Book 2: 52. “Thereby is worn away the veil which covers up the light.”
“The veil is the psychic nature, the web of emotions, desires, argumentative trains of thought, which cover up and obscure the truth by absorbing the entire attention and keeping the consciousness in the psychic realm. When hopes and fears are reckoned at their true worth, in comparison with lasting possessions of the Soul; when the outer reflections of things have ceased to distract us from inner realities; when argumentative thought no longer entangles us, but yields its place to flashing intuition, the certainty which springs from within, then is the veil worn away; the consciousness is drawn from the psychical to the spiritual, from the temporal to the Eternal. Then is the light unveiled.”
Book 1: 21. Spiritual consciousness is nearest to those of keen, intense will.
“The image used is the swift impetus of the torrent; the kingdom must be taken by force. Firm will comes only through effort; effort is inspired by faith. The great secret is this: it is not enough to have intuitions; we must act on them; we must live them.”
Book 1: 51. “When this impression ceases, then, since all impressions have ceased, there arises pure spiritual consciousness, with no seed of separateness left.”
“The last psychic veil is drawn aside, and the spiritual man stands with unveiled vision, pure, serene.”
So I was recently made aware of the “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.” I picked it up, not expecting much; you see I’ve read so much about spirituality that always ends in disappointment. There is incredible spiritual value in this work and in the interpretation by Charles Johnston. As Christians, we rely on the blood of Christ to save us, and many see it as absolving ourselves of any need for self effort. I understand the argument, that the mercy of God through Christ fills us with gratitude, out of which should arise in us, love and mercy for others. Christ said to pick our cross and follow him. Its seems that Christians are all about the mercy of Christ, but not much interested in bearing the cross. They are not much interested in doing the internal self work that opens the the descent of the Divine Mother into them and opens their hearts with a deepening interest in following the Way.
Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
Book 2: 41. “To the pure of heart come also a quiet spirit, one-pointed thought, the victory over sensuality, and fitness to behold the Soul.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, who is the supreme Soul ; the ultimate Self of all beings. In the deepest sense, purity means fitness for this vision, and also a heart cleansed from all disquiet, from all wandering and unbridled thought, from the torment of sensuous imaginings; and when the spirit is thus cleansed and pure, it becomes at one in essence with its source, the great Spirit, the primal Life. One consciousness now thrills through both, for the psychic partition wall is broken down. Then shall the pure in heart see God, because they become God.”
The Human is ruled by the right and left side of the brain. Left brain thought is linear, law, parts to whole, right and wrong, scientific, and proofs based. But the right brain is free; free to imagine the world as it could be. Freeing the Human to live life in a totally unique and beautiful way. The right brain is ruled by intuition. It is whole to parts, a tapestry of possibility, a powerful, engaging force. Those who can engage and yoke the the right side, have the power to change the nature of the Way.
In the last few months, of a very long life, I have endeavored to live my intuition. I have searched to immerse myself in the world and to immerse myself in the One. The beauty and awe that this has unfolded into my being is beyond description. Oh the things you will see and do when you let God off the leash and when you give yourself the freedom to live your authentic self. The world and the journey through it is astounding in its beauty.
When you first step out, into the world lived through intuition, you will many times think that you have gone stark raving mad. Step out anyway! Don’t fear your own intuitive sense of the underpinnings of existence. This is the very place that the One that is in you wants you to be. Discovering the Way, is madness to your left brained perception. The Left brained perception rules the world. It is your left brain the mocks you for untangling the bonds that hold you fast and chains you to the dream state of existence. It is the left side of the brain that is content to live in a veiled state, never seeing what lies beyond the illusion.
Ah, but the right sided, is full of compassion and awe, relishes wisdom in all its forms, immersing itself in light wherever it is found. The right is the place where the Human leaps, courageously runs without fear of consequences, because of the intuitive nature of the most important things. Knowledge is of the head and it wears the Human down with rules and formulas, the right is of the heart and where wisdom; the melding of knowledge and love is found.
Book 1: 22. The will may be weak, or of middle strength, or intense.
“For those of weak will, there is this counsel : to be faithful in obedience, to live the life, and thus to strengthen the will to more perfect obedience. The will is not ours, but God’s, and we come into it only through obedience. As we enter into the spirit of God, we are permitted to share the power of God.”
We all move within the One, within the very being of God. For those of us who have taken the right hand path, will find on the Way, the presence of the divine feminine. Many traditions speak of her. In Christianity, she is the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah glory. She holds in her hand a pitcher, filled with the Holy Fire. And she immerses all that love her and know her wisdom with the free gift of power and glory.
Book 1: 13. The right use of the will is the steady effort to stand in spiritual being.
“We have thought of ourselves, perhaps, as creatures moving upon this earth, rather helpless, at the mercy of storm and hunger and our enemies. We are to think of ourselves as immortals, dwelling in the Light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers. The steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers, which will unveil to us the nearness of the Eternal.”
Book 1: 14. This becomes a firm resting place, when followed long, persistently, with righteousness.
“We must seek spiritual life in conformity with the laws of spiritual life, with righteousness, humility, gentle charity, which is an acknowledgement of the One Soul within us all. Only through obedience to that shared Life, through perpetual remembrance of our oneness with all Divine Being, our nothingness apart from Divine Being, can we enter our inheritance.”
Book 1: 24. The Master is the spiritual man, who has conquered sorrow, bondage to works, and the accumulation of evils.
The soul of the Master, the Lord, is of the same nature as the soul in us; but we still bear the burden of many evils, we are in bondage through our former works, we are under the dominance of sorrow. The soul of the Master has conquered sin and made an end of servitude and sorrow.
Book 1: 25. In the Master is the seed of perfect Omniscience.
The Soul of the Master is in essence one with the Oversoul, and therefore partaker of the Oversoul’s all-wisdom and all-power. All spiritual attainment rests on this, and is possible because the soul and the Oversoul are One.
Book 2: 3. These are the barriers: the darkness of unwisdom, self-assertion, lust, hate, attachment.
“Let us try to translate this into terms of the psychical and spiritual man. The darkness of unwisdom is, primarily, the self-absorption of the psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and fears, plans and purposes, sensations and desires, so that he fails to see, or refuses to see, that there is a spiritual man; and so doggedly resists all efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and set himself free. This is the real darkness; and all those who deny the immortality of the soul, or deny the soul’s existence, and so lay out their lives wholly for the psychical, mortal man and his ambitions, are under this power of darkness. Born of this darkness, this psychic self-absorption, is the dogged conviction that the psychic, personal man has separate, exclusive interests, which he can follow for himself alone; and this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads to contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate, again, makes against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the high harmony between the spiritual man and his other selves, a harmony to be revealed only through the practice of love, that perfect love which casts out fear. In like manner, lust is the psychic man’s craving for the stimulus of sensation, the din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man, as, in Shakespeare’s phrase, the cackling geese would drown the song of the nightingale. And this craving for stimulus is the fruit of weakness, coming from the failure to find strength in the primal life of the spiritual man. Attachment is but another name for psychic self-absorption; for we are absorbed, not in outward things, but rather in their images within our minds; our inner eyes are fixed on them; our inner desires brood over them; and so we blind ourselves to the presence of the prisoner, the enmeshed and fettered spiritual man.”
Book 2: 11. Their active turnings are to be removed by meditation.
“Here is, in truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of true being.”
So now I pass them onto you, as a flowing gift, of personal enlightenment. I pass them on to the void of non-existent readers and my intuitive nature dwells alone with God in peace. I write tenderly as if the words will be read by millions, and in perfect peace that they will be read by none. This is the madness of the Way, the path of Intuition.
So as I write here, knowing full well that nobody reads what I write; this is incredibly liberating, because I don’t focus on my audience, except the One audience that counts. In the deepest sense, I write to amuse God. My writing is a love letter to the One who means everything to me.
The One who created All of existence out of Himself|Herself so as to have a mirror to see and contemplate His|her own image. The One who created the Human, as intimate members of His|Her own being, so that through us he can experience Himself|Herself. Without the Human, God is blind. Without the Human God is bound within Himself|Herself. Maybe, you understand now why you are so valuable to God. Now maybe, you understand the intensity of the One’s love toward you!
Book 3: 33. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the interior being, comes the knowledge of consciousness.
The heart here seems to mean, as it so often does in the Upanishads, the interior, spiritual nature, the consciousness of the spiritual man, which is related to the heart, and to the wisdom of the heart. By steadily seeking after, and finding, the consciousness of the spiritual man, by coming to consciousness as the spiritual man, a perfect knowledge of consciousness will be attained. For the consciousness of the spiritual man has this divine quality: while being and remaining a truly individual consciousness, it at the same time flows over, as it were, and blends with the Divine Consciousness above and about it, the consciousness of the great Companions; and by showing itself to be one with the Divine Consciousness, it reveals the nature of all consciousness, the secret that all consciousness is One and Divine.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Charles Johnston. Free Online.