Article Selection from “Advice from a Swami” | Notes by H.P.B.
I offer you a most valuable advice at the express order of my very venerable Spiritual Guide—Sri Alakhanandji Swami—an advice to suggest you the way to “self-knowledge.” (1) His Holiness teaches that “man can never be wise and intelligent enough to understand all the mysterious laws of Nature, even, if he were to live myriads of years. So that it is better for him—after selecting some competent guru for spiritual guide—to begin at once with the “Ajpa jap.” Step by step, he might thus develop his powers by means of deep meditation or “Dhyan”; and then, he is sure to see his Atma1 after some reasonable period of time. When after that he engages himself in “Sahaj Samadhi” he will become prepared to understand thoroughly, easily and almost instantaneously any law of Nature there, where, the man of the greatest learning would otherwise fail.2
(2) Man being truine (having three principal encasements, viz. Asthool, Suksham and Karan), three kinds of worship are recommended to him, viz. Lingie (signifying the Brahamn Sharir Pujan) Mansic, and Samadhic;
When he gains the Toorya Avastha he is forced from all bonds of Karm, Jog, etc. etc.
(3) Hence it is evident (as it can always be proved) that man must necessarily begin with “Sargun Upashna” (one of hte five representatives of the Deity as shown in many portions of our religious Books) which in the end will open for him the way of, and show him, the Almighty, the Universal, the All-Knowing and the All-Glorious God.3
1. Spiritual Soul or Self, the Augoeides of the Greeks.—Ed. Theos. [H.P.B.]
2. See Editor’s Note below.—Ed. Theos. [H.P.B.] [Note: it is not clear what this note is referring to, as there was no Editor’s Note following this article.]
3. Who, whenever seen, will always prove to be man’s own deific principle, his own luminous Atman, at best, and not God or Iswar, who—as well proved by Kapila—if Impersonal and Infinite cannot be seen, and if Personal, hence finite, is not the “universal” spirit.—Ed. Theos. [H.P.B.]