There are many forms of suggestion, some more subtle than others. Peer pressure is one form that everyone experiences at some point in time. Our friends and acquaintances do something and encourage us to participate and do it also. In some cases, this can lead to life-long consequences, such as ... Views: 171
The human range of perception is bounded on both sides and thus, forces that are active in ranges above or below our own field of perceptions are able to act without our ability to direct know what they are doing, or interact with them consciously. To the extent that they wield influence on our ... Views: 216
When most people think of ‘power’ , it is within the context of some overt ability to accomplish something in the setting of the external world within which we live and act. This may be political power, economic power, physical power, moral power, the power to persuade, the power of an idea, the ... Views: 212
The human mind likes to have nice, neat categories. “Either/Or”, “Black/White”. It has a hard time dealing with mixed actions or anything that partakes of various allegedly competing or conflicting principles. Thus, the debate over free will and determinism rages on, and eventually comes down to ... Views: 179
Many spiritual practitioners have realized that the external life we customarily lead is a life of ‘illusion’, and that it is based in a flawed view of reality. This does not mean that our life, existence and action has no real significance; rather, that the way we define our lives, based on the ... Views: 165
We experience a growth of consciousness during the maturation process starting with birth and continuing as the infant becomes a school-age child, then grows into teenage years and passes through puberty and the hormonal changes that come with that period, then into young adulthood and ... Views: 270
During the evolutionary development of the ascending powers of consciousness, the action of the soul is to provide an influence from behind, while the primary attention is fixated on the needed development of the powers of the external being, body, life and mind. This severely limits the direct ... Views: 185
There are many things in the world which we know exist, not because we can directly perceive them, but because we can experience their effects. Thus, we cannot see ‘gravity’ but we know it exists. We cannot see radiation, but again, we know it exists. As we continue to develop powers of the ... Views: 188
We observe everywhere that Nature has a development cycle, with focus of attention on what needs to take place at each stage of that cycle, rather than simply jumping ahead to an 'end result' of the development. Thus, we see that plants undergo a stage of sprouting from seed, and the first focus ... Views: 190
Why do we not immediately recognise the existence and centrality of the soul? We tend to set our standpoint in the external consciousness which is directed outwards, and which is constantly receiving sense impressions and pressures impinging on our body-life-mind complex. The sense organs, ... Views: 204
Just as forces and vibrations act upon us that vibrate below our normal human level of perceptive range, and bring in much of the past, subconscient, dark and ignorant reactions that drive much of our human life, so also there are forces and vibrations that enter us from above our perceptible ... Views: 255
What we actively perceive and pay attention to with our waking consciousness is a very small portion of the entire pattern of energetic forces we are constantly subjected to, and which act upon us, unseen and unrecognised. Whether it is physical radiation, vital forces, or mental thought-forms, ... Views: 250
We bring into this life many propensities as well as genetic tendencies, which are compounded and accentuated by early learning that takes place in the family and in the society. Prenatal influences as well as learning that takes place after the birth process and in the very early childhood ... Views: 284
Ideally we want some kind of a pill we can take, some kind of an instant solution, some magic formula that will instantly resolve some difficulty we face when a subconsicent formation has been triggered. We react without any advance warning when this occurs. it is also the source of many ... Views: 231
When we respond to a vibration, either at the physical level, the vital level or the mental level, we open a pathway for that vibration to impact us in some way, and, having once been accepted for admittance, it creates a propensity for us to admit it the next time it comes our way. In this way, ... Views: 207
There is a complex interaction between the external mind-life-body complex and the subconscious level of our existence. As we experience various things in our lives, including illness, accidents or various circumstances, our mind tries to build a pattern of recognition and develops a memory. ... Views: 286
The field of psychology in the West has developed over the last couple of centuries with a focus on the influence of the subconscious levels on our external lives, fixating on trauma, past events and their effect on the way we respond to circumstances in our lives. This has led to techniques ... Views: 183
European culture takes credit for ‘discoveries’ that it makes despite the fact that societies in other parts of the world have long known about these things. Thus, Europeans ‘discovered’ America while disregarding the fact that it was already populated with numerous tribes of indigenous people, ... Views: 215
We construct a personality that we present to the world and organize our expression and actions around this chosen construct. In doing so, we pick and choose elements that are present in our conscious mind, heart, life-force and physical body and create for ourselves the ego-personality that ... Views: 168
Our physical bodies operate complex functions without active oversight or intervention of the mind. We are essentially in the dark as our organs function, as our immune system automatically responds to pressures, as breathing, brain function and much more go on absent our supervision or control, ... Views: 187
Consider that we remove ourselves from active participation in the external world and its activities for some 30% of our lifetimes while we are asleep. Sleep provides the physical body-life-mind complex with the opportunity to undertake basic ‘maintenance’, repair the body, soothe the life ... Views: 226
Our surface awareness is basically the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Most of what takes place in our being occurs outside of the range of our active external perception of the senses and mental awareness. Even the interactions with the external reality we experience represent only a small fraction of ... Views: 286
We generally jump to extremes in our way of looking at things from our normal, mental viewpoint. Thus, we either want to accept that everything is absolutely determined and thus, every move we make, every action, every reaction, is choreographed down to the slightest detail; or else, we want to ... Views: 161
The seer of the Taittiriya Upanishad identified various planes of ever more subtle and powerful consciousness, with the most subtle and powerful being the ultimate causative agent of the denser and lower formations of Matter, Life and Mind. If we look at the experience of the vedic seers, we ... Views: 186
The concept of maya is frequently described as the world being an illusion that mystifies our senses and our minds, such that we take it for real, when it is not the truth of existence. We are then asked to cut through the illusion to find the actual reality, the Absolute, the consciousness that ... Views: 191
Many people profess to believe in the existence of God based on the teachings of their religion. Because the belief is based solely on a teaching, rather than actual experience that would support this belief, they may, in many cases, not take their faith in God seriously enough to actually abide ... Views: 178
When we look at the immensity of the evolutionary crisis, and the failure of “tried and true” solutions that have been put forward through history, it is easy to become discouraged and pessimistic about the possibility of survival. The solution proposed, a radical transformation of human life ... Views: 193
As the evolutionary pressure begins to develop individuals who undergo the spiritual transformation we have been discussing, there is still the issue of how these individuals can impact the wider life of humanity. Isolated individuals surrounded by an untransformed mass of humanity and the ... Views: 198
The actions that take place in the external world are controlled by the action of the three Gunas, or qualities, of Nature. This includes not only the physical nature, but also the vital nature and the mental nature. There is what we may call a ‘machinery’ of Nature that drives the creation ... Views: 182
As long as we remain rooted in the external surface consciousness and ego-personality, we are firmly bound by the determinism of Nature. Nature, whether on the physical, vital or mental level, operates under its own ‘laws’ of action. The more dense the expression of consciousness is, the more ... Views: 191
We believe we have free will. We are confronted with choices and make a decision and carry it out and believe that this decision was made freely by the individual we identify as ourself. At the same time, we can recognise the step-wise development which is called ’cause and effect’, or the law ... Views: 216
There are hidden forces, vibrational patterns that move between people that remain unseen, but have their effect, similar to the way that we do not observe electricity, but we do observe its effects. These vibrational patterns operate without any overt, external medium, simply through ... Views: 162
When Bram Stoker wrote his classic ‘horror’ tale, Dracula, he popularized and sensationalized an actual phenomenon of vital interchange that operates mostly unnoticed and not as sensationally as his tale implies. To put it in simple terms, ‘vampirism’ is the ability of someone to utilise the ... Views: 187
It is common for spiritual aspirants to be advised to isolate themselves or at least limit their contact with others in a social setting, with the ostensible reason to aid the seeker in focusing on the spiritual effort and avoid distraction and the possibility of being diverted or diluted in the ... Views: 186
We undergo changes of mood, feelings, responses and do not generally try to understand how these changes come about, their source, and impact upon our own state of being. In some cases, we actually associate ’cause and effect’ with an interaction with another individual, such as when we exclaim ... Views: 213
When we reflect on the difficulties involved with both the transformation of the individual to a spiritual, gnostic consciousness and the need for this individual change to proliferate and transform society, it becomes necessary to focus on what the transitional phase or steps might be and how ... Views: 199
Another, and serious, issue that arises is the relationship of the gnostic individuals and community to that wider world of humanity and life in general which remains based in the physical, vital and mental principles and thus, continues to operate on the basis of division, fragmentation and the ... Views: 177
Human interactions, human relationships have both a surface meaning and a subtle hidden energetic action. One of the most powerful vital energies in human life is sexual relations. By examining how this force operates, both overtly and on the occult levels, we can quickly see the mechanism that ... Views: 203
We tend to pay attention to the various forms of external communication that take place between people. Written, verbal, and visual non-verbal cues through body language or expression, are all considered to be the major means of creating a relation between individuals. What we do not always ... Views: 216
The question arises as to what exactly the science of jyotish, Indian astrology, is able to calculate and incorporate. Looking at the line of karma, the antecedents, direction and trajectory of energy in a particular stream, it can help to determine the life-path and major challenges facing an ... Views: 271
Someone has their astrological chart done, and by that they are able to determine the location of the various planets and the sun and moon and the constellations in relation to their birth. They will learn about the hardships they will face, the major life events they can expect, and the ... Views: 177
There are those who treat astrology as a science, those who believe that our fate is determined by the “stars” and also those who believe that astrology is a pseudo-science with no real basis in anything that can meaningfully either control our destiny or even signify events in our lives. How ... Views: 178
The individual is not an island unto himself; he is part of a series of larger groupings, such as family, clubs, teams, tribes, school classes, corporate entities, community, states and nations, religion, etc. The collective energetic expression of each of these groupings develops a way of life ... Views: 191
We have a physical being, we have a vital energy including nervous energy, moral force and emotional energy, and we have a mental nature which includes thought, reasoning powers, and formulation of thought into word or deed. The vital force acts on its own plane as well as utilizes the physical ... Views: 181
We face, in every sphere of human endeavor, a conflict of competing ideas or directions. If we look closely we can see an element of truth in each side, but can also recognise that as long as we are bound by the mind’s limitations and its desire to reduce everything to “either-or”, we cannot ... Views: 184
Under the influence of the gnostic consciousness, the entire framework of the mental organisation of life, which we accept as assumed and given, would necessarily be modified. The very basis of viewing and understanding things would have to shift from one of division and separation to one of ... Views: 217
As long as we remain fixed in the mental framework, we tend to create judgments and rules for everything we do that are founded on the limited and fragmented understanding that the mental power possesses. The advent of a new wider, more expansive, more unifying and comprehensive consciousness ... Views: 219
Most of us are wedded to the sense that enjoyment of life and richness of experience are inseparably linked to the play of the dualities. We believe and find our satisfaction in the mixture of darkness and light, joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, and the challenges attendant on meeting and ... Views: 196
Whether one calls it the ‘law of Karma”, ‘dependent origination, or ’cause and effect’, the operation of karma essentially states that each action will create an effect which thereby creates a line of development that impacts the individuals who participate in the situation as it develops. While ... Views: 189
Many people consider the concept of ‘karma’ to be some form of moral retributive factor that brings back to an individual the ‘fruits’ of his actions. Thus, they believe, if a man does something considered wrong, dishonest, underhanded, the universal law of karma will eventually right the score. ... Views: 204