Winning Over Your Mind

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

Life expresses itself through the body and the mind. Yet there is something more—an invisible principle which is the ultimate source of the body’s energy and the mind’s awareness. Itself motionless, it seems to play no part in human affairs. It is therefore ignored, either unconsciously through ignorance of its presence, or consciously through disbelief…

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The Non-Duality of Shri Shankara

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

Further extracts from H P Shastri’s essay on the Outline of the Advaita of Shri Shankara Moral virtues Let us consider the position of moral virtues in the non-dual teachings. In our practice, the inner life is considered more important than the outer life. Ethical living according to dharma makes the higher experience easier. A…

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Meditation – More than a Science or Art

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

For practical purposes, meditation may be regarded as both an art and a science. Like science, meditation is an expression of our desire for knowledge. In the case of science, our faculty of understanding is directed outwards, to the world. With meditation, our enquiry turns inwards, in order to discover a sure path to ultimate…

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The Taittiriya Upanishad

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

Joy and fear have their play in every human life, and our natural tendency is to seek and increase that which makes us happy, and free ourselves from that which causes fear. The Taittiriya Upanishad is like a manual of the means to banish fear and secure the joy of lasting fulfilment. Its three sections…

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Standard of Morality

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

A spiritual person must be moral; it is both normal and natural. What conduct, then, is moral and what immoral? Or what constitutes morality and what immorality? Thousands of pages have been written on this difficult question, yet no two scholars specializing in ethics and philosophy agree. Love and reverence for Truth seem to me…

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The Way to Lasting Fulfilment

Cover of Self-Knowledge Journal Spring Issue

How do we get the best out of life? Is lasting fulfilment possible in this uncertain world, where the only certainty is our limited life span and our eventual separation from all we know and love? The good news is that from time immemorial there have been teachings that show us how to transcend life’s…

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