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My hope is upon the Lord, and I will not fear.
And because the Lord is my salvation, I will not fear.
And He is as a garland on my head, and I shall not be moved.
Even if everything should be shaken, I stand firm.
And if all things visible should perish, I shall not die. Because the Lord is with me, and I am with Him. Alleluia.

–The Fifth Ode of Solomon

(The Odes of Solomon are the earliest known Christian hymns. Written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, some actually appear to have been composed by Him. Furthermore, the ideas expressed by the Odes reveals the utterly esoteric nature of original Christianity.)

There are two ways to “look at” Divinity. One is to see It as absolutely distinct from ourselves and therefore outside us. The other is to see It as absolutely one with us, and therefore within us. The results of these two views are quite different in their effect on us. One produces anxiety, insecurity, and even fear–though there may be occasional patches of “faith” and “hope” to artificially relieve the unease. The other produces confidence, tranquility, and inner strength. Those that subscribe to the “outside” view of God continually speak of the need for “trusting in” and “surrendering to” God, developing a total and pious dependence on God, firm in a conviction of their nothingness and valuelessness. Those that hold to the “inner” view are intent on the necessity for self-knowledge and the liberation of their inner potential to manifest the Divine. One group sees themselves as sinners, the other sees themselves as embryonic gods. What a totally different world these two live in! And more: what a totally different world is created or shaped by those who hold such views.

Some friends of mine had a very successful Montessori school. Quite a few of their students were “behavior problems” that were rejected by the public school system. One five-year-old had been expelled from as many schools as his age. In his second or third week of attendance he did something “bad.” He looked at one of the teachers and said: “I’m a little ‘devil’ aren’t I?” She smiled and replied: “Not to me. I think you are a little angel.” The poor boy was utterly flummoxed. “I am an angel?” he asked, his voice expressing total amazement. “Yes; you are to me,” she answered. And from that moment on his behavior was ideal. Because he really was an angel, but had not known it.

The real Gospel–Good News–of authentic Christianity is that of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) Our Christ nature is potential and must be brought forth, but we have no other nature to manifest. It is just a matter of now or later.

Once we realize that the Lord is our inmost being, the words of the Ode become extremely clear. The only comment needed is this poem of Emily Bronte:

No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life, that in me has rest, As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thy infinity, So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and moon were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou–thou art Being and Breath, And what thou art may never be destroyed.

More on the Odes of Solomon:

Odes of Solomon – text

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Q: In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the section on Yama does not talk about helping others, being compassionate and loving to others. Why is this?

First, because yama (See “The Ten Commandments of Yoga“) means “self-restraint”–what we do not do. However, since the qualities of non-violence and non-injury (ahimsa), truthfulness and honesty (satya), non-stealing and non-misappropriativeness (asteya), unselfishness (aparigraha), peacefulness (santosha), and spiritual orientation (Ishwarapranidhana), are listed by Patanjali as part of Yama, a yogi will have a truly positive attitude toward others and be very considerate of them.

Patanjali focuses only on yoga in a very specialized sense. A continual, in-depth study of the Bhagavad Gita will give a full picture of authentic spiritual life. For the Gita embodies the wisdom of the upanishads and the discipline of the Yoga Sutras in a totally practical manner. It is the guide to higher consciousness in all aspects of life.

More reading on the subject:

• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
• Foundations of Yoga

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Q. I have dreams at night with sages from the past. I am wondering if these are just dreams or if the dead can make communication through dreams.

A. First, please see the section on visions in the question-and-answer material, because what applies to visions mostly applies to dreams. Ramana Maharshi’s caution about getting involved with vision and dreams is most important and trustworthy.

It is extremely hard trying to figure out whether a dream is “real” or “true.” Yogananda said that if we dream of a saint and they look exactly like their photographs, then the dream is real, for the subconscious mind cannot reproduce the form of a realized Master. I have found that this is an extremely valuable principle, for a lot of the time our mind is just fooling around or even trying to trick us.

But even if the dream proves to be “real” is it completely trustworthy? For often a dream has both superconscious and subconscious elements mixed together. It is not uncommon for the mind to splice in subconscious “footage” even if the basic part of the dream is real. I have known for dreams to start out real and end up fantasy. How can the difference be detected?

It is best to just take note of what is dreamed but to go no further than that. In time life itself will reveal the truth or falsehood of the dream, as well as its value or worthlessness.

Masters never die, but live forever, and they can communicate with us. It has been my experience that such communication is always backed up with more objective elements, that the communications are more a pointing out than a stand-alone kind of teaching.

There is no substitute for the intuition developed by meditation–not even visitations from saints and angels.

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Avatars (to use the Sanskrit term) do not come to earth for the vague purpose of somehow uplifting humanity and “saving” sinners. Rather, They come with the intention enunciated by Saint John the Beloved at the beginning of his Gospel: “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” (John 1:12) That is, an incarnation of God manifests upon the earth for the purpose of establishing a repository of spiritual power which will outlast His physical “lifetime,” and will bring salvation to future generations. Sometimes the avatar establishes a new religion upon the earth, and sometimes He regenerates a religion whose inner power has waned or even been lost.

In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, a storehouse of power–the Church–was established which was to be a haven for those adherents of the ancient mysteries of the Mediterranean world which had lost their deifying power. I use the word “deifying” because “salvation” is not having our sins forgiven or escaping a miserable afterlife in hell, but rather it is freedom–freedom from all ignorance, and therefore from all necessity of further birth-manifestations in this lowest of planes of existence and in all other higher planes of existence as well. That is, salvation is the return of the individual spirit into the bosom of the Father from whence it came, and within which it has existed eternally.

Since human beings are what they are, in time the spiritual power so brought to earth becomes dimmed, distorted, and (often) eventually lost. Therefore the Lord must come again to again establish “the power to become the sons of God” among men.

Dual Incarnations

In the foregoing I have implied that God comes in a single form at a time–and that form a male form. Except in extremely rare instances, divine incarnation always takes place in a dual manifestation–that is, in both male and female forms. In the fourteenth century, in the controversy surrounding the Hesychast fathers of Mount Athos and their defender Saint Gregory Palamas, it was established as an irrevocable part of Eastern Christian theology that God, though one, has–from our standpoint at least–a dual nature: essence and energies. This teaching was not novel to Christianity, but had never before needed official expression and approbation. In Hinduism this duality is also to be found–that is, that God consists of two aspects, divine consciousness and divine creative power–Purusha and Prakriti. For this reason, also in Hinduism, every male deity representing the infinite guiding consciousness behind the universe also has a female consort (known as His Shakti, energy) Who represents the limitless field of conscious energy that is manifesting as the universe over which the Lord presides. Since the individual souls manifest and evolve within this great energy and are ultimately “born” out of it into the realm of pure consciousness, that energy field is called “Mother,” as distinguished from the “Father” of pure consciousness. All creation is looked upon as both the Mother and Her evolutionary “womb.”

In Christianity, this divine duality is manifested and symbolized through our Lord Jesus Christ and His Virgin Mother Mary. Usually the male incarnation marries His female counterpart, but because of Jesus’ unique spiritual mission–as well as the symbology which was to unfold through His life-drama–the divine power (also known as the Holy Spirit) was first born on earth and became His Virgin Mother.

Thus, there are virtually as many incarnations of God in female form as there in male form. (Although rare, sometimes there has been an incarnation in female form without the male counterpart.)

Two distinct modes

Since we are on the subject of divine incarnations, let me add that there are two distinct modes of divine incarnation.

The first–and most common–is the one in which the Supreme Consciousness manifests upon the earth in a body that is illusory–that is, it is not a body formed of dense matter but is itself a theophany (swarupa), formed of the Divine Consciousness, and is itself a revelation of God. That is, God is not inside that body, but God actually is that body. Therefore, whenever anyone sees the Incarnation they literally are beholding God. (The question as to whether they are seeing God with their two physical eyes or are actually having an internal, spiritual perception which seems to them external is to my way of thinking completely irrelevant.) As stated in the Bhagavad Gita, the Incarnation’s “birth” on earth is a mere appearance only. Such an Incarnation really has neither a father nor a mother, though for the sake of relating to human beings there is that appearance, including gestation and birth. The “body” of such an incarnation bears several distinctive marks or traits by which it can be known as what it truly is.

The second type of Incarnation is quite different, though morally-spiritually the same. This form of Incarnation differs in two major points. Firstly, rather than being a direct “raying forth” or extension of the Absolute Consciousness into the world in an illusory manner, the Incarnation is an individualized spirit that has traversed the entire range of evolution and attained absolute oneness with the Supreme and thereby participates in and manifests the omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence of God. Of such a person it is rightly said: “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” (Colossians 2:9) In such a being humanity and divinity are manifested as one. In the other type of incarnation, there is no humanity whatsoever–not even a human body–but only divinity manifest in an inexplicable manner. This second type of divine incarnation is born into a truly material human body and has actual human ancestry. Whereas it is incorrect to speak of the first type of incarnation as human, it is improper to deny the humanity of this second mode of avatar.

Jesus Christ was this second type of incarnation. By the end of the third century the general consciousness of the Christian Church became dimmed to such a degree that the nature of Jesus Christ in His incarnation was incomprehensible. This gave rise to various erroneous definitions of His incarnate nature–definitions that would not even have been bothered with if Christians had not lost the direct communication with Christ that was the normal mode of Christian consciousness in the preceding generations.

There were those who held that the birth and body of Jesus Christ were merely an illusion and that consequently He was incapable of experiencing any material sensations whatever, especially the sufferings upon the cross. This was the view of those known as Docetists, and is currently (erroneously) considered the “Gnostic” view. Later there were those that concluded that Jesus Christ was a great super-being created by God and sent into the world for the purpose of its salvation. This is known as the Arian view. Another view was that Jesus the Christ was a virtuous human being who was somehow overshadowed or possessed by God and used as a sacred medium or shaman for communication with humanity, and that divinity withdrew itself from the human Christ before His crucifixion. This is known as the Nestorian view. Things came back somewhat full circle to the Docetic possession in the teachings of a Greek monk named Eutyches, who taught that Jesus Christ was in no way human but only divine. The current “orthodoxy” among Eastern and Oriental Christians is the view that Jesus Christ was God Who assumed a human nature and thereby became as fully human as He was divine. However, since their (contemporary) understanding of both divinity and humanity is defective, this “orthodoxy” is of little practical meaning.

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Q: Can you help me find or choose a spiritual name, one that will express my understanding?

Since you are interested in a name that indicates your inner spiritual life, you can go about it in two ways.

1) You can choose a proper name, such as that of a great holy person, a figure in religious lore (such as the Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc.) or scriptures, or even the name or title of an aspect of God. (There are thousands in Indian religion.) Of course to do so you need to be well acquainted with such things.

2) You adopt a spiritual quality or state as a name. For example, you can take a Sanskrit dictionary and look through it for words that correspond to your inner feeling. We recommend that you start with A Brief Sanskrit Glossary, and if that does not yield what you need, then look into larger dictionaries. In India many people have names that indicate spiritual qualities, such as Abhaya (without fear; steadfast), Jnana (wisdom), Vivekan (one endowed with discrimination), or Brahmavadin (one who follows the path to Brahman).

But this is very important: the name should be your choice, not one recommended by another. Since you want it to express your inner feeling (bhava,) it must be determined from within, through your own intuition. Otherwise in time you may not feel completely satisfied with it.

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How tapasya is influenced by the dominant guna of the practicioner

[for those not familiar with the Sanskrit terms in this article, see A Definition of the Gunas and A Brief Sanskrit Glossary.]

• Sattwic tapasya

“When men practice this threefold austerity devotedly, with enlightened faith and no desire for reward, it is said to have the nature of sattwa.” (Bhagavad Gita 17:17)
Sargeant’s translation: “This threefold austerity practiced with the highest faith by men who are not desirous of fruits and are steadfast, they regard as sattwic.”

There are some key words we should look at in this verse to appreciate its profound meaning.

Shraddhaya paraya, highest faith, means mumukshutwa: intense desire or yearning for liberation (moksha). This is the sole basis for sattwic tapasya, the primary trait of a sattwic spiritual aspirant. Although tapasya accomplishes many things in the life and mind of a tapaswin (one who engages in tapasya), not the least of which is intense purification and opening of higher faculties of awareness, all those are but the means to the single end: liberation of the spirit. Thus it is called aphalakankshibhir–without desire for personal gain (fruit) in the egoic sense, though of course moksha is the supreme attainment (paramartha). Such an aspirant is then described as yuktaih–always “in yoga,” through the continual fixing of the mind upon the Highest through the japa and meditation of Om, which is Itself the Highest.

Such are the sattwic, and such is sattwic tapasya.

• Rajasic tapasya

“Austerity which is practiced out of selfish pride, or to gain notoriety, honor and worship, is said to have the nature of rajas. Its effect is not lasting, because it lacks resolution.” (Bhagavad Gita 17:18)
Sargeant’s translation: “Austerity which is practiced with hypocrisy for the sake of honor, respect, and reverence; that, here in the world, is declared to be rajasic, unsteady, and impermanent.”This is much more on target than the Prabhavananda translation. Still we need a closer look at the words.

Three words are used in the first line: Satkara, which means honor, reverence, favor, or hospitality. Literally, it means “good-doing,” so it implies that the rajasic tapaswin wants to be thought well of in general, which of course will result in the four meanings just listed. Mana, which means honor and respect. Puja, which usually is translated as “worship,” but can also mean reverence akin to worship. In India they basically go together. Guru puja is quite common, and almost as common is the claim of disciples that their guru is really an avatar, a divine incarnation. This is carried to absurd lengths all the time. Contrary to Buddha’s assertions, many contemporary Indian teachers are fingers pointing to themselves–not to the goal of nirvana.

Dambhena means fraudulent and hypocritical. Such people supposedly engage in extreme ascetic actions and continually have the most exalted experiences. But when you look closer it is all puff and patter. They do nothing but sit around being adored and toadying to the rich and the influential, occasionally emitting a string of platitudes whose banality is astonishing–but not as amazing as the mindless plaudits of their admirers.

Swami Yukteswar, the guru of Paramhansa Yogananda, continually cautioned people to never believe the claims made about yogis, especially the claims made by their disciples. Rather, he counseled them to carefully examine matters for themselves. As a young man he heard of a yogi who always slept in a state of levitation. So he hid under the yogi’s bed and waited. Nothing but snores. So he crawled from under the bed and said in a loud voice: “I don’t see any levitation–only sleep!” The yogi woke up, and to cover himself shouted: “I wondered why I did not levitate tonight as usual. You were spying on me!” The young Priya Nath merely laughed and went his way, not impressed by the declaration.

Pious hypocrisy is common coin of the crowd-pleaser. It is a favorite ploy in India to claim that you spent decades doing intense tapasya in the Himalayas. I personally know one Big Baba of Bengal who claims he spent over twenty years in the Himalayas, when investigation easily shows that he was a building contractor in Calcutta all the time! Swami Sivananda humorously wrote some instruction for these people. First, he said, rent a little house (kutir) in Rishikesh or Hardwar for six months. Arrange to have your food brought to you, and never be seen by anybody. Sit around inside and do what you like, including a lot of sleep. During that time write two or three “trash leaflets” (his expression) and a couple of bad devotional songs (bhajans). Then at the end of the six months go down to the plains and put it out that you have been living in silence (mauna) for many years way up in the Himalayas, even beyond Uttar Kashi. Arrange for yourself a few meetings where you will talk aimlessly, sing your bad songs, and give out your worthless leaflets. In no time at all you will be a sought-after guru, and maybe even an avatar.

This is no idle allegation. Once in Rishikesh I was stopped and grilled by a fairly well-educated “sadhu” who begged me to tell him how to get to America and “make a splash.” On another occasion in holy Naimisharanya a monk told me that if I would spend a few hours with him each day for a week, “I will show you how to get the people of America in the palm of your hand.” That is how these people think. Rajasic is a nice word for it.

Krishna winds up the subject by saying that rajasic tapasya, besides its obvious flaws, is worthless because it is chalam–unsteady and wavering–and adhruvam–impermanent, infirm, and unfixed. This is because rajas by its nature is restless and changing. A rajasic person does not hold single-mindedly to anything for long. Therefore any tapasya will be impermanent, especially because it is not oriented toward the unchanging and ever-existent Absolute, but rather toward the ever-changing and unsteady ego-dream.

• Tamasic tapasya

“Austerity is said to have the nature of tamas when it is practiced for some foolish purpose, or for the excitement of self-torture, or in order to harm another person.” (Bhagavad Gita 17:19) Here is the literal meaning: “Austerity performed with deluded notion of the Self, with torture, or with the aim of destroying another, is declared to be tamasic.”

There is a lot to look at here, and all unpleasant. But the result will be positive.

Mudhagrahenatmano means with deluded or confused understanding or concept of the Atman, the Self. This is a crucial point. For if there is no right understanding of the nature of our Self, we will do a great deal of foolish and pointless things. This is true of religion in general. In Sanatana Dharma alone is there a clear understanding of the Atman-Self. And if you don’t even know who or what you are, how can you even live life in a sensible manner? Most people do not. What kind of religion can we have if we have no clue as to what we really are? Any discipline will be as mistaken as our ideas about ourself. This is why most religion is destructive, as are the disciplines (or lack thereof) of most religion.

When people mistake their physical and psychic makeup for their self, they cannot help but misunderstand what is really needed for spiritual life, and will waste their time to no purpose, ultimately harming themselves. Such persons will often engage in padaya–torture or torment. They will torture the body with strenuous and painful actions, even mutilating it or hastening its death by injury to its health. Ritual mutilation is often practiced on their own bodies by those engaged in negative ascesis. Or just the opposite: they will harm the body through deluded indulgence and lack of discipline or purification. But most of all they will torment their Self by burying It beneath ignorant ideas and actions, clouding and distorting their minds so there is no hope of comprehending true spiritual matters or disciplines. They will live a life contrary to their real spirit-nature, and thus bring nothing but suffering to themselves and others.

Finally, tamasic tapasya is sometimes engaged in as a kind of evil magical practice whose intention is to gain the power to harm another, or to placate negative entities who will do the harming on behalf of the tapaswin. I am sorry to say that this is found in India even to this day. I know of a “sadhu” who lives in a temple in Kerala and who does incredibly complex and strenuous disciplines to get such power. This man was once hired to bring about the death of a friend of mine, supposedly through placation of a “deity.” Fortunately a letter from this evil man to the one hiring him was missent to my friend who spiritually armed himself and came to no harm.

The expression used for this in the text is parasyotsadanartham, which means the destruction of another, but it can also mean for the overturning or defeat of another. This is often the aim of such tapasya: either the unseating of a person in authority or advantage, or the bringing about of his loss of money, position, or reputation. Sometimes tapasya is engaged in just to be thought “more ascetic than thou” in relation to others engaged in spiritual discipline. A kind of ascetic one-upmanship and rivalry is often found among monastics of all religions. This was especially the case in Christian monasticism in the Egyptian desert during the third century (and after) when enough time had lapsed for the Church to have greatly forgotten what Jesus had really taught about spiritual life and discipline. Regarding this, in his book, Benedictine Monachism, Dom Cuthbert Butler wrote:

“The spirit, the dominating principle of this monachism, may be thus characterized. It was a spirit of individualism. Each worked for his personal advance in virtue; each strove to do his utmost in all kinds of ascetical exercises and austerities, in prolonging his fasts, his prayers, his silence. The favorite name to describe any of the prominent monks was ‘great athlete.’ And they were athletes, and filled with the spirit of the modern athlete. They loved to ‘make a record’ in austerities, and to contend with one another in mortifications; and they would freely boast of their spiritual achievements. One who had seen them describes the Nitrian monks as ‘surpassing one another in virtues, and being filled with a spirit of rivalry in asceticism, showing forth all virtue, and striving to outdo one another in manner of life.’ But it is in Palladius’ account of Macarius of Alexandria that this spirit shows itself most conspicuously: ‘If he ever heard of any one having performed a work of asceticism, he was all on fire to do the same;” and Palladius illustrates it by examples. Did Macarius hear that another monk ate nothing but one pound of bread a day? For three years he ate each day only what broken bread he could extract in a single handful through the narrow neck of a jar. Did he hear that the monks of Pachomius’ monastery ate nothing cooked by fire throughout Lent? He did the same for seven years. Did he hear that their observance was ““great””? He did not rest satisfied till he had gone to see, and had beaten them all.’ Thus the practice of asceticism constituted a predominant feature of this type of Egyptian monachism. Their prolonged fasts and vigils, their combats with sleep, their exposures to heat and cold, their endurance of thirst and bodily fatigue, their loneliness and silence, are features that constantly recur in the authentic records of the lives of these hermits, and they looked on such austerities as among the essential features of the monastic state.”

Much more crazy things were (and are) done, but this is sufficient for us to get the idea–and hopefully avoid it.

In conclusion

Krishna has given us all this information so we can determine the type and quality (guna) of our personal spiritual practice. This alone would make the Gita unparalleled in value for those who seek the higher life. And it contains so much more. All glory be to Sri Vyasadeva (the author of the Bhagavad Gita), the supreme guide of all who aspire to liberation!

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