The Facts of (Spiritual) Life
Serious spiritual life really begins with viveka and vairagya [discrimination between the essential and the nonessential and detachment from the nonessential].  Dancing, singing, and socializing in religious circles are, at best, mere beginnings.

What is the difference between taking up morality and committing to dharma?  Dharma requires one to learn precepts and take final vows based on the search for Truth. The difference is like that between following a commandment and taking up a practice. The latter has that distinguishing quality of actually proving the validity of all commandments. Thus, is the difference between mere belief and the rock of faith.

The New Age saying has it: "You are not a physical being having spiritual experiences, but a spiritual being having physical experiences."  But no, be like Sri Ramakrishna – a spiritual being having spiritual experiences.  Why should anyone coming to earth in a human body have to remain content with the physical only?

One cannot create something out of nothing; it has to be created from something that previously existed.  This is how we know that beginnings, middles, and endings are ultimately illusory.  Vedanta's two primary principles are ajati and aparinama [nonorigination and nontransformation].  If anything that one is considering for Reality does not pass these two tests, then it is unreal.

One should not seek direct spiritual experience until one consults and imbibes the essence of the revealed scriptures through the words of the illumined soul.  It is true that direct spiritual experience is the essence, like wine in a bottle.  But without the bottle (guru), how will one bring it to one's lips?  And how will one know that it is wine and not poison without the label (scriptures)?

Knowledge gives us concentration.  Concentration gives us bliss.  Bliss leads to realization of the Supreme Bliss.

Prasad is not just food.  Prasad means clarity.  If you take impure food you will have problems.  The same is true of everything you consume (through all senses and the mind).

You can get facts and info from your digital devices, but they cannot contemplate these for you.  One has to hear these from an illumined Soul and contemplate them in one's own mind.  Only the surface meaning is given through devices and books; the inner meaning comes from an illumined being encountered via one's own consciousness.

You never get illumination from books and temples; you get it from an illumined soul.  If this were not true the West would be full of illumined beings.

There is no purifier like Wisdom.  If the practitioner removes ignorance from the mind with Knowledge, then meditation is illumined, action gets illumined, devotion becomes illumined.

Our mudra should not be the cell phone mudra – arm cocked, hand to the ear.  Otherwise we may be born in that position.  Our mudra has to be the knowledge mudra. [A mudra is traditionally a sacred hand position used for representing and transmitting a divine quality.]

If you serve people, they remain people.  But if you serve God in people, their god-like nature manifests.

Some want their own mukti, liberation, and devil take the hindmost.  But true devotees want Sarvamukti – liberation for all.  If there is one person in ignorance, then that is like a cancer cell in a body.  So this is a very high Ideal.  And before we can assume that Ideal, we need to work on Videhamukti – liberation from all bodies.  The Self is beyond manifestation and nonmanifestation, so we need to learn how to attain formlessness.  We need to transcend a narrow identification with personal individuality and assume our collective and cosmic identity.  Then we can approach and merge into the Absolute Identity.

It is good to be reborn, but not to be reborn again and again.