Month: August 2022
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What Is The Difference Between The Soul And Consciousness?
Question: What is the difference between the soul and consciousness? Answer: 1. Non-difference There is a non-difference between the soul and Consciousness (which is usually capitalized). Synthesizing The Upanishads, The Brahma Sutra states, “And the effulgent Self [= Consciousness] appears to be different [from the soul] during activity, as is the case with light etc.;…
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How Everything ‘Gets Transformed’ Into Pure Consciousness
Out of compassion, Atmananda sometimes tells the earnest reader or disciple that every experience “gets transformed” so that it can be witnessed by Consciousness. Take the following representative example: “[T]he I-principle [one of his favorite terms for the Ultimate] is said to be the witness of thoughts. The ‘I’ cannot come down to the mind’s…
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How Can Atma Choose Who Gets Realized?
The Katha Upanishad states, “Only he realizes whom Atma chooses.” But how can Atma, which has no personal qualities, choose anything or anyone at all? Let’s listen to Atmananda: It is ordinarily said that a thing attracts one. It is not on account of anything done by that particular thing that it is said to…
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The Direct Method Of Atmananda Explained
Atmananda from Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda. What follows, beneath the first “*,” is the entire text from note 71. What follows after the second “*” is my brief commentary. * 71. The Direct Method Explained 1. By examination of the subjective element in man, from the body backwards to the I-principle, it…
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‘Consciousness Cannot Perceive Anything But Consciousness’
Atmananda was a teaching master of the Vedanta. Here is one stunning pointer he gives us in passing: “When you know any object, you stand as Consciousness; and the object also cannot help appearing as Consciousness, since Consciousness cannot perceive anything but Consciousness” (Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda, ed. Nitya Tripta, no. 34,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 