Many Native American religious and spiritual practices are colored with Vedic hues. The Native Indian's spirituality is based on naturalistic religion. The fundamental tenants of his naturalistic religion seem to have arisin as a direct outcome of self-realization in the Vedantic meaning of self-realization -- a self-realization while still in the body. Born of yogic practices peculiarly American, he shares with the Vedantist and Tibetan spiritual values based on direct experience rather than mere belief. The Native American, like the Eastern mystic, is taught to be wary of dogma and conventional non-secular nostrums, but to rely on the "Self" whence all spiritual experience emanates. He experiences his spirituality in the solitude of the wilderness or on sacred high places where visions are inspired by holy songs. His naturalistic religion is a direct method of exploring the arcane realm of the unconscious wherein lies the storehouse of memories of this lifetime and of myriads of lifetimes. In this book, the spiritual life and experiences of America's indigenous people and some of those throughout the hemisphere will be explored in conjunction with the estimable words and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, the great prophet of modern Vedanta.

Walking In Beauty

Politics & Social Sciences

EPSTEIN, RICHARD F.

Philosophy

Temple Universal Publishing

The Mother of Songs

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

The reader is taken on a mystical odyssey whereby the ordinary human consciousness realizes the Divine. Based on the personal experiences of such acknowledged saints: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Jeanne Guyon and others from both East and West, the seeker is guided through the four stages of the Mystic Path. For most individuals in the beginning it is a minefield of the self, or as some would have it, "As sharp as a razor's edge."     The Buddha proclaimed that pain on this earth is as copious as rain. But by no means is our story fixated on pain; the spiritual joys and ecstasies experienced by our saints with a first-hand knowledge of them, provide an undeniable inspiration for most people with a spiritual interest. Both pleasure and pain are inextricably linked they tell us, and the object of spiritual practice is to realize our own Divinity by transcending them     As the modern sage, Ramakrishna, a major contributor to our story once remarked, "We need one thorn to remove the thorn in the finger and when the thorn is removed both can be thrown away."     Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna's renowned disciple and his messenger to the West, provides us with the highest non-dual Vedic philosophy to broaden the dualism of the Western mystics without invalidating their message, but empowering it, because his goal was to prove that all religions stem from a single root.     Succinctly, the Swami puts the human spiritual dilemma in a nutshell. "The soul or Self must gain through experience its godly nature of perfection. The Atman does not love; it is love itself, It doesn't exist, it is existence itself. By identifying itself with the mind and the world, it thinks itself miserable."

The Sandalwood Tree

Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts

Walking in Beauty

Lapr, Ron

Dry Bones Pr

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