Universal Consciousness - Advaita - Teachings Backed by Practical Experiences

Last updated on November 20th 2013

The post, Sathya Sai Baba's Advaita Teachings By John Hislop Ph.D. - Edited Transcript of Video, is about teachings of Advaita as taught by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from one of the foremost, now deceased, Western followers/disciples of his, a Dr. Hislop (given in a talk in 1989 in the USA). Very interestingly, the theory of Advaita is backed by practical experiences of Dr. Hislop of the "universal consciousness" level of Sri Sathya Sai Baba which allowed the latter to have paranormal knowledge about Dr. Hislop.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba exhorted his followers to believe that the ultimate reality and the only reality of all of them (indeed of all existence) is the "universal consciousness" which is at the depth of their very being. In other words, that all are God.

But, as most of us (including me, certainly), have some difficulty in constantly (or even for some time) living with such a belief, given the various very human limitations that we have at our current spiritual evolution levels, we may prefer to draw inspiration from an external icon (name and/or form) for our spiritual efforts. In the post mentioned above Sri Sathya Sai Baba is that external icon which is viewed as Divine but in my humble opinion most (if not all) of the lecture would apply to other divine figures too of Hinduism as well as other religions. The nomenclature used may be different, "world as the body of Christ", "one Ummah", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummah, instead of "universal consciousness" (the equivalence is not exact but the essence of the terms is the unity in creation and so they have equivalence). Instead of Sathya Sai Baba, the figure could be Christ or Krishna, or the formless Allah.

It must also be mentioned that the initial part of the talk relates to matters specific to the Sri Sathya Sai Baba following. Some readers may want to skip that part and start reading the edited transcript document (or viewing the video) from "0:22:53 - How to Love Swami?; Hislop Experiencing Swami Within". [I repeat, you can substitute your name & form of God instead of Swami].