Before what we can conceive of as a start of time there has been eternity and a world of complete never ending time. In that place was Sri and Narayan the Female and Male divine. It came to pass that from the love affairs of both the male and female divine the souls of the world came to be.
When they come to be, souls are complete and yet are like seeds. We can see that a full tree can be found to come from a seed, even though the seed is small and still needs to grow, nothing but a full tree can come from a seed. The same is the case of all Jivas in the world. We can only be fully what we are at one stage but can only show as much of us as has been grown.
So it was that Narayan made this place which is called Jagat so that all the seeds could grow and flourish. This world was made as a place of learning and full of various and adverse circumstances of both pain and pleasure so that we can grow and understand completely everything. If our vision is only day or night then we can not understand either or place significance upon either.
Narayana is the source of everything and master of everything we can have an experience of. By his direction are we given our intelligence or ignorance, by his direction do we crave or hate. All words and all names have an origin in him. All sound has a origin in him alone. The sound of the crashing waves the hooting of animals have one origin and one source. This is the most perfect and true vision of reality which is perceived by souls who are liberated and who live in this state of understanding at all times.
This world was made for the purpose of being a giant school for all souls to learn and develop and grow on the path of life. Therefore how we see it all depends on our vision on the mater and how much we are willing to accept the facts of what it is and our purpose for being in it. How much attention or inattention we give to a mater or how much we love something or hate it, is based on our perception of it and our vision of something. All the souls have different levels of coverings and different levels of understanding of what is and what is the value of everything. This variation of thought is brought about as a tool for all the living things to grow and change and express exactly what they are in the most full and complete way they can. People will spit on the child who begs in the street and then come home and kiss there own child. They see a difference between the two and place an attachment on one and a aversion to the other based on what they have come to see as being a fact.
The Duality of the world has led some people to come to the conclusion that this is a bad thing and that in the end we must abandon all duality. This is the philosophy of monism. People condemn the world and call it either a place of suffering or a place of illusion and preach detachment from it. Many people claim that this was the message of the Buddha or of the teacher Shankaracharya. People claim that the world has no value and that to place a value on it is to be ensnared within it and to suffer from the duality of it.
By observation and by Philosophy and Theology I have come to see that actually this is a form of over attachment to the dream of the world. The exact opposite of what they are hoping for. When one claims that the world has no value and it is a source of suffering what they are saying is that they have had bad experiences and suffered from them and that they need some form of escape from the world. The more we crave to control something then the more we feel let down and sad when it acts in a way which is different than what we had hoped. In this same sense people cling to dreams and fancy ideas and want them to come true and when this doesn't happen then they become frustrated and decide to abandon that which has let them down. When some one is too lusty then they act this way and they control others due to fear.
These people have a perverted lust for the world which causes them to crave and hanker for dreams and visions of things which are not real. This is called Maya or Illusion. This in itself is the Maya which they speak of and which is spoken of.
Love on the other hand is something which has deeper connotation and which is the opposite of lust. When we understand that the world is made by God and is full of nothing but God and that everything which happens is going on under the direction of none other than God himself then the situation changes and we come to see that the world is a wonderful place. Every speck of dust and every thing which goes on has such a value and every moment is full of something new and wonderful. The Idea of duality is there in the world but the fact is when we focus on God then the duality disappears and what emerges is something else. This is what the great teachers have always said. We need to first establish the fact God is in control and that we need to accept what is happening to us. This is a difficult situation most of the time, but this is a kind of exercise which God gives us to show us just how strong and resilient we are.
One misconception which is spread by the ignorant and by those who desire the world to be ignorant is that for some reason in relation to God or just in general strength is a bad thing. The so called enlightened people claim that our goal as spiritual beings is to be weak, humble, little and worthless. They state that our ego is a demon and that it must be tamed and all sorts of moral evils are a result of an over powerful ego. In effect ego is the path to hell. This is a branch of "Philosophy" which has become popular in some circles and which I find a particular dislike of .
One can argue that by accepting what happens to us that is a way of disabling the ego and that what they are preaching is no different from the Truth which I am speaking.
However I will state this. Our desire for acceptance of the facts of reality is not a desire to destroy the ego, but to make progress on the path of life. There is a vast difference between the two. Strength is the great asset in our life, and progress can only be achieved based on strength. It is strength to understand that dwelling on what happens and what has happened to us or what might happen to us is going to stop our progress. However when we try and state that our goal is to be weak and humble and that we can be walked on by others, than what kind of strength or progress is achieved by that? Large amounts of progress can come in ones life by being a moral person and doing what is right and by trying to be a peace maker, but simply claiming that the "ego" is an enemy leads to all sorts of wild claims and ideas and leads a mass of ignorance in the minds of people.
I have seen hundreds and thousands of people who rather than making any kind of growth from the Idea of surrender or reducing pride, they simply take it as an excuse to be inactive and not face any challenge or do anything at all of any worth, claiming that it would only be my own pride or ego which is getting in the way.
The largest problem a person with divine knowledge ever faces when they speak is not what there is to speak. That comes naturally as water flowing towards the ocean. The largest problem is the ears of the people who hear the divine words. The ears of people desire to twist and change what is spoken. More often than not people will not think what can I use this for, but what can I get away with.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Orthodoxy Faith Bhakti and Truth
Orthodoxy Faith Bhakti and Truth
Often times what happens in life is a test of faith and of a belief in love. Love is the closest thing to the divine and therefore atheist will stop at nothing to destroy it. The current move by the atheist armies against the world of man is to make love into a cheap thing and trivialize it totally. I cannot blame the race of Assuras on the current global events which plague the human race. If it was a demon who is behind what is happening at the current moment he is a rebel and not even of the race of Daitya or Danava for they on the whole don’t have the pure dark void in there soul which is the spawn of our current earthly delema. I blame Nagas or some other third Party race who hasn’t had a hand at universal power. Who is the great unholy eye I cannot say. But his vile gaze has spread all over the world.
When bad things happen to us in life it produces a test of faith. But the real question is faith in what? Is it faith in us or is it faith in God. These things I would propose are an outward manifestation of a test in faith in love itself. Love becomes equated with pain and so we often times will make walls to block feelings fearing the pain and not letting it come through to us. We need to have a y that Love is not a trivial thing which comes and goes and that when it seems that way in this world that is the warning that the great teachers of the world have warned against. The apparent appearance and disappearance of love is a simple blunder on our part. It is our perception of the matter which has been corrupted. We must have faith that love in the divine realm is eternal and flawless, That is the nature of the divine realm.
Often times there is a need to be attached to things which seem normal and which can be easily defined. We want the copper bottomed truth. However many human emotions are beyond our scope to define and often times they make people act in ways which are completely beyond the logical ability to understand. With the Bhakti cults there is often a kind of fear which comes about as emotion is hard to understand. We want a simple formula which is like 1 + 1 =2. This is the cause of Orthodox religions and quasi religions such as Modern Darwinian Evolution. An orthodox religion is a belief in which some one says I have a set of beliefs and they mean this and anyone who says anything different is obviously a loony. No matter how logical you make it sound there is always something which people need to understand. The amount that we can grasp with our limited vision and senses is so small that it is impossible for us to understand the truth of anything unless experience is talking to us
There are 3 kinds of ways of understanding the world around us. Sabda Manimaya and Pratyaksha The 2 most powerful ones in the modern age are Sabda and Pratyaksha. Sabda is the Sanskrit word for sound and basically it means any and all information which is based on that which has been told to us. This includes written materials as well. Pratyaksha means experience, or that which has been experienced. These two sources of knowledge are used every day to get information. Most orthodox faiths are based on Sabdha and only a very few on Pratyaksha.
Many times this is the full extent by which people learn anything at all. Some things like what it is like on the surface of the moon or stars we are typically limited to what we read in books or if we are lucky enough to meet a astronaut who can tell us what it is like there themselves
There is one glaring downside to this method of gaining knowledge which is that it is based only on the limitations or qualifications of the people who are speaking to you. More times than not we find in the academic world especially people are prone to copy and paste information which they have no experience in whatsoever.
As far as the medical field, Biology and other more technical fields and some others which experimentation is taken up it is quite easy to see and test direct results however when it comes to things like the distance between planets and The origin of life or the sham called archeology it is important to look at these things with a grain of salt as often times theories are replaced as soon as they are spoken. Most source material and research is based on second hand information which has a thousand separate understandings and which has no experienced value.
For thousands of years the big brains of the western world were certain for example that the earth was flat or that it was the center of the universe. This was based on the ideas of the great minds of the ancient world like Socrates and Aristotle. By copy and paste methodology people were not working on the process of experience It creates knowledge filters. What is written is law, any new evidence must be cast aside because it goes against the established norm. (Which on the other hand seems to change all the time)
Another problem especially with this method is that even if it is direct experience it can be clouded by some ones personal preferences or ideas. For example if I had a friend who went to a restaurant and told me the food was bad. I may not go, but what happened if I went there and I happened to like it a lot. The reverse can also happen some one can like a place and I may hate it.
This is a simple example but it goes with almost all opinions and even has the possibility to go into any form of knowledge which is written down, as in the end it is only an opinion of one form or another. I think it would be impossible to truly understand a ancient culture unless you have seen it with your eyes or live the life yourself. It is almost imposable to get a clear picture about things in this life unless we see them for ourselves especially if it is alien or different than what we are used to.
The prime example of this is the famous case of Java man. A so called scientist went to a heap of bones and found as skull cap from a monkey and about 100 feet away he found the leg of a man and said that obviously it must be a ancient monkey man. At the end of his life the scientist realized the truth however the Java man is proudly displayed in our school childrens science books. I was cooking rice the other day and used the same ingrediants I always do and came up with 10% more quantity than normal. It happened to be the full moon so obviously since the moon is known to bring about abundance in the plant life it caused me to make more rice. I think that claim is about just as credible as any theory of archeology.
Experience
.. ..
Information which comes to us based on external circumstances or which confirm ideas which we have already received from another place. Experience is solid proof of something which comes to us from outside sources. People can talk all day about how good something tastes but the real proof is in the eating of that thing.
In the same way people can debate for example the nature of a persons character government science or any topic at length, but the real proof of the said subject will be in how it is experienced in life. Experience serves to confirm information but it also can teach us new information as well which may be to the contrary.
People can talk about how good something is but when you try it yourself then it is completely the opposite. This is what experience can show us. It is something which can be an almost undeniable source of information. It is a conformation of ideas. It teaches by external and real life experiences, Knowledge receved tends to stick to the mind longer
.. ..
Pit falls
.. ..
There is several pitfalls to this method of learning which I will show. When he have a set Idea about how the world works then all data taken in by us, tends to be read in a certain way.
Two people can have the same thing happen to them and they can have two different reactions and two different conclusions. This is a danger of preconceived notions. For example two people can be sitting in a park on a sunny day. One person will be happy to see the children playing and feel the sun on his face, his experience of the situation will be a pleasant one. The other person can sit on the same park bench and they will feel sad that the children are playing because they wish they were a child again or maybe they just had a bad day and seeing people happy makes them feel even worse
Different preconceived notions can enter into our mind and affect how we experience things. Preconced notions however are a pitfall for all kinds of knowledge gathering so therefore it cannot be restriced only to experience. People who read and listen to others for example can also suffer from preconced notions.50 people can listen to the same lecture and you can have 50 different conclutions on the same topic coming from the same person. People can debate the meaning of one sentence for example for hours.
Fear of the unknown which is a animal instinct is the cause of our need for certainty however if we realy look at the big questions and the more aesthetic parts of life we will see that things are not nearly as defined or clear cut as we pretend or pray for. This however is not such a bad thing. We need to go to the other side of fear and our attachment to what is considered by us as normal to begin to enter into the divine realms. Its is pure folly to think that anything is of more value to us than our self realization or love of Krsna.
Often times what happens in life is a test of faith and of a belief in love. Love is the closest thing to the divine and therefore atheist will stop at nothing to destroy it. The current move by the atheist armies against the world of man is to make love into a cheap thing and trivialize it totally. I cannot blame the race of Assuras on the current global events which plague the human race. If it was a demon who is behind what is happening at the current moment he is a rebel and not even of the race of Daitya or Danava for they on the whole don’t have the pure dark void in there soul which is the spawn of our current earthly delema. I blame Nagas or some other third Party race who hasn’t had a hand at universal power. Who is the great unholy eye I cannot say. But his vile gaze has spread all over the world.
When bad things happen to us in life it produces a test of faith. But the real question is faith in what? Is it faith in us or is it faith in God. These things I would propose are an outward manifestation of a test in faith in love itself. Love becomes equated with pain and so we often times will make walls to block feelings fearing the pain and not letting it come through to us. We need to have a y that Love is not a trivial thing which comes and goes and that when it seems that way in this world that is the warning that the great teachers of the world have warned against. The apparent appearance and disappearance of love is a simple blunder on our part. It is our perception of the matter which has been corrupted. We must have faith that love in the divine realm is eternal and flawless, That is the nature of the divine realm.
Often times there is a need to be attached to things which seem normal and which can be easily defined. We want the copper bottomed truth. However many human emotions are beyond our scope to define and often times they make people act in ways which are completely beyond the logical ability to understand. With the Bhakti cults there is often a kind of fear which comes about as emotion is hard to understand. We want a simple formula which is like 1 + 1 =2. This is the cause of Orthodox religions and quasi religions such as Modern Darwinian Evolution. An orthodox religion is a belief in which some one says I have a set of beliefs and they mean this and anyone who says anything different is obviously a loony. No matter how logical you make it sound there is always something which people need to understand. The amount that we can grasp with our limited vision and senses is so small that it is impossible for us to understand the truth of anything unless experience is talking to us
There are 3 kinds of ways of understanding the world around us. Sabda Manimaya and Pratyaksha The 2 most powerful ones in the modern age are Sabda and Pratyaksha. Sabda is the Sanskrit word for sound and basically it means any and all information which is based on that which has been told to us. This includes written materials as well. Pratyaksha means experience, or that which has been experienced. These two sources of knowledge are used every day to get information. Most orthodox faiths are based on Sabdha and only a very few on Pratyaksha.
Many times this is the full extent by which people learn anything at all. Some things like what it is like on the surface of the moon or stars we are typically limited to what we read in books or if we are lucky enough to meet a astronaut who can tell us what it is like there themselves
There is one glaring downside to this method of gaining knowledge which is that it is based only on the limitations or qualifications of the people who are speaking to you. More times than not we find in the academic world especially people are prone to copy and paste information which they have no experience in whatsoever.
As far as the medical field, Biology and other more technical fields and some others which experimentation is taken up it is quite easy to see and test direct results however when it comes to things like the distance between planets and The origin of life or the sham called archeology it is important to look at these things with a grain of salt as often times theories are replaced as soon as they are spoken. Most source material and research is based on second hand information which has a thousand separate understandings and which has no experienced value.
For thousands of years the big brains of the western world were certain for example that the earth was flat or that it was the center of the universe. This was based on the ideas of the great minds of the ancient world like Socrates and Aristotle. By copy and paste methodology people were not working on the process of experience It creates knowledge filters. What is written is law, any new evidence must be cast aside because it goes against the established norm. (Which on the other hand seems to change all the time)
Another problem especially with this method is that even if it is direct experience it can be clouded by some ones personal preferences or ideas. For example if I had a friend who went to a restaurant and told me the food was bad. I may not go, but what happened if I went there and I happened to like it a lot. The reverse can also happen some one can like a place and I may hate it.
This is a simple example but it goes with almost all opinions and even has the possibility to go into any form of knowledge which is written down, as in the end it is only an opinion of one form or another. I think it would be impossible to truly understand a ancient culture unless you have seen it with your eyes or live the life yourself. It is almost imposable to get a clear picture about things in this life unless we see them for ourselves especially if it is alien or different than what we are used to.
The prime example of this is the famous case of Java man. A so called scientist went to a heap of bones and found as skull cap from a monkey and about 100 feet away he found the leg of a man and said that obviously it must be a ancient monkey man. At the end of his life the scientist realized the truth however the Java man is proudly displayed in our school childrens science books. I was cooking rice the other day and used the same ingrediants I always do and came up with 10% more quantity than normal. It happened to be the full moon so obviously since the moon is known to bring about abundance in the plant life it caused me to make more rice. I think that claim is about just as credible as any theory of archeology.
Experience
.. ..
Information which comes to us based on external circumstances or which confirm ideas which we have already received from another place. Experience is solid proof of something which comes to us from outside sources. People can talk all day about how good something tastes but the real proof is in the eating of that thing.
In the same way people can debate for example the nature of a persons character government science or any topic at length, but the real proof of the said subject will be in how it is experienced in life. Experience serves to confirm information but it also can teach us new information as well which may be to the contrary.
People can talk about how good something is but when you try it yourself then it is completely the opposite. This is what experience can show us. It is something which can be an almost undeniable source of information. It is a conformation of ideas. It teaches by external and real life experiences, Knowledge receved tends to stick to the mind longer
.. ..
Pit falls
.. ..
There is several pitfalls to this method of learning which I will show. When he have a set Idea about how the world works then all data taken in by us, tends to be read in a certain way.
Two people can have the same thing happen to them and they can have two different reactions and two different conclusions. This is a danger of preconceived notions. For example two people can be sitting in a park on a sunny day. One person will be happy to see the children playing and feel the sun on his face, his experience of the situation will be a pleasant one. The other person can sit on the same park bench and they will feel sad that the children are playing because they wish they were a child again or maybe they just had a bad day and seeing people happy makes them feel even worse
Different preconceived notions can enter into our mind and affect how we experience things. Preconced notions however are a pitfall for all kinds of knowledge gathering so therefore it cannot be restriced only to experience. People who read and listen to others for example can also suffer from preconced notions.50 people can listen to the same lecture and you can have 50 different conclutions on the same topic coming from the same person. People can debate the meaning of one sentence for example for hours.
Fear of the unknown which is a animal instinct is the cause of our need for certainty however if we realy look at the big questions and the more aesthetic parts of life we will see that things are not nearly as defined or clear cut as we pretend or pray for. This however is not such a bad thing. We need to go to the other side of fear and our attachment to what is considered by us as normal to begin to enter into the divine realms. Its is pure folly to think that anything is of more value to us than our self realization or love of Krsna.
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