do.rflex wrote: > Is anyone on this forum qualified to explain the > following in practical terms? > > That future life is reached by two roads... > The two roads are Brahmanic ritual sacrifice and Yoga practice. The first, the way of ritual blood sacrifice, provides for rebirth in Brahmaloka after millions of reincarnations. The path of Yoga provides the means to obtain freedom from rebirth, in this very lifetime, by means of interior sacrifice - breath, thought, and tapas. The Vedas are based on metaphysics and a moral code of ritual ethics. Yoga enstasis has a physiological foundation, a simple material process: the gunas born of nature impregnate the universe as it were. The goal of Yoga and TM is go beyond the gunas, to *isolate* the Purusha, to be free, and achieve immortality.
According to Mircea Eliade, "There must be an entity that transcends the categories of Substance (Guna) and that exists in view of itself. There must be a subject to which mental activity is subordinated. But man confuses the true Self with the psycomental states" (24-25). According to Marshy, the Purusha is totally separate from the gunas born of nature, prakriti. What is needed is not a metaphysics, but a PRACTICE, that can be used to isolate the Purusha from the prakriti: TM is that effortless technique. "Every ritual act, by the very fact that it implies an effort, engenders a new karmic force" (29). Works cited: Samkhya Sutra, III, 26 Cited in 'Yoga: Immortality and Freedom' By Mircea Eliade Princeton U. Press, 1969 > the Devapatha, leading to the world of Brahman > (the conditioned), beyond which there lies one > other stage only, represented by knowledge of > and identity with the unconditioned Brahman; > > the other leading to the world of the fathers, > and from thence, after the reward of good works > has been consumed, back to a new round of > mundane existence. > > There is a third road for creatures which live > and die, worms, insects, and creeping things, but > they are of little consequence. > > Now it is quite clear that the knowledge which > king Kitra possesses, and which Svetaketu does > not possess, is that of the two roads after > death, sometimes called the right and the left, > or the southern and northern roads. These roads > are fully described in the Khândogya-upanishad > and in the Brihad-âranyaka, with certain variations, > yet on the whole with the same purpose. > > The northern or left road, called also the path > of the Devas, passes on from light and day to the > bright half of the moon; the southern or right road, > called also the path of the fathers, passes on from > smoke and night to the dark half of the moon. > > Both roads therefore meet in the moon, but diverge > afterwards. While the northern road passes by the > six months when the sun moves towards the north, > through the sun, (moon,) and the lightning to the > world of Brahman, the southern passes by the six > months when the sun moves towards the south, to the > world of the fathers, the ether, and the moon. > > The great difference, however, between the two roads > is, that while those who travel on the former do not > return again to a new life on earth, but reach in the > end a true knowledge of the unconditioned Brahman, > those who pass on to the world of the fathers and the > moon return to earth to be born again and again. > > http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe01/sbe01239.htm >
