• 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.

When the Absolute becomes the goal of a sentient being, such sentientism, has got a character not circumscribed by the nature of the phenomenal restrictions. But when it tends to limit activities to finite things and phenomena, it leads to a temper of lording it over the finite things having only mundane relativity among them. All activities of the spirit in the direction of the transcendental Absolute have to come under devotion or Bhakti whereas gratification of the senses leads to an activity known as karma of the actor. The Absolute has an unalterable complete situation void of the three positions of the observer, observation and the observed, according to the conception of the Gnostic or jnanins. The Factor of time cannot have any supremacy over the Absolute.

Unlike phenomena where everything is liable to transformation during the course of time, the Absolute does not undergo any change. The Absolute cannot be enjoyed by sensuous activities meant to bring any profit to mind and body. All the profits that accrue by offering our services to the Absolute are never meant for our temporary happiness, depriving others of the benefit. The Vedanta would actually deprive of Bliss the human frame and subtle body, which are wrongly incorporated with the unalloyed absolute infinitesimals. By the word absolute infinitesimal I mean the individuation of the identical quality and not the quantity. The stuff of the Absolute is not liable to any change. No factor of time would have any potency to mutilate it. No space is reserved for it as for material entities. The Absolute when analysed will go to show a division between the parts and the whole. The character of the Absolute will differ from that of the non-Absolute as estimated by the properties of perfection and imperfection. The undesirable experience of regions of imperfection and inadequacies need not be carried over to the eternal aspects of the origin, nature and ontological essence of the Vedanta.

The knowledge of the Vedantic field need not be restricted to the more elementary formula that conveys the Smaarta elucidation and to treatises of such workers as have deviated from the strict path of Shruti. In fact the untenable sectional views need not be included at all under the category of the Vedanta. The different explanations of several creative thinkers and destructive explorers should not be confused with the Satwata Puranas and Pancharatras.

Besides the Smaarta development of the Vedanta we have got to deal with the various treatises written by the Vedanta scholars to enlighten us on various points in our practical life. So we find that the Vedanta includes four aspects which pass by the names of (1) Shruti Prasthan, (2) Nyaya Prasthan, (3) Smriti Prasthan and (4) Prakarana Prasthan. The first two series are accepted by impersonalists, with a very few quotations from books known as Smriti whereas they do not admit the whole arena of Smriti for their Vedantic advancement.