01.22.10
Posted in Bhagavad-gita, Darshan, Esoteric Teaching, Karma-yoga, Transontology at 5:51 am by anandavardhana
viṣayā vinivartante
nirāhārasya dehinaḥ
rasa-varjaṁ raso py asya
paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate
“The embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, though the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness.”
In this lecture we talk about the importance of associating with devotees and how changing place of residence helps in spiritual progress.
Please join us for Evening Darshan live webcast daily at 6:30 PM India time, on our main site.
The video can be watched here on Youtube.
You can also download the original .mov file here.
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05.17.09
Posted in Darshan, Esoteric Teaching, Podcasts, Transontology at 1:59 pm by Nava-yauvana dāsa
Tonight we had a long discussion on topics of the ontology of consciousness raised in Hegel’s very important book The Phenomenology of Mind. This deep conversation pretty much covers the entire spectrum of consciousness from undeveloped to the highest stage of self-realization. Guaranteed to make your head spin, or your money back!
listen(MP3 audio)
If it is hard to hear the other devotees (because of the noise suppression), you might want to listen to the raw file (MP3 audio)
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03.18.09
Posted in Darshan, Esoteric Teaching, Podcasts, Transontology at 7:10 am by Nava-yauvana dāsa
This Evening Darshan comes from my efforts to explain what the Esoteric Teaching really is. You can look at it as a religion like the neophytes do; you can accept it as a transcendental esoteric school, which is what the Initiates do; or you can understand it as a high-level ontological system, like the perfected souls. Anyway this talk is very hard to describe; it ranges over examples from computer languages and meta-languages to musical harmonics, scales, chords and tonalities; from the external forms of religion to the most subtle reaches of high-level ontological entities and systems.
listen(MP3 audio)
The audio for the recording has a few short gaps due to a technical glitch. The complete transcription of this Darshan is available here.
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02.01.07
Posted in Community News, Esoteric Teaching, Transontology at 10:15 am by David Bruce Hughes
Dear Disciples, Students and Friends,
Welcome to the second edition of our spiritual community newsletter. Wow, it’s February already; time sure is flying by! It must be because we are fully engaged in preaching the Holy Name and teaching the principles of spiritual life.
There’s a whole lot going on, and many topics to cover.
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- Secret Teachings of Jesus video released
- Introductory Course at BioCyber Institute
- Exciting new developments in Transontology
- Esoteric Teaching site updates
- Your free spiritual music download
Secret Teachings of Jesus Video Released
Many of you know that my spiritual master Srila Prabhupada instructed me to preach to the Christians, and even authorized chanting the name of Jesus Christ. (If you have access to the VedaBase, look up letter 76-09-08.) Now in my old age―60 this month!―I am finally getting around to implementing this extremely merciful instruction. Along with serializing The Book of Gethsemane in podcast format, we have released a 10-minute online video titled The Secret Teachings of Jesus. More videos on similar subjects are in production.
Introductory Course at BioCyber Institute
We will present an introductory course on “Spiritual Teachings of the Vedas” at BioCyber Institute beginning on February 6. The course will total 15 hours of instruction, presented over a five-week period. The focus of the course is taking control of your life and improving your experience by upgrading your consciousness. Topics to be covered include:
Background and History
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- The Esoteric Teaching
- The Celestial Christ (Brahma)
- The Vedic Lineage
- The Book of Gethsemane
The Laws of Karma
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- Mode of Goodness (Elevation)
- Mode of Passion (Mediocrity)
- Mode of Ignorance (Degradation)
- Karma-yoga (freedom from reaction)
Health and Happiness
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- Hatha-yoga
- Xigong (Chi K’ung)
- Vegetarian Diet
- Sex and Relationships
Work and Worship
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- Scriptural Study
- The Holy Name (japa and kirtan)
- Home Worship
- Spiritual Community
Exciting developments in Transontology
Transontology is an expression of Vedanta in formal scientific terms. You could think of it as an interface between the original Vedic tradition and Western empirical scientific thought. Srila Prabhupada always referred to “the science of Krsna consciousness.” That is precisely what Transontology is.
We noticed during our travels around the world that most people who study the Vedic literature don’t really understand it very accurately. When we researched why that was so, we found that they were misinterpreting what they read. This misinterpretation was due to using an inappropriate ontological background, leading to subtle redefinitions of the esoteric Vedic terminology. Therefore the solution to the problem is to educate people in the Vedic background ontology; then they can understand and get the full benefits of the amazing wisdom of the Vedas. Thus Transontology was born.
What is most often missing in Westerners’ understanding is a high-level picture of the entire Vedic system of thought. In Kali-yuga, most people’s memory and attention span are quite limited. Therefore by the time they read and understand one fact, they have forgotten most of the information they read previously. This leads to a lack of understanding how all the pieces fit together into a complete system of thought. We also noticed a lack of semantic rigor among preachers and teachers of Vedic spiritual lore; they often redefined the terminology to fit their preconceptions, reducing its effectiveness while apparently keeping the words the same.
Transontology corrects these problems by creating high-level verbal and graphical representations of the Vedic philosophy, such that anyone can see and understand the entire system of dynamic relationships between and among the material world, sense objects, the bodily senses, mind, intelligence, false ego, the soul and Supersoul. This in turn provides the ability to change and improve those relationships for optimum spiritual advancement.
Our Transontology research began with a detailed analysis of the terminology of Vedic metaphysics, especially the ontological works of Rupa and Sanatana Gosvami, using the advanced tools of General Semantics and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This provided an accurate view of the ontological background and structural relationships among the various Sanskrit terms used in the Vedic theory of consciousness. Once that was clear, it became possible to express these relationships in both formal scientific and mathematical notation, and ordinary Western language without changing the original meaning.
Using non-Aristotelian mathematical logic to encode the acintya-bheda-abheda philosophy of Lord Caitanya turns out to be a very successful approach to preaching to the educated philosophical and scientific community. We are also developing an advanced course on practical applications of Transontology, including semantic analysis and counseling for attaining personal goals, and how to radically improve your experience and quality of life by changing your consciousness.
Recent updates to the Transontology site include:
Esoteric Teaching site updates
We have been hard at work updating the site to better serve our user community. Recent changes include:
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- New Esoteric Teaching Home Page writeup using semantic principles of Transontology.
- New guestbook for visitors to sign and leave comments.
- We are continuing the Sri Isopanisad series at the rate of about one new post per week.
- Complete content of Your Perfect Body podcast archives and Introductory Seminar Videos now available online (previously we were selling them on DVD).
- Integration of the current Your Perfect Body podcast with Odeo.com, digg.com, del.icio.us technorati.com, scape.com and facebook.com, giving our work much broader exposure. Now there are handy links below each post for you to subscribe to our RSS feed and share posts with a large online community.
- Reorganization of Secrets of the Soul podcast series into an online course.
- Our public forum for open discussions has been migrated to a new forum software package.
Free Download
This month’s free spiritual music download is Where Are You Now? This orchestral-rock-kirtan track recorded in 2000 is a musical tribute to His Holiness Visnujana Swami, my personal kirtan mentor. I was his backup kirtan leader on the Radha-Damodar bus party or over a year. He taught me a great deal, not only about kirtan, spiritual integrity and leadership, but also about what it means to be an ecstatic devotee. We all love him and miss him very much.
I hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter; we try hard to make every issue meaningful and enjoyable. Of course you can always email me your feedback at questions@esotericteaching.org; we use this feedback to improve our offerings.
Until next time, in the Lord’s service
Much love,
David Bruce Hughes
Master Teacher
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01.24.07
Posted in Transontology at 7:45 pm by David Bruce Hughes
Transontology, a convenient contraction of ‘transcendental ontology,’ is the master key to understanding the science of consciousness. With Transontology, for the first time we can logically map different states and qualities of consciousness, and accurately predict the symptoms and outcomes of conscious states. The theory of Transontology explains all states and manifestations of mind and consciousness: from deep sleep to superconsciousness, and from the pathologies of neurosis and psychosis to advanced stages of meditation, creative visualization, so-called mystic powers and transcendent God-realization. Transontology literally demystifies these aspects of consciousness, bringing them for the first time into the domains of empirical scientific inquiry and even engineering.
Contemporary research into consciousness is stymied because it insists on trying to study consciousness using the same ontological framework as the physical sciences. This will never produce satisfactory results because consciousness is not mundane or physical, but a transcendental object with completely different properties. Existing scientific ontologies lack a proper set of categories for transcendental objects. Therefore the difficulties in consciousness research stem from the fact that consciousness can only be observed, measured and manipulated by entities of equivalent ontological nature and qualities―in other words, by similarly conscious entities.
Transontology eliminates this heretofore intractable difficulty by introducing a complete background ontology of such conscious entities drawn from the Esoteric Teaching of Vedanta, a very ancient tradition of transcendental consciousness research. Transontology is the first mathematically precise definition of consciousness and the conscious living entity against the background of other spiritual entities, such as the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the spiritual world.
Transontology is a special type of ontology that describes transcendental objects and phenomena. If you are conscious, then you are a transcendental entity; as such, to understand yourself requires Transontology. Against this transcendent background, it is easy to design and implement protocols that produce clear-cut experimental results. In other words, for the first time, Transontology makes consciousness amenable to methodical empirical research.
Ordinary materialistic ontology and logic cannot account for, or correctly reason about, transcendental phenomena such as consciousness, individuality, personality, living force (prana, ki), desire, choice, intention, initiative, imagination, creativity, love and many other human qualities we experience every day. We need Transontology to understand these phenomena because existing ontologies were developed to support materialistic ways of looking at the world. Transontology helps us to correctly evaluate the immanence of spirit, consciousness and the inner life of the soul.
Transontology is important because it is the only way of giving appropriate meaning to the transcendental aspects of human consciousness, experience and life. To understand ourselves as spiritual beings, make tangible advancement in spiritual life and develop our consciousness to its highest potential, we need to understand Transontology and apply it in our lives.
The Ontology of Consciousness
Consciousness is the primary issue in human life. Indeed, without consciousness, there are no other issues. Consciousness and its corollaries are fundamental to every thought, word and action. Yet how strange it is that no universally accepted, comprehensive theory of consciousness exists in Western science. The reason for this is clear: science intentionally restricts its domain to empirical investigations of the manifest objective world, whereas consciousness is intrinsically subjective and immanent.
Consciousness is the primary experiential fact. Without a practical theory of consciousness, science cannot adequately explain our experience or the world in which we live. Any observer must be conscious, and therefore the consciousness of the observer is critical to the outcome of any quantum experiment. However, so far Quantum Mechanics treats the observer’s consciousness as a ‘black box,’ as if consciousness were proscribed from serious scientific inquiry. And the consciousness research done so far tries to isolate consciousness, as if it were a physical substance that could be poured into a test tube.
This is a perfect example of how language and theory can differ from reality. Just because it is possible to isolate the word ‘consciousness,’ it does not follow that one can isolate the thing consciousness. In reality, consciousness is not a thing, but on the internal side it is a quality inseparable from the living entity: he who is conscious of being conscious. On the external side, consciousness is never found separate from senses, form, mind and personal identity. Any attempt to treat consciousness apart from its structural relationships with the living entity, form (whether material or spiritual) individuality and identity, is futile. Such crippled theories can never lead to any practical result because they fail to recognize the actual structure of consciousness as a transcendental quality of the living entity or soul.
Transontology is derived from the ancient theory of consciousness of Vedanta, a spiritual tradition of vital living importance to hundreds of millions of adherents and practitioners all over the world. Our research reveals an unexpected deep congruence between the Vedic model of consciousness and current trends in pure mathematics and the philosophy of science. It provides a practical and efficient model for understanding all consciousness-related phenomena and techniques that have so far eluded scientific exploration.
Although the Badarinayana-sutras of Vedanta certainly make reference to the Upanisads, they cannot be interpreted by reference to the Upanisads alone. Vedanta can be understood properly only in reference to Bhagavad-gita (Gitopanisad) and Srimad-Bhagavatam (Bhagavata-Purana), the natural commentaries on Vedanta-sutra by the same author. Any attempt to interpret Vedanta without reference to these works will lead only to an intractable regression into nihilism, similar to Theravada Buddhism or existentialist philosophy. Although such disempowering misinterpretations are popular today, they are useless for understanding and realizing the true potentials of consciousness, for they attempt to deny the indelible structural connections between consciousness and its concomitant transcendental qualities, such as individuality and personality.
Axioms of Transontology
The following axioms and their corollaries are derived from the Vedic Esoteric Teaching of Vedanta, as described above. For a formal mathematical presentation of these ontological axioms in the OWL notation, see our site http://transontology.org
- Axiom: All energies are emanated by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient spiritual source of everything.
- Corollary: The qualities and quantities of the energies are a subset of the qualities and quantities of their source, the Supreme Personality of Godhead; He is infinite, but His energies are limited.
- Corollary: The spiritual world is the internal energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the material world is His external energy, and the living entities are His marginal energy.
- Corollary: Both the spiritual and material energies of the Supreme Personality of Godhead possess form and other qualities; however, the spiritual energy is eternal, living, conscious, individual and personal, whereas the material energy is temporary, impersonal and inert.
- Axiom: The spiritual energy (consciousness) is fundamental to existence; in fact it is the root substance of all other manifestations (Brahman).
- Corollary: All manifestations and phenomena are simply transformations of consciousness.
- Corollary: Consciousness is transcendental to the limitations of Aristotelian logic, specifically the Law of the Excluded Middle, because it is simultaneously, inconceivably one with and different from everything else.
- Corollary: Conscious entities cannot be described by the categories of conventional ontology nor their behavior predicted by Aristotelian logic; this requires the transcendental ontology and logic of the Esoteric Teaching.
- Axiom: The living entity is a fundamental particle of spiritual energy.
- Corollary: Consciousness is the primary symptom or quality of the living entity.
- Corollary: Individuality, personality, intention, mind, memory, desire, initiative, emotion, creativity, living force (prana, ki) etc. are also qualities of the living entity and thus concomitant with, and inseparable from, consciousness.
- Corollary: The living entity’s potency is infinitesimal because he is subatomic in size.
- Axiom: The living entity has an eternal ecstatic loving spiritual relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, which is his natural constitutional position of pure consciousness in the spiritual energy.
- Corollary: The living entity is eternally related with the Supreme Personality of Godhead in one of five primary relationships: neutrality, servitude, friendship, parenthood or conjugal love.
- Corollary: The living entity is temporarily related with the Supreme Personality of Godhead in one of seven secondary relationships: laughter, compassion, anger, chivalry, dread, astonishment and ghastliness.
- Corollary: Whether in the spiritual or material energy, the consciousness and experience of the living entity are determined by the character and flavor of his relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
- Axiom: The living entity has complete freedom, thus he may remain in his natural home, the internal spiritual energy, or may be covered by the external material energy.
- Corollary: The living entity can be conscious of the spiritual energy at any time; he becomes conscious of the material energy by rebelling against the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
- Corollary: When the living entity rebels against his natural constitutional relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, this original relationship becomes pervertedly reflected in the material energy, causing the consciousness of the living entity to become conditioned by the qualities of material nature.
- Corollary: When the relationship between the living entity and the Supreme Personality of Godhead is in a normal healthy condition, the living entity is happy; when the living entity rebels against this relationship, he becomes unhappy and suffers because he is in illusion and denial of his constitutional nature and real identity.
- Corollary: When the living entity in conditioned consciousness realizes the cause of his suffering, and again accepts his constitutional relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he is reinstated in his original consciousness, ends his suffering and returns to the spiritual world.
- Axiom: The living entity is always accompanied by the Supersoul (Paramatma), a plenary expansion of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
- Corollary: The Supersoul is the eternal friend of the living entity, and remains always faithful and affectionate toward him, constantly maintaining him in all conditions of existence.
- Corollary: The Supersoul manifests and operates the material or spiritual body, senses and environment of the living entity, in cooperation with the living entity’s desires.
- Corollary: The Supersoul desires the living entity to be happy, and thus when the living entity is in the material world, always tries to invite him back to his real home in the spiritual world.
- Axiom: The living entity may indirectly cause various manifestations by petitioning the Supersoul, who according to His perfect judgment, may create the desired effects with His omnipotent will because of His eternal affection for the living entity.
- Corollary: The apparent creative potency of the living entity is actually the power of the Supersoul responding to the petitions of the living entity.
- Corollary: Prayer, meditation, energy work, creative visualization, worship, mantras, devotional service, yoga, exercise, mental training and various other material and spiritual disciplines are simply different direct and indirect methods of petitioning the Supersoul for the manifestation of the living entity’s desires.
- Corollary: The living entity’s petition is more effective and easily granted when it is consonant with the purposes of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
- Corollary: When the living entity’s petition is against the purposes of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he becomes responsible for the karma of the manifestation and has to accept an unintended but equal reaction in the same mode (ignorance, passion or goodness); this is the cause of all suffering.
- Corollary: When the living entity’s petition is in harmony with the purposes of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, there is no karmic reaction.
- Corollary: The living entity can literally create miracles by dovetailing his will with the purposes of the Supreme Personality of Godhead; this is the actual basis of creative visualization and so-called mystic powers.
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