Ba

English: Detail of the frieze of the wells in the tomb of Pharaoh Horemheb, showing the gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the ancient Egyptian religion of the New Kingdom the ba represents, generally speaking, the individual characteristics of a person, roughly analogous to the personality.

The ba was often understood in terms of the effect it had on others, not entirely unlike the New Age idea of the ‘past life review’ (where the recently departed soul allegedly sees how its good and bad actions in life impacted others).

In the vision of the afterlife described in the Pyramid Texts, the ba is said to return to the mummified body at night, essentially going to Osiris (as the god of the dead). Then it returns to the land of the living during the daytime, free to roam as a spiritual presence.¹

S. G. F. Brandon says that the ba originally connoted spiritual power.²

Depictions of the ba might be present in Old Kingdom funerary statues, although scholars debate this point. More commonly the ba is said to be represented in the New Kingdom as a bird with a human head.³

Related Posts » Ka

—

¹ Donald B. Redford ed., The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, 2003.

² S. G. F. Brandon ed., A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, New York: Scribner, 1970.

³ Redford, 2003.

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Sri Chinmoy

Princess Diana meeting with Sri Chinmoy, Kensington Palace, May 21st 1997 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007) was an Indian guru from W. Bengal. He was popular in the West and based in NYC until his death.

Credible in the eyes of some, listed as a cult leader by the French National Assembly Commission for Cult Investigation, Chinmoy ran a restaurant chain where devotees clothed themselves in traditional Indian attire.

Chinmoy used to write books about reincarnation and the meaning of life, as well as compose meditation music and lift weights. Not too long before his death he declared that his devotees were not allowed to marry nor have children.

To this kedarvideo adds:

That his disciples should remain single was part of his philosophy during all his teachings and not only before his passing. And this is common among all serious spiritual and religious paths and is also being practiced by most of the world’s monks and nuns. To read more on Sri Chinmoy’s life you can also check his website http://www.srichinmoy.org. » See in context

Kedarvideo’s claim is debatable. Just because someone is single does not necessarily make them “serious” (i.e. deep and close to God). And to ban marriage seems to imply that married people cannot be deep or close to God. In the eyes of most major religions this stance is both impractical and discriminatory.

When interested in Sri Chinmoy after studying in India, I attended a meeting for possible recruits. At that meeting a person who was related to a disciple called out that the disciple in question was ignoring his/her spouse and family at the expense of driving long hours to be with other Chinmoy disciples in NYC. This was my first exposure to the kind of tensions that can arise when a person embraces a new religious path that family members are not sympathetic to.

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Channeling

Séance conducted by John Beattie, Bristol, England, 1872 from the Eugène Rochas Papers held at the American Philosophical Society Library. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Channeling is a new, perhaps more marketable, name for the old esoteric idea of mediumship.

A channeler allegedly permits a purely spiritual being to speak or write through his or her living, embodied person. Channeled beings may be people who’ve passed or entities in heaven, astral realms and other universes and dimensions.

Information derived from channeling is often quite general, repetitive and, some critics say, sugar-coated. Much of it can be summed up as follows:

Earthly life is a cosmic schoolroom in which we must learn to better love one another. Humanity is evolving into a new type of higher species or awareness. Already existing higher beings are helping us to achieve that higher level of being or awareness.

The alleged cosmic helpers may have Biblical or ancient Egyptian-sounding names (e.g. Seth, Lazarus, Ramtha). The channelers themselves usually present lectures and workshops (usually for a donation or fee) and author books, CDs and DVDs in which transcripts of the channeled entity’s words are made available to the public.

In some instances the channeler seems to become self-aggrandized, believing they’re called for a great, Divine Mission. Sober questioning, however, usually places a question mark around such claims.

From the perspective of parapsychology, one possibility, which might not go over too well in some New Age circles, is that lying and manipulative transcendent beings could see into a channeler’s psyche and play on his or her psychological complexes, weaknesses and desires—all to stroke up the channeler’s ego so they believe they’re divine emissaries.

Spiritualist St and Mediumship Way in Cassadaga, Florida by WIlly Volk via Flickr

It’s also possible that some channelers are channeling nothing more than their own fertile imaginations. This is not to say that channeling is necessarily a deliberate or unconscious sham. To place a question mark around the issue simply means we can’t be sure, one way or the other.

Whatever its veracity, the idea of channeling has become so widespread that we often see it used lightly on the TV news and in the entertainment industry. Wikipedia gives a great outline as to how pervasive this idea has become: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Channelling

To this joyfulseeker adds:

I would say that rather than being a replacement for the term mediumship, channeling is acutally a broader term under which mediumship and other forms of spirit communication fall. For instance— automatic writing, Ouija, pendulum, clairaudience, clairsentience, etc.

I also agree that there are manipulative and deceptive beings that use these means of communication to connect with and manipulate people. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean that you all of a sudden become kind and ethical. Channeling, like any form of communication requires care in both how you communicate and with whom. Its not unlike the internet. There are a lot of wonderful people on the net with much to offer you simply have to use discernment in revealing too much of yourself and how much you trust the other person. » See in context

Robert G. Black says:

Quite a lot of good comments about channeling. It’s a big Universe out there, and there’s hardly any doubt that our physical eyes can’t see it all. We can’t even see half of the things today that we take so for granted. » See in context

And Michelle writes:

I believe when we step into the spiritual realm through prayer or meditation, we can be influenced by good or evil. I think that is why we need to be careful who we are trying to contact – and possibly why the Old Testament gives clear warning to stay away from speaking to the dead. » See in context

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Celibacy

Several religious traditions regard celibacy as a requirement for advanced spiritual progress and healthy premarital relationships. And married seekers primarily concerned with God realization are often counseled to practice celibacy or, depending on their psychological makeup and related calling, sexual moderation.

In contrast to Sigmund Freud‘s theories about so-called normal psychosexual development¹ and C. G. Jung‘s advocacy of a mind/body holism, some celibates claim that unspent sexual energy is transmuted to higher forms of psycho-spiritual awareness.

Aspects of popular culture and many ordinary people tend to characterize celibacy as something odd or deviant but the devout monastic, saint or guru and many non-denominational spiritual persons say it’s essential not only for personal development but also for the universal work of spiritual ‘liberation’ or, depending one one’s path, ‘salvation.’

This spiritual work is said to be just that—work. But it’s not the kind of immediately visible work that everyone can easily understand. Rather, it’s arguably more subtle and inwardly demanding. The work of salvation is said to involve meditation, contemplation and intercession. These practices apparently facilitate others’ ability to recognize and respond to God as an active force of love in their lives.

In Catholic and Hindu mysticism, the transpersonal connecting principles are, respectively, the ‘taking of sin’ and ‘karma transfer.’

Celibacy combined with higher forms of contemplation is said to elevate all concerned individuals, but this is probably a best-case scenario. In actual practice it seems that some individuals react in a hostile manner toward deeply spiritual persons, this being a possible explanation for the well-known phenomena of religious persecution, scapegoating and martyrdom.

And while some contemplative celibates may seem like socially inept or repressed “losers” to those predominantly concerned with worldly rewards, the celibates themselves often say they are regularly in touch with helpful spiritual powers (e.g. The Holy Spirit, The Goddess), intermediaries (e.g. angels, deceased relatives and saints) and other saintly living people—i.e. those whose inner relationship with God invisibly reaches out to others.

For a discussion on the notion of healthy vs. unhealthy types of celibacy, see ”Celibacy, Sex and Spirituality.”

—

¹ From the entry “Cathexis” at earthpages.ca:

Freud never considers the possibility that pent up libidinal energy could be redirected to the spiritual life. On this score, many saints and mystics attest to the importance of celibacy. Without it, they say, their spiritual work (e.g. intercession) just can’t get done. Many go even further, describing chastity not as a kind of unavoidable necessity but as a great gift and virtue. This positive attitude lead St. Frances de Sales to say

Chastity is the lily among virtues and makes men almost equal to angels.

Sadly, many people still on a materialistic level of consciousness find this difficult to understand. As a result, some predominantly spiritual people may suffer ridicule and persecution, even by their apparently religious peers. Even more sad, it seems that some potential spiritual sensitives are, themselves, duped by the status quo viewpoint. So instead of flowering into sainthood, they may end up in psychiatric wards.

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Carlos Castanada

Las enseñanzas de Don Juan: arugatse / Geronimo De Francesco via Flickr

Carlos Castanada (1925-1998) was a Peruvian born anthropologist and author who immigrated to California hoping to attain an academic career.

For his master thesis, he published the book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968).

The book was promoted as an anthropological account of Castanada’s encounter with a wise, benevolent Yaqui sorcerer in Mexico. It sold very well and Castanada continued with a series of best-sellers, all making the same claim of authenticity.

Critics of Castanada’s work point out that he took no real field notes and is elusive about his past, suggesting that his books are cleverly crafted fiction.

Whether they be fictional, embellished facts, or factual, these widely acclaimed stories outline a belief in interactive fields of reality. In the broadest sense these fields could be differentiated as ordinary and non-ordinary worlds, or as Mircea Eliade put it, mundane and supramundane realities.

But Don Juan’s teachings involve more than a simple “this or that” cosmology. Schematically, his vision is not unlike the mathematical fractal. The sorcerer is said to control interactive fields of power. Accordingly, he or she may exert influence from one power region to another to bring about an ethically good outcome.

Yaqui indians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An apparent physical illness, for instance, could be healed by inwardly perceiving spiritual disturbances or fields that are interacting with a patient’s bodily organs. Don Juan claimed that, by focusing awareness and exerting the will, the sorcerer can correct a seemingly isolated physical disturbance.

This is now called distance healing. And in Don Juan’s story, distance healing could be a single or complex, multi-layered event.

This approach might seem fanciful to some, but semiotics wedded to subatomic physics seems to point in a similar direction. Leading physicists and modern science writers say that matter and energy are two humanly constructed concepts. As such, the ideas of matter and energy apparently represent two forms of one underlying essence.

Interestingly, Castanada criticized the beatnik, drug guru Timothy Leary for suggesting that psychotropic drugs, alone, could cure. For Castanada, ingesting drugs was only an initial step in a complicated inner journey requiring a great deal of prolonged training and personal discipline.

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Jin

Timeline of various splits in Jainism via Wikipedia

In Jainism the jin is the liberated soul, living in what is believed to be the highest aspect of reality. With absolutely no attachment to lower levels of existence, including this world of becoming, it does not intercede nor intervene in respond to prayer requests.

This extreme detachment differentiates Jainism from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity in that these systems, each in their own unique way,  teach that purer or more enlightened beings mediate graces to less pure, lost or deluded ones.

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Meno

An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting Socrates (Soqrāt) in discussion with his pupils...via Wikipedia

The Meno is Plato‘s celebrated dialogue in which his theory of knowledge as “recollection” is forwarded.

Plato believed in reincarnation and the idea that individuals possess an all-knowing, immortal soul. According to Plato, the trauma of being born causes amnesia and we forget all that we knew prior to a given birth.

Plato says learning is “remembering” things we already know about, at the level of the soul if not at the level of immediate consciousness.

In the Meno, Socrates is a literary figure who represents Plato’s perspective. Plato’s Socrates does not necessarily say what Socrates, himself, would have said.

Plato’s Socrates asks a slave boy a series of geometrical questions without telling him the final answer. Because the slave boy eventually gets the correct answer without Socrates giving it away, Socrates concludes that the slave boy must have already known the answer in his own soul.

Some philosophical commentators object that Socrates essentially lead the slave boy down the proverbial garden path, prodding the boy toward the desired answer with leading questions.

Would the slave boy have found the correct answer without Socrates (a) knowing what it was and (b) leading him towards it? If we answer “no” to (a) and (b), then knowledge arguably cannot be mere recollection because it depends on someone else, who already knows, to lead another person toward that knowledge.

This leads to a kind of chicken and egg problem. How could the very first person to exist, assuming there was a single first being, attain knowledge without a guide?

Others say that Socrates didn’t have knowledge of the answer, but simply a correct belief because he begins the dialogue by saying that the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t know anything for certain. But to this one could reply that Socrates (i.e. Plato) still had a definite philosophical bias at the outset of the dialogue.

Related to these issues, Plato makes the useful distinction between:

• Having a belief that happens to be true

versus

• Definitely knowing that one has gained the truth

Another objection to the Meno‘s theory of knowledge is that knowledge of geometry differs from other types of knowledge, such as knowledge of ethics. Can we generalize a specific example from geometry to claim that all forms of knowledge are instances of recollection?

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Soul

All Souls Night in Gdansk: Robin Hamman

Soul

The idea of the soul has innumerable meanings around the world and throughout history.

A distinction is often made between an individual soul and a world soul. Some regard the soul as a multiple entity, as in ancient Egyptian religion or the contemporary views of the trance channeler Jane Roberts/Seth.

Others insist the soul is single.

Some say the soul is the conceptual “I” that apparently remains constant throughout life.

Plato viewed the soul as single but containing multiple functions.

Aristotle saw the soul as a partly rational and partly irrational function governing bodily needs, desires and actions that disappears at death. Soul is also envisioned as a spiritual, self-motivating and eternal agent or substance.

St. Thomas Aquinas insists it is united to the body but not of the body. For Aquinas it “operates through corporeal organs” with its “proper function” being “in the understanding.”

In much of Hinduism the soul reincarnates, ultimately to merge with God, as a drop of water returns to the ocean from whence it came. In this sense, individuality is temporary at best. Ramanuja‘s Visistadvaita school of Hinduism is an important exception to this idea. For Ramanuja individual souls (jivas) emerge from and ultimately rest within God (Brahman), retaining  some aspect of their individuality, existence and, therefore, reality.

The anatman doctrine of Buddhism contends that the idea of a soul is just a conceptual illusion and, in reality, does not exist.

Catholics believe that the soul is created by God at the moment of human conception, a view that has sparked intense debate among pro-life and pro-choice groups. Concerning death and the afterlife, Catholic believers say the soul rises to heaven or is purified in purgatory in preparation for heaven or descends to eternal hell.

In music “soul” refers to a form of music originating in America that blends gospel music with rhythm and blues. Although soul music was created by black Americans, its contemporary offshoots are composed and performed by anyone, anywhere.

» Afterlife, Anatman , Arjuna, Atman, Augustine (St.), Ba, Bhagavad-Gita, Brahman, Carvaka, Dhammapada, Evil, Faith and Action, Fasting, Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand), Heaven, Hell, Hermes, Intercession, Jainism, James (William), Jin, Jiva, John of the Cross (St.), Ka, Kabbala, Karma, Karma Transfer, Kowalska (St. Maria Faustina Helena), Leibniz (Gottfried, Wilhelm), Magic, Mantra, Meno, Michael (St.), Moksha, Mortal Sin, Origen, Orphism, Plato, Platonism, Pollution, Postmodernism, Proclus, Psyche, Purgatory, Pythagoras, Radha, Ramakrishna (Sri),Reincarnation, Religion, Republic, Sacks (Oliver), Saint, Samkhya, Samsara, Shaman, Song, Soul Loss, Spirit, Tramp Souls, Transmigration, Venial Sin, Visistadvaita, Voodoo, Winnowing, Yoga, Zombie

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Soul Loss

Photo: Barney F

Soul Loss

In shamanic traditions, this is the notion that psychological or physical illness is caused by the loss or spiritual abduction of the soul from the physical body.

Through rituals, dancing or entry into a trance (sometimes induced by hallucinogenic drugs such as mushrooms or peyote), an experienced shaman allegedly undergoes a mystical voyage to return a lost, wandering or abducted soul to its body.

Reasons for leaving the body could be severe trauma, such as those associated with accidents or sexual abuse.

While the shamanic view of soul loss is an intriguing idea not too difficult to imagine in our age of digital graphics, video games and films like The Matrix, critics of Shamanism believe that shamans are lost in a world of fantasy or possibly astral, even demonic realms.

Along these lines, Sri Ramakrishna once said that all religious and spiritual paths lead to the same place and involve the same type of numinosity; but not everyone agrees with this view. For some, Ramakrishna’s claim is facile and throws his entire project and status as a ‘holy man’ into question.

» Illness, Laing (R. D.), Possession, Spiritual Attack

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Skandhas

Offerings at the Vulture Peak Buddhist Shrine, Grdhrakuta in Rajgir, where the Buddha inspired Avalokiteshvara to give the Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutram, the Heart Sutra, requested by Sariputra | Photo by Wonderlane

Skandhas

Buddhist belief posits five skandhas, or aggregates of attachment said to be the source of all suffering.

1. matter or form (rupa)
2. sensation (vedana)
3. perception (samjna)
4. mental formations (samskara)
5. consciousness (vijnana)

Taken together, the five skandhas form the impermanent personality and the illusion – so it is believed – of individuality.

Impermanent and subject to change, skandhas may discontinuously reappear from one life to another.

Whether or not one agrees with every aspect of Buddhist teaching, the skandas present a conceptual alternative that may be applied toward a contemporary critique of the Hindu view of reincarnation (See, for instance, Reincarnation: A New Look at an Old Idea – Part 3).

Although the two religions of Buddhism and Hinduism may seem similar at a glance, Buddhism clearly differs from the Visistadvaita school of Hinduism in that the soul, too, and not just its attachments, is usually seen as illusory in the ultimate sense.

» Buddhism, Corruption, Pollution

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