SAIEN

There is the aspiration and dedication that the seeker recognises and treats as his true identity. Then there are all the thoughts, motives and actions that undermine or contradict in some manner that aspiration and dedication. Many people fail to recognise that this contradiction exists, as they have a built in mechanism in the mind and the vital to find excuses or to justify it. The vital is especially powerful in its ability to influence the mind and the mind is able to create justifications based on the vital self-interest that is pressuring it. It takes a considerable sincerity, and a considerable effort of self-examination and tracing back of the sources and motive forces of thoughts, emotions, feelings and actions for the seeker to break through this self-justifying loop. Who really can accurately see himself stripped of all these excuses, and recognise that vital desire, ego-aggrandisement, or motives of vanity, pride, fame, greed, lust or some other power is actually the force...

In the Katha Upanishad, Yama the Lord of Death tells the young Nachiketas, "The self-born has set the doors of the body to face outwards, therefore the soul of a man gazes outward and not at the Self within". These "doors of the body" are our sense organs, our faculties of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. They are called the jñanendriyas, or powers of knowing. They are the means by which we know the material world in which we live. Sri Aurobindo points out that our five senses "would persuade us that the suprasensible is the unreal", that what they cannot detect does not exist. And the modern cult that calls itself science has been persuaded. Not only that, but science has laid claim to all arenas of knowing: beyond physics, biology and chemistry, it has seized psychology and even philosophy, demanding a fundamentalist materialism and gasping in horror at the suggestion of a purposeful cosmos or a reality existing beyond the grasp of the senses. Wh...

To you is offered this temple made of flesh and bone. Its jagged bricks of an ancient resistance bear stains of ignorance But still come! With your footfalls melt these bricks into rivers of light, With your touch dissolve the stains transform its dark opaque stones To transparent crystals, Not so that they look prettier But so that each stone can enshrine your light. Transform this foam of quicksilver passings into a monument of Truth eternal, Not so that it stands more resplendent But so that it can hold your largeness. Transform the rebels and the waifs frescoed in its walls into willing servitors of truth Not so that the irritants are removed But so that it hastens your victory. Come, Come as only you can And accept the worship this temple longs to offer, The worship that has never stopped its struggle to reach you. For through all the revolts and doubts that spew on the surface I have solace of knowing that deep inside there is something that has not ceased from loving you for eve...

In Hinduism, the conflict of worshipping the form and the formless is inevitable for the “sadhaka”, especially, at the initial stages of the spiritual journey. Different schools of Hinduism have talked about the “Saguna” and “Nirguna” Brahman and their respective advantages. But it is important to conceive that the goal of spirituality is to deep dive into the ocean of unknown. It is pointless to stick to the theories and philosophical interpretations created by the humans. They are important to some extent for our rational minds but there is something beyond all these piles of theories called the ultimate consciousness or the Brahman. The Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, and Tantra shastras affirm this ideology.  In Medicine, we often see Doctors using two parallel approaches or drugs to cure the same disease. None are bad by itself, but their combination is better. Similarly, in Hinduism, we see this eternal advantage of combining the form and the formless at our own preference. ...