Thinking that I will start a podcast, I have not been blogging lately in hopes the podcasts would start soon. I will keep you posted.
I was up until a bit past 4:00 a.m. last night watching Trump and Modi speak at the stadium packed with 120,000 people in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The streets on the way to the stadium were lined with thousands of people. The whole event was very inspiring. I could not help feeling it marked a positive phase transition in global events.
Mahashivarathri at our temple was beautiful. It too somehow had the feeling of a positive global phase transition.
We are planning a number of upgrades here at Mt. Soma including the dining menu and regular hours for telephone answering. We are looking forward to warmer weather when families come to Mt. Soma, visit the temple, play outside, go for walks to Ganga Park, Hanuman, etc. It is very heartwarming. It makes me feel like a Vedic Walt Disney, offering Mt Soma for everyone to enjoy with their families!
Also, hoping this spring or summer to offer Advanced Techniques phase 2 via the Internet…
Jyotish was most challenging for several years now, but it appears to have turned the corner!
Hoping to be chatting with you via the podcast airwaves soon!
A dear friend sent the following to me just yesterday and felt I should post something about it ASAP. I have edited it only to remove names in order to protect their confidentiality:
“My father told me about brainwashing techniques from his days in the military. If you were to read down a checklist, there would be a lot of things checked off that apply to cult activities we have been confronted by in recent days. For example, separate people from their normally trusted people, create breaches in all of their supportive or close relationships, talk to them unceasingly with the ideas you want them to believe, Praise them regularly, make them feel special…Make the authority, the enemy, so any super that was there will be undermined. Yeah. It’s a whole process. Pretty creepy stuff.”
I have discussed this sort of thing in my classes a number of times through the years. I must admit that in India I met such a group and their leader. They can at first be remarkably enticing, fascinating, and alluring. At first, I wanted to hear more. But at some point early on, like a flash out of the darkness, it is as if I woke up and saw so plainly what was going on. The mind control that happens creeps in seemingly harmlessly. The techniques are powerful, yet subtle and seemingly so beneficial. In fact, they are seemingly lifes panacea… the cure all for humanity.
I have told the story of ‘mystical manipulators’ who would do miraculous ‘healings’ that changed peoples lives and seemed to immediately lift them to higher states of consciousness. The manipulations can have incredibly compelling and hallucinatory effects. People see colors, have feelings of euphoria, see God everywhere, and believe they have just been given Gods greatest gift. We may wonder how anyone of any psychological stability could be manipulated and taken in so easily. It can happen seemingly unnoticed and feel like what you have been looking for.
There is of course, such a thing as spiritual growth and even enlightenment. I remember back in the 70s when I was giving a talk about it, a guy jumped up and said he knew exactly what I was talking about and it happened to him when on one of his LSD trips. There are a myriad of ways cults induce such beliefs and feelings into their followers. Just like the guy on LSD, they think they just became enlightened!
It is important to realize that these leaders are usually not intentionally malevolent. In fact they too have been intoxicated with the very things they offer. They truly believe the things they promote are good. A powerful collusion exists with them and within their group.
Often the potential followers are coerced into believing that their current mentors are wrong, foolish, misguided, or even ill intended, etc. They are thusly segregated from their previous support group. They become convinced that their previous bonds are, in fact, their enemies.
Interestingly enough, people outside those groups when they pass by them on the street often easily and obviously see and feel the cultish ‘vibe’ and are instantly off put by those groups. They see the group followers tagging along behind the leader, hanging onto the words of his alleged sermons from God.
I have in the past mentioned how they offer ‘instant enlightenment’ or ‘enlightenment in 30 days’.
Commonly, the leader is highly charismatic, a ‘smooth operator’, loving, kind and seemingly nonaggressive, attentive, innocent, and harmless. They shower their followers and potential followers with praise, telling them what they want to hear. Perhaps, for example, telling them they are already one of the ‘enlightened few’ or if not, then they are soon to be if they just follow his lead.
The leaders often present themselves as ‘Gods messenger’. They claim to speak with God and offer their followers Gods personal messages to them. They offer to teach the followers how they too can talk with God. Those not taken in by such leaders often immediately see the masks and overlays those leaders are living. Certainly, their sugar coated behavior is not what spiritual attainment means.
Chanting is a tool they misuse to induce hallucinatory states of happiness and health. Often, they promote chanting as their primary tool of spiritual growth. The followers are indoctrinated into reaching to live ‘outside of their bodies’ in a mirage of heaven above. It creates unity and loyalty within the group and to the leader. They come to believe that nobody else knows or understands God. Enraptured euphoria is the common enticement.
This is very spooky stuff. We all do well to be very careful in our lives. As Adi Shankara said, the spiritual path is the path of discernment. Things need to make sense. As is said, things that seem too good to be true, are just that. Flashy experiences and promises of quick enlightenment can be very tempting but are to be avoided. The spiritual path is wisely likened to traversing a razors edge or passing through the eye of a needle. Think, think, think. Proceed wisely with your life.
There are many online links discussing this. Here is one example:
Everything maps onto everything else. To look out over the night sky is to look out to the entire universe. Yet it revolves around a single point—the pole star (north star). Taking a closer look, the handle of the seven-starred big dipper points to the pole star. As the seasons change, the dipper rotates 360 degrees around the pole star. The dipper’s new position in each of the four seasons creates the swastika shape (andthe cross of Christianity) with the center, the pole star, being the heart and soul of the universe. This maps onto (correlates with) the central core of each and every individual.
The Rishi value (the central core, the Knower, you) is the finest fabric of the soul, your essence. The Rishis can be sensed above the head. However, if the relationship with that is not healthy, it can be a terrible distraction. More importantly the Rishi quality can be experienced deep within your being, the soul, the Jiva. The Rishis then, are the laws of nature (Dharma) that are the most refined quality of nature that comprises the Jiva (individual soul). So it is through the Rishis within that the depth of the Self–and through that, God–are known.
Our lives revolve around that one point, the essence of our being, the depth of our soul, the Jiva. Like a two-sided coin, the Jiva is the deepest aspect of our being still in relative existence. The other side of that coin is called the Atman, the (Bindu) point gateway to the Absolute Transcendental Source of all that is, i.e. God. To access the Divine is to know God through the Jiva. That is the meaning of “the kingdom of heaven dwells within.” The totality of existence dwells within you. As said in the Bhagavad Gita, all the Gods dwell within you.
Yet it is the syndrome of humanity that people look outside of themselves to find God. The mapping is that God dwells outside of us, over our heads and above. Though that mapping has validity, it leads so many astray. Such echoes of Truth, perceived as Truth, hold Truth at bay. It becomes an enticing astral level of spirituality. Worship of God then, so easily goes out of balance and becomes a life-consuming, intoxicating distraction. Indeed, the longing for God often reaches outside ourselves. Yet as the Gita and the Bible both say, the kingdom of heaven dwells within.
To find God is to refine and strengthen our experience of the Jiva, the Rishi value, the Self. It is an inward process, not an outward one. It is, of course, fine and feels nurturing, healing, and fantastic to sing the praise of God as outside and above us, but the evolutionary process is in the opposite direction, namely within. Over-emphasis of the outward direction then pulls us away from the God we feel we are reaching toward. To outwardly sing the praises of God on a Sunday afternoon in your church or temple is wonderful and is one thing. To turn it into your daily practice is quite another. God is actually revealed by the Self, to the Self, and through the Self, i.e. the Jiva.
This is why it is taught that we repeat Mantras silently. This directs the awareness to and through the Jiva, the Rishi value. Within the depth of our being, we already are One with God. We already know the Rishis. We can all sense that to some degree, though may say it in different ways. So when a Mantra is repeated silently, even if the pronunciation, rhythm, etc. are not exact, the deep physiology with the Jiva corrects it.
It is said in the Shastras that ten rules of proper pronunciation must be followed to prevent any distortion to be driven into the physiology. In fact, the Vedangas are said to be dedicated to that topic. To sing the praises of God on occasion is beautiful and fine but the actual regular daily practice is to be done silently. Also, it is best to leave the outward recitation to trained Pandits and those raised with proper enunciation. In fact, to hear Westerners try to speak out Sanskrit words can have a coarse feel to it. That is why in the temple, it is best to listen to those whose physiologies and dictions have been cultured from childhood to pronounce Vedic recitations properly. Yet at the same time, reaching outward for God can fill the heart and feel so nurturing and alluring… echoes of Truth holding Truth at bay. The path to God is indeed elusive and subtle, like traversing the razor’s edge, or passing through the eye of the needle.
We see in most every religion the reaching outside of ourselves for the Divine. Some call it being born again. Some call it attaining enlightenment, Bhakti, or Nirvana. Some say through that, God walks with them and talks with them and heals their body, mind, and life. They say they are saved. Unchecked, it hooks, intoxicates, and becomes the source of fanaticism foundational to so many religious practices.
With meditation and the Advanced Techniques, the experience of the Jiva (the Rishi value) is refined and strengthened. It does not promise instant enlightenment. Human evolution is a cultivation, not an detonation. Steady hand on the rudder. Staying on the path with distraction-free rationality is the key. The brain has two aspects… loving heart (Bhakti) and rational mind (Gyana). As illustrated in the Gita, true Bhakti comes once Gyana is solid. Know your Jiva through the Rishi value. Know God through your Jiva. JivoDevaha means the two sides of the one coin: Jiva (the Self, i.e. the Rishi value) and the Atman (Deva, God).
Quantum computing promises to exponentially propel the high tech industry forward. Nano technology boosts and microbiome understanding will transform our oceans. Major challenges will be solved, not with trillions of dollars of expenditure, but rather with technological leaps forward, dwarfing things like the industrial revolution and the computer boom. The future is great! The Age of Enlightenment is emerging!
During the month of January, there is some especially powerful Jyotish. Earlier in the month, six planets clustered in Sagittarius. This type of conjunction is rare and difficult to analyze, but has the potential to change the world. While this conjunction is challenging, some Jyotishis have referred to it as the spark that signifies transformation. The Jyotish was especially difficult from January 8-14, as Saturn conjoined Mercury (and Pluto as per Western astrology) in the last 2 degrees of Sagittarius. Also, there was a lunar eclipse on January 10.
Planets are especially unstable when transiting the final degree of a sign, and Saturn will be transiting the final degree of Sagittarius and the first degree of Capricorn from now until about the end of January. It crosses into Capricorn on January 24, the same day as the new moon (and also the scheduled starting date for the Senate hearing!). As a result, things have been, and will continue to be, rather shaky.
An example of this is the situation with the U.S., Iran, and Iraq. On an individual level, during this time, it is wise to keep the peace, avoid conflicts, and be careful in all areas of life over for the rest of the month and the first half of February. Conflicts, etc. that get created during this time could extend into the future.
The good news is that after Saturn transits into Capricorn, it will be in a much happier position. For the next five years, Saturn will transit its own signs and should provide significantly more positive results. Also, Jupiter is currently transiting its own sign of Sagittarius, producing positive results. Jupiter remains in Sagittarius until March 30, then moves into Capricorn for 3 months, shifts back into Sagittarius on June 30, and stays in Sagittarius until November 20. The upcoming times, where Jupiter is in Sagittarius and Saturn is in Capricorn, are especially auspicious. So 2020 has the potential to be an incredibly positive and transformative year!
Interestingly enough, numerology predicts it to be a transformative year as well. Click here to see the World Numerology forecast from Hans Decoz.
Michael Mamas provides insights as to how the world really works, and shares wisdom that applies to any area of life. Besides addressing a variety of subjects, he offers a natural and realistic approach to personal development and Self-liberation.
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