Sunday, August 14, 2016
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August is a month for study of Jnana Yoga (Advaita Vedanta). Jnana Yoga is an approach to self-realization through discrimination and reason. The goal is freedom from all limitation. Wisdom tells us our miseries in life are caused by seeing inaccurately. As a jnana yogi, you may finally break through this delusion and see only the Divine Presence everywhere and in everyone.
Jesus Christ
Mathew 5:8
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
(Ch. 32, Oct 19, 1884)
Master: “… You see the reflection of the sun in clear water. In the mirror of his ‘I-consciousness’ the devotee sees the form of the Primal Energy, Brahman with attributes. But the mirror must be wiped clean. One does not see the right reflection if there is any dirt on the mirror.
“As long as a man must see the Sun in the water of his ‘I-consciousness’ and has no other means of seeing It, as long as he has no means of seeing the real Sun except through Its reflection, so long is the reflected sun alone one hundred per cent real to him. As long as the ‘I’ is real, so long is the reflected sun real — one hundred per cent real. That reflected sun is nothing but the Primal Energy.”
Jnana Yoga says your reality, your everyday experience of the world, is a construction of your mind. Though enabled by the Primal Energy, it is not that Energy itself — it is a reflection in what is often called “the mirror of the heart.” In this talk the quotes above, and other definitions of that mirror, are explored and discussed.