Welcome to Session 6 of the Meditation and Yoga Philosophy course.
Go through all the practices as before, but this time sing along to the mantra while you’re listening to the kiirtan. It also helps to sing the mantra any time, to any tune you like — when you’re walking down the street, driving your car, cooking in the kitchen — wherever.
Now here’s a brief summary of the yogic philosophy of life, the universe and existence:
• The Cosmic Entity is everything. Everything exists within it, and nothing exists outside it.
• The main part of the Cosmic Entity is Cosmic Consciousness.
• Within that Consciousness is the Cosmic Mind (just as our own mind is within our own consciousness).
• The universe is a giant thought of the Cosmic Mind (one of the differences between It and our own minds is that the Cosmic Mind can think of everything at the same time).
• The universe is composed of 5 fundamental factors:
– space
– gas
– heat/light
– liquid
– solid
• Each factor is “created” by the thought-projection of the Cosmic Mind. So the Cosmic Mind is within every object, and the Cosmic Consciousness is also within every object because It is within the Cosmic Mind.
• The individual mind originally comes out of the solid factor (from a small part of the Cosmic Mind originally in that factor). That’s why we say in yoga: “The microcosm is a miniature of the Macrocosm.”
• The individual mind “develops” over many different births, in many different bodies. “Develop” means that the consciousness within it becomes gradually more and more apparent. For example, in undeveloped creatures, consciousness is hidden within them, and their sense of awareness is not very strong. They act mostly by instinct. As the mind develops, that sense of awareness increases as the consciousness within it becomes more expressed. Instinct gradually gives way to intellect. For example, a dog has a certain amount of intellect as well as instinct. Finally, at the human stage, our consciousness is much more expressed, so we have a clear awareness of our individual existence as well as of the universe in general. We mostly operate on intellect, and a certain amount of instinct too. But we also have intuition, which gives us a deeper conscience and the capacity for creative insight and discovery.
• Very developed human minds eventually becomes so aware of the universal existence that they lose awareness of their own individual existence. At that stage the mind merges back into the original state of Cosmic Consciousness, or full Cosmic awareness.
• Since the Cosmic Mind originally came from that Cosmic Consciousness, the whole process is a cycle: from Cosmic Consciousness, to Cosmic Mind, to matter, to individual mind (undeveloped, developed, human), to Cosmic Consciousness again.
• Note that this cycle doesn’t happen all at once for all minds. It’s a continual process with different parts of existence all at different stages. That explains why there are so many different creatures with so many different minds. It also explains why scientists have discovered new stars within old galaxies – new matter is formed from the Cosmic Mind while old matter gets gradually transformed into individual minds.
• The characteristic of the Cosmic Entity is infinity — it is the only infinite entity. In fact, not only infinity, but infinite happiness, perfect peace — bliss. That’s why we want infinite happiness, because we’re naturally attracted by the Cosmic bliss.
