Sunday, December 6, 2015
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We end the year with study of Jnana Yoga, an approach to spiritual realization through discrimination, reason, and release of the unreal. The goal is liberation, freedom from all limitation. Jnana (Advaita Vedanta) teaches that doubt, fear, and misery are caused by seeing inaccurately.
Swami Vivekananda said: “Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter. …
“Each (one of you) is only a conduit for the infinite ocean of knowledge and power that lies behind mankind. …
“Knowledge of the Absolute depends on no book, upon nothing; it is absolute in itself. No amount of study will give this Knowledge. It is not theory; it is realization. Cleanse the dust from the mirror, purify your own mind, and in a flash you will know you are Brahman … In one sense Brahman is known to every human being: he knows, ‘I am.’ But man does not know himself as he is. We all know that we are, but not what we are. All lower explanations are partial truths; but the flower, the essence, of the Vedas is that the Self in each of us is Brahman …”
In this talk, we discuss these ideas in more detail.
