Body & Mind Training Center

Ascended Masters


One definition of an ascended master is an individual who has undergone the process of ascension. Throughout history, there have been stories of these individuals who have reached a higher state of spiritual awareness and placed themselves in service to humanity. One concept of an ascended master derives from the teachings of Theosophy.

In Theosophy, and various descendants and offshoots of theosophy, ascended masters are a group of spiritually enlightened beings, once mere mortals, who have undergone a process of spiritual transformation. According to these teachings, they remain attentive to the spiritual needs of humanity, and act as superintendents of its spiritual growth. In this, they can be compared to the Great White Brotherhood or Secret Chiefs who are posited by various magical organizations; and more remotely, to the bodhisattvas of Buddhism, or the saints of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.

The Great White Brotherhood

Belief in the Brotherhood and the masters is an essential part of the syncretistic teachings of these several groups. Various important spiritual leaders such as Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, the Virgin Mary, and Kuan Yin the compassionate bodhisattva, take their seats alongside magical or alchemical personalities like the Count of St. Germain, and other mystic celebrities like Kuthumi, one of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's claimed spiritual guides - all of these leaders have put aside any differences they might have had in their Earthly careers, and unite instead to improve the spiritual well-being of the human race.

In the shamanic belief every thing is alive and carries with it power and wisdom. Power animals are an essential component of shamanic practice. They are the helping spirit which add to the power of the shaman and are essential for success in any venture undertaken by the shaman.
Shamans believe that everyone has power animals - animal spirits which reside with each individual adding to their power and protecting them from illness, acting similarly to a guardian angel. Each power animal that you have increases your power so that illnesses or negative energy cannot enter your body. The spirit also lends you the wisdom of its kind. A hawk spirit will give you hawk wisdom, and lend you some of the attributes of hawk.

Everyone is thought to have a few of these guardian power animals or it is thought that the individual could not survive childhood. Over the course of her or his life the person may have several. If a power animal leaves and one does not come to take its place the individual is considered, by the shaman, to be disempowered and therefore vulnerable to illness and bad luck.

Power animals do not have to be mammals and can be reptiles, insects or sea creatures. Any living creature can serve as a power animal. (Plants and trees can serve as plant spirit guides.) Domesticated animals are generally not considered power animals because they already in service to human beings. It is possible to have a domesticated animal, but it is more likely to have a wild untamed animal serve in the capacity of a power animal.

Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is a sacred journey. It is a process that is not meant to simply get away from it all, but to allow oneself to encounter, see, and experience the Divine. This is accomplished by associating with holy people, visiting the holy places where the pastimes of the Divine have taken place, and where the sacred temples allow darshan: the Vision of the Supreme. Darshan is the process of approaching the Deity in the Temple in a state of spiritual communication, open and ready to receive sacred revelations. It means to see the Absolute Reality, and also to be seen by that Supreme Reality, God.

Pilgrimage means living very simply, and going toward what is holy and most sacred, and remaining focused on the opportunity of having a life-changing experience. In this way we will undergo voluntary austerities for purification to relieve ourselves of lifetimes of karma. This process will help change our consciousness and our perception of our spiritual identity and how we fit into this world, and help us gain access to the spiritual dimension through enlightenment.

Hinduism, science and psychology:
Explaining this Indian approach to religion and the cause of the misunderstanding between science and religion, Swami Vivekananda said:

"Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world, just as chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with the truth of the physical world. The book one must read to learn chemistry is the book of (external) nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart. The sage is often ignorant of physical science, because he reads the wrong book - the book within and the scientist is too often is ignorant of religion, because he, too, reads the wrong book - the book without".

The practice of religion is a ceaseless quest after the facts of a man's inner life, at the innermost depth of which it finds the truth of God, which it defines as infinite existence, infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss, the Sat-Chit-Ananda Brahman it comes across, at the intermediate depths, and all higher values which find expression in man's ethical, moral, and aesthetic experiences. A dispassionate study of these facts constitutes the science of religion, the science of art of the spiritual life.

Upanishads grappled with these questions: What is this universe? What is man? What is his destiny? Long ago they discovered that the universe of experience consists of two broad categories, the subjective and the objective. It is important to remember that this idea is basic to an understanding of Vedanta and to an understanding of whither science is going today. Now, when we apply this classification to the whole universe, we get the corollary that modern science is the study of only one of the two categories, namely, the objective field. But modern science is also trying to understand the subjective field.

Psychology is one such science. But Western psychology has suffered from too great a dominance by psychology . By resorting to time and space methodology, we get a knowledge of the 'without' of things, but not of their 'within'. Much of psychology in the West is behaviouristic psychology: it is a study of the human mind through the study of human behaviour.

But Western psychologists have also tried to break from this kind of limitation and have developed, through psycho-analysis, the beginning of what is called depth psychology. This is just the beginning of a great movement in modern psychology which, if continued steadily and penetratingly, will bring it to the truth of the real nature of man which Vedanta reached ages ago in India - the eternal, undying Self of man, the Atman.

Vedanta and modern science are close to each other in spirit and temper. They are close to each other in their objectives and in very many of their conclusions as well. Even in the cosmology of the physical universe, we find so many points of contact. The fundamental position in the cosmology of both science and Vedanta is what Swami Vivekananda calls the postulate of a self-evolving cause. Vedanta says that there is one self-evolving cause, Brahman, behind the universe. Science says that behind this universe there is one self-evolving cause, the background material, in the words of astronomer Fred Hoyle.

Both believe in the theory of a cosmic evolution. There are a number of such similarities. The truths expounded in the Upanishads are impersonal, Apauruseya, not deriving sanction from any person. Scientific truths are similarly impersonal, objective, not deriving sanction from any person. Because they are impersonal, they are universal, and provide a clear insight into the nature of the world. That is science.

When we study the development of science during the last hundred years, we can trace the higher reaches of science slowly appearing on the horizon, and trace also the slow emergence of a non-materialistic outlook in science.

Who are the Zoroastrians ?


According to an indian Zoroastrian Named : Porus Homi Havewala
))
My ancestors, the Zoroastrians of Iran (pre-Islamic) were members of the Indo-European family known as the Aryans. They called themselves Zoroastrians because they believed in the teachings of the first Aryan prophet, Zarathushtra.

Zarathushtra was the first prophet to preach a monotheistic religion, and He was born in Iran about 8000 years BC. He revealed that there was only one God, Ahura Mazda and that life in the physical world was a battle between good and evil. As per man's actions, he would either cross the "Chinvato Peretu" or the sword bridge after death, and reach Heaven, or fall from it and go to the abode of the evil one. In the final days there would be a battle between good and evil, evil would be vanquished and the world would be purified by a bath of molten metal. Mazda would then judge the world, resurrecting the dead and His Kingdom would be established on earth.

Zarathushtra's songs are called the "Gathas" which linguistically may be older than the Indian Vedic scriptures. The Gathas are written in an ancient Avestan dialect. This is a sister language to Sanskrit of India, and Greek and Latin of the West. The reason is, the common ancestors (common to the ancient Iranians, Ancient Indians, Greeks, and Europeans) were one and the same - the Indo-European or Aryan peoples.

Surprisingly, many so-called Christian concepts actually were derived from Zoroastrian Aryan ideas which thrived in Iran for thousands of years until the Arab invasion of Iran around 1300 years ago. Concepts such as heaven and hell, God and the evil adversary ahriman, the coming of the Saviour or Saoshyant born of a virgin, the end-time purge of the world by Fire followed by the resurrection of the dead (Ristakhiz), the making fresh of the world (Frashogard) and the final battle between good and evil leading to the final defeat of evil. These beliefs filtered down to Judaism during the reign of King Khushru (Cyrus) of Iran.

Although proud to be Aryans, Zoroastrians also believe that all races in the world are created by God and are equal - a true sign of the real ancient Aryan's nobility and tolerance. Cyrus, King of Iran who was an Aryan rebuilt the temple of the Jews after freeing the Jews from Babylon - for this, he is still remembered by the Jews and called the "Anointed of the Lord" in the Bible. The Jews still celebrate that act of the true Aryans in a festival. Many Jews then stayed in Iran under Cyrus and his successors such as Darayus, as equal subjects under the King. Books of the Bible written after this stay have taken all these Zoroastrian concepts, from there they came to Christianity and other religions. There are scholars who consider Zoroastrianism as such to be the mother religion of the present day world's faiths.

In fact the edict of Cyrus proclaiming equality for all his subjects is enshrined in the United Nations today. The original Aryans were realy multicultural and tolerant of all races! So, it is probable that the Jews were influenced by the Zoroastrian faith of Iran in those days - and took on the concepts of heaven/hell, God's evil adversary, the resurrection and the final purification of the world - the virgin birth, the Saviour etc., all these concepts being Zoroastrian. There are other similarities too - certain purificatory observances such as the impurity of menstruation etc. are found in both faiths. Indeed, the very idea of the Messiah, and the very concept of Jesus could be Zoroastrian in origin.

Zarathushtra's religion was the prominent one in Iran until the conquest by the Arabs, around 1300 years ago, who converted Iran to Islam. To preserve the Zoroastrian faith, this most ancient of faiths, indeed the "mother" faith of all mankind, a band of the Zarathushtrians sailed by boat to India about 1300 years ago, and settled in India where they were called the Parsees (from "Pars" ie. Iran). I am a descendant of these migrants. Rare as diamonds are, we number 100,000 or so in the world today.

We keep the holy FIRE in our temple as the symbol of Ahura Mazda, and our priests feed the fire with sandalwood and cedar and intone the ancient sacred Mathras (verses of praise) in the ancient Aryan Avestan language. The Mathric incantations have incredible divine potent power, a power used to fight evil. We also revere the elements of God such as water, earth, wind, and the creations of God such as the Sun, moon and stars. We wear the sacred Aryan girdle or the "Aiwiyaonghanem" around our waists, a sign of our ancient Aryan lineage and religion, and the white "Sudreh" as a garment.

My real name is "Pourashpa", an Avestan Indo-European name meaning "Owner of Grey Horses", horses signifying spiritual wisdom. As per the ancient custom, it should be always mentioned with my father's name ie. Pourashpa Puthra (son of) Hormuzd (my father's name). The ancient Avestan Pourashpa does have a mystical meaning because we believe the entire language itself, and its pronunciation (our ancient prayers the Gathas are in Avestan, these are the songs of Zarathushtra) itself has a powerful mystical effect in the fight against evil.



The Link between Zoroastrian & Germanic mythology:

Recently I read a book on "Runes" by D. Jason Cooper. In this book, Cooper suggests a close link between Pre-christian Germanic mythology and Zoroastrian mythology. He says that the Germanic peoples had travelled from Iran and India, and had kept some myths they had known before travelling, aspects of Indo-European thought seen in the Rig-Veda and the Gathas. As examples: German mythology says the doom of the world will come after 3 winters with no summer in between, then the fires of "Muspell" would sweep the world. In Zoroastrian mythology the final battle between good and evil will take place after 3 years of winter with no summer in between. Then a river of molten metal would sweep the earth, purifying the righteous as a bath of warm milk and scalding the evil, purifying them too.

Also, in both mythologies, two necessarily antagonistic forces (good and evil) and their contention has brought the material universe into being, in both cases a sacred cow is involved, in both cases the death of a sexless giant is involved (the first man, GayoMaretan in Zoroastianism). In both cases, the forces of good and evil will contend till the final days. Evil or chaotic forces are contained underground in both cases. Nails are considered a help to evil forces in both. (Loki and his ship of nails of dead men). Cooper also says that Germanic mythology as we now have it is a late corruption of the original, Ragnarok was originally a purification after which the world was restored to its pristine state. Only later it became the destruction of all Gods but a few. Not so in the Zoroastrian case.

I was once surprised to read a book by a German author, written in the early 1900s, on German shepherd dogs which at the very outset quoted the "Vendidad", particularly passages in this ancient book which described the creation of the faithful Dog by Ahura Mazda (God) Himself. That showed the popularity of the Vendidad in Germany to me at that time. I also like to mention here that Edgar Cayce the "sleeping" prophet of the USA, the famous clairvoyant once mentioned that Iran was the ancient site of the "Garden of Eden". A most interesting thing to say, perhaps indicating the very ancient culture of old Iran.((

Your friend,

Porus Homi Havewala.

These are personal opinion of Mr Porus Homi Havewala and Body & mind Institut has no responsability for this article and our aim is only presentation of different religions and Ideas

Why we study religions ?

A short answer is that many religions worldwide are, for good or ill, powerful forces in today’s global society. As with politics, society, economics, literature, music and art, we need a reliable understanding of religions – in all their various manifestations - in order to make sense of our changing world and prepare for a future career.

Religions influence almost every aspect of society, from the arts to politics. Few days pass without reports in the media on the impact of religions upon both local and global events, and on the lives of individuals and communities.

Religions directly or indirectly influence social and foreign policies, laws, gender roles, diet, dress and ethical and moral beliefs. Religions affect the ways in which people interact and communicate and can be a powerful resource for both cooperation and antagonism. Freedom of expression, equality and tolerance and justifications for violence and war, very often have strong religious dimensions.

Contrary to the widespread belief that religions are about timeless truths, forms and expressions of religion are constantly changing, as society changes. Some people reject religion altogether, others are turning to 'alternative' spiritualities in search of personal and spiritual fulfilment while others want to reinforce 'traditional' religious values in a changing world.

If you are interested in understaning the diverse ways in which people live their lives, and in learning more about yourself and the changing world of which you are part, this subject may be for you...

Understanding different religious beliefs and practices becomes increasingly important in the workplace, for teachers, government, development agencies, international business, those in the media, in healthcare and in human resources. In addition to helping you to develop the blend of specific and transferable skills common to all Arts subjects, Religions and Global Diversity will give you insights into religion and culture, which should help you in the workplace and when seeking employment.