Sharanagathi

Arhatic Yoga practitioners would be quite familiar with this term. Sharanagathi is often translated as "surrender" but according to Master Choa Kok Sui in his book Inner Teachings of Hinduism Revealed, it would be more accurate to say that it means "inner conductivity." It means reducing one's inner resistance to the spiritual blessings given by the Teacher, so that like a copper wire that is extremely conductive to electricity, massive amounts of spiritual energy can flow unimpeded through the aspirant. Master Choa even goes so far to say that if one has a high degree of sharanagathi, one does not need to do as much sadhana (spiritual exercises and practices) because with the amount of spiritual energy that one would be receiving it would be as if one had already done sadhana.

Since there are always many facets and levels that can be extracted from esoteric concepts, I would like to explore a complementary way of looking at sharanagathi, and to do this we need to first refer to Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics. In the Step VII exercises of Initiation Into Hermetics, Bardon describes the methods by which elementaries may be created.

Before we go further, a clarification of terminologies may be in order. In Bardon's system, he talks about elementals, larvae, phantoms, phantasms and elementaries. At the risk of oversimplifying, elementals are thought forms deliberately created by the magician for specific tasks. Larvae are the unintentional thought forms produced by people; for example, if one suddenly saw a cute puppy on the street, a larvae of affection can be produced, leading to a feeling of happiness. Phantoms are usually fears, phobias or intense desires of people that have been given so much energy by repeated thoughts that they take a life of their own. According to Bardon, the legend of succubi and incubi who feed on the sexual desires of their victims (and entice their victims to produce more sexual thoughts) are examples of these phantoms. Phantasms are the etheric forms of deceased people that have been animated by various invisible beings.

Elementaries are also deliberate creations of magicians, but they differ from elementals in that elementaries are loaded with specific elements (fire, air, water and earth) and their creation follows a strict set of procedures. Elementals only work on the mental plane. On the other hand, because elementaries are loaded with the elements, they have an astral body and can therefore also work in the astral and material planes.

One method of creating an elementary involves forming a wax figure (the form that the elementary will inhabit during its lifetime), loading this form with the elements of earth, water, air and fire thus creating the astral body, then weaving its mental body, and finally giving life to the elementary by the act of accumulating the universal light and breathing it upon the wax form. There are other details, such as giving the elementary a name by which one is able to command it, and setting a definite death time (down to the date, the hour and the minute) upon creation of the elementary.

Dissolution of the elementary also has a set procedure: stabbing the "heart" of the wax figure using akasha, resulting in the death of the elementary, followed by dissolving the mental body, then dissolving the astral body (by scattering the elements back to the universe) and then finally burning or burying the wax figure. The dissolution process is so detailed because the elementary was given life through one's own energy, thus it is essentially a part of one's Self. The sudden rebound of energies caused by sudden destruction could cause severe injuries to the magician.

Do the above procedures sound familiar? They should, because they are similar to the process by which the Higher Self pours out a portion of itself to produce the incarnated soul, and the incarnated soul uses the mental, astral and physical bodies to interact with the material plane. The act of dissolution is also similar to how the Higher Self withdraws the life energy from the physical body at the time of death. I highly recommend Master Choa Kok Sui's book Achieving Oneness with the Higher Soul because the process of incarnation and death is explained in that book in more detail and in an easy-to-understand manner.

What does all of this have to do with sharanagathi? One thing about elementaries is that they have a mind of their own (literally, because they have a mental body). Because of this, they are imbued with a certain amount of willpower and the longer they exist, the stronger their instinct for survival becomes. This is why it is very important for the magician to set a definite death date and to follow through on it even if the elementary has been quite faithful and effective in its tasks.

Some elementaries, according to Bardon, may even plead for their lives but the magician must remain resolute, otherwise the magician risks the elementary becoming so strong-willed that it can escape the magician's control and refuse to follow orders. Any mischief caused by such wayward elementaries will result in negative karmic consequences for the magician. There are procedures that can deal with these out of control elementaries, but it only emphasizes the need for the magician to maintain full control at all times.

Relating the case of the elementaries with our own lives, how many people can be considered "lost souls" because they refuse to follow the urgings of their Higher Souls? Are we ourselves any more sensitive and receptive to what our Higher Souls want us to do? Do we even bother to ask for guidance from our Higher Soul?

For me, this is where sharanagathi comes in. It is truly humbling when we realize our true nature, that we are really an outpouring of our Higher Self, incarnated in order to accomplish something on this physical plane. Against such a truth all our pretensions and puffed up feelings about ourselves and our importance pale in comparison. In the end, we are destined to go back and re-unite with Source at the close of our physical life, a date that has been set even at the moment of our incarnation.

The question is, can we "surrender" to the will of our Higher Soul? Is there a joyful reunion with our Higher Soul during meditation (or during death)? Or are we like a wayward elementary, requiring more desperate procedures from our "Divine Magician" to get us back on track to our purpose in life? It's a question that we will need to answer sooner or later.

In the end one always stands alone in the face of one's Self. How we develop this relationship is entirely up to us, but for sure our presence in this life is not the product of whim or chance, considering the effort and risk that the Higher Soul takes in extending a portion of itself. Considering all this, to have sharanagathi is to be grateful. To have sharanagathi is to be humble. To have sharanagathi is to surrender to the will of the Higher Soul. To have sharanagathi is to be internally conductive to the Higher Soul's directions. Sharanagathi is all this and more. Anything less risks going down the path of the "wayward elementary."

During meditation, I always call to mind this process of elementary creation in order to get myself in the proper frame of mind when communing with my Higher Self. It reminds me of my part within the whole, and this is what the essence of sharanagathi means for me.

Not my will, but Thy will be done.

Forbidden Archeology

Sometimes, when just randomly surfing through the Internet or just searching for something totally unrelated, one can stumble upon some gems of knowledge. One such gem I happened upon is the following video:



Don't let the fact that it's presented by UFO TV deter you. The video is well made, and there was even space for a little humor at one point. The title of the presentation is Forbidden Archeology - Secret Discoveries of Early Man. The first half of the video discusses research from the book Forbidden Archeology - The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. The second half of the video is more speculative, in my opinion, but I was happy enough that a video about the book even exists.

I actually have the book, but watching a video is way easier than plowing through close to 1,000 pages filled mostly with scientific jargon and other terms that I had not seen used in such frequency since college. Yes, I'm saying that it has the readability of a college textbook so you can understand why I prefer to watch the video.

As a bonus, for those who are fans of History Channel's Ancient Aliens, you'll see a lot of the same resource personalities being interviewed towards the second half of the video. It was really interesting watching younger versions of these same guys.

Anyway, the book (and video) is titled "Forbidden Archeology" because it showcases different archeological anomalies that were dismissed simply because they did not fit the "generally accepted" models and theories of the scientific community. One example, featured in the video, is the case of etched metal spheres found by South African miners in rock strata that are 2.8 billion years old.

The uniformity of the spheres and the parallel grooves etched into their sides clearly identify them as something other than naturally formed, but since modern man is only supposed to have appeared 150,000 years ago, the presence of the spheres threatens that particular model of human history hence the scientific community has chosen to sweep that case under the rug, so to speak. One other detail not included in the video but mentioned in the book is that the spheres are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel.

One other example not in the video but mentioned in the book is the unmistakable impression of a partial shoe print in Triassic rock (which means it is dated between 213-248 million years ago). There is a picture along with the description and it really does look like a shoe print. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Apparently, most scientists find it too boggling, so their response is to pretend that the evidence does not exist.

The above examples remind me of what T. Lobsang Rampa consistently mentioned in several of his books. He says that we are not the first civilization to inhabit the Earth. There were many more advanced civilizations that existed millions, even billions, of years ago in forms that were compatible with the atmosphere of the Earth during the times those advanced civilizations existed. However, there is always an end to every particular cycle and periodic Earth upheavals would wipe these civilizations away until barely a trace was left. All this in order to prepare the ground for the next wave of civilizations that would appear (this is also similar to what other spiritual teachings are saying, such as Blavatsky's mention of the different root races). Lobsang Rampa compared it to a gardener plowing the field to mix the soil, so that some things that were previously on the top would get buried deep in the ground. For all that, it seems tantalizing hints of these very ancient civilizations are still being discovered, but automatically dismissed, by the modern scientific community.

At first glance, such dismissive attitudes among majority of the scientific community may be inconceivable. Aren't we in the age of reason, when the scientific method is supposed to predominate over superstitious belief and erroneous conclusions? But upon closer inspection, we see that scientists are not immune to human attitudes that influence any other occupation: peer pressure, professional reputation, fear for the future of one's career, politics and sometimes just plain greed and jealousy.

Scientists may not (always) display the emotional fanaticism that led the Catholic Church to excommunicate Galileo when he suggested that it's the Earth that revolves around the sun, but one can still sense the same mindset of inflexible belief that was incapable of accepting anything that contradicted the generally accepted status quo. No one likes to rock the boat, especially if that boat is the one that's keeping you employed. To them there is only one right path, and to stray from the path is to step into a minefield.

When too much is at stake, that is a sign that one is heavily invested in something (financially, emotionally or mentally). And so we again see the importance of detachment. Being too invested in something interferes with correct interpretation and right action. Yet I can understand how difficult it can be for the ego to accept that one's belief was wrong, especially if it's going to be publicly known. And so we have cases of people defending untenable intellectual positions instead of admitting they were wrong (I'm sure you can point out examples of this based on your own observations of public figures).

So the lesson we can extract from the above is this: the scientific method only works when one has humility and detachment. It doesn't get simpler than that. It's just another example that shows that scientific objectivity cannot be divorced from spirituality.

The Pendulum Always Swings

Wow, what a busy time the holidays are. In between all the family gatherings and reunions as well as the dine outs and late night gimmicks with balikbayan friends and relatives, there's hardly any chance to follow one's normal daily routine. That's why the Christmas holidays are the most enjoyable yet stressful times of the year. For most people even the diet goes on vacation, so much so that getting rid of that bulging waistline often becomes one of the top resolutions of the new year.

The fact that I'm writing this of course means that the "end of the world as we know it" didn't happen last December 21, 2012. I went through that day as I pretty much did any normal day. My wife and I even went out with a few friends that night. My philosophy is that if it's your time, you're going to go no matter where you are, so might as well try to make the most of the time you have right now. This is pretty much what I said in one of my previous articles that touched upon the December 21 date.

Not that the end of 2012 was entirely quiet. We had some natural disasters like typhoon Pablo and then Quinta that slammed through both the Visayas and Mindanao, and then we had man made disasters in the form of mass shootings both in the U.S. and here in the Philippines, as well as that brutal gang rape in India. For the people affected by these tragedies, the world seemingly comes to an end for them. Nothing underscores the reality of sudden change like disasters and tragedies can.

The saying goes that you never truly appreciate what you have until you lose it. Being a victim of typhoon Ondoy, I feel for those who have suffered similarly and suffered some form of loss. I experienced, first hand, how one's life can literally change overnight. Everything that was familiar for most of one's life at this point, turned upside down and never to be the same again. The experience always reminds me to appreciate even the little things and blessings that surround me, because I know that any situation can change in an instant. "Situation normal" is no excuse to slack off.

Just as good things can be temporary, so can bad things. And that's the beauty of life, because everything is subject to change. Esoterically, this is called the Law of Cycles. The recent end of the great Mayan cycle may not have produced the change that a lot of people expected, but change is not always tied to one big event. Life calls to us every day and every moment, and life is simply the experience of change in action. And if those signals just fly over our heads we miss out on some of the best things that life has to offer. The samurai of feudal Japan were not only warriors but also poets and artists. They savored every moment because they knew they could die in combat anytime. The life of a samurai was extreme, but their attitude towards life is something worth emulating.

Speaking of cycles coming to an end, yesterday was the Feast of Three Kings that officially ended the Christmas season. We've started taking down our Christmas decorations and soon enough, no physical trace of Christmas will remain. But hopefully, the same spirit that made us shower love and generosity to our fellows won't disappear along with those decorations.

So while everything is subject to change, there are some things that are definitely worth keeping. In a nutshell, that's the overall message of 2012.