Inner Tantric Yoga
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 6 years before Feb 25, 2017
neil 6 years ago
I'm reading the book Inner Tantric Yoga by David Frawley and in it he says that to really practice yoga, we must embrace the inner Yoga within us, which is to see all beings within our Self and our Self within all beings.
He points out this quote from the Upanishads to support his philosophy:
"He who sees the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self henceforth has no disturbance. In the Knower for whom the Self has become all beings, where can there be any delusion or any sorrow for he who sees only the Oneness."
My question is: Do you think this is the goal of yoga?
MiBeloved 6 years ago
I would have to see what is meant by the term Self.
The particular statement which David quotes is from the Upanishads. At least I assume that is where he took that from since that is the main Vedic source for that statement. But I would have to see the Sanskrit terms whether it is atman or paramatma, or brahma or adhyatma or some other term.
I would also have to know which Rishi wrote that Upanishad.
I won’t sign my name to any such statement without really understanding what that term means. There is also the possibility that David is using the statement but putting his own meanings to the term as many other of these teachers do. In that case, I would require his clarification.
Apart from that, my experiences leave me with these conclusions regarding Self, self, selves and individual psyches.
The individual who actually perceives by mystic or psychic means, not by reasoning it out, not by conceptualizing, that there is a similarity in itself and other limited selves, and that there is a Supreme Self in every individual psyche, and who also sees that all the limited psyches are under the jurisdiction and within the range of the Supreme Self, feels secure.
In the experience of such a yogi (not in the experience of the concept of this) there is spiritual family relationship in all directions both with similar limited selves and with the Supreme Self, thus there is no delusion or any sorrow because that enlightened person feels kinship with all existence.
To summarize that there is:
1. limited selves
2. Supreme Self
3. limited psyches
4. Supreme psyche
The whole existence is a combination of the 4 listed above.
In addition there are external physical environments which are outside the limited psyches. Example is this physical environment.
There are also external psychic environments which are outside of the limited psyche. Example when a person has a third eye experience and sees into their environments which are outside of the third eye which is an orifice on the psychic membrane of his psyche.
The relationship between the individual and these environments hinges on the type of body or form he or she uses in the said environment. These forms either attenuate or amplify the desires and powers of the individual in relation to the facilities in that environment.
If the environments are not taken into account, then the idea of unity of whatever is flawed because the selves are inevitably involved with environments. Thus the statements of the Upanishads must be tempered by explanation of the life in the corresponding environments and so the Puranas have value as well as the Upanishads.
In this world, we are confronted with this as a man’s philosophy and his lifestyle, because no matter what his philosophy is, when it gets right down to it, we rate him by his lifestyle and if it is not consistent with his ideas, we wonder about him.
Question then is this:
Can there be just an environment of just selves and no environments. Or stated otherwise, can there be such a situation where the selves are themselves the environment and there is nothing else?
Well, you guys can take it from there. The ball is in your court.
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Special Note:
Many people do not know it but the Bhagavad Gita is said to be the milk and the Upanishads is said to be the cow and Krishna is said to be the milkman, and Arjuna is said to be the calf. So the idea is that Krishna milked the cow of the Upanishads and gave Arjuna the milk in the form of the Bhagavad Gita.
According to the life story of Krishna, he studied the Upanishads under Sandipani Muni and also under Upamanyu Rishi.
Now I don’t know what Frawley thinks about Krishna, and maybe he is not aware of the fact or disagrees with it, but in the Gita Krishna listed two types of selves, namely a limited self (atman) who is in the individual limited psyche (ksetra-Sanskrit for psychological environment), and a Supreme Self (paramatma-adhyatma) who is in all psyches.
In other words, Krishna’s view was that there is a limited psyche and in that limited psyche there are two selves, namely a limited one and the Supreme One. Krishna never said that the limited one could become the Supreme Self, even though he did place the responsibility for the limited self’s’ spiritual development and liberation upon the limited self itself.
Krishna said that the limited self was (kshara) subject to harassment and the Supreme Self was (akshara) immune to it. To explain the social distinction of each in practical terms, Krishna told Arjuna that Arjuna could not remember past births and therefore was at a disadvantage while Krishna remembered all such past births and had by virtue of that insight the ultimate intelligence.
I have written this because there is much explanation of the Upanishads by persons who are not conversant with the whole story of those literatures and their applications.
Nobody has to agree with Krishna’s ideas but at least we need to know what they are and then we can understand where we agree with him and where we disagree with him.
It is the same thing dealing with Jesus Christ where he distinguished himself from others and then later somebody said that he did not and that Christ means everybody can be Christ. Actually Jesus did distinguish himself and identified himself as being special in relation to the Jewish Deity from whom he claimed to emanate. But we can disagree with him if we like. There is no need to try to say that what I am saying is what he said exactly.
It was exactly because he distinguished himself that he was killed by the complicity of the Jews. It is exactly because he was different that he was singled out.
neil 6 years ago
MiBeloved wrote, "I would have to see what is meant by the tern Self."
According to David Frawley the Self is the God or Goddess within us. He says, "Our true Self is Atman. The Self is a principle of sentience, awareness and self-being inherent in all existence. It is the ultimate principle behind all the laws, principles and dharmas operative in this magical universe of mind, energy and matter."
MiBeloved also wrote, "I would also have to know which Rishi wrote that Upanishad."
David references the quote to Isha Upanishad.
MiBeloved 6 years ago
Thanks for the clarification on his meanings
The Ishopanishad glorifies what it called the purnam, which is a Sanskrit word meaning the entire whole, the complete existence, the total Whatever this is.
It begins like this:
Om purnam-adah purnam-idam
Purnaat purnam-udachyate
Purnasya purnam-aadaaya
Purnam-eva-avashishyate
Notice purnam in some of its variant forms underlined by me above.
The word idam is an adjective meaning this.
Basically this mantra says that whatever there is part of the complete aggregate existence and that this is all there is.
Now you said he used the word atma and that means that he did not use the word paramatma or the word adhyatma (adhi+ atma), now the word brahma or brahman or parambrahman. So I cannot really get what he is saying if he does not properly fit in these other important words from the Upanishads.
