Vedanta in Rishikesh, day 6

28 September 2005

The world has its own order and within that order everything has its orchestrated role. Krishna (the attractive one) dances in a kind of ecstasy, and the gopi dance around him. Navaratri lasts for nine days and in that time many celebrants dance.

You can pack a suitcase and every extra article makes it heavier and heavier. But the mind, despite adding to it one idea or fact after another, doesn’t get heavier, maybe a little tired, but has a seemingly endless capacity for more.

In Ellora there is a temple which has been chiseled out of the side of a hill, where the architect/sculptor cannot be allowed any mistakes.

What happens in the mind also obeys a certain order as well. Whether a person is depressed, confused, or happy is part of the mind’s range. We may not know why we feel a certain way, but there is always a cause behind it. Memories come and go, and so do emotions. We don’t always know what we’re going to remember, but once we have absorbed knowledge, it becomes part of us. The inner world has its own order.

Most of our life is governed by this inner world. The quantity of my life is governed by what lies outside, but the quality of my life is governed by what lies within me. The manifest order of the world is dharma. Within that order is the law of karma – cause and effect, the two of which are interdependent.

Whether making cotton or creating a consciousness, the Maker must have knowledge of the material. In the making of the thing, we can thus observe an order.

• Partakata: maker of cloth
• Partajnaha: knowledge of cloth
• Sarvakata: maker of all
• Sarvajnaha: knowledge of all

We cannot see the process in which the maker and the material are one and the same. The spider has the intelligence to build its web in a lighted place where it can trap insects. But the spider also draws the web from within itself to create it. This is referred to as an example in the Mundaka Upanishad.

God is the power that is capable of manifesting creation from out of itself. How, no one can know. I am the Creator of my dream universe, which is populated with many objects and persons. I am the maker of my dream, but I am also the material (experience, hopes, fears, emotions) which constitutes the dream.

Because cotton is in all cloth, and gold in all jewelry, and wood in all furniture, therefore God (the Creator) is everywhere that we find objects (the Creation). Thus is Ishvara the creator manifest in all since Ishvara is the source of all creation. This encompasses every object, emotion and thought, but it also takes us beyond perception to cognition. Eg, I see the wave but I know it is water. I can see the trees but I know they are wood. I can see sculpture but know it is stone.

We relate to other people differently, but behind that relation there is cognition of Ishvara.

~~~

Alan Annand is a graduate of the American College of Vedic Astrology and a former tutor for the British Faculty of Astrological Studies. 

His New Age Noir crime novels (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) feature astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.”

He’s also the author of several non-fiction books. Stellar Astrology offers a compilation of Vedic astrology techniques, in-depth celebrity profiles, and analysis of world events. Parivartana Yoga is a reference text for one of the most common yet powerful planetary combinations in jyotish. Mutual Reception is an expanded companion volume for western practitioners, covering the same subject of planetary exchange through the lens of traditional astrology.

Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com

You can find his books on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.