A Collection of Yogic Aphorisms
'Spiritual Knowledge and Vision is dependent upon the realization of certain
eternal truths, something which arises from the fount of the soul. It cannot be
passed from one who has had it to another who has not. The sense of it however
can be communicated in a structure or form which may inspire a recognition in
others. To enter into the thoughts of the Spiritual Sages, one has to allow
their words to sink into our souls to mold our thoughts and create their own
reverberations in a sympathetic resonance. Their knowledge was accessible by
listening to the old voices and allowing the "Sruti" (resonance) in
the Soul to respond, to vibrate to the Vedantic hymn of knowledge and to allow
that response to gradually gain in clarity, intensity and fullness.'
The Ground of all being is a spiritual Absolute ineffable in terms of
discursive thought but susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by
the human being. It is the Divine Self, same in each, One in All.
" The Self is Being, not a being. By self is meant the conscious
essential existence, one in all. Self is the fundamental aspect of the Brahman
with a certain stress on impersonality. It is omnipresent, same in everything,
intimate, pure and intangible. The Self can be experienced as the self of the
individual. It is at the same time universal. Self is that aspect of the Brahman
in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic and
transcendent."
"To realize Self is to realize the eternal freedom of the spirit. The
first realization of the Self as something intensely silent and purely static is
not the whole truth of it. There can also be a realization of the Self in its
power. Establishing the mind in the Self means the conviction that the self
alone is all, and that there is nothing other than it. As ones process deepens,
the pervasive sense of coolness and calmness shows that the consciousness is
reorienting itself at a deeper level of the being. Joy and happiness not
dependent upon outward things begins to manifest. One becomes aware that he is
acted through and totally dependent upon the Divine. This realization and
accompanying release into peace and happiness is spoken of as liberation and
carries with it the value of being released from jail. One begins to feel that
the ordinary consciousness is something quite external and on the surface. It
does not seem to be ones real self." Sri Aurobindo "The Life
Divine"
The Four Great Yogic Sayings or "Mahavakyas"
- Consciousness [as manifest in an individual] is Brahman [God]
- I am Brahman [Consciousness]
- Thou Art That
- This Atman [the individual self] is Brahman
Matter and the entire universe are absolutely real as congealed or contracted
forms of consciousness. The same reality thus abides equally both in gross and
subtle forms.
Reality is pure consciousness and Consciousness and Being are synonymous.
There is no difference between the purely subjective element of one's
subject-object consciousness and God. Being and God are the same.
"I and the Father are One...."
Jesus Christ
The Divine Reality is Pure, Non-Dual Consciousness beyond the relativity of the
knower and the known. It is prior to every form of existence. It is
self-luminous and self-existent. A Noetic Plenum, It is the ultimate reality.
" In an absolute Silence sleeps an absolute Power " ( Savitri )
The Atman is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless,
unaffected by the (vicissitudes) of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is
the true being of the individual, but more widely, the same being in all, and
the Self of the Cosmos. It has an existence above the existence of the
Individual and the Cosmos and is then called, Paramatman, the Supreme Divine
Being.
This supreme teaching imparts a knowledge attainable by no other means than
Self-realization. It removes man's deep-rooted misconception regarding himself,
namely, that he is bound, finite, imperfect, and mortal, and points to his true
self as self-existent, self-shining, ever-pure and ever-free. It removes man's
equally indomitable misconception regarding the Supreme Being, namely, that He
is remote, unattainable, hidden, if not non-existent and reveals him as the
innermost Self, ever-manifest, immediate and direct. Thus what is conceived as
the farthest is revealed as nearer than the nearest, what appears to be
unattainable, as already attained, what is ever hidden, as self-manifest.
" Whoever worships a divinity as other than the self, thinking 'He is
one, and I another,' knows not..."
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I, 4, 10
"The final thought before the breakthrough was the very clear realization
that there was nothing to be attained. For attainment implied acquisition and
that implied change in content of consciousness. But the goal is not change
but detachment from content. Thus I am already that which I seek and therefore
there is nothing to be sought. By the very seeking, I hide myself from myself.
Therefore abandon the search and expect nothing. This was for me the end of
the long search, I died and in the same instant was born again. Spontaneity
took over in place of the old self-determined effort, after that I knew
directly the consciousness reported by the mystics again and again."
Franklin Merrell-Woolf "The Philosophy of Consciousness without an
Object"
The Self is the Archetype of order and meaning in the universe. It is the
unifying center of the total psyche and is identical with the God within. It is
of the nature of self-luminous Knowledge or Light, and reveals Itself to Itself
upon the removal of ignorance. It can never be the object of your knowledge
because it is the subject who knows. The great fallacy of the spiritual quest is
that the act of seeking hides the Self from the Self. You are already that which
you seek. The final goal is not the acquisition of something new but detachment
from the habitual egoic perception of the contents of consciousness.
Self-realization is the awareness that one is acted through and totally
dependent upon this inner light.
The universe proves to be a system in which the living and the non living, the
physical and the psychical, form an organic whole. With the furtherance of
knowledge the manifold turns out to be a continuous existence without the least
break anywhere, and is conceived as the varied forms of one all-pervasive
reality. Inasmuch as the individual is essentially identical with this all
pervasive reality or Brahman, he can realize the same by realizing his inmost
self. But none can realize this inmost Self until the mind is completely
tranquil and suffused with its light.
Everyone is everywhere, at the same time and in the same space, every being
in each being. Every being is the totality and at the same time a part of the
totality.
"The express direction of the path of Yoga is the highest unity, the
call to absolute Oneness. The self of the individual must be made one with the
Self of all. This cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the
Ego-sense at its very basis and source. One attempts this abolition,
negatively by a denial of the reality of the ego (the withdrawal of
projections), and positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea
of the One and the Infinite everywhere. This, if persistently done changes in
the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind
of mental realization; but afterwards and by degrees the mental realization
deepens into spiritual experience - a realization in the very substance of our
being. More and more frequent conditions come of something indefinable and
illimitable, a peace, a silence, a joy, a bliss beyond expression, a sense of
absolute impersonal Power, a pure existence, a pure consciousness, an
all-pervading Presence.
For even before a complete purification, if the strings of the egoistic heart
and mind are already sufficiently frayed and loosened, the Jiva (Soul) can by
a sudden snapping of the main cords escape, ascending like a bird freed into
the spaces or a widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite.
There is first a sudden sense of Cosmic Consciousness, a casting of oneself
into the universal. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of
walls that imprison our conscious being; there is a loss of all sense of
individuality and personality; there is no longer an ego, a person definite
and definable, but only consciousness, only existence, only peace and bliss;
one becomes immortality, becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left
of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating
somewhere in the eternal."
The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
"The ultimate nature of physical reality is not a collection of separate
objects (as it appears) but it is an undivided whole that is in a perpetual
dynamic flux. a universe that is undivided and in which all parts "merge
and unite in one totality". This undivided whole is not static but rather
in a constant state of flow and change, a kind of invisible ether from which
all things arise and into which all things eventually dissolve. In this flow,
mind and matter are not separate substances, they are different aspects of one
whole and unbroken movement. Thus Matter does not exist independently from so
called empty space; matter and space are each part of the wholeness"
David Bohm; Quantum Physicist: 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' 1980
" The Divine ( Self) cannot never be the object of your knowledge
because, it is the subject who knows."
Sufi Master; Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
"Knowledge is Pure Consciousness beyond the relativity of the knower and
the known. It is self-luminous and self-existent and shines even when there is
no object to illuminate. Being is identical with Pure
Consciousness." The Upanishads
Consciousness and its contents are essentially the same thing, two forms of the
same reality, the knower and the known.
"The Self is of the nature of Knowledge. It is self-luminous. It does
not require borrowed light in the matter of its own illumination. It cannot be
attained, though shines of itself upon the removal of ignorance."
"The Upanishads"
" The self reveals itself to itself by itself...
St. Frances
In the later stages of transformation, the initiate discovers that within him
lie knowledge and power of an unimaginable order. It is an order of knowledge
which can only be called forth and realized by another knowledge, the operations
of which have always been concealed from the uninitiated. This hidden knowledge
is an awareness of the truth of things by identity. We become one with the
truth, one with the object of knowledge.
If we can desert the thoughts of particular things, the images of particular
objects raised by the senses in the field of consciousness with complete and
intelligent understanding of what and why we are doing it, then such desertion
will be followed by the appearance of its own account of the element of pure
undifferentiated thought itself. The latter will be identified as our innermost
Self.
"The superimposition of the ego-idea upon existence is our first and
most important act as human beings. The moment we have made this central act
of superimposition... the moment we have said, "I am I, I am private, I
am separate, I am an individual,... We have set up a kind of chain reaction
which makes further superimposition inevitable. All of our thoughts, desires
and the events of our lives are slipped like beads upon the thread of this
belief."
Shankara
When the individual has learned to dissociate his "I" or subject from
the universe of objects he will find that he has retreated into a bare point of
consciousness. The moment he succeeds in doing this, the point is metamorphosed
into a transcendental plenum where the self and the content of consciousness are
blended into one inseparable whole. There is no subject object relationship. It
is multidimensional, non-successive and simultaneous.
The way of non-dualism is to withdraw from the finite in order to achieve a
return to the infinite. It is as simple as turning from the object of, to the
subject to, all relative consciousness, plus the spontaneity of the SELF
You must remind yourself that although you see everything as an objective
picture, that picture is inseparable from your own mind. You must become an
onlooker, detached in spirit, but capable in action. You will next discover that
you are not merely the witness of the rest of existence, but one stuff with it.
Meditate on your own witness self as being in essence the infinite All.
The ordeal of the mystic death appears as a terror inspiring apparition.
But he who with stout heart challenges the seeming of ultimate dissolution,
and enters into the awful presence, finds only utter glory. Terror has become
beatitude. Only liabilities have been lost as he finds himself, not lost in
the Eternal, but become that Eternal Itself. All the dangers of the Way are
only ghosts, possessing no more power save such as the candidate has himself
projected upon them.
Franklin Merrill-Woolf
"Paradoxically, it is only by loosing ones life that one finds life more
abundantly. Only when the finite mind [ego] is annihilated, blown out like a
flame of a candle by the breath of Divine Wisdom can there be true knowledge.
When one has reached the frontier of the known, progress beyond is for the
fearless, for those who are prepared to loose their life that they may find
it."
Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation
The opening of the channel between the conscious and the superconscious levels,
between the Ego and the Self, and the flood of light, joy and energy which
follows often produce a wonderful release. ...The inner experience of the
spiritual self and its intimate association with and penetration of the personal
self, gives to those who have it a sense of greatness and internal expansion,
the conviction of participating in some way in the Divine nature.
Reason which is founded on common experience, necessarily fails to unveil what
is beyond it. There is a little circle within which the human reason moves and
it cannot go beyond it. Knowledge on the other hand, is Revelation, it discovers
it does not create, its sole purpose is to unveil what is. It is through the
self that we know anything for it is Brahman that appears as the individual self
in association with the finite mind. The knowledge of the Self that is said to
liberate the soul from bondage is direct knowledge which is like unto perceptual
knowledge. What we perceive as external objects exists in God's mind as ideas.
"The nature of Supermind is that all of its knowledge is a knowledge
by identity and oneness. The Spirit is one everywhere and always. It knows all
things as itself and in itself and therefore knows them intimately,
completely, in their reality as well as their appearance. By concentrating on
anything whatsoever, we are able to know that thing and make it deliver up its
concealed secrets. This is the faculty of Essential Cognition, it always
cognizes the essence, the truth. There is not even a trace of false
knowledge."
Sri Aurobindo
"The truth bearing mind has been purified and illumined by a light which
lay dormant within its inmost center. Up to this time the objects of the mind
were mere ideas and inferences, mere thoughts. With Samadhi, (essential
cognition) the contents of the mind are things, the very things as it were,
and not merely thoughts of things. The mind modifies itself into the very
thing itself and thus the thing is known more truly and essentially than it
was ever known before. In this state of mind, time and space cannot impede the
perception of the object, for it no longer depends upon the senses for its
knowledge but has become the all sense itself."
Patanjali's Yoga
Teilhard de Chardin describes spiritual vision as, "the final depth where
all the faculties of man are so closely bound together as to become a single
point".
"To all those who persevere, the day will come when spiritual light will
envelope them and a new world will be revealed to an organ of sight of whose
existence within them there were hitherto unaware."
Rudolph Steiner
"The organ of perception cannot be defined in earthly language. I
"saw", but not with my earthly eyes, I "Heard", but not
with my worldly ears. The nearest description would be that I
"Sensed" with an inner, hidden organ of perception that included all
five senses in a magnified, expanded awareness, and that this could be
correlated by an inner organ of intelligence which could comprehend Divine
purpose and function in the information received."
Martin Israel; "The Nearness of God"
"This other [mode] of consciousness is not in the form of Thought, it
touches, hears, sees and is those things which it perceives. It is a
perception in which all of the senses unite into one sense, in which you
become the object. To attain this one must have the power of knowing oneself
separate from the body."
Edward Carpenter
The fundamental Self is an awareness other than and finer than the physical
body. It can operate seperately from the body and survives the death of the body
in much the same way as it escapes during sleep.
"The prevailing emotion during this experience is a feeling of intense
Joy, something far above any sense of joy that has ever been felt. Then there
is experienced an intellectual illumination, or a pouring in of
"knowing", impossible to describe. The soul becomes conscious that
it possesses in itself, "Absolute Knowledge", knowledge of all
things, the why and wherefore of everything is recognized as being contained
within itself. The sensation cannot be described, even faintly. It is so far
above anything that the human mind has ever experienced that there is simply
no words with which to tell that which has been felt and known."
Yogi Philosophy
Supramental Gnosis is free from doubt, self-evident, self-existent, irrefragable
and absolute.
"As we move toward the Supramental transformation we perceive a
graduality of ascent, a communication with a more deep and immense light and
power from above. We become aware of a sea-like downpour of masses of a
spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of thought but has a different
character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed. There is not
the usual seeking, no trace of mental construction, no labor of speculation or
difficult discovery. It is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge from a
higher mind that seems to be in possession of truth."
Sri Aurobindo
"The first and typical condition of our consciousness, that in which we
now move, is the mind of ignorance which has arisen out of psychological
unconsciousness and the unknowing of material nature. All truth to this mind
is a thing that it originally had not, and has had to acquire, or still has to
acquire, a thing external to it and to be gathered by experience or by certain
methods and rules of inquiry. Its very knowledge implies an underlying
ignorance. The second condition of consciousness is potential only to the
human being and may be gained by an inner enlightenment and transformation of
the mind of ignorance. It is that in which the mind seeks for its source of
knowledge, rather within than without. This mind is conscious that the
knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the
being. but as if veiled or forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a
thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and
known at once to be true. The third state of consciousness is that of the mind
of knowledge in which all things and all truths are perceived and experienced
as already present and known and immediately available by merely turning the
inner light upon it, as when one turns the eye upon things in a room already
known and familiar. They become objects of a preexistent knowledge. The
difference from the second self-forgetful state of consciousness is that there
is here no effort or seeking needed but simply a turning or opening of the
inner light on whatever field of knowledge one wishes. It is not a recalling
of things forgotten and self-hidden from the mind, but a luminous presentation
of things already present, ready and available. This mind of knowledge lives
in the indivisible continuity of time and is essentially a power of potential
omnipotence."
Sri Aurobindo
"There is a central order to the universe, an order that can be directly
apprehended by the soul in mystical union."
Albert Einstein
"All things exist already in [the Brahman], but all are not here
manifest. They are already there in Being but not in Time."
Sri Aurobindo; The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
'The infinite energy/consciousness of the Supreme Godhead is unbound,
undifferentiated and eternal; it is the Brahman, 'One without a second'. In
order for the Incomprehensible to become intelligible to itself, it becomes
dense, first becoming audible and then visible, and it does this through the
contracting power of Time which slows down the vibrations of the infinite
consciousness and congeals it into material forms. Thus, it is reduced from
its native state of undifferentiated Unity into Form and Multiplicity. It is
on the basis of this 'act of contraction' that the Greek myths accuse Saturn (Chronos/Time)
of dismembering his father. When this process of contraction (involution)
reaches a certain point of density, it produces a 'seed' or singularity which,
when it crosses a certain resonant threshold, links up with the spatial field.
All material creation issues from this original involved point or 'seed' as
involutionary forms move across the spatial threshold and begin to evolve
linearly in accordance with the laws of causation and the principles of time.
Once it crosses that resonant threshold the material universe is obliged to
unfold in a manner that allows us to follow the evolving in our Time measure
of what was involved in that 'seed' by compression or contraction. Cosmology,
the ancient science which defines this underlying order, does so by using an
archetypal symbol system which describes the laws of Time, Form and Energy at
the event horizon of the Spatial dimension.'
Robert Wilkinson
Time is the medium for the Absolute to Be and Become. In its compressed form at
the threshold of consciousness it is Being, crossing that threshold into the
Spacial dimension compressed Time energy begins to evolve linearly as the
Becoming.
Time is what gives birth to Space, its preeminence is acknowledged in the Indian
iconography of Shakti, the divine cosmic force, dancing upon the inert body of
Shiva, with a serpent, symbol of eternal time, wrapped around her body.
"The significance of our existence here determines our destiny: that
destiny is something that already exists in us as a necessity and a
potentiality, the necessity of our being's secret and emergent reality, a
truth of its potentialities that is being worked out; both, though not yet
realised, are even now implied in what has been already manifested. If there
is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself
in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is is what we have to become,
and so to become is our life's significance."
Sri Aurobindo; The Life Divine
"In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad the Horse and its speed is the great
symbol of this act of Becoming. The Horse is indeed Agni, first of the Vedic
Gods and foremost figure of all the hymns. He is that first point of space,
the coming into being of which requires two cosmic powers: contraction and
expansion."
PN-B
"The real power, the fundamental greatness of the Horse is not the
material world, not the magnitudes of Space, but the magnitudes of Time. Time,
that mysterious condition of universal mind which alone makes the ordering of
the universe in Space possible, although its own particular relations to
matter are necessarily determined by material events and movements."
Sri Aurobindo; The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
"Time in its period is the Self of the Horse Sacrificial" so not
Matter but Time, is the body of this force of the material universe whose eye
is the sun and his breath the wind. Space then, is the flesh constituting
materially this body of Time which the sage attributes to his Horse of the
worlds, by movement in Space its periods are shaped and determined."
Sri Aurobindo; The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
"There are two poles of universal being. One is Spirit, the other is
Matter. The essence of both is Consciousness in different states of vibration.
In the Spiritual pole there is complete fusion of Time and Consciousness which
we experience as Timelessness, or undifferentiated Time. In this state
Time-energy vibrates at such an intense rate that is appears static and
thereby lacking any element of periodicity or denseness. Hence it cannot
produce any form or any division of Consciousness-substance into distinct
crystallised objects in Space. As time slows down the densification of
consciousness becomes greater, we experience the extreme lengthening of Time
and a consequent solidification of energy where Time is experienced in its
most clearly defined periods. Indeed, Matter is but Consciousness jellied into
countless forms by the crystallising action of Time. Between these polar
extremes lie the dream states and planes of subtle matter. As Time is thinned
out, so too Matter is rendered more subtle. In these realms, our 'bodies' also
thin out and we immediately learn that because material density is lacking; it
is possible to pass through walls, doors, even other 'bodies'. Likewise what
appear to be vast distances are crossed in the batting of an eyelid, because
rigid time barriers are not met in the more subtle planes of universal being.
In the less dense planes all is more fluid, but, at the same time, a certain
element is lost which is the most precious gift of our material universe. Here
we actually progress, we evolve, we develop, we grow-because we are conscious
of Time in its densest aspect. The price we must pay for this gift is the
'heaviness' of dense matter, in that the other worlds are contained in our
own. Thus we carry the burden in our dense physical of all the other
worlds."
The New Way, Vol. 3; PN-B
"Time is the propelling agent of Consciousness, the dynamic power in the
manifestation; in order to measure Time it is necessary to enter the realm of
Consciousness. In consequence, to alter any form we must first alter the
element of Consciousness that stands behind, upholds and indeed is the very
essence of the Form"
P N-B
"The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a
condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the
material eye. Each thing manifest here has its principle, idea or essence
somewhere in the subtler regions."
The Mother
The doctrine of Wholeness which came from Bohm's interpretation of physics,
especially quantum theory, led to his theories of the Implicate order. It
consists of two fundamental aspects; the explicate and implicate order. What we
call matter is merely an apparent manifestation of the explicate order of
creation. It is the surface appearance or of a much greater enfolded or
implicate order, most of which is hidden from view. Physics and Science deal
with the Explicate order ...while Myth and Cosmology deal with the Implicate, or
so called "Spiritual" realm.
"Cosmology is older than any religion known today. It is more ancient
than the most ancient scriptures. It will last long after these two have past
into oblivion, when religions, philosophies, metaphysical systems, the various
spiritual disciplines will appear as myths, because its life does not depend
upon man, though he be divinely inspired. Its scriptures are the movements of
the planets, its Truth lies in the workings of the Cosmos, in the harmony of
the spheres and as long as these exist, so long will Cosmology live."
Norelli-Bachelet
The world we live in, is in its most essential nature, an indivisible part of a
Cosmic Whole governed by certain eternal laws and principles. These eternal laws
and principles represent the foundation and inner mechanism of Myth and Legend.
Myth, which Jung felt to be the direct embodiment of archetypes, represents the
nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words. They are
integrative, patterned, holistic and encompass a truer representation of Reality
than we will find in any other symbolic system. Myths are not primarily
determined by their content but by their form.
The Eternal Truth has been revealed through the ages in a series of ever
recurring myths.
The principles of esotericism have, like most well kept secrets, been hidden
in plain view. They reside in the myths and legends of all cultures, in fairy
tales, ancient symbols, and stories of Gods and Goddesses, doing battle with
dragons and beasts and winning great treasures. All of these mythological and
spiritual motifs refer to the inner kingdom and find their common ground in a
uniform Cosmology. This is why the names and attributes of the planets
correspond to particular Gods and Goddesses. Their material attributes, heroic
deeds, costumes, consorts and magical powers are all representative of the
deeper psycho-spiritual functions which exist in potentia in the Soul of man.
"Mythology is the song of the Universe, the music we dance to even
when we cannot name the tune."
Joseph Campbell
Jung viewed Astrology in particular as indispensable for a proper understanding
of mythology and wrote, "I dare say that we shall one day discover in
astrology a great deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected upon the
heavens."
Astrology is a means of knowledge, the highest and fullest knowledge, but in
order to grasp this it is essential for man to see properly, and this seeing
comes only with an intense and dedicated work for purification. Its truest
mysteries are only made evident to those who have undergone this purification
and have come into a direct experience of the soul. All sense of individual
power vanishes with the deep knowledge of cosmic harmonies. Man sees in all that
happens to him or to others, the irresistible tide of providence, willing and
accomplishing the highest good of all beings, he then consciously and gladly
unites his will to the Divine will and resolves the conflict between freedom and
fate.
"The mind is a miniature universe and the universe is the expansion of
the mind. He who directly experiences this truth sees the universe in himself
and sees himself in the entire universe."
Jacob Bohme
"The Cosmos is a whole organism is multidimensional and sacred in its
structure and duration. It simultaneously reveals the modalities of being and
sacrality through the very structure of the world. In it, Ontophany and
Hierophany meet. The individual is equal to the whole, he is Divine."
Sacred and Profane
"From the external we come to know the internal, for that reason, the
external heaven is a guide to the heaven within..."
Paracelsus
"Our psyche, said Jung, is set up in accord with the structure of the
universe. What happens in the Macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal
and more subjective reaches of the psyche."
"We must never lose sight of the fact that the tantric universe is made
up of an endless series of analogies, homologies, and symmetries; starting
from any level, one can establish mystical communication with the others, in
order finally to reduce them to unity and master them."
Mircea Eliade; Yoga
For the mystic, everything is connected; there is no condition which is detached
from another condition. Every condition has a correspondence, a relation with
another condition, because for the mystic, there is no divided life. There is
only one life and one being, one mechanism which is running.
"Time is not a condition of the existence of the universe but only a
condition of the perception of the world by our psychic apparatus which
imposes on the world conditions of time since otherwise the psychic apparatus
would be unable to conceive it."
Ouspensky
"The cosmic order is controlled by a fundamental moral principle. An
eternal law or unity, which can be conceived as the principle of rightness or
justice, regulates all phenomena. In the Veda, this is called "Rtam",
which means the fixed way or course, in other words, the settled order of
things. The whole universe is founded on Rtam and moves in it. It keeps all
things and beings in their respective courses. Consequently nothing deviates
from its own nature. Because of Rtam, fire burns, wind blows, water flows,
plants grow and the seasons revolve. Rtam maintains regularity in the
movements of the Sun and Moon, the planets and other luminaries. It manifests
itself as the universal law of causation which finds expression in the human
plane as the law of Karma. It establishes unity between the Cosmic forces and
the individual powers. It is the basis of all laws, physical, biological,
psychical, moral and spiritual. Rtam regulates Dharma, the principle of
equity, the moral law that governs human life. because of this, right deed
inevitably produces good result whereas wrong deed leads to evil consequences.
There is no unmerited happiness or misery, gain or loss in mans life."
Rig Veda
"It could be said that the Absolute created the universe in such a way
that its very structure is designed to reflect the highest spiritual truth. It
contains the mystery of a sacred and eternal order, the realization of which
becomes the common matrix for an organization of all human knowledge."
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
"When one looks at the cosmos, the movements of the stars and planets,
the laws of vibration and rhythm, all perfect and unchanging, shows that the
cosmic system is working by the law of music, the law of harmony. Before
reaching a highly specific individuation of the personal, the absolute
manifests as Cosmic and Planetary harmonies and it is these that Pythagoras
called the music of the spheres."
Hazrat Inayat Kahn
"Time does not proceed endlessly in a straight line. It is always and
everywhere a closed curve, although on the scale of our three dimensional
perception we do not see that it is curved or that it is closed. The closed
curve of the forth dimension or the circle of time, is the life and existence
of every living thing."
Ouspensky
"Every effort to transcend the cosmos is preceded by a long process of 'cosmicizing'
the body and the psychomental life, for it is from a perfect 'cosmos' that the
yogin sets out to transcend the cosmic condition. He does this by repeating
and reliving the cosmic Great Time, the periodic cycles of the universe."
Eliade
"In her legendary dialogue with Osiris, Maria Prophetissa revealed the
central axiom of Alchemy; "One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of
the Third comes the One as the Fourth". The great secret, said the
Seeress, lies in knowing; 'Unum est vas', (the vessel is One). And she
emphasized again and again, it must be completely round, in imitation of the
spherical cosmos, so that the influence of the stars may contribute to the
success of the operation. It is a kind of matrix or uterus from which the
miraculous 'Philosopher's Stone' is to be born."
C.G. Jung; Psychology & Alchemy
Because of man's intrinsic correspondence to the universe, the alchemists
referred to him as "Microcosmos", the significant difference between
him and the Cosmos being a matter of degree, rather than essence. Hence the
deepest purpose of human existence is to discover and establish within oneself
that inborn immutable center, that 'Skambha', or axis joining heaven and earth
which unveils one's intrinsic relationship to the Macrocosm. The Vedic sages
taught that if man could learn to find himself within the harmonies of cosmic
Time, that he would regain this natural alignment and become the (Sun) or center
of his own Cosmos.
Hence there are two kinds of time, sacred and profane. Sacred time appears under
the paradoxical aspect of a circular time, a sort of mythic present which is
periodically regenerated by means of rites. It is connected with man's deepest
existential dimension for it is linked to the passage his own life. The
revelation of sacred time makes it possible to experience the cosmos as it was
at the mythical moment of creation, acquire an orientation in the chaos of the
profane world and to begin to live in a real sense.
"We are living right here and now in the fullness of true eternal life
only we are quite unaware, quite unconscious of it. Restoration of this
missing awareness would necessarily revolutionize our lives."
Paul Brunton
"A Cosmogony is the archetype of all creation. Cosmic Time which the
Cosmogony brings forth is the paradigmatic model for all other time. In an
evolutionary framework, it represents the passage from chaos to Cosmos. The
world becomes renewed. Since the temple is the image of the cosmos in
microcosm, its architectonic structure represents the temporal symbolism,
principles and harmony of the cosmic order and sanctifies the cosmic
life."
Mircea Eliade
The true Vedic temple goes back to something timelessly ancient and almost
wholly lost to the world. It is a model of the spatial and physical
correspondences between the worlds of God and man. Its measurements contain a
divine mathematics which convey to the initiate a symbolic realization of the
underlying cosmic ideas.
The Hindu Temple
In the Agni Purana of Vedic India, the question of human action is discussed as
it relates to Dharma, duty and law. Its establishes the premise that no sector
or dimension of real human action is free of karmic consequence. Certain acts of
piety such as offering sacrifices and practicing austerities are known to have
particularly beneficent effects. But nothing is equivalent to the virtuous act
of temple building. It becomes the paradigmatic ethical act which frees one from
all sins and guarantees an exalted state both in this world and the next.
"A Temple is said to be sacred in nature when it is seen and
accurately translated or given the shape on earth which corresponds to certain
laws and principles seen on the higher spiritual planes. When they are seen
and accurately translated temples carry with them a formidable power of
transformation because they are the symbols indicating a readiness of the
birth of a new world. In a true temple there is hidden in its dimensions the
key to Time, a power over which no one on earth can have control. They
resonate with the evolutionary being of the planet, and rectify an exact
record of the earth's history in terms of its spiritual destiny as it unfolds
in time. such a seeing and the transcription of the laws and principles
governing a higher plane can only be carried out by a seer of an extraordinary
order."
PN-B
"Reality is a structured whole consisting of a graded hierarchy of
consciousness which corresponds to the various planes of existence. The planes
within the Absolute correspond to a hierarchy of deities which rule over them.
The soul is made up of these various aspects or essences (Archetypes, Gods,
Powers) which may lie more or less dormant in some individuals but awakened in
others. Jung compared these half forgotten archetypes to dry riverbeds which
await only the release of the waters of life to renew them along their old
patterns. There are in fact numerous poetic and mystic metaphors of the
down-pouring of these "streams, or waters" of inspiration which
course through the riverbeds of these forgotten psychic channels. They may be
found in every significant religious scripture extant, for example, the Vedic
symbol of 'Saraswati', who represents the "stream" of inspiration
which descends from the plane of Truth Consciousness."
The Secret of the Veda
"The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God to
Himself in His own consciousness, it has no material existence but exists only
in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward
being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula,
notes of that rhythm, symbols of that system. Let us lead forward God's
movement, play out His play, work out His formula, execute His harmony,
express Him through our selves in His system. That is our joy and
self-fulfillment."
Sri Aurobindo "The Hour of God"
"All is the result of a harmonious process of unfoldment. The only
difficulty lies in the scope of our vision. To eliminate the element of
uncertainty and unknowing we must be able to view the process in its integral
form, from a height that grants the possibility of a total vision. Obviously
this is not yet possible for the human being, and consequently he must believe
that nothing is determined and all is chance, though he is always receiving
proof that such is not the case. Rising in consciousness one is given a vision
of the One and the Many and the harmony of their evolutionary play, and in a
"seeing" of this nature there comes the understanding that all is
arranged, all is controlled, all is a perfection. It is the very nature of
integrality of the phenomenon that makes the outcome a certainty; each element
in this play of the Many contributes to the Whole and supports each other
element."
The New Way
"One of the first realizations on the spiritual path is that there is no
accident, no coincidence, and that there is a power of the Divine Mother which
works on all levels simultaneously and guides and directs each event down to
the most minute details, with a vision of the whole that to us is staggering
in its scope and capacity. The Divine arranges and we allow ourselves to be
arranged, always with less obstructions, placing less obstacles in her path.
The action is spontaneous, an action in non-action, being without
premeditation."
PN-B
"At least nine tenths of our freedom of will is a palpable fiction; that
will is created and determined, not by its own self-existent action at a given
moment, but by our past, our heredity, our training, our environment, the
whole tremendous complex thing we call karma which is behind us. The whole
past action of nature on us and the world converging in the individual,
determining what he is, determining what his will shall be at any given moment
and, even its actions in the moment."
Life Divine
"When a higher poise is reached there is a major shift or reversal of
consciousness. The notion of free will and its need vanishes and in its place
there is a 'Conscious Surrender', an offering of oneself as an instrument of
the new creative power manifesting in the world. Part of that shift is the
quality of perception we are discussing; a vision of oneness, of
interconnectedness, of harmony, based on the greater harmony of which we are a
part."
PN-B
"The new man if he is to emerge at all, must have a consciousness poised
on the pillars of that sacred knowledge of Oneness, forged in the fires of a
tapasya that is born out of the practice of a Yoga which alone can produce a
new consciousness and a new species."
PN-B
"The perfection of Faith lies in the truth that all things are the
workings of the Supreme Being. That nothing which happens in or around us is
in vain or without its appointed place and just significance. That all things
are possible when God takes up the action. That all which has been done before
and all he will do hereafter, was and will be according to his infallible and
foreseeing guidance and intended toward our perfected evolution and life work.
This faith will be more and more justified as wisdom grows and the higher
knowledge opens. Then we will see the great and small significances that
escaped our limited mentality and faith will pass into knowledge. We shall
then see that all that happens occurs within the working of the one will which
is infinite wisdom."
Sri Aurobindo
"THOU art perfect knowledge, absolute consciousness. He who unites with
Thee is omniscient -- while the union lasts. But even before attaining this
stage, he who has given himself to Thee in all the sincerity of his being,
with all his conscious will, he who has resolved to make every effort to help
in the manifestation and triumph of Thy divine law of Love in himself and the
whole field of his influence, sees all things in his life change, and all
circumstances begin to express Thy law and assist his consecration; for him it
is the best, the very best that always happens; and if in his intelligence
there is still some obscurity, some ignorant desire which at times prevents
him from becoming aware of it immediately, he recognizes sooner or later that
a beneficent power seemed to protect him even from himself and secure for him
conditions most favourable to his blossoming and transfiguration, his integral
conversion and utilisation."
The Mother; Prayers & Meditations
"In the beginning of the century Sri Aurobindo wrote: Sometimes...a force
appears to which we can no longer apply the description of genius without
being hopelessly inadequate in our terminology. Then those who have eyes to
see, bow down and confess the Avatar. For it is the work of the Avatar to
typify already, partly or on the whole, what nature has not yet effected in
the mass or even in the individual, so that his passing may stamp it on the
material ether in which we live."
PN-B
Compiled and Edited by Robert Wilkinson
November 18th 1996 New York.
Robert E. Wilkinson is a writer and astrologer in
the Asheville area of North Carolina.
His specialized area of expertise is the role of applied cosmology in the areas of
science, psychology and human development. He has written extensively on Time
and Vedic Cosmology as an aid in the realization of a Supramental Consciousness.
You can find more articles by Robert E. Wilkinson at www.aeongroup.com.
You can contact Robert Wilkinson at [email protected]
