Sudhakar S.D, 1988

 

But man does need God. Vedanta defines God as Brahman, which is beyond all duality, plurality and beyond all categories of thought; yet including these. But the Vedantic concept of God is difficult for the common man to understand. It is beyond those who are incapable of abstract thinking, for it is impossible for them to establish an effective living relationship with what is formless, infinite, …transcendent, that Brahman is. Such people need a personal God with whom they establish a personal relationship- a father, mother, master, goddess, beloved, friend. Lord Krishna, a human incarnation of God, is closer to the heart of common man than Brahman could be. For unless the infinite is conceived in the finite form of a personal God, devotion will be lacking in depth and intensity. The senses need a form, a concrete something that can be held, touched and adored.

Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj

 

Qualities of Spiritual Consciousness

Love

Anyone who has experienced spiritual consciousness has spoken of coming in contact with divine love.  God is love, our soul being of the same essence as that of God is love, and the way back to God is through love. The ocean of spiritual consciousness is an ocean of love. It is hard for us to understand this, because we as human beings think of love in a limited and narrow sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Shiva and Shakti are ONE

 

The tradition states that the Heart is the enormous ocean (ambunidhi), the ocean of light, the ocean of consciousness. The waters of consciousness that in man are broken by countless polarizing and divisive waves (urmi) may be easily brought to a state of dynamic stillness by the process of immersion or absorption (samdvesa) in the Heart.

THE BREATH OF THE ETERNAL

 

1. The Upanishads are the breath of the Eternal.
2. The Eternal Voice speaks within the core of your heart. Wake up! Thou art the Immortal, all-blissful Spirit. ‘Tat Twam Asi’.
3. Awake! Arise! O Man! You are a pilgrim on the path of Truth. You are Divine. Find the way back to your spiritual abode of eternal bliss.
4. Hold fast to that which ever endures.
5. Look not outside for light, peace, joy and bliss but look within
6. Truth must be discovered in the depth of your own being.
7. Your life is incomplete without spiritual Consciousness.
8. Your life is barren without righteousness, renunciation, meditation and self-realisation.
9. A desireless man becomes immortal.
10. To have God is to have the entire world.
11. Without Atman or the Self there is no life.
12. Come then. Tarry not. Falter not. March onward, forward, and Godward. Your goal is to
13. realise the forgotten oneness with God.
14. The foundation of spiritual life is self-control. Ever lead a life of righteousness or Dharma.

Sri Ramakrishna

 “God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion...One may eat a cake with icing either straight or sidewise. It will taste sweet either way.”

                                                                        

(Swami Chidananda, Light Fountain Divine Life Society)

 To the enlightened one, the world as he knew it ceases to be, and everything now stands enmantled (shrouded) by a shining vesture of divine effulgence, hitherto invisible to his normal vision.

    

(from Bhagavata Vahini)

 I am the Cause of all Causes.

I am Eternal. I am Sath-Chith-Ananda (Existence, Knowledge, Bliss). I am Hari (Vishnu the preserver aspect) and Hara (Rudra the destroyer aspect), too; for, I transform Myself into these Manifestations as occasion arises. Creation, the Universe, is but the projection of My Will; it has no basic reality.

George Feuerstein

 

 Hindu Tantra is a complex system of spiritual knowledge, an integral part of Hindu spirituality and the traditions of the Himalayan region. Yet Hinduism is not a religion in Western sense of a belief-oriented system emphasizing one book, prophet or church. Hinduism is not an exclusive belief which says that other religions are false, but an open spiritual tradition that accepts all useful practices and insights and which encour­ ages diversity, innovation and individual freedom.

Bowl of Saki, April 29, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

When souls meet each other, what truth they can exchange! It is uttered in silence, yet always surely reaches its goal.

                                                

Swami Paramananda

 “The Sages gave to the Supreme the name A-U-M which stands as the root of all language. The first letter ‘A’ is the mother-sound, being the natural sound uttered by every creature when the throat is opened, and no sound can be made without opening the throat. The last letter ‘M,’ spoken by closing the lips, terminates all articulation. As one carries the sound from the throat to the lips, it passes through the sound ‘U.’ These three sounds therefore cover the whole field of possible articulate sound. Their combination is called the Akshara or the imperishable word, the Sound-Brahman or the Word God, because it is the most universal name which can be given to the Supreme.”

Bede Griffiths

 There is a beautiful expression of this in the Chandogya Upanishad: 'There is this City of Brahman, (that is the body), and in this city there is a shrine, and in that shrine there is a small lotus, and in that lotus there is a small space, (akasa). Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.' This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.

Shivapuri Baba

 

When wavering thoughts dominate the mind, then it does whatever it likes. You should fill your mind with Divine Virtues. Without peace, there is no prosperity and without inner peace, there is no divinity.

 

Upanishads

 

 The Upanishads were composed and compiled by such people that engaged themselves in spiritual progress. They choose to follow ascetic life and rejected ordinary material concerns. They even gave up family life. Moreover, the Upanishads focused on internal spiritual quests rather than external religious rites and sacrifices.

Maitri Upanishad

 

There are two ways of knowing reality: One is through sound and the other is through silence. It is through sound that we arrive at silence. And that sound is Aum (OM). (Maitri Upanishad (6.22)

Mandukya Upanishad

 

 Beyond the waking, dream, sleep states; beyond the conscious, unconscious and memories; beyond ignorance, knowledge and intuition; beyond all thoughts, feeling and psychic modifications; beyond all qualities, definitions and words; beyond sights and forms; revealed in the silence of the pure heart I exist. In me, worlds and words resolve. I am peace absolute, goodness absolute and oneness absolute. I am the fourth dimension, the great beyond and I am Shiva.

Kenopanishad

 

 Brahman is not an object. It is that which is all-pervading, mysterious, incomprehensible, Chaitanya or pure-consciousness.

Brahman must be known through intuition or self-cognition.

Brahman is known when it is known as the witness of every state of consciousness.

Paramahamsa Omkarananda

God is infinitely more valuable than all the wealth of the whole world, infinitely more pleasurable, joy giving, happiness giving than all the sense pleasures of all the world enjoyed for thousands of years, infinitely more peaceful than the most peaceful sea, infinitely more beautiful than the beauty, that you can ever think of as the greatest beauty in all the world.

A thousand times you could renounce your emperorship and mastership over the whole earth, if only you could have God. A thousand times you could renounce your status as the world's greatest scientist, greatest artist, if you could have God.

Try then to cultivate single minded devotion to the Divine. Again and again turn the mind and thought and heart to the Divine. When there is some great temptation before you, convince your heart, that what you gain by the Divine is infinitely greater than what you gain by the fulfilment of this temptation.

(Avadhuta Upanishad)

 

 As the ocean into which all waters flow maintains its own nature despite the water pouring in (from all sides), so, he alone attains peace into whom all desires flow in like manner; not he who seeks the objects of pleasure. 

GOD IS ONE

Truth is one, though the sages know it as many . God is one, though different religions approach Him differently Call Him Shiva, Vishnu, Allah, Jesus or any other form of God that you believe in . Our paths may be different. Our destination is the same.

Sringeri Sri Sharada Peetam

 God is the supremely intelligent ultimate cause from which the entire universe has emerged, in which the universe exists, and into which the universe ultimately dissolves. We proclaim that God is omnipresent. Everything we see or feel is only a form of God, gross or subtle. This is the real concept of God in Sanatana Dharma.

C.J. Jung

 

 The title "May All Things Dissolve in the Ocean of Bliss" is inspired by one of the tenets of Indian philosophy, which says that everything we see is part of a collective unconscious, the kind that Jung talked about, and that all things emerge from an endlessly deep ocean of bliss.