Find a way to be, or think, or feel, or act

I have escaped and the small self is dead;
I am immortal, alone, ineffable;
I have gone out from the universe
I made,And have grown nameless and immeasurable.

I have become what before Time I was.
My heart is a centre of infinity
A momentless immensity pure and bare,
I stretch to an eternal everywhere.

--Sri Aurobindo

Now, broadly speaking, there are four kinds of men: pneumatic man, intellectual man, emotional or vital man, and the man of action. And there is an appropriate practice for each--or raja, jnana, bhakti, and karma yogas, which any full-service religion will offer. Each type of yoga, in its own way, tries to provide an appropriate means for experiencing eternity within time. To live “within” religion is to find a way to be, or think, or feel, or act within eternity.

Now, no one has been more shocked than I have about what happens when you begin “thinking” within religion, because to a certain extent, this blog is nothing more or less than that. Like so many people in the modern west, I started off in a place that pretty much equated religion and ignorance. But as it so happens, knowledge of religion is knowledge that is both fruitful and efficacious, not to say transformational. It is nothing at all like “book learning,” or mere mental knowledge. If we grasp religion only with the mind, it is not really "interior" knowledge to which we may validly lay claim.

With the type of thinking I am describing, one is vaulted, so to speak, into a different space, the space from which the primordial mystery perpetually arises. What I have discovered, to my everlasting surprise, is that once in this space, one finds that it actually has its own very real characteristics and attributes. I know this because every day I receive confirmation from fellow explorers who see and experience the same thing. It's as if we are all setting voyage into an unknown sea but all returning with vaguely similar--sometimes strikingly so--descriptions of the flora and fauna on the other side. I can only reemphasize that this is most mysterious indeed. posted by Gagdad Bob at 8:03 AM 32 comments One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

Gagdad Bob said... Yes, everyone is a mixture of each, but each person generally has a dominant type. The only exception would be certain members of the lowest caste, who can do no better for themselves than to be obedient. I know it sounds harsh, but let's be honest, we all know they exist. Left to their own devices, they destroy their own lives. 12:41 PM