A confession … or at least an explanation for my Hare Krishna friends who wonder why that previously humble/submissive Divyasimha das now sometimes refuses to bow to authority of guru, sadhu and sastra. Well, it all comes down to first principles. According to Wikipedia … In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption … are from first cause attitudes commonly…

In the dharmic tradition there is no such thing as sin*. Or at least no such thing as non-contextual sin. Why? Because that would require absolute laws, pre-established by God, as to what is acceptable action, word, thought, etc. Step outside such laws and one becomes sinful. Simple. It’s a very Christian idea. But not at all a dharmic tradition idea. The dharmic tradition is very much one of accepting things favourable/rejecting things unfavourable. It…

I said: Do not use terms in response to my image generation requests like ‘our’ and ‘we’ll’ that infer ChatGPT is a person or sentient being. This is not the first time I have instructed this. ChatGPT said: Understood. Future responses to image generation requests will be phrased without implying personhood, sentience, or collective identity. Let me know what you’d like generated next. I said: I just now instructed do not use ‘we’ll’ as in…

What if victims are really neither children or any type of vulnerable person but ancient beings who have done it all (almost all) many times before? And while they may themselves presently be identifying self in victim terms, and onlookers see them in terms of their present bodily situation, they are all actually eternal souls expressing and exploring divinity by choice? What if at a deeper soul level most victim role-players are forgivers in the…

In this connection the reference sanskrit words are nitya-baddha (eternally conditioned) and anadi (beginningless). Firstly, our experience of life here makes it difficult to think outside the box of cause and effect – where everything has a beginning and end in time. However that is precisely the eternal arena that the words nitya-baddha and anadi are dealing with. This difficulty is perhaps the reason that even sanskrit scholars and/or dharma-tradition religionists who accept the situation…

Maybe sin is not an actual thing. More a way of explaining why we are here, and at the same time not blaming God for the suffering of the world. Needed by those who doubt good reason for God’s creation. An attempt to distance God from what appears to be unworthy … incompatible with an all-beautiful, all-perfect, all-powerful God. Personally, given (my) conviction that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the…

So long as a believer characterises this world as primarily a place of ignorance and suffering they have a problem in connecting it closely with God. Especially if they also embrace the idea that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the lord. And God is all powerful and all loving. I believe it is for this reason that the majority of religions seek, through various means, to separate God from the…

No disrespect intended, but I am not a fan of comebacks like ‘Don’t worry about why you are here … just worry about how you are going to get out’ or ‘You don’t need to know why you are here, you should simply focus on how you are going to get out’. The main problem with these types of non-answers, these deflections, is the presumption that we are not here for good reason(s). Inferred is…

I propose that the jiva (individual soul) is never at odds with God but is always functioning exactly as intended. It cannot be otherwise. It is a perfect arrangement befitting a Perfect God. That we are fallen souls, or for that matter identify ourselves in any other way whatsoever, is simply a construct which facilitates, provides a stage for, a particular flavour of our joint lila. Thus contributing the experiential completeness of God’s self-knowing. Just…

I’d argue it’s not religion It’s lust for certainty where problems begin. Faith is belief in something unknown. Something you choose to believe. Denying you don’t really know, and surrounding yourself only with like-minded people, doesn’t make something known. Why should it? How can it? That self-deception may be cosy for a while. But it easily leads to demonising of anyone does not embrace the party line. And banishment of those who dare to question.…

Given the context that an individual has already freely chosen to embark on the spiritual quest to understand self and God, it may be in the initial stages that their motivation for perseverance comes mainly from fear of failure. And therefore enlightened teachers may speak that language for the sake of helping such neophyte practitioners stay with the plan. And that such preaching may justify the use of white lies because it serves the neophyte…

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix documentary) When Norwegian gamer Mats Steen died at age 25, his parents mourned what they thought was an isolated life. It was only once they had access to his blog that they discovered the deep friendships he created virtually before passing away from a degenerative muscular disease. They were unaware that Mats had long been leading a vibrant digital life that had left a profound impact on a community…

Regardless of how spiritually aware my guru might be, his/her/their reality is not my reality. Therefore, for me to accept what they tell me of their reality in place of my own is necessarily a faith thing. There may be a variety of reasons I have that faith … gut feeling, philosophical resonance, reasoning, the experience of being in the presence of such a person etc, etc. When you are a follower, rather than someone…

The main problem with denying ones divinity is that one tends to think of their suffering in terms of ‘why me?’, or ‘I’m being punished from transgression of some pre-defined code of acceptable conduct’, whereas ‘how does this serve me?’ becomes more the mindset when self-divinity is accepted. Perhaps that is why Bhagavad-gita 2.15 states yaṁ hi na vyathayanty ete puruṣaṁ puruṣarṣabha sama-duḥkha-sukhaṁ dhīraṁ so ’mṛtatvāya kalpate O best among men [Arjuna], the person who…

You are a soul with a body. Immediately I heard this idea, it made perfect sense, resonated as truth, and changed everything for me. But when I shared this – what was for me a profound revelation – I was surprised that most people rejected it out of hand. 40+ years later I still find this to be the case. Why does this explanation of self not appeal to so many? And most people who…

Within the Vaishnava tradition, the conditioning of the souls in the material world is said to be anādi – beginningless. If English speakers wish to understand the finer points of the Sanskrit word anādi, there are probably a number of English words they should steer clear of, for example … forget – because the word infers previously known when – because the word infers something happened at some point in time, and before that point…

To tell someone who strongly feels they are suffering, and/or this world is very much a place of misery, that they are not in fact suffering at all, and not a fallen soul being punished for their sins, but a divine part of God eternally engaged in the beautiful divine lila (pastimes) of God is unlikely to resonate positively. Reality of suffering is so proven and real that such a idea is more likely lead…

PET THEORY: Notwithstanding our difference, by dint of our simultaneous oneness we are God/Krishna (albeit with a small g/k) exploring/experiencing/expressing self with blinkers on. In so doing we all contribute our focused fascinations to the ever expanding completeness of God’s self-knowing. Consciously or unconsciously, believer or atheist, no matter. Being conscious, however, opens the door for love. In the Bhagavad-gita (9:27) Krishna encourages ‘everything you do, do as an offering to me’ as the means…

Siddhartha: An Indian novel is a 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha. Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha follows the spiritual journey of Siddhartha, a young man seeking enlightenment. Rejecting wealth, status, and rigid teachings, he explores various paths, ultimately finding wisdom in life’s experiences and the unity of all things. Through trials, Siddhartha learns that true understanding comes…

From the point of view of us not being God the world may appear to be mainly a place of suffering and ignorance. After all, it is a place of birth, death, old age, and disease. And we don’t really know with certainty who we are, or the limits of our power, or the connection between desire and realisation of dreams etc. Religions tend to emphasise along these lines. But what about if for a…

For a westerner embracing the dharmic tradition, the concept of nitya-baddha (sanskrit) – often translated as ever-conditioned or eternally conditioned soul – is routinely confused with the idea of fallen soul prominent in Abrahamic religions. A fallen soul, in simple terms, being one who has rebelled against God, and has thus been cast out of / banished from the kingdom of God. A sinner, in other words. But assuming eternal actually means eternal, nitya-baddhas, being…

I joined the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON) in the early 1980s, shortly after the passing of founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta swami (aka Srila Prabhupada), and lived through the turmoil of several fallen ‘successor’ gurus. I was a member for 15 years and therefore feel entitled to opinion on the subject matter of Guru misconception. At the same time, please note that all that follows is just my personal opinion, and as such I am not going…

If one believes God exists, and God is perfect/all-powerful, one might reason that everything that comes from God must also be perfect. Us and this world included. If that is the case, how then are our lives and this world, along with all of its apparent horrors*, perfect? To my mind, if everything comes from God, in a sense there is nothing but God. And whether or not we believe in God, whatever we find…

Premise: God exists. God is perfect and complete. Everything that emanates from God is likewise perfect and complete. Us and this world included. Seeming imperfect/flaw points to misunderstanding of purpose. How are we and this world perfect? Possible Purpose: We are all looking at God We are all experiencing God We are all attracted to some aspect or another of God We are all appreciating some facet or another of God All from our individual…

The Parades Minako waking up on a rubble-strewn beach. As she searches for her son, Ryo, she stumbles upon an assorted group, including a young man named Akira, former yakuza Shori, and ex-film producer Michael. She soon realizes the shocking truth that she has died. Her new companions are also stuck between worlds, unable to move on due to unfinished business with the living. Despite struggling to fully accept this new reality, Minako joins in…

If I’m pursuing a spiritual path, a reasonable question is why? What is my motive? What are my motives? For example, am I motivated primarily by fear or love, or by something else? Perhaps I’m in a state of transition between fear and love, and if so, is that a comfortable experience? Although I believe choosing to embark upon a journey of spiritual awakening is always a divine prerogative – I suspect in the early…

Yesterday’s Children Jenny Cole lives with her husband and son in middle America. She is pregnant and starts to have very vivid dreams about a small city that has a big church. She starts talking to her mother about it and her mother shows her some drawings she made when she was a child. To her amazement they are identical to the drawings from the dreams Jenny is now having. Jenny and her mother do…

All Hallows’ Eve is the last of the seven novels of the supernatural written by Charles Williams. Charles Williams had a genius for choosing strange and exciting themes for his novels and making them believable and profoundly suggestive of spiritual truths. All Hallows’ Eve is the story of a man and woman whose love was so great it could bridge the gap of death; of evil so terrible as to be unmentionable, of a vision…

In my opinion this most important of topics must not be hijacked by religious dogma or women’s rights issues. Views on all sides of such things are passionate, fiercely defended, and for me, paradoxically, they simply cloud and distract. Instead I suggest invested parties step back … way back … and review their personal convictions about who/what we are, and what life is? In other words, go back to first principles (base assumptions). In the…

That God is benevolent and completely in control, yet at the same time bad things happen in this world is a problem for logical and rational thinkers. I think. If we embrace any idea that artificially distances God from something he/she is absolutely in control of, i.e. to explain the suffering of this world without implicating God … as most religions tend to do in one form or another (law of karma, natural law, punishment…

1. God chooses to taste and explore rasa. Our life adventures, dark or light/conscious or unconscious regardless, contribute, albeit in a small way, to the completeness of that exploration. How? Our personal experiences of emotion/feeling, by dint of our enternal jiva individuality, together with our current lifetime tailored conditioning, have a uniqueness about them, and thus value because they add to the completeness of God’s exploration. How are our experiences God’s experiences? By both our…

When I say I don’t believe in Karma, it’s not that I don’t believe in karma per se, but I don’t believe in karma as reaction to thought and/or deed that one is obliged to accept. I find that sort of understanding fundamentally incompatible with the divinity of the soul in that this idea of karma is simply a thinly disguised version of against-my-will-obliged. Divinity and against-my-will are never happy bedfellows for me. Just as…

The questions ‘Do you believe in God?’ and ‘Do you have faith?’ are both often taken as ‘Do you believe God exists?’ I propose a more personalised way of understanding. ‘Do you believe in God?’… not so much about ‘Do you believe God exists?’ but more along the lines of one person saying to another ‘I believe in you’. Others may doubt you, defame you, misunderstand you, but I still believe in you. Likewise ‘Do…

Bondage of karma, fallen soul etc., … this type of thinking can go unchallenged/sit comfortably with the idea that we are not God. That our being a separated part and parcel of God more or less minimises the fundamentals of our continued divinity. I feel this is a false argument … much in the vain of the passing of huge amounts of time makes the ideas of natural selection / random mutation / man from…

In pondering my own mortality, and in particular the temporary nature of life on Earth, I stumbled into a comparing of my life here with the taking of a vacation. That a vacation is temporary is not normally perceived as a problem.  And that a holiday is not forever is not actually thought of as an impediment to enjoyment of the holiday. Likewise that this life has a beginning and an end doesn’t necessarily need…

How strange it is that cultivation of the sense of ‘other’ is prominent in so many of the religions of the world? Surely understanding that everyone (and I’m not just talking about human beings) and everything comes from God is at the very ABC beginning of spiritual vision? That being the case, we are all family … brothers and sisters so to speak.  No question of ‘other’ simply because someone embraces another faith, or no…

Just saying

Many religions consider freedom from judgement of others a saintly quality. But how attainable is it for a person of faith? Especially when at the foundation of their existence are a number of huge personal judgements. For example What I believe to be truth IS true (I judge it to be true) My beliefs are not actually beliefs at all … they are knowns – revealed to me by God I know a lot about…

So we are faced with three different truths about the shape of an object seen by three separate people. The object is a either round, square or a strange shape … surely they cannot all be correct? You say it’s round I say no, it’s a square, another says it’s a strange shape. But imagine our seeing ability is restricted to just one eye … i.e. we can only see in two dimensions … objects…

Anyone who embarks on an adventure with eastern thinking cannot help but come across the notion of the ‘Four Defects of the Conditioned Soul’. Imperfect Senses (Karanapatava) Illusion (Pramada) Mistakes (Bhrama) Cheating (Vipralipsa) … and the argument that these defects prevent determination of dependable truth, especially in the matter of the meaning and/or purpose of human life. But the widely recommended solution – submission to infallible authority of guru-sastra-sadhu* – to my mind does not…

If you accept the idea of reincarnation, then you can easily explain the natural flare and talent people have for certain things … this is simply not the beginning of their cultivation, they are picking up from where left off in previous life. Rather than becoming disheartened … I’m just no good at such and such (i.e. compared to someone else) … instead think ‘anything is possible if I choose it’ … those who I…

A follower of religion might fear that by admitting any uncertainty they risk losing their faith. Easier and safer (and certainly more cosy) to just pretend I know rather than I choose to believe … and bury deep any doubting thought as the work of a devil. That somehow it is a fundamental to maintaining and cultivating faith that one never entertains any type of doubting. I propose however that just the opposite is true.…

Achintya-Bheda-Abheda is a school of Vedanta representing the philosophy of inconceivable one-ness and difference. In Sanskrit achintya means ‘inconceivable’, bheda translates as ‘difference’, and abheda translates as ‘non-difference’. Achintya-Bheda-Abheda, as explained at Wikipedia The big difficulty for me with this philosophy is how to overcome the inconceivable part. That there is a simultaneous one-ness and difference between/with God and everything (us included) that emanates from God. It is God and it isn’t God at the…

One often finds the sanskrit word karma translated as action or work. But sometimes, and especially in the western mind, people take it to mean reaction rather than action, or something subtle that binds one to the cycle of birth and death (samsara) — administered by some sort of unseen cosmic debt collecting task-force requiring balance in the universe be restored. Others see it as a satisfactory way of separating God from the suffering in…

What if life is not something that comes about because a body in a womb has reached enough maturity to survive outside the womb? What if life exists even prior to conception? If this is true, how does it change the way we understand termination of pregnancy? Let us not cloud the discussion with religion. Let us neither cloud with rape, nor liberation and equal rights for women. They are separate issues after all. Let…

At least this idea feels compatible with the notion of self-divinity.  Compatible in the sense that there be no out of bounds, no area that cannot be explored, no experience that cannot to sought.  Everyone at all times is simply expressing their divine. Contributing automatically to the completeness of God. Perfectly. And regardless of judgement imposition of worthy vs. unworthy desire choices. So the adventure is underway, and as they say, one thing leads to…

If God exists, and God is perfect, is it not then reasonable to suggest that everything emanating from God, us and our lives included, is also perfect? But who amongst us is seeing their lives and world around us as perfect? If fact, some say the material world is imperfect. Flawed. A place of suffering, a struggle for existence, a place of birth, death, old-age and disease. If you measure perfection in terms of freedom…

Notwithstanding the pain / horror of the experience, existence of a victim for me is a major philosophical problem. My song Forgiver In The Rough lays bare my struggle with this. My problem begins with my conviction that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of God. The all powerful and benevolent God  If this is true then the idea that the victim is purely a random recipient of adversity, with no cause…

We find it relatively easy to dismiss as false or deluded the truths of others … especially when they don’t tally with our own. We might consider them ridiculous, unbelievable, inconceivable, implausible, or even insane. No more thought required. But what if the same processes apply to us that make such ‘wrong’ truths acceptable, or even absolute, to others? In other words, our finding something believable – real – true, no matter how implausible to…

You can’t say no to God. At least not if you subscribe to the traditional notion of God. You cannot say that God can’t have something God wants. After all, what sort of God would God be if some things are out of bounds? Forbidden. Where would be the divinity in that? But what about us? What if our not being God does not mean we have lost our divinity? In other words, we are…

Many would agree that to achieve freedom from judgement of others is a worthy goal. My song Preacher is about the struggle a person-of-faith likely faces in this endeavor. But regardless one is a person-of-faith or not, I believe the path to freedom from judgement of others has a similar set of obstacles. At the heart of the challenge always lies conviction there exist ‘truth-absolutes’ of good/bad, higher/lower, worthy/unworthy, should/shouldn’t … in terms of individual…

When something is conditioned that means it is made ready for something … conditioning is the process of making ready. Generally that is a good thing. Perhaps a conditioned soul is therefore simply a soul prepared for their chosen objective. Let us consider this possibility without judgement. After all, if the soul is divine (of God, one and different), and choice of objective is divine prerogative … i.e. there is no question of prescription, or…

Ignorance and ignorant are weighted words for me. To be ignorant, or to be absorbed in ignorance, … neither are things to be proud of :(. For me the weightedness of these words has gradually grown over my lifetime. Due, at least in part, to my being born in 20th century England, and growing up within Christian-esque culture. Yet it seems to me our whole existence is permeated with ignorance. Are we not ignorant of…

A made-up term yes, but actually one intended to explore a fairly serious philosophical proposition. My song of the same name, and associated online form, being two previous explorations. It really comes down to the question of cause and effect. My proposal is that this present life (e.g. our place of birth, parents, type of body, disposition of mind, events in our life story, etc. [all together I call these ‘disposition matrix’]) are designed to…

A note of caution: It is fine to say of oneself ‘I am not a victim’, but to say of another, that is another thing altogether. I know if someone had suggested I was not a victim during a difficult earlier chapter of my life I would not have appreciated  … nor could I have imagined a time when I might see things differently *. The Self-Divinity Challenge Most people who believe in the existence…

… a very interesting mindset for one who is control of everything. Yes, it facilitates the both the forgiveness and revenge adventures for sure … but are those adventures really attractive enough to explain the widespread permeation of victim/blame culture on this planet at this time?

I propose that the self (personally I prefer the word soul) is the active ingredient in all situations. Self knowledge is not required for optimal functioning, … degree of self awareness only flavours our experience … our experience of, our tasting through, and the associated enjoyments of the mind and bodily senses (both favourable and unfavourable). There exists a potentially confusing situation for the self, … we find ourselves simultaneously integrated with our body, our…

According to Vedic thought, planet Earth is located in the midway planetary system (Bhu-loka), and our present time is near the beginning of Kali Yuga, the last of the four cyclic ages. Planet Earth, as a middle level planet, is not typically a place where enlightened beings tend to take birth. Compared to the other three yugas, Kali Yuga is characterised as the age of least enlightenment. Simply put, one should not be surprised at…

If everything is simply the imaginings and role-plays of God, then surely everything is contrived: God is pretending – contriving – not to be god for the sake of achieving some specific experience and enjoyment? What we generally mean by contrived is something we consider to be concocted for a less worthy objective. But is not worthiness of objective a subjective (contrived) judgement? I propose that everything is worthy. So where does that leave us?…

Sometimes adult society is dismissive of the emotional experience of children and/or younger people. Take the expression ‘puppy love’ for example … an adult judgement that prepubescent romantic love is not real, or at least is in some way inferior to the adult counterpart. I suggest, however, that compared to an adult, there is no reason to believe the ability to feel emotion is in anyway restricted by the soul wearing the mind/intellect/life experience/maturity of…

For me, against-my-will seems incompatible with self-divinity. So when something seems indisputably against my will, or against the will of any other, it can be difficult to maintain faith in self-divinity. It seems that the fundamental is disproved. In my endeavour to preserve the possibility of self-divinity in my mind, I have often found it helpful to stand back from an immediate adverse situation, and consider it more in the category of scene setting* rather…

The lyric of this song is a bit of a rant against what I consider the dumbed-down values and social expectations placed upon us by government/corporations in 2012 UK society (perhaps this is a global trend?) – together with my observation that generations presently growing up do not realise that just a few decades ago ideas like sending small babies to daycare so mum can hurry back to the work place, or the necessity of…

The lyric of my song is an imagined conversation between God and a soul, loosely based on the two-bird-in-a-tree analogy found in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad … but presented strictly in terms of my own understanding 🙂 Free listen/download of song at http://www.songsofdave.com/song-details.php?id=262 Verse 1 So if you want me Know where to look Find my number It’s in the book ‘So’ to convey this is not the beginning of the dialogue, ‘Know’ intended as both…

You are God – They are God – not just those with human bodies. This is my proposal to the world. Don’t let the fact that you and they are also not God confuse you. Unless it serves you. Try to always relate to others in conscious awareness of their divinity. Remember who they are. Unless you don’t want to. Don’t forget who you are … even if others sometimes fail to acknowledge your Godness.…

That anything can happen against the will of the divine seems illogical to me. After all, what sort of divinity would that be? If something happens against my will, that’s another thing. Or is it? What if everything that eminates from the divine, all of us included, is also divine? In other words, though we may not be God (with a capital ‘G’), at the same time we do not give up our divinity by…

I am not dismisive of being in ‘love’, or the associated euphoric feelings. My proposal is that love is simply the wrong word. The correct word is ‘infatuation’. Sorry … I know it doesn’t sound so lofty 🙂 And that love is not a feeling or state of being … rather a giving; a caring; a doing … always a conscious choice. Not always spontaneous or easy. Let us use the correct word: ‘I fell…

By pretending to be someone else, we don’t become someone else. Like an actor on the stage, absorbed in character as they may be, remains the same person. And they go home to their real life – their family and friends – after the show (so-called real life). By temporarily forgetting who I am, that I might be fully absorbed in the role I am playing, that I might deliver a performance of a life…

What if the only thing that is going on here is simply that everything in this world is adjusting and aligning according to our individual desires? To facilitate an experience or emotion that we are after? That would certainly sit well with the notion of our divinity … compared, say, to the idea of us being required to first know/learn something, discover a secret, contrive a process, etc., before we can tap into the workings…

In my opinion religion and faith often have very little to do with spiritual awareness. In most cases they have more to do with devotion, love, dependency, belonging, etc. I am certainly not suggesting such things are not wonderful and desireable, but just that they don’t automatically translate to spiritual awareness. And in some cases produce just the opposite! What do I mean by spiritual awareness? For me it revolves around an awareness of being…

Most of us enjoy watching a good film on TV. Even though we ‘know’ it isn’t real … they are just actors … or not even actors … just dots on a screen representing actors. An illusion, in other words. But because it facilitates our enjoyment to loose awareness that the film isn’t real, we very readily do so. We like to enjoy, and it is by buying into the illusion we get our enjoyment!…

I propose that we (the soul/jiva) are simultaneously one and different from God. In other words we ARE God and we ARE NOT God. And though these two positions seem contradictory, both are true at the same time. Confusing, yes. Inconceiveable, yes. So an experiment: Don the God hat for a moment. Forget you are NOT God. Being God, I suggest you would likely ask questions along the lines … What do I want from…

… the soul being you, rather than something separate from you that you possess, for example, like your mind, your intellect, your body etc. Of course you don’t have to use the word soul. I propose that feelings, or in other words emotions, are the language of the soul. I further propose that our lives are primarily about a calling of elements into play, assembling our cast etc., setting the stage, for us to feel/experience…

While sitting in the comfort of ones’ armchair it’s easy to philosophise that whatever comes to us we desire on some level or another. Indeed many ‘new-age’ programmes of self-empowerment revolve around this idea, and certainly it seems to sit very well with the notion of our divinity. However, when faced with suffering, the idea that it is coming to us only because we want is less appealing. And even more so when it is…

Assuming our divinity, it doesn’t seem logical to me that self realisation should be a mysterious process. A process of uncertainty, a process requiring faith/belief in something not known to be true. Not known if we are honest 😉 Neither does it seem reasonable to me that we could be surrounded by universal laws that if transgressed reward punishment regardless of those laws being known or not to us. Why should there be so many…

I suggest that this is what we are. And that we lowercase ‘G’ gods are simultaneously one with and different from the uppercase ‘G’ God. ‘One with’ in that we are also divine. ‘Different from’ primarily in that we possess the special ability to accept the illusions of the material world as real. But one should not hurry to judge this ability as some sort of flaw or problem. Rather, I suggest, it is in…

I suggest that the importance of what you believe to be real and true is best measured not so much by how close it is to reality, but more by how much it contributes to the setting of the stage upon which you play out the adventure of your life. I suggest our beliefs are a major force in creating context for the theatrical performance that is life. OK, there may be other forces, but…

If we are divine beings/of-god, engineering situations in this world that enable us to experience the tastes we are after, for me that status would seem at odds with anything ever happening against our will. After all, the very notion of expression of divinity, be it collectively or individually, suggests that we are always willing and eager participants. Yet what about the aggressor/victim scenario? Can that be true that the real situation is one of…

Invented, I suggest, because we find it impossible to accommodate the dark, the evil, the ghastly of this world within our idea of who God is and what God is like. It’s easy to accommodate things like love, kindness, mercy, peace within the traditional concept of God, but in excluding the other stuff I propose that we end up with an extremely limited idea of God, and, perhaps more importantly, a very confused idea about…

I suggest that this is true because the others ARE YOU. ARE YOU in the sense that we are all God. Are God in the sense that we are from God / of God, and everything that emanates from God is God. And that we are also simultaneously not God, and similarly not the others, does not change the fact that we are the same at the same time. Contradictory, yes. I propose that our…

I propose we are divine, part of God, or in other words, we are ‘of God’. And because we are not anything but God, in that sense we ARE God. And that we are also NOT God does not change that we ARE. That being the case, I suggest that judgement of wrong or right/good or bad/punishment or reward flies in the face of our divinity. In my opinion these concepts are incompatible with the…

… there would be no prescription/judgement of wrong or right what we should or must do the goal of life the lessons to be learned … scary or liberating? I propose that whatever way we choose to express our divinity, that always perfectly fulfills our purpose. … crazy or profound? Let me put it another way. It is the choosing more than what we choose that expresses our divinity. And by divinity I mean our…

One If I think I am God … then, looking at my experience of life and the world around me, I might question Why am I doing this to myself? … How does it serve me? … etc. Different If I think I am not God … then my questioning might be more along the lines of Why is God doing this to me? … What have I done wrong? … etc. One and Different…

Imagine no religion … or a religion where there is no presumption of a single ultimate goal. There would be: No context for judgement of good and bad. No context for judgement of sin or piety. No context for judgement of right and wrong, and in fact all the choices we make would be simply regarded as manifestations of our of divinity, regardless of level of self-awareness. … to list just a few Scary or…

I propose that we are always perfect. Perfect and prefectly situated. Seeming imperfection is always the result of erroneous assumption as to who we are and what we are about. After all we are part of God. We are God in that sense. So how could it be otherwise? Consider for a moment the case of Dorothy, the sweet and innocent young girl who gets lost in a storm, survives miraculously … only to be…

I propose that death, and for that matter birth, old age and disease as well (sometimes dubbed the fourfold miseries of material existence) are there to serve us. They are there in support of our purpose. Indeed they are necessary to our purpose. But how? And do they really need to be so extreme and harsh? I propose they are actually no more or less graphic than necessary, in fact just dramatic enough to make…

Haiti Earthquake, Jan 12th 2010 – if God loves us, and is in control … how can one reconcile that idea with the horror and tragedy of such a huge scale natural disaster? OK … everyone still has an individual experience of death/loss of loved ones, as in the normal course of life. And perhaps those who lose their life are not particularly aware that they are dying as part of a mass loss of…

Karma, understood as reward/punishment, is a concept that seems to fly in the face of the oneness aspect of the jiva (individual soul) and God (the source). In other words, why would God punish Himself? Perhaps if it is understood more in terms of our creation of a backdrop for us to perfectly experience a specific chosen emotion, then that would fit much better with the idea of our emotional experience being part of the…

It is not so much that God is getting something that He wants from what is going on here in the material world, but more that He is simply manifesting something He is: the Supreme Enjoyer. His supreme enjoyment includes ‘enjoyment’ of the myriad of pleasures, including those ghastly and horrific, facilitated by self-ignorance in the material world. Without them His enjoyment would not be complete! However, it is not directly as the supreme orginal…

The seeming horror of what goes on in the material world, for example birth and death/one species needing to eat the body of another simply to survive, is best understood in terms of our oneness with God, rather than from the standpoint of our separateness from God. Otherwise, no amount of philosophical rangling can produce and explanation that believably preserves the notion that God is both benevolent and in control. Saying it is our karma,…

Death is a fatal car crash, but we walk away without a scratch. Imagine our surprise as we view the wreck – the mangled remains – how did we survive? I propose that our body is like our car. A vehicle for the soul if you will. Bhagavad-gītā chapter 2 verse 23 states The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by…

We all enjoy reading a good book. A book with a well-conceived plot, rounded characters that we can relate to and empathise with, an eventual triumph againts all odds of the protagonist, and so on. And with a good book we get to enjoy a huge range of emotions from the comfort and safety of our living room. And those emotions can seem every bit as instense and vital as their real-life counterparts. I think…

What I mean by ‘real life’ is our living in ways fully consistent with who we are at the most fundemental level. Consider a life experienced in a dream: It seems very real while asleep, but upon waking we realise it is not our real life. Even though the range of emotions experienced while sleeping are tangible, perhaps just as tangible as those experienced in our waking life (for example, we may cry and feel…

In a theatre the stage is often decorated with props and screens. At least enough to create a context for the drama, a believable backdrop, so that the audience can easily enter into, and enjoy the performance. I propose that this is exactly what the material world is to us. Something we can readily accept as real, so we can get on with exploring the variety of sensual and emotional enjoyments facilitated by our existence…

Beautiful and wonderful as nature undoubtedly is, it has a very dark side as well: The body of one species is always food for another. We call this the food chain. For most species, their choice of food seems to happen instinctively. By design you could say. The body of one species being food for another … where is God’s love in this design? How is this arrangement consistent with the idea of an all-powerful…

We human beings seem to have an extraordinary ability to suspend disbelief. Especially when it serves our enjoyment. For example, whenever we watch a film we suspend our awareness that the film is not real … that we are in fact watching actors represented by coloured pixels on a screen. We suspend disbelief in order to enter into and identify with what’s going on. Our suspension of disbelief is necessary for our enjoyment of the…

At least some of yesterday’s definate truths I now regard more as part of growing up … with a few slightly embarrassing periods thrown in t’boot. Ironically, I think it is through our growing out of the need for everything to be black or white, and willingness to embrace uncertainty, that real progress on the ‘path of enlightenment’ begins. We may not know, but a least we now know we don’t know. I call this…

Who are you, and why? Typical answers to this question might include: I am a human being I am a man/woman I am a « name of your profession here » I am a soul I am a soul in a human body A Hare Krishna answer would probably be I am servant of the servant of the servant … I know because I was one! But interestingly these are all answers to the questions…

I propose that what is going on here is that God, albeit in the form of multiple spirit souls (i.e. us), is using the unique feature of the material world, namely ignorance in self-awareness … and everything that that facilitates (in terms of flavour of experience, emotion, enjoyment etc.) to increase the completeness of His/Her enjoyment. But God cannot directly enjoy the pains/pleasures of material existence because ignorance of self, especially firm belief in ones…

When a point of view is assumed to be something much more than a simple point of view, for example, we might blow it up into ‘the complete and final understanding of the meaning of life and everything else” … rather than accept it as but a partial appreciation, simply seen from our particular point or angle, then it becomes very difficult for us to accommodate contrary perceptions as anything other than plain wrong. Why…

It’s easy to relate to some people. Not so to others. I am sure we all find this to be the case. When we particularly relate to someone, we might say something like “he/she’s one of us!”. But I propose that everyone is actually one of us. Personally, I believe we are all equally part of God; little gods, if you will, going about our business of serving the completeness of God. And not just…

I think I believe that in this world we are all little gods serving the completeness of the big God, and as such whatever we do must already be perfect … quote from my ‘Material World Only Rasa‘ essay. The Śrī Īśopaniṣad invocation states that everything that comes from God is perfect. Let us try to face the challenge of seeing perfection in everything that is going on in this world. Even in the dark…

Human beings can believe in just about anything, and then go on to believe that it’s not a question of belief but just plain fact. But as one goes through life we have the opportunity to look back at the various convictions that we embraced and then later rejected over time. And how they caused us to act in relation to others. We realize that if it’s not truth now, then it never was ……

I am the first in line to say that each is entitled to their own point of view. After all, I believe am … so it would be inconsistent to deny others the same right. Point of view means you are seeing something from where you stand in relation to it. It is therefore, by definition, always a relative and partial appreciation of the complete view/whole picture.

Assumption God is complete, and God being the supreme enjoyer is an essential part of the completeness of God. In the Hindu/Vedic tradition, one name for God is Rasaraja (Sanskrit: king [raja] of tastes [rasa]). Completeness is not one-sided or partial. God’s knowledge and experience are not one-sided either. I propose that His completeness must span knowledge/experience and enjoyment of the full range of rasa, including those facilitated by ignorance. This material world is a…