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A Forerunner of The New Race By Tara Mata

  • 31 Mar/
  • Gary /
  • Spiritual

A Forerunner of The New Race By Tara Mata-

(An actual experience in her life) and 1933 Predictions

THOSE who have read Doctor Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness and Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy know that these authors believe that Cosmic Consciousness is a natural faculty of man, and that a future race of men on this earth will be born with this faculty well developed, and not merely latent as it is now. Bucke’s theory is that, just as man advanced from the state of simple consciousness, which he shared with the animal kingdom, into a state of self-consciousness, peculiar to man alone, and marked by the development of language, so he must inevitably come into a higher state of consciousness, distinguished by a cosmic or universal understanding.

Bucke maintains that the increasing number of people who have attained some degree of Cosmic Consciousness in the past few centuries is proof that these persons constitute the vanguard or forerunners of the new race. Among those whom Bucke believes to have had the cosmic sense more or less well developed (in recent centuries) are St. John of the Cross, Francis Bacon, Jacob Behman, Blaise Pascal, Spinoza, Swendenborg, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Alexander Pushkin, Honore de Balzac, Emerson, Tennyson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter and Ramakrishna.

Besides these famous men, it is doubtless true that many hundreds of men and women in each century, unknown to fame, have been exalted to some degree of Cosmic Consciousness. There is no doubt in my mind that the message of Yogoda in this country and this century has been the means by which hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans have achieved, through the meditation practices taught them, a glimpse of divine consciousness. Some few students have gone farther, and attained very high illumination. Here we have an example of how the cosmic sense is being developed in larger and larger numbers, paving the way for the great race of the future.

One paragraph from Bucke’s book is well worth quoting here:

“In contact with the flux of Cosmic Consciousness all religions known and named today will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized. Religion will absolutely dominate the race. It will not depend on tradition. It will not be believed and disbelieved.

It will not be a part of life, belonging to certain hours, times, occasions. It will not be in sacred books nor in the mouths of priests. It will not dwell in churches and meetings and forms and days. Its life will not be in prayers, hymns nor discourses. It will not depend on special revelations, on the words of gods who came down to teach, nor on any Bible or Bibles. It will have no mission to save men from their sins or to secure them entrance to heaven.

It will not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality and all glory will exist in the here and now. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye. Doubt of God and of eternal life will be as impossible as is now doubt of existence; the evidence of each will be the same. Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life. Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanently replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired.

Men will not worry about death or a future, about the kingdom of heaven, about what may come with and after the cessation of the life of the present body. Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal, will feel and know that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty is for it and belongs to it forever. The world peopled by men possessing Cosmic Consciousness will be as far removed from the world of today as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self-consciousness. . . . This new race is in act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.”

The fact that there is a technique, such as Yogoda teaches, whereby Cosmic Consciousness can be attained, is in itself proof that this higher sense is indeed an inherent faculty of all men, needing but the necessary training to call it forth. Most people believe that divine knowledge comes to only a few chosen people, and that the average man can approach no nearer to God than his “faith” will take him. Realization that there is a definite Way to contact God, a technique usable by all men in all circumstances, has come with such a liberating shock to many Yogoda students that they feel they have undergone a new birth.

I have one such case in mind—a man who, as soon as he had heard the Yogoda message, was swept up into Cosmic Consciousness. He is the only man of true Illumination, outside of Swami Yogananda, whom I have known personally, though I have heard or read of a number of other Yogoda students who have had a more or less similar experience.

This man was possessed of intense religious faith and aspiration. Though well read in the sacred scriptures of the world, especially those of the Hindus, he knew that this intellectual knowledge was barren and stony; it did not feed the soul-hunger within him. He did not wish merely to read about spiritual food, but to taste it. Under the even tenor of his days there yawned a black abyss of despair—despair that he was worthy of any direct contact with God, since no such experience was given to him. He finally came to doubt, not God, but the possibility that he would ever be able to have more than an intellectual comprehension of Him. This conviction struck at the roots of his life, and made it seem a worthless and meaningless thing.

Into this dark night of his soul came the light of Yogoda. After attending a few of the public Yogoda lectures, and before taking the class lessons, this man felt the heavy weight of despair lifting from his heart. Returning to his home one night from the last of the public lectures, he was conscious of a great peace within himself. He felt that in some deep fundamental way, he had become a different person. An impulse urged him to look into a mirror in his room, that he might see the new man. There he saw, not his one face, but the face of the Hindu teacher whose lecture he had attended that evening. The flood-gates of joy broke in his soul; he was inundated with waves of indescribable ecstasy. Words that had been merely words to him before—bliss, immortality, eternity, truth, divine love—became, in the twinkling of an eye, the core of his being, the essence of his life, the only possible reality. Realization that these deep, everlasting founts of joy existed in every heart, that this immortal life underlay all the mortality of humanity, that this eternal, all-inclusive love enveloped and supported and guided every particle, every atom of creation, burst upon him with a surety, a divine certainty that caused his whole being to pour forth in a flood of praise and gratitude.

He knew, not with his mind alone, but with his heart and soul, with every cell and molecule of his body. The sublime splendor and joy of this discovery were so vast that he felt that centuries, millenniums, countless eons of suffering were as nothing, as less than nothing, if by such means this bliss could be obtained. Sin, sorrow, death—these were but words now, words without meaning, words swallowed up by joy as minnows by the seven seas.

He was aware, during this first period of illumination and during the weeks which followed, of a number of physiological changes within himself. The most striking was what seemed a rearrangement of molecular structures in his brain, or the opening up of new cell-territory there. Ceaselessly, day and night, he was conscious of this work going on. It seemed as though a kind of electrical drill was boring out new cellular thought-channels. This phenomenon is strong proof of Bucke’s theory that Cosmic Consciousness is a natural faculty of man, for it gives evidence that the brain cells which are connected with this faculty are already present in man, although inactive or non-functioning in the majority of human beings at the present time.

Another important change was felt in his spinal column. The whole spine seemed turned into iron for several weeks, so that, when he sat to meditate on God, he felt anchored forever, able to sit in one place eternally without motion or consciousness of any bodily function. At times an influx of super-human strength invaded him, and he felt that he was carrying the whole universe on his shoulders. The elixir of life, the nectar of immortality, he felt flowing in his veins as an actual, tangible force. It seemed like a quicksilver, or a sort of electrical, fluid light throughout his body.

During the weeks of his illumination, he felt no need of food or sleep. But he conformed his outward life to the pattern of his household, and ate and slept when his family did. All food seemed pure spirit to him, and in sleep he was pillowed on the “everlasting arms,” awakening to a joy past all words, past all powers of description.

He had previously suffered from chronic catarrh and had been a heavy smoker; now his body was purged of all sickness, and desire for nicotine was wiped completely from his consciousness. His family and friends were aware of a great change in his appearance and manner; his face shone with a radiant light, his eyes were pools of joy. Strangers spoke to him, irresistibly drawn by a strange sympathy; on the street-car, children would come over to sit on his lap, asking him to visit them.

The whole universe was to him bathed in a sea of love; he said to himself many times, “Now at last I know what Love is! This is God’s love, shaming the noblest human affection .Eternal love, unconquerable love, all-satisfying love!” He knew beyond all possibility or thought of doubt that Love creates and sustains the universe, and that all created things human or sub-human, were destined to discover this Love, this immortal bliss that was the very essence of life. He felt his mind expand, his understanding reach out, endlessly widening, growing, touching everything in the universe, binding all things, all thoughts to himself. He was “center everywhere, circumference nowhere.”

The air that he breathed was friendly, intimate, conscious of life. He felt that all the world was “home” to him, that he could never feel strange or alien to any place again; that the mountains, the sea, the distant lands which he had never seen, would be as much his own as the home of his boyhood. Everywhere he looked, he saw the “atom-dance” of nature; the air was filled with myriad moving pin-pricks of light.

During these weeks, he went about his daily duties as usual, but with a hitherto unknown efficiency and speed. Typed papers flew off his machine, completed without error in a fourth of his customary time. Fatigue was unknown to him; his work seemed like child’s play, happy and carefree. Conversing in person or over the telephone with his clients, his inward joy covered every action and circumstance with a cosmic significance, for to him these men, this telephone, this table, this voice was God, God manifesting Himself in another of His fascinating disguises.

In the midst of his work, he would suddenly be freshly overwhelmed by the goodness of God Who had given him this incredible, unspeakable happiness. His breath would stop completely at such times; the awe which he felt would be accompanied by an absolute stillness within and without. Underlying all his consciousness was a sense of immeasurable and unutterable gratitude; a longing for others to know the joy which lay within them; but most of all, a divine knowledge, past all human comprehension, that all was well with the world, that everything was leading to the goal of Cosmic Consciousness, immortal bliss.

This state of illumination was present with the man for about two months, and then gradually wore away. It has never returned with all its pristine force, though certain features, especially the sense of divine peace and joy, return whenever he practices the Yogoda meditation exercises.

We can well imagine, with Doctor Bucke, that a race of men, possessing as a normal and permanent faculty this sense of Cosmic Consciousness, would soon turn the earth into a paradise, a planet fit for Christs and Buddhas, and polestar for the wheeling universe.

(The End)

Astrological World Cycles

By Tara Mata (Laurie Pratt)

IN a series of articles, of which this is the first, the writer proposes to demonstrate the profound connection of an astronomical phenomenon, known as the Precession of the Equinoxes, with the history of mankind and the great cycles of the world. The true Age, or Yoga, of the present world-period, in reference to the Grand Cycle of Time, symbolized by the stars in their courses, will be pointed out, and certain erroneous ideas that have been circulated by modern philosophical literature, due to misunderstanding of the ancient Hindu Scriptures, will be corrected. The writer will attempt to make all astronomical and astrological references clear enough to be understood by those with only a very elementary knowledge of those sciences.

Authority Is Great Hindu Sage

Readers of EAST-WEST will be interested to know that the chief authority for the writer’s central thesis, which will be developed mainly in the second article of this series, is a small work, published privately in India, entitled: “The Holy Science,” by Swami Yogananda’s Guru and Master, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giriji Maharaj, founder of Sadhumandal (counsel of sages) and its various Sat-Sanga (fellowship ) branches in different parts of India. This saintly Guru is a learned and illuminating commentator on the Bhagavad Gita and other Scriptures, including the Christian Bible, and has, in addition, a grasp of modern science that entitles his views to a very respectful hearing.

Systems of Chronology

The many systems of chronology adopted by different nations at various times are usually the source of great confusion to later historians and archaeologists in their attempts to fix the periods of history. However, whenever the ancients mentioned the position, during their own times, of the planets or of the Equinoxes in reference to the Zodiacal Constellations, the chronological era of such men in world-history can be determined with exactness. An illustration of the truth of this claim, and one which incidentally proves the great astronomical learning of the ancient Egyptians, who could so correctly place the planets, is a mummy’s coffin, now in the British Museum, which bears on its cover a Zodiacal representation of the planetary positions at the time the dead Egyptian was embalmed. Calculations by modern astronomers have proved that on the precise date of October 7, 1722, B.C., the planets and luminaries were in the exact positions shown on the coffin design. The mummy can thus be assigned an undeniable antiquity of seventeen centuries before Christ.

All ancient and modern methods of measuring years are based either upon solar or lunar phenomena. Just as a sundial will show the exact time of true noon in any locality, regardless of what system of mean or standard time may be used there, so man has no accurate reference of the passage of time in world cycles through the ages, except the testimony of celestial phenomena.

Precession of the Equinoxes

As every student who goes deeply into the study of any religion, philosophy, or history will find himself confronted with the necessity of understanding the astronomical and even astrological significance of the Precession of the Equinoxes, it is well that this subject be simply and briefly dealt with here.

The equinoctial times are about March 21 and September 22 of each year, when day and night are equal in length all over the earth. This is due to the fact that only on those two days does the earth’s axis come to an exact right angle (90°) with an imaginary line running from the center of the Sun to the center of the earth (the equator). The second of time when this right angle is exactly complete, and the Sun is directly in line with the earth’s equator, the Sun is considered to have reached the equinoctial points of Aries O° (the Vernal Equinox, or spring in the northern hemisphere, about March 21) and Libra O° (the Autumnal Equinox, or fall, in the northern hemisphere, about September 22). The ecliptic, or Sun’s annual apparent path around the earth, is measured off, starting with the equinoctial point of Aries O°, into 360°, 12 signs of 30° each, called the Zodiac of the Signs. This Zodiac, or imaginary belt in the heavens, with the ecliptic as its middle line, is considered to be 16° wide, in order to include the latitude, north and south of the sun’s path, of all those planets belonging to our particular solar system. The Sun completes its circuit of this Zodiac of 360° in about 365¼ days, our solar year.

Zodiac of the Constellations

The Equinoxes having been explained, we shall now consider the meaning of their precession. Modern astronomers have classified every fixed star in the heavens into groups called Constellations. Those groups, however, which lie close to the plane of the ecliptic, were arranged into Constellations in very ancient times, and were considered to form the belt of the natural and actual Zodiac, through which the Sun appeared to travel in its yearly pilgrimage around our earth. This was the Zodiac of the Constellations, and the ancients divided it into 360° or 12 signs of 30° each.

What is the difference between the Zodiac of the Constellations and the Zodiac of the Signs? There is no difference in their division into signs and degrees, or in the astrological influences ascribed to their various parts, but there is, at present, a difference in space between them. There would be no necessity for dual Zodiacs if the Sun, each year, reached its equinoctial point of Aries O° at exactly the same point of space, measured by reference to some fixed star of the Constellations. However, it has been mathematically determined by astronomers that each year at the moment when the Sun reaches its equinoctial point of Aries O° and is in exact line with the earth’s equator, the position of the earth in reference to some determinant fixed star is some 50″ of space father west than the earth was at the same equinoctial moment of the previous year.

The position of any fixed star near the ecliptic and near the border line of the Constellation Aries could be chosen to be the determinant, or standard reference point, in order to observe this yearly precession of the Vernal Equinoctial Point among the fixed stars. The Hindu astronomers selected Revati as the determinant fixed star, and considered this star as marking Aries O° of the constellations. Each year the equinoctial point of Aries O° of the signs will be found to have precessed some 50″ of space farther west of Revati than it was the previous year. The meaning of the term, “Precession of the Equinoxes,” is now clear. It refers to the slight annual increase in distance of the equinoctial points from a standard fixed star, which is considered as Aries O° in the Zodiac of the Constellations, while the Vernal Equinox is considered as Aries O° in the Zodiac of the Signs.

The Central Sun of the Universe

The cause of precession has not been finally established by modern astronomers, some claiming it is due to a slow change in direction of the earth’s axis, while others believe they have mathematical proof that the phenomenon is caused by the motion of the Sun in space along its own orbit, whereby all the bodies of our solar system are being brought nearer to a Grand Central Sun, around which our own Sun and every other Sun (fixed star) in the universe is revolving.

All ancient nations considered Alcyone, brightest star of the Pleiades, to be this Grand Central Sun. To the Babylonians it was Temennu, “The Foundation Stone.” The Arabs had two names for it—Kimah, the “Immortal Seal or Type,” and Al Wasat, “The Central One.” It was Amba, “The Mother” of the Hindus, and its present name of Alcyone was derived from a Greek word signifying Peace. It is so far distant from us at present as to appear to be a star of only the third magnitude. There is a significant passage in the Bible (Job 38:4-31) about the Constellation containing Alcyone, where the Lord asked Job: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?”

24,000 Years For One Circuit

The great sages of ancient India, whose knowledge of astronomy has not been surpassed by any modern nation, claimed that by the phenomenon of precession the equinoctial points of our Sun would take 24,000 years to complete one circuit around the Zodiac of the Constellations. Modern science tells us that the present rate of precession is 50.1″ yearly, or 1°0″ in 72 years. At that rate, it would take, not 24,000, but 25,920 years for the Vernal Equinox to make one whole circle of the Zodiac of the Constellations and return to any given starting point (fixed star). However, there is no proof that the present rate of precession, or 50.1″ yearly, is constant, and the ancients claimed that at certain stages of the cycle the rate of precession is slightly more rapid than at other stages. This theory receives proof from the calculations of the great astronomer, Hipparchus (146 years B.C.), who gave the rate of precession at the time of his observations as 50-2/3″, or a rate somewhat faster than at present. We have, therefore, no scientific reason to deny that the ancient Hindu astronomers were correct in giving 24,000 years as the time which would elapse between one coincidence of the Vernal Equinox with any fixed star and its next exact coincidence with the same star.

The Four Ages or Yugas

This precessional cycle of 24,000 years is profoundly related to the Four Ages or Yugas into which the ancient rishis (wise men) of India divided each cyclic period. These Ages, known to the Greeks and others as the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, are as follows:

Satya Yuga—4800 years

Treta Yuga—3600 years

Dwapara Yuga—2400 years

Kali Yuga—1200 years

Total, 12,000 years

Lemuria and Atlantis
 

by Tara Mata

(Laurie Pratt)

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Introduction

A STRIKING proof of the truth of the cyclic nature of man’s progress and decadence, and of the presence on this earth of high civilizations tens of thousands of years ago, has been offered during recent years by geological and archaeological evidence of the existence and culture of the sunken continents of Lemuria and Atlantis. Colonel James Churchward’s three scholarly books on Mu (Lemuria) point out that Lemuria was the “mother of the world” and that her civilization was vastly more ancient than that of Atlantis.

This theory, that colonists from Lemuria, and later from Atlantis, spread their civilization all over the ancient world, is not accepted by many scholars, but it must be admitted that it is the only explanation that satisfactorily accounts for the otherwise puzzling similarities to be found in the ancient architecture, art, language, religion, traditions and customs of widely separated lands, such as Central America and Mexico on one side of the world, and Egypt and Babylonia on the other.

Plato’s Atlantis

The story of Atlantis is better known, because more recent, than that of Lemuria. The famous Republic of Plato (370 B.C.) was largely inspired by Greek traditions founded on memories of the great civilization of Atlantis, and in two other books, the Timaeus and Critias, Plato gives vivid descriptions of the lost continent and its people. Other ancient Greeks wrote about Atlantis as the “blessed,” “happy” or “fortunate” land, the Edenic garden of the world in a long-past Golden Age, remote even to the Greeks of Plato’s time. Roman writers of the same period referred to the vast sea between Europe and America as Maris Atlantici, the Atlantic Ocean, thus indicating their belief that these waters covered the Atlantean continent.

The Atlanteans are described by Plato and others as having been in possession of marvelous scientific knowledge and power. Particularly notable was their conquest of space by the use of airplanes and through television. Churchward believes that the Lemurians and Atlanteans spread the knowledge of aerial travel over all the ancient world. He writes, in his fascinating book, The Children of Mu:

These are the most detailed accounts I have found about the airships of the Hindus 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, except one which is a drawing and instructions for the construction of the airship and her machinery, power, engine, etc. The power is taken from the atmosphere in a very simple inexpensive manner. The engine is somewhat like our present-day turbine in that it works from one chamber into another until finally exhausted. When the engine is once started it never stops until turned off. It will continue on if allowed to do so until the bearings are worn out. These ships could keep circling around the earth without ever once coming down until the machinery wore out. The power is unlimited, or rather limited only by what metals will stand. I find various flights spoken of which according to our maps would run from 1000 to 3000 miles. All records relating to these airships distinctly state that they were self-moving, they propelled themselves; in other words, they generated their own power as they flew along. They were independent of all fuel. It seems to me, in the face of this, and with all our boasting, we are about 15,000 to 20,000 years behind the times . . . There are many Chinese records of about the same date regarding these ancient flying machines.

It is noteworthy that recent excavations in Crete have brought to light records which mention Cretan airplanes.

King Chronus

Though Plato’s account of Atlantis met with slight credence from scientists up until recent times, the discoveries of Dr. Henry Schliemann, eminent archeologist, have placed the existence of that land beyond doubt.

When in 1873, writes Dr. Schliemann, I made the excavation of the ruins of Troy at Hissarlik and discovered in the second city the famous treasures of Priam, I found among that treasure a peculiar bronze vase of great size . . . engraved in Phoenician hieroglyphics with a sentence which reads: ‘From the King Chronos of Atlantis’ . . . Among a collection of objects from Tiahaunaco, South America, is another vase identically the same as I found among the treasures of Priam.

The significance of the Phoenician hieroglyphics is explained by Professor Nicola Russo, in The Atlantis Quarterly:

The Phoenician alphabet, which is the first of all the European alphabets, is derived from the Atlantean alphabet, which was taught to the Maya of Central America . . . Atlantis was the home of the Aryan or indo-European, and of the semitic, not excluding the Turanian, peoples . . . The male and female divinities of the ancient Greeks, of the Phoenicians, of the Indians, and of the Scandinavians, were kings, queens and heroes of Atlantis, and the acts of heroism which mythology attributes to them are none other than a confused record of historical happenings . . . Atlantis perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which the entire island was submerged, with the loss of all the population. Those few who had time to escape from the general disaster on boats and on rafts carried the account of the event to the people who were in the East and West—a tradition that has come down to our days with the legend of the universal Deluge . . . That Atlantis before the time of Plato was known in sacred traditions and legends is proved by the fact that Homer and Hesiod were already acquainted with the legend of Atlas, condemned by Jove to bear the heavens on his shoulders. Herodotus also, in the fourth book of his History, mentions the Atlanteans, and Diodorus, in his Library of History, tells of the Atlanteans, a people more civilized than the people of these countries, and inhabiting a rich land containing many cities.

Lewis Spence, the learned scientist whose researches have thrown important light on the vanished civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, points out that Suidas claimed that both Homer and Hesiod were Atlanteans. In the Homeric epics, the blind bard “sings of his country, the country of the gods, Atlantis”.

The vases found by Schliemann establishes the fact that there was a King Chronus of Atlantis, and in this connection it is of interest to note that the ancient Greeks preserved traditions of their Golden Age, which they made coincident with the reign of a King Chronos, who may well have been the ruler over the Atlantean forefathers of the Greeks.

A group of survivors of the Atlantean cataclysm settled in northwest Africa, and were known as “Atlanteans” to Greek and Roman writers, who named the Atlas Mountains, in that region, in their honor—Atlas being the Latin singular form of Atlantes.

Scientists of the Carnegie Institution, recently excavating at Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, found, among the imposing ruins of the Pyramid of the Warriors, a Temple dedicated to the Atlanteans.

Azores

The Antilles group of islands in the West Indies, and the Azore and Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, are believed by competent scholars to constitute veritable remnants of Atlantis, and to indicate roughly the extent of her western and eastern boundaries. All these island groups are situated on an ocean ridge which is subject to great earthquakes, and this region, according to Scott-Elliott, “has been the scene of volcanic disturbance on a gigantic scale, and that within a quite measurable period of geologic time.”

An article in The Atlantis Quarterly for September, 1932, refers to a recent discovery by the archeologist, Nicolas de Ascanio, on Teneriffe, largest island of the Canaries, of vases and pottery “of exquisite proportions and workmanship. . . M. de Ascanio does not hesitate to assert that the pottery and mortar in question are, ‘with the exception of arms, the most ancient products of human industry actually known’. That we are here in the presence of remains of an advanced civilization that existed long before the present race of aboriginals inhabited the islands cannot be doubted. . . The conclusion that the beautiful examples of ceramic art under discussion are veritable relics of Atlantean craftsmanship is, we think, established, and constitutes one of the most remarkable corroborations of Plato’s history of Atlantis.”

Professor Russo, in an article in the same issue of the magazine above referred to, stresses the importance of the results of a scientific expedition in the ship Meteor around the Azores.

The mythical island, which has been the object of so many studious investigations, according to the testimony of a recent German scientific expedition, must have been located where the Azores now lie, and the peaks of the Azores must be the tops of the mountains of the submerged Atlantis. . . The contour of the upper submarine plane of the Azores sounded by the ship Meteor is indicated to us exactly by the situation and the conformation of Atlantis, in accordance with what is left to us in their writings by Plato and the geographers of antiquity.

This is the reason why the learned Germans maintain the submersion of Atlantis must be calculated as 9,500 years B.C., a period during which the earth penetrated into the moon’t ray of action. Under the magnetic influence of this satellite, the waters of the ocean rose to the point of overwhelming Atlantis, so that only the tops of the highest mountains remained. The communications of these scholars come opportunely to throw light upon the darkness of so many mysteries that enwrap the Edenic Island, they serve as a link connecting Egypt and South America, and exhibit the similarities of the characteristics of their civilizations.

Poseidon

Lewis Spence believes that continental Atlantis was destroyed at the end of the Tertiary period (Miocene times), leaving two large islands. One of these, the largest, was the only Atlantis with which the ancient Greek and Roman writers were acquainted. Most of this island was finally submerged by a cataclysm of nature at a date which geological, historical and traditional evidence agrees on as about 9,500 B.C.

Plutarch tells us that Solon, the Athenian law-giver and ancestor of Plato, visited Egypt in 600 B.C., and that:

Souchis, a priest of Sais, and Psenophis, a priest of Heliopolis, told him that 9000 years before, the relations of the Egyptians with the lands of the west had been interrupted because of the mud which had made the sea impassable after the destruction of Atlantis.

Churchward writes,

When Atlantis was first submerged, she only went down deep enough to be awash at low tide so that at low tide mud banks appeared with masses of seaweed which made the northern Atlantic impassable to shipping. This was the real reason why the ancient Greeks never ventured to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). Later on, Atlantis sank to her present depth, and ships could move freely over her burial place.

Some ancient writers refer to Atlantis as Poseidon. “An Egyptian papyrus states that Poseidon was the first king of Atlantis and that he was followed by a long line of Poseidons, thus forming a Poseidon Dynasty” [Churchward].

Egypt

The Platonic story tells us that “Atlantis was the center of civilization and conquered the whole world.” Dr. Schliemann makes the following observations on the connection of Egypt with Atlantis:

In the Museum at St. Petersburg, Russia, there is a papyrus roll, one of the oldest known. It was written in the reign of Pharoah Sent of the Second Dynasty. The papyrus relates that ‘Pharoah Sent sent out an expedition to the west in search of traces of the Land of Atlantis from whence, 3350 years before, the ancestors of the Egyptians arrived, carrying with themselves all of the wisdom of their native land. The expedition returned after five years with the report that they had found neither people nor objects which could give them a clue to the vanished land.

Another papyrus in the same Museum by Manetho, the Egyptian priest-historian, gives a reference of a period of 13,900 years as the reign of the Sages of Atlantis. This papyrus places the height of the civilization of Atlantis at the very beginning of Egyptian history, approximately 16,000 years ago.

Spence tells us that the modern Basques who dwell in the Pyrenees,

have not hesitated to announce themselves as the last branch of the Atlantean race—and perhaps not without reason, for it is within the bounds of probability that they are descended from the Cro-Magnon race which would seem to have reached Iberian soil from an oceanic area.

Etymology of ‘Atlantic’

Brasseur de Bourbourg, a writer of the last century, traced the etymology of the word Atlantic in the following way:

The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahu-atlan language (peculiar to the Toltec tribes of ancient Mexico) we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, or the border of or amid the water; from which we have the adjective Atlantic. . . A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraha.

Another city, existing today, with a similar name, is Mazatlan, on the west coast of Mexico. It is an interesting fact, mentioned by some of the early European voyagers to this country, that certain Indian tribes called the whole continent of America by the name of Atlanta. The Nahuatlan language, as its name implies, is similar to and derived from the Atlantean language, for the ancient Maya and Toltec civilizations, so similar in many ways to that of Egypt, were brought to Mexico and Yucatan from Atlantis.

Conclusion

The subject of Atlantis, her magnificent civilization and her dramatic end, has exercised a fascination for modern as well as ancient authors. Besides the scholarly works, published in the last fifty years, by such scientists as Ignatius Donnelly, Schliemann, Spence, Russo and Churchward, many imaginative novels have been written around Atlantis. A Dweller on Two Planets by Phylos, is stimulating reading. A romance, L’Atlantide, by Benoit, has recently been produced in France as a motion picture. The Coming Race by Bulwer-Lytton, very popular with a previous generation, was based on Atlantean traditions. Recently two French writers have compiled a Bibliography of Atlantis, giving over 1700 references. “Societies for Atlantean Studies” now exist in France, Italy and other European lands.

Francis Bacon, “father of experimental philosophy,” wrote a stirring book in the 17th century, outlining a great plan for the development of scientific learning which was to remold the institutions of the world on a fairer basis. The founding of the Royal Society of London in 1662 was a direct result of Lord Bacon’s inspiring work, which was named “The New Atlantis”.

Shankara, the Great Vedantist

By Tara Mata

TWELVE centuries separate us from the time of Shankara, but the influence of his mighty intellect and flawless life is felt increasingly in India and in all lands where men seek guidance for divine inspiration.

Shankara is regarded in India as an incarnation of Shiva, one of the aspects of the three-fold Godhead. The following passage is found in one of Shankara’s works:

“I prostrate not to the gods.

One who is beyond all gods

Does not salute a god.

After that stage, one does no prescribed act.

I prostrate again and again to my own Self,

Which is the root of all endeavor. . . .

The Lord facing the south

(Dakshinamurti, the Lord Shiva

In the shape of a spiritual teacher)

Himself has composed this work entitled,

‘The Definition of One’s Own Self’,

Which will dispel the darkness of ignorance

And will carry one across the shoreless ocean

Of phenomenal existence. The sky of my mind

Is illumined by the sun of the Master

Who is the Lord Vishnu,

That causes the lotus of realization to blossom.”

Shankara was born in 788 AD in the Malabar section of the Deccan, the son of Shivaguru, a Brahman of learning and devotion who placed the child in a Vedic school at an early age. At three, Shankara was familiar with the Puranas and could read the deepest philosophy with understanding. He adopted the life of a wandering ascetic in his eighth year, and soon became the disciple of Govinda, a famous sage who taught from a mountain cave near the Narbuda River. The guru (master) of Govinda was Gaudapada, who also accepted Shankara as his disciple. Three years later, when Shankara was only twelve, he wrote his famous bhasya (commentary) on the Brahma-Sutras, the essence of the Upanishads.

Miracles cluster thickly in the story of Shankara, as they do around all supremely enlightened men whose conscious oneness with the Universal has given them mastery over the forces of nature. This son of India, born with Yogic powers, was tenderly attached to his mother, and the tale goes that once, when she was suffering from the intense heat, he caused the river nearby to rise and cool her. Another story concerning his mother is that she opposed his plan to become a wandering sannyasin, and that he would not leave without her permission. One day a crocodile seized his foot as he was bathing, and he cried out to his mother that he would not release himself from the crocodile until she had promised to release him from home ties. In this way he won her reluctant consent.

Still another exercise of his Yogic power in connection with his mother occurred at her death. He had promised to return to her should she ever need him, and fulfilled his word by reaching her death-bed in time to give her instruction in divine knowledge. His life as a yogi forbade that he witness her funeral rites; to overcome this difficulty, he caused her body to be consumed before his eyes by fire which spurted from his upraised hand.

Another interesting story concerns Shankara’s favorite disciple, Sanandana. This young man, hearing his guru’s voice calling him from the opposite shore of a river, plunged into the water without hesitancy. Shankara caused a lotus flower to emerge from the dark depths to support each footfall of his disciple across the rushing river. From that day on, Sanandana was known as Padmapada, “lotus-foot.” This same disciple later wrote a bhasya which was accidentally burnt. Shankara had read it once and, to Padmapada’s joy, recited it faithfully from memory while the disciple wrote it down. It has been preserved for us as the Pancapadika, a commentary on the Brahma-Sutras.

Shankara is unique among the outstanding spiritual teachers of the world in that he was a great scholar—”mightiest mind that ever dwelt in human body,” in the opinion of Douglas Grant Duff Ainslie, the English philosopher—and left many written works behind him. He did not, however, claim to be the originator of any new system of philosophy or plan of salvation, but regarded the ancient Vedas as the infallible, divinely inspired repository of Truth. He writes: “The Vedas are the highest authority, either because they are beginningless or because they are the utterances of the Supreme Lord. Knowledge, therefore, cannot result either by itself or from any other authority. The Vedic word which does not depend on any other proof, but on which depend proofs, is the only source of the knowledge of Brahman. As no authority is equal to the eye in the perception of forms, so no authority is equal to the Vedas in the realization of that which is beyond perception.”

Shankara’s main works are his commentaries on the first ten Upanishads, and on the Brahma-Sutras and Bhagavad Gita. These bhasyas earned him the title of Acharya, “great spiritual teacher,” (Shankaracharya), and he is considered the foremost Vedantist, whose authority exceeds that of Ramanuja, Vallabda and other celebrated Vedic commentators.

Vedanta means “end of the Vedas” and refers expressly to the Upanishads, which constitute not only the last part of the Vedic texts but also summarize the final and ultimate meaning of the entire scriptures. The principal teachings of the Vedanta, and hence of the Upanishads, were formulated by Vyasa into a collection of aphorisms called the Brahma-Sutras. These sutras have formed the subject-matter of various commentaries by different writers, but the first bhasya on them which is available to modern students, that of Shankara, is by far the most famous, due to its profound and subtle reasoning and power of illumination. Because of this, the Vedanta philosophy has come to mean the Brahma-Sutra interpretation of Shankara.

The great Acharya insisted on a strict non-dualistic, absolutist interpretation of the Vedas, and credited his own guru, Gaudapada, with the recovery of the monistic (advaita) creed of the Upanishads, which had been misinterpreted for centuries by commentators who professed to find grounds in the traditional scriptures for belief in dualism. According to Vedanta, individual souls (jiva) are but illusory manifestations of One Soul or pure consciousness the Brahman; according to the Sankhya philosophy, jivas are true and numerous. Sankhya cosmology also claims the reality of Prakriti (root principle of matter); Vedanta denies reality to anything except Brahman.

Shankara expounded his teacher Gaudapada’s monistic views on the Vedas with additional insight of his own, and Shankara’s bhasyas, rather than Gaudapada’s, have been the basis for a host of additional commentaries by later Vedantists. But Shankara himself wrote a bhasya on Gaudapada’s work, and at the conclusion, he says that

“He adores by falling at the feet

Of that great guru, the adored of his adored,

Who on finding all the people

Sinking in the ocean

Made dreadful by the crocodiles of rebirth,

Out of kindness for all men,

By churning the great ocean of the Veda

By his great rod of wisdom,

Recovered what lay deep

In the heart of the Veda,

Hardly attainable even by the immortal gods.”

In another place, Shankara eulogizes the guru thus:

“There is no known comparison

In all the three worlds for the venerable teacher

That bestows knowledge.

If the philosopher’s stone be assumed as such,

It could only turn iron into gold,

But not into another philosopher’s stone.

The venerable teacher, on the other hand,

Creates equality with himself

In the disciple that takes refuge at his feet.

He is therefore peerless,

Nay, even transcendental.”

Shankara reorganized the ancient monastic Order of Swamis. The title of Swami can rightfully be bestowed on a disciple only by one who is himself a Swami, tracing his title from Shankara’s time and following the life prescribed by the great Vedantist.

Shankara traveled about from place to place in India, meeting in public debate all the eminent sages of his time, and converting Buddhist, Sankhya and Mimamsa philosophers to his own monistic view of the Vedas. It is said that Vyasa1, author of the Brahma-Sutras, returned to earth in the guise of a Brahman scholar in order to debate with Shankara, thus testing the latter’s Vedic knowledge. But even a superhuman adversary could find no flaws in the young Acharya’s exposition, and Shankara was admitted the victor.

An interesting story comes in here. At Shankara’s birth, his horoscope was cast, in accordance with the ancient custom of the Hindus. The astrologer found that the boy was allotted but sixteen years of life. A short time later, a great Rishi announced that Shankara’s years would stretch to thirty-two.

When the Acharya met and conquered Vyasa in debate, the latter declared that, because of this great victory, Shankara’s life span would be doubled, In this way, the predictions both of the astrologer and the Rishi were justified. The disputation with Vyasa presumably took place before or during Shankara’s sixteenth year. It is interesting to note that both Jesus and Shankara had incarnations of thirty-two years each.

One more extraordinary story of Shankara must be told. The great Vedantist went to Benares to meet in debate the eminent Mimamsa scholars of the day. Of these Kumarila was the chief, but he was then at death’s door. He arranged for his own most distinguished follower, Mandana, the author of Vidhiviveka, to meet Shankara. The Mimamsist was so much impressed by the superiority of the Vedanta expounded by Shankara that he became a great Vedantist himself, taking the new name of Suresvara.

His wife, one of the greatest women of India, a veritable Saraswati (goddess of wisdom), acted as umpire during the debate. Afterwards, she herself engaged Shankara in controversy. Confident that the young ascetic knew nothing of the science and art of earthly love, however wise he undoubtedly was in Bhakti or divine love, she questioned him on intimate matters beyond his ken. He admitted his temporary defeat and asked for a month’s grace. Committing his body to the care of his disciples, Shankara directed his consciousness into the corpse of King Amaraka, even then on its way to the funeral pyre. The mourners were overjoyed to see the King awake to life, and bore him back to his throne and Queen. A month later, the borrowed body of Amaraka knew the vivifying consciousness of Shankara no more, and the great sage, returned to his own earthly habitation, met and answered the Saraswati whose questions had previously confounded him.

Out of this experience, Shankara wrote a famous treatise on that branch of astrological science dealing with the conception, evolution and reproduction of the human species under certain categorical conditions laid down by the ancient Rishis. It expounds certain principles regarding the structure of the human organism, its mental and moral qualities, aesthetic, physical and psychological tendencies; interrelation of the sexes, and attraction and repulsion of persons born under various stars. Shankara also dealt with this subject in his commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

He took final leave of his body in his thirty-second year, in the city of Kanchi. His disciple Anandagiri describes the end thus: “As he was seated he absorbed his gross body into the subtle one and became Existence, then destroying this subtle one he became pure reason; then, attaining to the world of Ishwara (the personal God), with full happiness completed like a perfect circle, he passed on into the Intelligence which pervades the universe, and in this he still exists. The Brahmins of the place and his pupils and their pupils, reciting the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma-Sutras, then excavated a grave in a very clean place and making due offerings to his body raised a tomb.” The unpolluted body of a Yogi is considered in India to be beyond the need of the purifying funeral fire.

Some of the writings of Shankara have been made available to the western world through the translations of Radhakrishnan, Max Muller and other scholars. An English translation by S. Venkataramanan, entitled Selected Works of Sri Shankaracharya, (Natesan & Co., Madras), contains the famous Century of Verses by the great Vedantist. Some extracts from this work are given below.

Shankara pointed out that the study of Vedanta was not for everyone, but only for those who were filled with a true desire for emancipation. Such a man should have the following qualifications: (1) true discernment, an understanding of the difference between the transitory and the eternal, (2) desirelessness for rewards both in this world and the next, and (3) faith, concentration, self-control, patience, peace and longing for liberation.

Spotless freedom from desires means dissatisfaction in respect of all objects. Discrimination of the real means the determination that the nature of the self is eternal while all that is perceptible is otherwise. The constant eradication of mental impressions is called control of mind. The restraint of external activities is called control of body. Extreme abstention is the turning away from the objects of enjoyment. The endurance of all kinds of pain is called resignation, which is beneficial. Devoted belief in the sayings of the Vedas and of the teacher is called faith. The concentration of the mind on the Reality that is the ultimate goal is called balance. Desire for liberation is the name given to the intense thought, “How and when, O Lord, shall liberation from the bonds of samsara (phenomenal existence) come to me?” Whoever desires his own welfare should, after acquiring the above-mentioned qualifications, commence the inquiry with a view to the attainment of knowledge.

Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry, just as the perception of things is impossible without light. “Who am I? How was this universe born? Who is its maker? What is its material cause?” This is the kind of inquiry referred to.

Whatever is made of gold retains forever the nature of gold. So, too, all that is born of Brahman is of the nature of Brahman.

Just as one sees not the separate existence of the pot when he knows that it is clay, or the illusive existence of silver when he knows that it is mother-of-pearl, so, too, does one see not the condition of the individual soul when he knows Brahman. Just as a pot is only a name of clay, and an earring, of gold, so too is the individual soul a name of the Supreme.

When the knowledge of the Reality has sprung up, there can be no fruits of past actions to be experienced, owing to the unreality of the body, in the same way as there can be no dream after waking. Action done in past lives is called prarabdha. But that has no existence at all at any time, since past life is itself unreal. Just as the dream body is a mere illusion, so is this physical body also. How can an illusory thing have life, and how, if there is no life, can there be past action? As clay is the efficient cause of the pot, so is ignorance declared by the Vedanta to be the efficient cause of the universe. When that ignorance itself is destroyed, where then is this universe?

Without constant practice, the self that is pure existence and knowledge cannot be realized. Therefore, one who desires knowledge and seeks liberation should meditate on Brahman for a long time.

The control of the senses (yama), the control of the mind (niyama), the avoidance of unreality (tyaga), spiritual silence (mauna), place (desa), time (kala), posture (asana), the subduing of the root-cause (nulabandha), the equipoise of the body (deha-samya), the firmness of vision (driksthiti), the control of life-forces (pranayama), the holding of consciousness (dharmana), self-contemplation (dhana) and absorption (samadhi)—these, in order, are said to be the steps.

One should see the cause in the effect, and should then eliminate the effect. The cause, as such, will vanish of its own accord. What then remains, that the sage becomes. For, one soon becomes that which he contemplates with extreme assiduity and absolute certainty. This should be understood by the illustration of the wasp and the worm. 2

Feeling, while going about, that he is a wave of the ocean of the self; while sitting, that he is a bead strung on the thread of universal consciousness; while perceiving objects of sense, that he is realizing himself by perceiving the self; while sleeping, that he is drowned in the ocean of bliss—he who, inwardly constant, spends his whole life thus is, among all men, the real seeker of liberation.

Fire does not touch wet fuel even exceptionally, but only fuel that has been dried in the sun. So the fire of knowledge does not touch the mind that is wet with attachment, but only the mind that is dried with non-attachment.

Water taken from the sea, when solidified, goes by the name of salt; when it is thrown back into the sea and is dissolved, it loses its name and form. So does the individual soul merge into the Supreme Self. At the same time, the mind is dissolved into the moon, speech into fire, sight into the sun, blood and semen into water, and hearing into the (four) directions.

Compared with other means, knowledge is the only direct means to liberation. As cooking is impossible without fire, so is liberation impossible without knowledge. Ritual cannot dispel ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory. But knowledge surely destroys ignorance, as light the densest darkness.

One should separate the grain of the pure inner self from the chaff of the body and other sheaths by the threshing of reason.

Passions, desires, happiness, misery, etc., exercise their function when the consciousness is present, and do not exist in deep sleep when the consciousness is absent. They belong, therefore, to the consciousness and not to the self.

The very nature of the self being knowledge, it does not depend, for a knowledge of itself, on any other knowledge, in the same way as a light does not require another light to reveal itself.

The flame of knowledge that arises by the constant churning of meditation on the wood of the self will completely burn away the fuel of ignorance.

Brahman being known, all this universe will become known, in the same way as all earthen jars, pots, etc. become known when the clay, which is their cause, becomes known.

______

1One of the seven Chirajivis, literally, “beings endowed with longevity: whose manifestation is not confined to any one epoch.

______

2A popular belief that the worm in the wasp’s nest develops into a wasp by its constant expectation of the wasp’s return.

Yoga or Modern Science

By Tara Mata

MODERN inventions merely copy nature. The telescope is only equivalent to a pair of abnormally bright eyes and brings us merely an extension of vision. It cannot give us a new sense but simply enlarges the sense of sight we already possess. Knowledge of the electro-magnetic world of atomic structure has opened to us universes so infinitely small that the microscope itself cannot perceive them and we must represent them with mathematical equations. But we understand that, given a microscope of sufficient power, the atoms, being forms, could be seen. We see light, though it travels 186,000 miles a second. We see Andromeda, and the inconceivably distant universes of stars, with the naked eye.

Because we cannot go beyond sensory perception (for even thought and imagination are forms perceived with the inward eye or the inward sight) the ancient Hindus and doubtless every other great race of the past Golden Ages built up their systems of mental science, yoga (control), through which the senses were refined, broadened and sharpened so that all natural phenomena lay open to their true-seeing gaze.

The whole body of scientific inventions of which the modern world is so proud was totally unnecessary, an encumbrance, in fact—like spectacles to a man of good vision—to Golden Ages rishis (literally, seers). Red begins the spectrum of colors, and red ends it, but the intensity of one is not the intensity of the other. Though it is true that extremes seem to meet, and that both the most backward peoples and those belonging to the highest civilizations, do not have inventions and observatories and scientific laboratories, yet in the first case, it is due to the ignorance of Kali Yuga (Dark Age) and in the later case, to the perfected insight of Golden Age men. So we need not conclude, because the ancients left no records of inventions such as we have today, that they were ignorant men. Inventions are for Dwapara and Treta Yugas (the Bronze and Silver Ages)1, the midpoints between savagery and true civilization.

Thinkers of our own age are not failing to point out that our inventions are likely to lead us to ruin unless and until we are morally developed enough to direct and use them rightly. Without a better understanding of his own nature, man is not fit to be trusted with a knowledge of nature and her dynamic forces. So the Golden Age men developed and perfected a science of man. Yoga—not science of nature, for that follows automatically.

Man too is a solar system, a universe, fit for the profoundest study. He too has a Grand Central Sun within him, the Spiritual Sun. He too is a Creator and by him creation was made, is preserved and shall be destroyed—the trinity of all religions. Yet what does he know of himself? Man can harness the lightning, tame the wind and control the elements, pluck the Moon from the sky and bring it to his own doorstep with his telescopes, more easily than he can control his own passions. Yet that was the goal and the achievement of Golden Age men, the “gods” of all ancient mythologies.

Out of millions a Newton and an Einstein are born, with enough natural concentration to penetrate some of the secrets of nature. These men are true men; Newton was deeply religious, and Einstein is a true humanitarian. But the results of their discoveries, the host of practical inventions that follows each new discovery of the laws of nature—can these be entrusted to the hands of ordinary men? Are not discoveries in physics and chemistry put to destructive use, as in the late war? The undeveloped man has always used discoveries and inventions to enslave others, and the machine age is far from a perfect one. Such are the dangers of inventions. The forces of nature are not for the use of weaklings. First perfect the man, then he will know how to utilize nature. We do not need to perfect a cosmic-ray method of curing cancer, but to produce a race of men of pure minds and bodies where no cancer can grow. Man is the problem, not nature.

The time spent on science in this age is not misspent, because the more we discover of natural laws and their practical utilization, the more quickly we will see that without a corresponding extension of knowledge of man and his own nature and its control, the specter of world-wide destruction is the only promise of the future.

World-peace is only the dream of visionaries so long as man does not know and is not taught ….how to control his passions. Whether he fights with poison gas or from the air with bombs, or with his bare hands, he is still a victim of his own ignorance. If he can live at peace and in harmony and cooperation with his family, his neighbors and his friends, then he is fit for world-peace. When nations are composed of men like that, then we can expect world-peace. Man is the measure of all things, according to the Hermetic teachings and all ancient philosophies. World conditions can do no more than reflect the temper of man.

It was for this reason that Buddha, Christ, all the great teachers of mankind, stressed one point and only one—the conquering of human passions. They did not attack institutions nor initiate sweeping outward reforms of social or economic conditions, because these are only an effect of far deeper causes. The sages who have guided mankind did not bring inventions with them nor point out new ways to enslave nature for the daily purposes of man. The conquest of the internal nature is the only fit occupation for a human being. Otherwise he is no higher than an animal. Spiders can spin a geometric web; the ant is the greatest organizer in the world. A monkey can put any agile athlete to shame; the hibernating animals can live without food or drink; a turtle can exist for hundreds of years. A body of strength and endurance is not the measure of a man, nor his command of mathematics nor the extent of his scientific or artistic ingenuity. The measure of a man is his control over himself—his lower self, his thoughts, his impulses, his desires and his actions. This goal can never be achieved without a knowledge of his own nature, such as is embodied in the psychological, mental and spiritual sciences of Yoga. These sciences all rest on the same fundamental foundation of morality (yama and niyama), non-stealing, non-injury, truthfulness, etc. This is the starting-point of all religions as they were laid down by their founders.


Science such as we know it today can never be anything but fallible. There is no such thing as certainty or finality, when the proof must depend on the ordinary perceptive sensory powers of man. If the sensory instruments are faulty, so will be conclusions. And all inventions depend on the senses of man to utilize them.

Golden Age men therefore set out to perfect their sensory instruments, and did it so well that there is no modern discovery of natural law that has not already been known and elucidated by the ancients. What fragments of natural laws have been discovered through physical instruments by the moderns were known, and far more comprehensively, by the ancients without any other instrument than their true inward eye.

Modern science can never hope to do more than confirm what the ancients have already said about the nature of the universe. The conclusions of scientists today are minus the ring of conviction, for knowledge obtained by outward means can never fully satisfy the nature of man, and there is always an element of doubt connected with every man-given dictum. The foremost scientists of our time openly acknowledge that they expect their present views to be overturned by later developments. But the ancient rishis knew, because they had seen, and not merely arrived at their conclusions by the trial-and-error method. Hence they could sing of the laws of the universe, could mix science and poetry and music, as later Pythagorus did, with the utmost serenity, knowing that future ages could do no more than confirm the timeless truths they were giving out.

1The significance of these Yugas or Ages were explained in the writer’s series of articles on “Astrological World Cycles” which appeared in Inner Culture Magazine 1932-1933.

1933 Predictions

A study of the Equinoctial World-Age Chart gives us the important information that a Kali Yuga, darkest and most degenerate of the four World Ages contained in each half of the Equinoctial Cycle, is also the shortest Age. Its period of 1200 years is only half that of our present Bronze Age or Dwapara Yuga, only one-third that of the Silver Age, and only one-fourth the duration of the great Golden Age. Of a complete 24,000 year Equinoctial Cycle, only one-tenth of that time is allotted to the two Iron Ages contained in that cycle. 1 This is indeed an inspiring reflection. However, due to the fact that the two Kali Yugas, one of the Descending and one of the Ascending Arc, merge together by combining their two periods, their united span of 2400 years occurs at one time during the world’s history and leaves a longer and darker record of human ignorance and misery than would be the case if the two Kali Yugas were separated in time through the intervention of the period of one of the fairer Ages.

Many people express pessimistic doubts that mankind is now traversing any truly ascending arc of progress which will lead ultimately to a Golden Age of universal peace, wisdom and happiness. “All history is against such an assumption,” these people say, “Human misery and oppression is a fundamental condition of earth life, and have never been absent from the records of the most distant ages up until the present.”

Such a gloomy view of mankind’s possibilities is made possible and prevalent only because the world has but lately emerged from 2400 years of Kali Yuga domination. All our history is but Dark Age history, since the great civilizations of the world prior to the founding of Rome in 753 BC are known very little and misinterpreted very much. The minds of Kali Yuga men were not fit to understand the records of civilized men of higher Ages. indeed, until the dawn of our present Bronze Age in 1698 AD, there were, generally speaking, no scientists nor archaeologists worth the name. What slight knowledge we now have of pre-roman and pre-Grecian world conditions has all come to light in the last 200 years, since Dwapara Yuga made its appearance. We shall uncover more knowledge of antiquity as time goes on, which shall ennoble our view of the past and prove that the majority of mankind has not always been in the wretched condition of the Kali Yuga epochs (702 BC to 1698 AD).

However, even a complete knowledge of the last Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages (11,502 to 702 BC) would not suffice to indicate, by analogy, to the modern world what great progress and enlightenment lie before it, because the last Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages belonged to the Descending Arc of the Equinoctial Cycle, and each year of the ancient world saw the closer arrival of a lesser Age and the loss of some part of a civilized heritage.

Whereas, the modern world, now on the Ascending Arc, has risen from the Iron Age into the greater freedom and power of the present Bronze Age, and can look forward to gradual and continual improvement and perfection for mankind for many thousands of years in the future—until the Autumnal Equinox reaches the culmination of its Ascending Arc in 12,498 AD. At that time, no further progress will be made by the majority of mankind, and every subsequent year of that 12,000 year Arc will see the further decay of civilization.

However, Mankind shall never again fall to the depths of degradation witnessed by the last two Kali Yugas, for the next Dark Age (starting in 23,298 AD) will be on a higher spiral in the long, epoch-marking series of Equinoctial Cycles.

In man’s slow trek toward realization of his Divinity and his consequent escape form the “wheel of life” which Ezekiel saw in his vision, 2 and which the Buddha described, time is one of the essential factors. On this ground we are justified in believing that the Equinoctial Cycles follow a spiral pattern, and that each cycle sees humanity advanced beyond the previous cycle. The ancient Greeks had this thought in mind when they assigned the rulership of a Golden Age to Cronus, 3 Saturn, planetary god of Time, since Time brings all things to perfection. 4

Previously it was shown that the true Age of the world at present (1933), as indicated by the position of the Autumnal Equinox on the zodiacal circle, is year 235 of Dwapara Yuga of the Ascending Arc. Of this span, the first 200 years constituted the transition or mutation period which still retained some of the qualities of the preceding dark Age of Iron. Only in 1898 did the true, unmodified Dwapara Yuga start.

Since that year, thirty-five years have elapsed, and this span has witnessed unparalleled conditions of world unrest: the first World War of known history, the wholesale fall of kings, and the rise of dictators. Signs are not wanting that the total collapse of the whole economic, financial and social structure of the world is approaching. Thoughtful observers of the trend of events in the world today know that another World War is near at hand which will wipe out entire nations and plunge the whole earth in a sea of tears and blood.

“The next war,” says Guglielmo Ferrero, the famous Italian historian, “will plunge Europe into a chaos from which it will never extricate itself. The next war is the death knell of Europe . . . destruction of our western civilization.” Biblical students claim that the World War which started in 1914 was the beginning of Armageddon, and that the next war will be a continuation and completion of that prophesied event.

Why is it that the opening years of our great Dwapara Yuga are thus red with blood and black with destruction? It is simply because we must break with the past. Kali Yuga institutions are unable to survive the vibrations of the new Age. The children of Dwapara Yuga cannot build the fairer structure of the future civilization on the crumbling and ill-laid foundations of the Dark Age now definitely past. The power of Kali Yuga was based on the sword, and by the sword must it perish. 5

The handful of people who will survive the next World War, chastened and strengthened by their sufferings, will be the parent stock of those later generations who will bring the true Bronze Age civilization into being. In the words of Isaiah, “When Thy judgments are upon the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, and wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:19-21.

The Bhagavad Gita gives us the following inspiring promise of Krishna, the Incarnation of God who lived at the end of the last Silver Age of the world:

When Righteousness Declines, O Bharata!

When Wickedness Is strong,

I rise, from age to age, and take Visible shape,

And move a man with men,

Succoring the good, thrusting the evil back,

And setting Virtue on her seat again.

The last Kali Yuga of the Descending Arc, darkest span of the whole 24,000 year Equinoctial Cycle, saw the coming of two World Saviours, Gautama the Buddha and Jesus the Christ. Jesus promised that He would come to earth again, and told his disciples of the Signs or world indications that would precede His second coming. Students of Biblical prophecy and of the prophetical measurements of the Great Pyramid (which is mentioned in Isaiah 19:19-21: “There shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. . . . And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day”) are agreed that “the time of the end” is at hand, and that the Lord shall come “in power and great glory” during the time of the next World War.

The “time of the end,” so frequently mentioned in the Bible, is not the end of the world, as so many people erroneously believe, but the end of the old dispensation or order of things. The word “world” is derived from “whorl,” signifying a cycle or round.

Nicholas Roerich, the great Russian traveler, painter and mystic, tells in his book, Altai-Himalaya, how widespread are the legends and manuscripts relating to Issa (Jesus) throughout all Asia. There can be little doubt that the “missing years” of Jesus’ life, those years prior to the start of his ministry in Palestine, were spent in India, Tibet and other parts of Asia, and that He was known and beloved by the peoples of those countries.

Roerich has also pointed out how universal is the expectation in Asia of the near coming of a World Messiah. The Tibetans calculate the coming of “Someone of greatness” in 1936. The prophecies of Asia, Roerich says, relating to the arrival of the New Era, are: “First will begin an unprecedented war of all nations. Afterward brother shall rise against brother. Oceans of blood shall flow. . . . Only a few years shall elapse before every one shall hear the mighty steps of the Lord of the New Era. And one can already perceive unusual manifestations and encounter unusual people. Already they open the gates of knowledge and ripened fruits are falling from the trees. . . .

“The new era of enlightenment is awaited. Each reaches in his own way. One nearer, one further; one beautifully, one distortedly; but all are concerned with the same predestined. . . . It is so precious to hear and to repeat. The Motherland of Gerssar Kahn, 6 Ladak (Tibet), knows that the time of the regeneration has come. Khotan remembers the Signs of Maitreya6 over the ancient stupa. The Kalmucks in Karashar are awaiting the coming manifestation of the Chalice of Buddha. On Altai the Oyrots renounce Shamanism and are singing new chants to the Awaited White Burkhan. 6 The Messenger of the White Burkhan, Oirot, already rides throughout the world,. The Mongols await the appearance of the Ruler of the World and prepare the Dukang (temple) of Shambhala. 7 On Chang-thang they extol Gessar Khan6 and whisper about the hallowed borders of Shambhala. On the Brahmaputra they know about the Ashrams of Mahatmas and remember the wonderful Azaras. The Jews await the Messiah at the Bridge. The Moslems await Muntazar. 6 In Isfahan the White Horse is already saddled. The Christians of Saint Thomas await the great Advent and wear hidden signs. The Hindus know the Kalki Avatar. 6 And the Chinese at New Year light the fires before the image of Gessar Khan, 6 ruler of the World. Rigden Japo, the Ruler, is fleeting over the desert, achieving his predestined path. A blind one may ask, ‘Is it so? Is there no exaggeration in it? Perhaps some fragments of survivals are taken as beliefs of the future.’

“It means that he who questions has never been in the East. If you once were upon these sites; if you traversed many thousands of miles; if you yourself have spoken to many people, then you know the reality of what is related.”

This subject of the Lord’s second coming, of Biblical prophecy and of the indications of the Great Pyramid cannot be dealt with in this article, but those who are interested will consult the works of Dr. Grattan Guinness, David Daivdson and Frederick Haberman. A very striking series of Prophecy Letters are now appearing in the magazine, “Knowing People.”

It will suffice here to say that the Equinoctial World Age chart, which has been so fully dealt with in this long series of articles, is in harmony with Biblical and Pyramidal prophecies, and agrees with them in pointing out that all traces of Kali Yuga “civilization” shall soon be destroyed; that a world fairer and more righteous than our imagination can picture shall come into being as a fit symbol and manifestation of the Ascending Dwapara Yuga. “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Isaiah 2:4.

The enlightenment, the achievements and the aspirations of mankind shall rise with the ascending Autumnal Equinox, in conformance with God’s great plan for His children of earth. He has written His message in the stars, that all who will, may read. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice (influence) is not heard. Their line (vibration) is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” Psalms 19:1-4.

(The End.)

______

1The words which Jesus used to describe the coming tribulation of the world are also applicable to the Dark Age: “Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”

2“When the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.” Ezekiel 1:19.

3From the Greek root of this word is derived our word “chronology”.

4 In this connection, it is noteworthy that vases found in South America, and identical vases unearthed in troy by the eminent archaeologist, Schliemann, bore the inscription, “From the King Chronus of Atlantis.” Colonel Churchward contends that the pre-historical Greeks were emigrants from Atlantis; this King may thus have been the actual Chronus which the Greeks associated with their Golden Age.

5Jesus said: “All they that take the sword must perish with the sword.” Matthew 26:52.

6The coming Messiah, Who, under different names, is awaited by all peoples of the world.

7Shambhala is the name given to a place in Asia where the coming Messiah is expected to live. “Shambatyon”, a somewhat similar word, is a river mentioned in the Kabala and the Old Testament.

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