Letter No.38 Sufism

Emerging from the Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit
Letter Nº 38
Sufism

Self-discovery of its essence

Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena

The mysticism is to realize the existence of the being or god: how? as a more real internal being. The oriental religions are mystical, while the three religions that have had origin in the Near East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - are not, for its belief that god is "out" somewhere far beyond the man. Many mysticism groups exist inside these three religions and the Sufis is one of those groups within Islam.


The date of the Sufis eighth and ninth centuries A.C. They rebelled against the sumptuous luxury and corrupt power that arose in the days following the death of the prophet Muhammad and became ascetics, wandering the desert, wearing clothes made of coarse wool called suf in Arabia, from where its name it. They were described as foreign and travelers, for their walks through the desert and they were taking a life of abnegation, silence and renunciation.

The Sufis mainly originated in Persia, where the two religions, Hinduism and Buddhism had penetrated deeply. Muslims and the Sufis were not interested in creating a new religion. Because the truth does not belong to any religion but it transcends them all. They were the most rigid followers of Muhammad and their mystic idea transcends Muslim dogma. The great masters of Sufis founded schools where they guided his disciples in many practices and beliefs and their writings passed from one generation to another.

The progress of the disciple happened in seven stages, each stage by their own efforts.The ultimate goal for a disciple had several senses:be consumed in the fire of God love, see God revealed in its perfection, or abandoned him and filled with the glory of God.

The mystical journey was interested in discard the Me, leaving the disciple with his will of desire purifying his will. He had to learn to abandon the Me and bowing in the hands of God. The Sufis believe that graces given by God manifested in three ways: one was the heart that knows God, another was for the spirit that loves God, and the third one for in the most recondite of the soul, where is possible contemplate God.

The mystical knowledge of Sufis is called Gnosis. This is the God light, a so penetrating illumination that, as sword cuts the feelings of the disciple of “Me” forever and from there is not him, but god. The Sufis believe that the man cannot know anything until he is with himself. He cannot know God if God is not there to be found. Gnosis is the discovery of that “He found like in the western religions that there is not a separate me. The Sufis say the truth, the fact is that I is a purely conventionality and a personage of the language. All the acts, words, feelings and thoughts are not his but of god. The man was created to the god's image and all his attributes.

To their believers Gnosis is the realization that no one exist in the world that the unity of God. The other is an illusion. Manifest that God is known by name and a particular aspect. In one of these aspects it is said that it is in the sky, in other that in the ground, the reality is the same in everything. The true Gnostic (expert) is one that sees all with worship as a manifestation of god, therefore, every adorable thing receives the name of Ilah (god) although its own name is a stone, tree, animal, plant, man, etc.

Gnosis and love, the same spiritually meaning for the Sufis was the biggest goal, and the way to reach them was a high perception and a deep mystical grace. As in other religions, exist steps to be continued to help the disciple to reach the goals. These practices it was all important ones for the experience Sufi, without them it was not advanced in the footpath.

It is essential for the understanding of these practices to see first the essence of the Sufi faith. Essence is what the so-called Buddhists and Hindus as such-that. It is the internal reality, being the thing itself can be seen only when all the concepts about him have been thrown. The search for the Sufis have been discovering their very essence, their own reality, which is in themselves. The Sufis believe that the essence of man was hidden behind veils made by himself, like desires, hypocrisy, gluttony, etc. The exercise is used to remove the veil so the essence can shine like a light in the disciple.

Dervish was the name given to the Sufi disciple, and the Sufi masters of the past had their own schools, based on orders of dervishes. When the disciples had been accepted by the master of a dervish order, he had to start his training to be ready for new experiences, which with his ordinary mind he had not been capable of understanding. These new experiences take form and awake the five centers of lighting, called lataif. The method is to concentrate his conscience on some place of the head and the body, every place joined with a lataif. While the concentration penetrates in this area, the lataif is activated and produces a change in consciousness and an expansion of the mind to the essence.

The same way he has to learn the difficult truth, central point of the religions, of which his feelings of non-being are based on a real entity but on a changeable sea of sensations and thoughts that accompany him of a rapid movement that is imperceptible for the conscious mind, like the sequence in silences movement or the perpetual movement of the atoms compressed into only one body, they cannot be seen by a naked eye. He has to learn that he is not only one person but many. His states of origin and imaginations have created all his veils. The master helps him to see these aspects of himself after the lighting of the lataif, so that the same lighting is reinforced and integrates with the changes caused in him.

The Sufis gather together with an intention like the spiritual remedy, and then they separate when the above mentioned target has been fulfilled. They do not set up organizations and organic structure that they keep on existing after the group work has been realized. The Sufi's life will move back and it will be evident for itself in some another part. This gives to the whole movement Sufi an organic composition continuously creative and flexible, different to the common western organizations that are more formal structure. The Sufisms has penetrated deeply in Europe and America, and his followers study with the same devotion the Bible, the Vedanta, the Koran, the Cabala as well as religious thoughts of other sources.

Apparently the Sufis ideas have influenced some western writers. A writer whose books are very well-known, is Kahlil Gibran born in Monte Lebanon. Gibran spent most of his life in America and there he wrote. He thought by his poems, which is a Sufi's custom. His most well-known book is the Prophet, in whom he exhibits many aspects of life.

Letter No.37 Krishna Fundamental Lessons

Emerging from the Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit
Letter Nº 37


KRISHNA FUNDAMENTAL LESSONS

Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena

In the West Krishna followers are popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, or devotees of Krishna, the identification that the generality of the people has of the devout ones is with the most popular song of the movement, the singing of the Maha-Mantra I will Do Krishna:

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,
Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,
Rama Rama, Hare Rama,
Rama Rama, Hare Hare”


Singing that consists of the God's holy names - Krishna and Rama.

The record of this doctrine is in the literature Védica (The Vedas), compiled in the Sanskrit language it does approximately four thousand years for Sri Vyasadeva. Today it has been translated to all well-known languages. Inside the works of these literary heritage has been explained to us that there are four classes of evidences by which it is possible to know the truth: revelation, perception, history (common voice), and inference.

Srila Madhavacharya in his work Prameya-ratnavali concludes that, because the common voice or history is included in the perception, the means to get the appropriate knowledge are three (aforesaid ones), among which Sruti (divine sound) or revelation, it is the most elevated.

The Bhagavatam consists of 18.000 poems, shlokas. It contains the best parts of the Vedas and the Vedanta. Lord Chaitanya says that The Bhagavatam is based on four Shlokas that Vyasa received from the wise person Narada. He says to us further that Brahma penetrated across the whole material universe per years looking into the final cause of the world, but on not having been able to find it out, he looked inside the construction of his own spiritual nature and there he heard to the Universal Spirit.

In all its twelve skandas or divisions. The Bhagavatam teaches us that there is only one God without parallel, which was finished in itself and which is and it will remain equal. Time and space, which prescribe conditions to the created objects, they are much underneath of the supreme spiritual God nature, which is undetermined and absolute. The created objects are subject to the influence of the time and of the space, which are the essential ingredients of this beginning in the creation that we know for the name of Mayan. Mayan is a thing not easily understood by us who are subject to it, but God says, as much as we can understand whit our present condition, this principle through our spiritual perception.

The Bhagavatam teaches that everything we perceive is true, but it material appearance is fleeting and illusory. The scandal of the ideal theory consists in its tendency to misrepresent the nature, nevertheless the theory explains by Bhagavatam it does the nature like "real" although not as an eternal truth as God and his ideas.

The Bhagavad-Gita

The Vedanta's writings. The Srimad Bhagavad-gita Upanisad is the sacred conversation between Lord Krishna and prince Arjuna, that is in the section Bhisma Parva of Sri Mahabarata, the Writing of the Divine Law that was compiled in hundred thousand strophes by Srila Vyasadeva.

In the doctrine gaudiya-vaisnava the Bhagavad-Gita is the book for the aspirants. Then, at a higher level we have the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and finally, the postgraduate study is in the Chaiyanya-charitamrita Srila Krishna das Kaviraja Goswami. The concept of God by Krishna is expressed magnificently in the Gita. In the Bhagavatam, however, the ideal theist is presented in the Gita develops to plenitude and is explained by all its elements and parts. And in the Chaiyanya-charitamrita, the concept of God by Krishna reaches its highest expression through the precepts of Lord Vhaitanya. In an inconceivable way the levels of good, better and higher, they exist in the spiritual reality.

In general the Bhagavad-Gita is known like an excellent study of the science of the religion. From the atheists up to the highest saint - the essential concepts of all kinds of philosophers are treated by a clear and vigorous logic-. The furtive worker, the scholar, the practitioner of yoga, the devout one of the Lord will find in this holy book an illuminating and comprehensive exhibition of the substance of its respective philosophies, having the whole book in high esteem. The essence of the teachings of the Vedas and Upanishads of Aryan is directly explained, and with a little more research, the essence of various doctrines no Arias may also detected in the text.

Within the meaning of the Bhagavad-Gita is find the purification of consciousness through wisdom arises from the execution materially unmotivated of the duties identified by scripture, resulting in self-knowledge or divine realization. At full maturity, the pure and immaculate perception culminates in the search for a pure state of understanding in the Supreme abode.

The Bhagavatad-Gita has distinguished and delineated clearly the characteristics of not devout footpaths based on the action (karma) and the knowledge (Jñana) and its objective correspondents of pleasure of the senses (Kama) and liberation (Moksha). Therefore, the intelligent one can notice than by means of the declaration: yo yac charaddhah sa eva sah, "One is identified by his particular faith", Sri Gita (cap. 17 text 3) has planned an objective comparison of different footpaths and his goals, disarming and exhibiting those who make confusion for support the speculation of which many footpaths and goals are all one.


Krishna: The Almighty

In the Veda theology, the creative beginning of the Divinity is personified by Brahma, and the destructive beginning is Shiva. Indra is the head of some of the low elements of the administration. They are not the proper Lord, but representations of different attributes of the Almighty one. They have obtained their powers of the original source and that's why they are considered to be beings subordinated in the God's service.

Apart, there exist also three different philosophical ideas of the Divinity, namely:


(1) the idea of the omnipresent bhahman of the pantheistic school,

(2) the idea of the universal soul-paramama - of the school yoga, and

(3) the idea of a personal God - bhagavan - with all his stateliness, power, glory, beauty joint knowledge and supremacy in his personality

The human ideas can be material or spiritual. The material or mental idea is defective, since it has relation with the created beginning of the matter. The spiritual idea constitutes certainly the nearest approach the Supreme Being. The spiritual idea of God (Bhagavan) is of two kinds: first the person of God is beyond all its majesty. The first idea is represented in the great Vaikuntha of Narayana, who is considered the Lord of Lords and all the God of all Gods. The second idea is represented in Krishna with his eternal consort, Radharani, his energy-giving pleasure (hladini).

Krishna attracts, loves, and offers to them blessedness to all the souls. The qualities of Krishna are purely spiritual, they have no relation with the material substance. The material senses of the man cannot come closer to him. It is the spirit in the man who can see him straight and communicate with him. For its own degradation, the soul chained in the matter has lost its right to see Krishna and his divine activities (lilac) in the spiritual world. But Krishna can, for his own supremacy, appear with His eternal residence (Vrindavan) and his activities before the eyes of all men.

Krishna is the supreme will and he exercises his supreme power in accordance with his pleases. His power is not subject to any law, since any law has come from his power and from his will. The power can be known by means of his exercise or application. In this world only we have experience of three of the attributes of the power of God. We see the material creation and understand that his power has the attribute of creating the matter. This attribute is known in the vedics literature like Mayan - shakti. We see a man and understand that the supreme power has the attribute of producing limited and imperfect souls. The Writing calls this attribute jiva-shakti. We conceive someone who is spiritual and supreme in your residence of eternal spirits and we understand that his power has the attribute of exhibiting perfect spiritual existences. The Vedas call this attribute chitshakti. They all as a whole form his supreme power named para-shakti.