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“The universe becomes conscious of itself in us.” - Roger Scruton

We were pleasantly surprised when we recently came across “The Return of Religion,” an article by contemporary English philosopher Roger Scruton, which we would like to share with our blog’s readers.

Scruton begins with an analysis of today’s “evangelical atheists” – the self-dissatisfied enemies of religion who try to use the advances of science to bludgeon into silence the religious impulse wherever they find it. But this impulse cannot be silenced, as Scruton explains so well. Our self-consciousness is what differentiates us from animals, and is the very image of God within us. And with this self-consciousness comes the urge to transcendence, to reach out to that greater Consciousness of which we are a part, which even the atheists cannot deny forever.

Read “The Return of Religion” by Roger Scruton.

Many valuable articles disappear from site on a blog after they leave the front page. And on a spiritual blog such as the Atma Jyoti Blog where the articles are useful at all times, it is helpful to occasionally publish a round-up of top articles to remind readers new and old of worthwhile postings from the recent past.

Half of 2008 has passed, and below is a listing of some of the best of the last six months. We have picked some of the most helpful articles from several categories.

Web Resources

1. 19 Exceptional Web Resources for Spiritually Minded People
The Internet is a vast sea of information, and finding what you need to know can be a time-consuming project. Especially when it comes to locating spiritual resources, separating the good from the mediocre and useless can be a frustrating undertaking. So we have put together a list of what we have found to be extraordinary web sites of wisdom which will be a help to anyone striving to grow spiritually.

Meditation and Practical Spirituality

2. Learning to Use Your Mind
“Use your mind” (intelligence) is just about the first thing a worthy teacher will tell the student–and will usually have to keep on telling him for quite a while until the instinct habit is broken. This article will help the student of meditation develop this essential capacity.

3. How to Misuse Your Power of Thought
On the other hand, failing to control the mind can have disastrous consequences. It is true that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. In these two verses of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna has described the entire journey, beginning with thought and ending in total loss. Each step should be considered well.

4. Key Concepts in Yoga: Karma
A clear understanding of the concept of Karma is essential before embarking on the path of Karma Yoga. Without a correct perspective our attempt to follow this path will be fraught with uncertainty and an almost sure incidence of misstep and failure.

5. The Key to Finding God
Part 3 of the four part series “How to Know God,” this article stresses that it is the seeking that brings about the finding in spiritual life.

Vegetarianism

6. Increasing Your Responsiveness to Meditation With Diet
The body is the vehicle through which the individual evolves during the span of life on earth, and must be taken into serious account by the yogi who will discover that the body can exert a necessary effect on the mind. A fundamental aspect which should be considered by the serious aspirant is diet, as this article will show. Another article which expands on this is Humans: Are We Carnivores or Vegetarians by Nature?

Questions and Answers

7. Reincarnation: Choosing Our Costumes in the Drama of Life
We do indeed determine what each life is going to be in a general way. For reincarnation does not stand alone. In fact, it is not an entity unto itself, but is the result of karma, the law that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Find out more.

Teachings of Krishna

8. Choosing Between the Good and the Pleasant

Krishna describes the pleasant as essentially “sweet at first but at last how bitter: that pleasure is poison.” It is not just harmful–it is deadly. In this article, we learn the characteristics of both good and pleasant. Then follows the article Are We Wise or Foolish?, which completes the picture.

Teachings of Jesus

9. What Did Jesus Really Say in the Sermon on the Mount?
This special eight part series is a careful examination of the inner meaning of Jesus’ words in the Sermon of the Mount, with special attention to the intent of the original language from which the Beatitudes are translated. The rest of the series is listed below.

• The Kingdom of Heaven According to Jesus
• What Jesus Really Means by Meekness
• When Craving is a Good Thing
• Mercy and the Law of Karma
• Clean to the Core of Our Being
• The Spiritual Process of Making Peace
• Blessed Persecution: A Cause for Rejoicing

Teachings of Buddha

10. Be Awake Among the Sleeping
There will always be this sharp division between human beings. Most sleep and dream they are awake, and some of them are halfway between sleep and waking–sleepwalkers. In this article learn what it is to be awake, to be self-aware, centered in the consciousness that is our true nature.

Just a sampling

These blog postings were selected because they give a broad cross-section of the content of the Atma Jyoti Blog. On the blog and the Atma Jyoti Website together, there are over 600 articles and books available for reading and downloading. Begin exploring today to find out about the mystical traditions of the world, or subscribe to the Atma Jyoti Blog. to keep up to date with the latest postings.

Stephen Smith of the Productivity in Context Blog has a weekly column called Friday Morning Zen. Last week he kindly hosted a guest post by Swami Nirmalananda, a commentary on a quote from Buddha in the Dhammapada:

“By resolution and attention, by discipline and self-control, a clever [wise] man may build himself an island that no flood can overthrow.”

Click here to read the commentary on this verse.

Stephen has offered to host frequent guest posts by Swamiji commenting on quotes on spiritual topics. Do you know of a good spiritual quote by someone or from spiritual writings which you would like to see explained or amplified? Contact us and we will consider using it on Stephen’s Friday Morning Zen column.

In September of 2004 when the Atma Jyoti website was started, our site had only a handful of articles on meditation and spiritual life. Today there are roughly one thousand. There are writings by some of the most esteemed authors and spiritual figures of recent times, including Swami Vivekananda, Rama Tirtha, Swami Sivananda, Dr. Raymond Bernard, Swami Ritajananda, and others. With all these articles, ebooks and more scattered in different categories, it is easy to overlook some of the treasures on our site. Here are just a few of these hidden gems for you to read and profit by.

• All Is One (Ellam Ondre)

“If you want moksha, read and practise the instructions in Ellam Ondre.” –Ramana Maharshi

This small but extraordinary book was written in the 19th century and has been translated from Tamil into English. The author is unknown. It was popularized by the sage, Ramana Maharshi, who often named it along with a few others to disciples who were in pursuit of wisdom. This book, highly saturated in wisdom teachings, names the single most effective method of attaining to realization (i.e. enlightenment, moksha or liberation). The Maharshi especially emphasized the book to those who had difficulty reconciling the concept of multiple gods (as in the Hindu religion) with the Advaita concept of a single Universal Creator. This book explains how there is no basic conflict between these points of view, as long as things are viewed from the perspective that all the diverse beings and objects in this expansive universe are essentially parts of a greater whole–or as the book sums it up: All is One.

• May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation? by Swami Nirmalananda Giri

No serious Christian wishes to be “carried about with divers and strange doctrines,” (Hebrews 13:9) but rather to be established in “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 3) Therefore the purpose in this brief study is to determine if, in good conscience, a Christian may believe in reincarnation.

Reincarnation-also known as the transmigration of souls-is not some exotic idea of non-Christian mysticism. In ancient orthodox Jewish and Christian writings, as well as the Holy Scriptures, we can find reincarnation as a fully developed belief, although today it is commonly ignored.

• Commentary on the Yoga Sutras by Raghavan Iyer

Raghavan Iyer was a noted theosophist, with a long and distinguished career in academia, as well as the editor of several prestigious metaphysical and theosophical magazines. His extensive knowledge of spiritual matters make his writings on the Yoga Sutras some of the most inciteful on the subject.

• The Chidakasha Gita by Paramahansa Nityananda

The Chidakasha Gita is a transcription of random teachings of Nityananda, given when he would walk unannounced into a house, sit down, and begin speaking. Though the devotees did the best they could, writing frantically in hope of keeping up with his words, the resulting records are often disjointed and sometimes make no sense since something is missing. This of course is a defect of the transcribers and not of Nityananda who was speaking spontaneously in spirit consciousness without interest in polished expression. Nevertheless, a devotee collected these fragments and had them printed under the title of Chidakasha Gita. They have been translated into several Indian languages as well as English.

• The Aquarian Gospel by Levi Dowling

In 1908 a book appeared on the shelves of American bookstores that was destined to garner interest throughout the world, so much so that today it has gone through more than seventy editions in America alone. This book was The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi H. Dowling. It evoked a response in those who intuited and sought for a deeper meaning of the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Many at that time, as well as today, could not honestly accept the limited interpretation of Jesus and His words that was offered by “Churchianity”–an acceptance that would have obligated them to reject Him as but one of many misperceiving religionists of the past. For them the Aquarian Gospel was truly Light in Darkness, a fount of life-giving knowledge.

For more spiritually profitable links, read 19 Exceptional Web Resources for Spiritually Minded People.

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Happy Stumbling!

An essential part of spirituality is conscious growth and evolution. And an important aspect of growth is the willingness, even a thirst, for learning: what works, what doesn’t work; what helps and what hinders our spiritual life. We can learn from the wise, who have cut paths through the dense forest of ignorance, or who have successfully followed those paths, and make our sojourn easier and more effective.

The Internet is a vast sea of information, and finding what you need to know can be a time-consuming project. Especially when it comes to locating spiritual resources, separating the good from the mediocre and useless can be a frustrating undertaking. So we have put together a list of what we have found to be extraordinary web sites of wisdom which will be a help to anyone striving to grow spiritually.

• The Internet Sacred Text Archive

This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics, with over 1400 books online. You will find an impressive array of the principal text for the various religious traditions, both mainstream and obscure.

• Bhagavad Gita on Wikipedia

The External Links section for the Bhagavad Gita has links to 10 online translations of the Gita, as well as several commentaries, as well as audio versions of the Gita. There are also links to the Gita Supersite. (The External Links section at the bottom of any Wikipedia article can be a treasure trove of resource material if you are looking up a spiritual subject.)

• Celextel’s Online Spiritual Library

This extensive library contains texts of the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, Shankara’s writings and much more. There is also a considerable library of some of India’s prime religious texts.

• Advaita Vedanta Library

This site compliments the Celextel site and contains The Principal and Minor Upanishads, as well as other primal Vedantic texts.

• The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda is regarded as the chief disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and was one of the first to make the spiritual wisdom of India well known in the West. WikiSource has now made available the ten printed volumes of Swami Vivekananda’s writings, lectures, and letters.

• Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism

Access to Insight has English translations of many of the most important sections of the Pali Canon, as well as books, essays, sutta commentaries, and study guides to Theravada Buddhism. It includes a large section of useful writings by the Venerable Thanissaro Bhikkhu, renowned author and monk of the Thai Forest tradition, and dhamma talks by Ajaan Chah, one of the great modern saints of Thailand.

Another site with great resources Theravada Buddhism is What the Buddha Taught, with articles in English and also a good number of other languages by some of the most renowned figures in contemporary Theravada Buddhism.

• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

This is a site dedicated to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, with multiple translations of the Sutras into English, as well as in a surprising number of other languages–a very helpful resource for serious students of yoga.

• Autobiography of a Yogi Online

Paramhansa Yogananda’s classic Autobiography has been the catalyst for spiritual awakening for tens of thousands of people. The original, unedited edition is now available online at the website of Ananda Village. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in spiritual life.

• Bible Gateway

For any student of the Bible, this is a remarkable resource: a searchable online Bible in over 50 versions in numerous languages, with both old and contemporary translatons, including both text and audio versions of some of the translations.

• Divine Life Society

The Society founded by the great Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh has a website full of useful information for spiritual aspirants. Includes spiritual instructions and discourses, as well as a large number of free eBooks by Swami Sivananda. The site also has photos, audio, and videos of this remarkable spiritual giant.

• Sanskrit Spiritual Scriptures

On this page, you can listen to Sanskrit chanting and recitation with English translations for some of the most powerful, holy, and ancient spiritual scriptures from India, including Bhagavad Gita, Shiva Sutras, Spanda Karikas, Bhaja Govindam, Pratyabhijanhrdayam, and more.

• Atma Jyoti Website

Last but not least, we have endeavored to make our own website into a spiritual resource, with features including A Brief Sanskrit Glossary , a Downloads page with a dozen PDF eBooks, and many more website articles, including commentaries on the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism.

Alas, not all spiritual resources are on the web. To see what we consider the best spiritual reading in print, read our article, A Yogi’s Recommended Reading List.

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