Deep

Practice Of Yoga

15 posts in this topic

Here is video by Mr. Lakhani. He is a professor at Eton College in England. His background is in Physics but he teaches Hinduism. People ask him about moksha and he answers them. 

 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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I noticed the video duration is 11:11 :o

There is one issue - he keeps calling ancient Indian philosophy as Hinduism. There was no Hinduism at that time, and no Hindus. That term was slapped on Indians by western attackers, so people living beyond Indus river were called Indu, which became Hindu. This was just recently. They could not understand the culture, it was too complex and beyond their grasp, they just called it a "religion" and tried to destroy it. Westerners (mostly from today's mid-east and then British) were mostly successful in destroying the culture, the rest got rotten away by extreme poverty, caste system and wars. Today's Hinduism is a grand mixture of a variety of gods, deities and rituals or festivals, very little resemblance with Yoga or Samkhya or Vedanta.

Secondly, he doesn't mention Vedas, which predate all that stuff and materialism, science and maths that developed and spread to west via Greece and Persia. Vedas clearly put forward the concept of Atman and Brahman. So Kapil is not the start of spirituality, nor of the science of consciousness. The credit is usually given to seven seers, the Saptrishis, disciples of Shiva, the Aadiyogi of Himalayas.

However, I don't claim to know everything, that's what I was taught in school and by the great teachers on the subject. I was not there to see it all happening :D so please forgive if the above is not correct.

 

Edited by PureExp

My Blog : : Pure Experiences : : Pure Knowledge

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@PureExp He knows what you're saying, but in this video he is only talking about Raja yoga. He says that Kapiel was before Vyasa and all of those other dudes. I don't know what's right, I'm just posting the video for fun. 

I think part of the problem is that India's consciousness was lower that's why the British were able to destroy many things. Although many things of the culture remained intact but many were lost. "Hindus" also don't believe in converting or conquering, but that doesn't mean we have to take abuse from anyone. 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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40 minutes ago, Deep said:

I think part of the problem is that India's consciousness was lower that's why the British were able to destroy many things.

With the help of the meditation techniques of Buddha and Mahavira, hundreds of thousands of people attained to the fourth body. As soon as they reached the fourth plane their personalities became feminine. By this I mean that the passive side of their nature developed. Violence and anger vanished as aggression left them; affection, love, compassion and nonviolence increased.

Femininity took hold as the inherent nature of this whole country, and my feeling is that this was the cause of the great amount of aggression that occurred here. All the neighboring masculine countries succeeded in subduing the feminine personality of India

In one way a very valuable thing took place – that we experienced wonderful things on the fourth plane. But on the plane of the first body we found ourselves in difficulty. Everything has to be compensated for. Those who were prepared to leave the treasures of the fourth plane attained the wealth and kingdoms of the first plane. Those who were not prepared to leave the pleasures of the fourth plane had to give up many things on the first.

After Buddha and Mahavira, India lost its aggressive instinct and became receptive. So with whoever came we made it a point to be-come receptive; whoever came we absorbed them within us. The question of segregating them never occurred to us, let alone attacking them. That question was lost forever because our personality had become feminine. India became one large womb that harbored all who came to her. We denied no one; we never tried to remove any of these aggressors from among us, because the warlike quality that was required in order to fight was no longer within us.

With the great men it became lost, and the ordinary masses followed the great men. And the masses had to remain dominated by them. The ordinary man heard the great men talk on nonviolence, compassion, and saw them living accordingly, so he accepted their word and remained silent. He could have fought but he had no leader.

If the history of the world is ever written from a spiritual point of view – when we no longer will consider only physical happenings as history but instead will begin to consider the happenings on the plane of consciousness as history, that is the real history – then we shall understand that whenever a country turns spiritual it becomes feminine. And whenever it becomes feminine, lesser cultures, most ordinary cultures, will defeat it. It is a surprising fact that those who conquered India belonged to very backward cultures. In many ways they were wild barbarians, whether they were Turks or Mongols or the Moguls. They had no culture, but in a sense they were men – though barbarious – and we were feminine, passive. We had no other way than to absorb them within us.

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Can someone explain in short what the major types of yoga are? It seems there are many different brenches and I have no clue what to search for and what they offer. Until now I have been doing some kundalini yoga exercises from youtube.

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13 minutes ago, Principium Nexus said:

Can someone explain in short what the major types of yoga are?

There are four ways to approach truth, to be connected with truth.

The first is known in the East as karma yoga – the way of action. Man has three dimensions in him: action, knowing, feeling; so three ways use these three directions: action, knowing feeling.

You can act, and you can act with total absorption, and you can offer your act to God. You can act without becoming a doer. That is the first way – karma yoga: being in action without being a doer. You let God do. You let God be in you. You efface yourself.

In this, the path of action, consciousness changes the content. These two things have to be understood: consciousness and content. This is all that your life consists of. There is something which is the knower in you and something which is the known. 

On the path of action, consciousness changes the content. That is what action is. You see a rock. Somebody may stumble upon it – because it is getting dark, night is falling. So you remove the rock from the path. This is action. What have you done? Consciousness has changed the content. On the path of action, content is important and has to be changed. If somebody is ill and you go and serve him and you give him medicine, you are changing the content. If somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning, you jump in and you save him from drowning. You have changed the content.

Action is content-directed. Action is will – something has to be done. Of course, if the will remains ego-oriented, then you will not be religious. You will be a great doer, but not religious. And your path will be of action but not towards God. When you allow God to become your will, when you say, ’Let thy will be mine,’ when you surrender your will to the feet of god and his will starts flowing through you, then it is the path of action – karma yoga.

The goal of karma yoga is freedom, moksha – to change the contents so much that nothing antagonistic is left there; nothing harmful is left there; to change the content according to your heart’s desire, so that you can be free of limitations. This is the path of Jainism, yoga, and all action-oriented philosophies.

The second path is the path of knowledge, knowing – gyana yoga. On the second path consciousness is changed by the content. On the first, content is changed by consciousness; on the second it is just the reverse – consciousness is changed by the content.

On the path of knowledge you simply try to see what is the case – whatsoever it is. That’s what Krishnamurti goes on teaching. That is the purest path of knowing. There is nothing to be done.

You have just to attain to clarity, to see what is the case. You have just to see that which is. You are not to do anything. You have simply to drop your prejudices and you have to drop your concepts, notions, which can interfere with reality, which can interpret reality, which can color reality. You have to drop all that you carry in your mind as a priori notions – and then let the reality be there. Whatsoever it is, you just see it. And that changes you.

To know the real is to be transformed. Knowing the real as the real, you cannot act in any other way than the way of reality. Once you have known the reality, reality starts changing you. Consciousness is changed by the content.

The goal of the path of knowledge is truth. The goal of karma yoga, the path of action or will, was freedom. The goal of the path of knowing – Vedanta, Hinduism, Sankhya, and other paths of knowing, Ashtavakra, Krishnamurti – is truth, Brahman. Thou art that. Let that be revealed, then you become that. Once you know that, you become that. By knowing God, one becomes God. Thou art that – that is the most essential phenomenon on the second path.

The third is bhakti yoga – the way of feeling. Love is the goal. Consciousness changes the content and the content changes consciousness. The change is mutual. The lover changes the beloved, the beloved changes the lover. On the path of will, consciousness changes content, on the path of knowing, content changes consciousness; on the path of feeling, both interact, both affect each other. The change is mutual. That’s why the path of feeling is more whole. The first path is half, the second path also half, but the path of love is more round, more whole, because it has both in it.

Vaishnavas, Christianity, Islam, and other paths; Ramanuja, Vallabha, and other devotees – they say that subject and object are not separate. So if one changes the other, then something will remain unbalanced. Let both change each other. Let both meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and there is great joy, let there be an orgasm between consciousness and content, between you and reality, between that and thou. Let it not be only a knowing, let it not be only partial – let it be total.

These are the three ordinary paths. Sufism is the fourth. One of the greatest Sufis of this age was George Gurdjieff. His disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, has written a book called The Fourth Way. It is very symbolic.

What is this fourth way? If it is neither of action, nor of knowing, nor of feeling – because these are the three faculties – then what is this fourth way? The fourth way is the way of transcendence. In India this is called raja yoga – the royal path, the fourth way. Neither consciousness changes the content, nor the content changes consciousness. Nothing changes nothing. All is as it is with no change. Content is there, consciousness is here, and no change is happening. No effort to change is there.

This is what I mean by being. With all the three paths something remains in the mind that has to be done. With the fourth, all becoming disappears. You simply accept whatsoever is. In that acceptance is transcendence. In that very acceptance you go beyond. You remain just a witness.

You are no longer doing anything here, you are just-being here.

A goal is not possible with the fourth way. There is no goal. With the first, the goal is freedom; with the second, truth; with the third, love. With the fourth there is no goal. Zen and Sufism belong to the fourth. That’s why Zen people say ’the pathless path, the gateless gate’ – because there is no goal. The goal-less goal. We are not going anywhere. We are not striving for anything. All that is needed is already here. It has been here all along. You have just to be silent and see. There is no need to change anything. With the fourth, the myth of change disappears.

And when there is no need to change, joy explodes – because the energy that gets involved in changing things is no longer involved anywhere; it is released. That released energy is what is called joy.

This is the fourth way, that’s why it is called raja yoga – the royal path. The king is not supposed to do anything. Servants do. The king is not supposed to do anything. He simply sits on his throne and things happen. 

The king is not expected to do anything; he simply sits there relaxed. That’s what we mean by one who is a king. Doing has disappeared, knowing has disappeared, feeling has disappeared – the king is utterly relaxed. In that relaxation it happens.

Sufi and Zen are raja yogas – the royal paths.

29 minutes ago, Principium Nexus said:

I have been doing some kundalini yoga exercises from youtube.

This is path of action.

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@Prabhaker  It sound like the fourth path is similar to non-duality? Would it be possible to walk all four paths sequentially and try to attain them all, even the non-becoming? Could one master all the paths, action, knowledge, love and being?

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2 hours ago, Principium Nexus said:

@Prabhaker  It sound like the fourth path is similar to non-duality? Would it be possible to walk all four paths sequentially and try to attain them all, even the non-becoming? Could one master all the paths, action, knowledge, love and being?

All 4 of them lead to non-duality. Yes, it's possible to mix all 4 and master them. 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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@Deep I agree. We in general tend to blame attackers from the rest of the world for the destruction here, but in part the ancients failed to protect themselves. Violence does not usually appreciate kindness and tolerance, these are taken as signs of weakness and inferiority by violent people. Anyhow I see it as Karmic consequence, business as usual from the point of view of mother nature. Lesson learnt, and now Indians use violence whenever needed, they have a huge military.

About the vedic stuff, IMO its a mystery much greater than that of pyramids, Mayans or anything else. In future people are going to dig into it, we will see something awesome (I'm hoping :) )


My Blog : : Pure Experiences : : Pure Knowledge

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6 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

With the help of the meditation techniques of Buddha and Mahavira, hundreds of thousands of people attained to the fourth body. As soon as they reached the fourth plane their personalities became feminine. By this I mean that the passive side of their nature developed. Violence and anger vanished as aggression left them; affection, love, compassion and nonviolence increased.

Femininity took hold as the inherent nature of this whole country, and my feeling is that this was the cause of the great amount of aggression that occurred here. All the neighboring masculine countries succeeded in subduing the feminine personality of India.

That surprises me because I don't think it's necessary for everyone to be liberated. That poses more questions in my mind but I'm not sure if I should ask them here. 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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1 hour ago, Deep said:

I don't think it's necessary for everyone to be liberated

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity; now, do you have to discover it again and again? You will be foolish if you discover it again and again. What is the point? One man has done it; he has given you the map. It may have taken years for him, but for you to understand it will take hours. You can go to the university and learn. 

Buddha also discovered something, Zarathustra also discovered something, but it is not like Albert Einstein’s discovery. It is not there that you have just to follow Zarathustra and his map and you will find it. You will never find it. You will have to become a Zarathustra. See the difference! 

To understand the theory of relativity, you need not become an Albert Einstein, no. You have to be just of average intelligence, that’s all. If you are not too much retarded, you will understand it. 

But to understand the meaning of Zarathustra, you will have to become a Zarathustra -- less than that won’t do. You will have to create it again. And each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one’s womb, feed it by one’s own blood, and only then does one discover. 

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1 hour ago, Prabhaker said:

But to understand the meaning of Zarathustra, you will have to become a Zarathustra -- less than that won’t do. You will have to create it again. And each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one’s womb, feed it by one’s own blood, and only then does one discover. 

I understand but there are many good people living through the ego. The dream state can also be fun sometimes. You said after Buddha, Indians became passive but during the times of Krishna people weren't passive. Some sages were also assholes. If Krishna was liberated, why wasn't He passive? I believe he was a real person but the story has some exaggerations. 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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40 minutes ago, Deep said:

I understand but there are many good people living through the ego. The dream state can also be fun sometimes.

They pretend to be good to adjust in society, if you can read their mind, you will find many ugly things.

44 minutes ago, Deep said:

You said after Buddha, Indians became passive but during the times of Krishna people weren't passive.

Buddha taught path of non-violence, Krishna didn't. I do not mean Krishna enjoyed violence, he was full of compassion.

Deep down what matters is how one feels, not what happens. Deep down the question is of the feeling, of what the person thinks, because a person lives surrounded in his thoughts. Events take place in reality but the person lives in his thoughts, in his feelings.

Violence or killing is evil. It is evil despite Krishna saying that it doesn't actually take place. And Krishna's statement is not at all wrong. In fact, Krishna is speaking from the existential state, he has discovered this in the layers of existence itself.

When Hitler is killing people, he is not in the same state of mind as Krishna is. Hitler enjoys killing; he delights in destroying, in exterminating. Whether anything actually gets destroyed is another matter, but Hitler has a passion of killing. This passion for killing is violence.

50 minutes ago, Deep said:

If Krishna was liberated, why wasn't He passive?

I said "hundreds of thousands of people attained to the fourth body. As soon as they reached the fourth plane their personalities became feminine."

Male fourth body is passive.This division of male and female exists only up to the fourth body; fifth body is beyond sex. Therefore, as soon as the liberation is  attained there is no male and no female.

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1 hour ago, Prabhaker said:

They pretend to be good to adjust in society, if you can read their mind, you will find many ugly things.

No I think some people are genuinely good hearted and some aren't. They just don't realize they're incarnations of God. It's okay if they never realize it, isn't it? Most people can't relate to something like this because our spiritual side is very subtle. 


The unborn Lord has many incarnations. BPHS 

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8 minutes ago, Deep said:

No I think some people are genuinely good hearted and some aren't. They just don't realize they're incarnations of God.

A person living through the ego in the dream state can be less bad more good. He can be greedy, jealous but clever enough to hide his real face. He can beat his children, scold his wife out of anger for their good. Can be angry with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Can happily kill other nations soldier in a war. He can have high morals as per standards of society, but morality is not spirituality. 

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