Articles on Hinduism

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(Originally published in Tattva Prakasha newsletter.)

It has become quite popular nowadays to speak about mystical experiences and "siddhis". Most yoga and meditation groups speak of them, along with other esoteric blabber such as the raising of kundalini, opening of chakras, and other things which no one has actually experienced. On one side we have new age gurus speaking of siddhis very cheaply as though they are as common as sand on a beach, and on the other hand we have "rationalists" who discount siddhis all together as mere fantasy.
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(Originally published in Tattva Prakasha Newsletter.)

The Bhagavata Purana, commonly referred to as the Srimad Bhagavatam, is considered the ripened fruit of all Vedic knowledge. Sri Vyasa Muni, the compiler of the Vedic texts, advises us as follows:


"O expert and thoughtful men, relish Srimad Bhagavatam, the mature fruit of the desire tree of Vedic literatures. It emanated from the lips of Sri Shuka Muni. Therefore this fruit has become even more tasteful, although its nectarean juice was already relishable for all, including liberated souls."
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(Originally published in Tattva Prakasha newsletter.)

The topic of this issue is the Mahabharata war in relation to world history and culture. We will begin the topic with a question we received sometime back:

"In the Mahabharata, the war seemed to have affected the whole world. We don't find so many references to such of a huge event in other cultures. Why are there no references to a great world event?"
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Brihaspati said: Long ago there was a brahmana named Heli, in the beautiful city Pampapura. He was a worshiper of the sun-god ...

Many times people have written to me about their difficulties and despondency in life. Usually they ask how they can attain peace and happiness. Nowadays peace is a very rare commodity in the world. Everyone is looking for it, whether one is an individual, or a nation.

On the individual level we find many people are experiencing turmoil and confusion from within, which prevents them from experiencing any happiness and peace.
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Sri Chaitanya is the kali-yuga avatara, and He descended for the purpose of establishing the yuga dharma, which in this age is the chanting of Lord Krishna's names. He appeared in the guise of a devotee to perfectly show how the process of devotion should be followed and applied. It is something like a teacher drawing on the black board "A B C". We should not think the teacher is himself learning the alphabets, but he is doing it to show us how to write properly.
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[ Excerpts from Sri Caitanya-shikshamrita, chapter one. First published in 1886, by Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakur. ]

Four Types of Motivated Worship

According to his condition man attempts to please the Lord for four reasons:

1) Bhaya - Out of fear.
2) Asha - For satisfying material aspirations.
3) Kartavya-buddhi - Out of a sense of duty.
4) Raga - Out of a genuine attraction to the Lord.
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A lecture given in Bhubaneswar, India on September 28, 1995.

If you are very greedy, very eager to have sadhu-sanga, sat-sanga, the association of grantha-bhagavata and bhakta-bhagavata, first of all you have to give up duhsanga or asat-sanga. What is association? One may say that to come in close proximity to a person is association. But that is not the fact. Association takes place in the mind, in the heart. As long as there are desires for material enjoyment, desires for liberation, desires for mystic perfections, and other desires in your heart, then you are doing asat-sanga. ...

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If Buddha really combated and denied all Vedantic conceptions of the Self, then it can be no longer true that Buddha refrained from all metaphysical speculations or distinct pronouncements as to the nature of the ultimate Reality. The view you take of his conception of Nirvana seems to concur with the Mahayanist interpretation and its conception of the Permanent, dhruvam, which could be objected to as a later development like the opposite Nihilistic conception of the Shunyam. ...

I don't know that I can help you very much with an answer to your friend's questions. I can only state my own position with regard to these matters.
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If Shankara's conception of the undifferentiated pure Consciousness as the Brahman is your view of it, then it is not the path of this yoga that you should choose; for here the realisation of pure Consciousness and Being is only a first step and not the goal. But an inner creative urge from within can have no place in an undifferentiated Consciousness—all action and creation must necessarily be foreign to it.
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I do not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithya. The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is the Ignorance which makes us blind and prevents us from realising Brahman in the world as well as beyond it and the true nature of existence.
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What we are doing, if and when we succeed, will be a beginning, not a completion. It is the foundation of a new consciousness on earth—a consciousness with infinite possibilities of manifestation. The eternal progression is in the manifestation and beyond it there is no progression.
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What is meant here is the Divine in its essential manifestation which reveals itself to us as Light and Consciousness, Power, Love and Beauty. But in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. ...

All the phases of human history may be regarded as a working out of the earth-consciousness in which each phase has its place and significance, so this materialistic intellectual phase had to come and has had, no doubt, its purpose and significance. One may also hold that one of its issues was as an experiment to see how far and whither the human consciousness would go through an intellectual and external control of Nature with physical and intellectual means only and without the intervention of any higher consciousness and knowledge—or that it may help by resistance to draw the spiritual consciousness that is growing behind all vicissitudes to attempt the control of Matter and turn it towards the Divine, as the Tantriks and Vaishnavas tried to do with the emotional and lower vital nature, not contenting themselves with the Vedantic turning of the mind towards the Supreme. ...

There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. ...

Human mind has amazing powers. But many of us do not realize this. Our epics and Puranas illustrate the power of mind with beautiful stories. Every person creates some kind of vibration. Some people are pleasure to be with. They seem to have a certain energy that they share with others. Then there are those who are negative and depressed; they seem to draw energy out of others. The reason for this is that there is a power contained in thought. It is very subtle, yet it does exist and is extremely powerful. "Every thought has weight, shape, size, form, colour, quality, and power. An experienced yogi can see this directly with his inner eye. Just as an apple can be given to your friend, or taken back, so also it is possible to give a useful, powerful thought to someone and take it back." - says Swami Vishnu Devananda.
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