I published this article sometime ago in Yoga Magazine issue number 66 year 2007.

In the current climate, it seems that the issues from this article are very significant for  Natha. Many of the school’s students have reached an advanced level of practise and experience on the spiritual  path and the tests they now face exceed the normal limits of  the tests of a beginner. Some of the recent events may appear strange to those who are unfamiliar with the specific problems of an advanced practitioner.

I hope these notions will shed light upon the infinite mechanisms that can generate such events. For those who want to better understand these complex events, please also read the article  Judas heritage…

Enjoy….

 

The tests that mark our spiritual evolution on the path of self becoming are inevitable. It is said that even Jesus experienced them, therefore all of us have spiritual tests. However, we usually hear about situations that test the beginner aspirants and we rarely hear about the tests of those who have been walking the spiritual path for some time.

The regression of the apprentice,the occultation of the teacher

Tests that appear in the first stages are much more obvious and they affect many practitioners, selecting those who are truly ready to continue. A discussion about such tests is generally better understood because it refers to the beginning stages, which are widely accessible. Nevertheless, the spiritual tests of aspirants with experience on the spiritual path are just as interesting. Due to the fact that they appear in more advanced stages of practice, they are subtler and more difficult to decode.

“When the disciple is ready, the master appears,” is a saying for those who’ve begun their inner evolution and sometimes express their worry about the way they will be guided further. Triumph over the first subtle tests represents the criteria upon which the aspirants’ selection is based. Therefore, the master only appears to those who have succeeded, as confirmation that they have passed the test and are ready for the next stages. For a while, everything flows within the new frame, the aspirant learns to see things from a new perspective and discovers the value of the truth of this expression, but its reverse can equally manifest: when the disciple fails some major spiritual tests, he regresses; therefore, he stops being ready and the master “disappears”, becoming occult. Of course, this is not only about concretely withdrawing from the life of the aspirant, due to an “apparently objective” situation (he either leaves the physical level, or he moves to another city or another country, or he is stopped from seeing his disciples). The most frequent situation is the one in which he is close to the aspirants, but some of them begin to regress and, by completely changing their point of view, they can no longer perceive him as a master.

The disciple sees differently, the master is the same

This bizarre phenomenon of “becoming occult”, which is specific to the spiritual teacher, is only due to the fact that the aspirant completely changes his inner point of view, and it is not because the master has changed. The one who is in such a dramatic situation begins to make strange and mean projections, he begins to find all kind of unreal justifications and he says that “the master is not as he was in the beginning”, even if – paradoxically – the master proves to be the same for the others, giving them the same divine help and being the same unpredictable enemy of the ego, when necessary.

How does such a distortion of the perception take place? A disciple who practices controlling the sexual energy, for example, will soon face serious tests in this direction. If he fails the spiritual test, he has the tendency to “lower his standards as an instinctive protective mechanism, hoping that in this way he will be protected from the risk of future disappointments. Without realizing it, the disciple narrows his inner horizon, and the master’s impulses and actions appear in another perspective – a darker and duller one. When the master gives him the impulse to mobilize all his forces in order to succeed to control the sexual energies, the aspirant will be less enthusiastic, he will even be ironic or joke about these impulses, sometimes manifesting impertinence or even a de-transfigurative familiarity. If the master advises him to let go of prejudices and enjoy lovemaking with his lover in order to develop control over the sexual energy, the aspirant may have the impression that he is pushed and forced towards something he no longer values, therefore he may consider that the action of the spiritual guide is an exaggeration, an intrusion into his personal life.

There is a risk for all of these aspects to appear as a result of the regression that follows the failed spiritual test. The aspirant no longer understands the importance of re-using sexual energy on the spiritual path and he now looks at things from a more “relaxed” point of view, imagining that the systematic use of the sexual energies on the path of transmutation and sublimation is a secondary, optional choice. Another example is that of a disciple who wants to explore the secrets of meditation. In the beginning he makes a daily effort, inspired also by the master’s words and by the example he gives. After a while he becomes looser and stops practicing so intensively, even if his spiritual results do not give him the right to slow down. Now he is tempted to give greater importance to some common aspects of life which he previously considered ephemeral. If in such a moment he has the possibility to choose between spiritual practice and a certain tempting social position that offers him financial satisfaction, but takes away all his time and energy, it is almost certain he will choose the social position.

Tricked by the vision which has once again become profane, the aspirant chooses the social position, convinced that after he makes a career and a bank account he will also find time for meditation. After failing this test, the aspirant considers that his action was correct and he imagines that his master’s advice regarding detachment from material aspects of life are strange and exaggerated. This is why he can even begin to intensely criticize some of his spiritual guide’s advice and also to convince others to act as he did. This attitude makes him go even deeper into the mistake marked by failing that spiritual test. In such a situation, the distance between aspirant and spiritual guide increases more and more, without any changes in the attitude of the master.

Playing the statue

For the advanced practitioners, one of the most difficult tests is that of their position and importance on the spiritual path. As one advances in his acquiring of knowledge, part of the spiritual training of a disciple is to share this knowledge with the practitioners from the same school of evolution. They are in the beginning, and he helps them to move on. Self-giving in order to give an impulse and to support the others offers a new depth to spiritual becoming; this is why it is embraced by most of those who reach a certain level of spiritual practice. However, in the significant and detached work through which he helps the others to evolve, a particular amplified “self-importance” can appear, in a very subtle way, without obvious signs. In this way, the spiritual ego awakens and becomes amplified. When the consciousness of self-importance is connected to strictly individual accomplishments or situations, especially very worldly ones, it can be noticed and removed more easily. However, when it is about what the aspirant does in order to serve the others spiritually, the state is insidious and it sneaks into his soul at a more subtle level and is often an important test on the path of inner perfection.

“The graveyards are full of irreplaceable people” – is a saying for those who need to understand that they are too full of themselves. When you truly do very good and important things for the others, you can easily forget that you are not the one who acts, but that God acts through you and He constantly does what is necessary. This is why advanced aspirants must be careful to apply the Karma Yoga principles with great mastership, and to practice humbleness intensely, attentively and consciously. It is not by chance that communities of monks insist on having a state of humbleness –the ally of monks and especially of those who have already had some spiritual realizations. Behind this self-importance, the germ of deviating from the spiritual path can appear very fast. How does this happen? The colleagues that the aspirant helps have the natural tendency to ‘erect a statue in his honour’. The advanced aspirant must be very lucid and avoid identifying himself with this image, in order to break that statue that they built of his image and with which he tends to identify his soul.

The disciple can consider these things as simple, harmless games, but when they crystallize as inner attitudes it is already too late because they lead to serious contradictions, big inner crises and painful errors. These mistakes are not made as a result of a lack of knowledge, but because he had already lost his inner freedom when he became the statue he was playing before.

Candle is the result of the burning flame

Another important test for advanced practitioners is that of “taking out insurance” against the reactions of the master. Any authentic spiritual guide has a crushing effect on the nature of the ego. Therefore, from the first steps on the path of inner becoming, the action of the master scares the disciples who still cling to the ego. As the transcendence of this illusory structure appears later on the path of evolution, it is possible that the aspirant will have a kind of deep subconscious terror that the master will “strike” again one day, hitting him in the core of his being, where the last piece of ego is hiding.

This is how, once he has gained a certain “importance” in the structure of the spiritual group, the aspirant will have subconscious hopes that the “gained” position will ensure him a kind of protection in front of the objective and uncompromised eye of his guide. The test he has to go through now is about the way in which he deals with the tendency to rely on his so-called illusory position to which he gives imaginary weightiness. This tendency appears because today’s society teaches us that one must prove to be useful in order to survive. The ego reacts in the same way in its desperate attempt to strengthen or even to regenerate its last pieces, after the aspirant had gradually reclaimed almost all his inner territories from of its claws.

“For the one who is still ignorant, the flame is the result of the burning candle; for the one who became wise, the candle is the result of the burning flame.” This is the test of successful individual practice. If we see things from a limited perspective, after the euphoria of the results of the beginning passes, a major inner conflict tends to appear between what we understood partially and what the master sees from a universal perspective and what he shows us with lucidity and detachment. If we do not aim to “raise” ourselves to the level at which we should be, according to the things we learned so far, it is possible to gradually lose the overview that is open to us in the first stages of the spiritual path, because we trust our master “no matter what”.

In this way, a feeling of being astray from the master appears. This feeling manifests as apparently “fair” criticism, phantasmagorical discontent, and a mean and exaggerated selectiveness towards what the master does. In this situation, his actions start to appear to increasingly lack the real divine meaning we used to perceive at the beginning of the spiritual path. Why is that? It is because now we no longer have the same vision. We live with the false impression that the flame appears now due to the candle and we consider it absurd to act upon it if we want to change the shape of the candle.

The image in the broken mirror is a distorted one

These aspects seem unimaginable for those who are in the first stages of the spiritual path (this is because in the beginning the inner vision is borrowed from the master to a great extent, and it represents part of the grace we receive in order to be able to move on). Yet, in the case of advanced aspirants who have a natural tendency to clearly understand this and to form their own spiritual vision, it is possible – if this crystallization does not take place at the highest spiritual coordinates that have been shown – that the aspirant can gradually lose contact with his master through an obvious alienation of ideas.

If the aspirant has the revelation in the beginning (transmitted by the spiritual guide) that everything in the Universe is love and he allows this new perspective to give him an impulse, it is nevertheless possible that over time he can no longer validate this understanding through personal experiences in meditation and in daily life. Scepticism, doubt, regression and various difficulties appear once again in the heart of the disciple, but now he has other “certain” perspectives and nobody sounds the alarm bells. In his subconscious, the regressing aspirant builds the conviction that not everything is quite like that, that there is not only love in the Universe and for him things become “different” and much more nuanced. He even has the tendency to be ironic, as if he is joking, about this revelation “for the beginners”; gradually, he will start to live further and further away from that principle, returning, without even noticing, to a profane vision, hidden behind the imaginary behavior of a “saint”, of a great “wise man” or even (why not) proudly claiming he is a master, (and, ridiculously enough, having the impertinence to give lessons to the spiritual guide from which he learned the little that he knows).

Even so, the master will continue to manifest in a detached manner and to apply this principle everywhere. If he interacts with the disciple and corrects him, the disciple will have the tendency to judge the actions of his spiritual guide according to his own perversity, according to abject and limited human interests, and not according to the universal principal of love, which he abandoned without noticing when he passed from the master’s direct support to the results obtained through individual practice. It is especially then that he imagines that the master acts out of certain personal interests and he interprets the master’s intention and action of correction in a distorted and mean way. This is only a part of the most famous tests that the advanced aspirants face on the spiritual path. Usually these situations are hard to understand as long as we do not have the inner point of view; they are especially hard for those who are not yet at that level of spiritual practice and realization to understand.

In life we are often confronted with situations in which we can take a certain decision and move towards one of our goals, but this is not easy. There is a moment that makes this decision the most important event in our life: if we act in that moment we gain all and if we don’t act we lose almost everything. This special moment can usually be perceived as a hesitation, as a break in the flow of events that gives us another perspective.

This moment of hesitation is a moment in which we are free from any previous ideas, any preconceived elements, when we are able to fly beyond the limits, but for this we have to DARE! There is much more to this DARING attitude than meets the eye.

These days I have been observing the reactions of people in the yoga school to the defamation campaign that some newspapers are spreading against NATHA YOGA CENTER. Their reactions were good from the perspective of being able to see through the smokescreen which the journalist created around this subject. Most people were surprised that an apparently reputable newspaper would do such a thing, others asked us to take immediate legal action against the journalist or the newspaper, and even more sent us messages of encouragement and solidarity. However, this is not enough! I noticed that few dared to act, to stand up and tell the truth as they know it, because it seems that they have to stand up against the entire public opinion. This case is very interesting because it shows that sometimes a newspaper can confiscate public opinion and replace it with the opinion of 3 (three!!!) people who have personal interests in the case. The other hundreds of students in NATHA YOGA CENTER may have the impression that they are standing against the public opinion if they are to tell their truth, while in reality they are just telling their truth against only three former students who have personal agendas. Apart from the immoral (and somehow illegal) manipulation that the newspaper is performing by confiscating public opinion (this is the subject of a following article) we face a problem of DARINGNESS. Three people motivated by personal interests and promoted by the agenda of a newspaper pose a big test to thousands of people to DARE or not to stand for the TRUTH. In line with these observations, here are some further thoughts on this important topic.

(see video in the end)

“To know, to wish, to dare and to keep the secret” says the ancient oral tradition of wisdom.

These four were considered the four most important principles in life, marking the path to perfection. The absence of one makes the other three meaningless and can even transform them into a mental prison.

These days knowledge is expanding exponentially as we have communication possibilities like never before. We have a vast amount of information and we are able to “connect the dots” and consequently see the bigger picture more easily than ever before. The reality that appears before us doesn’t fit (sometimes there is an immense difference) with the story that is constantly fed to us by the multitude of channels of (dis)information. Yet no one can prevent us from thinking and understanding and therefore WE KNOW!

We also have the wish to do something according to that knowledge and there are so many aspects today that require our immediate attention! We wish to perfect our being in ways that we know are possible. We wish to tell the truth about some things which we know happen in our society and are not right. We wish to be able to do something about the injustice we know goes on in our “backyard”. We wish to be able to investigate events that we know are not the way they are presented to us. We wish to be able to love and make our lover happy in the way that we know is right. We wish to be able to follow our ideals that we know are possible. Knowing all these aspects WE WISH!

Up until this point everything appears to be fine, each step in these events seem to lead to the next and evolution unfolds.

However, exactly when it comes to a practical action, when we have the moment of hesitation that gives us the freedom to act, WE DON’T DARE TO ACT in accordance with what we know and what we wish! We allow ourselves to be driven by the forces that surround us and by the desires these forces trigger inside us that seem to control “the game”. We dare not go against this apparently very powerful stream and as a result we lose our self esteem! We dare not challenge the system since we were made to believe we cannot live without the system. We dare not start an investigation on our own even if we know something is wrong and we wish to do it. We dare not begin a program of self-development even if we know we need it and we wish to do it. We dare not follow our dreams that we know are right and we wish to follow! We dare not tell the truth and we prefer to remain in the formal box of the socially and politically correct truth even if we know it is not humanly correct and we wish to say so. All in all WE DARE NOT!

Furthermore, in order to hide from this failure to dare, we quickly jump straight to the last part of the ancient phrase: we keep it secret that we know and even think to do something, but we NEVER DARE!

Without the principle TO DARE, the four principles are transformed into a mental prison instead of being the four columns supporting the “roof” over our perfected personality. Nowadays, this mental prison can be seen all over the place (if we dare to look around): “to know, to wish and to keep it all secret”!

Today this has become THE TRIPOD THAT SUPPORTS THE EGO, the mental prison in which people choose to spend their lives because they put themselves there and, after locking the door, throw away the key into the abyss of regrets.

If we learn to DARE, all four principles will work together to set us free. With this knowledge, we will wish to act and we will dare to do it, and then we will keep it secret from our ego! We will no longer consider our personality as being defined only by the events that happen to us, but we will begin to understand that we are the center of our own universe and this is a big secret!

We will dare to act silently, like the secret force of life that is always there and always secret. We will keep secret only the fact that we did it because the actions will become visible for everyone. In this way, the ego will no longer exist, being dissolved by the actions that we dare to manifest in the name of a higher principle of life that we start to directly discover in the silence of our secret place that is the soul.

It is time NOW to start learning to DARE since this is another lesson of life that sooner or later we have to take. Here is an excellent short video about this state. ENJOY and START DARING!

The ‘power of sacrifice’ and its miraculous effects upon our lives when made correctly.

In almost all the spiritual traditions on this planet we find references, to a greater or lesser extent, about ‘sacrifice’, as its power reveals new life, the new age, and transformation. According to these spiritual systems the entire Creation is in fact made possible by the supreme sacrifice that God makes in the perfect and permanent process of creation.

Even though it is a subject about which many people believe they know a lot, if we look closer we will realize that in order to correctly understand the reality of sacrifice as a profound divine mystery, we first of all need to deeply understand the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

At least once a year all the Christian world and in fact all the world, (because nowadays we live in the world of communication) focuses directly or indirectly upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and its importance for all of us. Unfortunately it must be said that in many situations (and sometimes even in the fundamental books of Christianity) the moment of Easter (when Jesus Christ gave his life for his people and for mankind) is treated in a superficial and sometimes even intentionally unclear way. Due to this approach, this wonderful, magnificent gesture Jesus made in order to make a better world for us became an act of suffering, an act of terror, an act which in fact does not reflect the reality of his act or gesture.

If the entire Creation is made possible by the supreme sacrifice that God makes in the perfect and permanent process of creation, let us first see what God is sacrificing in the process of creation and also why He needs to make this sacrifice, since He is The Almighty, who can do whatever He wants, anytime. To understand this we will use a model of Creation, a model which is a synthesis of all the models that are used by different spiritual systems (and of course we have to keep in mind that it is only a model and the reality is even far more complex than what is presented here).

Before the whole process of creation starts, in the Supreme Consciousness all the possibilities which exist in the future manifestation, in the future Creation, are equal. In front of the Divine Consciousness none of these possibilities or potentialities is more important, longer, or bigger than any other possibility.

For this reason, in order to create, God the Supreme Consciousness needs to start “somewhere”. To begin the process of creation God needs a starting point, a mark for the future development, otherwise all the equal possibilities remain in a state of perfect balance in the Supreme Consciousness and there is no Creation.

Therefore, in order to start “somewhere” God needs to make a first choice, and this first choice is made by “ignoring” all the rest of the potential Creation in favor of the first choice. In the sequence of creation this will become the first step.

In this same way, the next step is in fact always what follows in the sequence of creation and it is made possible so that God continues the act of creation. This is made possible only by this process of “ignoring” the rest of the equal potential possibilities by focusing and choosing only one of them.

Therefore, in the act of creation God focuses exclusively on something and consequently “excludes” everything else (for the moment). In this way, even though the Creation is very vast and expresses all the infinite Divine possibilities, at the same time it is also accurate and precise. This accuracy and precision of the entire manifestation, with all its levels and worlds and limited consciousness, are made possible by this sacrifice of the multiple choices by making only one choice.

The act of sacrifice that God is making is not a mere act of rejection, but rather it represents an act of embracing only one aspect and apparently sacrificing, (apparently from the point of view of creation) the infinitude of the finite Creation. Without this act of sacrificing the infinite possibilities by focusing upon one of them, without this exclusive focus into the creative act, it will not be possible for anything to manifest and everything will remain just pure potentiality with its infinite possibilities in the Supreme Consciousness.

Upon closer inspection (and thus losing the general perspective for a while but gaining details) we see that God’s act is a conscious choice that replaces another status of consciousness. The sacrifice that God makes by choosing one detail that is becoming the next step and sacrificing the whole general perspective for a while is a conscious one, it is not an accident or determined by an exterior force (for there are no “exterior” forces).

In this way God makes the manifestation of a particular level of consciousness, of a particular aspect, of a particular being possible; keep this important observation in mind for later on. It will enable us to be ready to understand some secret esoteric aspects regarding the exemplary sacrifice of Jesus Christ and to extract valuable conclusions for our daily life and the way we can use the power of sacrifice for our spiritual evolution.

God’s act of creation is not dictated by the “rules of the game”, but by His free expression of choices. We can understand now that any choice we make leads to a sacrifice that sooner or later will emerge, claiming the proper “price” for what we have chosen to bring into manifestation or to bring into our life in this way.

This idea, that everything we choose has a “price”, is a fundamental one and it will take the shape of a very important conclusion later.

When we want to bring a dream to life we have to make the right choices and in correspondence with this to pay the “price” through the sacrifices that will come together with our choices, first of all by limiting our possibilities.

The immature aspirants, who don’t understand these secret mechanisms of the universe, think in terms of having ‘everything’ without sacrificing ‘anything’. In this way, even though they always begin an action with a lot of enthusiasm, when it comes to sacrificing something they run away because they cannot understand its mechanisms.

As we can see in our lives, when we want something we are confronted with more than this simple mechanism; any choice implies a sacrifice, irrespective of whether we choose the “right way” or the “wrong way”. A choice implies the sacrifice of the potential options by choosing only one, thus ignoring all the rest. This is the first sacrifice which is placed in the beginning of every project we will ever do in our life. This is the fundamental sacrifice from where everything starts, including the whole Creation.

The discussion about whether our choice is right or wrong belongs to the inferior mind. For the initiate, before talking about right or wrong, making a choice implies a sacrifice and knowing this prepares him/her – by allowing the act of sacrifice which comes together with the choice.

Even if it might sound easy, in reality many discover that making a choice is not that easy.

In fact, what does it mean to be ready to make a choice? First of all to be ready to make a choice means to be aware that we can choose! In many situations people are unaware they can choose and sometimes, due to attachments and fears, they refuse to see this because intuitively they know that choice comes with sacrifice.

Moreover, to be aware that we can choose means first of all to be aware of the field of all potentialities. The field of all potentialities is in fact contained in the “creative void” from where everything starts and where everything returns after existence.

An initiate who wants to gain the freedom of choice strives to “wake up” all the time, to become aware of the multiple possibilities that are born within the creative void. Being aware of this infinite field of possibilities we make the first and decisive step towards making any dream come true in our life.

Every single success, every time we make a dream come true in our life, is in the beginning rooted in the creative void and starts with a choice we make, thus making our first and most important sacrifice by becoming aware of one option and sacrificing the infinite possibilities which previously existed as potentials.

For an initiate this is the true sacrifice. To be aware of the possibilities in order to be able to choose is the real readiness for this sacrifice.

Let’s see why sacrifice is so scary and for whom it is so scary. Sacrifice makes it possible for us to transcend the limits of the present reality in order to make room in our life or in the universe for a new aspect of life, for a new understanding, for a new status, for a new level of existence.

Sacrifice therefore makes it possible for transformation to appear and stagnation to disappear by giving birth to something that appears to be “new” in our life.

Normally we consider that our thoughts, ideas and actions are all “original”, that we are the authors. In this way we consider ourselves to be separate entities from the Totality, being able to create and to manifest something completely independent from the Universe. From a spiritual perspective this can rightfully be considered the “original sin”, the source of confusion and misunderstanding in our life. Remember that there is “nothing new under the sun”, everything (when we are at this normal level of consciousness) comes from the universal “reservoir” of thoughts and possibilities and it is not new, it just transits through our being again and again. Therefore we can eventually bring something new into our life which is limited.

But even so, the only possibility to bring something completely new into our life is through sacrifice. When we correctly perform a sacrifice we clearly feel that something new will appear in our life. In this way we can say that the renewed transformation is the very expression of the Spirit in manifestation and its basis is the sacrifice.

Continuous renewed transformation is the only access to universality and eternity that the limited consciousness has while existing in the dual world. The inertial and unconscious stagnation is the expression of the “shadow” of the Spirit we generally call ego; this inertial and unconscious stagnation is based on a deep fear of anything new, as well as on the attachments to comfort, continuity and security.

As a consequence we can understand now why sacrifice is a terrible threat for the ego, as sacrifice dissolves the very basis of the ego – stagnation, thereby making a new status possible, a new level that will emerge into our life and thus into the universe. If we look around us we can see people making a lot of efforts to achieve something and sometimes they are even suffering while making all these efforts. Afterwards they say: “I have sacrificed so much to get here”, or “I have sacrificed so much to create these possibilities”.

It is interesting to observe later that sometimes, out of the sacrifice that person mentions, something good, harmonious or beneficial does not come in that person’s life. Instead of the good aspects, attachments, suffering, confusion, conflicts, tension, or illness seem to come out of the sacrifice they have made. This typical situation shows that not always what we may consider – from the ego perspective – to be a sacrifice is a real sacrifice and then of course, seeing such a result, we will become more careful when we say “I have sacrificed so much to get here”.

Now let’s see what a sacrifice is in reality and how we may correctly use this formidable power. From the aforementioned life situations we can see that there are real sacrifices which always bring immediate genuine transformation, spiritual understanding and evolution into our life; and there are also the so-called ‘false sacrifices’ that bring with them attachment, suffering, confusion, illness and tension.

It is apt to mention here the folkloric saying, “a kick in the backside is followed by a step forward, taken by us.”

If we put the problem from this perspective we can say that there are efficient sacrifices that bring immediate spiritual results and what I call ‘slow sacrifices’ that take us on a long journey, until, being moulded by the kicks of life, we eventually attain spiritual results. Both visions, the first one with real and false sacrifices and the second one with fast and slow sacrifices, are correct since we are interested in the differences that exist between the two aspects for its practical importance in our daily life.

In relation to the deeply mysterious and often misunderstood exemplary sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and following this parallel (by other examples) we will be able to understand the reality of sacrifice and the misunderstandings that radically influence this topic of ‘sacrifice’ nowadays.

If we will make an imaginary travel back in time 2000 years ago, we will see that Jesus knew what was about to come upon him and he even knew who would betray him ‘with a kiss on the cheek’ as the Book tells us.

Furthermore, He announced this information to the gathering of disciples. Despite having this knowledge He continued without any fear, facing an apparently “tragic” destiny, but still following the divine principles He taught.

Usually when we think about this moment we think about the tragedy rather than His glorious victory achieved by following His principles, the principles He taught until the end. Remember that in those days Jesus didn’t follow the Book, for He was “writing” it right there and then. And He also didn’t perform the sacrifice because He didn’t have another choice or He didn’t realize the danger He was exposed to. Jesus knew the danger, He also knew all the consequences, yet He chose to follow the principle of LOVE that would make human beings better and deliver a better world. His attitude was firm in following the path not because of the lesson He would give to the people around Him for they were the ones killing Him or at least watching Him die (without moving a finger). His attitude was one of firmness of following His beliefs, His attitude was to follow the teachings and not to focus on the failure of the others to understand His teachings.

Seeing from this perspective we should consider what a state one must have when, after enthusiastically teaching people about true belief, about love, about loving and trusting God, they look at Him as a stranger and don’t move one finger to save Him; moreover they deny knowing Him – as Peter did three times in the night Jesus was arrested – or they choose another one to be spared from the terrible death. In such a situation one must have an extraordinary determination to go further since no science showed precisely that this sacrifice would have any meaning at all for the people, or that it would work for sure and in the end people would listen to the message. The sacrifice was made “blindly” until the end without any prior certitude that it would succeed or fail.

The fact that the sacrifice was not made in vain, that it was in fact a success, was only understood later on, after hundreds of years, however Jesus could have given up before the sacrifice even took place upon seeing his own disciples betray and deny him. Instead Jesus focused upon the goal and not upon the sacrifice, He therefore performed the sacrifice to the end proving in this way that He really wanted to save human beings and deliver a better world, and as a result not even the terrible events were able to stop him in the moment they happened.

Jesus taught the people around Him for years, many of these people were now in Jerusalem (for Palm Sunday), many of the people had spent years attending meetings with Jesus and they faced this tragic event without doing anything, without trying to save Him and more than this, some of them even chose His torture and death (by opting for Barabbas’ release).

When the Roman governor asked the Jewish people if they wanted Jesus or the local leader Barabbas to be released, the same people who had come to listen carefully to His teachings then betrayed and condemned Him to death. Of course, some say that the priests from the temple had the place filled with their servants who instigated the people to choose Barabbas, but this still doesn’t make the ones who previously listened to Jesus’ words less responsible for their choice!

For many this moment is an important one because it focuses upon the sacrifice, it focuses upon the tragedy that unfolded, but if we try to put ourselves “in Jesus’ sandals” we will realize that in that moment He was confronted with an extraordinary choice.

In that moment nothing showed the success of His previous teachings; He had taught about love, about following your heart, about belief in God, He taught people about loving each other and now, in His extraordinary moment of need, when He, the teacher, was unjustly accused of heresy, those who had followed him for years gave up on him, they no longer followed His teachings and He could see this.

But this sacrifice of an uncertain success represented a part of His choices and at that point He could choose something else. He could choose to “confess” His sins and give the priests the satisfaction that He recognized His mistakes and He could have walked out from prison free, at least momentarily. He could have chosen to go away and not even enter Jerusalem for Palm Sunday (because He knew that people would forget what he said and embrace the formal social conventions in the end, choosing the political leader instead of God). Knowing that Judas would be the one who will plan to “help” Jesus the way in which he did, He could have at least chosen to lead Judas away because in this way there would be no betrayal.

All these choices existed at that moment, choices that were for sure not delivering a better world, not delivering a better human being. But these choices did not come from the principle of ‘love’ and from the principles of ‘tolerance’ and helping one other as Jesus preached and therefore He did not consider any of these choices.

There was also another choice – the choice to follow the path of Love. This was not a choice of sacrifice, it was a choice to continue further with the Divine principles regardless of what will happen.

In that situation Jesus did not choose sacrifice, He chose to follow the Divine principles, and that choice alone puts Him in the situation to pay the “price” in the shape of a proper sacrifice. To deliver a better world and give better chances for the evolution of the whole of humanity was Jesus’ aspiration and by following that until the end, at a certain point He crossed paths with society, with people’s egos and He had to “pay” the ultimate “price” to make His “dream” come true – making a better world, creating a better chance for salvation.

We often see people claiming to be ready, saying they would ‘do anything for a certain ideal in their life to come true’. However, when life comes to them claiming the necessary sacrifice for that ideal, they start to have second thoughts, doubting the success and as a result they finding reasonable excuses to betray the ideal in front of the imminent proper sacrifice. These people claim that they become “more realistic”, that they have more mature thoughts. However, those betrayed ideals represent (for the majority of people) nowadays the failures of the so-called ‘maturity’ even for those who call themselves Christians, who were supposed to learn about the power of sacrifice from the best model we have had in this world, which was Jesus Christ.

The ideals that we develop when we start to grow up, the ideals we have when we are young and full of energy, possibilities and potential are confronted with terrible and terrifying moments (for the ego), when we have to make a choice and then we have to follow that ideal by paying the price with the sacrifices that are needed.

For this reason the immense majority of people living on this planet make compromises in order to downsize the sacrifice needed, instead of manifesting the wonderful ideals they have chosen to follow. Moreover, if we go back to Jesus’ example we see that He chose to follow the Divine principles with all the risks – He went to Jerusalem in a difficult time, surrounded by a group of disciples who will leave him in the most difficult moments – and consequently He continued until the end, paying the ultimate price without knowing if His gesture will teach anybody a lesson or if He will be counted among the thousands of prophets who had died before Him, killed by the angry mob or by the scared people of power while remaining almost anonymous…

(to be continued)

I wish you all a happy Easter celebration, full of choices…

“What is the secret of happiness in a couple relationship?

Love together the same divine things!”  (Anthony De Mello)

Here are some fundamental ideas that give a deep and initiatic perspective upon the couple relationship and underline its spiritual value.These ideas can represent a genuine revolution in the view of couple relationships since they are reformulating the frame of thinking about this important aspect of our life.

• The Law of polarity:

As I referred to in the first article about the Tantric system, and I will have to mention that a fundamental notion that will help us to understand the phenomenon related to the couple relationship and the way it can become the genuine “engine” for our spiritual evolution is ENERGY. There are many possible definitions of energy but I will only mention here one that is useful in the practical applications: energy is a movement that is born out of a difference of potential between two poles. This difference of potential is in fact born out of the game of polarities that structures the entire creation at all its levels, for this reason it is of a high interest to take polarity as one fundamental law.

Tantra states that everything in the whole universe results from the free, spontaneous, endless and ecstatic union between Shiva – the Supreme Masculine consciousness – and Shakti – the Supreme Feminine Consciousness – the game between Yang and Yin.

For this reason Tantra reveals, (for the ones who are ready to look carefully and without preconceived ideas into these aspects) that the universal dynamism mysteries are found in a synthetic way expressed within the mysteries and fascinating game of the relationship between a man and a woman in the same way the mysteries of galaxies we find condensed within the deepness of the atoms. This is the reason why the conscious and initiatic approach of a polar couple relationship represents much more than the inevitable result of some game of individual forces, but the expression of a Divine Game that is structuring the whole universe in this manner.

For the tantric initiates, the couple relationship is viewed upon as an open gate towards one of the great mysteries of the universe, a great chance to directly experience this mystery and to understand it through direct and conscious participation. The couple relationship is thus understood as an expression in the human existence of the Universal Couple Shiva – Shakti, Consciousness – Energy.

Thus the couple relationship would become a genuine “spiritual workshop” in which the two lovers learn how to awaken first their individual polarity to a large extent and then – by empathetic union with the other lover – to awaken the complementary polarity.

This makes the couple relationship become not only a pleasant aspect of life, but an occult element of great importance for our spiritual evolution, with the obvious condition that we look upon it from the right perspective or in other words to have the proper initiation. This is possible by consciously engaging in this game of complementary polarities, amplifying first our own polarity and gradually awakening through assimilation from the other one the complementary polarity, thus gradually heading within the couple relationship towards the glorious state of androgyny. The polar couple relationship becomes in this way the most simple and in the same time efficient method through which we can approach and become tangent with the glorious state of androgyny, the state which will allow us to have afterwards exceptional spiritual realizations very easily.

The purpose of the tantric path with regards to the couple relationships

The essential goal of the tantric system as well as of any genuine spiritual path is the awakening towards our true nature, the God within, the Supreme Self-Atman. The second stage of this realization implies consciously realizing the identity which exists between this ultimate reality of our being and the ultimate nature of the entire creation, the Supreme Absolute or God.

The first and most important step in this spiritual search is the revelation of the Immortal Supreme Self – Atman – step which is realized by the direct experience of that perfectly neutral “something” within, the luminous and silent witness which is the one who knows everything. In order to achieve this state of centering in the “silent eye” of the storm (as sometimes we call the Supreme Self); the Tantrics propose the spherical expansion of the consciousness by the amplification and union with complementary pairs of energies from the universe.

This neutral centre is expressed in our consciousness through the fundamental experience of TO BE, through the feeling of I, free from any other associations.

Tantra teaches us that the intensely lived life experience in all its plenitude and maximum lucidity, transfiguration and adequate knowledge generates in itself a state of centering on this central axis (The Supreme Self) of which at a certain point we begin to be aware. Therefore all that is needed is to awaken steady attention in the middle of the most intensive experiences of life. States like happiness, harmony, goodness, extraordinarily intensive pleasure, as well as states of frustration, sadness, anger can become as many reasons to become centered in the superior state of the detached witness.

The condition for this state of self-centering to appear is, besides having a steady and powerful attention in the middle of the experience, is to have an exceptionally intensive state. The more intensive the experience is combined with a sharp attention, the faster the process of self-centering is. If the experience is a medium one then we risk having less capacity to centre in the superior state of the detached witness. This observation represents a fundamental mechanism which is revealed by the tantric system and represents the foundation of many of its techniques. If the attention and the lucidity can be trained through different exercises performed individually, the other “ingredient” to expand our consciousness until the state of detached witness, namely the exceptionally intensive states, will not always depend on us. Life sometimes provides us with exceptionally intensive states, but when and how they come is not always under our control and consequently it might be a problem to use this mechanism as a steady spiritual practice. For this reason the tantrics always sought the source of exceptionally intensive states to which we can naturally have access to at any time and which, together with our well-trained lucidity and attention, will become the basis of an exceptionally efficient spiritual practice.

The super sensual experience of eroticism with perfect control over the sexual function in a transfigurative and loving couple represents such an important source of extraordinarily intensive states which will help us to realise the state of self-centering.

Love is one of the fundamental experiences that a person will have in the process of spiritual awakening and the sensual expression of it through love making with perfect control and transfiguration will become the closest way to consciously experience the state of pure existence.

Through these intensive experiences which we have with lucidity and relaxation our consciousness will tend to expand to include complementary states and to complete our spiritual experience. Tantra doesn’t imply a fight with the elements of life, but rather to assimilate them through the conscious experience.

Since tantra suggests to live as much as possible all of life’s experiences with intensity, some mistakenly consider that it is an inferior path which leads to exaggerated carnality and mere orientations to pleasure.

Beyond this misunderstanding the initiates consider Tantra as the SUPREME ASCETICISM because it implies a perfectly controlled and lucid gradual expansion of the consciousness into the exceptional experiences of life, the control here being done not by force, but rather through realising our options.

Therefore in tantra the experience is not “consumed”, but it gradually and lucidly unfolds so that it is enriching us. Therefore, the state of centering is obtained in tantra not by effort, but by lucid experience of all that life offers to us, the expansion of the consciousness which results from here allows us to include the contraries and thus to obtain the state of centering in the neutral point, accessing the zero level of personality.

In the couple relationship, both the positive extraordinary experiences and the negative experiences which result from the individual blockages are as many ways to expand the field of our consciousness and to surpass our limits.

The tantric initiates lucidly observe and thus effortlessly control any manifestation of the universal energy, Shakti, being able to transform its inferior aspects in as many spiritual states.

Through this spherical expansion of the field of our consciousness, everything which was established beforehand in a rigid way (which before was helping our being to live even through the moments of unconsciousness) is gradually eliminated; the walls of life regulations are falling under the enormous pressure of the conscious experience, of Reality. This way the being becomes free and spontaneous, permanently aware of itself. The more often these moments of awareness occur, the more accentuated is the state of spiritual awakening.

As a conclusion we can say that the gradual expansion of the consciousness will appear through the controlled and conscious union with the energies and experience of life, therefore, tantra is using the extraordinarily intensive experiences which life provides.

The plenary and full of love transfiguration couple relationship in which the two lovers practice sexual continence (the hyper lucid and perfectly controlled sexual impulse) becomes for the tantric initiates an exceptional source of such overwhelming experiences that are doing nothing more than expanding the field of consciousness of the two lovers from finite to infinite.

The exceptional value of these mechanisms recommend the super sensual erotic experience in a polar couple as an efficient method and from here we can understand why the interest to prolong the sensual experience is not any more a hunt for sensual pleasure but to gain new spiritual balances

• Essential aspects related to the couple relationship – the normal way in the couple

Statistics and modern realities:

• · The life duration of the couple relationship decreases in an alarming way. In 2001, statistics showed that the average duration of a couple relationship is 3 – 5 times less than the duration of a couple relationship in the beginning of the 60’s. Yet the interest to have a happy couple relationship remained almost unchanged, but “it seems” that it doesn’t depend on us. In reality, only people’s ignorance makes them unable to develop a couple relationship in the direction to which they aspire.

• · The way the couple relationship is perceived was subjected to drastic change. Some aspects represent a genuine failure in the modern couple relationships. Happiness and fulfillment in the couple relationship for example are often replaced nowadays with professional and material accomplishments. People have the tendency to “forget” about themselves through excessive work and through the use of psychic stimuli such as tobacco, alcohol, drugs. The time the two lovers spend together decreases both in quantity and in quality. If last century we could speak about the honeymoon of the two lovers, these days we can barely speak in most of the cases about the honey-weekend and even this one is often not so bright.

• · The concept of relationships tends to become something simplified to the maximum. For example in the Nordic countries the confusion at this level makes people often have an instinctual interaction reduced to the minimum. People prefer to live within groups of interest staying away from intensive experiences such as passion or love; these intensive experiences are sometimes even considered noxious and disturbing for what the modern person aims for in the daily life.

• · More families are now disabled in an accelerated rhythm. As an example, the majority of the families from the Nordic countries recompose a few times before children reach maturity, thus each child “enjoys” more parents. This fact might appear to be good, but in time it leads to the weakening and degradation of the couple relationship, its fundamental role being gradually replaced by the society, effect which is paradoxically corresponding to the ideals towards which the utopic communists from North Korea were heading.

• · At a more profound level, the erotic fulfillment in the couple is drastically reduced. Most women today are not fulfilled erotically and they seldomly experience states of orgasm. States of frustration and connected disturbances become more frequent. The way sexuality is experienced by women is in many cases a sacrifice (they sacrifice their own sexual fulfillment for the man’s sexual fulfillment) while for the man, sexuality leads in many cases to premature exhaustion.

• · Due to the continuous alienation from their own soul, the romantic phase in the couple relationship (phase which we will see occupies an important role in developing the superior levels of consciousness) becomes shorter and the routine and boredom arise earlier. Due to this fact more and more couples call without great success the couple counseling in order to re-ignite the flame of passion in their relationship. The consequence of this situation is immense. One of them is the fact that in many cases people remains emotionally retarded, being unable to sustain the couple relationship from an emotional point of view.

• · An improper participation in the couple relationship which destroys the passion faster leads to the proliferation of pornography as a desperate attempt to light up the interest for intimacy and sensual interaction. On a long term basis this aggravates the situation, leading to the sexual problems and disappearance of the libido.

• · Upon closer inspection one can notice that the forms of emotional and sexual education are primitive and the sources are almost non-existent. Yet the emotional chapter of life is a very important one. Due to emotional crises or emotional immaturity, people make the majority of their wrong decisions in life. For example, due to mistaking a sexual attraction with love, youngsters marry and try to establish a family which is based on something unreal. Rarely do we see people crying because of a mental mistake, but often we see people crying because of an emotional mistake. Even though this chapter of our life has such an impact on us, the emotional education is primitive, if at all. Children and teenagers are not taught about love and about love relationships and therefore the only educational sources at this level remain the characters in books and movies which most of the time present distorted, deviated and unrealistic models. This leads to the situation where people step into life and into relationships completely unprepared from an emotional point of view.

• · Another strong chapter in our life which suffers these days from lack of information is sexuality. Similar to the emotions, sexual education is very poor, being reduced to the basic biological mechanism of it. It shouldn’t amaze us that in this situation in the era of interplanetary travels, genetic engineering and supercomputing sexuality is still under the influence of medieval taboos and prejudice.

Next we will present how to make the couple relationship the genuine “engine” of the spiritual life….. stay tuned

“Memories” about the spiritual future of our civilization as I see it now
The aspects that I am writing here are not referring to a specific time but to a specific state of consciousness. The time is yet associated with it but the way this time we can expect to be is very much in accordance with the level of consciousness that our humanity is having and the way we evolve in the future years and decades.

If these aspects here will be understood by many, a lot of them will already change for it is only the unconsciousness that is predictable and foreseeable while the consciousness is spontaneous and is unpredictable. Once we understand about ourselves a certain predestination we are already on the changing course of that destiny. As we already scientifically proved, the mere fact of understanding a process is already transforming that process.

It is therefore sometimes a prophecy is apparently not fulfilled for it is enough that lots of people understood it and took it seriously then the future was already transformed and that prophecy is not valid anymore. Of course we will say that if the prophecy was not made than the events will happen as the untold prophecy will reveal. From this perspective we can say that a prophecy is acting as a future changing tool that is guiding the human consciousness toward a better future by the power of awareness.

We are now in a moment of great importance for our human development both as individuals and as a civilization. Our planet is becoming more and more as a fast learning class where the teaching lessons are very intensive.

The lesson that is facing the human being right now is the lessons of conscious letting go of the individuality and of the separation. We are in the full speed development of the informational communication that is sooner or later leading to the emotional breakdown and a necessary revolution in the emotional communication. Before this will happen, a great crisis of the morality will take place on the planet, probably due to the discoveries about the manipulation that is done through informational control, manipulation that will become ever more destructive in the following years.

Devices that will combine the latest discoveries of science with the psychic abilities of some people enhanced by the devices will create genuine mass psychosis that will lead to social tensions. Those will first of all affect the individuals from inside in the form of anxieties, stress, and unexplained sadness. Soon after, the information about these aspects will come out and the moral issue will be intensely debated.

People will gradually begin to realize that nobody can stay apart from the whole humanity and that everybody is linked with everybody. Notions as “psycho ecology”, “a clean mental environment”, “mental protection”, “emotional protection” and so on, will emerge in full power on a background of amazing scientific discoveries regarding the power of our mind over matter and the way we influence the planet on which we live. After the first rush and some violent confrontations of a religious nature – confrontations in which the religions as we know them today will loose most of their power and influence among the people of the world – the people that will remain will start to understand that we are all together in this cosmic adventure and that we are all the sons and daughters of the same Cosmic Father.

But these elements, even thou they are amazing and should create an entire revolution, they will be really understood under the power of some events of an intensity and magnitude that will affect deeply the whole planet. Thus the lesson of giving up the individuality and separation will be given by three big disasters that will make people experience the solidarity and in the same time will make them understand that without a state of unity we cannot make it through this universe on this little planet. This external threat will coincide with the beginning of the previously mentioned internal troubles. A new collective consciousness will reappear and gradually tend to replace the collective unconsciousness.

The old science and scientific spirit, that is holding in the back the occult organizations, will tend to control the human spirit in a final attempt to eradicate this increased tendency toward occultism and obscurantism – as they will call the new tendencies for spiritual research and the vivid spirit to question the old and rigid beliefs. This ideological battle will be given on the field of informational ground, the old world trying to control all the informational channels and to label all the new tendencies as: “dangerous attacks to the established order and modern civilization”. They will try even to create some associations between the modern vanguard scientists and the charlatans that are using people’s increased natural  openness toward these aspects in order to get material advantages. In the future the ideological battle will be as fierce and as damaging for humans as the battle with bombs and rockets. The more humans become aware about the power of the mind over patter the more this battle will commence.

The technology development will be reoriented in the following years by the new discoveries in the domain of energy and will also be enormously encouraged by the energetic crisis. Due to this crisis, humanity will invest more attention in the areas that until now were unknown and in the 21^st century we will face the first experiences that will prove without any doubts the existence of the so called subtle energies and the way they interact with the physical world. That will open a new era in the science and the theories that revolutionized the 20^th century will collapse with big noise. The spiritual science will make the first steps on these grounds. Once that is happen, the science is developing in an unseen rhythm in a period that will be known as the second renascence.  A new generation of evolved spirits will come in earth to reformulate the spiritual doctrines in accordance with the new horizons that were given by the science. This new spiritual doctrine will be simple and will be a new religion that is individual and direct, without any intermediary, adapting to all the scientific discoveries and using every element of life as a gate to spiritual transformation and direct communion with God.

After the informational revolution – after the big informational abuses will be revealed and the people will start to understand more such issues that until now where completely out of reach for ordinary people – the emotional revolution will come. The world will understand that emotions are a very important part of our life and that we need proper development and proper education as well at this level. There will be given new laws for emotional protection, based on the new discoveries about the subtle energies and the fact that the emotions can be measured and their impact studied. Gradually the attention of most of the people will focus in this area of life and it will become quite common to perceive directly the subtle energies and the subtle colors. A new era will begin in human relationships and communication. The couple relationship will be revalued to its cosmic dimension and the idea of androgyny will be again going out for the public. New understanding about human nature will emerge in these troubled times. The occult law of resonance will become the mile stone for all the science and the unificatory force that will allow all the systems to discover the fifth element, the Unification, the Oneness.

The mistakes of the past will be understood from a clearly different perspective and the state of unity and tolerance will grow on earth. After the three big disasters and the informational revolution that will lead to the emotional revolution, humanity will know a time of growth in spiritual dimensions. The new generations of evolved spirits will create a spiritual environment in some areas of the planet, making possible to appear a new race of people that will be genetically superior and also will be endowed with new abilities that humans never new in the modern history at such extended scale. The use of intuition and a primitive form of telepathy will become wide spread and in the areas that will be the cradle of the new religion there will be large communities that will use a new form of intuitive language as a basis for their communication. In such areas the development will be faster and they will be separated by the different level of consciousness and even by a different language.

The time of unity of the whole humanity will enter another phase when all people will be united in a kind of human consciousness and in the same time will freely develop different communities that will be the seed for the future specialized communities that in the end will form the Great Human Consciousness of the Cosmic Human.

All these are happening right now and for every one of us.

An ashram in the middle of the city

The new role of the monasteries and ashrams in the modern society

In the modern society we are confronted with a lot of challenges raised by the civilization process itself. The old way of living was swept away by the industrial revolution and the secular traditions were lost. But in most of the cases we didn’t put anything in exchange. What the ancestors were doing in the daily duties out of a natural wisdom so they could stay in harmony and sanctity in the middle of their life, later become a set of traditions that were still keeping people in the spiritual integration yet in a more rigid way, and is now covered insufficiently by the slow progress of science. The cathedrals that were replacing the places of natural energetic power marked in the old times by sanctuaries are now replaced in their turn by shopping malls. What was a place for recovering our forces and giving us a reorientation toward what’s essential in life become nowadays places designed to confuse and make us loosing the track of time and our common sense in order to spend more of anything (money, energy, time). The individual is therefore struggling to find a solution to the problematic of the daily life that is too complex to be comprehended by our weak senses and agitated mind.

One of the increasingly big problems is the life stile especially in the civilized society. The welfare system proved already, for those that are ready to see, its problematic angles. Weaken by the lack of direct daily challenge and training, people’s life-force is drying out quickly and this process is more spread than ever in the civilized world. The human qualities, especially those regarding the human soul that we are now knowing mostly from books and movie characters, are decreasing under the pressure of the stressful life in the cities. Our life is flattening and looses its deepness, becoming more and more a “bidimensional life” from a “three-dimensional” life that was once, analogically loosing one of its dimensions under the pressure of the life consuming civilization.

Once I was together with a tantric master, eager to learn more about life and spirituality. We were in the nature and a little bug landed on his right hand. Instead of chasing the bug away, the master started to observe the bug and while doing this the bug begin to run on his flattened right palm. When the bug reached the end of he palm, the master placed the left palm in continuation and the bug continue the race on the left palm. In the end of the left palm it was already waiting the right palm again. And the “game” continued for a while, caching the attention of all the people around, curious to understand the meaning of this game of the master. After a while the master raises his eyes and looked directly into my eyes saying: “can you imagine what a revelation this bug will have if it will stop now?”. In that very instant I realized that in fact we are like the little bug in the palms of Life, being supported but in the same time running toward the end of it and every time going through the same places and same situations  again and again, being too busy running to observe the game itself. For that we need to stop! But the problem that appears is how and where to stop without being taken by the flow or without being “crushed” by the immense flow of people that are still rushing toward the “horizons”.

The attempt to stay sharp and keep the aspiration toward perfection intense and vertical is many times challenged by the life stile that is almost not at all including any spiritual issue. We do not have “space” in the daily agenda for spiritual evolution and therefore the one that want to go for transformation must practically run “against the current”. In this respect, like in any process of healing (because in fact the first attempt on the spiritual transformation path is to cure ourselves from the weaknesses, from the bad habits, from compromises, from ignorance) a stage of protective environment is needed; in this stage we get the strength and knowledge that are needed for successfully realize this spiritual step under the protective help of the spiritual environment. 

The “fortress” of spirit

Traditionally the idea of an ashram or a monastery was to provide a safe place, away from the “world”, to those that were aiming to seek perfection and to dedicate all their life for that. It is a place meant to be the “fortress” of spirit where the eternal Light of Divine Wisdom was preserved unspoiled by the world changes. It is a place where one can “stop” from the race toward the end of life and have the necessary time to observe the Divine Game. By giving up the world with all its temptations, the aspirant is able to gradually embrace more and more the Kingdom of GOD. Silencing the outside noises the aspirant is aiming to listen the “voice” of the Heart where GOD is talking always to us.

Therefore an ashram is a place where the hearts meet and not a place between some walls. The ashram is also that privileged place where people “take refugee” in order to gain the battle with their own inferior tendencies. The ashram is not only a house but mainly it is an attitude toward evolution. It is that special place where people are taking the chance to challenge their destiny for better and have the proper conditions to succeed in this difficult task.

The fortress turns into an “eagle nest”

These days the options are not anymore so clear and therefore the meaning of an ashram or a monastery and under the pressure of necessity the meaning enriched with some new issues.

In the modern time a rather “living life” option is embraced by most of the people that are approaching a spiritual life instead of “getting away” from life to reach spiritual heights. Many realize nowadays that every experience in the world is a very good training and it’s very hard to seek perfection out of the world. For this we have to live our life and not refuse life in an endless chain of mortifications. But in order to live our life first we have to wake up from the “trance” of our own habits. As we have shown in the above story with the bug, we have to stop “racing” and for this we need first the protection of a nest that let us training apart from the world dangers that will stop us before we have the chance to start. People knows that by instinct and when they have some new ideas that need to get crystallized before facing the big test of the others skepticism they are seeking for the company of other people that share the same vision or have the same system of values.

For those that aim the spiritual awakening and need a “nest” to fetch their progress, the solution is the ashram or the monastery. In this situation the meaning of this settlement must be enriched with a new significance that adapts very well to the modern spirituality and fulfills the goal to live life and evolve spiritually in the same time. From the “fortress” where spirituality is guarded, the modern ashram turns into a “nest” where spirituality and life are fetched together and spread into the world.  The ashram is not anymore placed in a remote location, far from the world temptations, it is placed in the cities, and there where people are living. People are not anymore hiding into the ashrams from the world; they are living in the ashram while learning and getting the strength to live into the world a spiritual life, being able to stand by their own strength and learn from the lessons of life instead of learning from escaping life in different ways. The time spend into the modern ashrams is for many people a temporary but necessary “reduction” of their social existence and not a life time option. Enriched with this meaning the ashram is amazingly up to date and ready to provide the solutions for the very complicate problems of the coming spiritual revolution.

We can say from this perspective that an ashram is a “spiritually controlled environment” in which al the transformations are taking place under the protective setup. The agitation of the modern society is proportionally kept away so that the spiritual seekers can constantly come back to the silence of meditation without necessary living completely isolated from society. The ashram is the “silent island” in the middle of the stormy ocean.

The ashram is a sacred place but not because it is built with sacred stones but because is inhabited by future saints. For this reason all the activities in the ashram have the goal to serve the best the inner transformation of inhabitants and not to serve their ego. But since the people are integrated into life, the ashram life will reflect the inner life of the inhabitants. The problems that are encountered in the life of such spiritual community are in fact the exteriorization of the problems existent in every inhabitant of the ashram.

The ashram is the place where the limits are all the time pull down and the physical appearance of the ashram is important only in the extent is reflecting the inner reality. In the ashram, for each individual the “outside” and the “inside” meet under the sharp light of the constant attention. For example if one have a messy room, that reflect the inner mess and by cleaning the room he/she aim to clean the inside that was the cause for the outside mess. If one is always postponing to do certain tasks for the common living in the ashram, that person show a mental pattern that is in fact affecting all his/her life, not only those particular situations where it become visible for the others. And knowing this, that person has the chance to transform efficiently for better using the spiritual techniques that are provided to get out from the “tyranny” of that mental pattern.

Every attempt to organize the life in the ashram have to take into consideration the spiritual goal and also the fundamental law of correspondence that make possible to influence and even to modify what is “up” (in the higher aspects of our being) by modifying what is “down” (in the physical level). For this reason the life in the ashram will sometimes have situations that are not usually found in the normal life but this is due to the fact that the life in the ashram itself have a purpose: to create the best conditions for its inhabitants to transform. In a situation that a person brake a glass and doesn’t announce this but is just hiding the pieces, the main focus when this is discovered is not to replace the glass as soon as possible so that the life take its normal course but to find the person that did that and with specific methods to help the person to understand the deep mechanism that make him/her to do that (hiding from responsibility). In a normal situation we don’t care much who did it but to restore the order as soon as possible. In an ashram the first concern is to help the person to understand the mistake and of course after that to restore the order.

When the light is bright the dark looks darker

In the ashram are the most demons. The more you stay in the light the more the darkness looks darker. If a person is stilling from his neighbors, that is seen as a regrettable act but if this is happening in a spiritual community than it looks worst. For this reason some have the tendency to see in the ashram a place with a lot of problems but in reality in the ashram the problems are highlighted by the general level of awareness that is higher than normal and also by the raised standard of expectations from a spiritual community. But being a spiritual school, an ashram is a place where mistakes are even more visible because the mistakes here are the way of learning and nobody is avoiding them (at least not consciously).

Another important aspect that is deeply specific to the life in the ashram is the “spiritual integration”.  This means a special field of interconnections between the inhabitants so they are always confronted with the situations of life serving the best their spiritual goal. This “spiritual integration” is given by two aspects that are common to all the persons that are living in the ashram:

1. The individual dedication for a certain and clear spiritual goal followed with intense aspiration. One of the fundamental conditions to live in an ashram is to place the transformation on a higher priority than the individual comfort. Usually we are seeking consciously or not for comfort and easy life and when confronted with the transformation (especially the spiritual transformation that is affecting very deep all the levels of our being) we realize that we are not ready to “pay the price” that is requested or it. It becomes obvious in those moments that we are pricing higher the comfort and easiness of our life than transformation and evolution. Living in an ashram makes sense only for those that already have a priority from their spiritual evolution or al least want to do that when they are confronted with the choice.   For the ones that place GOD on the first place in their life, the ashram is a “launching site”. And in the ashram the evolution can be much faster. For those that are not ready, the ashram is a kind of “prison” from which sooner or later they will “escape”. The fact that most of the ashram inhabitants are linked by a common aspiration makes the events in the ashram to become “synchronistic” and highly significant for each of the members of the community(to understand better this notion please read the article “….” from the second issue of Logos magazine). Only a group of people that are studying by out of curiosity and in a flabby manner the spiritual texts, in the rest of time being focused on all kind of other goals, are not part of an ashram, even if it might be called like that.
2. The connection to a spiritual school or system. In this way the inspiration and the feed back are assured for the process of transformation to be safe and to go always in the right direction. A spiritual school or system, represented here by teachers that in themselves are realizing the goals that the aspirants are aiming for,  is providing with the assistance, with the “expertise” to pass the difficult moments, and – most important – with the proper techniques for operating this transformation. Therefore a group of people that are living together and that are individually interested into the spiritual evolution are not necessary forming an ashram.

Empowered by these aspects mentioned above, the “spiritual integration” is manifesting as a protective field of “significant coincidences” and “lucky” events that are always having a spiritual meaning and tend to teach exactly that lesson that the aspirant needs for the moment, the evolution becoming thus an accelerated process of inner transformation. It is possible to appear such phenomena because of the above mentioned conditions that in an invisible way connect through resonance all the members of a spiritual community.

Both these things are essential to create an ashram. Any attempt to break these aspects lead sooner or later to evanesce of the ashram (even thou the building and even the inhabitants are still there!)

We say that the transformation is possible instead of being certain because here lays another very important characteristic of the ashram that make the ashram different than a blind oppressive system. In an ashram a person comes by free will and goes by free will. And most important, is assuming the ashram discipline and practice by free will as a part of the assumed “price” of the spiritual transformation. Because of this situation, the ashram is a spiritual transformation friendly environment, giving the necessary discipline, silence, community with persons having the same preoccupations and the same spiritual goal, but in the same time it is not guarantying the results. It is exactly like going to the gym. There we have all the conditions to train our body, we even have competent assistance but nobody can tell for sure that we will do it because it’s all based on our own effort.

Even if it is a system that helps the transformation, the ashram is not canceling the individual responsibility for evolution. And this is another characteristic of the life in the ashram.

The individual spiritual goal that is aimed intensely is important so that the permanent orientation of all the attitudes and actions of the inhabitants are integrated into the spiritual field that is generated by the goal itself.  This is giving to the spiritual community a great stability and reliability in front of the very many problems that appears in the life of such community. This common orientation toward a spiritual goal is what makes the people in the ashram to live together in harmony even in the most difficult situations that appear.

The spiritual transformation through action

An important tool of transformation that was always at a very high price in ashrams and spiritual communities in order to maintain the spiritual level of the life there was the form of yoga called: KARMA YOGA.

By definition the KARMA YOGA system is “the yoga of communion with GOD through all the actions that we are doing in a perfectly detached way”. Basically no one can stay without doing something, without acting in a way or another. On the other hand anything we are doing involve a “reaction” (we are thus programming a reaction from the universe that is coming sooner or later in our life). The solution to this apparently paradoxical situation is to realize the fact that we are just channels through which the Divine Consciousness manifests and we are not the authors of the action itself. In this way the reaction that the action was creating is not addressing us anymore and is returning to the real Author of the action. This process itself is creating the most fascinating game of forces in our being and we gradually transform from the one carrying the burden of all the reactions from the actions (the so called KARMA) into the detached witness that is participating into the whole show without being burden by the reactions that are anyway not meant for him.

From the other perspective the life of the ashram always tend to become intensive and to “force” the participants to overpass their egoistic limits. It is therefore the life there is not always easy and it is not meant to be like that. Between easiness and intensity is the big abyss of death – the “death” of the ego that is followed by the birth of the spiritual awareness. The special condition that the aspirants to enlightment have to fulfill is to relax and abandon into the flow of transformations without giving up the awareness. Trying to always be in control in a forceful and egoistic way will bring back the limits that were removed in the first place. Trying to relax in an unconscious way, loosing the awareness is also leading to unconsciousness and to mistakes. The only wise solution here is to learn to relax and abandon while in the middle of the action itself. And here is the Karma Yoga system proving its spiritual value by teaching the practitioner to participate to the universal game as a witness without ceasing the activity that is done through him.

But the ashram is not at all like a “pensioner’s house”, but more like a training place for high performance sportsman. Or like the eagle nest. People don’t grow older in the ashram, they grow wiser. And after the solid base of deep inner transformation was built, its time for the “young” aspirants to face the real life and to make room to others that needs the protection in order to begin their spiritual life. The ones that evolve become the living models for the new aspirants and in this way the whole environment is permanently providing the aspiration for going further. Within the ashram is created a genuine spiritual lineage, beginners and advanced, students and teachers being in a very close connection and walking the path together.

Many times the spiritual path was seen by the people that were not yet spiritually awakened as entering in a “collision course” with the society, the collision being most of the times devastating for the aspirants that are not wise enough to understand this fundamental antagonism. For this reason it was considered that these two have to stay separated at least until the aspirant grow wiser. In this way the so called “conflict” between the spirituality and society reach to a wise and peaceful solution, spirituality being harmoniously integrated into the society, both fulfilling their role in the formation of us as perfect universal beings. That is the final meaning of the modern ashram or spiritual community into the modern world.  

From natural freedom to anarchy until spiritual freedom

“Know the truth and the truth will set you free”

One of the keywords of our world today is freedom. Many of the themes of discussion about our life systems are spinning around the concept of freedom.  Freedom became nowadays even a trading value, reorganized comparing with the old era of slavery. But freedom is deeply related with other notions like responsibility, knowledge, compassion, sacrifice, and love. 
Some spiritual traditions are saying that freedom is a golden chain.  Even if it sounds paradoxical this statement (the association between freedom and a chain – even made of gold – might sound like a paradox), just looking around us will give an unmistakable confirmation for it. In our world today, we are facing sometimes-paradoxical situations even greater than the golden chain of freedom. Today we are talking about notions like “fight for peace” or “war on terror” as part of our daily life concepts. If nowadays peace is obtained with fight and terror is cured with war than we should not be amazed that freedom is just another chain made of gold. 
Let us take as an example how the idea of freedom develops for an individual. A newborn child is so charming because his spontaneity is coming from a freedom that is unspoiled by any personality yet.  The amazed eyes of a little child express the best this state of inner freedom to abandon in the protective hands of life. 

When the child grows into a teenager the first notions about individuality, pleasure and ego comes into the attention. The first reaction is to “liberate” from the “tyranny” of the parents, the “protective hands”.  The teenager has a strong impression that he needs to be free and this becomes his principle of living thus his first chain. 

In the name of this freedom he becomes anarchic. The way he walks, talks and dresses, expresses almost all 0f the time the tendency to contradict what he has learnt until then. In the case of the newborn child freedom was associated with total surrender, thus the child has this capacity to take everything as it is, being in the state of natural freedom. The moment he grows up and become more aware about himself, he begins to be enslaved by the tendency to interfere and to impose his newly awakened will thus becoming an anarchist. He breaks the rules but he is not aware about the consequences of his acts or why those rules were in place. He exists at this level only to break the rules and freedom is often measured by the rules he have broken.

Out of this attitude the teenager is making mistakes that hurt him and the people around. Due to this fact while reaching adulthood he is already wrapped into new sets of rules that are the results of the traumatic experiences from puberty. Gradually the anarchic freedom is replaced by the idea of responsibility.

Trading freedom for responsibility leads the teenager to adulthood through a continuously growing labyrinth of rules and conventions.  In this way, the so-called adulthood is just a set of predefined rules among which freedom is just one of them. Freedom becomes just a dry concept used to cover most of the time the fears we have in front of any form of superior authority. The responsible adults gradually lose their appetite for life because life is deeply related to freedom. Solving this apparently conflicting situation will become the reason for searching the truth.
Nevertheless, while struggling with the self-imposed rules the adult begins to understand life and the more he understands it the more he values the power of the truth that brings back the ineffable feeling of freedom without killing the responsibility.

First, the adult is “squeezed” from all the directions by the rules he assumed before, in the early years of his life. Trying to survive the routine of an responsible existence buried in rigid rules and conventions, the adult is forced to realize the limitations that are imposed by these rules and the freedom given by the truth in the shape of the right knowledge. Here begins the spiritual transformation.

From this moment on the individual is searching for the truth as a solution to solve the conflict between responsibility in life and freedom. Nevertheless, freedom has more to reveal. The first attempt will be to become an egoistic seeker for the truth, caring only about himself. When this attempts to find the truth will become a very rigid and sometimes painful practice of a doctrine, than in the soul of the aspirant – and out of this spiritual suffering – starts to grow love and compassion for all the beings around. Thus, the individual enters the Christic “legacy” of those that are free to love and to sacrifice for the good and happiness of their beloved ones.
As we can see, freedom is an idea that constantly pushes us further in our evolution. We can say from this perspective that the only moments when we experience freedom is when we are on the path of transformation.
Unfortunately these days we can see freedom associated with ignorance and thus turning into the strangest paradox. This is the level that our civilization is at today.  We can see clearlly this in the case of the concept in fashion “preventive strikes”!

To see the whole absurdity let’s complete the picture: after 2000 years of Christianity – a doctrine based on the idea “turn the other cheek……” – we, the Christians, synthesized our “experience” in the idea “better to strike first”!!! Until now the church was imposing very strict ways to look upon different matters of life and the conflict situations where among them. It was the era of childhood.

But nowadays we feel freer from the church doctrine (which failed to adapt to the rapid transformations in the world) and out of this freedom we created such an anarchic paradox! Moreover, we did that because we dropped the rules without replacing them with the proper knowledge.  We are not ready to be free!  In this way we proved to be in the puberty with our civilization, experiencing the difficult times of this period.  If we look carefully, we can even see the teenager’s “pimples” on George Bush’s brain and heart expressing a reality for the most majority. Let us hope together that our humanity will get out of this puberty without hideous scars as a mark of our “classes” on freedom. 

Tantra, the consciously assumed freedom – solution to the modern freedom

Today, freedom is reflected differently by the two fundamental currents: science and religion. If religion is asking us to believe without questioning its sets of values proposed, science is questioning everything thus ending up with a relative conclusion on anything.

Caught in this dilemma the modern society is struggling between blindly assumed moral rules – leading to rigidity and intolerance – and complete denial of any need for moral rules – making us lose the fundamental purpose of our life. Apparently, these two extremes cannot be conciliated.

On one hand, religion is giving us a higher purpose in life and a certain direction but make this without any explanation by imposing rules that often cannot be understood. On the other hand, modern science is teaching us to dare to question anything but fails in finding a higher purpose for our life.

Speaking from the point of view of freedom in the first case we are told what to do with our freedom but without being told how to get there and in the second case we are pushed to have the freedom which does not have a meaning.
The ancient concept of tantra is giving here the genius solution. Tantra means “network” so the tantric system is the system that find the links and the correlations that exist between everything.

The Tantric system brings the scientific method into the spiritual life creating in this way a form of spiritual science, which represents the synthesis between religion, and science. We can say from this perspective that tantra provides a staircase from slavery to freedom.

The method used in tantra is the conscious approach on every experience of life. Experiencing life in full awareness will allow us to receive a very efficient feedback, to learn fast about the consequences of our actions and becoming in this way free of any fantasies, daydreams or illusions.

As we previously saw, we lose our freedom when we blindly assume certain rules or when we blindly deny any rules. However, tantra is not saying “don’t eat that” or “eat only this” but is saying, “be aware that if you eat that you will have these consequences and if you eat this you’ll have these consequences”. For this reason, tantra was often considered to be the science of life, linking in a harmonious whole – net – all the genuine science and all the genuine religious systems.
Freedom in this way becomes a measure for our awareness, a result of knowing the truth, truth that is revealed by life itself once we “wake up” from the “dream” of our daily life.

The tantric is not questioning everything but is experiencing everything in full awareness. The tantric is not taking anything for granted but is open to experience. In this way, tantra is replacing the dogma with life experience and dry theories with direct understanding. There is no more need for building a fence of taboos around something that is not good or is dangerous because with this new attitude we will know precisely what is not good or what is dangerous, what is harmonious or what is good.

Life becomes a chain of spiritual lessons through which we get to know the Truth which will set us free.

“Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion.” Liberty Hyde Bailey

What was the lesson that Judas was teaching the humanity? What we can learn from Judas episode in the big drama of human history?
These are questions that many people pose to themselves while reading the dramatic events described in the bible’s NEW TESTAMENT. Judas was the disciple of Jesus that was giving the Savior on the authorities for a sum of money. This is how the story appears to us at the first sight. Of course the situation has to be seen also from Judas perspective but will the situation be different even from that perspective? Is there any perspective from which we can agree to what Judas did? Can we find a spiritual perspective that will excuse Judas and will explain what he did in such way that we can accept what he did?

Intuitively everybody will tend to say that the answer is NO. There is no possibility to find a correct angle from which the betrayal is not a betrayal and Judas was a saint that did the right think in the right moment.

Still if we want to learn this lesson we should understand why Judas did what he was doing? Was he doing it on purpose, completely aware of the disastrous consequences of his act? In this case he must have been a sadistic and cynical traitor that was maybe infiltrated into Jesus group to act as such at the right time. But if he was not a cynical traitor than what was Judas guilt?

From a certain perspective we can say that Judas mistake was to think without common sense, it was the first famous documented case of mind without consciousness. After that the consciousnessless mind become more and more spread as a disease until today most of the people suffer of that so the state became normal. Judas didn’t betray Jesus because he was angry with Him or because they were fighting with each other. He didn’t do it for money or for gaining anything. Judas was thinking that he knows better than Jesus what is good and that he can take such an important decision without even asking. It was just the sin of pride. He was thinking that he is doing it for the good of all the others and also for the good of Jesus. If Judas was having a good intention is quite clear but we should not forget that “the road to hell is paved with the best intentions”. Judas was not selling Jesus for the money he received. He was doing it because he thought that it is better like that and that he doesn’t have to ask Jesus’ opinion because he (Judas) knows better. Some are saying that Judas was a tool of the Divine plan. But as we know, we are always free to choose to become the miserable tool of destiny or to be the reason why the destiny changed. Of course we don’t gain anything by blaming Judas and instead we should aim to understand his mistakes. the picture with a Judas as a traitor is as comfortable for the ego as the picture with Jesus as the Son of God, perfect and unreachable therefore leaving us with the conformable thought that we are not responsible so much of not being prefect ourselves. Yet in reality Judas was not a traitor in the sense we try to put it. In the terms of our days we can say that Judas was just a smart guy, one that was considering himself high enough that he can judge by himself and even to take his own decisions. And there are so many like him today.

In the recently discovered text of “Judas Gospel” we have a confirmation of a completely different angle of Judas story. From the text we can see a Judas that was considering himself special and far above the level of the rest of disciples that he was considering quite “simple” and “uneducated”.

But when asked by Judas about his destiny, Jesus is replying: “You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations—and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the “holy” generation.”

In the biblical story there is a very interesting aspect that should give us some perspectives. In the night after Jesus is betrayed by Judas, the first among the apostles, Peter, is denying Jesus three times. Why his denial was not so much discussed into the Christian teachings as Judas’s? The main reason is that Judas betrayal is done with a totally different perspective than Peter’s denial. Judas was acting by himself while Peter was reacting to some situations, maybe not at the level expected from him. The example and the lesson that Peter is giving is that the aspirants might have their moments of hesitation on the path to perfection. But the example that Judas is giving to us is that when we start to think that we know better than our master, better than God, we expose ourselves and all the other to terrible consequences that we are not aware about. For this reason Judas action is worst and his example more poisonous.

Judas was an important lesson not because he made a mistake; he is an important example because he represents all those that making a mistake believe that they were doing the right think. They cannot be stopped by anything till the end when they also have a chance to see the mistake with all its consequences, unfortunately too late. These people are thinking more than perceiving or asking and trapped into the illusory cage of their mind these people are worshiping only their own intelligence that is separated from the universal wisdom not because is meant to be like that but because they choose to think separately. They are following the satanic message of Judas: I can do it with my mind better than God!

Lucifer was falling not because he was denying God but because he was thinking that he can do at least the same as God was doing. From this perspective we can see the Judas message being same with Lucifer’s one. Judas didn’t deny Jesus; he just thought that he knows better in some aspects. He just gave God a secondary position but he didn’t exclude Him. And giving God a second place in life is one of the most common situations today. It is also true that to give God the first place in life is an adventure that goes many times through fanaticism, obscurantism, mass manipulation and many other things that have nothing to do with this spiritual perspective. but that is not the reason why we should just give God the second place in life. Old texts of wisdom were saying: “giving God the second place in your life means giving Him no place”.

Yet if we take a closer look to the thinks that are happening today we will be shocked to discover something: Judas example was copied many times and nowadays we are using this example at a very large scale, doing acts that are similar with the one Judas did. Most of the people today are giving God a secondary place in their life if giving any. The impression that we are alone and that we are doing everything by ourselves, isn’t that what many people are experiencing nowadays? The search for “independent” and “objective” thoughts and results, the more sober from any idea of God the better, are in fact the Judas followers legacy after two millennia.

The development of the scientific spirit nowadays show many times the same attitude that we can call it the “arrogance of intelligence”. The arrogant scientist is daring to deny what was previously stated, challenging everything just in order to, later on, come to the same conclusion but after a lot of troubles and a very high price. Was not the science that was trying to explain that everything regarding the mind is happening only in the brain and that nothing else exist in order to later on begin to accept that there are lot many other aspects that the physical brain that is forming what we are generally call mind. But how many people were dying waiting for the scientists to rediscover what was stated long time ago, before the modern science appeared.

The modern medicine (about which our magazine was writing in one of its previous issues) is a typical example of what we can call Judas descent or heritage. In many situations the scientists were denying the evidence, refusing to seriously study aspects of reality that were getting out of their theory or didn’t fit with the “official” dogma. And they were doing this being aware of what they were doing but…they were thinking that it is better like that.

The modern science is moving slow and many times is only guessing the way and the main reason for that situation is that the scientist is not anymore an initiate one, one that is himself on the path of perfection, having God as the Supreme Teacher. The modern scientist is in most of the cases an erudite that is thinking by himself and is not including God into his search, most of the time being as rigid in his scientific theory as the religious fanatic in his dogma. Of course the erudite scientist that is reading the article here will deny already these statements because “there is not clear method” that can explain how can one include God in his scientific work. That is in fact a terrible lack of education because the ancient spiritual systems, genuine initiate sciences were giving practical solutions in order for the initiate scientist to follow the path to perfection both outside and outside.

But the modern scientists betrayed God! They were not denying Him, but they were just giving Him a secondary place in their theories, research and also in their life. And they are not the only ones. The politicians also betrayed God. Recently in the European Parliament was discussed if God should be mentioned in the European Constitution. Judas must have been very proud of such great disciples! The ones that denied the very essence of the Christianity by inventing the concept of “preemptive strikes” are the direct descents of Judas.

Yet from a certain perspective the betrayal of scientists is the biggest hit because they were the ones that were supposed to keep the flame of searching for the truth alive. But the ones that were inheriting the treasure of the alchemists became the Judas nephews, acting by their own thinking and selling God for a bunch of privileges. But the real characteristic of Judas heritage is the impression of being able to replace any higher authority in the universe because we can think by our “own”. The terrible impression that we are independent and that we can do our own destiny is what is keeping us in ignorance, says the old texts of wisdom. With the attitude that we have many times nowadays we turn to be more Judas followers than Jesus followers. Judas thought that he knows better than Jesus and acted as Jesus was not there, we think that we know better than God and act as if God is not here. In its frenzy to permanently reaffirm its “freedom” and “objectivity” science is going deeper into the Judas way.

The typical exponent of the Judas legacy member of nowadays is the “expert” or the specialist. An expert is “one that knows more and more things about less and less things”. From the “experts” hoards we have the brilliant servants of Judas legacy, the ones that have the impression that they can know something very well ignoring anything else, and basically by ignoring the Unity they think that they reach the knowledge of something particularly. Unfortunately everything today depends on them: the international financial system, the life of people, the starting of the wars, and so on. Judas was an easy pray for the angry rabbi that wanted to stop Jesus because he was blinded by his arrogant intelligence. In the same way the “experts” are used today in many situations just because they are the easy pray for those few that use them for acknowledging different “expertly proven” lies.

The initiate scientist from the past was serving God and was aiming all the time to discover what is meant by God for human to know. The Judas scientist is excluding God from the Whole, trying to do everything by himself, to understand from a so called “objective perspective” and becoming immediately annoyed by any reference to God or any Supreme Power in the Universe. Permanently tormented by doubts and lost in an immensity that the more is researched the more is showing its infinity, caught between the anxiety of not understanding much and the daring attitude with shades of anarchism to question everything, the modern scientist is walking the path very slow, with an immense burden on the shoulders: Judas heritage. For this reason we can say that the destiny of the science as we know it today is similar to the destiny of Judas. But the spiritual science, the science of Unity and Wholeness is just about to be born as the sacred child in the “outskirts” of the big scientific citadels.

“Science without conscience is the ruin of the soul” (Francois Rabelais)

In the old time the secret initiate science was creating the image of the “cosmic man” as “the androgyny” that is in fact a being that have developed and harmonized both the masculine and the feminine aspects. It was said in these traditional initiations such as alchemy that the power, efficiency and transformation appears when the masculine – feminine couple is united and harmonious. But the power, efficiency and transformation are lost when they are not united or harmonious anymore. The androgyny myth is based on these initiate considerations. The masculine and the feminine are completing each other and they form the two power poles of the “battery” of everything that exist: being, think or phenomena.It is a notorious fact the science and religion (as the main exponent of spirituality) has a difficult relationship in the last centuries. At a closer look we can observe a very interesting aspect: the relationship between science (or the scientific spirit) and religion (representing the spirituality) is from many perspectives a masculine – feminine relationship. Spirituality is using more the intuitive approach and therefore we can say that is more feminine and science is using a rational approach and therefore we can say that is more masculine. Science is trying to know more without involving any sensible aspect that can “confuse” the result of the research. Science was desperately trying to separate the one that experiment from the experiment itself so that the results will be objective and the obtained knowledge will be “absolute” – an absolute that in the scientific vision have to be completely separate from its manifestations, thus being not influenced by it. In this way any influence from aspects of life like: “intuition”, “faith”, “God” should be reduced at maximum in order to obtain an absolute view. On the other hand religion as the main exponent of spirituality was stating the truth in an absolute manner, with little to research about it, much more as a dogma. In its turn spirituality and religion is using the soul as a fact and is not giving much consideration to research and method. Religion is often using only the methods that are common to femininity such as intuition, faith, feelings and is considering many times as not being appropriate any rational or rigorous attempt to clarify some of its fundamental aspects. In this way we are not wrong considering that science is more masculine and religion is more feminine in their method. Considering the above mentioned facts from the secret initiate science about androgyny we can easily understand why in time both science and religion gradually lost their power and efficiency and what was once a path of transformation that was offering a nest to its Childs until they can “fly” to the heights of the Spirit is now just a “divorced” family in which both the mother and the father is blaming the other one for being wrong, the Children thus growing in the “sufferance” of ignorance. We can say that in the millennia, when science and religion were together in a harmonious relationship, they were forming a powerful couple of the spiritual science and in the times when science and religion were separated they were generating disharmonious manifestations such as the atomic bombs(from the science side) or the inquisition(from the religion side).

Science and religion – a mirror of the modern world

The relation between science and religion nowadays is reflecting very well the relation between the men and women. They are now having some couple problems and they need some “counseling”. But nowadays the men – women relationship is poisoned by some phenomena that are making it difficult. Let’s take a look into these aspects in order to have a clue about the science – religion relationship difficulties. The man is overpricing the reasoning and the mind and the heart and intuition is loosing the value for him. Therefore many times he cannot understand what the women are saying (therefore not being able to make them happy and content) and is starting to avoid any clarification with them or to impose his own view. On the other hand the women are overcharging the importance of the intuition and soul aspects therefore do not understand the men in his need to be in control (need that is coming from his very intimate nature as a man). Having clearly the impression that she understands deeper what is going on most of the women are loosing the contact with the men and therefore the chance to make a difference in their relationship. In a similar way, if we consider science as the men and religion as the women, we can have a very clear picture of how their “relationship” is going these days. Science is avoiding any subject about the deep aspects of spirit and is denying the existence of anything that cannot be proved logically and in the existing paradigms. As the man is tending to preserve anything that is already established and he get used with (the classic issue “why changing something if it is still working?”) the science is tending to preserve an already accepted theory and even to oppose any tendency to investigate other horizons. On the other hand spirituality and especially the religion is not making any efforts to investigate the truth in order to extract practical methods that can make people getting closer to it. Often is not going deeper into fundamental issues of not investigating them for the reason that is not feeling right to do it, finding all kind if forced interpretations of the its fundamental texts and thus limiting itself to an attitude of frustration and refusal to talk (the classic “I don’t talk about this. It is how I feel!”). If we were to find a solution to this “couple problem” we better look into the couples problems and see how is there a possible answer and by extrapolation to suggest the solution in the first case. Often in a couple relationship conflict both sides are considering themselves of being right. the conflict is many times all about who is right and who is wrong, and in this way the conflict itself is covering the real problem which is that the love started to fade away in that relationship and at a closer look, the human couples can see that in fact love is gradually replaced by the wish for justice. A general solution for most of the human couples is therefore to restart to love. When they love intensive and overwhelming than such a problem of who is right and who is wrong doesn’t have much relevance because in situations of tension the two lovers want and practically work to find solutions to the problems instead of finding problems to the solutions. The real conflicts appear only when the two don’t really want to find solutions and therefore the “divorce” is starting by trying to decide who is right and who is wrong. “Love is In a relationship to love together the same things” (Anthony de Melo). If this will be the solution for the human couples, than which are the things that science and religion can love together in order to heal their couple relationship? We think that the answer is obvious: they have to love the TRUTH. The science have to move from the defensive attitude in which is now trying desperately (like many times in its history) to defense the old positions just for the sake of their “perfection” to a more creative and offensive attitude in order to go and meet the religious concepts and to sort out all the misunderstandings from their relationship. Nothing but the TRUTH should be the goal for the scientists and in this way all the fundamental questions that are posed by religion will become an endless source of inspiration and fascinating studies. The Truth should also be the only religion and therefore all dogmas will be “dissolved” under the immense pressure of the knowledge that is coming out directly from the Truth. All the religious concepts will be naturally and constantly updated according to the degree of evolution of mankind and thus to the degree to perceive and understand directly the Truth.

There is neither religion nor science that is superior to the TRUTH
Modern science and religion are claiming to approach the Truth and that their way is the right one. This apparent contradiction is possible to be solved only if we are going to realize the fact that both the scientist and the mystic have to orient their aspiration toward the same God and to seek to know Him together, in a spirit of fraternity and in the name of the TRUTH. When the scientist and the mystic are working together, they have all the tools that are needed for the delicate task that they both are assuming. The scientist is having the proper “equipment” and the mystic have the wish to go and the “map of the place”. Until they understand that only together they have a chance their work is the work of the two impaired trying to succeed in a labyrinth, one having the good legs but being blind and the other one having the good eyes but no legs. No matter which is the method that we use or the philosophical explanation of what are we doing, the reality of our experience is the same. Therefore the “togetherness” between the scientist and the mystic (with their particular eccentric hypostasis: the philosopher and the engineer) will lead to the rebirth of the ancient spiritual science from the time when the one with a scientific spirit was devoted to the Supreme Goal and the one with a mystic heart was thoroughly studying how to reach there.

 

TANTRA – AN INTRODUCTION IN THE SYSTEM

The Tantric system is one of the best systems for the modern times, times in which spiritual values are forcefully being replaced by materialism and ignorance. And this is happening almost everywhere nowadays. Tantra is the spiritual system which, having a scientific side, manages to integrate perfection and the absolute in a practical and tangible way, staying always at the level of immediate reality, instead of sterile philosophical dissertations. Tantra is a philosophy of life and a system of spiritual evolution, based on profound or initiatic knowledge of the fundamental laws of the Universe, a system that does not suggest denial of ignorance as being an illusion, but its replacement with adequate knowledge, based on direct and guided experience.

Tantra is a system that efficiently combines science with spirituality, revealing the mysteries of Creation and of the Universe that appear, in light of this system being structured holographically. In the Tantric vision the part is integrated in the Whole and the Whole is reflected in each of its parts.

Tantra uses the fundamental laws for the study of phenomena and gives thus a set of practical knowledge in order to replace rules and dogma with experience and understanding. For this reason we can say that Tantra is based only on direct practical knowledge, the Tantric system being a solution for the modern man to get out of the state of anxiety regarding life, a state that makes him prefer indirect experience, experience through different means and formalities, as opposed to direct experience of life.

 

 

The Tantric system considers energy as the fundamental basis of all that comes to exist. From a certain perspective energy is a movement born from the differences of potential. This difference of potential is actually the game of polarities, therefore it is important to approach polarity as a fundamental law.

Everything in the Universe comes from the spontaneous and free game of the endless and ecstatic union between Shiva and Shakti, between consciousness and energy, masculine and feminine.

This is also the game of the two fundamental polarities. In the human being, this divine game is best reflected and easy to see through the force of attraction between man and woman and through the erotic dynamism that appears between them.

Therefore, in the fascinating and mysterious game of the relationship between man and woman, we find all the secrets of the universal dynamism, in the same way in which we find all the secrets of the galaxy condensed in the depth of atoms. For this reason, the conscious and initiatic involvement in a polar couple relationship represents more then an inevitable result of certain individual forces. It is also an expression of the divine game that structures the entire universe.

For Tantric initiates, the couple relationship is seen as an open gate towards the great secrets of the universe, a chance to experience this secret directly and thus to understand it fully. The couple relationship is thus understood as the expression of the fundamental couple Shiva and Shakti, consciousness and energy. Any process, phenomenon or state is given by this divine game of energies. In order to have control over any states, phenomena or processes, it is necessary that the two fundamental polarities that support that state, phenomenon or process are balanced – the two complementary forces must be polarized by each other. (to be continued…)

by Mihai and Adina Stoian