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The vital nature craves excitement. It also craves recognition and acknowledgement, in the form of vanity, aggrandisement of the ego, and seeking for fame. The vital nature is also quite impatient and wants to see results right away. When the vital nature enters into the spiritual realm, it ... Views: 335
Humanity is facing a crisis of existential proportions. Climate change, pollution, income inequality, access to fresh water and food, and the consequences that lead to mass migration, war, and increased risk of pandemic disease vectors all are forcing us to confront our entire way of looking at ... Views: 791
People believe generally that taking up the spiritual life involves a form of escapism from the daily obstacles, difficulties and pressures of living an active life in society. Some people in fact take up the spiritual path as an escape, but that is neither the primary motivation nor does it ... Views: 131
One of the habits that has built up over many millennia among spiritual practitioners is the ingrained idea that Matter and Spirit are essentially irreconcilable and that in order to pursue the spiritual life one must be willing to give up and abandon the material life. Material life and a focus ... Views: 189
In the ordinary life in society, food plays an especially important and high profile role. We treat food as a centerpiece of our various celebrations, as rewards, as comfort when we are under stress and as something we consumer out of boredom or inattention. Food taste, food preparation, food ... Views: 73
Obsessing about failures, weaknesses, lapses, and obstructions can turn into a full-time occupation! All of human nature has to be taken up and modified, transformed or outright rejected for the next evolutionary manifestation to fully take up its role in the life of the planet. All seekers ... Views: 96
Particularly in the West, when people think about Yoga, they believe it is a series of physical postures or exercises done with a certain sense of concentration. They associate Hatha Yoga with the entirety of yogic practice, and in many instances, treat Yoga as a form of physical ... Views: 116
Each individual is rooted primarily in one of the major component aspects of our human individuality. Some are clearly rooted in the physical and their thoughts, actions and needs are those called for by the physical being. The vast majority of people are moved by their vital being, and are ... Views: 394
One of the reasons that a seeker is advised to have the assistance of an experienced guide, or guru, in the spiritual path, is that it is easy to be confused about the real meaning of what is written in the texts. For instance, when we hear about the concept of ‘conscious sleep’ or we see Arjuna ... Views: 375
As long as an individual is rooted in his own ego-standpoint, he sees and interprets things from that standpoint and cannot, by definition, ‘see things as they are’ in the wider creation. There is the famous story of 5 different observers of a traffic accident, each one observing from a ... Views: 148
We see pattens repeating from the macro-level to the micro-level. The study of fractals shows us that there are indeed certain patterns and relationships that repeat themselves in every smaller configurations as we drill down toward the micro-level. The macrocosm and the microcosm reflect the ... Views: 432
Allah the Almighty sent down the 1 lac 24 thousand prophets to guide the people who had forgotten Allah’s instructions and His righteous way. When Allah felt that humankind need a Messenger and director who will lead His creation towards Him then He sent down the Messenger immediately. There are ... Views: 2136
We live in a world that prizes action and that continually impinges upon us with various information feeds and input from all directions. Quiet and stillness, the ability to remain calm without agitation or upset, the ability to achieve true peace in the mind, in the vital and nervous being and ... Views: 515
Once we break out of the limitations set by Western psychologists, such as Freud, in our attempt to understand the nature of dreams, we can explore the much wider and more nuanced potential causes, triggers, images and significances of dreams.
We find it hard to appreciate that there are ... Views: 51
We are conscious and aware of forces and energies that operate within a certain specified range. Anything that falls outside that range, whether above or below, remains unseen and unknown to us, even if the forces operative in those superior or inferior ranges impact our thoughts, feelings, ... Views: 398
There are realms that operate under different rules, or laws, than what we have come to expect here. Our earthly life is a complex amalgam of physical, vital, mental and psychic consciousness, and this mixture implies that none of these are able to express themselves in the purest sense of their ... Views: 553
As the individual works to understand the wellsprings of the motives, impulses and forces that rise up through his being in the subconscient and push him into action, a subtler understanding begins to develop. The need to distinguish between the inherited habits and embedded atavistic movements, ... Views: 495
We bring into this life many propensities as well as genetic tendencies, which are compounded and accentuated by early learning that takes place in the family and in the society. Prenatal influences as well as learning that takes place after the birth process and in the very early childhood ... Views: 524
We tend to not only identify with the values of our family, our country, our religion, but we also internalize the standpoint taken by them, so that we view situations, actions and reactions, and history through the lens of this standpoint. This of course can create a highly biased viewpoint of ... Views: 560
As if the genetic, prenatal and neonatal influence, and the habits and customs of the society into which one is born is not sufficient burden to have to deal with as it rises up from the subconscient levels of our being, we also have to address the current influences provided through peer ... Views: 522
When we are focused on our external being, we tend not to recognise that forces unseen actually not only impact how and what we perceive, understand, and respond to impressions and pressures, but actually very much define who we believe we are. There are forces that are subconscient to our ... Views: 61
It is typical for human beings to associate their knowledge, their artistic achievements, their skills as something they create within themselves. They tether the ego-consciousness to all such developments, believing that somehow they are unique and special in terms of the ability to create ... Views: 383
What we actively perceive and pay attention to with our waking consciousness is a very small portion of the entire pattern of energetic forces we are constantly subjected to, and which act upon us, unseen and unrecognised. Whether it is physical radiation, vital forces, or mental thought-forms, ... Views: 437
Our surface awareness is basically the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Most of what takes place in our being occurs outside of the range of our active external perception of the senses and mental awareness. Even the interactions with the external reality we experience represent only a small fraction of ... Views: 430
One of the reasons that spiritual seekers have traditionally been advised to seek solitude and not engage in society is that there is a constant, subliminal interchange that takes place between all human beings. We generally do not notice it, but on an energetic, a vibrational level, we are ... Views: 307
We tend to pay attention to the various forms of external communication that take place between people. Written, verbal, and visual non-verbal cues through body language or expression, are all considered to be the major means of creating a relation between individuals. What we do not always ... Views: 365
When looked at from the outside, it seems that Matter came first and out of Matter arose Life and out of Life arose Mind. What is not addressed here is how material forces were able to create life and intelligence, in a seemingly random fashion. This is why some religious traditions posit that ... Views: 474
In the Taittiriya Upanishad, a seeker undertakes a discipline to discover the truth of existence. He first lands upon the idea thta the material existence is the truth, as it is the basis and foundation of his existence. As he continues his concentration, however, he begins to realize that the ... Views: 458
It is a typical belief that through the use of logic, argument or some kind of pressure that is exerted, through perhaps an enforced dogma or belief system, that opinions and beliefs can be changed. It is true that the power of an idea may capture an individual’s focus and support. It is also ... Views: 585
When Bram Stoker wrote his classic ‘horror’ tale, Dracula, he popularized and sensationalized an actual phenomenon of vital interchange that operates mostly unnoticed and not as sensationally as his tale implies. To put it in simple terms, ‘vampirism’ is the ability of someone to utilise the ... Views: 333
When we see deeply religious or spiritual people, we expect to see people who are serious, reserved and who carry an air of distance from the things of the world. This expectation has been so deeply embedded in the human psyche that we almost unconsciously take up this attitude when we tread the ... Views: 133
For many people, the religious life or the spiritual path is considered to be extremely serious and cheerfulness is considered to be some kind of frivolity, not becoming to the serious nature of the endeavour. They make spiritual practice into a harsh discipline and struggle with difficulties ... Views: 510
The integral yoga works to shift the standpoint from the ego to the divine consciousness. As that is accomplished, the focus on the ego-personality and its suffering and difficulties and the feelings it is experiencing are reduced or entirely removed. The being is absorbed in the divine ... Views: 564
Just as the electro-magnetic spectrum has ranges below those that we can consciously receive and translate, as well as ranges above those we can utilize, so also consciousness has ranges below and above our limits. The ranges below our limits are called subconscient and inconscient. Those above ... Views: 414
Nietzsche espoused the idea that the ‘superior man’ was, by definition, ‘beyond good and evil’ and was therefore not bound by the rules of society. This concept has led a number of people into serious trouble. Dostoevsky explored this idea in his novel Crime and Punishment, in which the ... Views: 383
The human mind has difficulty imagining the possibility of an entirely new direction for evolutionary development, and tends to try to “read” the future by extrapolation from the present and the past. Thus, we see Nietzsche describing the “superman” as someone who has a higher mental ... Views: 446
As we begin to experience realms of awareness other than that of our current primary body-life-mind complex, we can begin to appreciate that there are further, higher states of conscious awareness that can be experienced, and which have powers of insight, and ways of working that are far ... Views: 311
The mental, vital and physical levels of consciousness are fundamentally limited by their basis in division and fragmentation. They see and categorize their understanding in a way that emphasizes the separateness of the forces at work and the consequences. This makes it impossible to understand ... Views: 405
For much of human history, spirituality has been looked upon as a contradiction of an active life in the world. The anchorite in the desert, the renunciate, the Sannyasin, the monk or nun in the cloister are held up to us as the examples of dedication to spiritual growth and purpose. All of ... Views: 427
For much of human history, spirituality has been looked upon as a contradiction of an active life in the world. The anchorite in the desert, the renunciate, the Sannyasin, the monk or nun in the cloister are held up to us as the examples of dedication to spiritual growth and purpose. All of ... Views: 356
The “master race”, the “white man’s burden”, “white supremacy”, “manifest destiny”, the “superman” of Nietzsche all represent past attempts of the mind to translate the urge to transcend the limits of the human mind-life-body and assert power and control over the society through what may be ... Views: 458
Until such time as we become capable of drawing infinite energy from the universal force of creation, we have the issue of choosing how we utilize the energy that we have available to us. Through certain types of practices we can actually increase the available energy. The radical transformation ... Views: 75
We go through our daily lives, busy ourselves with earning a living, supporting our families, maintaining our bodies, entertaining ourselves, arguing, fighting, gossiping, and following up on hobbies or passions we are engaged in. We close ourselves into a narrow and limited existence and feel ... Views: 184
Human awareness can be compared to an iceberg on the physical plane. The iceberg appears small and insignificant above the surface of the ocean, yet it is massive below the surface, as was found out by the ‘unsinkable’ cruise ship, the Titanic during its maiden voyage. Similarly, the awareness ... Views: 387
We focus our attention and awareness on the external world in which we are active. We receive impressions, sensations, vibrations, impulsions and pressures from that world and it fixes our mind on that palpable experience of reality. This is however not the entirely of our existence nor of the ... Views: 383
Development in our world of existence takes place in a sequential manner, systematically developing the physical framework, the body, and then manifesting the vital, life-force and developing its powers, adding in thereafter the mental layer and subsequently, we see the signs that further stages ... Views: 563
A frequently mentioned method in the practice of the integral yoga is the separation of the Witness Consciousness from the Nature (Purusha and Prakriti). This separation allows the seeker to recognise the surface consciousness, the play of body, life and mind based in the ego-sense as separate ... Views: 397
There is a factor of enjoyment of taste of various foods which is called rasa in Sanskrit. We experience this when we eat something that excites our taste buds and sends signals of pleasure to the brain. For many people, the sweet taste, and more particularly the taste of rich chocolate, seems ... Views: 72
Everywhere we turn we see mounting crises. The news reports are dire. Climate disasters are increasing, we are poisoned daily by toxic substances in our food, water and the very air we breathe. On a day-to-day level, we are struggling in a world that seems to be impossible to understand, with ... Views: 314
The setting of Sri Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, symbolizing the ‘battle of life’ is an essential message to all who seek to progress in their spiritual growth and development. We do not normally associate a battlefield as the place to learn about our spiritual ... Views: 609