The Atma Jyoti Blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Karma means both action and reaction. Since action precedes reaction we can say that karma “began” as soon as we were able to act intentionally in any manner. Since intention implies conscious will, that would be as soon as we have evolved to that capacity–sometime during our manifestation on the animal level. (“Animal” is meant in a very broad sense that would include even micro-organisms.)

Q: Why is Yoga considered a science rather than a religion?

Because it is a precise methodology that has nothing to do with faith or the action of another being–including God. If you do it, it works, if you don’t, it won’t. It is just like a machine. Doubtless there is such a thing as aptitude for yoga, as with any other practice, but the machine does not determine the success of the operator.

Facts are facts. And yoga is based on the highest facts.

Also, even though a general philosophy has developed as a result of the unanimous experience of yogis through the centuries, the philosophy is a side effect and of absolutely no influence in success in yoga. We have lived so long at the whim of “authorities” that we just can’t imagine not needed someone interfering with us. But yoga is a completely personal matter. You need not believe in it, and you can even laugh at it and deny its value. But if at the same time you are practicing you will get the same result as a person who has faith and values it. Oh, how wonderful it was to escape “If it be Thy holy will, O Loward” religion and find yoga that worked no matter how “worthy” or “sincere” I might not be.

When I was little I reached for a metal ring that was lying on top of a heater. “Don’t touch it!” I was warned. “You will get burnt.” I have no idea why, but I did not believe I could not manage. So I picked it up and got the most painful burn of my life, and hurt for a couple of weeks. My lack of faith did not affect the effectiveness of the ring to burn me.

No one need accept yoga. Just do it. As Yogananda pointed out, the critics and deniers of yoga are the ones that have no experience of it, because they do not practice it.

When I was first learning yoga I often laughed at how funny the processes were, and how odd that they would produce the desired result. But they did. Always.

Now, can you equate that with religion? Hardly.

But yoga is the highest dharma. That is sure.

[The yoga spoken of here is the science of Self-realization, not the bodily postures commonly called "yoga" today. For more reading on this subject, visit An Introduction to the Yoga Sutras.]

Q: Is Yoga also helpful for mentally ill people (people living with paranoid schizophrenia, etc.)?

A very adept Indian yogi once told me that crazy people should not be taught to meditate, for they will meditate in a crazy manner and make themselves crazier–and usually claim crazy experiences and revelations. He did, however, recommend that mentally ill people learn deep relaxation, and had cured a number of them in that way.

Q: If we plan everything before we are born, is that where we have free will or does it continue here?

Are you two people? One before birth and one after? There never is anything but free will.

If we do have free will here then can we choose to change something we planned before we were born?

If before birth we chose to be in a situation which we would then change or abandon–yes.

Do accidents happen?

There are no accidents.

If there are accidents and one senses help from a higher source, does that higher source help because It knows the accident wasn’t part of our plan and would, therefore, interfere with the life plan we made before birth?

Why make a simple thing hard? Sometimes we choose to create a situation in which we are miraculously helped so we will wake up and realize there is more than we realize. Don’t forget, your true Self and God are one–even if not the same.

Just how much is really planned? If we plan everything and nothing is left to chance, wouldn’t we advance sooner? We wouldn’t want to suffer if by just doing what we are supposed to do, we could mitigate lot of karma at once. You have said we can do this.

Do not assume that before birth you are omniscient. Being out of the body does not make us any smarter. So people plan lives that are idiotic. But even those lives push them toward learning.

Q: Are angels and archangels real individual consciousnesses, or are they some kind of energy constructs?

In Oriental cosmological view–including that of Christianity which is an Eastern religion–the individual consciousness evolves from the simplest form of manifested existence, the atom of hydrogen, to the most complex–including angels and archangels. (In India they are known as various kinds of devas–“gods”–gandharvas, asparas, etc.) They are all stages along the way to Infinity. Thus, archangels are “graduated” angels, who are themselves “graduated” human beings.

In truth, there are no human, angelic, archangelic, etc., beings as entities in themselves. Rather, there are spirits (atmas) who are presently evolving through those forms. More simply: there are no beings known as hats, coats, shoes, dresses, and trousers–those are just the clothing assumed by us humans. In the same way there are only individualized consciousnesses that are clothing themselves in various states of embodiment for the purpose of evolution. The angelic/archangelic condition is just that: a condition or state of being which is experienced by the evolving spirit in its upward passage to divinity.

Q: It has been my understanding for years that angels are in a completely different evolutionary stream from that of human beings–that they have not passed through the evolutionary forms that lead up to the human form. I have been taught that angels are of a completely different mode of being than us, and that their evolutionary paths are irrevocably separate. Could you comment on this?

There are throughout the universe–and including our own planet–numberless types of psychic entities that are evolving along lines of their very own–beings that shall indeed never be in the human evolutionary stream. (I use the term “psychic entities” to designate beings that have bodies formed of astral–psychic–energies, rather than material energies. The term “spirit” is properly applied only to the divine spark within all beings, rather than to their relative conditions.) These range from the type of entities we call “elementals” to the guides and guardians of plant and animal life, even up to great entities who look after the welfare of solar systems. Each of these entities may be given a proper name of their own, such as sylphs, undines, pixies, kelpies, devas, gandharvas, kinnaras, etc. Chistians tend to lump them all together under the term “angels.” This certainly does no harm, but is not very accurate.

Although there are indeed many “species” of non-physical entities which dwell within, upon, and above the earth, mostly affecting its mineral, plant, and non-human life, they are not properly called angels. Perhaps to use the Sanskrit term devas, as do the residents of Findhorn, is more appropriate even if not exact. Further, it is true that these residents, though evolving, will never enter into that particular evolutionary current which produces humans and angels. They are nevertheless the moral and spiritual equals of the beings within that current–as are those within all the various evolutionary streams within creation.

Read More Questions and Answers

Satan is the force of cosmic delusion. But since it is to a great extent the collective energies projected by deluded intelligences (souls), it is also a kind of energy being that has a form of independent (though reflected) consciousness. Those who talk about how “if God did not exist, man would invent him” have intuited a fact. Humans can create thoughtform entities that become energy robots with a dim life and consciousness of their own. Many of the “gods” that have been worshipped throughout history were such creations of human will and consciousness. It is fashionable to sneer at the declaration by Judaism and Christianity that many of the “old” gods were demons, nevertheless–they were.

Satan is much more powerful than the thoughtform gods, being drawn from countless beings over a vast span of time. Satan can be thought of as an immense blind shark that swims around and intuits who can be engulfed or eaten and perhaps even assimilated in time. In this way it perpetually increases in power and effect. As Frankenstein’s monster was composed of parts taken from many bodies, so Satan is also a composite of energies or intelligent beings that are yet somewhat individual though submerged in a collective darkness of consciousness. So Satan is not an individual but a collection of both negative forces–and negative trapped souls. This is far more hideous than anything most of us can imagine. This awful conglomerate moves through the universe, both material and psychic, indeed seeking whom it may devour or debase. It both knows what it is doing and does not know, since much of its function is subliminal.

Lucifer is an altogether different matter, being a highly evolved creative being–an archangel or prajapati–that has turned negative while maintaining his definition as an individual entity. Since he is in total harmony with the cosmic Satanic force and has for ages added to its power as its agent, he can also be called Satan–just as Jesus “turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”