Huston’s Yogas
I’ve been reading Huston Smith’s World Religions for ordination studies. The book is well-written but dominated by recent academic perspectives of the topic. It offers a general overview of the larger faiths, but I wouldn’t …
Category: Mind
A Third Conversation with Andrew Hewson
Andrew and I first had a conversation with Dorothy Rowe last fall, then followed up with just the two of us in conversation on the stages of enlightenment. In December Andrew and I had a …
The Image of God
Just like stages in consciousness, there are stages in knowing the Divine. The first stage is the most common, a stage of belief or disbelief. God as an idea we believe in or don’t, often …
The Backstory
On this blog, I’ve talked about past lives and karma many times. I started remembering prior lives back in the early ’80’s during a period of major challenges (karma). In the Shadbhava article, I talked …
Respect for the Personal
On articles like The Power of Mantra, I’ve mentioned the personal mode of experiencing the world through the heart. I thought we should take the point a little further. First, when we talk about experiencing …
The Power of Mantra
Back on Transcending, I explored right mantra for a meditation practice. I’ve also talked about the language of mantra and how they’re often used. Yet there is a much deeper understanding about mantra that’s largely …
Indifference
“…The unmanifest Being [pure consciousness, Self] coming to direct experience establishes the reality of oneness of eternal existence: That is the pre-eminent path of gaining knowledge (of reality). “There is no effort, no individual inception …
Awareness of Becoming (causal)
A reader asked me to comment further about the field of becoming where manifestation first begins. From the larger context of this blog, there is pure Divinity, the source of the source. The afterglow of …
The Range
First a brief review of the natural ranges of each level of experience, the koshas or energy bodies: a) physical, etheric b) energy, emotional c) mental, sensory d) intellect, Buddhi, intuition, fine feelings e) bliss, …
Mind and Cognition
A question came up I thought would be useful to share here. How do we give words to cognitions if they arise from beyond the intellect? First: what do I mean by cognition here? A …
Bhedābheda Vedānta
Vedanta means the end of the Veda or final knowledge and is the last of the 6 systems of Indian Philosophy (Yoga is the 4th). We also know these systems as the Vedanga or subordinate …
Mental Activity
One of the curious features of being human is that we assume others experience the world the same way we do. We may expect people to see things the same way also, considering them mistaken …