UNITING
WITH SOURCE,
THROUGH
FOUR FUNCTIONS OF THE MIND
Whatever our religious persuasion, whether we're spiritual
or not, consciousness opens in four primary ways: through 1) our reasoning, 2) our emotions, 3) our everyday will power, 4)
and our focused attention.
We use these four features
simultaneously, however, we attain our secular and spiritual
goals by emphasizing only one or two of these fundamental
features. As a consequence, it's usually at the expense of the others.
Some of us rely on our reasoning powers.
Some of us look to our emotions.
Some of us are inclined toward introspection and reflection.
And some of us are active by nature.
It follows that these quadrants of consciousness are found in all religions. However, most religions emphasize only one or two of these quadrants.
Some emphasize reason. Others emphasize devotion
or active service. And mixed throughout all traditions
are varities of meditational practices.
Vedic spirituality values all four,
leaving one free to draw from the metaphors and symbols
of any and every religion,
thus embellishing and empowering one's own enthusiasm.
The following is from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
"We must learn that truth may be expressed in
a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways
is true as far as it goes.
The same thing can be viewed from a hundred standpoints,
yet be the same thing. Take for instance the sun. Suppose
a man looks at the sun when it rises in the morning;
he sees a big ball. Suppose he starts on a journey towards
the sun and takes a camera with him, taking photographs
at every stage of his journey, until he reaches the
sun. The photographs will be seen to be different; in
fact, when he gets back, he brings so many photographs
of so many different suns, as it would appear; yet we
know that the same sun was photographed by the man at
the different stages of his progress."
"So with the Lord. Through high philosophy or
low, through the most exalted mythology or the grossest,
through the most refined ritualism or arrant fetishism,
every sect, every soul, every nation, every religion,
consciously or unconsciously, is struggling upward,
towards God; every vision of truth that a person has, is
a vision of Him and of none else."
