Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | Suffering in the World

SUFFERING IN THE WORLD

Everyone is suffering. Everyone experiences birth, disease, old age and death. Everyone experiences fear, loneliness, emptiness, confusion, mental agitation, and heartache. Yet a fool, despite the fact that he keeps getting his teeth kicked in, never thinks twice about the whole thing. An intelligent person sees he is suffering and wants to know why. He thus becomes motivated to seek a solution to the problems of life. He seeks liberation. That is the beginning of spiritual life.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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

Jagad Guru

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We all want freedom, but real freedom is possible only if we understand our true identity.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Existence is the only reality for the self. As water cannot be separated from wetness, so you, the self, cannot be separated from existence. Existence is an integral aspect of your essence.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | You, the Seer

What about the seer? What about you? This is the crux of the matter. Even if scientists can determine how electrochemical impulses translate into such varying forms as a golden sunset, a red truck, or a flower, the main question still remains: Where is the self who is looking at those forms and images? What is this self made of? In what part of the body or brain is it? In other words: What is your essence, and where are you?

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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The senses (whether they are the “normal” senses or “extra” senses) are really just channels by which information from the external world travels to and is impressed upon the mind. The self, then, perceives or views that information as it appears on the mind.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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“Awareness” refers to that inseparable, essential, inherent attribute of yours, the self, which enables you to perceive thoughts, feelings, the world, etc., and indeed your own existence (self awareness = awareness that “I am”).

Science of Identity

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Awareness refers not to the stream of mindstuff (thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, forms, etc.) but rather to the inherent characteristic or ability that enables you, the self, to perceive the stream of mindstuff.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | There Is Nothing Wrong With Differences In External Appearance

Each body has a multitude of different labels and characteristics. This in itself isn’t bad; just like it is not bad for people to wear different-colored clothes. What is bad is that due to identifying the body as the self, we wrongly consider the person to be the labels that are on his body.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Being unable to see past the labels to the person himself, we end up in a world of barriers and conflict.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Your behavior toward another person should not be based upon his external skin color or whatever, but on his behavior.

Siddhaswarupananda

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There’s nothing wrong with differences in external appearance, labels, and external function. In fact, such differences are necessary and valuable. The problem arises when we falsely identify with our bodies and all the bodily labels and functions.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | We Cannot Have the Consciousness of Animals and Yet Have the Peace of Humans

Mystic yogis, by the practice of mystic or psychic powers, can do things that ordinary people consider very wonderful and miraculous. Such yogis then exploit the people, claiming that they are God Himself. And millions of foolish people believe such charlatans and blindly follow them. This is very unfortunate.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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There can never be harmony if we live like animals. We cannot have the consciousness of animals and yet have the peace of humans.

Jagad Guru

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There's a saying: “Misery likes company.” So-called religious fanatics are so miserable that they want to create as much havoc in society as possible. They want others to join them in their misery.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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For the world to be peaceful, we have to be peaceful within ourselves.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | on Impersonalist Yogis

An impersonalist yogi can be very dangerous because he may try to take the position of the Supreme Lord, believing himself to be the Supreme dominator and enjoyer of all that he surveys. This is the darkest region of ignorance. He may try to act on the illusion that he is God and that the world is his playground. He may become, in other words, a “super-hedonist.” One such “I am God”ist, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), formerly a professor at Harvard University, declares that no one exists except oneself, and that after merging with the impersonal Brahman, one returns to the world and is the world and is everyone.

If you come back into form from having merged with God ... you fill the forms [bodies] though there is no one home, it is just more lila, the dance of God.1

The late Swami Muktananda, a well-known “I am God”ist who had thousands of followers, wrote:

Assuming physical bodies, He appears as separate entities.2

According to the “I am God”ist, the apparent existence of others is just a hallucination. And since you are God, you are the creator of the laws of the universe (or as Ram Dass puts it, “You are the laws of the universe!”).3 And since you are the laws of the universe—since you are God—then there is no higher person or law to which you must subject yourself. Your will, your desire, is God's desire—God's will—so there is no need whatsoever to check or control your desires or actions. As another “I am God”ist, Werner Erhard puts it:

What you're doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy.4

So according to the “I am God”ist, since you and I—each of us—is God, whatever you and I and others are doing is what God wants us to do. You can be engaging in the most illicit or the most heinous activities, but since you are God, you are doing the will of God. Your will is God's will. In other words, he believes his will is God's will because he wrongly believes he is God.

Science of Identity

1Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1976), p. 166.

2Swami Muktananda, Siddha Meditation, p. 59.

3Ram Dass, Remember, Be Here Now (Albuquerque, NM: Lama Foundation, 1971), p. 86.

4Quoted in Adelaide Bry, est (Erhard Seminars Training): 60 Hours That Transform Your Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 66.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | The Passing Away of the Body Does Not Mean the End of Your Existence

The body you have at any moment in time does not last long—it is soon replaced by a new body made of new cells, molecules, and atoms. The “baby” body is replaced by the “child” body, which is replaced by the “adolescent” body, which is replaced by the “young adult” body, which is replaced by the “adult” body, which is replaced by the “middle-aged” body, which is replaced by the “old” body. Yet throughout all these complete changes of the body, you—the self—endure. You remain as the unchanged, untouched witness of all the different changes of your body as well as the changes of your mind.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Every one of us continues to live, even though our childhood bodies have long disappeared. Your “baby” body and “childhood” body have ceased existing, but you have not ceased existing.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Those who claim that the self can continue to exist only if the body continues to exist must explain how come they and other selves exist despite the fact that their “baby,” “child,” and “adolescent” bodies no longer exist.

Siddhaswarupananda

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The fact is that you know you existed five years ago, and you know you exist today. Although you still exist, you know that the body you had five years ago does not exist today. Therefore, you know that your existence is not dependent on the existence of any one body you may have on at any particular moment—whether it is a “baby” body, an “adolescent” body, an “old” body, or whatever.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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If the passing away of the body meant the end of your existence, then you, the self who existed along with the “childhood” body, should have ceased existing when that “childhood” body ceased to exist; and you, the self who existed along with the “adolescent” body, should have ceased existing when your “adolescent” body ceased to exist. The fact that you continued to exist, even though your body (bodies) did not, proves that your existence does not depend upon the continuing existence of a body.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes | Becoming Free of Bad Habits By Tasting a Higher Taste

A person who tries to be a goswami is careful not to engage in those activities that are harmful to his spiritual development. For example, he refrains from taking intoxicants (including all sorts of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and so on); from having illicit sex; from gambling; and from eating meat, fish, and eggs.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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If a person engages in the process of bhakti yoga and yet continues to engage in activities that are detrimental to spiritual progress, his spiritual progress will be very slow. This does not mean that a person must be completely free of all bad habits before he can even begin the process of bhakti yoga. For example, in the Philippines, one teacher saved many young people who were addicted to heroin and other drugs by teaching them the process of bhakti yoga. It took some time before they could completely give up all drugs; but eventually they did.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Sometimes a person is still addicted to cigarette smoking or meat-eating. If he follows the process of bhakti yoga, then gradually he will be able to give up such habits. It is a question of tasting a higher taste. If a person engages in the process of bhakti yoga, he will gradually begin to taste the higher spiritual happiness, and he will be able to give up all vices naturally. After he gives up such bad habits, then his progress will be very rapid.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation