Tag: Advaita Vedanta
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Ramakrishna Cuts Through The Divine Mother
The Sword Of Discrimination Reaching the end of his rope, Ramakrishna said to Totapuri, his Vedantic teacher: “It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.” “What?” Totapuri replied. “You can’t do it? But you have to!” Searching about excitedly, he picked up shard of…
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Yogic New Thought: Problems & Directions
My wife Alexandra and I are currently writing a book entitled Yogic New Thought. New Thought is a largely American “metaphysical religion” that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and that continues, mainly in pop cultural form, today. To simplify to an extreme: the basic tenet of New Thought is a thought…
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Metaphysical Commitments In Raja Yoga & Advaita Vedanta
Which metaphysical commitments draw Raja Yoga (the path of willpower and concentration) together with Advaita Vedanta (the path of knowledge)? In Meditation and Its Practices: A Definitive Guide to Techniques and Traditions of Meditation in Yoga and Vedanta, Swami Adiswarananda tells us that there are four such principles–namely, the “divinity of the individual soul, [the]…
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Raja Yoga Prepares The Way For Advaita Vedanta
“The path of [Raja] Yoga,” states Swami Adiwarananda in his book Meditation and its Practices: A Definitive Guide to Techniques and Traditions of Meditation in Yoga and Vedanta (2003; 2012 ed.), “is suited to those in whom reason has not yet established its natural supremacy over the emotions and volitions” (p. 40). This is a…
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Positive Overcomes Negative
In Thought Power, Swami Sivananda lays out the “law of thought.” I’ll have more to say about this astonishing work in the future, but for today I’d like to briefly touch upon something that is undeniably yet also wondrously true: positive thought prevails over negative thought. This, if true, is an argument for God. For…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 