the outer pristine lands, and undiscovered lands. The reason that our ancestors of Europe had "undiscovered, pristine lands" in their life-story was because they were more continent than us, and God-lovers.

A male breaks up and damages his inner land with his sexual discharge or period. The same is true of the female's period. When the purpose is creation of a son or daughter, it is worth the harm in that loss. Otherwise not. Procreation legitimizes the disturbance and takes it out of the realm of sin. Still, the outer world is disturbed. This is the meaning of the Biblical story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the perfect garden. The "fruit in the midst of the garden" was the generative organs in the middle of the body-garden. One's body is, indeed, the projector of his material universe.

Every man and woman experiences the world uniquely. When they hanker after "other" to share it, an "other" finally appears.

If enjoying the procreative act in a holistic context with the married wife (or husband), if one devotes or shares that pleasure mentally with God, offering it up, the damage to the outer lands and environment (the negative changes in the world dream after) will be greatly mitigated.

The Shiva Principle

Shiva is as if a personified symbol of Pure Consciousness as Brahman, but with an emphasis on the impulse of renunciation, austerities, and celibacy. Shiva represents the impulse for austerity and renunciation of sense pleasure and lust. Shiva, moreover, represents the ascent of the human creative energy up the spine instead of down it as it conventionally goes in the the state of ignorance or lassitude. Shiva represents the transmutation of the sexual energies into merit, realization, knowledge, and the surrendering and fusing of those energies with Pure Consciousness. The figure of shiva is favored by men desiring to pursue asceticism and overcome addiction to lust. Shiva is a father principle. One of the Sufi saints said "God without form is my father, God with form is my mother."

When Shiva externalizes, Shakti is born. Shakti is the manifest universe and all of nature, in right order when attuned to Shiva. Thus Shiva and Shakti are styled as consorts. In attunement the Shakti principle respects and reinforces the Shiva principle, and Shiva enlightens and guides the Shakti principle. There is a tension between them, and that manifests in creation. Thus in scriptural myths (all self-generated in the minds of human beings according to beneficial karma), Shiva is occasionally cast as being tempted by his manifest creation, Shakti. At that time Shiva falls, and worlds are created. In like manner, when the human male (Shiva) is tempted by the human female (Shakti) worlds are created, that is, the boon of a child arises.

Yet Shiva continues to represent the impulse for transcendence, the impulse in the male for chastity (this also transmitted as wisdom to the female), and the raising of the creative energy up the spine. That energy in its intelligent and divinely awakened aspect has been called kundalini or kundalini-shakti.

Shiva also represents the penetrating power of Saguna Brahman, and urge to penetrate all creation with Its divine impulse. Shakti represents the receptive principle, Nature in reception of pure consciousness and made equally divine. Thus Shiva is a male principle and Shakti a female principle. Shiva in the form of the aspirant is normally seeking to penetrate upward. Then occasionally he is tempted by Shakti and seeks to become Shakti. At this time then he is Isvara, the Creator or Lord it it's male form. He has his own consort then as well, styled in various forms of the Divine Mother.

The Hindus, inheritors of the Aryan Vedas, created the symbol of the Shiva Lingham to represent Shiva and the Yoni to represent Shakti. The Shiva Lingham is literally an erect phallus. This is not to signify that Shiva is a party animal, like Hugh Hefner, etc. Rather, it signifies that He is pure creative potential and pure potency because of brahmacharya.

(Communists and feminists would like to characterize it otherwise. They would like the erect phallus to signify that Shiva is merely Hugh Hefner. They would like to posit that the erect phallus represents sexual excitation rather than potential, thus hoping to prove that woman really rules everything, including Shiva. This is a degenerate view of feminists and Marxists when interpreting Hinduism. They glory and gloat over the idea that the ascetic principle and male impulses for aspiration are 'futile' and that nothing can overcome her sexual attraction. Thus these ignorant ones mock the principle of asceticism and renunciation. This text is to set them back.)

The White European peoples who developed Christianity created their own unconscious Shiva linghams. There were their straight, tall, and aspiring church steeples and spires. In a real sense, every young White European male in old Europe grew up in a village containing a Shiva lingham that dominated the landscape, giving subtle and unconscious inspiration toward spiritual aspiration and renunciation.

Freudians and feminists, i.e. Jews, have long loved to mock the "phallic symbol." They say it is a sign of merely repressed sexual energy, not sublimation or sacrifice. They say it expresses a secret male desire to dominate women, or dominate the environment, with their penises. Thus it is that these minds, of small spiritual stature, demean, cheapen, and crassify whatever they ponder in the realm of Europa. Yes, indeed, the church steeples and other creations of men are a kind of phallic symbol, but one of beauty. When man tries to turn his creative energy upward it sublimates into exterior fruits, beautiful structures, art, and music. These will, indeed, have aspiring features. In the case of church steeples, they are straight up just as the yogi makes his spine straight in meditation and raising his creative energy up. They aspire to the temporal heavens even as the male religious devotee, in meditation, aspires within to touch the transcendental and meet it at the top of the head, where blinding pure light of a thousand suns does await his aspiration. The "phallic symbols" demeaned by Jews and feminists are, in fact, the Shiva Linghams of the White European peoples and can be respected, not as symbols of lust or the penis, but as symbols of divine aspiration, attainment, and connection by a people to the protecting and fruitful divine power.

On Race

The races and ethnicities are a manifestation of the creative power of Saguna Brahman, the Lord, called Isvara in yoga. The Lord Himself creates the diversity. We can see that creative diversifying principle in our own minds which continually imagine new things.

Destruction of the races comes from ignorance.

Fetishes for other races, while not appreciating your own, is worldliness and bodily lust. Attraction to varieties and varieties of "difference" is nothing but another form of carnality and exterior-pursuit -- or ignorance. But obsessive regard or attachment for one's own race, also, is worldliness, ignorance, and attachment too.

Instead, peoples should simply be natural and do what is natural. This means having a healthy respect for themselves and their own heritage and people. It is natural to love your own family most just as it's natural and proper for a mother to feed her own child rather than trying to feed everyone else's and letting hers go hungry. A man and woman should love their own children first and best, then their people of common blood and heritage, then thirdly the rest of the world. That world is endless,
and impossible to love in any practical way, whereas loving your family and your people is practical and doable, and pleases God. Loyalty to one's own parents, siblings, wife, husband, and children is practice for loyalty to God.

When racial attachment begins to produce negative genetic effects, it has gone beyond wisdom. Conversely, when appreciation of other peoples and disregard for your own leads to the weakening or destruction of your own people, it has also gone beyond the wisdom or the natural.

God wants you to love and serve your people. The unique peoples, plus their unique bodies, faces, cultures, nations, religions, and ways of life --
should abide, live, and keep on developing intelligently. Then the peoples evolve different things to bring before the Lord and to show to each other.

Presently the White Europeans are being propagandized by the ignorant and hateful into unconscious self-destruction. Because they are my own, I direct these words first to them for their regeneration. Those who want to mix the peoples all together are haters of the peoples, or simply foolish.

Those who love and serve other peoples more than their own are psychologically confused.

Seeing "all things as the same" is a mystic point-of-view of the sage who also sees no difference between rotted food and good food, or gold and clay. It is not the natural point of view of a natural human being.

Most racial-mixing and destruction of nations comes from the control-agenda of the Jews, and the gullibility of White Europeans who have been propagandized to self-hate and depreciating their own people.

In short: Love your people.
The diversity in them is enough for the spiritually-minded.

The Delusion of Technological Progress

The wise man sees that the real problem is the problem of duality.
He also sees that technology, science, and invention are harnessed
for the purpose of eliminating duality (problems, good/bad, trouble, etc.)
but that they never succeed in that.
Rather, they only cause duality to change form, become more complex,
and often more destructive.
White Europeans, masters of technology and a great race upon the earth,
will come into their true spiritual and material destiny when they see
the delusion of technological progress and seek world-mastery
through spiritual knowledge instead of re-arranging inert matter.
This spiritual knowledge shows him that the exterior world-dream is his own manifestation and that it is controlled by mind and prana.
The outer stars are only truly mastered by mastering of the inner stars. Mastery of the mind gives the true mastery over external matter.
Abiding in the sat-chit-ananda and the state of grace is the true solver of "problems" or dissolver of duality. Re-arranging inert matter never reduces duality by even a small degree.

Signs of the activation of kundalini
(baptism by the Holy Spirit)

-- Bliss and devotion at the sight of religious things
-- Bliss and devotion felt in church, or on sight of a priest or nun
-- Bliss and bhakti felt at the sound of religious singing in church or elsewhere
-- Sight of true things at a distance,
-- hearing of things at a distance
-- intuitive knowledge of true things, including the thoughts of others
-- inner light (bindu)
-- inner sound (nada)
-- movements of the body (kriyas)
-- hot penetrations of the head, feet, and hands
-- sudden bit by a snake on the finger or foot
-- expulsions of the breath
-- spontaneous kumbhaka
-- divine taste and divine smell
-- tongues and languages
-- samadhi or pratyahara taking place spontaneously
-- Visions of the guru or other forms of the Lord, as if looking at a real thing in front of one's self
-- Visions of one's self, as if looking at a real person but seeing that it is yourself
...and other signs.

When they happen, the religious person should take it as a sign of God's pleasure and let it give them confidence they are on the right path. Generally speaking, the incidents should not be shared with anybody but one's guru, close spiritual brother, or suitable family members. However, it is erroneous when "spiritual people" disparage the seeker who notices these things, or brings them up, saying things like "You shouldn't focus on phenomena." One focuses on God alone in meditation, and when talking often discusses absurd and mundane trivialities like what's for dinner. Certainly these developments are some of the most important in one's life, and they are meant to give you encouragement. God wants you to be encouraged by them and genuinely confirmed that you are on the right path. He loves to give you signs and encouragement that you are progressing, exactly like a loving mother and father loves to encourage their striving children by giving them rewards and evidence of progress.

Those posing as your spiritual mentor who demean them or trivialize these phenomena associated with religion (yoga) are in error. Perhaps they are inexperienced or simply jealous. Know who to bring them to!

On the other hand, you should tell about them except for good cause an in the right way. Neem Karoli Baba said: "If you talk about your wealth or your sadhana, both go away." Just as a wife does not tell her friends everything about what happens between herself and her husband on the marriage bed, God does not want you to speak promiscuously about everything that happens between you and He. The best things should be kept private. Some things can be spoken to the sincere to encourage them and give them faith in religion and the eternal path of God-knowledge. The list above was given, in fact, to encourage the yogis and give men and women a new interest in religion and its mysteries. But proceed with caution.

On the Life of the Yogi
Or Sage

Solitude, the thought of God, the meditation technique,
and the inner perceptions -- these are his Delights.

He thanks God, and often, for his solitude, the meditation technique,
the guru, and the inner knowledge perceptions,
and for salvation from suffering for himself and the rest.

General

Music

The highest and most fulfilling use of music is as worship, as a vehicle for bhakti. When hearing music that touches or moves you, think of the Lord or your guru, and share it with God. Listen together, in your mind, to the music. Make it your offering. Add it to your prayer, or to the vision that you ask God to bless, just like a food offering. This is the highest use of music. Music that is written or used for the purpose of God-worship and bhakti is one of the finest things in human life.

Music that is so loud it harms the hearing, or can't be enjoyed, or heard with any dimension because of overload to the ears -- is tamasic music. That is, it is ignorant and an abuse of sound. Music that sounds like the sound of machines, randomness, or battle, or clashing of machines -- is also ignorant and destructive to the spirit and body. It should be avoided as well as censured and mocked as an absurdity.

On Family

The natural family is the natural building block of a whole-some and natural society. The wholesome natural family is the male with female, the natural father and natural mother, and their children. Other newly-proposed formulations of "family" are illegitimate, pathological, and harmful to the natural family and their children's' interests.

Adoption is what natural families in natural families do to cope with the tragedy in which a child loses both parents. But an adopted child and the natural child of its parents are not the same thing.

Parents are the natural and proper authorities over their children, not the state or agencies of the state or other interests. The one who suffers the most and has the most conscience in the case of their child's unhappiness or pain -- and this means the natural parents -- are the ones with true natural authority over their children. The authority of parents over their own children should not be degraded by communistic interests. Whoever will sacrifice the most for the happiness of a child is their proper authority. In the main, parents love their children best and are willing to make the most sacrifice on their behalf. Communistic plans of child-rearing or "everybody is your parent" are a travesty and a robbery of a child's emotional, physical, and spiritual birthright.

On Children

A man or a woman is not truly an adult, and does not come into the fullness of wisdom and feeling, until they become parents of children.

Children are a divine trust, and remind the parents of the divine and their own divine nature. Forcing children to grow up unnaturally fast, and get adult-like minds before their time, is ignorance. Sending your children off to be basically raised by strangers at a young age (as with public schooling) is also ignorance, weakness, and degeneracy. It is a form of parental abandonment, and weakens the family since your children will no longer be close to you, you won't really know them, and they will not really know you, receive your values transmission, or learn to work closely with their own families in practical ways. Forced public schooling is destructive to both families and to children themselves, and is nothing but an aspect of the Marxist agenda to destroy White European culture and religion. Take your children back and do not send them to formal schools on any heavy basis prior to the age of 12. Their intellectual cultivation will easily exceed those of public-schooled children even with the most minimal tutoring, as was seen by the founders of our country.

One of the boons that the wife gives to the husband is to teach him how to love and value children. She is also the children's first teacher of virtue.

A boon that the husband gives to his wife is to raise his children to be strong, respectful, able, and serviceful to the mother and the family. The strength of the mother is in compassion, nurturing, and sacrifice like the husband. The strength of the father is teaching law, integrity, and sacrifice.

Every child has a true mother and a true father and they should be raised by their own mother and father unless tragic acts of God make it impossible (as in the case of orphans). Children with their true parents, with whom the jivas (souls) have karmic affinities and bonds, should remain the ideal for any wholesome society that values naturalness and wholeness. The desire of the Marxists, Communists, and "One World Order" predators to separate children from their parents is aggression and destructiveness, and should be resisted by all White European men and women. Adoption is the address to tragedy (to a child's loss of a parent), only. Adoption has its own nobility. But natural parenthood is best. Generally if you cannot have a child at a given time or place that is your rightful karma. Only if orphanages are full of White European children lacking parents does adoption become attain nobility. Children are a karmic gift. Not something you simply seek and desire because you want them, like any other material object.

On Marriage

Sex involving the generative organs in any way should be abstained from until after marriage before the community in a solemn ceremony. Anything else is fornication and destructive to the social order as well as the persons involved.

One of the beauties of marriage is that it gives long term security and love to children as they grow. Another is that it gives long-term security and companionship to a man and woman throughout life and in old age. The final beauty of marriage is that it requires that both man and woman become divine in order to remain content. In synastry or astrological compatibility, there are no couples that are completely "compatible" or will always please one another. If a woman remains content with a man lifelong, that is a divine attainment and comes only through God. If a man remains content with one woman lifelong, it is the same, a divine attainment. To make marriage work one needs to learn to call on God fervently, and that is the truest and final beauty of marriage. All others who run away simply meet more dualistic karma (another flawed mate) and never obligate themselves to become divine.

Couples should be helped to meet one another who have astrological compatibilities, with these hoped-for compatibility ideals:

The 1st compatibility should be Moons in compatible signs, in close degree (ideally within 5 degrees), and not in opposition. (Such as Moon 20 Taurus/Moon 15 Pisces, etc.)

The 2nd compatibility is the male's Mars making an aspect to at least one of the woman's planets other than Saturn or Pluto.

The 3rd is that the woman's Venus should make aspects to some planet of the male's other than Saturn.

The 4th compatibility is that the Saturn of each should not aspect the Moon of the other by the dodecile, the quincunx, the opposition, or the square within less than 10 degrees.

The 5th is that the Mars of each should not make same aspects to the Moon of the other by more than 10 degrees.

These kind of compatibility situations can easily be found in advance of creating matchmaking events. Mailing lists targeting birth dates, for example, can be easily found. Then with two sets of invitees (men and women) having strong compatibilities, matchmaking events such as dances, balls, and outings should be held by the parents and elders. Then selected groups of men and women having these compatibilities can meet each other under auspicious transits, then let nature take her course.

A couple should have written permission from all four parents before marriage, and this requirement should be administered by the priest or minister of their regenerated Christian church.

The Voice

The voice conveys the qualities of the speaker. A person transmits their true self through their voice. Spiritual development can be heard in the voice, and vice and selfishness, too. Inner beauty or ugliness is transmitted through the voice, no matter what the voice sounds like from a technical standpoint.

A beautiful, attractive voice is the fruit of karmic merit and spiritual knowledge. This is why the Upanishads say that the priest should have an attractive, melodious voice. It says that the priest should try to cultivate a melodious voice, but this is not right. The spiritual knowledge in the voice builds up naturally on its own, and no amount of voice-cultivation or exercises can provide it. However, it is right and natural that humanity values beautiful voices. A beautiful voice reminds us of God, and that is why we are attracted to it.

The voice becomes more beautiful automatically as a result of God-meditation. This is because God is the source of beauty and has the most beautiful and satvic voice, which is Aum. When people sing, they transmit not just the ideas present in the lyrics, but their very selves through their voice. That is why it is not wise to listen to the speech or singing of unvirtuous people. It's also why one feels soothed and even fed within by the voice of a virtuous person. There is no reliable technical standard by which one can define the sound of a virtuous voice, however, people instinctively know. Especially when the intuition is developed, one can sense the inner quality of a speaker or singer unerringly. No amount of techniques or exercises by a singer can place "spiritual knowledge" into the voice of a person who lacks it.

A religiously-developed person get music in his or her voice, even when simply speaking. This is because God, as Aum, is the source of all beautiful music. Whoever meditates on Aum, whether as mantra or the actual sound, automatically gets music in his voice that others can hear. Jesus said, "And when the good shepherd puts forth his they go before him because they know his voice." People respond to the voice instinctively.

God-lovers and yogis also get power in their voices. One of those powers is that the things they say are made true. This power of creation by word is referenced in the Christian Book of John, with God creating through word alone. His sons and daughters (those with bhakti and meditation on Him) get this same trait. Religious people also end up with the power of benefactions or curses in their voices, whether desiring it or not, intending it or not. This is an aspect of siddhis. It is inevitable. This is the very truth from which the idea of "blessing" or "giving a blessing" comes in Christian tradition. To receive a blessing from a priest, nun, sage, yogi, or saint is more than an empty ritual, formality, or "positive thought." It is the channeling of God's divine efficacy.

On Dance

White Europeans should revive community dance, dancing as a way to create community bonding, to celebrate life and community, re-develop their culture, and create a substrate for matchmaking and courtship. The fact that White Europeans no longer dance in-community is a sign of cultural and spiritual degeneration.

On Singing

White Europeans should value group singing. The fact that we seldom sing together and few know common lyrics to any songs is, also, a facet of cultural degeneration. A healthy culture has its songs that all know. Go back to the churches where this still lives, but expand it beyond church singing for worship, which is the highest kind of group singing. Children should be encouraged to sing as soon as they show interest, starting young. They should not have their singing criticized or faulted. (When not singing at an inappropriate place or time, etc.) Singing give wings to the heart, and it is one of the best ways to feel bhakti for God as well as to get the bliss of bhakti. This knowledge about singing has long been an implicit part of the Christian church culture. In Hindu terms, the White Europeans have long sung "bhajans" to the Lord -- group devotional singing -- in their churches and it is one of the most beautiful things about the bhakti-yoga called Christianity. Whites should also sing publicly as a political, racial, and teaching impulse. The rangers or wandering brothers of the Brotherhood of The Sacred Word should sing both religious God-devotional songs and racial-survival songs in appropriate public places. This in a way similar to the Hare Krsnas of both ancient times and modern, but in distinctive European molds.

In most cases the professionalization of singing is a misfortune and a downgrade of the value and spirit of one's singing. In the case of a spiritual person with a beautiful voice this may be, in fact, a real abuse of their voice and themselves.

Singing privately to God is the highest form of singing of all. One thing people do, as soon as they hear a beautiful voice or singer who is, say, young is to say: "Oh, you should be on the stage! You should be on TV." They think that this must be done or that it will make his/her singing more worthy. As if it's not good enough for them to sing to God or a few friends or their community. Singing for ego, fame, or money does not your singing greater than singing for God, devotion, or your community in church. That latter singing is more pure and beautiful in almost every case. In fact, if one's voice is beautiful enough and his heart full enough when singing, why should we think everybody in the masses deserves to hear it? What made them deserve it? Maybe very few deserve to hear it besides God. Those who sing alone to God are doing the best singing. Those who professionalize their voices are sometime making a mistake. Taking beauty, art, and the sacred and commercializing or professionalizing it is, in many cases, a tragedy and a disgust. This is especially true of the rarefied beautiful voice. Let the most beautiful voices be found in church.

On Cars

The automobile is the embodiment of materialism, the essence of the "delusion of technological progress," and has been one of the most powerful factors destroying the naturalness and communitarian nature of European societies. The automobile changed villages, towns, and cultured cities into paved car-hells. Allowing its proliferation was one of the mistakes of Whites. (As is the fault, in general, of creating inventions and technologies without regard for how they will disturb and cheapen life.)

On Architecture

Cities and towns should be designed so that the majority are able to walk everywhere and do not need an automobile to carry on the basic functions of life. This way, people naturally meet one another and know one another. One of the things that damaged the cohesiveness of the natural White communities -- and thus their very survival -- was the indiscriminate introduction of the automobile into every area of civic space. These are car-hells, and a manifestation of the Delusion of Technological Progress. By walking instead of driving, as a daily feature of life, people who live near one another get to know each other and natural community bonds are formed. Mothers do much better when staying home raising children, because they are far less isolated in a pedestrian oriented town. They see people throughout the day, including other mothers who may naturally stop by. Motherhood itself became isolating and empty because of the automobile and the car-oriented towns. Pedestrian-based towns are also safer for children to play in, giving them greater happiness and freedom in childhood, plus further relieving mothers by giving their children other realms beside the small house under need of continual watch. Because the mothers are happier and motherhood not such an unnatural burden, in pedestrian oriented towns, the family itself holds up better. Cities and towns should be made beautiful, including natural elements such as trees etc., so that they are places to become fond of. This, in turn, causes the children to more often stay close to home and parents as they mature, making the family even stronger.

On housing and blocks

In most cases, instead of lots in which each has their own front and back yard, blocks of common-cultured families should carve out a common space at the center, like a common park area belonging to that block, in which children can play and be seen through the back windows of the houses. Size of front and back yards should be sacrificed to give space to that common area. A walkway should encircle this inner area that passes by each small back yard, back porch, or garden area at the back of each house. Instead of private garages and driveways, one parking area should be provisioned on one corner of the lot for those requiring cars, so that all who arrive walk in through the back circular walkway, or from the front to their homes. This arrangement would create natural safety and freedom for children, cause neighbors to know each other, and in the case of racially and culturally harmonious families, lead to a close-knit community yet sufficient independence and space. Old city blocks of regenerated White Europeans should be retrofitted and redesigned in this manner.

Animals

Those who willingly torture animals or make them to suffer are not truly human beings. The real human beings should restrain them. Over-attachment to animals and pets is a fault, especially when a pet takes the affectional place of a child in young people who could easily have children.

The religious person comes into knowledge of true causation. That is, he or she comes to understand how phenomena actually arise. Science will not reveal this scientists, functioning always as subject-object, approach phenomena with ignorant premises, thus they will always be confused. One begins to understand true causation when he realizes that there is no genuine subject-object, but that all outer objects and manifestations are only projections of yourself, just as in nightly dreams we also experience our self-projections. Pure Consciousness or Brahman is the only effective cause of phenomena and all subsidiary or apparent "laws of causations" are originally fancies of the Pure Consciousness. Everything one needs to know about causation of the material world is contained in this Upanishadic verse:

"Some wise men, deluded, speak of Nature, and others of Time [as the cause of everything]; but it is the greatness of God by which this Brahma-wheel is made to turn."

"Some learned men speak of the inherent nature of things, and some speak of time, [as the cause of the universe], They all, indeed, are deluded. It is the greatness of the self-luminous Lord that causes the Wheel of Brahman to revolve."

To put this in modern terms: Some men, deluded, speak of "the big bang" or "matter" or "evolution" or "chemicals" as the cause of the material universe, but the the glory of The Lord itself, who is pure Being, Consciousness, and Bliss, is the only effective cause. A few more verses that continue this theme:

"The self-effulgent Self imagines Itself through Itself
by the power of Its own Maya.
The Self Itself cognizes the objects.
Such is the definite conclusion of Vedanta."

"It is Consciousness [God as Brahman] -- birthless, motionless and non-material, as well as tranquil and non-dual -- that has the semblance of birth, appears to move, and simulates a substance (possessed of qualities)."

"Cause and effect spring into being so long as there is mental preoccupation with cause and effect. There is no origination of cause and effect when the engrossment with cause and effect becomes attenuated."

These verses explain the true secret of the origins of the apparent world and all phenomena. They speak of the glorious Infinite Consciousness that is Brahman as the actual real cause of the various phenomena.

That is, Brahman alone (Pure Consciousness, the bed of our own consciousness) is the first, ultimate only cause of experienced phenomena, whether in dream or the grosser waking world.

All other perceived subsidiary causes (time, light, fire, heat, elements, etc.) are original imaginations and creative script features along with the phenomena itself. One dreams of a "magical tree." If he touches the tree he falls in, and becomes small, etc. Both objects and their causes are imagined simultaneously together. The only real cause of exterior and interior creation is: Brahman imagining and cognizing Its imaginations.

When men and women grow in their religious knowledge (which is synonymous with spiritual and metaphysical knowledge), their understanding of causation will evolve and become more accurate. When you understand true causation (by attaining religious knowledge, that is, spiritual knowledge) you will also understand the basis of miracles or siddhis, and realize that you are already using your own siddhi power to dream the bizarre world-dream you are already dreaming.

With religious knowledge you will understand that everything you perceive and experience in the world is already of a miraculous nature, in some sense bizarre. It was all originally erected miraculously by imagination. The jiva erects worlds by its own siddhi power.

Even its own delusion and non-cognizance of what it does, and misunderstanding of the origin of phenomena, are kept in place by its own siddhi power of concentration and visualization. The jiva hypnotizes and conditions itself into limitation and duality; the jiva can also hypnotize and condition itself back into freedom from limitation and duality. It is the purpose of the religions -- from Christianity to Hinduism to Yoga -- to teach the jiva how to effect this self-liberation in God.

Non-dualistic Vedanta teaches that all other subsidiary causes of world-phenomena are themselves imagined principles, including chains of causation such as time, space, energy, fire, etc. These lesser causes are themselves originally imaginative constructions of Brahman, which is the bed of your own consciousness.

Understanding true causation you will also understand how science continually fails to arrive at a grasp of it. The scientist is always stuck in the subject/object dichotomy. By his very nature (as a scientist), in which he only thinks of "I" vs. "other," he fails to hit on the possibility of other objects as his own projection; his own self. This keeps him from comprehending the continually changing world-miasm that he seeks to understand, or that it changes only as a result of his own changing states and projections.

The scientist's theories about causation or world-origin must continually change as his own state and karma change, which change the nature of the projections he is projecting (and studying) at the moment. His theories will continually change and find themselves superseded as his own consciousness keeps projecting his world-dream and exploring its infinitude. His theories will always open up into more mystery and unanswered questions. It is the Self within the scientist which generates the exterior phenomena. That is infinite, fathomless, and contains all possibilities and potencies. Because he is not looking there, he will never arrive at any stable or accurate theory of causation.

The world is like more like an incomprehensible magic show than a reliable set of laws or history. Even the "history" of the world and various causes are completely subject to amendment, correction, and flux.

The exterior and interior dream worlds are erected by the Pure Consciousness (called Brahman/Shiva) by its own glory, whim, and siddhi power.

This Pure Consciousness or Brahman is the bed and basis of our own individualized consciousness; the reason we ourselves have limitless imagination. The Lord gives to the individual His self-same creative and imaginative power. Then we misuse it and become deluded and trapped by it. We become trapped by the original "I" idea (of being a particular individuized consciousness), and samskaras (impression) for that which then form a body (starting astrally). The body, in turn, keeps receiving impressions (samskaras) of its various imaginings, continuing to build up a set of "laws" for itself. This basic problem is referred to as "conditioning." The conditioning exists in the particular jiva's body, astral body, and "I" mind. Part of its conditioning is experience with a set of "laws of causation" and an increasing belief in those.

But love-of-God, renunciation, and chastity finally bring all knowledge about the nature of exterior and interior reality, including creation's origin and true cause, and how God (Brahman) manifests it. Different and more accurate understanding of causation is found in the religious system called Non-Dualistic Vedanta associated with Shankaracharya, and the Mandukya and other Upanishads, such as above. The philosophy there, an important adjunct to yoga generally and the knowledge of such yogis and saints as Nityananda of Ganespuri, is at first difficult to grasp. However, by gradually seeing the falsity of some of your existing beliefs about causation, and discovering or inventing new and effective temporary causation principles as alternatives, you will finally understand true causation and this will give you increasing freedom from sorrows and limitations. (That is what religious knowledge is for.)

One of the finally prospects in non-dualistic Vedanta is that there actually is no creation; that the universe we perceive is always uncreated. Rather than being a creation with real existence, it is at root imagination.

It is easy to entertain this prospect of world-as-imagination when we think of our world of nightly dreams. The waking life is also at root imagination. However, once space, time, the jiva and body exist, the factors of karma and conditioning come into play. What started as pure imagination has now accumulated in various types of karmic conditioning present in the jiva and body, making the daily waking world move more slowly and appear to be more impervious to our thought. We have no understanding how gross and dense our jiva and body have become, how stained with dualism and conditioning. This grossness, stain, and conditioning account for the relative inertness, stability, and imperviousness of the gross exterior world. Our body itself projects the external gross world movie. All other bodies hang on the existence of our own body.

As to the "natural laws" we experience as functional and effective in the waking world, such as energy, substances, time, attractions and repulsions, which make the world appear real and which play out over time and space -- all these principles of causation were originally, themselves, only imaginations and fancies.

It is possible to entertain the above verse -- of Pure Consciousness imagining worlds -- if you consider your nightly dream life. It is easy to understand, in that case, that nothing is being "created," per se. Rather, the world and events you experience in dreams are active creations of your imagination. (Interesting, too, how the nightly dreams engross and engage us more than the passing waking states.) It is easy to entertain that the things you imagine during dream are not so much creations as active and dynamic projections of your own consciousness. You can see how you yourself are like a god creating experiences and worlds. That imaginative power that you possess is borrowed from; is an extension of, God or Pure Consciousness in which your individualized consciousness is sometimes embedded. (It merges into All Consciousness nightly in deep, dreamless sleep.)

Non-dualistic Vedanta teaches that the waking state is no different at root, that the external waking world is also an active, dynamic projection of consciousness filtered through our individualized minds and bodies, but now with their grosser conditioning. Vedanta sets out to explain how such is true. We can easily see two essential similarities of waking and dream states:

-- Both dream and waking experiences are dualistic, containing good and bad, pleasure and pain.

-- Both are transitory.

The only notable difference with the waking state is that it appears to be more inert, more stable, less changeable, and less subject to our mind in its present state. This comparative inertness is due to conditioning -- memory, expectation, and karma -- resident and recorded our physical body and mind. However, on the long view it is easy to see both the waking and dream worlds are ephemeral.

The Mandukya Upanishad, while brimming with wisdom and knowledge, does a poor job of explaining that apparent difference in the waking world -- it's lack of comparative malleability and response to thought which we experience in dreams. Dreams are new and different each night. The waking world seems to plod along in a comparatively repetitive condition day after day. It appears to be comparatively impervious to our thought or will.

In reality, the waking world does change, just more gradually. The waking world also is susceptible to our thought (and even more to our purification). However, its change is comparatively more gradual and its susceptibility comparatively much less.

The factor that explains that difference is the jiva's body-mind and its resident conditioning. Consciousness projects through the body-mind like light projects through a lens or film. The "markings" (conditioning) in the body lens determine the nature of the outer projected world and its conditions.

You may say: "In dreams I experience extraordinary things compared tot the waking life." True, because our creative power is more free during the sleeping state, and the conditioning is not so gross, as the projected experience is no longer being filtered through the body's impurity and grossness. Meanwhile, are you not often so engrossed in a movie or story that you forget yourself and live temporarily in the world presented there? And is not that world (as presented in movies and stories) often just as sensational and extraordinary as dreams? So, extraordinariness is not an essential difference between the states. Meanwhile, with religious knowledge, one begins to see that the external waking world we are so accustomed to is indeed extraordinary, even bizarre. In reality the entire astounding and bizarre waking world is a product of our own siddhi power. We are simply not conscious of this, or how we created it. We are also not conscious of the ways we ourselves set up dualistic laws of limitation. By siddhi power itself, and delusion, we limit our own siddhi power. But the exterior world -- with its multifarious ways -- is a product of our own unknowing siddhi power.

It is by austerities, meditation, and chastity that we wear away, burnish, and efface those markings, gradually making them more satvic thus the projected world more satvic, unto liberation.

Though the world does not seem as fluid or ephemeral, that is merely a function of time and perspective. Its changes are merely moving more slowly because of the grossness of bodily karma. Just as the dreams we dream at night suddenly evaporate upon waking, the exterior world we are experiencing presently will someday -- in the span of Time -- be radically altered, even turned to dust.

Establishing the dream-like nature of the grosser waking world is a basic goal of Vedantic philosophy. Vedanta also contains other difficult but finally comprehensible ideas such as the falsity of conventional ideas of causation. After working through the false or more limited beliefs in causation, the devotee gets experience and proof of higher principles of causation. These superior principles of causation can include:

-- Action into a particular space-time nexus
-- prana
-- Thought
-- Re-conditioning or alteration of karma
-- The destruction of conditioning
-- The above plus contact with Pure Consciousness so the exterior world miasm is completely amenable to thought

After developing proof and experience with higher principles of causation the devotee will finally arrive at Brahman (Pure Consciousness) as the only real cause of phenomena free of other laws, and the only real substance. Moreover, the understanding can arise that Brahman is not actually a cause of creation at all, but more like a field in which a 'creation' is continuously seen.

To have an understanding of these ideas will assist in understanding non-dualism. Moreover, it will let Non-Dualist views be less destructive or confusing to the beneficial and dualist religious approaches, these dualistic religious approaches being auspicious and beneficial to all humanity. Many times those fascinated with non-dualist ideas use them to harm the faith or bring disruption to knowledge-development in dualists. One purpose of my writing here is to end that tendency among the religious seekers. In this discussion I will make repetitions of the ideas, and look at them from different views, because non-Dualistic understanding is difficult to grasp.

The verse above, on the "effulgent Self" imagining the world, continues this way:

"The Lord diversifies the mundane things existing in the mind. Turning the mind outward, He creates the well-defined things (as well as the un-defined things). Thus does the Lord imagine."
2nd Mandukya Upanishad, Verse 13, Ghambhirananda

The word "diversifies" above (vikaroti) provides a key understanding of the viewpoint of non-dualistic Vedanta. "Diversifies" means actually what it seems to mean. That is, that the Lord projects the diverse (different) things dynamically in the present moment. This includes all the opposed things, the competing or conflicting things, the villain and victim, the past and present -- and all things seen as causes or whatever story "explains" the diverse phenomena of the moment. All the diverse elements in one's present experience, whether waking or sleeping, including plot elements related to "causes" or "a past," are erected dynamically in the moment now by the Lord.

We can easily understand this if we observe how a storyteller or writer erects a world possessed of characters, situations along with an imagined past, all at once. The creative author alone, while imagining the people, situations, and events -- also provides them with "past causes" that justify or "explain" them, concocted from whole cloth and all in the same move. He can furnish his present story doings with any past explanatory events that he wishes. There is no difference between the imagination of his characters in the story-present, and the imagination of their "past events."

Non-dualistic Vedanta teaches that the exterior waking phenomena, including the notions of past events as causes, arose in the very same way originally. Just as writers provide their "present" characters with past stories to explain their present situations, the Pure Consciousness also provides its present imaginations with fancied "causes" having no particular validity and not required in any way by nature. The idea presented in the Mandukya Upanishad and explained by Sankaracharya is that of mutuality of the so-called phenomenon and its so-called cause.

"...from the apprehension of some fancy as the cause, there follows the apprehension of the result..."

Now I will bring in the Yoga-Vasistha. This is a scripture that strives to explain the point-of-view of non-dualistic Vedanta while also affirming and acknowledging the value of dualistic (knowable) religion. He repeats often a certain phrase which speaks to the principle of mutuality and Brahman as the sole cause. The imagination of a "cause" to match the event is what Sage Vasistha, in the Yoga-Vasistha, is trying to show with this statement:

"A crow lands on a coconut branch. At the same time a coconut falls without any causal relationship."

The great religious teacher, who affirms both conventional religious practices and at the same time teaches non-dualism, repeats this phrase many times. In an original imagined event in incarnational time a falling coconut is simultaneously imagined along with a "causative" landing crow. Other causative aspects may be imagined simultaneously or later on as both fancy and investigation of karma expand, such as "velocity," "gravity," "weight," "the qualities of wood," "air," wings," etc. because one of the features of mind is that it likes to create order plus create stories. But these, also, were originally notional just as "things causing other things" are notional ideas in our dream states. (The dreamer imagines "If I touch the evil tree I'll fall in and shrink," etc.) Then by believing in the reality of that first imagined event (in karmic time), we make repetitions of the same scenario. These build up in memory (as conditioning in the jiva), we believe them more and more, and they become our "laws."

Shankara continues:

"Hence from the apprehension of some fancy as the cause, there follows the apprehension of the result; from that (awareness of causal relation) follows the memory of the cause and the effect..."

Instead of "from that awareness of causal relation" Sankara meant or should have said, "from that notion of of causal relation." Thus dualistic experience and conditioning commence. The remembered self-generated and notional dream experience containing various imagined "causes," factors, and varied players repeats itself. It firms up in the mind as a set of expectations and laws.

"...and from that follows their apprehension, [the apprehension of one thing causing another] as well as the awareness of the action and accessories that this apprehension of causality leads to [the jiva starts bringing in other factors, notionally in conjecture, as causatively related to the landing of the bird and the falling of the fruit, such as weight, velocity, wings, etc., and believes in these factors also] and the awareness of the different results following from those actions etc."

The web of causation-ideas and imagined laws thus expands.

"From their awareness arises their memory; and from that memory again arises their awareness."

We keep re-manifesting prior dream-experiences and self-imagined laws of causation, whether in dreaming life or finally into grosser external form. We do this largely because we remember the experiences before, i.e., we have been marked by them or received impressions (samskaras).

"In this way He imagines diversely the things, both personal and external, that are mutually the causes and the effects."

And all this made possible by the existence of the individualized consciousness, or jiva, which receives the imprints:

"In the previous verse it has been said that the imagining of individuality is the root of all other imaginations."
Mandukya Upanishad, Verse 16, Commentary of Sankaracharya, Ghambhirananda Trans.

Exterior phenomena of the waking world arise in a similar way, with the only considerable difference being the idea of conditioning present in the body, and this aspect is poorly addressed in the Mandukya Upanishad. For the devotee to see the waking world become more obviously like the dream world, with similar fluidness and susceptibility to his thought, requires: 1) Reduction and destruction of the karmic conditioning of the body which projects the more hardened dualistic world-movies, 2) New faith as applied to the body, world, and causation (including invention of new, more auspicious effective principles of causation), and 3) conscious contact with the Transcendental Power, such as Aum.

The final truth, after long religious (i.e. spiritual) development, is that Pure Consciousness is itself the only cause of all the various phenomena, not the things the human mind routinely assigns as causative such as past events, the behavior of elements, etc.

Now, after building up a body full of conditioning and after incarnations, the mind habitually assigns, as causes of various phenomena, a plethora of physical "laws." With our notions of various laws-of-causations, powered by the power of the mind, faith, and conditioning, we gradually imprison ourselves in a dualistic web of limitations and trouble.

We can begin to be free of these laws by, at the first, apprehending other or "higher" causes (of various phenomena) more effective than causes conventionally believed.

The Deluded Belief in Past Events
As Causes of Present Phenomena

One of the biggest and most common traps, in which the mind believes in false causes, is the idea that a current condition or event "has to be" because of prior conditions or events. The mind is especially hypnotized with the idea of Time and Prior Past Events as causes for present phenomena. Examples would be: "I have this scar, and have to have it, because I was once cut there by a knife." Or, "There was a great war that killed many of our men, that is why we are so bereft and destitute," etc. Or, "A company came here and dumped toxins everywhere, and that is why nothing grows and we all die." (There is no limit to the application of this knowledge. The only limits posed are by the non-destruction of conditioning and the failure to properly direct the mind and its power of faith.)

This only occurs and is effective because our mind is our own lawgiver and has firmed up these associations over time.

In the "time and past events" trap, the mind continually reasons: "That event occurred in the past, so this event/situation must be." However, it is simply a case of the jiva bullying and trapping itself by its heavy conditioning.

Review

Religious knowledge and yogic development (such as going to church and enjoying bhakti, or meditating on God, or practicing chastity, freedom from lower laws being, indeed, from the grace of The Lord) will show you that all those theories of causation are false and are created by the mind along with the events and phenomena themselves. Then they are firmed up to the deluded ego through repetition over incarnations, if you will, thus these laws, results, and perceived causes are also the product of conditioning across time.

To review: The original birth of various events and phenomena was nothing but Pure Consciousness (Brahman). However, the Pure Consciousness also allows the mind to invent causes associated with the central phenomena. Now these involve the spectrum of time, the various pre-imagined elements and natural forces, etc. The sequence called time, plus the elements of nature, were themselves originally notions of the Pure Consciousness, then firmed up in the Jiva as real through repetition of experience with them. The mind actually, in the very first "exterior phenomenon" that it invented and experienced, also invented scenarios and relationships of causation to "explain" the imagined event to itself. But the only original cause is the Pure Consciousness itself.

Indeed, we can see the principle easily in the state of dreams at night, where things are experienced nightly -- many of them having an "ancient" aspect, or a monumental and magnificent aspect, but which are erected in the wink of an eye during the dream state. (And a good observer will know that these dream phenomena affect us greatly while they last, often even more than the waking phenomena which we immediately forget upon sleeping. We forget both waking and sleeping lives daily.) As the Yoga-Vasistha says, "A castle in the sky has no builder." (The dream castle seen in the sky doesn't actually have a story of causation.) The "story" of causation are also mind-inventions and firmed up by repetition over incarnations.

Interaction of Action with a Space-Time Nexus as a Higher Cause of Phenomena

We can learn to see that causative explanations spanning back into history are actually a manifestation, in real time, of the manifested event in real time. As the ego experiences events, the mind itself structures the "explanatory cause" spontaneously at that time, associated with the event, and perceives and spans notional causes back through time.

If we can first posit Time (one of the original or founding imaginations, after space is first imagined), an original imagined event happens in karmic time. While imagining an object or event we also invent the "causative agent" along with it. We can see ourselves doing this in dream nightly: "I am fearful of this tree! It's leaves have strange power! When I touch its orange seeds, it bites me! If I touch its bark, it will cause me to fall down into it and shrink" etc. Laws we take for granted here are, in reality -- such as fire should burn, or that there is a thing called "air" that we must breathe to stay alive -- are no less notional than such as that from a typical night's dream.

Again, in dream, "causes" are imagined right along with the phenomena, just as a novel-writer creates the "causes" for his characters situations. After experiencing our own self-created causes, then remembering them, such as "this imagined fire shall cause pain and destruction," we repeat the process during incarnations. The conditioning for these "laws" then builds up in the mind of the jiva (the original imagined "I").

Finding or Choosing Effective Higher Causes

Freeing yourself of the rulership of past-time as causative

One purpose of religious knowledge (spiritual knowledge) is to free us from entrapment by our conditioned beliefs about causation. Then we finally become free of our own self-created laws and "cause" entrapments.

Action, interacting with a space-time nexus, as a more effective cause than "past events"

We have already seen, above, that the past continually changes as new facts about it are discovered (according to our purity and impurity). Thus it is that "past events" as causes for present phenomena are already exposed as faulty. The community may believe that it's crime problem is because once a brothel was there. Then it turns out that the brothel was not a brothel after all, however, a certain corrupt banker was there funding organized crime. Then it turns out he wasn't so bad after all, but rather, a massacre occurred there and the town's over a graveyard. Then it turns out that the massacre was actually on another hill, but a shaman once cursed the town in 1863, etc. etc. The past "facts" are always changing, as we have seen.

The highest purpose of astrological study is to show the difference between grace and karma, and to lead us to higher laws of causation. Not that the planets, either, are causative, but the study of astrology will, indeed, change your ideas about causation. In this study, you learn that action intersecting with various moments-in-time is more causative, and has the power to spontaneously erect an "explanatory past." However, you learn that the cause is not the explanatory past, but the action interacting with a particular moment in time, which creates both particular phenomena, plus appropriate explanatory "past causes."

This higher cause is easy to see by observation of astrological transits and use of selected timings for various actions. Different astrological timings produce different results. By choosing the timing of an action, you can predict much about how the action will go, what the outcome will be, etc. So, for example, a certain moon transit would be likely to produce an unpleasant experience of music, or a meal at a restaurant, or a movie. These same things undertaken during a pleasant transit tend to produce the pleasant meal, music, or movie. The timing of the "finding out" controls the results found out. We have all had the experience buying some music we plan to like (maybe because we like the musician), but upon playing, find we dislike it; are disappointed. Or going to a restaurant where it was pleasant before, but now the experience is less pleasant. Or taking a trip where we enjoyed ourselves before, now finding it's changed and the trip is not enjoyable. Always correlating with these variations will be different planetary combinations at the time of the event.

Thus, one can choose to wait to listen to his CD or album, waiting for a transit that has corresponded to "good music" in the past (say, Moon sextile Venus, etc.). He finds then that, though the nature of the music was unknown prior to listening, it turns out to please him. Or, he waits to go to a restaurant, choosing a pleasant transit, and finds it is pleasant. Or, waits to open a letter, investigate a new place, or read a report -- and gets results accordingly. This phenomenon is easily observable with astrology.

Now, what is found will be the good or bad results will always come with a "story" that explains them. "This change has occurred with the group, so it turns out I don't like the musical group now." Or, "The nice waitress is no longer at the restaurant, this one's different, so that's why this visit was less enjoyable." Or, "The report of my grades/health/child's condition is bad/good because of thus-and-such past fact." A story explaining the past always emerges concomitantly with all actions into dualistic time. Both the results obtained and the story "explaining" them (relative to the past, or pre-existing conditions) -- are all erected in the same moment. The perceived "causes" are actually the result of the choice of action during a particular intersection of forces, i.e., a spot in dualistic time.

The Pure Consciousness is likened to the "uncarved block" (Tao Te Ching/Yoga-Vasistha). Just as a piece of granite has limitless possible sculptures and shapes "inside" it, the Pure Consciousness can produce any event or condition, plus an attending story "explaining" the event or condition. It all arises together.

Imagine standing above a piece of uncarved stone with a ruler. Imagine now for a moment the stone is Time, and natural karmic forces. There are many little speckles or spots in the stone, representing different bundles of dualistic karmic forces. You lay your ruler across a little blue spot in the stone, pointed in a particular direction. That represents your choice of moment, the "finding out," or "action taken in time." Because you placed the ruler (acted in time) above the "blue speck," you got a certain result. Now, the ruler also points two ways, away from the speck, in two directions. This represents the story back in time that "explains" the blue speck (the pleasant or unpleasant experience or results). Each time you choose different speck, placing the ruler above a different colored speck (choosing a certain act in time), the ruler is pointed at a different angle. That is, it intersects varied "explanatory past stories."

The truer cause of the particular results was the action into a certain point of time, i.e. action (interaction) with a particular packet of dualistic karmic forces. It is as if the choice to act into a particular moment of time and place creates a fracture line along a particular direction into a spontaneously created past-story. As karma continues to unfold and one digs into the arising story, particular "facts" that explain the outcome are found in the "past" inherent in that particular fracture line.

Now, this i- one superior "theory of cause." It can begin to free you from conventional notions of cause, and from conventional laws should you be deserving through brahmacharya and religious devotion.

Thus one trains one's self away from conventional theories of causation. That is, the combination of action with a particular point on the substrate of time. In this higher theory, all moments are pregnant with a different package of dualistic stories. Acting in that particular moment is piercing the moment, thus it's various dualistic outcomes arise. This includes the "story of why" back in "the past." The mind itself which seeks to see order, and which also has "conditioning for causes," has erected the "past story" to match or "explain" the event.

In the example mentioned of grades, let us say the student's grades are out, and he seeks to find out what they are. The wiser student does not even choose to check them until he has a positive, beneficial transit for "good news and good findings." The impulsive, uneducated student, stumbles into them under any old transit. The wiser one choosing the better time, though unsure what the grades would be, finds them to be satisfactory or better than expected. He gets all A's and a Be let's say, when it could have gone differently. Now, his mind produces the explanation: "Ah, it turns out that teacher didn't dislike me so much after all." Or he inquires and finds out more about his result (moving into time with more actions), and finds out: "Oh, it turns out my paper made it in, in time, after all." So the "explanation of the facts" arises in concert with his action into time.

Now, let's say the clever one forgets his knowledge one day, and impulsively "finds out" (checks to see) his new grades under a less auspicious moon. He stumbles in, looks at the bulletin board, or opens the mail, and he is disappointed with his grades. He thinks of the moon, "Ah, why did I not wait to check." However, all the "story of explanation" will be attending his "finding out," as usual: "Ah, it turned out that that substitute teacher, at the end of the semester, didn't know how brilliant I was because she missed the first 2 months of my brilliance." Or, "Ah, it turns out my paper didn't get in by the deadline," or "Was in the wrong format," or "It turns out I missed an assignment and didn't know."

Only his action into a particular moment was the creator of the story, and the "ruler" was turned at a different angle, intersecting the whole stone of time, projecting into a different past story or explanatory story.

In this way, astrological observation can teach you to see that things are not caused in the way we conventionally think.

Now, another higher theory of causation is to understand the purity and impurity of your own mind-body, as projecting grosser or finer (pleasant and unpleasant) outer world conditions. Many have had the experience of being on a drug and finding that the world is different, the world has changed. The difference seen in the world -- even contradicting the usual known laws of nature -- are a product of the drug or impurity in the body. The world-within, now disturbed by the impurity of the drug, has been re-arranged. Thus the exterior projected world is likewise rearranged. What happens in this theory is that karma is unfolding across time and made grosser or finer (in projection) by varying states of purity or impurity. With increasing purity of body-mind, especially as regards lust and the vibration of the lower, more dualistic centers, the general self-projected dualistic "world movie" becomes more benign or refined, though still being dualistic. (Instead of seeing a world being paved over, you see world paved over only in places, with some gardens, etc.)

The Yoga-Vasistha tries to break us free of our conventional notions of causation by repeating a strange line: "...just as a crow lands on a palm tree branch, and a coconut falls off, without any causative relationship." This is the meaning of that phrase: That all our ideas of "causation" -- save the Pure Consciousness itself -- are mind inventions turned into gross conditioning through repetition or re-confirmation. Religious knowledge shows you that ultimately, notwithstanding our obligation to treat them as real in conventional life, these lesser ideas of causation are part of our a trap. The conditioning, in essence, says "This (event/condition) must cause or lead to that (event/condition)."

Sankara, in one of his commentaries on the uncaused nature of phenomena, gives the example of believing there is a certain town around you, because you have visited its "places" before, and that there are "unknown, undiscovered" parts of the town, etc. These notions are only mental ideas, but we have made them temporarily true by conditioning. (All towns eventually dissolve; all those places will one day not be there, or will be dramatically changed.) The entire exterior world, which we assume as existing and in place throughout our day, are at base notional. It is the product of conditioned but ephemeral karma, and began as nothing but expectation and the repetition of original events. In order to get this conditioning involving "past causes," Time itself had to first be imagined then firmed up by conditioning. The time idea was an outgrowth of a prior visualization of space.

In the view of non-dualistic Vedanta there is only one root cause, and that is Pure Consciousness. Even time and space itself, upon which conventional causation is based, are imagined. Conditioning, itself, is imagined. And it -- the conditioning -- is based on the original notion of "I" or jiva, having a body etc. There is no conditioning ("past experiences) possible where the "I" or jiva dissolve.

In the non-Dualistic view, even primal things such as space, time, and prana (life energy as present in exterior nature) -- are mental inventions. Even prana and time are false. Thus, you can see what a great and disorienting sea is the sea of non-Dualist knowledge and why it has power to create confusion and disorientation to the majority of mankind who benefit from dualistic religious approaches. However, the seekers and knowers of the knowable blissful God (Isvara, Saguna Brahman) should definitely contemplate non-duality also and grasp these ideas.

The various theories of creation
(Non-dualistic Vedanta encompasses them all)

The Evolutes

According to one practical theory present in non-Dualistic Vedanta all that really exists is Brahman, sometimes called Pure Consciousness. This is basically one of the Vedic words for God, in a particular conception as pure, unmanifested potential. We, each of us, experience mergence with this Brahman nightly in the state of deep dreamless sleep, in which we are no longer aware of our "I," and no longer aware of any "other." This is actually the state of Brahman, covered with the layer of nescience or ignorance that is sleep.

In Vedantic theory, there is a point in which the idea of "I" arises in Brahman. At that point Nirguna Brahman arises, or Isvara the Lord. Then Nirguna Brahman, the Lord, imagines infinite space (akasa). Then arises sound, or Aum, in the infinite space. Then because space exists the idea of Time, or sequential movement across space, arises.

Next arises, in Nirguna Brahman, the thought of "Thou" or "other" and objects. Now there are two. One of the first "objects" Isvara imagines is prana, or a fundamental life energy. Then other prana-made objects are imagined that we call elemental objects such as air, water, fire, earth, etc. These elemental objects are imagined as causing each other in succession.

According to pure non-dualistic Vedanta even Isvara, the Lord, is "deluded" by his creation and the belief in its existence. Other Isvara's arise from the one first Great Isvara (Mahasvara) who each have their own universes and are Lords of them. This is because Brahman or Pure Consciousness has infinite power and potential.

The Lord of our Universe, Isvara, goes on imagining various "others" and objects while also endowing them with their "causes." When he imagines an "other" like himself, with His same awareness and capacity for interaction, that is the beginning of "jiva," the individual soul such as ourselves. The jiva, also, has this same power of imagination. So he begins to imagine "others" and "events," while also supplying them with their various "causes" just as seen in dream. He is imprinted by the event (receives conditioning in his jiva-mind), remembers it, then repeats the experiment. Thus various "natural laws" are set up.

Even the laws of Time and Karma are predicated on the existence of the original imagined "I" and other imagined things such as Time, so even the laws of conditioning and karma can become undone and dissolved by the dissolving of the jiva. The jiva is the original substrate or print bed upon which these "laws" are set up. Just as we know complete freedom from all laws and limitations nightly in the dream state, the dissolving of the jiva in the waking state also frees us from conditioning and karmic law. The dissolving of the jiva (individualize identity) is the very same thing as the dissolution of conditioning and karma.

The Problem of the Body, Mind, and their Conditioning

In order to develop freedom from karmic law and inferior (false) causations, several approaches are taken by the religious (the spiritual seekers):

-- Destroying the existing conditioning

-- Attenuating incoming new conditioning

-- Imagining (inventing) other effective causes (of a more auspicious nature, superior or with sway over the lesser false causes)

-- Visualizing and experiencing Brahman as untouched, as pure potential, as all auspicious

This has been a partial exposition on the idea of causelessness as presented in the Mandukya and other Upanishads. In this view, nothing has ever been created, only Brahman exists and we superimpose duality and causes onto Brahman through ignorance or maya. There are other dimensions to the philosophy, expounded in the Upanishads, adducing the fictional nature of conventional causation. However, this is an introduction to the basic idea of self-invented causes for modern seekers.

On Sankara

Sankara of India did four great things:

1) He propounded a rational analysis of God and reality that encompassed all possible religious conceptions, up to and including Brahman who is pure consciousness, being, and bliss.

2) He presented stout and elaborate ascetic ideals of renunciation. A central part of his renunciation ideal was that very rational analysis itself, intended to convince the aspirant to withdraw from mental engagement with exteriors and perishables.

3) He created the orders of ascetics (swamis) of India.

4) He describes a great many of yogic states and attitudes, though he may not have been established in them himself. (I am certainly aware of the legends about Sankara, yet these remain my solid impressions from seeing him display his knowledge of the occult scriptures.) He affirmed a great many things in the Vedic scriptures and ancient dharmic culture of India. His attitude was, in fact, Cancerian in the way that he affirmed much cultural tradition without necessarily any rational basis for it, though his main approach was rationality.

However, Sankaracharya's teaching also had particular flaws and these should be born in mind when reading his powerful writings. These flaws have often been intimated or addressed by various yogic saints in their opinions about the path of jnana or reason. Having read him extensively and compared him to the teachings of the yogic saints as well as the scriptures themselves, I would like to list them for the edification of White Europeans who may wander into Sankara's mental territory:

The Faults of Sankara

Lack of treatment for bhakti and brahmacharya

1) Bhakti (devotion) is not presented in a systematic way as an explicit feature of the yoga Sankara presented. This is tragic. Perhaps his most weighty statements on bhakti are these from the opening of "The Crest Jewel of Wisdom": "Meditation upon the true form of the real Self is said to be devotion" and "Some say devotion is meditation on the nature of one's Atman." He does not posit these and then counter with some other better definitions for bhakti. He simply posits these definitions -- and they are very lacking -- then moves on to other topics. It was quite as if he wanted to keep arm's length from bhakti and only mentioned it for the sake of a complete enumeration in a work that sought to be, at least, comprehensive. Others may point to a great many references, at least, to the bhakti attitude by Sankara throughout his works. Yet the point is he never lays it on the table as a fundamental pinion of his yoga. Rather, it has a background or mere atmospheric role.

Indeed, indirect references to the bhakti attitude show up regularly in the margins and sidelines of Sankara's writings -- quite as if he himself possessed bhakti. It's found in his introductory and closing invocations. It's often seen in the creative "teacher and student" scenes with which he embellishes his aphorisms: "Having obtained the guidance of such a preceptor through devotion, respectful demeanor, and service..." However, he fails to list bhakti as a critical component of religious life and yoga. Certainly he spends little time on it as an explicit subject in the meat of his teachings. We can easily say he does not consciously emphasize bhakti. This stands at odds with the fact that the Yoga-Sutra lists "devotion to the Lord" as the 2nd of only three basic "yogic actions." One would think that Sankara, founder of the yogic orders of India, might have found place to speak of it more directly.

The same can be said for the teaching of brahmacharya. Sankara appears to uphold it and affirm it in his commentaries, but often in a desultory way. In one commentary he defined brahmacharya as "lack of sexual relation" which is flawed and misleading. Though acknowledging it he does not emphasize its importance in his overall writings. Yet both of these are of fundamental importance in yogic development, and the latter important in comprehending Sankara's non-dualistic arguments. It suggests s that though Sankara himself benefited from bhakti and brahmacharya and they played a large role in his greatness, he himself did not understand their significance. Or, it could suggest that Sankara was himself weak in bhakti or brahmacharya, which would explain a third flaw:

Lack of occult yogic knowledge

I have been repeatedly surprised by Sankara's lack of response, in his commentaries, on Upanishadic verses that clearly deal with esoteric aspects of meditation and yoga. This might be attributed to a wise master refraining from mentioning things unseemly to teach openly in publicly available scriptures. However, these are supposed to be commentaries bringing out value from abstruse scriptures. An intelligent writer, and he was one, can at least make allusions to the truth for the benefit of the yogins and avid seekers and Sankara often passes by without any comment at all. This is obvious in the Upanishadic references to the inner bindu ("comets, stars, smoke, fireflies"). It is also obvious in his commentary on verses that are speaking of Aum as a reality experienced in yoga. He steadily misses the import of the verses. Sankara even states that Aum is merely a symbol for God that lesser devotees can use as a meditation vehicle. This is sadly erroneous.

As I studied Sankara my respect for him was high. Whenever he failed to even allude to occult significances in various Upanishads, I regularly pegged it to wise reserve. However, when I read Sankara's commentary on Yoga Sutras 2:50 and 2:51, it became clear to me that he was not an advanced yogi and that he was in fact not qualified to comment on a great many Upanishadic verses. Truly, his comments on those two Yoga-Sutra verses dealing with pranayama are completely lacking in insight and the inner yogic development that leads to samadhi.

Perhaps this was indeed because if a weakness, in Sankara, in both the bhakti and chastity areas. That would be one explanation. Perhaps he was simply not graced with the raja-yoga of the siddhas or even the Yoga-Sutra.

So it turns out that Sankara's insistence on a yoga that consisted primarily of rational analysis was inadequate. Sankara's central teaching is a form of rational analysis by which the devotee can become convinced that there is only one reality, Brahman, and all perceivables and externals are false. The purport of this, as he repeatedly stresses it, is that a kind of pratyahara (reversal of attention away from the world) and therefore an entry into samadhi is obtained by steadily convincing one's self of the world's non-reality. In his oft-repeated "snake and stick" metaphor the devotee is seen realizing "I thought there was 'a world' there (I thought I saw a snake), but there is really nothing there. (It was only a stick.)" I wonder how many yogis have attained savikalpa samadhi primarily by abiding in Sankara's recommended constant viewpoint of the unreal world. My expectation would be that most of them did so by guru shaktipat, bhakti, plus meditation technique and not primarily through Sankara's viewpoint-yoga.

Messy or insubstantial

In the opening 20 verses of "Crest Jewel of Wisdom" Sankara allows a great many obvious inconsistencies. Not that inconsistencies are unnatural to scriptures or the discussion of a God that contains all possibilities. Just that it is a messy presentation for a book that looks to be a systematic presentation of essence. Then many of his commentaries on Upanishadic verses, painfully detailed as they seem, bring little new insight to the verse just preceding. When they do, it is often an insight of a mere practical nature, making clear a sentence that is confusing or sketchily constructed. His commentaries are often long sputter-alongs that simply repeat the obvious as he parses the verses. One often has the impression that he has little to say, but is doing his best to be an authoritative recounter nevertheless.

Summary on Sankara

My view is that Sankara's non-dualism arguments are a huge contribution to religious knowledge as well as raja-yoga. They are the shining intellectual component of raja-yoga. However, abiding in an intellectual analysis in which the world is remembered as transitory and unreal is only a supplement to yoga. I believe that as a whole technique -- and Sankara seemed to stress it over all others -- it is lacking. That is to say, the majority of beings get hold of Brahman -- both Saguna and Nirguna -- faster and easier by being taught bhakti, moral purity, and meditation technique. These are, indeed, central to the Yoga-Sutra as well a the Bhagavad-Gita and Upanishads. In summary Sankara was an important contributor to religious and yogic knowledge, teaching the proper intellectual view-of-creation that the aspirant should cultivate. But he was not a realized master and his commentaries are often incomplete and sometimes even incorrect.

In the words of great bhaktas and yogis such as Ramakrishna, Nityananda, and others we can often hear them pointing out the flaw of Sankara's "dry reasoning" path. So my critique is not at all new. However, I myself, in the years when I first began reading Sankara, had viewed him as a kind of god. What he was was a great thinker and renunciate. There is majesty in both his formulation of non-dualistic Vedanta and the transitoriness of material existence, and his priceless articulation of renunciation and saddhu ideals. Aum. In general I consider the "Qualified Non-Dualism" school of Ramanuja to be superior to Sankara's view, because it is replete with the bhakti that Sankara only mentioned glancingly as if for mere textual atmospherics. Sankara is best viewed as a great religious thinker and philosopher of India, an upholder and affirmer of yogic renunciation culture, and as the exponent of Non-Dualism. He was not a great bhakta, yogi or adept at the time of his writings.