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This article critically surveys the value of eastern gurus and their teachings in western society. It is recognized that they constitute a valuable contribution in their proposal for a more balanced way of thinking about and living with a selfrealization ego and a more comprehensive command of the so called eternal values that the Christian knows to be reflected in the ten commandments and the monastic rule. The article concludes that a common weakness can be observed in as well the western as eastern points of view: neither of them is really in command with a properly worked out respect of time. Although to live a proper respect of time without repressing the time of the fellow man is a theme from as well the western psychologist as of the eastern guru, it remains an open end to the westerner and entire world to realize a constructive, non-repressive approach on the collective level that is more comprehensive as e.g. a one-sided concept of worldtime like the 'universally coördinated time' called UTC.




 

 

 

     

by A.A.

 



Contents:

1) Introduction

2) The essence of the teachings, their consequences and their relation to the present state of affairs and the future

a)The personal/impersonal controversy of theology

b) The system of values and grace

c) The nature and purpose of discipleship and discipline itself.

d) The nature of illusion and attachment, and the final reality of liberation.

e) The concept of reincarnation of importance to the development of western concepts of time.

3) The analytic conclusion.

 


 

 

   1) Introduction

In the second half of the twentiest century the West had to face a flood of gurus paying the westerners back for their colonial superiority, which was to them primarily the result of a lack of spiritual discipline. The complete of twentiest century warfare can be understood as a karmic reaction to the western colonial mentality: the oppressed peoples couldn't make Christianity proselytizing pay back for all their atrocities, and so God presented us with an evening of the balance of our own making: our imposition went against ourselves, against the Jews and against Western 'decay' (America). This madness was not just fascism, it was a sincere desire for a strong and inspiring cultural lead. The West was craving to be elevated above its primitive medieval culture of human exploit, its lack of true sophistication and aryan, read civilized, human selfrespect. It turned into a show of false ego with false authority: racism and dictature. And this started long before the twentiest century: it was there ever since the Middle Ages as a vague concept of reformation and enlightenment. Truly the gurus knew how to state the problem and clarify the subject of enlightenment and reformation: enlightenment is according to many of them the result of forsaking desire and reformation is nothing but the essence of religion: to be born again to spiritual values in stead of the materialist sex and money walk of life with its false authority.

So what about these gurus who apparently had a refreshing look on our pitiful and troublesome concepts of enlightenment and reformation: what is the essence of their teaching and what is the practical consequence?. And how does it compare to the present day state of affairs as evidenced by this site The Order of Time e.g., and how does it relate to the future?

 

2) The essentie van de Leringen, hun Gevolgen en Hun Relatie tot de Huidige Srand van Zaken en de Toekomst

   

There are several issues here to be mentioned: 1) the personal/impersonal controversy of theology, 2) the system of values and grace, 3) the nature and purpose of discipleship and discipline itself, 4) the nature of illusion and attachment, and the final reality of liberation. Also 5) the concept of reincarnation is of importance to the development of western concepts of time (as can be observed at The Order of Time).

 

a) The personal/impersonal controversy of theology

The gurus brought a sense of peace and happiness to the West unknown before: they painted a reality pink and happy as a puppy that would exist as a real time heaven on earth. With drugs and free sex, we thought, we could have an illegitimate preview. Their grace seemed to be infinite; as long as they were respected we could have drugs (Shivavatar Babaji was in favor of hasj) and free sex for spiritual purposes (Osho; Shree Rajneesh) to our own desire. As no one else they understood that prescription of the escapist symptom was the best cure, not repression with dogma and commandments. They were the wisdom and freedom we were looking for, they were the fathers of the New Age , the sexual revolution and the restoration of our fallen prewar theosophical exercises in eastern philosophy (The Leader Blavatski was fond of eating meat and there was mention of fraud and homosexuality as well of racial theory about them).

 

But soon there appeared clouds at the horizon of the postwar new enlightenment: it was not just the Vietnam war and the ever increasing materialist desire of the Westerner. It was not just the failure of many people adhering who turned out to be nothing but a bunch of losers. It was far more complicated than that. On closer study these gurus were fighting themselves: none of them really agreed with the other. Each was denouncing the other: they wouldn't initiate one another like the Baptist did with the christian Lord, or respect one another's system and thus had no coherence in their preaching to the West: the best we nowadays can make of it is an idea of multicultural integration where all these gurus would neatly be classified as hindu, muslim or buddhist subculture and as such be heartened with an hour of television and a magazine next to the request to properly integrate with the local christian community: speak the language and abide by the mode of cultural conduct. The essence of all the quarrels among themselves reminded of our own christian quarrels of reformation: and indeed they preached from their vedic scriptures that it is the fate of modern man to live the "Age of Quarrel" also called Kali Yuga or The Iron Age (modern ever since the fall down of vedic culture after the disappearance of the Lord of - bhakti -Yoga, Krishna, with the great 'world'war of the Mahâbhârata).

 

Some of the gurus stressed the impersonal liberation out of any false authority of ego and teachers (gurus Krishnamurti and Bhagavan Sree Rajneesh/Osho). Others stressed the importance of devotion to the guru and the personal Lord (e.g. gurus Swami Prabhupâda and Bhagavân S'rî Sathya Sai Baba). These two schools of thought: the personalists and impersonalists where both characterized by the philosophy of illusion: the transitory world of matter had, much like the Buddhist philosophy, to be forsaken as illusory and one had to live up to a concept of rebirth in a spiritual world that reminded much of our christian idea of heaven. There was no clear idea about this reality of heaven: how could that be a stable reality apart from some cult of drugs, sex or meditation? Love is the solution. Of course hate wouldn't, but what did this really add to our christian doctrines? In the christian monasteries we were vegetarian already and also believers in a separate heaven or community making a separate world of religious virtue. That wouldn't be the solution to the bewildering reality of recurring warfare and collective madness as we never had before in the twentiest century. Somehow our christian culture had culminated to an aggression and selfdestruction that had to be stopped absolutely or else we would lose the whole planet all together. Cults of meditation making separate heavens were nothing new and thus more a reaction to than a solution for the problem of our increasing destruction. Many psychologists theorized and formulated adaptations of the teachings as gestalt therapy, new age therapies or reformulations of psychoanalysis in the form of some kind of cognitive and behavioral restructuring approach. The scientific answer of the behavioral sciences would rescue and replace this apparently futile guru-attempt to save the world from total selfdestruction.

But the guru attempts were not as futile as the behavioral sciences would picture. The psychologists themselves overflowed with denial and repression making their own rationalist ego's of false spiritual authority we already knew of our prewar fallen attempts to integrate eastern and western philosophy. The gurus made an essential contribution to our western culture in abridging the gap between religion and science in the behavioral sciences themselves. They clarified in their quarrels about the personal/impersonal approach that a school of personal and confidential teaching is there to realize that the mature state of selfrealization was founded on spiritual discipline and individual aligning to the impersonal formless God above us all more than on religious rituals, community gathering, religious dogma or psychological egodrives against it. With this they as well confirmed the psychologists who declared all religion superstitious, regressive or falsifying, as well as denounced them in being undisciplined themselves: how can one ever preach spiritual, mental sanity without ever preaching or teaching a proper valuesystem and discipline? Mere rationalizing cognitive restructuring was not a simple valuefree affair but more a conversion to classical spiritual values. This was the merit of the gurus: they declared the ego holy fighting it; the guruparadox of teaching. The ego had to be aligned with the soul and not to be destroyed or elevated to the status of worship. We had to balance to spiritual values and realize our mature selfresponsibility of being sane ego's to a virtuous liberated and disciplined soul.

All this could be recognized on the condition of one rule: confidential information cannot be disclosed. In fact, not even the name of our christian Lord can be betrayed although everyone knows Him. The ego purified cannot dominate any longer in the postmodern society: it may freak, it may scream and misbehave, but it may not dominate for conquering the world and warfare any longer. We cannot afford us an absolute of whatever ego, or bodily fixation, be it holy or unholy. Thus the conflict between the personal and impersonal doctrines is solved: the message is more important than the messenger, although also about this there would exist and again will be debates and quarrels (as e.g. with of the Marshall Macluhan ego-age dictum: the medium, read the body of ego, is the message). Therefore are, with the exception of this article (department 'personal') and the introductions, for most of the content of the internet site The Order of Time or much of Internet in general, there only pseudonyms and initials as consequent as possible or, philsophically authentic, no references at all here and there. The modern age of the rebellious, experimenting and booming naive ego is over, the postmodern multitude that revives the virtue and values of the selfrealized, restricted and subservient ego is in.

 

b) The system of values and grace

The great importance of the gurus lies in their preaching of the eternal values. Christianity celebrated a traditional set of values known as the ten commandments. The gurus made them comprehensible and attainable: they combined them into a few basic values that could easily be remembered and would still make enough of a challenge to find all the other commandments in them as a natural consequence of spiritual integrity and intelligence. They for instance did not stress the importance of respecting the parents or fight the worship of idols. They in fact preached the (temporal) denouncing of the parental (false) authority and propagated an instrumental meditation on all forms of God, idols or not. They did fight fruitive labor though as an act of the ego and reserved the profit of creative selfrealization to themselves: only one can be the leader and teacher. Only in a very limited sense they did not denounce individual contributions in therapy and research-writings. Most of them have a strict body of literature and practice to be followed as a school without permitting further amending to it. Guru Bhagavân Sathya Sai Baba encourages to write books, as long as they concern him, just like guru Bhagavân S'rî Rajneesh (Osho) encouraged his followers to make therapies of their own as long as they would accept his own creative findings in spiritual innovation. In many ways the gurus excelled in propagating the selfrealization of their pupils without neglecting the importance of attention for their own teaching. Such was the operation of their grace which constituted a heavy competition commonly known as the culture of New Age and modern spiritual psychotherapy relative to and expanding from the christian doctrine and practice of gracing the sins.

Closing in on the essence of these values there are several systems that stand out in their clarity of formulation next to the biblical ten commandments: Bhagavân Sathya Sai Baba preaches sathya, prema, dharma and ahimsâ: truth, love, righteous duty and non-violence that would bring shanti or peace. Yoga teachers of all kind would preach yama & niyama in general meaning do's and don'ts to the values of the great (yama-) vow of ashthângayoga (eightfold yoga): ahimsâ, sathya, asteya, brahmacârya, aparigraha & yama or non-violence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy, non-possessiveness and renunciation, leading to the (niyama) practices of s'aucam, tapas, svadhyaya, santush and îs'varapranidhâna, or purity, penance, selfstudy, contentment and service to the Lord. The vaishnav school of Swami Prabhupâda preaches dayâ, sathya, tapas & s'auca or compassion, truthfulness, penance and purity as the basic values for their regulative principles of respectively not eating meat fish and eggs, non-intoxication, non-gambling and abstaining from illicit sex. In sum they improvise all on a basic set of eternal values best formulated by the vaishnav school and christian-wise recognized as the commandments of thou shalt not kill, steal, lie and fornicate. The other commandments can be considered Jewish theological derivatives of these basic eternal general spiritual values. With guru Bhagavân Sathya Sai Baba truth means not to lie while non-violence means not to kill [to be a vegetarian]. How love and duty imply not to fornicate and not to steal one must realize oneself with him. In eightfold yoga the yama-don'ts imply that non-violence means not to kill, truth means not to lie, celibacy means not to fornicate and non-possessiveness and non-stealing that one wouldn't acquire more than one needs, thus making up the renunciation of the yama that is almost identical to the vaishnav set of values. The vaishnav fuses from this yama the niyama service to the lord, contentment and selfknowledge in one idea of truth or not lying, thus defining bhakti or devotional service as the true practice. (compare this to the values of The Order of Time that make up a likewise set next to derivatives of principles, a compromise of reality and a resultant set of the virtues of grace: honesty, loyalty, sharing and caring).

 

Many other gurus have some kind of improvisation on these values (e.g. the alleged Jesus Christ reborn, the redeemer Maitreya of the Share-movement preaching sharing for its own sake) in general meaning that one should learn to control the sexual urge, become a vegetarian, offer ones profit to the cause and stay a loyal member of the spiritual community. To all these practices the remaining question is: how does the individual survive the group, how would the ultimate social definition be that would add something to christian culture that was not there before? To make a group-ego out of some spiritual leadership fighting the individual ego is generally recognized as the problem of not only the guru-cults: they make nice schools of holy virtues, but how does it save the individual to the actual society that it has to adapt to? How does fighting the ego within a cult of even christian reform actually protect the normal ego of mature selfresponsible societal adaptation? It is clear how the ego of the guru or teacher himself is adapted. It is not so clear whether the pupils will ever be able to follow that example, or whether that would be the purpose of the teaching in the first place. One can e.g. become a vaishnav guru oneself in disciplic succession. But does maintaining to a school that way make it possible to kiss it goodbye like one should with any other teaching job on a school in order to become an equal to one's fellow man? In Buddhism the practice is to have the youngster meditate with the teachers in order to become disciplined and normally adapted fathers and be indeed a school of spiritual discipline one is expected to graduate from. In Christianity one uses the monastery as an endstation of materialism to wait for heaven like one does in a home for the old-aged. Both religious realities have a set function with their societies defining liberation as a success of spiritually disciplined service as a selfresponsible adult member. The common denominator for this success is found in the word order and not so much in the concept of the guru. A system of values and grace only seems to be successful if the teachers and the teaching turn out to be the catalyst in stead of the purpose. Thus the contribution of their presence must be sought in the essence of their teachings: in what way do these contribute to our own christian liberation in service?

 

c) The nature and purpose of discipleship and discipline itself. 

As said above to the essence of teaching one should look for the concept of order that is added by the gurus. Stated is their comprehensive view and intelligent grace with their quartet reductions to the ten commandments. The danger is to get attached to the school in stead of graduating to the selfresponsible and disciplined mature state of selfrealization. Many a woman can tell that many men suffer this problem in the same school of love figuring herself as the goddess and church of matrimony. To become an equal is the challenge of selfrealization. To become a God, goddess, guru or school is not actually the purpose and might even be considered a failure: the teacher has to teach until he (or she) realizes what creates the dependency of the pupils and thus is himself just another pupil of his (her) own school. The leader of psychoanalysis Dr. Sigmund Freud stated clearly that helping people was not the purpose of his school: it was for him a scientific researchmethod to find out how to arrive at civilized selfrealization in the true knowledge of the human predicament. Still he had difficulty accepting the maturity of his own pupils that would resist his authority: he created ego as he wanted, but he didn't know how to escape from suffering it. For that the nature and purpose of discipleship and discipline has to be understood.

The classical teachings of the gurus state that the ego is a trap: it gives all the trouble of desire and selfhood. With that they refer to the falsehood or material identification with the (desires of the) body that would be the source of fear and modern neurosis (the realization of being a stimulus-response-junkie). The ego properly aligned and disciplined in the service of the liberated state they would support and work for. Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) stated even that one would need a big ego in order to be able to drop it. But there is more about it: there is a whole cult of mystery getting enlightened and reborn to a new world and consciousness. It is not simply a school or piece of knowledge one can chew on for one's health. It concerns a conversion, a complete change of paradigm, outlook, lifestyle and consciousness. This refers to a process of gradual evolution step by step (compare the picture of emancipation of the guide of The Order of Time) towards total surrender to the authentic service to the soul: the realization of ones true nature (swadharma). This would also comprise the realization of past lives or the clearing up of ones identifications and the acquisition of a divyam s'rotam or divine hearing to the inner voice (the 'holy spirit'). This process must be carefully guarded as failing in it would lead to insanity: a schizophrenia of a divided self estranged from the oneness of the holy spirit in a hell of internal demoniac voices (by the devil possessed; leading to whichcraft & heresy). This divine hearing or holy spirit as the church calls it or de âtma-nivedanam or literally the: 'self-or soul-communication' as the Hare Krishna's call it, can be called the essence of the selfrealization process and the real purpose of discipleship and the discipline itself. 

René Descartes the philosopher of reason and the method as the founder of the scientific discipline would conclude with his cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) to the same ultimate truth: the true realization of the method and the discipline lies in the ability to think. As simple as that. This thinking would be something completely different from what we expected, the gurus have taught us: it is no small affair to become a schizophrenic, wrestle with the bad spirit for the sake of a holy one and turn out ultimately as a normally thinking person. Our Lord Jesus Christ did this wrestling but was crucified before he could be caught drinking a beer in the pub as an unobtrusive but liberated equal. Freaking out on this realization of the holy spirit that would defy all false power over the world is the catch of madness that led so many failures of selfrealization to the asylum: ill disciplined with the ether can the breaking through of the inner reality of the spirit and power of God not be controlled and turns it into a hell which can effect like an induction psychosis as happened with the Führer of Fascism (Adolf Hitler). One individual deranging can induce the madness of a worldwar. Guru Krishnamurti therefore taught against führers and was in favor of realizing oneself as being the world. Pacifying that holistic self-world and saving it would be equal to bringing peace and intelligence of meditation to the world outside. The conflict perceived in the spirit might not differ from the war going on outside in the material world. What would the brain else be but a sense-organ? Likewise the guru Maharishi Yogi of transcendental meditation taught that a group of successful meditators would effectively fight crime in the environment and bring peace to the whole world just sitting still. Guru Bhagavân Shree Rajneesh (Osho) spoke of a buddhafield that would wipe away all suffering and unenlightenment miles around when he did his energy-darshan.

Gurus at this point turn out to be the guardians of enlightenment: they have a calling to keep the madness out of it and prevent a collective derangement following an ill-disciplined selfrealizer or bogus-guru. Christian reformation suffered as known likewise a lot of madness. All kinds of Christians killed one another calling each other heretics to the true faith. Much of our wars are explained by this failure of spiritual discipline. How does one really stay out of repression and denial, projection and paranoia especially in the enlightened state. The vaishnava's have a clearcut answer to the problem of what they call the mâyâvâdi or bogus-guru who says that the material world is an illusion: they say that enlightenment is not the purpose at all of the spiritual discipline, it is just a byproduct of liberation which is something completely different. Enlightenment is simply the state of relief as a result of giving up desires relaxing in the natural order of time. This is the picture Christianity has of Hinduism and yoga: it is a selfish thing making no sacrifice or service. But the Bhagavad Gîtâ explains differently: the purpose is to attain to service, otherwise the yoga would be nothing but cheating. It takes Lord Krishna the 800 verses of the Gîtâ to explain this to the confused warrior confronted with his enemy in order to give him the fighting spirit. The essence of yoga is in the sacrifice otherwise one will get attached to the world He explains in ch.3:9. This sacrifice must be according to one's nature, and the realization of one's nature is the purpose of the discipline. This discipline can therefore be no easy job: it means that one has to answer to the highest standards: the warrior fighting for righteousness could not have any selfish motive, he would have to fight even in the interest of the enemy himself. Nothing can be excluded as the supreme of God would be in all and everything. Fascism was the first collective attempt at conscious karma-yoga, working for the unity: bitter in the beginning, but sweet in the end the Gîtâ clarifies. And bitter it was indeed to present the Jews the bill of the biblical jealousy with God and ourselves as westerners the bill of slavery and colonialism. But the world survived its major war and nuclear holocaust, licked its wounds and had to face the gurus as the deus ex machina of modernity: thou shalt be disciple and disciplined preferably before taking responsibility.

 

d) The nature of illusion and attachment, and the final reality of liberation.

Not having a discipline the gurus teach us, we are in a state of illusion: we do not see the reality as it is. Mâyâ, the term used, is etymologically recognized as not-this. Not-this is the definition of illusion according to the Veda. Popularly this motive has been expressed by modern psychotherapy as the here-and now realization of sanity. This is where concepts of locality (loka, planet, place) and time come in view. The western psychiatrist estimates the sanity as a proper orientation in space and time. Scientific research pointed out that there would be a distorted sense of time with the mental patient, especially the schizophrenic. (just like e=m.c2 physicist Albert Einstein declaring that the perception of time depends on the relative motion of the observer, see former article). We saw that the essence of the success of the eternal values was simply known as a spiritual discipline of order in service. Without it a loss of control and a fall in illusion would be the reality. Anyone will agree with the statement that it is difficult nay impossible to have full control over the spirit. One must always try to direct ones mind, but success is dependent on more than one may control. Just like in the material world the spiritual world has its own laws. Identifications work like living people. The analytical psychologist Carl Jung spoke of archetypes that would have their own existence in the collective unconscious. Occult media speak of real people and spirits in the beyond and many religions speak of ancestors or guardian angels that accompany the soul in its material journey. The gurus may speak about the karma, workload or consequence of actions, from past lives that is working out in the full spirit and taking the lead over the motives of action. It is to them no simple psychology of a straight lifetime of frustrations trauma's and guilt about weakness. It is much more the total reminiscence of ones existence in all time, past, present and possibly even some preconception of a path drawn out into the future by the leading spirits in the world. And this would apply to all lifeforms one could have possibly lived or being identified with.

Whatever the reality beyond might be, it is certainly a personal affair to appease the mind and to arrive at a spirit that is in full touch with the material world. In fact hardly a single person is capable of 24 hours of conscious control for longer than a couple of days. Sleep deprivation can lead to serious selfintoxication if the non-sleeper does not take enough rest. Resting usually the person loses consciousness in order to have the brain freak out on all its repressed neural pathways to restore a balance of brain-activity. Getting out of balance with the functions of the brain is the normal routine of the human being: either the left brain is over stressed or the right brain, or one is too cortical or too physical, too emotional or too controlled. One may be overactive or overly receptive and passive. Whatever the disharmony in this organic brain might be, work is felt as a fatigue that needs balancing.

The properly balanced person would overcome the state of illusion, the Bhagavad Gîtâ assures us. Not taken away by heat and cold, sorrow or happiness the true devotee would keep balance (Bhagavad Gîtâ. II-15). Equilibrium is a central issue in the spiritual endeavor against the misconceptions of the seer. Service this way to the holy purpose would keep one free of attachments that lead to the bewilderment of the illusioned state. Bhagavân S'rî Sathya Sai Baba proposed for this a four times 6 discipline of dividing the activities of the day over the common fields of work (see fields of work of The Order of Time). Sex and money are the motives of attachment while the eternal values would settle for the interest of the balanced divine that would maintain the intelligence.

Attachment though is not such a simple thing to understand. Attachment in fact is the term used for all ignorance about cause and effect. If one doesn't understand how the mind goes, one is ignorant. If one reasons from the proper cause, one must be enlightened. This is the position held by the gurus: They speak in one breath of mâyâ (illusion) avidyâ (ignorance)and râga (attachment). This would constitute the psychology of the sinner that would always suffer imbalance and lack of control. In western terms the question would be: how to get out of the psychology in the negative sense. The western answer is either religious: stop sinning and everything will work out right or would be: go to the psychologist and talk it over your here and now troubles and lack of control. As the gurus would advise to bed early and rise early and set for a proper scheme of service, meditation and socializing (as they all have their ashrams ), so also the therapists tell their clients to have contracts of agreement interacting with others and schedules of work and rest and doing basic exercises not unlike those of yoga. The values may differ but the therapy looks the same: living up to the eternal values or not, one must follow a certain order of day and a calendar for having holidays, days of rest and celebration of the freedom from fruitive action.

In the political and theological confusion about what the proper order of time would be, is the concept of labor of central importance [see also the Filognostic Manifesto about work and unemployment]. What kind of work would one have to do to keep out of trouble and have an automatically pleasant, righteous and servile mind? Some say right association gives right thinking, some say the opposite: only facing the challenges of the ones in need (bad association) would give the chance for service and liberation. Thus the gurus speak of karma: it is not a simple concept of work but a highly personal complication of the soul that permits no easy settlement by law or commandment. None of the holy scriptures speak of unemployment. They speak of different types of work: karma, akarma and vikarma. Karma being material labor, akarma not being unemployment, but (voluntary) labor for the spirit and vikarma being unwanted labor like unrighteous action or crime. Many modern gurus improvised on this vedic reality giving a home to all kinds of volunteers that would support their ashram. But checking those ashrams out one will rarely find an employment office or even a welcome committee for the lost soul. The first lesson in the ashram is to mind ones own spiritual business and not worry too much about material labor. Some service might be welcome, but you won't be paid for it or even receive food and shelter. They make no nice monasteries were your hair is cut, your clothes are taken and everything is taken care of by the order. In fact the concept of order is completely revised by the gurus. They directed it to the nature of the individual in an extend that no monastery ever could achieve. The master knows the disciple and has a unique relationship. Not so much of a standard routine like in a school or fixed cult. Only when the master has died and things are taken care of by pupils something like an organized order with clear instructions and set roles comes about (a religion, or cult): the master doesn't amend any longer, the job is done. Still with all of them there is an order of time that would offer a program for the day. Again here the same conclusion can be drawn: each authority complies with a settlement of time: it is the ultimate reality and denominator of all gurus, religions, governments and laboring societies. Thus the final liberation at least has this mark of identity: the liberated person serves a definite settlement of time making up and defining the actions within a specific cultural framework. Illusion, in a relative sense, is nothing but the result of parting from that framework and attachment (as the root of misery) is nothing but the resistance from unregulated desires working against one's own order.

 

e) The concept of reincarnation of importance to the development of western concepts of time.

In the western world there has been a lot of controversy with the concept of time. Most salient is the resistance against the concept of reincarnation amongst the Christians [see also the aricle 'Reïncarnation and the fear of time']. According to St. Augustine the idea of reincarnation would be inadmissible as the Lord would never be crucified again. The sinner would never have to pay again for the sins once redeemed being thrown back in the material world. One is liberated to be an eternally liberated soul [called nitya-mukta by the vaishnav' gurus]. The gnostic christian alternative opposing dares to speak about accounts of our redeemer as a propagator of a more spiritual, vegetarian type of man with an uniquely personal point of view as opposed to mechanical time-regulated ritual, worship and onesided social routines of control. In fact this gnostic tradition is the frustrated authentic spirituality of the christian world. Each would and should realize his own unique nature of service to the more immaterial and impersonal God of nature and time to which our Lord would only be but an example to lead the way. Again the e.g. vaishnav gurus speak like the church of more remote realities. One does not reincarnate for the same world but for a higher one, like the christian heaven, although they recognize the possibility of falling down from higher planets to lower ones. More independent gurus speak less opposing of the cycle of birth and death one has to escape from into the impersonal void for the sake of the eternal soul: either one dissolves in it or one has to wander around this material world life after life until the karma is over. The Bhagavad Gîtâ in 4:7 speaks of avatâra's that descend from heaven to correct the misdeeds and to protect the devotees. So in sum there is incarnation in this material world but not really reincarnation in the sense of returning to the same place. Once a job is done that is a permanent acquisition of the soul. Another birth in the same situation would be a birth of grace, a gift of God for the redemption, hope and belief of another mission with others. This soul would be the continuity of self-awareness that in grace is opposing the changing material nature with its illusory power of false attraction.

The fact is that Christianity with its motive of ascension defied, led by St. Augustine, the cyclic concept of time [see also 'religious time']: it was declared invalid as mere repetition would be an offense to personal evolution: the idea of fixed conditionings out which there is no real escape ['nitya-badda' also a vaishnav term] is unacceptable to the original christian soul and the more common spiritual teaching. The story though wasn't finished with this realization. The predilection for linear time ultimately led to the perversion of the natural sense of cyclic time and its conditionings: the newtonian concept of time was replaced by the electromagnetic concept of linear time without another stable reference but the unit of measurement in a politically dictated concept of standardtime. The resentment against the idea of dead repetition obscured the reality of cyclic time as the maintaining capacity of God and His Goodness. God can also be considered the repeated affirmation by nature of good habits thus maintaining and feeding it into evolution and refinement. The exact theme of evolution that was wanted was fought with the defiance of cyclic time. Even the gurus turn out to be in mâyâ themselves overly stressing the bad and destructive nature of time pleading for other worlds and remote heavens. In their speeches they speak about attaining to the timeless happy void of nonmaterial reality etc. as if it could exist for itself without the time-bound material world. All want to forget the God of time that is knocking on one's door as The maintainer of the Goodness and harmony every day. With the gurus concerning the time it all depends on the correct or incorrect interpretation of the verses III-53-55 of the yoga-sûtras of Patañjali. He says there: It is so, that by controlling oneself with the succession of the moments of time one reaches the spiritual insight of full realization. (54) From this is one of understanding for that what stays the same separate from another state of being, place, characteristic or birth. But behind the word control must be read between brackets: [thus with the help of a good schedule of meditation no longer being disturbed in time], because only then will one understand that one cannot cancel the soul with the time or the time with the soul. Also the time is God explains Vyâsa in the Gîtâ with Krishna identifying three times with the Time. Also Patañjali returns to this later in the text in IV-33 when he says: The order of things becomes crystal clear when one no longer fights the uninterrupted flow of moments, when one no longer wages against the time. So it is indeed about the order of time one doesn't resist when one as a mediator accepts it as it is, for only then will the witness, the soul, find stability.

It seems to be a universal repression of the true nature of God as a maintaining, evolving, dynamic, changing and feeding force in nature that automatically sifts out everything that does not last and thus is not true (according to the Gîtâ 2: 16). Resistance against the time of God might be eternal, but so is the God of Time itself. Maybe we have hit with this upon the basic psychology of mankind: we hate the God of time (father time) since listening to the teacherhe always steals our lives and puts everything to an end. He subdues all and appeases all in death and destruction. This realization turns everything around: not man is eternal, but matter. We souls go in and out of the material world that is as eternal as its absolutely relative time. Our human forms are the temporal, the elements of matter are eternal. We just can't stand to see our material games destroyed by time, and therefore time (especially the cyclic reminding us of our failure) would be bad. This misconception brought great havoc to mankind. Fighting time itself we declared God dead as standardtime itself. Time is not just linear and a static stiff scheme: time is the true (dynamic and also cyclic) nature of the Lord. Great yogis , thus says the paramparâ-guru (Vaishnav gurus in disciplic succession or âcârya's) in the Bhâgavata Purâna meditate on the celestial sky spinning around like a wheel (cakra, compare the cakra design of The Order of time. see time-quotes) because it is the visible part of The Supreme personality of Godhead Himself: "All glory to Him who has taken the form of time and brings peace to all the living worlds and who is the subduer of the demigods, the Supreme Personality of God we meditate upon." (S B canto 5: 23-4). This is the scriptural truth. But the gurus rarely speak of these verses. These verses compete with their own temporal existence, just like it did with the ego of the holy fathers of the christian church who denied the cyclic nature of time (remember that the earth was supposed to stay flat too).

 

   3) The Analytic Conclusion.

In the twentiest century it was the modern psychologist that pointed out the importance of conditionings in the theory of human behavior next to which modern physics also has put a relative to the linearity of time declaring it dependent upon the frame of reference of the observer. Behavioral therapy would be nothing else but a therapy of time: the conditionings had to be compensated, outrated, outdone, desensitized, reconditioned, etc. Our behavior wouldn't be a karmic fix but a temporary engagement of possible error. Their statements were in fact in line with the gurus declaring that karma yoga would undo many of the trauma's and bad habits of material conditioning. But nor the behavioral scientist nor the gurus would speak in favor of an alternative of time-management for the whole world in general. Nobody in fact consciously dares to take the role of the Lord of Time making an imposition of it, as, according to Daniel in the Old Testament, that would be an act of the beast, eventually suppress holiness and would even be an impossible endeavor as, according a known french philosopher (Henri Bergson), time in reality is a mere inscrutable duration. And indeed along these lines took the pointless and unconscious actions of the past century of political pragmatic and reductionist mankind place in manipulating the concept of time. In the sixties we declared with them not just the sexual revolution (after the french and russian one), but also the chinese cultural one and the scientific paradigmatic one; actions that were completely in defiance of what Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis, had told us: what ever you do, do it in free association, be a complement to the culture and not a monster of repression and denial of not only your sexual nature. The real revolution is of course the natural one of the cyclic time of the revolving earth. 'Thou shall respect The Father', Freud would maintain to himself fighting the repression. But did he suspect he was speaking for the real Father Of Time. This analytical conclusion was lacking and present day (1990-ies) psychoanalysts are still wrestling on how to relate to the object (of time and repression) without clearly offering or understanding what alternatives of cultural time actually mean. It means that the whole world, each person, each individual and social group has its own settlement of time, its days of celebration its own calendar and even scale, consciousness and concepts, terms, language and genes of time. To respect this is the factual mission of the gurus and the psychotherapists: we should not repress our own past nor the individual cultures of the souls fixed in material orders of time devoted to God, but find ways and means to have them all respected relative to the one reality of the natural order (of God) that offers the true and real of time (compare the clock-design of The Order of Time) that nobody in reality can deny or will defy for long as Spinoza also says. To this, finally, should the digital revolution of information be an exercise of respect and not another drama of repression and denial to which no future can be seen, if we really want to be of progress with the new medium.

Escaping from the warning of the Holy Bible not to impose timeschemes, a world of mutual time respect relative to a common concept of natural true and representative time, would exclude the dominance of any system (and thus even please the anarchist/libertarian): only comprehensively comparing each cultural fix to the dynamic reality of it in nature (i.e. the position of the sun, moon and stars and spin of earth in an astrarium representation) would give the proper sense of relativity, consciousness and freedom of association, irrespective whatever political /economic concept of dominating (american/german/french) standardtime, swiss swatchbeats or Greenwich-worldtime. Each to his own time and the time of God (read: nature) for all. And this comparing and eventual practical leaping to the order of God, would do justice to the cause of the gurus: they, politically conscious, never explicitly asked for it but they always preached for it.

 

Anand Aadhar Prabhu
(expanded with Patañjali quotes and discussion: 22-08-2006)

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