John Hunt Publishing’s various imprints have built a series of Made Easy titles. They cover a whole multitude of spiritual ideas and disciplines. It is a collection of brief introductions which reveal alternative spiritual insights, paths and truths to new and experienced seekers whatever their current faith, practice or creed.
Morality in the Brain
Year 2012 is coming to a close and we are getting ready for one more end-of-the-year celebrations. People are already in a festive mood – remembering friends, recalling favors received and planning for reciprocation with gifts. As you shop and bring home the packets, you plan to embellish them with a hand-crafted insignia to show your extra care and love. So you take a pair of scissors in hand and begin to cut a piece of paper molding it into an attractive shape. Your child suddenly comments: “Why do you purse your lips when you are cutting the paper?”
Fig. 1: Homunculus – Brain Real Estate Devoted to Touch in the Primary Somatosensory Cortex
What? Pursed the lips? You were not even conscious of the face, forget the lips.You were so much lost in the job with all your attention focused on the fingers and the scissors, you were unaware of the tightness in your face. Why should the lips tense up? And you don’t even know about it!
You may be a six footer weighing 60 – 70 Kg having seen half a century or more of summers (and winters); or may be a short and smart young man of 20. The wetware weighing less than a Kg and half (about 3 pounds) sitting between your ears contains an encrypted miniature model of who you are. It has all the maps representing your past, your knowledge, your expertise, tastes, likes, dislikes – everything that describes what you call as your ‘personality.’ Continue reading
Depression – Q.330
Depression – Q. 330
Q: For years now I’ve been severely depressed and it doesn’t seem to be changing. What led me to Advaita, I think, was the intense desire to know what I guess I can only meaningly refer to as God.
I read a lot about how we are not our bodies and how if we can be aware of something, then that ‘something’ cannot be us. I understand all this. There is a formless awareness that appears to be prior to everything, prior to my body, my mind and the suffering of depression, I can see that.
One book I’ve read, not specifically about depression, advises that we remain with that awareness, as that awareness that is prior to both body and mind. However, I find this difficult. The body and mind come out of the Self and thus must be the Self. Beyond this the reasoning and experience of it gets quite subtle, but I’ll give it my best shot. Yes, there is an awareness that is before the mind and body, something that you might call the Ultimate subject, but It is only apparent because of the body and mind – without the body and mind, the Self wouldn’t know itself. Continue reading
Subscription Deletions
We have recently been receiving large numbers of what appear to be spurious subscriptions to the site, presumably for the purpose of spamming.
Accordingly, new subscriptions have temporarily been suspended and a number of existing subscribers have been deleted. The criteria for deleting these were as follows:
. Username unnecessarily long, with random alpha characters or numbers.
. No Name field entered.
. Email address suspect in a similar way, or closely resembling those of other subscribers.
. No posting activity since subscribing.
(If there had been posts or if a name had been entered, then the subscriber was not deleted.)
My sincere apologies if any valid subscriber has been deleted but I am sure you will understand and accept the error. Please re-subscribe and ensure that you enter your name and preferably use a Username that does not look as though generated by a computer!
If I have inadvertently deleted anyone who was not guilty of the above misdemeanours, then I doubly apologize!
I will reinstate the subscription facility in a few days.
upadesha sAhasrI part 6
Part 6 of the serialization of the presentation (compiled by R. B. Athreya from the lectures given by Swami Paramarthananda) of upadesha sAhasrI. This is the prakaraNa grantha which is agreed by most experts to have been written by Shankara himself and is an elaborate unfoldment of the essence of Advaita.
Subscribers to Advaita Vision are also offered special rates on the journal and on books published by Tattvaloka. See the full introduction and part 1 of the new series.
Bhagavad-Gita and Advaita – Q. 329
Q: How would it be possible to deal with our common Bhagavad Gita in terms of Advaita Vedanta?
A (Ramesam): Please appreciate that Bhagavad-Gita is not the primary or basic text for Advaita. Though many of the verses in it are almost exact mantras from various Upanishads, prior to Sankara (8th Century A.D), Bhagavad-Gita was not perhaps as popular a scriptural text for teaching Vedanta as it is today. It was a part of the mythological story, Mahabharata. Some people hold that the Bhagavad-Gita of Mahabhrata contained 745 verses. Some others opine that the original Gita was much smaller and it was Sankara who compiled the present Gita putting together diverse verses from different sources. None of these opinions, however, have any credible supporting evidence. The first extant gloss on the Gita is by Sankara and it contains 700 verses (one or two verses are still disputed and said to have been later insertions). Continue reading
The Dream Problem part 8
Part 8 of the New Book Serialization!
The sage Vasishta explains the working of the power of suggestion in creating both the dream world and the waking, the need for desireless ness and describes a metaphor for conceiving the nature of ultimate reality.
Book Review: FREE WILL
Free Will by Sam Harris, Free Press, 2012, pp: 83, ISBN 978-1-4516-8340-0
I always wondered at the American marketing wizardry of bite-size chocolates and peanut butter cups that lure the consumers. If a book on a highly intriguing, tantalizing and no less controversial a subject like Free Will is presented in bite-size, even a die-hard Advaitin can hardly hold his temptation to take a bite! And I did.
Perhaps one should call it a long essay discussed under eight or so subheadings rather than a book. You hardly open the cover and right away, the text begins with “The question of free will touches nearly everything we care about” — no Intros, no Forewords, no time wasted. And then as suddenly, the author explodes the myth of ‘our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice.’ He writes:
“If the scientific community were to declare free will an illusion, it would precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than one that has been waged on the subject of evolution. Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clock-work…… And those of us who work hard and follow the rules would not “deserve” our success in any deep sense. It is not an accident that most people find these conclusions abhorrent. The stakes are high.”
The stakes may be high; but Advaitins will surely cheer the author, Sam Harris, a Ph. D. in Neuroscience on those scientific declarations. Continue reading
Non-dual Reality – Q. 328
Q: Can one ever KNOW that reality is non-dual?
A (Ramesam):
(i) YES, The moment you can grasp tight your reflection in the mirror!!!
(ii) No, you cannot know it like you know the salary you get.
(iii) Yes, you cannot ever NOT know it; what all IS, is your perception alone.
(iv) No, if you place yourself aloof trying to know it as a distant object.
(v) Yes, you know It in your deep sleep.
(vi) No, if you want to measure and compare to duality. Continue reading
Vegetarianism – Q. 327
Q: I need clarity on some questions.
01. The understanding is everything is life/consciousness/totality, it is the totality that functions through animals including human beings ( so-called separate entity/Body Mind Organism) and life/god/consciousness’ true nature though indescribable in words has been described as Sata Chit Ananda in other words peace love etc. So my question is if that is true why animals attack and kill, when they too have Life? Though humans too do that but, Master has good explanation for that under Advaita teaching as to why humans possibly do wrong or kill. One answer some what suffices when it comes to humans in particular as to why they kill or do wrong, i.e. when this impersonal consciousness identifies with the body and mind suit, there is every chance that actions that will happen will be imbued by the understanding that I am a body and so are others and actions with ignorance can take place, but the question is what about in the case of animals, why they do kill/attack if they have Life or rather they are Life? Continue reading