A Life dedicated to
World Peace
through
Individual Peace
through
Individual Peace
"Respecting the needs and ambitions of others is the
peak
of human culture."
Vethathiri Maharishi (1911 - 2006)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This blogspot discontinued as of December, 2007; please go to the link below right
Vethathiri Inernational Academy **new** link
Love and Gratitude...
To all dear friends who loved Swamiji AND his teachings -- thank you for your great kindness, compassion and support.
Choose your section of interest:
A Frog jumps into the Blog...
This morning my conscience sweetly kicked and abused me ‘til I succumbed and took the broom and mop for an overdue floor-swabbing session. As I righteously swabbed away, I saw a dead frog – one of those cute ones, just barely an inch long -- in the corner of the room, facing one wall of several in the room that has a window above where he is lying.
Poor thing, he died trying to get up to the window and out of the room. Don’t we all? Someone inside commented. Mm. yes, good enough analogy: he died in tragic ignorance that he is already in the world he wants to be in, he just can’t see it so he didn’t believe it; he couldn’t perceive that he was actually in the only place there is. Now, if he had had a wise guide he might have been told to calm himself, stop leaping inanely and suicidally against that wall, and go stand in the middle of the room. From there you can see out a number of windows to that beautiful place you wish to be, and you can also see that though you are in a room, the room itself is embedded in the larger area that contains it.
So….
You need not die desperately trying to get out of the room; leave the corner and go stand in the center and enjoy the view. In fact the room can be a great place to stay if we keep it clean and beautiful, filled with love and happiness. We all live in a ‘room with a view’; just open your eyes and occasionally enjoy looking at the unlimited, glorious garden that lies farther out. Swamiji often used the expression, saying: man has ‘cornered’ himself with false concepts that are the reason for misery. Life is wasted in futile searches for an imagined 'deeper' or alternative reality, state or place. Do you pity that poor frog, which could have lived longer and much more happily if he weren’t deluded? Pity the many of humankind also who are always unhappy where they are, and die 'cornered' like the frog, and for your own life, do something different!
Swamiji's personal quest:
Dear friends,
Amongst humankind there are different motivations that drive one onto a spiritual path. In
The distinctive motivation leading to the gnana approach is an inner drive to enlarge the self to the ultimate extent possible rather than efface it. This attitude reflects in Vethathirian philosophy as the attainment of understanding is the focus: it all tends toward living the best possible life in consequence of enlightenment. In Swamiji’s autobiography he repeatedly stated that there were basically 3 questions that “haunted” him throughout his youth and into adulthood: what is God, what is life, and why is there poverty? These questions are the only questions: the transcendent reality, the immanent reality and the entire social question: what is the right way to live? These questions were his guiding star: they preoccupied him for years and when he was satisfied that he had thoroughly resolved them, he rested; there was his fulfillment of life, his enlightenment and completion. He was transformed into a joyful ‘gnani’. I have lived with him for years and assure you that in his enlightened lifetime he was the happiest person imaginable: intellectually dynamic, naturally and effortlessly virtuous, and lived truly ‘at play in the fields of the lord’!
To wrap this up, just the other day I found myself reflecting that my fascination with Swamiji AND his teachings was motivated by my own search for satisfactory answers in life -- akin to his own motivation, and I think this is likely true of all his students. His type of personality and the nature of his own quest set the tone for the practices he prescribed and supplied a dialectic approach. Hence, as this weblog indicates, his exposition has led to a scientific theory as well as a philosophical system. Thank you for sharing this; any comments?
It just won't go away...!
The totality is described as plenum, force, consciousness and time. The limitless substratum is 'dust' --of, by and in space. Swamiji often compared this to water: Water is apparently a fluid continuum, (really IS a continuum for practical purposes), yet it is known to consist of separate molecules. Similarly, the cosmic substratum (the 'background') is a fluid continuum, yet comprised of 'dust' (spinning quanta of space) in space. The difference is that at the gross level we can detect and separate oxygen and hydrogen out of water, but the dust is undetectable and inseparable from the space background.
Ref. to the book: The History of the Universe and Living Beings, p.6
Reminds you of... some of the ancient Greek philosophers...reminds you of ...some from India too....
But....the means is not the end.
Bhakti and gnana – devotion and wisdom -- are traditional ‘paths': both have characteristic tools, but these tools carry the risk of becoming obstacles to transcendence and transformation.
Self and God realization is the ultimate self- transformation toward which every method is a means, not an end in itself. Liberation from suffering may be approached by certain means and methods, but entails far more inner work than can be told or taught either in words or forms; also utmost sincerity, inborn talent, perseverance and the indispensible, mysterious benediction of divine Grace.
A "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"??
Try this one on:
"The quantum collapse of the atma (wave function of genetic center) is the mind. "
Yes, this statement emerges from our Vethathirian Science! To understand why, refer to the paper:Sanchita, Prarabtha and Akamya Karma: A Quantum Mechanical View
skymeditation.org/vin_academy.asp
Any comments/feedback?
Just got to thinking...
If I look around me, and look within me, it appears we have become adept at self-deceiving and enthusiastic in self-justification. I suppose that in this way we can assuage our fears of failure or error. In our era we have learned to be judgmental, acutely critical, and the ego cries to be protected from criticism focused on oneself; the critical faculty turned within would be too shaming to bear: the result? perhaps a loss of self-confidence or self-respect so that self-deceit and justification are a protective measure. We couldn’t allow ourselves to be as critical of ourselves as we are of others! We are able to block out and escape from much of what we don’t like to contemplate, but when forced to confront our own imperfections we tend to resort to denial, deceit or justification.
Self-deceiving: adj.
1. refusing to recognize the truth, usually because to do so would be painful or difficult
2. cherishing self-indulgent beliefs about yourself
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation.
Sharing umaspace
The ‘spiritual’ life is nothing but an extension of the ordinary life. We step to the edge of the ordinary life and stand there, looking in and looking out in wonder, and that is the fascination.
We humans have made life charming for ourselves – we have made our pleasures and our pains all to order and dwell in their midst. We cry over our pain, our suffering, but feel it’s worth living when we have our pleasures at hand; sometimes it seems our pains are only to throw our pleasure into relief and so define pleasure, make it enjoyable. Is lack of pain, or relief from pain, the only pleasure? Or is pleasure, happiness, the basic state, only perturbed by temporary pain of one sort or another? Peel away at the layers...it’s one more kind of pleasure!
*********
Two articles: Center and Circumference part I and II, have been posted in the Spiritual Teachings section in the site:
More on Love: “even doing nothing is doing something..”
Everything is an active interplay; nothing is really passive.
Swamiji often used fruit on the tree to illustrate the concepts of love and compassion: love is holding the fruit, compassion is the feeding, the perfect nourishing of it. So love appears to be passive, compassion is active. Right? But even the love, the holding, must exert a resistance to being separated. It's an action of Will in the form of resistance.
The existence and functions of Will are a great mystery! any thoughts on it to share??
a Vethathirian verity
"We judge every thing and every action according to the time, place and object of contact The same action may be judged good or bad depending on these three".
Archive
What needs to be remembered....is the Dance!
The whole universe is nothing but a constant whirling dance of spinning particles -- particles coming together into spinning groups, forming associations, elements, a few living beings, forever joining and coming apart.
And everywhere between them the never-ending, innumerable waves -- enjoy the beauty of the dance: it is All There Is!
Vethathiri -- a Joyous Communicator
Vethathiri Maharishi was remarkable, far beyond the ordinary in his wisdom and discernment and he wasn’t made to be reclusive in enjoying his vision of reality. He was made, some may even say born, to share it; he was a communicator par excellence – a writer, an orator, a poet – and imparting his knowledge and wisdom was his delight and forte. A real communicator needs an audience, the other side of the equation. However, many human beings who feel themselves to be somehow more knowledgeable than the ordinary lot do not merely share: they impose, insist, at the worst they intimidate and manipulate others, playing on the insecurity and ignorance of their audience. They need approval and compliance, perhaps even reverence and obedience. Obviously, they are not the noblest, nor truly enlightened who need these rewards of power through control over others.
Those such as Vethathiri deeply enjoy sharing all they possess and whatever they know without any thought of reward or praise for it; the chance to release it to someone who is receptive is his reward. As he used to say: as a mother wishes, even craves, to breastfeed her baby, so is the feeling of a gnani who yearns to share his wisdom with all.
Friends for life!
As we know and perceive only causative, linear relations in space and time, and even our abstract concepts are perforce relevant to that, we consequently describe our God as the ultimate concept in space and time: i.e. plenum, force, consciousness and time – to say God is infinite, eternal and non-contingent expresses the ultimate as transcending space-time, using these terms as we have no other concepts we can comprehend. We maintain that this infinite, eternal and non-contingent Being gives rise to our world of causation in space/time and thereby establish a spiritual as well as scientific base for our perceived universe. It would be possible to describe a purely abstract, un-perceived universe such as in string theory, but this too is defined in terms related to our oldest and only friend: space-time!
VIA Executive Committee
- Rajni Nair, India
- Meena Narayanaswamy, USA
- Martha Pedroche, Mexico
- M.G.Selvi, India
- Laura G.Hanshe, USA -- www.skymeditation.org
- Alagar Ramanujam, India -- www.shastrass.org
VAZHGA VAIYAGAM! VAZHGA VALAMUDAN!
May the whole world enjoy prosperity, happiness, wisdom and peace!