• What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness
  • The yogi's interest is inner peace and self-realization and social harmony
  • Perfection means being in tune with reality
What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness
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Who am I

Success in life begins with knowing, "Who am I? What is the purpose of my life?" Knowledge of the self exists; but sincere seekers are rare. More rare are the great teachers of such wisdom. Since time immemorial, wise men have described our wonderful nature: spiritual, primeval, ever-existing, undying, unchangeable, imperishable. This selection of the writings of Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler) shares that timeless wisdom — inspiring, challenging , practical.

Ontology

The ontological view will surely tell us that Eternal Brahman is the all-Pervading Supreme Cause of all manifestive eternal and transforming domains. All the Vedantic literature viz., Shruti, Nyaya, Smriti and Prakarana tend to delineate the Personality of the Unique Owner of all Eternal manifestations and their opposites and the conception of His Personality need not be morphologised by worldly temporal transforming attributes and at the same time He should not be denied His Spiritual Form, Attributions and spiritual eternal innumerable transcendental Qualities and unending and unrestricted Pastimes, Owing to His supersensuous situation, frivolous attempts should not be directed against Him by our anti-theistic exploitations. He should be approached through Shruti or pure aural reception of transcendental Sounds which should not be confused with mundane sounds which are temporary and meant for the gratifications of our senses. The mundane sounds have to submit to our inspectorial staff of the senses, whereas cogent transcendental Sounds are enriched with superior delegated powers of Divinity to regulate the previous conviction of an enjoying captivated object who poses himself as a subject to lord it over the phenomena. The mind and all other wrong activities of senses are to be regulated by means of devotional temperament to proceed to the Region of eternal transcendental Beatitude. The approaching activity along the path of devotion will empower all individual captivated entities to throw off the thralldom of this enjoying region.


Those who engage in the culture of nescient activities shall enter into the darkest region of ignorance. Worse still are those engaged in the culture of so-called knowledge.
~Sri Ishopanishad, Mantra 9

Unfortunately, most of humanity spends the majority of its time in the culture of ignorance. We cultivate ignorance by serving our tongue, belly, genitals, and other senses like obedient slaves. The vast majority of our energy goes into this mad pursuit of sense pleasure. Left with frazzled nerves, frustration, anger, jealousy, envy, greed, hate, loneliness, and confusion; we seek an escape in alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and a myriad of other legal and illegal consciousness dimmers. This is the cultivation of ignorance.

Science of Identity Foundation | Chris Butler Speaks


Over this, we can trace as well the development of the Vedantic aspects in history and in many ritualistic works, known as Satwata Pancharatra, all of which show an advanced thought of practical Vedanta. Moreover the commentators on the Puranas and the Pancharatras also give us facility to dive deep into the conception of the Transcendental Truth which will form an enterprise of the Vedantic extension. Some of the Prakarana books show a definite tendency to move towards the impersonal goal. The analytical development has given us a long list of arguments refuting pure impersonalists where we find a foliation of ?Rasa? apart from its indolent aspects. This is no doubt a valuable addition to the Vedanta library. Vigilant writers will come up in the field of the Vedanta in its dualistic phase, vehemently protesting against the ideas of indolent pantheists by their synthetic propaganda towards the Absolute. This process may appear to us as an inductive process leading to pantheistic vision in the long run shaping convergently to one point. Many schools of philosophy in their progress tend to convert themselves to one thought where specification is utterly denied; in other words, they speak of many things which will be proselytized to one thing viz., indistinctive monism.