Woke up refreshed. . . until I stood up. Experienced some sharp stomach pain, but the combination of Jesus + pepto bismol + the carbonation of a diet coke helped cure the pain rather quickly. I was thankful to have the day off though; I felt it was a gift from God! When I started feeling better, I went out shopping for a good majority of the day. Ate some delicious chocolate cake with Desiree (a Swiss girl who is here to work in some of the orphanages in India). Then ate some rice and curry when we got home (yes, the meal was in reverse but for choc. cake at only a dollar a slice, why not?) :) I took some pictures. Walked a LOT. Began to feel that elevation difference but was thankful for the exercise. Ooty is 8,000 ft. above sea-level! Finished Rabi Maharaj's Death of a Guru and it is simply unbelievable and so timely! It is especially fitting when reading it right alongside with Charles Colson's book How Now Shall We Live? (Thanks again for letting me borrow it, J.M.!) . . . Jesus, you are SO good. I wanted to read exactly the kind of material I have been reading. Identifying the falsities and holes in eastern mysticism and replacing them with a wholly and holy Truth. Are my desires Yours? I hope so!
Here is a sample from Death of A Guru. I would challenge everyone in any walk to life to read this book. It's a quick read and SO eye-opening and is most importantly, culturally relevant and sound in its arguments.
Nor was it only a matter of my five senses versus my inner visions. It was a matter of reason also. The real conflict was between two opposing views of God: was God all that there was, or could he make a rock or a man without its being part of himself? If there was one Reality, then Brahman was evil as well as good, death as well as life, hatred as well as love. That made everything meaningless, life an absurdity. It was not easy to maintain both one's sanity and the view that good and evil, love an hate,life and death were one Reality. Furthermore, if good and evil were the same, then all karma was the same and nothing mattered, so why be religious? It seemed unreasonable, but Gosine reminded me that reason could be trusted--it was part of the illusion.
If reason also was maya--as the Vedas taught--then how could I trust any concept, including the idea that all was maya and only Brahman was real? How could I be sure that the Bliss I sought was not also an illusion, if none of my perceptions or reasonings were to be trusted? To accept what my religion taught, I had to deny what reason told me. But what about other religions? if all was ONE, then they were all the same. That seemed to deify confusion as the Ultimate Reality. I was confused.
My only hope was Yoga, which Krishna in the Gita promised would dispel all ignorance through the realization that I was not other than God himself. At times this inner vision had dazzled and excited me--I had felt so close to Self-realization that I could almost see myself as Brahman, the Lord of all. Almost, but now quite. I had told myself it was true and pretended that I was God; but always there had been that inner conflict, a voice warning of delusion. I had fought against this as the vestige of primordial ignorance, and at times had felt that I was on the verge of conquering this insidious illusion just as my father had. But never had I quite been able to bridge the chasm separating me and all of creation from the Creator.
I began to think of the Creator as the true God, in contrast to the man Hindu gods, some of whom I was convinced I had met in my trances. I felt increasingly the stark difference between the terror they struck in my heart and the instinct I had that the true God was loving and kind. There was not one of the Hindu gods whom I now felt I could really trust--not one that loved me. I felt a growing hunger to know the Creator, but I knew no mantras to recite to him, and I had the uneasy feeling that my pursuit of Self-realization was not bringing me nearer to him but taking me farther from him. It troubled me also that, in spite of my attempts to realize that I was Brahman, the feeling of peace I achieved in meditation never lasted very long in the everyday world... (98-99).
"For God is not a God of confusion but of peace." 1 Corinthians 14:33
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