Monthly Archives: April 2023

The Wisdom of Robert Adams #60

– The three types of people are equivalent to the three Guna’s –

There are three types of people who are ready to practice Advaita Vedanta, or atma-vichara or self-realization.
The three types of people are the seekers, disciples and the devotees.

We have discussed this before but this is a little different.
The three types of people are equivalent to the three Guna’s.
Tamas, Rajas and Sattvic.
———-
Tamas means dullness, inertia and this refers to the seeker.
Rajas is action and this refers to the disciple.
Sattvic means purity and this refers to the devotee.
———-
Guna tamas/Seeker

Now when I say a seeker is dull and that’s the tamas quality, this is from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta.

But a seeker is a very advanced soul compared to the billions of people on this earth who are wandering around in total delusion and they have not as yet become seekers.
So a seeker is really an advanced stage.
Yet a seeker has a tremendous ego.
They run around from teacher to teacher, read tons of books, always looking to find something for themselves.
Their concern is only me, me and mine.
I want to become enlightened, what can I get in this class, what’s in it for me.
———-
Their attention is on the personal self.
They go to one teacher, they hear about another teacher they go to that teacher, they hear about somebody else they go there, but at least they’re seeking.
They don’t really go anywhere.
They can go through thousands of incarnations.
Thousands upon thousands of incarnations as a seeker always looking to themselves.
Involved only with themselves.
They cannot keep the mind off themselves.
They find fault.
They always find something wrong with the class.
They compare one class to the next class.
One teacher to the next teacher, trying to pull out all of the information they can get from the teacher and couldn’t care less about anything else.
Yet if the seeker becomes sincere they evolve to the point where they become a disciple.
———-
Guna Rajas/Disciple

A disciple begins to settle down and this is the rajas quality, action.
They begin to act upon what they see.
They have an infinity for one teacher and they go to that teacher more than anybody else.
They act upon what the teacher says but they’re still external.
They read certain books pertaining to the teachers direction but they’re still not true to the teacher, they’re still interested in themselves but they stay mostly with one teacher.
Then if someone real good comes along and they hear the word they go to listen to this other person yet they always come back to the one teacher.
———-
They’re still concerned of themselves.
They also become sometimes trouble makers, they gossip a lot, they’re craving excitement.
So when things are smooth in the class they look for a way to make a little problem through gossip but they really mean well.
If they keep on being sincere they will evolve into a devotee.
———-
Guna Sattva/Devotee

Now the devotee has come a long way.
The devotee no longer thinks about themselves, they have forgotten about themselves.
They don’t even care about becoming self-realized.
They have no desire to become liberated.
They have no desires whatsoever.
They act spontaneously and take one day at a time.
They surrender completely to the Sage.
They have no life of their own.
They think of the Sage day and night.
There is no room in their minds for anything negative.
———-
A devotee never judges.
A devotee understands that the Sage is coming from a different consciousness from theirs.
So what the Sage does they may not understand too well but they don’t care.
The devotees are the people who maintain and sustain the Sage.
They look at the Sage as themselves.
What they do for themselves they do for the Sage.
The devotees are the life blood of the Sage and it’s the devotees that become liberated.
———-
In every movement of a high nature.
Ramana Maharshi, Rama Krishna, Shankara, many others too numerous to mention, it is only the devotees who become liberated because they don’t care about it.
Their personal-’I’ is gone.
They have surrendered the personal-’I’ to the Sage.
There is no-one left to quarrel.
There is no-one left to think something is wrong.
There is no-one left to judge.
———-
Why do I share this with you?
Because it’s time that most of you understood this truth and remember it.
What are you really here for?
You’re here to realize that you are not the body or mind.
That you’re absolute reality, that you are pure awareness.
———-
How can you realize this if you have other things in your mind?
If you’re thinking about the world and worldly conditions.
The world has always been here and the things that the world is going through, it has gone through again and again and again in previous ages.

*****

May God bless and protect you

Seth Kelly Curtis

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Nightly Spiritual Quote #502 Osho

Relationship is needed only because you can’t be alone, because you are not yet capable of meditation. Hence, meditation is a must before you can really love. One should be capable of being alone, utterly alone, and yet tremendously blissful. Then you can love. Then your love is no more a need but a sharing, no more a necessity. You will not become dependent on the people you love. You will share, and sharing is beautiful.

*****

Peace and Love

Seth Kelly Curtis

Spiritual Essays #122

Why is Life Such a Struggle?

by Jayaram V

Why is life such a struggle? Why do you face problems and resistance as you begin to work on something? Why do things seldom run smoothly? Why do things begin to fall into disorder and when we neglect them or do not take any action? What makes changing anything so difficult?

Sat and Asat

The Vedic seers of ancient India thought about this particular aspect of our existence and found an answer. They observed that Reality had two modes: existence and non-existence. They called them sat and asat. They are also known as Real and Unreal, Known and Unknown, Being and Nonbeing, and Manifested and Unmanifested. No one can fathom the nature of non-existence or Asat. How can you draw any conclusions about something that does not exist in the perceptual and mental sense and cannot be reached through any known dimensions? Hence, beyond recognizing its presence, they did not probe into the nature of non-existence.

Nature of Sat

Instead they focused upon existence, Sat, and speculated about its essential nature. They further observed that existence had two modes, order and chaos. Nature, (manifested as the world, the universe and existence itself) was subject to these twin modes, or the duality (dvanda). When the order is missing, chaos would prevail. Existence vacillates between these two modes because of impermanence. They called order Rta, meaning harmony, order, regularity, etc. It is manifested as days and nights, seasons, years, the waxing and waning of the moon, the position of the planets, starts, etc. In contrast, disorder (anrta) denotes weakening of life sustaining forces or absence of willful divine activity.

Niyati

This order and regularity imparts some predictability (niyati) to the whole existence. Because of it you can predict when the summer or the winter will come and how you can deal with the changing seasons and climate. They attributed the cause of this order and regularity to God or Brahman, the Supreme Intelligence of the universe. They believed that the worlds stayed in their spheres and the laws of the existence operated predictably because of the supreme force of God.

Gunas

They further observed that existence was subject to the twin modes of order and chaos because of three operating principles or competing forces. These three forces are found in every aspect of existence. They are hidden in all objects and phenomena, including our very lives. We suffer because of them. We are happy because of them. We live and die because of them. They are responsible for the whole existence, all diversity, and the very manifestation of beings and worlds. Without them existence would recede into a non-active and non-existential mode.

What are these three? They are

  1. The creative, constructive, progressive, building, binding, forward force.
  2. The balancing, upholding, preserving, protecting and supporting force.
  3. The opposing, destructive, dispersive, degrading, retrogressive force.

These three forces are called rajas, sattva and tamas respectively. Diagrammatically, you can represent them as below.

You may now wonder what these three forces have to do with your life. Your entire life is defined by them. You are made up of them, and you make use of them. From the time you are born, you live, act and breathe under their influence. They shape your life, thinking, actions and destiny continuously. You are not free from them even for a moment. They govern your life both in all planes, and even when you are asleep. Metaphorically, you are like a football in the field of life, with the forces of Rajas on one side and those of Tamas on the other, with sattva acting as the referee in between. They are responsible for every emotion, desire, attachment, feeling, thought and action you experience. These forces manifest in creation variously. A few important ones are listed below.

Gunas in competitionGunas in Competition

What does all this mean?

It means you have to live your life with the awareness that you have to deal with both the positive and negative aspects of your life and try to achieve balance and stability, without being overwhelmed by them. You cannot escape from life. You cannot escape from problems and suffering. To move forward in life, you must know how to harness the creative forces in you, control the destructive tendencies, and stabilize your life with peace and equanimity. It means your life will be shaped by how you manage the creative and destructive aspects of life and stay in control and balance. It also means you can take nothing for granted, since you have to deal with resistance from tamas the moment you decide to initiate any constructive action. It also means that as soon as you decide to do something, you will set in motion a number of forces that may either assist you, oppose you or support you.

These three forces are responsible for our desires as well as suffering. When you desire to do something in life under the influence of one guna, you will be met with opposition, problems, doubt, and criticism from the other. The quality of tamas is the obstructing or resisting force in Nature. It makes possible the Newton’s law of motion by creating the equal and opposite reaction. You push something and something pushes it back.

Therefore, if you expect that your life will run smoothly you are sadly mistaken. If you intend to do some good expect that there will be resistance and criticism. That is how Nature works. Whatever you do, you will meet with some resistance. If birth is a creative movement caused by rajas, death is the destructive movement caused by tamas. What keeps both of them in balance is sattva, the balancing force. Existence is possible because of these three force only. If you want peace, let the balancing force in you gain strength.

*****

May God bless and protect you

Seth Kelly Curtis

Nightly Spiritual Quote #500 Spirituality

“Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again – the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world’s greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding”
― Saul Williams

*****

Peace and Love

Seth Kelly Curtis

Rosicrucian Reflections #169

Rosicrucian Contribution to Peace

I contribute to Peace when I strive to express the best of myself in my contacts with others.

I contribute to Peace when I use my intelligence and my abilities to serve the Good.

I contribute to Peace when I feel compassion toward all those who suffer.

I contribute to Peace when I rejoice over the happiness of others and pray for their well-being.

I contribute to Peace when I listen with tolerance to opinions that differ from mine or even oppose them.

I contribute to Peace when I resort to dialogue rather than to force to settle any conflict.

I contribute to Peace when I respect Nature and preserve it for generations to come.

I contribute to Peace when I do not seek to impose my conception of God upon others.

I contribute to Peace when I make Peace the foundation of my ideals and philosophy.

I contribute to Peace when I look upon all as my brothers and sisters, regardless of race, culture, or religion.

*****

May God bless and protect you

Seth Kelly Curtis