Shadbhava (the 6 Houses of our Life)
While people may speak of past karma or desire driving the form of this lifetime, the qualities of the life that unfold are found in various factors. Shadbhava is a term from Ayurveda meaning 6 …
Category: Philosophy
Four Mayas
Awhile back, I wrote about the 3 forms of Maya described by Shankara. The way we perceive the world is dependent on the dominant guna or quality through which we experience it. Guna means string …
Father Thomas Keating
My first real exposure to Father Keating was in the film One, the Movie (2005). I bought the DVD and the extras DVD that included the entire interviews*. More recently, I discovered he played a …
Testing if we Live in a Computer Simulation
British philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper in 2003 that suggests the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. (future offspring) Using logic, he determined that if …
Walking
“We’re all just walking each other home.” – Ram Das (servant of God), aka Dr. Richard Alpert, author, Be Here Now (1971) Now in his ’80’s and in spite of a serious stroke, he’s still …
States of Consciousness redux
aka 7 States of Consciousness, aka Stages of Human Development See Update: Stages of Development in Consciousness Periodically on this blog, I write a reference article for background info on key subjects. I can then …
American Veda
Recently, I’ve been reading a book that’s a fascinating review of the migration of Vedanta and Yoga to the west. The book by Philip Goldberg is called American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to …
The Flower of the Heart
There are a number of ways we might experience the heart. The feeling of love or the more profound flow of divine love. As an open space. As a flame. As containing a being the …
The Foundation of Belief
In our western culture, many of us were raised in Abrahamic faiths like Christianity. But most of the teachers we meet had not experienced what they preached. They asked us to believe without evidence. Have …
Yukteswar’s Yugas
I’ve occasionally mentioned the Yugas here. Basically, it’s a Vedic understanding of the cycles of time. Just as we have a cycle of hours, days, years, and centuries, the Vedas also chart ages (as in …
Models of Awakening – Part 2
< Part 1 On God Consciousness: (the next stage in Vedic tradition) What you have to consider is the cultural differences. Indian culture is much more devotional. In devotees I’ve known, they’re naturally developing the …
Models of Awakening – Part 1
You may have noticed that different teachers will teach THEIR truth. It will be a blend of their own experiences and what they were taught. Any given teaching may or may not be a good …