Next Thursday families and friends across our nation will gather together to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holyday. We will rightly give thanks for family and friends, for the plentitude of food to nourish us, for the wonderful homes in which we live and raise our children, and for countless other “earthly” blessings we are grateful to have received. But let us make sure we pause for a moment to give thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow. Quoting from Swami Premananda’s Seven Mystic Holydays, “God has given us this life to unfold and manifest his attributes and he has granted us immortality in order that we may realize our oneness with Him.” God is the material and substance of this earth, which has come into being that we may live and grow by his grace. Let us give thanks to God whose grace nourishes and guides all of life.  

We know that one of the sublime messages of the Bhagavad Gita reveals to us that we should dedicate our actions to God, the universal reality; that we should fix our mind on that reality; rise above all personal desires and egoism; make ourselves free from attachment and grief. Thus prepared, we should engage in life. Is this not the very ideal that we are to “live in the world but not of the world?”

We live in exciting times.  Externally we have come along way since the age when most of humanity believed that the earth was the center of the universe.  Self-driving cars, planetary exploration, intelligent robots, the internet, advances in biology and medicine are but a few of man’s many material achievements.  Internally, examples of highly advanced souls like a Gandhi, a Jesus, a Buddha, a Mohammed and many others hold the promise of our future evolution as a species. These supreme souls have demonstrated the higher spiritual laws that govern our evolution and have taken us to a new level of understanding regarding the universe and ourselves. 

The beautiful observance of Diwali is found in our sacred awakening to the Light of Soul within and around us. We light the lamps, not only earthen lamps of oil and wicks, but we light the lamps of our own hearts.

The service this Sunday will be a logical follow up of the service I gave on September 18th entitled “Moksha.” As stated previously one of the most fundamental desires of human beings is for freedom. Moksha is the ideal of absolute freedom and it is the birthright of all souls. We so earnestly desire freedom because in our true nature we are absolutely free. However, contrary to the dictates of popular culture, that freedom is not attained by giving free rein to the multitudinous desires of the senses which, paradoxically, lead us to sense enslavement and not to that true freedom we so desire. True freedom is only obtained by following the Divine Guidance of God afforded to us through the light of soul.

In the Autumn months of the earth we witness the majesty and glory of nature renouncing her garb and paring back for the winter months to come.  We are mesmerized by the beautiful pageantry of color displayed before our eyes.  The trees and forests share with us the message of life, wisdom and immortality.

The tree of life is a symbol that spans across religious scripture, mythological lore, and artistic impressions and represents to us the cosmic principle of life’s unfoldment.

This Sunday we have chosen for our meditation the subject, “Truth, Love and Non-violence.”  Our goal will be to awaken, inspire and affirm the spiritual evolution of our soul and that of humanity by the power of what Mahatma Gandhi referred to as “Satyagraha” (soul force). We will see that Satyagraha comports with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as well as the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita and that the law of love is the path to universal peace and understanding.

We look to all the messengers of God — the great masters, rishis, saints and prophets —  to guide us as disciples on the path of truth.

With inner illumination we begin to see what is required for true discipleship: self-dedication and spiritual discipline.

Through discipleship we learn that it is the love of truth and the truth of love that shape our consciousness, ideal and activity. 

One of the most fundamental desires of human beings is for freedom. This desire is inherent in human nature. We do not want to be confined or controlled by outside agencies in our physical life, in our mental life, in our emotional life, nor in our spiritual life. We rebel against such impositions with all our being. We cry out for freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and so forth. In fact much of human history can be understood in terms of the pursuit of these freedoms. In Hindu philosophy “Moksha” refers to liberation or emancipation. We may ask: liberation from what? Liberation into what? What freedom do we truly long for? Why do we long for it? What is the nature of that freedom? What are the true obstacles to the freedom we so desire? These questions will be the focal point of our service this Sunday.

This Sunday we have chosen for our meditation a critical step in our spiritual journey to God-realization, “The Awakening.”  The Awakening is that point in our spiritual quest where we are “awakened” to our true nature and spiritual life's mission and given the choice of following life’s present course of separation in consciousness from God (the finite ego) or entering into a higher state of oneness with God—Soul Consciousness.  The Awakening is our Soul’s spiritual tipping point, the transformative moment where our consciousness is elevated into a higher level of spiritual knowledge and experience regarding who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.  It is the crossroad of spiritual choice.  It is the moment we enter into a new and exciting stage of our inner and outer life.  It is the point in time when the spiritual law of unfoldment kicks in and manifests the power of our Soul, the power of divine life, divine love and divine wisdom.

All of philosophy seems to raise the question: "What is thy nature?” 
 
In our study of the universe, of ourselves and of God, we seek to know "What is thy nature?” But what does it mean to “know” the nature of the universe, of ourselves, of God? 
 
According to the Upanishads the enlightened life requires both Brahma-Vidya and Atma-Vidya; realization of God and realization of one’s own true self.

I am thinking of this, our final Sunday together before we disperse for July and August. As usual we will all have various plans — be they a dedicated project or study, travels, vacations and visits with family or friends or unique times alone. Whatever our days, they need always be lived consciously, contributing to our spiritual purpose and fulfillment.

We begin our meditation with gratitude to God for the life and example of our earthly Fathers.  Each of us has special memories of our relationship with our father that we treasure in our hearts, and on this special day, we extend our love and thankfulness for his life, idealism, example, love and gift of our life.

Day in and day out we strive to be high minded, deriving our thoughts, words and actions from the purest place. Is that place the mind? Or somewhere else? This Sunday we will take a look at our mental worlds, and the four constituent functions that create them: buddhi, manas, ahankara, and chitta. These functions, like the spokes of a wheel, drive the mental process — moving us along, and providing us the perspective to navigate, our spiritual paths. Let us join together in the Temple this Sunday to contemplate what it truly means to be High Minded.

This Sunday marks the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.  This sacred period of fasting and worship commemorates the first revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad. The consciousness of God’s holy light is revealed to the purified heart.  Knowledge of God is realized in the knowledge of one’s true self.

There are many beautiful ways to describe the process of Self-realization: spiritual path, spiritual journey, ascension, and so forth. As beautiful as these metaphors are, they can be somewhat misleading in that they seem to imply that the goal is somewhere else in time and space. Where are God and the perfection of soul to be found? In some distant time and place? Attunement is one of the most sublime descriptions of spiritual unfoldment, for it implies that the perfection of God and soul exist in the here and now and await our perception through attunement. The radio waves are everywhere but remain unheard unless the radio is tuned to the correct frequency. Likewise, God and his perfection abide here and now in every aspect of our lives. It is up to us to “attune” our heart, consciousness and life to that divine presence. 

This Sunday we have chosen for our meditation the subject “Science of the Soul.” We will explore such questions as: “Why cannot the science of religion be like any other science?”  “Why, if such a thing as the soul of man really exists, if it is immortal, can it not be known here and now and realized within one’s own consciousness?” 

Mother’s Day and the ideal of Divine Motherhood present us with the blessed meditation on the attributes of Godliness in self-manifestation.  It also represents the glorious ideal of discipleship. One example is found in the death of Jesus of Christ-Consciousness—when upon his death he said in the presence of his mother, Mary, and his disciple, “Woman, behold your son.” And to his devoted disciple, he said, “Behold, your Mother.” Her motherhood expanded beyond her own blood and kin… her love was elevated to spiritually encompass the souls of those on the path of God-realization. Sharing the purest love is the way of true discipleship and the life of a devotee of God. 

Sri Chaitannya was an ardent exponent of Bhakti Yoga, the philosophy of love and devotion. He wandered the village path awakening all with his songs of God. The pure heart of devotion sings joyfully through a life of attunement. Devotion is vital to sustain us on the spiritual path.

The artist must have the vision or ideal of the finished painting to guide his brush strokes else the finished work would be nothing but random and meaningless blotches on the canvas. The pianist must have the ideal of the harmony and beauty of the music to guide his fingers or the result would be random dissonant plunking, as a cat walking across the keyboard. Our ideal of life gives meaning and cohesion to the seeming disparate and unrelated“notes” of our lives. What ideal will give this life of ours its most perfect, harmonious and beautiful expression?