The Secret, the Vow and Initiation

Summary

So turn inwards and find harmony, happiness and spiritual coherence with the Person of Transcendence, constitutes the purpose of meditation. The outer world, remarkably, operates in the same direction, from the outside it impresses with impulses our senses and thus conditions our bodies to time and circumstance. The material world works from the outside inwards and the smart meditator realizes that he/she only has to go with that flow... But that, again, is easier said than done. Your ego will tend to seek the opposite of what caused the trouble and will produce projections from the inside out, supposing that an exercise of free will is the way rather than acceptance of a force operating from the outside. Going with the flow seemed to be the problem, that flow was quite obscure and of little respect for you as a person. Actually, there does not seem to be any order in the sounds, smells, sights, sensations and tastes the natural world offers. All one may know is that they are a function of time and that there are some abstract laws of nature. Thus one as a person, as an agent of order above time, assigns meaning to the sense impressions. In fact one morally opposes these impulses with a spirit obeying to a standard of what we consider humanity in contrast with the animal state of ignorance and instinctual behavior. As discussed in Inspiration 5 we, striving for human connectedness, thus arrive at a notion of civil virtues in different fields of human activity concerning the two basic spirit/matter and  individual/social dimensions of life, the qualitative and quantitative dimension. We that way found the basic interests of regulating our material wealth, our natural and religious duties, our liberation in service and freedom of association. Then we later on in this book in inspiration 15 arrived at the knowledge of the three disciplines of uniting our consciousness for the sake of human harmony and understanding. Having discussed our human weaknesses we stated next that the uniting, which we desire and need to live in peace, requires a respect of basic human values and principles of regulation by which we create our human cultural reality, our human command. The end result of this realization was that we managed to formulate a simple set of individual human virtues closely associated with the general civil virtues of regulation we started with. Honesty, loyalty, sharing and helping - or not to lie, betray, steal and kill - directly follow from respectively regulating the economy, regulating our dharma, regulating our labor and regulating the association of our ego that we have with each other and other living beings.
Thus we build civilization and culture to have order on the planet we inhabit as human beings. But we oppose that way as persons the by natural law ruled imposition of the material energy operating upon our senses. In that opposition, going against the flow as mentioned, we do not automatically find harmony. We, with our vicious circle of animal propensities, tend to be destructive in our cultural preferences because of, simply stated, the desire of having matters the easy way. To be devoted to the Great Person in the Form of the Universe is not a simple affair. Our ego is somewhat of a cheater tempting us into the denial of the natural complexity. It is easier and relatively harmless, so it superficially then seems, to have linear time, to eat meat, to rule with money and possessions rather than with morality and to serve our sensual desires rather than master them. But that way not facing things as they are by nature, we generalize and engross, and thus run into conflict and illusion with both nature and each other. Thus we attain the opposite of what we want. We oppose nature with unnatural rhythms of life, we oppose the animal kingdom taking a superior stance, we oppose the human command with politically cunning disguised forms of  immorality e.g. claiming in opposition with 'have-nots' the possession of the earth's resources that factually are the common natural inheritance we are equally entitled to. And also our love relationships tend to become power struggles in stead of agreements of serving with voluntary penance the Supreme Person of Peace and Love.
From a classical psychological point of view we took the road of the lust principle and strayed away from the path of the reality principle. Ego would not be false in proper regulation of our lust, but our law books cannot really oblige us to it. Politically we are powerless in this. Without the  freedom to find our way it does not work either. And so we from creating order ran into disharmony. And the more we try to do it better, based on the free will of our ego of identifying with our material position, the worse it seems to become. Our motives suffer from impurity and our human and societal self-confidence is undermined by ulterior motives.

The classical solution for this problem, of going against the natural flow with our free will and ego interests and thus achieving the opposite, is to respect our teachers. The self realization purpose of internalizing them, as discussed in Inspiration 3, is not automatically achieved in life. Usually it is the class of the intellect, the scholars, sages and eternal students that is supposed to lead is out of our adult troubles of ego and ignorance. But, as we saw in the previous Inspiration, we, again, tend to make it ourselves easy being faced with the difficulty of reading books and listening to their writers. To curse, from the arrogance of our ego,  the intellectuals for being navel staring autistics that are even more useless than unemployed laborers, constitutes our own damnation. For we should not become the victim of our own psychology of ego resistance against the adult education we need. With our turning away from books and writers, not admitting our real problems of focus and memory, intelligence and coherence, we turn away from their and our own devotion to the Supreme Writer of All Writers, The Creator of the Creators, the Knower of All Knowers. We lose sight of the Person of Wisdom and thus also lose sight of ourselves who as persons are part of that Greater Person. We spoke of the estrangement and impersonalism of a materialist society, and the material, spiritual and personal ways to conquer that. But the intellect should not be considered a materialist approach, despite the fact that many people of intellectual achievement occupy well-paid jobs as agents of the doubted system.  In fact all intellectuals, however abstract, reprehensible, autistic and difficult to comprehend or full of absence they might be, are to be respected as representatives of the Person of All Intelligence and Knowledge. The Great Person of Coherence and His assistants we cannot miss, for the real curse for consciously having turned to the darkness of ignorance will fall upon us when we turn away from them.
To meditate on them - with due critical reserve for their lack of purity - and be devoted to their Support equals to washing oneself by dipping into a holy river at a site of pilgrimage crowded with sages. They, depending their degree of spiritual involvement, transcendence, discipline, association and  level of personal realization and commitment, offer the opportunity to rid oneself of all attachments that screen one off from the light of knowledge. The impersonal way of many intellectuals, the hard, difficult road they follow, ultimately leads to the same purpose of the Person of All Integration Inside and Outside, as the discipline of direct devotion does.  They toot are devotees of the Person of the Universe vowed to integration, non-illusion, justice and value freedom. To attend to the schools, literatures, ashrams and institutions of both categories of the intellect, is like taking the bus in stead of walking all the way. A load of karma drops away following in their company. To follow their advises saves one a lot of hard learned lessons. They in control of the knowledge foundation of our culture, are the highest class in society. Even school kids and elder students of spiritual learning and/or scientific discipline are of a higher standing than kings and queens without. One may learn from both teachers and their pupils. There is no distinction between them really but in experience, both carry the same load of tradition and wisdom and can shed the same, more or less, bright light on one's path through life. Even though the societally engaged intellectuals or the more aloof meditative transcendentalists more often than not rather read a book - or a file these days - than listen and respond to superficial talk, still the association of these people must at all times be sought, even if their disciplines are incomplete, for they constitute the spiritual cement of knowledge and intelligence that our human societies of peace and harmony are built with. Having learned from one teacher and school, another may follow. Thus learning by following one's own course through the educational system of science and spirituality the Person of Liberation can be attained. But especially the teacher one needs for spiritual progress may be hard to find. Pure devotees of pure goodness and other conducive qualities, are rare. But having found such a soul of pure intentions  and practices, one is saved, for he/she is a soul one usually can more stably build on, than on spiritually undeveloped impersonal teachers of science who offer but a limited curriculum. Just the silence of such souls, even more golden than the silver of their speech, can be enough to cure a wandering person from his greatest pains of loneliness and confusion. With these beacons, the spiritual happiness and better company can be found that make it possible to subdue the redundancy of ego of one's material control.

As said, the ones of learning, the scholars, may have difficult characters. They require special forms of approach. First of all an approach of respect with a mind full of questions is required. They will not speak in a satisfying manner unless the proper questions are asked. When criticized they will act as if dumb, illiterate and turn away. They do not waste their time and have better things to do than to be a sound box for one's ego desires that only make noise in their ears. The special approach needed suggests that they will not easily initiate you into their world of knowing. If you do not ask properly, you may be happy that they write, or have written,  it down so that you can read it. Just as well they refrain from even writing, for why should they, if you cannot even properly listen to a few words spoken by them? When paying respects is not our culture being suspicious about everyone's impurities, such a lack might be a hindrance difficult to overcome. So there can be many secrets you are not told about, there can be much confidence that is not given for you did not express what you are vowed to, and they might never introduce you to the practice, for who will be initiated without being ready? Closed ears because of inner and outer mind chatter, do not open by talking to them. One opens one's ears oneself by questioning, not by talking. Starting a discussion e.g. because of their character, omissions or faults  is useless, they will at all cost try to escape from the passion and ignorance to point out these matters, for they matured by self-correction and feedback in trusted association. In the culture of devotion criticism does not work. Each devotee is a volunteer after all, who is more easily lost than won. Every little grace there is must be welcomed, however imperfectly presented. That makes it difficult to find, build and sustain spiritual association. One needs to learn all this in practice, but not all knowers like to repeat and coach therein.

So, considering the fact that asking questions is the way of approaching spiritual knowers and find association, the question is what one should ask. Why one should meditate, when one should meditate, whereupon one should meditate and how one should  meditate, as also what or whom one should serve and when and what matters would be counterproductive to the purpose of attaining liberation in self-realization, are likely questions. We mentioned some mantras like 'not this, nor that' and gave ad hoc many names of the Supreme Person to meditate upon. Still much has not been said and has been postponed for later discussion. And there is no guarantee that everything will be written. Not by me, nor by anybody else. Originally the tradition of this knowledge is of aural reception. After all, people go before things like books. And thus we evolve only step by step, generation after generation grateful for the grace we found. Details of the processes of transcendence and emancipation have as yet not been discussed in this book. No alternative modes of filognostic intelligence have been exercised. No stories have been told apart from the stories mentioned in the chapters we refer to that must suffice. No further historical references to facts and persons were made, nor were there any details of actual cultural references. This book on itself hangs pretty much in the air of philosophical conjecture.And that is how it should be to begin with. We depart from an authentic philosophical point of view, sincerely wondering what the spiritual science of self-realization is all about. Thus getting acquainted with the concept of filognosy, proposed here as the basic reality of knowing ourself, it is easy to put it away. It was just a small round of being informed by a single devotee called Aadhar who offers his excuses for his imperfections of reasoning. Someone else will certainly do it differently and one should never waste the opportunity to learn from different sources.  That is how all valid knowledge is acquired after all. As yet hardly any fact has been disclosed, nor any serious polemic been considered. So be it all. We will see what comes later or not. Still, as for now, many terms were presented in a cohering fashion as an preliminary exercise for preparing oneself for more untold secrets in this field of knowledge, for more explicit vows one would like to make apart from the most basic one of  'honest and loyal, sharing and caring' as conceived of the basic human values, and for further initiations one might take to live with this spiritual science. Reading one chapter or inspiration a week, it might have taken up to nine, then months, to reach the last page of these Inspirations, just to realize that it offers one nothing more but a ticket to become vowed, confided and initiated. These basic steps of spiritual advancement one must take oneself with due respect for the souls learned in the field. That is how it is. Changing one's life should never be taken lightly, certainly not without further consideration of taking these three essential steps. In matters of meditation we cannot really attain without this consideration and thus have to take seriously the Time that is The Person we need.

Source for this Inspiration:
S.B. Canto 1, Chapter 19