Trust

All is well unfolding as it should, trust that great power which knows the way.

Robert Adams

America’s Identity Crisis

America’s infatuation with masculine values is expressed in capitalism. In contrast, the USSR’s infatuation with feminine values expressed as communism. These two super-powers played off each other – each despising the other – causing them to go further to the left and right.

Now that the USSR has gone, there is nothing pushing America more and more to the right. Naturally, it is moving back towards equilibrium at the centre. America is now having to own what it previously disowned – its feminine nature: socialism.

This is terribly offensive to the American identity – as demonstrated by loud groups like the Tea Party which cling to their masculine values: independence, autonomy, look-after-yourself mentality.

America’s demonisation of the left in the past is making its road to equilibrium in the present a difficult time.

David Frawley on Emotion

Great Tantrics like Abhinavagupta teach us the secret of all the rasas. In this regard, all emotions are rasas. The nine emotional rasas are love, anger, disgust, courage, joy, fright, compassion, wonder and peace. Like a great artist or performer one must come to understand and be able to express all these rasas in their full scope. Then emotion becomes a tool of divine feeling and eternal joy which raises us up, not a poison that brings us down. These emotions belong to the Divine artist. When we expropriate them at an ego level, they become poisons. We must not be incapable even of negative emotions like anger or fear, but we must touch the energy behind them, not contract in the circumstances which create them.

In Tantra, emotion is the main area in which our life energy, our prana or Shakti is held. Suppressing emotion is like suppressing life. It causes death. But expressing raw emotion at an ego level is also destructive and disintegrating. The key is to go to the rasa of the emotion in the dance of Shiva, in which the Shakti will naturally be released.

Continued here.

Deepak Chopra on Entrepreneurship

What advice would you offer entrepreneurs on success?

Your true measure of success is your self esteem. Don’t confuse your self image with self esteem. Self image is what other people think of you. Self esteem is the inner core of your being that relies on the inner sense of self. Then also realize that you’ll never get anywhere unless you’re independent of the good and bad opinion of others. Be fearless.

From here.

Deepak Chopra on Athiests

Deepak points out the foolishness of shallow thinkers like Christopher Hitchens:

By discounting the whole notion of spiritual awakening, atheists make a claim to false knowledge. They haven’t walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren’t just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today. I have my doubts.

See the whole article here.

The Highest is Unknown

Dr John Demartini:

The lowest state of human awareness is the victim mentality, where there exists disassociated perceptions and blame. The highest state of awareness is where you realize there’s no separation between cause and effect, where your perceptions are the true causes and your reactions are the true effects of your life, where you are the cause of your own effect.

Sunyogi says:

Since you are the cause of your own effect, then you are 100% responsible for everything in your life.

Sunyogi also says:

‘Highest’ and ‘state’ refer to relative realities. What about the state in which everything is uncaused and uneffected? What about the state of statelessness? Who knows what the highest state really is. A philosophy must accommodate the UNKNOWN.

Swami Krishnananda

But there is a higher kind of work that is not binding but liberating, and it is this work that goes by the name of service, and is above self.
.
.
.
.
So also the principle objectivity has to be isolated from consciousness. This is called kaivalya or moksha. Kaivalya means kevalata. Kevala means oneness, alone, aloneness. When we stand alone as purusha, as consciousness, independent of association with objects or prakriti, we are said to have attained kaivalya. This is also called moksha. It is called moksha because it is freedom. Moksha means liberation, mukti, complete dissociation from all factors causing bondage. When the purusha isolates itself, separates itself from contact with prakriti, it is supposed to attain kaivalya moksha. We stand in our independent status. We are no more a slave to the enchantment of prakriti.
.
.
.
But beyond still, beyond this causative principle of avyakta, is the Absolute. This is called the ultimate purusha or the Purushottama. It is called Purushottama because it is transcendent purusha and not merely the consciousness involved in creation.

Dvād imau puruṣau loke kṣaraś cakṣara eva ca, kṣaraḥ sarvāṇi bhūtāni kūṭhastho’kṣara ucyate (Gita 15.16). Uttamaḥ puruṣas tva anyaḥ paramātmety udāhṛatḥ (Gita 15.17).

This Paramatman, or the Purushottama, is beyond both prakriti and purusha. It is not the purusha involved in samsara, and it is also not the prakriti, the objective principle. It is the supreme regulative order of the universe wherein the constitution of all creation is laid down once and for all. It is difficult to name it, designate it; and until we reach that state, we are samsarins.
.
.
.
.
It is very difficult to conceive this in our little brain, but this is the object of our supreme meditation. We will be simply thrilled even to think of this Reality. Our hair will stand on end. Hunger and thirst get quenched; it will appear as if nectar is flowing through our throat, and we will be in ecstasy of joy beyond comprehension. Here we will stop speaking altogether, and we will be an eternal mauni, forever. When God enters the jiva, nothing remains to be said or done. We will become kritakritya, praptaprapya and jnatajneya. Everything that is to be known is known, everything that is to be done is done, and everything that is to be obtained is obtained. This is perfection.

The Raja Yoga of Shankara

Shankaracharya, or Shankara the teacher, is one of the greatest spiritual masters in the history of India. Shankara has often been called the greatest philosopher of India, if not of all time and of the entire world.

His teaching is highly rational, clear and concise, as well deeply mystical, unfolding all the mysteries of Self, God, the universe, the Absolute and immortality.

Most of what today is called Advaita (non-dualistic) Vedanta reflects the mark of his insights. He is the main classical teacher of the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

Written by Dr David Frawley and continued here.

Shankara says in his text Aparokshanubhuti:
.
.
.
11. Without inquiry (vichara) there is no knowledge, which is not gained by any other means, just as an object is revealed only by light and not by anything else.
.
.
.
12. ”Who am I? How did this world come into being? Who is its creator? What is its material cause?” This inquiry is of that kind.
.
.
.
101. Without continual practice (nitya abhyasa), there is no attainment of the Self of Being and Consciousness (Sacchidatman). Therefore, those aspiring to the truth should continually meditate upon Brahman for their highest good.
.
.
.
105. Increasing the sense of commonality and decreasing the sense of difference, which grants the supreme bliss, that Niyama or restraint is practiced by the wise.

The Kybalion

“Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

“To illustrate: Heat and Cold, although “opposites,” are really the same thing, the differences consisting merely of degrees of the same thing.”

— The Kybalion (a Hermetic text)

Maharishi Speaking to Reporters

A reporter once asked Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, “How does the world look in the highest state of consciousness?”

“You see that everything is exactly as it should be,” said Maharishi.

The reporter hesitated before asking, “But why then, are you working so hard to improve the situation?”

Maharishi smiled. “Because that is exactly as it should be.”

————————————————————————————————-

A reporter once asked Maharishi as he boarded a plane why he didn’t levitate himself from one city to the next. Maharishi replied, “Because I don’t like to fly alone.”

————————————————————————————————-