ONE WORLD - ONE FAMILY
We are many and yet we are One
The Satsang Association is a Companionship of Spiritual Seekers who are seriously committed to their Spiritual Path. They seek to discern and read the ‘signs of the times’ in a world that , at times, is confusing, misleading and is seemingly drifting towards an abyss of destruction.
Members undertake to commit themselves to this task and try to live out their Satsang Triple Commitment . ( see a brief outline below). This blog introduces our 'theme' for this year - One World- One Family. It opens with this quote from the Isa Upanishad, a 'pearl' from the Inherited and Perennial Wisdom of Humanity
' The one who sees all beings in her or his own Self,
and her or his own Self in all beings,
loses all fear.
When a wise one sees this Great Unity
and her or his own Self has become all beings.
What delusion and what sorrow
can ever be near her or him?'
Isa Upanishad
Satsang Companionship & the Triple Commitment
The ISA is a companionship between those who are open to the Truth in all traditions and who are seeking to know the Absolute Reality, the Mystery at the Heart of Creation, in short, the Source of all Life. They accept their need for guidance, challenge and support in the concrete living out of their ideals. Satsang Members commit themselves to :
* a personal growth in spiritual awareness and practice ( sadhana)
* helping to remove the barriers of prejudice
and ignorance which divide persons from each other.
* building up relationships of compassion and appreciation across frontiers of race, ethnicity, culture,language, economic class and religion.
And in so doing each member plays their part in an attempt to :-
‘Create a Planetary Vision
and a Universal Heart of Compassion’
This is known as The Triple Commitment
PLEASE NOTE :
The remainder of this Blog Post is designed to provide both a theme and an opportunity to take some time for Personal Reflection. It includes a few introductory reflections, a video clip ( almost 19 minutes) and further reflections.
Consequently, you may find it helpful to 'put aside' at least 60 minutes as a time for spiritual reflection.
Each year Members and Friends in the UK Midlands meet regularly in Satsang at the Friends Meeting House in Wolverhampton . Because both Angela and I had a long standing commitment and , in addition, were unable to obtain a booking at our normal venue for September 2015, this Blog is designed to provide an Introduction to our Theme and a time for personal Reflection.
This year 2015/16 our Theme will be :
ONE WORLD - ONE FAMILY
‘Our duty as men and women
is to proceed as
if
the limits to our ability did not exist.
We are collaborators in Creation’
Teilhard de Chardin ( Mystic & Scientist 1881 -1955 )
Introductory Reflection
Our human family has evolved as part of the
on-going unfolding of the Cosmos and Creation. Teilhard de Chardin reminds us
of our duty and responsibility to play our part in this process. We are co-creators with the Mystery.
In her teachings over the past 30 years, Sister Ishpriya has reminded us that we, in the International Satsang Association (ISA), along with many others, have been , and are aware of the growing and impending crisis facing our world and humanity.
Many experts, in a wide diversity of disciplines, agree that this crisis is so
profound and immediate , that it could mean the end of the Human Era on this
our beautiful and wonderful Blue Planet.
Our Cosmos has been evolving for
almost 14 Billion years, our Solar System is almost 5 billion years and
humanity has become part of this steady evolution in the relatively recent past,
that is only in time measured in tens of hundreds of thousands years. During
this time, humanity has made several crucial choices on its path to the present
day. One such choice was the decision of our ancestors to move from the African
Rift Valley towards the Middle East and then to move East and West. This choice resulted in the rich
diversity of our human family. But , as the Hindu Vedas reminds us, we are all
inter-connected. This is beautifully expressed in these words from the Katha
Upanishad
There are not many but only one.
Who seeks variety and not the unity,
Wanders on from death to death.
We face a human crisis that is rooted in a Lack of Compassion
There is increasing evidence of humanity’s failure to understand our
inter-connectedness. We seem to find it difficult to see the inherent wisdom
and truth in discovering and recovering our sense of a common unity amongst
peoples. The consequences of this failure were so aptly outlined in the earlier
quote from the Katha Upanishad. They are also evident in the distress and violence that currently besets our human family. A crisis rooted in dualism, where we only see Either : Or.
We tend to divide , split and contrast as an automatic response to issues. Thus we see our political system as better ( not different) than another's. We see our religion, class, ethnic group, race etc as better than ( not different) than another. This failure and lack of wisdom and
discernment, dulls our sense of compassion. Thus we seemed doomed to ‘ wander
on from death to death’
There are many signs of this failure to see our
underlying unity and our seeming difficulty to act more consistently with
compassion. There is a disconnection
between our intellectual knowledge and understanding of crucial issues and our
heart of compassion. The result is a broken world - broken by war, disease, hunger and violence.
Our theme is particularly relevant given the current world situation and particularly the millions of refugees caused by the situation in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
We are one people - one family and intimately inter-connected with each other and the Source of all life.
To introduce our Theme and develop it still further the following their is a Video Clip from Sister Ishpriya.
However, before that their is a short Introductory Video, based on a Tagore Poem. This poem describes how Nature can be viewed as the 1st source of Revelation.
You may wish to use this as a way of preparing for the time of Reflection
 |
| Boddhi Tree |
SILENCE MY SOUL
Silence my soul,
these trees are prayers.
I asked the tree, “Tell me about God”;
then it blossomed.
Silence My Soul ( Tagore) A Focusing Video( Click Here)
Now its time for the Main video clip from Sister Ishpriya. This sets the scene for our Theme.
WE ARE ONE GLOBAL FAMILY
Click here to view Sister Ishpriya (video length 18 min)
TIME FOR SOME PERSONAL REFLECTION
A major problem or issue, particularly in our busy, modern times; is that we can so often fail to put aside sufficient time for moments of silence and quiet reflection. We tend to adopt and work out of a Reactive and not a Reflective Brain.
This failure is counter-productive as it is only from a depth within ourselves that we can learn to resist the 'instinctive fear' that Ishpriya talks about.
She also quoted the following lyrics of a song from the Musical 'South Pacific '. It indicates how our family and culture can carefully and unconsciously teach us PREJUDICE .
It's interesting to realise that this premiered in New York in 1949. This was before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and other Civil Rights struggles of the late 20th Century.
You've Got to be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
This is not too dissimilar to the sentiments of the following poem by Rabindranath Tagore a Hindu, Bengali Mystic of the early 20th Century
Note:- When reading this it can be helpful to 'personalise the sentiments of Tagore's poem by changing the last line ( as shown below)
WHERE THE MIND IS
WITHOUT FEAR
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awake
(Into that heaven of freedom, my Lord, let ME awake ! )
Rabindranath Tagore
It can be helpful to read both the poem and lyrics slowly and see what 'jumps out' for you. Then spend some time quietly reflecting on this and begin to challenge your own instinctive prejudices.
Instinctive prejudices exist for the vast majority of us. We inculcate these from our childhood. They are part of our unconscious ' Ego Self' . This 'False Self' needs to be slowly stripped away in order to reveal our true inherent identity.
Perhaps this month we could all begin to face some of our false, instinctive fears and begin to realise how these fears can trap us into a very small, selfish and mean-spirited world.
Perhaps we could all benefit by facing and challenging these fears and any tendency to erect barriers between ourselves and others.
Perhaps, as Ishpriya suggests, we could try to regain and retain a sense of connectedness with the cosmos, the Source of all life, ourselves and others
Then in truth we can move nearer towards to goal, outlined in the words of the Hindu Vedas , taken from the Isa Upanishad
The one who sees all beings in his or her own Self,
and his or her own Self in all
beings,
loses all fear.
Finally
We are all part on the Web of Creation, we are paradoxically not many but One.
We share far more than our small ( and so often petty) Ego differences.
We participate in the on-going evolution of consciousness and of creation.
You are very welcome to join us at our next Satsang
Meeting on Saturday 10th October , at the Friends
Meeting House in Wolverhampton
