Continued from above.......

Alfredo 3 years ago

Michael!
My pleasure, it is me benefiting. I intend to suck you dry of knowledge if given the opportunity, I am your worst nightmare in terms of the selfish student you describe in "Spiritual Master", ha, ha, just joking.

I will use intuition, but definitely that intuition now tells me to go for the Yoga Sutras.
Now, not to boast, I am no total neophyte to the Sutras. I studied them once a while back (Vivekananda) and wrote a commentary of the Yama and Niyamas in Paras (or English Sutras of 8 Sutras each). I also received some instruction on it from Swami Jyotirmayananda, a direct disciple of Swami Shivananda founder of Divine Life Society. Swamiji, now 84, wrote a commentary and also other 40 books, but his books are a little general, unlike yours, in my opinion.

Example:

YAMA - AHIMSA

1.      Yama is the first of the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Raja or Ashtanga Yoga, and it consists of five abstinences: Ahimsa (Non-violence), Satya (Truthfulness), Asteya (Non-stealing), Brahmacharya (Continence), and Aparigraha (Non-greed).

2.      Himsa in Sanskrit means violence; Ahimsa signifies the opposite or not committing violence against any living creature.  This precept can be taken to extremes, like in the case of the Jaina tradition in India.

3.      It is impossible to survive without killing one form of life or another.  Whether by inhaling microbes or by destroying certain plants even for the vegetarian, life is an intricate relationship among a myriad of creatures.

4.      However, as the complexity of the organism increases, the Karma associated with injuring it and the pain inflicted on the living being proportionally increments.

5.      Refraining from killing animals, whether a cow, a pig, game, or fish, or eating their flesh and as such becoming an accomplice to their demise very well enters into the practice of Ahimsa.

6.      No animal lends itself to the slaughterhouse. The fish does not bite the hook on purpose nor the deer enters a clearing of the woods for the hunter to kill it.  It is a fallacy, at least for the majority of the population, to think that we need to eat meat to survive.  Countless individuals have proven this erroneous.

7.      Killing a vegetable to eat it is not the same as slaying an animal.  In addition, violence to animals without slaughtering them is also questionable, such as the way cows are treated when reared for milking, a practice that prevented Mahatma Gandhi from feeding on milk and its products, and the use of animals in circuses and shows.

8.      Needles to say, violence in thought and against other humans also breaches Ahimsa.Jettins 3 years ago

I know all about what you guys mean about crazy talk. I realized I don't fit in in most forums, everyone is just learning to have their first few Astral Projection experiences and I want to talk about those insights from them. Doesn't fit, I got ignored, so I had to create my own forum, still get mostly ignored probably because of the weird factor.This forum is weirdo enough for me.

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Swami Jyotirmayananda has done tremendous work for Sanatana Dharma. His books were catching on in the 1970’s but then they faded. That might be because there was a change in English such that books which were written from a British English usage, were like a foreign language to Americans.

I agree 100% with what he wrote about ahimsa. For me however the basis for doing the vegetarian diet is a bit different. According to the level of the spiritual advancement, the basis for the very same action or life style changes. In my way it is a matter of studying how nature operates laws of reaction and especially how the subtle body changes in shape and form depending on the habits it practices.

So as not to enter an undesirable species, one should not cultivate the habits of that species.

The more important thing though is that when I was growing up, I ate meat, fish, eggs and whatever else people normally eat but then something happened where I saw that it was expanding my appetite range and making me more and more desirous to increase flesh consumption. This was the beginning of sliding downwards in the mundane evolutionary cycle. I think Darwin used the terms of adaptation.

Because I was adapting more and more to animal flesh, I was also moving closer and closer to taking birth in animal species where I could max out on such flesh. So then I decided to look to see what would happen if I moved in the other direction, or have the reverse adaptation.

I found that soon after that when I would pass flesh like in a grocery store or a butcher shop, it would appear to be just like human flesh. A chicken leg which is a preferred food for many, seemed to be the leg of a human being. An egg seemed to be the menstruation of a human being. It did not make a difference to me.

Then when I would see animal food, I would think, why not eat a human instead. So that brought me to the stage of non-violence. As you can see the basis is totally different.

Another key word in that verse is Satyam which I translated after careful study of Sanskrit of the contents of Patanjali as Realism. This means what is reality. Is truthfulness included in this? Yes and no. Truthfulness as it is usually advocated like this is for the Dharma principles of society, or principles of righteous lifestyle but here I was speaking about what is real, what is reality. So there are little differences which you will see as you go through my translation.

Please keep us posted if you find anything surprising or appalling.

There is nothing more exciting than to write a book and then read a critical review of it on Amazon. If you ever want to get at somebody, then just write a bad review on Amazon. I pity any author who ends up in that boat but for me it is sheer fun.

Alfredo 3 years ago

Michael!
Just to clarify, the 8 points (and I have 8 for each Yama and Niyama) above I wrote myself before meeting Swami Jytotirmayananda, and after studying Raja Yoga by Vivekananda. Actually, I went through Jyotirmayananda's Yoga Sutras book later.

Regarding your reviews in Amazon, you have few, but very high, that called my attention, this is rare, you have the same guy giving you reviews in several of your books, he is an adept of your work, then this woman, Beverly, who said that funny thing that the book was so good "it should be illegal". That made me laugh.

Now, now that I have your attention, a question regarding Swami Jyotimayananda. I could not fail to be entertained by the section in your book "Spiritual Master" about tricks of the trade used by Gurus to get Chelas and keep them, one of them being "initiations". Well, I was "initiated" by Swami Jyotimayananda in 2002 in Mantra Yoga, very nice ceremony. He gave me a mantra, a maalaa, and very specific instructions, starting with Tratak, followed by more practice. For years I followed these instructions but then slacked off on its daily practice, but still sometimes revitalize it, it is just so time-consuming...thus...what do you think about the efficacy of mantra yoga?

Thanks in advance.

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Alfredo wrote: Mantra yoga and the efficacy of it:

MiBeloved’s Response:

First of all I do not like the combination of any word with the word yoga. I find that in India, the words karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga have lost their meaning and have taken on new meanings to suite whatever. To me karma yoga is a compound word in Sanskrit and is a compound procedure where each feature holds its own.

This makes karma yoga, karma + yoga and bhakti yoga bhakti + yoga. This also means that bhakti is not bhakti yoga, and karma is not karma yoga. Bhakti as far as I am concerned stands on its own and has its own integrity and potency. Thus there is no need to say that bhakti is bhakti yoga. In one of the sampradaya of which I am a part, bhakti is given as bhakti yoga and the motive for doing this is to say that since bhakti accomplishes perfection as in the case of the gopis of Vrindavan, then it is a yoga.

This I do not endorse. I think that bhakti is bhakti and a person who gains proficiency in yoga can apply that to the bhakti and then that would be bhakti yoga.

So with mantras when you say mantra yoga, then there is a problem for me. But assuming that you mean the use of mantras alone without the application of yoga proficiency, then my view is that mantras are not going to do what they did say in the time of Rama, the son Dashratha, or in the time of Arjuna, the Pandavas. I do not see that mantras have effectiveness in the religious and spiritual area and they do not have it in say the military area.

In the eras when mantras had effectiveness they worked not only in the religious field but even in the field of military conquest. A wrong pronunciation of a word produced results to the contrary because those sounds affected the material world. Nowadays the sounds do not do so, there is not one scientist or general in the Indian government who can say a mantra and issue a weapon to defend that country but that was done in the time of Mahabharata and before.

My view is that until the mantras in India work like that I cannot buy into the idea that just religious mantras will produce desired results. Western scientists to my view are the new brahmins with mantra effects by their satellite communications. That is the real mantra in our time. Even a new Ford car carries a little clicker which issues a sound (mantra) and opens the doors or even starts the engine.

I use mantras and I have confidence in them but I only use them as call prayers for Deities. I do not use mantras to get any result from them because as far as I can see they are not effective like that anymore. To me one can call a deity with a mantra and the deity will pick up the call energy if one is sincere and has a contact with the divine being. Otherwise I have no confidence in mantras.

The initiation ritual, and I have gone through a few and sat through many such ceremonies where others were supposed to be sanctified, is a form of religious procedure which makes a commitment of the disciple official. I feel that usage is great but in so far as a guru guarantees physical effects and psychic results from mantras, I am a bit nervous about that.

If the Vedic mantras are working then they should also work to make a nuclear weapon like the one Ashvattama released to end the Pandavas. Mantra should work for good or bad. Indian authorities should stop playing the game of indicating that the mantras work for good and that they should not be used for bad, because that is just a way of cheating a gullible public. That is my view.

The boy Shringi heard that his father was dishonored by King Parikshit who placed a dead snake around the father’s neck instead of a flower garland. The boy immediately touched water (achmana), and said a few curses on the head of Parikshit, saying that the so and so king would be dead in seven days. That is real mantra.