"It is absurd for the egosense to seek this emancipation, for it can never comprehend the truth. The infinite consciousness surely stands in no need of realizing the infinite consciousness!" - Vasistha's Yoga
How many paths have I followed, how many exist to lure us forward with their promises of liberation? Too many, perhaps. But even when we get caught up by the latest supposed yogi's and swami's and priests and Zen masters and their golden roads to unlimited devotion, there is value in these experiences, however frustrating. Because no matter what dead ends they seem to take us to, the path will always be one of "neti, neti"--not this, not this. As the song says, another one bites the dust, and then another, then another, until ultimately, hopefully, we arrive at the place to which Vasistha alludes, a place of surrender, vacancy, freedom from egosense: Being-Knowledge-Bliss. We haven't wasted time. All along these paths unbeknownst to ourselves, we have progressed by grinding away the egosense in our futile attempts to "attain" enlightenment. Do not despair, or better yet, do. There will always exist another huckster to delude another spiritual addict desperate to escape his or her painful round of existence. Hell, even my copy of Vasistha's Yoga has a forward written by one, Swami Muktananda, who, if the internet is to be believed (?) was a pedophile as well as a preacher--and where have we heard that before, O Vatican? No matter. These Muktananda's are just another lesson learned. Each time we try to name Him, we spread another veil across the face of God until, in the end, like the magician who finally whisks away his veil of illusion, nothing stands behind it except clarity and peace at last.
"Ignorance points to the hidden wisdom. Wisdom then destroys that ignorance and eventually that, too, comes to rest. That is the supreme state." - VY
How many paths have I followed, how many exist to lure us forward with their promises of liberation? Too many, perhaps. But even when we get caught up by the latest supposed yogi's and swami's and priests and Zen masters and their golden roads to unlimited devotion, there is value in these experiences, however frustrating. Because no matter what dead ends they seem to take us to, the path will always be one of "neti, neti"--not this, not this. As the song says, another one bites the dust, and then another, then another, until ultimately, hopefully, we arrive at the place to which Vasistha alludes, a place of surrender, vacancy, freedom from egosense: Being-Knowledge-Bliss. We haven't wasted time. All along these paths unbeknownst to ourselves, we have progressed by grinding away the egosense in our futile attempts to "attain" enlightenment. Do not despair, or better yet, do. There will always exist another huckster to delude another spiritual addict desperate to escape his or her painful round of existence. Hell, even my copy of Vasistha's Yoga has a forward written by one, Swami Muktananda, who, if the internet is to be believed (?) was a pedophile as well as a preacher--and where have we heard that before, O Vatican? No matter. These Muktananda's are just another lesson learned. Each time we try to name Him, we spread another veil across the face of God until, in the end, like the magician who finally whisks away his veil of illusion, nothing stands behind it except clarity and peace at last.
"Ignorance points to the hidden wisdom. Wisdom then destroys that ignorance and eventually that, too, comes to rest. That is the supreme state." - VY
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