Healing from addiction or any other unhealthy habit is a spiritual practice. It’s impossible simply to say, “Oh, I don't want to indulge in this or I have to get rid of that.” We cannot. The more we try to push it away and get rid of it, the more we wind up...
Huddled inside my heaviest winter coat at the edge of a pond, I watched as my coffee steam merged with misty clouds of my breath. At dawn the cranberry bog in coastal Massachusetts was an expanse of frozen sand and wiry tangles of russet vines; old snow scudded across...
This shloka is a Shanti mantra from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and Ishavasya Upanishad. This is an innocuous looking verse: one noun, two pronouns, three verbs and a participle for emphasis. Yet, someone once said: “Let all the Upanishads disappear from the face of the...
In the last ten years my work has been made much easier by the progress made in the fields of Neuroscience and Epigenetics. Following a great deal of scientific experimentation, significant evidence has materialized to show how the brain works and how meditation...
God or Infinite Consciousness is That through which our own egos move. Unfortunately, the ego tends to overlook the fact that its capacity to function is from that Source, and instead it comes up with the notion that I am doing everything by myself. But it would be a...
The beginning of a new year is a natural time to reflect on and re-envision our lives. The tradition of New Year’s resolutions can be life-changing or it can be a temporary way of fooling ourselves with lofty ideas that fade when reality hits. Clarifying our...
The goal of Yoga is to realize the Divinity within. This can be explained in different ways. A devotee will say, “I want to know God. I want to commune with God.” The jnani will say, “Tat Tvam Asi. I am That. I want to know this Truth—this Self or Cosmic...
We all need teachers in life; not everything can be learned from a book. According to Hindu tradition, there are four main teachers: Mata, Pita, Guru, Deva: Mother, Father, Guru and God. The mother is the baby’s first guru; she is everything to the baby: unconditional...
Have a spiritual question? Get clear answers to life's big questions via the new website: Undoism.com. SISProject.org is pleased to announce the launch of Undoism.com, featuring "Ask Undoism" – a real-time question-and-answer option. "Undoism" (trademark pending) is a...
OM is a letter and a word. It is also a sound or resonance. There are three sounds in OM, known as “matra” (vowel diacritics): ‘a,’ ‘u,’ and ‘m.’ When ‘a’ and ‘u’ merge, they form ‘o,’ and when ‘m’ is placed alongside ‘o,’ it forms OM. Thus, all sounds of all...
My dog Ranger’s rear leg kicked then he exhaled his final breath. I smoothed his tan and black muzzle for the last time. Bone cancer had arrived with terrifying swiftness. A sudden lameness had revealed the insidious way the cancer had secretly been eating his bones....
What is Yoga? In simple words: to remain with ease and peace. You might wonder what that ease is. I am talking about that ease, which you disturbed and then called yourself dis‑eased. Even to become a diseased person you should have had ease before, is it not so? If...
I know it sounds hard, but we must remember that when we go through, or see, suffering it is not the Immortal Self that suffers. Who is the sufferer then? It is the mind that goes through all the changes—the little ego, guided by vasanas, wrong thinking, and...
The Chinese sage, Chuang-Tzu, once had a dream in which he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he didn’t know for sure if before, he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or if now, he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Likewise, we are all caught in a dream...
Let us know that in Truth you are the Divine Image, the image of God. Somehow the veil of the ego prevents you from realizing this. Just remove that veil. It is that veil that is the basis for all these mental dramas. It creates all kinds of problems, troubles,...
It’s been proven time and again that Yoga practice can have incredible effects on all aspects of your being. Stretching your physical body and giving space to your heart and mind to let go of the negativity first come to mind, but Yoga goes deeper than that. More than...