1)
Introduction
In the second
half of the twentiest century the West had to
face a flood of gurus paying the westerners back
for their colonial superiority, which was to
them primarily the result of a lack of spiritual
discipline. The complete of twentiest century
warfare can be understood as a karmic reaction
to the western colonial mentality: the oppressed
peoples couldn't make Christianity proselytizing
pay back for all their atrocities, and so God
presented us with an evening of the balance of
our own making: our imposition went against
ourselves, against the Jews and against Western
'decay' (America). This madness was not just
fascism, it was a sincere desire for a strong
and inspiring cultural lead. The West was
craving to be elevated above its primitive
medieval culture of human exploit, its lack of
true sophistication and aryan, read civilized,
human selfrespect. It turned into a show of
false ego with false authority: racism and
dictature. And this started long before the
twentiest century: it was there ever since the
Middle Ages as a vague concept of reformation
and enlightenment. Truly
the gurus knew how to state the problem and
clarify the subject of enlightenment and
reformation:
enlightenment is according to many of them the
result of forsaking desire and reformation is
nothing but the essence of religion: to be born
again to spiritual values in stead of the
materialist sex and money walk of life with its
false authority.
So what about
these gurus who apparently had a refreshing look
on our pitiful and troublesome concepts of
enlightenment and reformation: what is the
essence of their teaching and what is the
practical consequence?. And how does it compare
to the present day state of affairs as evidenced
by this site The Order of Time e.g., and how
does it relate to the future?
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2)
The essentie van de Leringen, hun
Gevolgen en Hun Relatie tot de Huidige
Srand van Zaken en de
Toekomst
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There are
several issues here to be mentioned: 1) the
personal/impersonal controversy of theology, 2)
the system of values and grace, 3) the nature
and purpose of discipleship and discipline
itself, 4) the nature of illusion and
attachment, and the final reality of liberation.
Also 5) the concept of reincarnation is of
importance to the development of western
concepts of time (as can be observed at The
Order of Time).
a)
The personal/impersonal controversy of
theology
The gurus
brought a sense of peace and happiness to the
West unknown before: they painted a reality pink
and happy as a puppy that would exist as a real
time heaven on earth. With drugs and free sex,
we thought, we could have an illegitimate
preview. Their grace seemed to be infinite; as
long as they were respected we could have
drugs
(Shivavatar
Babaji was
in favor of hasj) and free sex for spiritual
purposes (Osho;
Shree Rajneesh)
to our own desire. As no one else they
understood that prescription of the escapist
symptom was the best cure, not repression with
dogma and commandments. They were the wisdom and
freedom we were looking for, they were
the
fathers of the New
Age , the
sexual revolution and the restoration of our
fallen
prewar theosophical exercises in eastern
philosophy
(The Leader Blavatski
was fond of eating meat and there was
mention
of fraud and homosexuality as well of racial
theory about
them).
But soon there
appeared clouds at the horizon of the postwar
new enlightenment: it was not just the Vietnam
war and the ever increasing materialist desire
of the Westerner. It was not just the failure of
many people adhering who turned out to be
nothing but a bunch of losers. It was far more
complicated than that. On closer study these
gurus were fighting themselves: none of them
really agreed with the other. Each was
denouncing the other: they wouldn't initiate one
another like the Baptist did with the christian
Lord, or respect one another's system and thus
had no
coherence
in their preaching to the West: the best we
nowadays can make of it is an
idea of multicultural integration where all
these gurus would neatly be
classified
as hindu, muslim or buddhist subculture and as
such be heartened with an hour of television and
a magazine next to the request to properly
integrate with the local christian community:
speak the language and abide by the mode of
cultural conduct. The essence of all the
quarrels among themselves reminded of our own
christian quarrels of reformation: and indeed
they preached from their vedic scriptures that
it is the fate of modern man to live the
"Age
of Quarrel"
also called Kali Yuga or The Iron Age (modern
ever since the fall down of vedic culture after
the disappearance of the Lord of - bhakti -Yoga,
Krishna,
with the great 'world'war of the
Mahâbhârata).
Some
of the gurus stressed the impersonal liberation
out of any false authority of ego and teachers
(gurus Krishnamurti
and Bhagavan
Sree
Rajneesh/Osho).
Others stressed the importance of devotion to
the guru and the personal Lord (e.g.
gurus
Swami
Prabhupâda
and Bhagavân
S'rî Sathya Sai
Baba).
These two schools of thought: the personalists
and impersonalists where both characterized by
the philosophy of illusion: the transitory world
of matter had, much like the Buddhist
philosophy, to be forsaken as illusory and one
had to live up to a concept of rebirth in a
spiritual world that reminded much of our
christian idea of heaven. There was
no
clear idea about this reality of
heaven:
how could that be a stable reality apart from
some cult of drugs, sex or meditation? Love is
the solution. Of course hate wouldn't, but what
did this really add to our christian doctrines?
In the christian monasteries we were vegetarian
already and also believers in a separate heaven
or community making a separate world of
religious virtue. That wouldn't be the solution
to the bewildering reality of recurring warfare
and collective madness as we never had before in
the twentiest century. Somehow our christian
culture had culminated to an aggression and
selfdestruction that had to be stopped
absolutely or else we would lose the whole
planet all together. Cults of meditation making
separate heavens were nothing new and thus more
a reaction to than a solution for the problem of
our increasing destruction. Many psychologists
theorized and formulated adaptations of the
teachings as gestalt therapy, new age therapies
or reformulations of psychoanalysis in the form
of some kind of cognitive and behavioral
restructuring approach.
The
scientific answer of the behavioral sciences
would rescue and replace this apparently futile
guru-attempt
to save the world from total
selfdestruction.
But
the
guru attempts were not as futile as the
behavioral sciences would
picture.
The psychologists themselves overflowed with
denial and repression making their own
rationalist ego's of false spiritual authority
we already knew of our prewar fallen attempts to
integrate eastern and western philosophy.
The
gurus made an essential contribution to our
western culture in abridging the gap
between
religion
and science in the behavioral sciences
themselves. They clarified in their quarrels
about the personal/impersonal approach that a
school of personal and confidential teaching is
there to realize that
the
mature state of selfrealization was founded on
spiritual discipline and individual aligning to
the impersonal formless God above us
all more
than on religious rituals, community gathering,
religious dogma or psychological egodrives
against it. With this
they
as well confirmed
the psychologists who declared all religion
superstitious, regressive or falsifying,
as
well as denounced
them in being undisciplined themselves: how can
one ever preach spiritual, mental sanity without
ever preaching or teaching a proper valuesystem
and discipline? Mere
rationalizing cognitive restructuring was not a
simple valuefree affair but more a conversion to
classical spiritual
values.
This was the merit of the gurus:
they
declared the ego holy fighting
it;
the guruparadox of teaching. The ego had to be
aligned with the soul and not to be destroyed or
elevated to the status of worship. We had to
balance to spiritual values and realize our
mature selfresponsibility of being sane ego's to
a virtuous liberated and disciplined
soul.
All this could
be recognized on the
condition of one rule: confidential information
cannot be disclosed.
In fact, not even the name of our christian Lord
can be betrayed although everyone knows Him. The
ego purified cannot dominate any longer in the
postmodern society: it may freak, it may scream
and misbehave, but it may not dominate for
conquering the world and warfare any longer.
We
cannot afford us an absolute of whatever ego, or
bodily fixation, be it holy or unholy.
Thus the
conflict between the personal and impersonal
doctrines is solved: the message is more
important than the messenger, although also
about this there would exist and again will be
debates and quarrels (as e.g. with of the
Marshall
Macluhan
ego-age dictum: the medium, read the body of
ego, is the message). Therefore are, with the
exception of this article (department
'personal') and the introductions, for most of
the content of the internet site
The
Order of Time
or much of Internet in general, there
only
pseudonyms and
initials
as consequent as possible or, philsophically
authentic, no references at all here and there.
The modern age of the rebellious, experimenting
and booming naive ego is over,
the
postmodern multitude that revives the virtue and
values of the selfrealized, restricted and
subservient ego is
in.
b)
The system of values and grace
The great
importance of the gurus lies in their preaching
of the eternal values. Christianity celebrated a
traditional set of values known as the ten
commandments. The gurus made them comprehensible
and attainable: they combined them into a few
basic values that could easily be remembered and
would still make enough of a challenge to find
all the other commandments in them as a natural
consequence of spiritual integrity and
intelligence. They for instance did not stress
the importance of respecting the parents or
fight the worship of idols. They in fact
preached the (temporal) denouncing of the
parental (false) authority and propagated an
instrumental meditation on all forms of God,
idols or not. They did fight
fruitive
labor
though as an act of the ego and reserved the
profit of creative selfrealization to
themselves: only one can be the leader and
teacher. Only in a very
limited sense they did not denounce individual
contributions in therapy and
research-writings.
Most of them have a strict body of literature
and practice to be followed as a school without
permitting further amending to it. Guru
Bhagavân
Sathya Sai Baba
encourages to write books, as long as they
concern him, just like guru Bhagavân
S'rî Rajneesh
(Osho)
encouraged his followers to make therapies of
their own as long as they would accept his own
creative findings in spiritual innovation. In
many ways the gurus excelled in propagating the
selfrealization of their pupils without
neglecting the importance of attention for their
own teaching. Such was the operation of their
grace which constituted
a
heavy competition commonly known as the culture
of New Age and modern spiritual
psychotherapy
relative to and expanding from the christian
doctrine and practice of gracing the
sins.
Closing
in on the essence of these values there are
several systems that stand out in their clarity
of formulation next to the biblical ten
commandments: Bhagavân
Sathya Sai Baba
preaches sathya, prema, dharma and
ahimsâ: truth, love, righteous duty
and non-violence that would bring shanti
or peace. Yoga teachers of all kind would preach
yama & niyama in general meaning do's
and don'ts to the values of the great
(yama-) vow of ashthângayoga
(eightfold yoga): ahimsâ, sathya,
asteya, brahmacârya, aparigraha &
yama or non-violence, truth, non-stealing,
celibacy, non-possessiveness and renunciation,
leading to the (niyama) practices of
s'aucam, tapas, svadhyaya, santush and
îs'varapranidhâna, or purity,
penance, selfstudy, contentment and service to
the Lord. The vaishnav school of Swami
Prabhupâda
preaches dayâ, sathya, tapas &
s'auca or compassion, truthfulness, penance
and purity as the basic values for their
regulative principles of respectively not eating
meat fish and eggs, non-intoxication,
non-gambling and abstaining from illicit sex. In
sum they
improvise all on a basic set of eternal values
best formulated by the vaishnav school and
christian-wise recognized as the commandments of
thou shalt not kill, steal, lie and
fornicate.
The other commandments can be considered Jewish
theological derivatives of these basic eternal
general spiritual values. With guru
Bhagavân
Sathya Sai Baba
truth means not to lie while
non-violence
means not to kill [to be a vegetarian].
How love and duty imply not to fornicate and not
to steal one must realize oneself with him. In
eightfold yoga the yama-don'ts imply that
non-violence means not to kill, truth means not
to lie, celibacy means not to fornicate and
non-possessiveness and non-stealing that one
wouldn't acquire more than one needs, thus
making up the renunciation of the yama that is
almost identical to the vaishnav set of values.
The vaishnav fuses from this yama the
niyama service to the lord, contentment
and selfknowledge in one idea of truth or not
lying, thus defining bhakti or devotional
service as the true practice. (compare this to
the
values of The Order of
Time
that make up a likewise set next to derivatives
of principles, a compromise of reality and a
resultant set of the virtues of grace: honesty,
loyalty, sharing and caring).
Many other
gurus have some kind of improvisation on these
values (e.g. the alleged Jesus Christ reborn,
the redeemer Maitreya
of the
Share-movement
preaching sharing for its own sake) in general
meaning that one should learn to control the
sexual urge, become a vegetarian, offer ones
profit to the cause and stay a loyal member of
the spiritual community. 
To
all these practices the remaining question is:
how
does the individual survive the
group,
how
would the ultimate social definition be that
would add something to christian culture that
was not there
before? To
make a group-ego out of some spiritual
leadership fighting the individual ego is
generally recognized as
the
problem of not only the
guru-cults:
they make nice schools of holy virtues, but how
does it save the individual to the actual
society that it has to adapt to? How does
fighting the ego within a cult of even christian
reform actually protect the normal ego of mature
selfresponsible societal adaptation? It is clear
how the ego of the guru or teacher himself is
adapted. It is not so clear whether the pupils
will ever be able to follow that example, or
whether that would be the purpose of the
teaching in the first place. One can e.g. become
a vaishnav guru oneself in disciplic succession.
But does maintaining to a school that way make
it possible to kiss it goodbye like one should
with any other teaching job on a school in order
to become an equal to one's fellow man? In
Buddhism the practice is to have the youngster
meditate with the teachers in order to become
disciplined and normally adapted fathers and be
indeed a school of spiritual discipline one is
expected to graduate from. In Christianity one
uses the monastery as an endstation of
materialism to wait for heaven like one does in
a home for the old-aged. Both religious
realities have a set function with their
societies defining liberation as a success
of
spiritually disciplined service as a
selfresponsible adult member. The common
denominator for this success is found in the
word order and not so much in the concept of the
guru. A
system of values and grace only seems to be
successful if the teachers and the teaching turn
out to be the catalyst in stead of the purpose.
Thus the contribution of their presence must be
sought in the essence of their teachings: in
what way do these contribute to our own
christian liberation in service?
c)
The nature and purpose of discipleship and
discipline itself.
As
said above to the essence of teaching one should
look for the concept of order that is added by
the gurus.
Stated is their comprehensive view and
intelligent grace with their quartet reductions
to the ten commandments. The danger is to get
attached to the school in stead of graduating to
the selfresponsible and disciplined mature state
of selfrealization. Many a woman can tell that
many men suffer this problem in the same school
of love figuring herself as the goddess and
church of matrimony. To become an equal is the
challenge of selfrealization. To become a God,
goddess, guru or school is not actually the
purpose and might even be considered a failure:
the teacher has to teach until he (or she)
realizes what creates the dependency of the
pupils and thus is himself just another pupil of
his (her) own school. The leader of
psychoanalysis Dr.
Sigmund Freud
stated clearly that helping people was not the
purpose of his school: it was for him a
scientific researchmethod to find out how to
arrive at civilized selfrealization in the true
knowledge of the human predicament. Still he had
difficulty accepting the maturity of his own
pupils that would resist his authority: he
created ego as he wanted, but he didn't know how
to escape from suffering it. For
that
the nature and purpose of discipleship and
discipline has to be
understood.
The classical
teachings of the gurus state that the ego is a
trap: it gives all the trouble of desire and
selfhood. With that they refer to
the
falsehood or material identification with the
(desires of the) body that would be the source
of fear and modern neurosis (the realization of
being a
stimulus-response-junkie).
The ego properly aligned and disciplined in the
service of the liberated state they would
support and work for. Bhagavan
Shree Rajneesh
(Osho)
stated even that one would need a big ego in
order to
be able to drop it. But there is more about it:
there is a
whole cult of mystery getting enlightened and
reborn
to a new world and consciousness. It is not
simply a school or piece of knowledge one can
chew on for one's health. It concerns a
conversion, a complete change of paradigm,
outlook, lifestyle and consciousness. This
refers to a process of gradual evolution step by
step (compare the
picture of emancipation of the guide of The
Order of Time)
towards total surrender to the authentic service
to the soul: the realization of ones true nature
(swadharma). This would also comprise the
realization of past lives or the
clearing
up of ones identifications and the acquisition
of a divyam s'rotam or divine hearing to the
inner voice
(the 'holy spirit'). This process
must
be carefully
guarded
as failing in it would lead to insanity: a
schizophrenia of a divided self estranged from
the oneness of the holy spirit in a hell of
internal demoniac voices (by the devil
possessed; leading to whichcraft & heresy).
This
divine hearing or holy spirit as the church
calls it or de âtma-nivedanam or literally
the: 'self-or soul-communication' as the Hare
Krishna's call it, can be called the essence of
the selfrealization
process
and the real purpose of discipleship and the
discipline itself.
René
Descartes
the philosopher of reason and the method as the
founder of the scientific discipline would
conclude with his cogito ergo sum (I
think therefore I am) to the same ultimate
truth: the true realization of the method and
the discipline lies in the ability to think. As
simple as that. This thinking would be something
completely different from what we expected, the
gurus have taught us:
it
is no small affair to become a schizophrenic,
wrestle with the bad spirit for the sake of a
holy one and turn out ultimately as a normally
thinking person.
Our Lord Jesus Christ did this wrestling but was
crucified before he could be caught drinking a
beer in the pub as an unobtrusive but liberated
equal. Freaking out on this realization of the
holy spirit that would defy all false power over
the world is the catch of madness that led so
many failures of selfrealization to the asylum:
ill disciplined with the ether can the breaking
through of the inner reality of the spirit and
power of God not be controlled and turns it into
a hell which can effect like an induction
psychosis as happened with the Führer of
Fascism (Adolf Hitler).
One
individual deranging can induce the madness of a
worldwar.
Guru
Krishnamurti
therefore taught against führers and was in
favor of realizing oneself
as being the world.
Pacifying that holistic self-world and saving it
would be equal to bringing peace and
intelligence of meditation to the world outside.
The conflict perceived in the spirit might not
differ from the war going on outside in the
material world. What would the brain else be but
a sense-organ? Likewise the guru
Maharishi
Yogi
of
transcendental meditation taught that a group of
successful meditators would effectively fight
crime in the environment and bring peace to the
whole world just sitting still. Guru
Bhagavân
Shree Rajneesh
(Osho)
spoke of a buddhafield that would wipe away all
suffering and unenlightenment miles around when
he did his energy-darshan.
Gurus
at this point turn out to be the guardians of
enlightenment:
they have a calling to keep the madness out of
it and prevent a collective derangement
following an ill-disciplined selfrealizer or
bogus-guru. Christian reformation suffered as
known likewise a lot of madness. All kinds of
Christians killed one another calling each other
heretics to the true faith. Much of our wars are
explained by this failure of spiritual
discipline. How does one really stay out of
repression and denial, projection and paranoia
especially in the enlightened
state. The vaishnava's have a clearcut
answer to the problem of what they call the
mâyâvâdi or bogus-guru
who says that the material world is an illusion:
they say that enlightenment is not the purpose
at all of the spiritual discipline, it is just a
byproduct of liberation which is something
completely different. Enlightenment is simply
the state of relief as a result of giving up
desires relaxing in the natural order of time.
This is the picture Christianity has of Hinduism
and yoga: it is a selfish thing making no
sacrifice or service. But the Bhagavad
Gîtâ explains differently: the
purpose is to attain to service, otherwise the
yoga would be nothing but cheating. It takes
Lord Krishna
the 800 verses of the
Gîtâ
to explain this to the confused warrior
confronted with his enemy in order to give him
the fighting spirit.
The
essence of yoga is in the
sacrifice
otherwise one will get attached to the world He
explains in ch.3:9.
This sacrifice must be according to one's
nature, and the
realization of one's nature is the purpose of
the discipline. This discipline can therefore be
no easy job:
it means that one has to answer to the highest
standards: the warrior fighting for
righteousness could not have any selfish motive,
he would have to fight even in the interest of
the enemy himself. Nothing can be excluded as
the supreme of God would be in all and
everything. Fascism was the first collective
attempt at conscious karma-yoga, working
for the unity: bitter in the beginning, but
sweet in the end the Gîtâ clarifies.
And bitter it was indeed to present the Jews the
bill of the biblical jealousy with God and
ourselves as westerners the bill of slavery and
colonialism. But the world survived its major
war and nuclear holocaust, licked its wounds and
had to face the gurus as the deus ex
machina of modernity: thou shalt be disciple
and disciplined preferably before taking
responsibility.
d)
The nature of illusion and attachment, and the
final reality of liberation.
Not having a
discipline the gurus teach us, we are in a state
of illusion: we do not see the reality as it is.
Mâyâ, the term used, is
etymologically recognized as not-this. Not-this
is the definition of illusion according to the
Veda. Popularly this motive has been expressed
by modern psychotherapy as the here-and now
realization of sanity. This is where concepts
of locality (loka, planet, place) and time come
in view. The western psychiatrist estimates
the sanity as a proper orientation in space and
time. Scientific research pointed out that there
would be a distorted sense of time with the
mental patient, especially the schizophrenic.
(just like e=m.c2 physicist Albert
Einstein
declaring that the perception of time depends on
the relative motion of the observer,
see
former article).
We saw that the essence of the success of the
eternal values was simply known as a spiritual
discipline of order in service. Without it a
loss of control and a fall in illusion would be
the reality. Anyone will agree with the
statement that it is difficult nay impossible to
have full control over the spirit. One must
always try to direct ones mind, but success is
dependent on more than one may control. Just
like in the material world the spiritual world
has its own laws. Identifications work like
living people. The analytical
psychologist
Carl Jung
spoke of archetypes that would have their own
existence in the collective unconscious. Occult
media speak of real people and spirits in the
beyond and many religions speak of ancestors or
guardian angels that accompany the soul in its
material journey. The gurus may speak about the
karma, workload or consequence of actions, from
past lives that is working out in the full
spirit and taking the lead over the motives of
action. It
is to them no simple psychology of a straight
lifetime of frustrations trauma's and guilt
about weakness.
It is much more the total reminiscence of ones
existence in all time, past, present and
possibly even some preconception of a path drawn
out into the future by the leading spirits in
the world. And this would apply to all lifeforms
one could have possibly lived or being
identified with.
Whatever the
reality beyond might be, it is
certainly
a personal affair to
appease the mind and to arrive at a spirit that
is in full touch with the material world. In
fact hardly a single person is capable of 24
hours of conscious control for longer than a
couple of days. Sleep deprivation can lead to
serious selfintoxication if the non-sleeper does
not take enough rest. Resting usually the person
loses consciousness in order to have the brain
freak out on all its repressed neural pathways
to restore a balance of brain-activity.
Getting
out of balance with the functions of the brain
is the normal routine of the human
being:
either the left brain is over stressed or the
right brain, or one is too cortical or too
physical, too emotional or too controlled. One
may be overactive or overly receptive and
passive. Whatever
the disharmony in this organic brain might be,
work is felt as a fatigue that needs
balancing.
The properly
balanced person would overcome the state of
illusion, the Bhagavad Gîtâ assures
us. Not taken away by heat and cold, sorrow or
happiness the true devotee would keep balance
(Bhagavad
Gîtâ.
II-15).
Equilibrium is a central issue in the spiritual
endeavor against the misconceptions of the seer.
Service this way to the holy purpose would keep
one free of attachments that lead to the
bewilderment of the illusioned state.
Bhagavân
S'rî Sathya Sai
Baba
proposed for this a four times 6 discipline of
dividing the activities of the day over the
common fields of work (see fields
of work
of The Order of Time). Sex and money are the
motives of attachment while the eternal values
would settle for the interest of the balanced
divine that would maintain the intelligence.
Attachment
though is not such a simple thing to understand.
Attachment in fact is the term used for all
ignorance about cause and effect. If one doesn't
understand how the mind goes, one is ignorant.
If one reasons from the proper cause, one must
be enlightened. This
is the position held by the gurus: They speak in
one breath of mâyâ (illusion)
avidyâ (ignorance)and
râga
(attachment).
This would constitute the psychology of the
sinner that would always suffer imbalance and
lack of control. In western terms the question
would be: how to get out of the psychology in
the negative sense. The western answer is either
religious: stop sinning and everything will work
out right or would be: go to the psychologist
and talk it over your here and now troubles and
lack of control. As the gurus would advise to
bed early and rise early and set for a proper
scheme of service, meditation and socializing
(as they all have their ashrams ), so also the
therapists tell their clients to have contracts
of agreement interacting with others and
schedules of work and rest and doing basic
exercises not unlike those of yoga. The values
may differ but the therapy looks the same:
living up to the eternal values or not, one must
follow a certain order of day and a calendar for
having holidays, days of rest and celebration of
the freedom from fruitive action.
In the
political and theological confusion about what
the proper order of time would be, is
the
concept of labor of
central importance [see also the
Filognostic
Manifesto
about work and unemployment]. What kind of
work would one have to do to keep out of trouble
and have an automatically pleasant, righteous
and servile mind? Some say right association
gives right thinking, some say the opposite:
only facing the challenges of the ones in need
(bad association) would give the chance for
service and liberation. Thus the gurus speak of
karma: it is not a simple concept of work but a
highly personal complication of the soul that
permits
no easy settlement by law or
commandment.
None of the holy scriptures speak of
unemployment. They speak of different types of
work: karma, akarma and vikarma.
Karma being material labor, akarma not
being unemployment, but (voluntary) labor for
the spirit and vikarma being unwanted
labor like unrighteous action or crime. Many
modern gurus improvised on this vedic reality
giving a home to all kinds of volunteers that
would support their ashram. But checking those
ashrams out one will rarely find an employment
office or even a welcome committee for the lost
soul. The first lesson in the ashram is to mind
ones own spiritual business and not worry too
much about material labor. Some service might be
welcome, but you won't be paid for it or even
receive food and shelter. They make no nice
monasteries were your hair is cut, your clothes
are taken and everything is taken care of by the
order. In
fact the concept of order is completely revised
by the gurus. They
directed it to the nature of the individual in
an extend that no monastery ever could achieve.
The master knows the disciple and has a unique
relationship. Not so much of a standard routine
like in a school or fixed cult. Only when the
master has died and things are taken care of by
pupils something like an organized order with
clear instructions and set roles comes about (a
religion, or cult): the master doesn't amend any
longer, the job is done. Still with all of
them there is an order of time that would offer
a program for the day. Again here the same
conclusion can be drawn: each authority complies
with a settlement of time:
it
is the ultimate reality and denominator of all
gurus, religions, governments and laboring
societies.
Thus the final liberation at least has this mark
of identity: the
liberated person serves a definite settlement of
time making up and defining the actions within a
specific cultural
framework.
Illusion,
in a relative sense, is nothing but the result
of parting from that framework and attachment
(as the root of misery) is nothing but the
resistance from unregulated desires working
against one's own
order.
e)
The concept of reincarnation of importance to
the development of western concepts of
time.
In the western
world there has been a lot of controversy with
the concept of time. Most salient is the
resistance against the concept of reincarnation
amongst the Christians [see also the aricle
'Reïncarnation
and the fear of
time'].
According to St.
Augustine
the idea of reincarnation would be inadmissible
as the Lord would never be crucified again. The
sinner would never have to pay again for the
sins once redeemed being thrown back in the
material world. One is liberated to be an
eternally liberated soul [called
nitya-mukta by the vaishnav' gurus].
The gnostic christian alternative opposing dares
to speak about accounts of our redeemer as a
propagator of a more spiritual, vegetarian type
of man with an uniquely personal point of view
as opposed to mechanical time-regulated ritual,
worship and onesided social routines of control.
In fact this gnostic tradition is the frustrated
authentic spirituality of the christian world.
Each would and should realize his own unique
nature of service to the more immaterial and
impersonal God of nature and time to which our
Lord would only be but an example to lead the
way. Again the e.g. vaishnav gurus speak like
the church of more remote realities. One does
not reincarnate for the same world but for a
higher one, like the christian heaven, although
they recognize the possibility of falling down
from higher planets to lower ones. More
independent gurus speak less opposing of the
cycle of birth and death one has to escape from
into the impersonal void for the sake of the
eternal soul: either one dissolves in it or one
has to wander around this material world life
after life until the karma is over. The
Bhagavad
Gîtâ
in 4:7
speaks of avatâra's that descend from
heaven to correct the misdeeds and to protect
the devotees. So in sum there is incarnation in
this material world but not really reincarnation
in the sense of returning to the same place.
Once a job is done that is a permanent
acquisition of the soul. Another birth in
the same situation would be a birth of grace, a
gift of God for the redemption, hope and belief
of another mission with others. This soul would
be the continuity of self-awareness that in
grace is opposing the changing material nature
with its illusory power of false
attraction.
The fact is
that Christianity with its motive of ascension
defied, led by St.
Augustine,
the cyclic concept of time [see also
'religious
time']:
it was declared invalid as mere repetition would
be an offense to personal evolution: the idea of
fixed conditionings out which there is no real
escape ['nitya-badda' also a vaishnav
term] is unacceptable to the original
christian soul and the more common spiritual
teaching. The story though wasn't finished with
this realization. The
predilection for linear time ultimately led to
the perversion of the natural sense of cyclic
time and its
conditionings:
the newtonian concept of time was replaced by
the electromagnetic concept of linear time
without
another stable reference but the unit of
measurement
in a politically dictated concept of
standardtime. The
resentment against the idea of dead repetition
obscured the reality of cyclic time as the
maintaining capacity of God and His
Goodness.
God can also be considered the repeated
affirmation by nature of good habits thus
maintaining and feeding it into evolution and
refinement. The exact theme of evolution that
was wanted was fought with the defiance of
cyclic time. Even
the gurus turn out to be in mâyâ
themselves overly stressing the bad and
destructive nature of
time
pleading for other worlds and remote heavens. In
their speeches they speak about attaining to the
timeless happy void of nonmaterial
reality etc. as
if it could exist for itself without the
time-bound material
world.
All want to forget
the God of time that is knocking on one's door
as The maintainer of the Goodness and harmony
every day. With the gurus concerning the time it
all depends on the correct or incorrect
interpretation of the verses III-53-55 of the
yoga-sûtras
of
Patañjali.
He says there: It is so, that by controlling
oneself with the succession of the moments of
time one reaches the spiritual insight of full
realization. (54) From this is one of
understanding for that what stays the same
separate from another state of being, place,
characteristic or birth. But behind the word
control must be read between brackets:
[thus with the help of a good schedule of
meditation no longer being disturbed in
time], because only then will one
understand that one cannot cancel the soul with
the time or the time with the soul. Also the
time is God explains Vyâsa in the
Gîtâ
with Krishna identifying three times with the
Time. Also Patañjali returns to this
later in the text in IV-33 when he says: The
order of things becomes crystal clear when one
no longer fights the uninterrupted flow of
moments, when one no longer wages against the
time. So it is indeed about the order of
time one doesn't resist when one as a mediator
accepts it as it is, for only then will the
witness, the soul, find stability.
It seems to be
a
universal
repression
of the true nature of God as a maintaining,
evolving, dynamic, changing and feeding force in
nature that automatically sifts out everything
that does
not last and thus is not
true
(according to the
Gîtâ 2:
16).
Resistance against the time of God might be
eternal, but so is the God of Time itself. Maybe
we have hit with this upon the basic psychology
of mankind: we
hate the God of
time
(father time) since 
he
always steals our lives and puts everything to
an end. He subdues all and appeases all in death
and destruction. This
realization turns everything
around:
not man is eternal, but matter. We souls go in
and out of the material world that is as eternal
as its absolutely relative time. Our human forms
are the temporal, the elements of matter are
eternal. We just can't stand to see our material
games destroyed by time, and therefore time
(especially the cyclic reminding us of our
failure) would be bad.
This
misconception brought great havoc to
mankind.
Fighting time itself we declared God dead as
standardtime itself. Time is not just linear and
a static stiff scheme: time is the true (dynamic
and also cyclic) nature of the Lord. Great yogis
, thus says the paramparâ-guru
(Vaishnav gurus in disciplic succession or
âcârya's) in the
Bhâgavata
Purâna
meditate on the celestial sky spinning around
like a wheel (cakra, compare
the
cakra design of The Order of
time.
see
time-quotes)
because it is the visible part of The Supreme
personality of Godhead Himself: "All glory to
Him who has taken the form of time and brings
peace to all the living worlds and who is the
subduer of the demigods, the Supreme Personality
of God we meditate upon." (S
B canto 5: 23-4).
This is the scriptural truth.
But
the gurus rarely speak of these
verses.
These
verses compete with their own temporal
existence, just like it did with the ego of the
holy fathers of the christian church who denied
the cyclic nature of time
(remember
that the earth was supposed to stay flat
too).
3)
The Analytic Conclusion.
In the
twentiest century it was the modern psychologist
that pointed out the importance of conditionings
in the theory of human behavior next to which
modern physics also has put a relative to the
linearity of time declaring it dependent upon
the frame of reference of the observer.
Behavioral therapy would be nothing else but a
therapy of time: the conditionings had to be
compensated, outrated, outdone, desensitized,
reconditioned, etc. Our behavior wouldn't be a
karmic fix but a temporary engagement of
possible error. Their
statements were in fact in line with the gurus
declaring that karma yoga would undo many
of the trauma's and bad habits of material
conditioning. But
nor the behavioral scientist nor the gurus would
speak in favor of an alternative of
time-management for the whole world in general.
Nobody in
fact consciously dares to take the role of the
Lord of Time making an imposition of it, as,
according to Daniel in the Old Testament, that
would be an act of the beast, eventually
suppress holiness and would even be an
impossible endeavor as, according a known french
philosopher (Henri
Bergson),
time in reality is a mere inscrutable duration.
And indeed along these lines took the pointless
and unconscious actions of the past century of
political pragmatic and reductionist mankind
place in manipulating the concept of time. In
the sixties we declared with them not just the
sexual revolution (after the french and russian
one), but also the chinese cultural one and the
scientific paradigmatic one; actions that were
completely in
defiance of what
Dr.
Sigmund Freud,
the father of Psychoanalysis, had told us: what
ever you do, do it in free
association,
be a complement to the culture and not a monster
of repression and denial of not only your sexual
nature. The real revolution is of course the
natural one of the cyclic time of the revolving
earth. 'Thou shall respect The Father', Freud
would maintain to himself fighting the
repression. But did he suspect
he
was speaking for the real Father Of Time. This
analytical conclusion was
lacking
and present day (1990-ies) psychoanalysts are
still wrestling on how to relate to the object
(of time and repression) without clearly
offering or understanding
what alternatives of cultural time actually
mean. It means that the whole world, each
person, each individual and social group has its
own settlement of time, its days of celebration
its own calendar and even scale, consciousness
and concepts, terms, language and genes of
time. To
respect this is the factual mission of the gurus
and the psychotherapists: we should not repress
our own past nor the individual cultures of the
souls fixed in material orders of time devoted
to God, but find ways and means to have them
all respected relative to the one reality of the
natural order (of God) that offers the true and
real of time (compare
the clock-design of The Order of
Time)
that nobody in reality can deny or will defy for
long as Spinoza also says. To this, finally,
should the digital revolution of information be
an exercise of respect and not another drama of
repression and denial to which no future can be
seen, if we really want to be of progress with
the new medium.
Escaping from
the warning of the Holy Bible not to impose
timeschemes, a world of mutual time respect
relative
to a
common concept of natural true and
representative time, would exclude the dominance
of any system (and thus even please the
anarchist/libertarian): only comprehensively
comparing each cultural fix to the dynamic
reality of it in nature (i.e. the position of
the sun, moon and stars and spin of earth in an
astrarium representation) would give the proper
sense of relativity, consciousness and freedom
of association, irrespective whatever political
/economic concept of dominating
(american/german/french) standardtime, swiss
swatchbeats or Greenwich-worldtime.
Each
to his own time and the time of God (read:
nature) for all. And
this comparing and eventual
practical
leaping
to the order of God, would do justice to the
cause of the gurus: they, politically conscious,
never explicitly asked for it but they always
preached for it.
Anand
Aadhar
Prabhu
(expanded
with Patañjali quotes and discussion:
22-08-2006)
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