Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Prodigal Son Returns!

The story told by Jesus in the New Testament of the prodigal son who returns to and is welcomed back home by his father is one of the most inspiring allegories of the scriptures of east and west.

Where in this story is there any hint of eternal damnation? Is not error, ignorance, and self-destructive attitudes and behaviors hell enough? How many millions suffer from poverty, addictions, abuse, disease, and exploitation? Hell, who needs hell? It can be right here in our own hearts and minds! Besides, when you are truly in the midst of suffering, does it not SEEM like it will never end?

Are WE the cause of our suffering? How can we explain the suffering of a child? The annihilation of an entire culture? Is life itself to blame? Is suffering just built into the matrix of life? Is it God who punishes us? If so, do we deserve it or is God capricious?

These are among the great questions of life, to be sure. Just as only a handful of people in this world can truly comprehend the grand mysteries of science such as string theory, quantum physics, relativity, and the time-space continuum, so too only a few great souls truly grasp the grand mysteries of our human experience. Who, among millions who use computers or cell phones, truly understand the inner workings of even these (now) mundane devices we so depend upon?

The pearl of life's wisdom is not sold cheaply in the marketplace of bookshops but is only found, hard-won, in even-mindedness and calmness on the threshing floor of daily life and in the hermitage of inner silence.

Why, then, should we be surprised if the great drama of life is veiled and seems to us a mystery, an enigma? Paramhansa Yogananda was once asked about a possible "short-cut" to wisdom. He smiled and replied that such a short-cut would make it too easy and that God has so veiled the truth that we might seek Him for his love, not merely his wisdom. Besides, he quipped, most people, if given a chance to talk to God, would only argue.

He went on to say God HAS everything; God IS everything. He "lacks" only our love, our personal interest, and our attention. Most humans on this planet wouldn't have it any other way, so engrossed in the pursuit of life, liberty, pleasure, and human happiness are they.

Yet, like the prodigal son, when the famine of disappointment or disatisfaction strikes again (whether clothed as material success, or, failure) and we gnash our teeth in despair at the thought of the anguishing monotony of continued rebirth, and we look heavenward (inward) for the truth that can make us free.......then the dawn of wisdom appears in the eastern sky.

You see, until we have stepped out of the drama, we cannot see the drama for what it really is: a drama. Caught up in our roles, we cannot see that both the villain and the good guy are but actors. It's true that the villain is slain and the hero victorious but even that doesn't necessarily appear so from the outside looking in. We cannot see the cause of our suffering or the seeming whimsey of success as but part of the drama and our likes and dislikes of it all as the result of our identification with it.

But there is a way out. Someone once said, "The only way OUT is IN!" Indeed! The story of prodigal son describes the pathway home.

Turning now to the story itself in the New Testament, at first, famished as our souls become for kernels of wisdom, we take apprenticeship with spiritual teachers, teachings, and practices; in this process, we may be asked to feed others who are even more needy than we (the "swine" in the story). Then, as the Bible describes, we "come to ourself" and remember the happiness (bliss) we once knew in our Father's home.

Then, armed with that remembrance, we begin our journey, retracing our steps homeward. In what direction do those steps lead? As Jesus put it elsewhere: "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Thus he, a great yogi, counsels as does Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, the inner path of meditation.

The door the leads to "heaven" are the doorways of the subtle (astral) spine known as the chakras. These lead to the inner kingdom which, in turn, leads us to our home in God's eternal presence. Kriya yoga is an advanced technique of meditation that is aptly described as the key to these doorways. It is designed to accelerate our inner path and ability to become sensitive to this inner world of energy and consciousness. This is the "stuff" of the higher worlds from which the material world appears and is sustained.

We retrace our steps in a way not unlike reversing the process of birth, or, as is often said, becoming "born again." Not physically of course, but energetically. We become baptised in this inner spine of energy and divine consciousness. The rest of this description is the teaching of raja yoga training and need not be dwelled upon here.

Be ye of good cheer, for the good news (paraphrasing Christian vocabulary) is that the keys to the inner kingdom have been given. Meditation is for everyone and kriya yoga unlocks the power to be free.

Blessings to all! Hriman

Monday, November 8, 2010

President Obama visits India!

My friend, Larry Rider, sent me quotes today from some of Obama's remarks in India. In light of Paramhansa Yogananda's oft quoted prediction that someday India and America would, together, lead the world into a new age of cooperation and balancing material with spiritual needs, I find some of the quotes rather remarkable.

But before I share them, the background for their appeal lies in a broader understanding of the needs of our rapidly changing planet.

When I think back to my childhood in the 1950's in a small town on the California coast (Pacific Grove - part of the now famous Monterey Peninsula), our lives seemed so quiet and insulated compared with today's clamoring diversity. But even then, the hints were there. For starters, Monterey was a fishing town comprised of many Sicilian descendents.

It had once been the capital of Alta California under Spanish rule and even briefly the capital of California when first a territory of the United States. As a boy I was aware that there still existed large tracts of land owned by blue-blooded, almost royal families who were descendents of the original Spanish land grants.

Spanish language, culture, cuisine, music, and dress were ubiquitous and proudly affirmed as part of our heritage. Indeed, our towns and streets were mostly Spanish named. The architecture, which I still to this day love so much, was the adobe buildings with the red-tiled roofs, geranium flower boxes, and the miniature courtyards offering greenery and respite from the dusty streets.

Pacific Grove, where I lived, had been founded as a Protestant church camp. But it had become a small town and had its own African-American quarter. Their church, which shook joyfully each Sunday with gospel music, was right up the street from my house. One of my boyhood friends went to church there every Sunday. We took turns going to one another's homes to play. No one - either in his family or mine - ever hinted that there should be anything different or awkward between us.

The residue of a former "Chinatown" was only blocks away, adjacent to the famous Cannery Row, among whose largely abandoned sardine factories, I played as a child. It had once bustled with the rich and mysterious color of the orient. As youngsters, we heard stories of opium dens and mah jong gambling establishments --all very appealing to our youthful imaginations.

On the weekends I played with the children of a family of Japanese descent who ran a dry-cleaning business and a grocery store. Their grandparents' home was filled with oriental paintings and furniture. I remember sitting quietly in the living room one day (while my friend went upstairs to speak with his grandmother) gazing at awe at the mysterious carvings, swords, and tapestry-like scenes of traditional Japan.

So, there it was, all around me. But I remained, as a child, insulated with my Irish-Catholic family and faith, with my Catholic school and parish church, and the many families who, surrounding it, comprised a kind of community. I could not have imagined the diversity we now know day-to-day in America and around the world.

Paramhansa Yogananda looked past the simple mixture of nationalities to the driving impulse of consciousness that brought them together. Yes, the promise of prosperity and freedom of America has been for two hundred or more years the engine driving this admixture. Fueled by rapid advances in science and commerce, together with heretofore seemingly inexhaustible natural resources around the world, the world has changed rapidly.

But what is missing is the heart and soul of an emerging world culture. We may have the power to change our lives and our world but not the yet the wisdom not to destroy it (and ourselves) in the process. Assimilation maybe a fact but it is not necessarily a harmonious one! What is needed is an expression of spirituality that matches our material might.

And that's where India comes in. India has nurtured and preserved an underlying spiritual revelation that matches the grand vision, both macroscopic and miscroscopic, that science offers to us. No other orthodox theology or tradition on the planet is so far reaching in its embrace as to be described more often as a philosophy than a religion.

I am not referring to India's culture, necessarily, as we encounter it in the 21st century. Nor yet even its strictly orthodox, Brahaminical theology, rituals, and deistic pantheon. I refer to what in a past higher age was self-described by India's rishis as "Sanaatan Dharma," or, the eternal religion.

This is not intended to be yet another sectarian boast. Rather, it is a revelation based on personal realization by "spiritual scientists" which are as real and as practical as the experiments of modern scientists. Sanaatan Dharma describes the universe as a manifestation of divine consciousness and the purpose of evolution as the creation of Self-awareness adequate to achieve this realization in a state of Oneness.

It is this grand vision of spiritual reality that offers humankind a concommitant spiritual version of a "unified field theory" that great scientists have sought for centuries.

So, back to President Obama! His statements are naturally politically, economically and technology oriented, but behind these is an acknowledgement of a central role that India has to play and for a special relationship in that role to America.

Here then are some of his statements that, in their essential recognition at least, echo the words of Paramhansa Yogananda several decades ago:

Obama hailed Mahatma Gandhi, who used peaceful non-violence to help India gain its independence, and he noted Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther King and the non-violent resistance that typified the American civil rights movement: Obama spoke revealingly of this by saying:

"I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as president of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world," the president said.

Obama lauded India's rise on the world stage, saying "India is not simply emerging; India has already emerged."

He envisions, he said, U.S.-Indian relations as "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century."

He said India has overcome critics who say the country was too poor, vast and diverse to succeed, citing its Green Revolution, investments in science and technology.

Obama praised India's democratic institutions: its free electoral system, independent judiciary, the rule of law, and free press. He said India and the United States have a unique link because they are democracies and free-market economies. "When Indians vote, the whole world watches. Thousands of political parties. Hundreds of thousands of polling centers. Millions of candidates and poll workers, and 700 million voters. There's nothing like it on the planet.

Blessings, Hriman

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Thank You Darwin!

I read once in National Geographic how researchers were analyzing human love and attraction and attempting to show that this, too, was but an outgrowth of our genetically programmed impulse for survival and continuation of the species.

I've never understood all the fuss about the law of survival. It seems so obvious (to anyone perhaps but a scientist) it should never have received tha attention it has garnered.

I suppose some of these "Darwinists" also interpret great works of art and acts of personal self-sacrifice in terms of the law of survival, as well. But the attempts reek of the sterile laboratory of dry, myopic reasoning.

Consider that long before Darwin, Adam Smith published the (then) shocking assertion that self-interest was the motivation behind all human action. Ah, yes,yet another fact of human nature revealed to us that is otherwise so obvious as to never having merited particular attention by people with common sense and a higher vision of life.

And then there's the "pursuit of happiness" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Who's to argue with these great "revelations?"

Now all told, none of this is either shocking or blasphemous in its own right. The issue I take with it all is twofold: 1) It's simply and truly inadequate to explain anything meaningful to human existence, and 2) Scientists and nonscientists alike have made bold attempts to make a philosophy of life (and in some cases a religion) out of such pedestrian observations. The modern age seems to have gloried in the most banal realities of human existence.

Returning, then, to Darwin and his army of devotees, we can say that competition and survival have been elevated to the heights of the greatest virtue in social theories, pyschology, politics, and the arts. Both communism and capitalism owe their stark, dark, and banal dogmas to the deification of the mundane realities of self-interest and material needs.

Again, who would argue with obvious fact of competitiveness (and its potential benefits when held in check). It's just that the 19th and 20th centuries which promoted this "philosophy" managed to slaughter hundreds of millions of people, wipe out entire species of animals and plants, and bring this earth rapidly towards potential self-destruction!

In other words, philosophy DOES matter. Social values DO MATTER. The Founding Fathers of America created checks and balances to hold at bay the self-interest that they wisely knew was the engine of human motivation. At the same time, they themselves were guided by and extolled for everyone high ideals of the social good, belief in God and recognition of divine love and virtues.

According to the teaching of duality, however, all things have their opposite. I have noticed that since the Sixties, the science of ecology is reawakening a steadily growing and enlightened self-interest that is the necessary counterweight to competition and materialism. Ecology contains an implicit philosophy of interdependence and places a high value upon mutually supportive diversity. At heart, these are, arguably, spiritual values and, in fact, only to some degree, scientific ones.

Of course, religion ought to offer such insights but science and religion have been at odds for centuries, with religion steadily losing ground and science gaining respect and becoming the religion of modern culture. Religious principles founded on a priori beliefs and sectarian dogmas have earned the disdain of intelligent and high-minded people all over the world.

So, if science is the modern religion then it must needs be science that will save us! And that's where the message of ecology seems to have played a role.

Still, science, whether pedestrian or elevated, cannot satisfy the deeper and eternal questions of humankind, nor can it satisfy the heart. For wisdom, too, Paramhansa Yogananda wrote in his famous life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," we have a hunger (not just for food and shelter).

This is where and why the life-affirming and all-encompassing ancient Vedanta philsophy of India has encircled the globe offering hope for a better world. Vedanta is incomplete with the knowledge, science, and art of how to attains its cosmic vision of the creation and the purpose of creation.

That art and science is the personal and nonsectarian practice of meditation and Self-realization. Science will never be enough to transform civilization. At every great turn of history, it is the saints and men and women of universal vision who guide humanity away from the rocks of self-destruction towards the shores of true survival.

Blessings, Hriman

P.S. If you'd like to learn more about this subject, please obtain a copy of Swami Kriyananda's (J. Donald Walters) insightful landmark book, "Out of the Labyrinth." It's sequel, equally inspiring and forward looking, is "Hope for a Better World."