Sunday, April 16, 2017
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April is a month for the study of Jnana Yoga, an path to realization that requires analysis, discrimination, reason, and constant devotion to your goal. Your aim is liberation, freedom from all limitation.
Vedanta’s scriptures and teachers tell us that life’s misery — its pain, anxiety, and sense of imprisonment — is caused by seeing inaccurately, due to “maya.” As a jnana yogi, you may break through that framework of delusion and see only Brahman everywhere, in everything and everyone, including yourself. This is realization!
Book of Genesis: Chapter 1 (King James Version)
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
From our perspective, Chapter 1 of Genesis describes a resurrection — the dawn of another Day of Brahma. Judeo-Christian scriptures do not speak of it specifically, yet the logic of an eternal cycle of creation, sustentation and destruction underlies Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
Swami Vivekananda echoes, in different terms, the formlessness and darkness of verse 2, when he describes the Night of Brahma as an aeons-long period when the gunas are in perfect equilibrium. The Swami well might have playfully finished verse 2 with a paraphrase from the Chandogya Upanishad: “… and He said, ‘I am One, I shall become many.’”
In this talk, we explore this and other instances of resurrection — waking from a night’s sleep, winter and spring, and of course, Jesus Christ’s ability to “… rise from the dead on the third day” after His crucifixion. — Luke 24:46 New International Version (NIV)
This 30-minute talk is followed by a short worship of the Christ.