Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | Spiritual Craving

Most people are not concerned about the problems we are creating on earth. Our whole attitude towards this planet is that it is disposable. Everyone thinks that they can take anything they want, exploit it, and then conveniently throw it away. So many things have become disposable, not only diapers, towels, plates and spoons, but babies, wives, husbands and old people too.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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There is more than enough food, water, fuel and so on to satisfy the actual needs of everyone on the planet. But there is not enough to satisfy everyone's greed. Even if it were physically possible for you to consume all the food, water, and fuel in the world, you still would not be satisfied. “Material food” cannot satisfy spiritual craving. Since the materialist is never satisfied, he never feels that he has had enough.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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In his book Small Is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote:

Insights of wisdom … enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man’s needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.*

It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the atma (spirit soul). Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one’s spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

* E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38.

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People cannot remain as materialistic, selfish people and have peace and harmony in the family, society or world.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | The Body is Constantly Changing

The physical body is made up of countless numbers of tiny material particles called molecules and atoms. These material particles are constantly being replaced by material particles from the outside environment (in the form of food, water, air, and so on). Over a period of five to seven years, this process of metabolism brings about a complete change of the matter that makes up your body.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Recent studies at the Oak Ridge Atomic Research Center have revealed that about 98 percent of all the atoms in a human body are replaced every year. You get a new suit of skin every month and a new liver every six weeks. The lining of your stomach lasts only five days before it’s replaced. Even your bones are not the solid, stable, concrete-like things you might have thought them to be: They are undergoing constant change. The bones you have today are different from the bones you had a year ago. Experts in this area of research have concluded that there is a complete, 100 percent turnover of atoms in the body at least every five years. In other words, not one single atom present in your body today was there five years ago.*

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

* Taken from Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1978), pp. 321-22.

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Many people believe that a person is the brain or some part of the brain. You may be one of them. If so, the following should boggle your mind:

Recent studies on the turnover of the molecular population within a given nerve cell have indicated that ... their macromolecular contingent is renewed about ten thousand times in a lifetime.*

In other words, the matter making up each brain cell is completely renewed every three days.
Your brain—that mass of matter which is contained in your skull today—is not the same brain that was in your skull last week.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

*Paul Weiss, “The Living System: Determinism Stratified,” in Arthur Koestler and J.R. Smythies, eds., Beyond Reductionism (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p. 13.

Science Of Identity :: Excerpts

Impersonalist Philosophy: Am I God

Rajneesh, infamous for his advocation of “free sex” among his thousands of Western disciples, writes:

The word “brahmacharya” means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the Brahman, the ultimate, the divine, that you are God Himself.1

Satya Sai Baba, India's most famous contemporary mystic and “holy” man, says:

You have not heard Me fully; I say I am God; I say also that you are God. The difference is that I know it and you do not know it.2

The idea of the “I am God”ists is that each of us is actually the Supreme Spirit, but that somehow we forgot our true identity as God and came under the spell of ignorance. So you are supposedly God, the Supreme Being, but you are now caught under the laws of material nature. You are supposedly the Supreme Lord, but you are now bound on the wheel of birth and death. It is an absurd proposition.

Science of Identity

Karma

According to yoga, every action, good or bad, produces some karmic reaction. Actions that are “bad” create bad karmic reactions. A person who engages in heinous criminal actions or who lives simply like an animal, exploiting others, will have to eat the bitter fruit of such actions in the future.

Science of Identity

Unfortunately, a person who is materialistic, greedy, and self-worshiping wants to take the place of God. He sees himself as the center of the universe. He sees everything and everyone—the world, people, his family, animals, plants, the environment—as revolving around him. He sees everything and everyone as meant for his enjoyment. The world is full of such exploitative people, and they cause so many problems.

Science of Identity

Siddhaswarupananda | Wisdom

Materialistic Society

Because our materialistic society considers the acquisition of wealth and power to be the goal of life, the more wealth and power you possess, the more “successful” you are considered to be. If you are materially poor, you are considered a failure in life, whereas if you are wealthy and powerful (regardless of how you acquired such wealth and power), you are considered a great success. So obtaining material wealth is not only essential for your direct sense gratification, but also for your feelings of self-worth. In other words, you feel only as valuable as the things that you possess and control. Lacking appreciation of your real value as an eternal, blissful spark of the Original Cause -- falsely identifying the temporary body as yourself—you try to achieve feelings of self-worth by acquisition and control of material things. To achieve such economic development, you may end up engaging in illegal activity—in other words, you might become a crook.

Siddhaswarupananda

The Need for Spiritual Happiness

This is why people in modern Western societies are still not satisfied, even though they are so economically advanced and thus have so much facility for sense enjoyment. They always want more. As the late British economist E. F. Schumacher points out:

Is there enough to go round? Immediately we encounter a serious difficulty: What is “enough”? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues “economic growth” as the highest of all values and therefore has no concept of “enough.” There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: “Halt! We have enough”? There is none.*

What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body—even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments.

Siddhaswarupananda

*E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 25.

Spiritual Hunger

If you believe that you are your body, you will strive endlessly to give your body sensual pleasure. You will struggle to fill up your inner emptiness with fleeting sensual flashes. But no amount of sensual pleasure will satisfy you. No matter how many taste orgasms, sexual orgasms, and other kinds of orgasms you may have, you still won’t be actually satisfied. You’ll always have a never ending desire for more.

Siddhaswarupananda

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | Characteristics of a Wise Person

For a person who cultivates wisdom or true knowledge, the results are inner peace, satisfaction, patience, respect for others, freedom from duplicity, compassion, joyfulness, remembrance of his spiritual identity, freedom from the fear of death, freedom from anxiety and depression, and so on.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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If you are wise, you can see the person or atma within the body, and relate to the person, not to his body.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Concerning a wise person’s feelings toward the body left behind by a loved one: First, unlike the materialist, he is not attracted to it as though it were the person. Second, he is not afraid or repelled by it because he sees it for what it is: a vehicle, or type of clothing, left behind by the one he loves.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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If you are wise, you are free of prejudice, racism, sexism, class consciousness, and so on.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | Searching for Wisdom

THE SEARCH FOR WISDOM

The search for wisdom is a great challenge; to act on wisdom is an even greater challenge.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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A person who understands that (1) one day the body will cease existing, and that (2) he himself will not cease existing, naturally becomes less interested in material gain and material pursuits (which he knows will be taken away one day) and becomes more interested in making spiritual advancement—advancement in wisdom, love, and compassion.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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It is the presence of the life particle—the person-- that makes the physical body valuable. If this atma is not present in the body then it has no real value. As soon as the person, the atma, leaves the body, the body becomes worthless. The closer you are to this understanding, the closer you are to wisdom and sanity.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation