• VIDEO BY ALICE
• SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO
  • Stories by Alice: Thoughts on Ways to Attain Liberation
    • “Meditation for Abundance of Wealth or Love,” Chanted (But Not Created) by Alice B. Clagett, Soundtrack and Words
  • The Trouble with the Yogic Superpowers
  • On Using Drugs to Attain Yogic Superpowers
  • Optimizing Timelines to Avoid Using Yogic Superpowers for Worldly Gain
  • For the Skeptic: A ‘What-If’ Exercise
  • Photos by Alice

Dear Ones,

In this video are thoughts on how to attain God consciousness, based on “How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali,” with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda, translated by Christopher Isherwood …

Citation: “How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali,” translated with a commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, copyright 1953, 1981 by The Vedanta Society of Southern California ..

There is an edited Summary after the video …

VIDEO BY ALICE

SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO

Hello, Dear Ones, It’s Alice. I Am of the Stars.

I thought I would talk to you for a moment about a few words from the great yogi Patanjali … from the Aphorisms of Patanjali, with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood …

Citation: “How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali,” translated with a commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, copyright 1953, 1981 by The Vedanta Society of Southern California ..

Stories by Alice: Thoughts on Ways to Attain Liberation

• bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion … playing kirtan, feeling one’s heart
• jnana yoga … attainment of knowledge or wisdom. Perhaps Theosophy and the writings of Arthur E. Powell fall into this category?
• concentration on an object
• concentration on nothingness, or ‘no object’ (the path of advaita)
• chanting God’s name: Hara Hara Hara Hara Hara Hara Haree … a chant for abundance

it had to do with the ways to attain liberation. And of course there are many ways to attain liberation. For instance, my favorite way to practice to become more spiritual is through the yoga of devotion, bhakti yoga.

I was just at the Shaktifest in Joshua Tree, California, this last weekend; and that is what the people there were doing, with an emphasis on devotion to Divine Mother and the Sacred Feminine.

Then later in the year they have Bhaktifest; that is a festival of devotion to God; it has both male and female energies of devotion. It is a little bit more masculine, I feel, than Shaktifest. So that is one thing.

You can play kirtan, or sacred music … that is a way of devotion. You can feel your heart; that is what I have been doing since the year 2000. You can take the path of jnana yoga …

I am out in the desert, in Joshua Tree, and there is a raven soaring by on the updrafts from the warm airs of evening. A big confrontation between two ravens ended not too long ago. It was very talkative, very loud, and it ended with a standoff. [Looks up.] Here is a raven just enjoying the beautiful breezes of sunset.

So jnana yoga has to do with knowledge. Some people pursue that path. In fact, I would be inclined to say that the School of Theosophy and the writings of Arthur Powell have more to do with jnana and the attainment of wisdom. (I might be wrong about that.)

Some people say that this is one of the hardest paths of yoga. But I think, for people that are suited to it, it is perfect, really perfect. There may not be too many people like that, but for those people, it is really great.

I like jnana yoga also. I am one of those unusual people that like a number of different ways of attempting to attain God consciousness, or liberation. Actually, I am interested in almost all the paths.

Then there is concentration …he art of concentrating … The yogis use this word in a particular way. They are concentrating on a particular object, say, and just watching it until they attain oneness with it.

And then another way to do it is by concentrating on nothingness … no object.

It is a rather arcane science that you can learn, step by step, by reading that book.

One of the ways that I like to seek liberation is by chanting God’s name. Years ago, I did that all the time. For about ten years, I chanted God’s name. I was using a mantra that had to do with abundance. It was of the sacred names of God from India, from the Hindu tradition. And it went like this …

. . . . .

“Meditation for Abundance of Wealth or Love”
Chanted (But Not Created) by Alice B. Clagett
Soundtrack and Words
16 May 2016

 

Hara, hara, hara, hara, hara, hara, haree 

You use your navel point energy, and in the world it creates something for you … what you want: Abundance, or love, or whatever it is. I will do it again. I am pushing my navel point in, on most of the syllables. It goes like this …

Hara, hara, hara, hara, hara, hara, haree  (x2)

I learned this chant from Yogi Bhajan of Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) … https://www.3ho.org/ … many years ago. As to whether he has copyrighted it, or whether it was an ancient chant, I have not been able to determine.

. . . . .

And so I would do that. Just in my own consciousness, I would ‘churn the ethers’, as they say, with that all day long … every time I could think of it; especially during drive time, if it was local and not on the freeways, when I was standing in line, and whenever I was not doing a work that involved the logical mind.

I like that way … using a mantra … too. I do not know whether that is in Patanjali, though.

The Trouble with the Yogic Superpowers

• Patanjali offers ways to attain over 100 yogic superpowers.
• In the fine print, we learn that, if we attain the yogic superpowers and then don’t go on to total alignment with God consciousness, then some really gruesome things will happen to us.
• Once a person gets yogic superpowers, he must figure out how to give them back to God somehow.
• The theory I learned (not from Patanjali, though) is that the yogic superpowers are just paving stones on the way to God consciousness, God awareness, Awakening … what we’re doing now.
• So we have to know the warning signs of having the yogic superpowers, and then we have to humbly offer them in service to God. That’s the important thing.

There was a list, in “The Yogic Aphorisms of Patanjali,” of the ways to attain the ‘superpowers’ … the yogic powers. The interesting thing was, it gave the list, and then it gave the list, it gave over 100 superpowers, and then you learned that if you attained the superpowers and then did not go on to total devotion to God or to alignment with God consciousness, then some very gruesome things would happen to you.

So I always thought, after that, I was glad I read that book very carefully, because then I did not go after those superpowers, which are a bit of a bother; they create more trouble than they are worth. And once you get them, you have to figure out how to give them back to God somehow.

Anyway, with regard to the list of superpowers, this is the theory that I learned (but not from Patanjali): I learned that the superpowers are just something like paving stones on the way to liberation or God consciousness, God Awareness, Awakening … what we are doing now. We have to know the warning signs of having the superpowers, and then we have to humbly offer them in service to God. That is the important thing.

On Using Drugs to Attain Yogic Superpowers

• drugs as a way to develop yogic superpowers,
• hallucinogens used in ancient rituals
• drugs contraindicated for the person training to be a spiritual adept
• drugs is that they offer yogic superpowers before a person is spiritually developed enough to deal with them
• one good example: psychic murder
• thuggee cult in Ancient India
• walk-in lore
• kama rupa lore
• fate of disincarnate thuggees since 2012

I think that, in India, where Patanjali lived, there were a lot of people who were interested in developing the superpowers a long time ago … long, long ago. And still today, that is the case. And so this list of ways of developing the superpowers is pretty important.

The very first thing on the list is drugs … I am assuming maybe hallucinogenics, or whatever; I am not sure what. But what I have heard about hallucinogenics is that they were used in many ancient cultures, to open the doorway to the astral realm, for instance.

And when an initiate was properly prepared, with fasting and ritual and so forth, with the support of his or her community, then they were fairly successful, I feel, as a way of ushering in rites of passage … say, for manhood, or womanhood, or whatever it should be.

But for the person that is training to be a spiritual adept, the use of drugs is, in my opinion, not indicated. Sometimes people use a drug, unknowingly, in their youth, and learn about this kind of spiritual attainment where a person becomes one with God, or a mystic. And then they go on to lifelong study of spiritual things. In that case it is not such a bad thing … to have tried something that led to something really good.

My path was otherwise: When I was born, I already had a feeling of being a mystic. And by the time I was five years of age, I was very strongly into that understanding that God is One with me, and that the natural world is merely a manifestation of God’s loving care.

What I feel, very strongly, is that drugs are not the way to step out there, into the realm of seeking liberation. The problem of drugs is that they offer these superpowers before a person is spiritually developed enough to know how to deal with them.

What will happen then, is that mistakes can be made. For instance, a person may use their superpowers out of sensory attraction … out of the desire for money, or the desire for lots of women (or the desire for lots of men). I think those are the main attractions: The desire to accumulate lots of goods, and the desire to have lots of sexual liaisons. I might have missed a few … Oh! … the desire for great power: A person could use the yogic techniques because they want power over lots of people. [laughs]

So then what happens is, people do the drugs; they get the superpowers, and then they have these temptations that lead them into the realm of massive karmic problems. And so then it takes lifetimes to get out of that again.

One good example is the use of drugs to attain superpowers that allow a person to kill other people and go undetected. In ancient India, there was a group called the thuggees. In India, everyone is respected, no matter what their occupation; so these were considered great spiritual adepts and the strongest among them was given the name of ‘guru’.

In our culture we would call them gangsters or brigands or roaming gangs of thieves that would mercilessly prey upon travelers and throw them down wells, and all kinds gruesome things described in “Wikipedia.”

They were treated with respect, and they had attained these superpowers. Apparently, piecing it together, what happened was that they would practice to walk into other physical forms, from the astral form. Then when they died, they passed on, into their astral form. Then they would try to seize upon the drugged body a person that was young and healthy, and displace the Soul and consciousness and Awareness there, and step into that body …. It is called a ‘walk-in‘ … and take over that body from that other person … steal the body.

The story goes, that this was successful. I consider that it was probably not successful; it is just a story … because the astral body of such a person, who had spent their whole life murdering and thieving … would most likely be what they call a kama rupa. Kama rupa is the body of a depraved human being who has lost the conscience that characterizes the nobility of humankind. What I have heard, from the texts of the School of Theosophy is that the kama rupa is like a very tough, gangster desire elemental that can survive for a very long time on the astral plane.

Typically, when we pass on, the best thing is for the desire elemental to detach and go away and slowly disintegrate, I hear. But in the case of the kama rupa, what survives on the astral plane is the base animal instincts and the feral passions of what was once a very gnarly human being.

In my opinion, what they call ‘walk-ins’ in the psychic lore are really the walking in of the kama rupa of these ‘depraved’ individuals … as the description goes, in the texts of the School of Theosophy. It is a pretty cool text: ‘depraved’ … depraved individuals who have lost their Souls through their actions in the world.

And the kama rupa is what steps into, and displaces, the Soul of the person who is ‘walked into’. So, what the followers of such a ‘walked into’ person might worship … if it is a spiritual leader who has been ‘walked into’ … because it sound a lot like their leader, who passed on (or maybe a living spiritual leader) … is really just the worst qualities … the most animal qualities of a thuggee … a person who walked sideways of the law for their entire life, and disregarded all the conventions regarding kindness and convention, and legal niceties such as ‘do not kill’ … ‘honor your father and your mother’. All that stuff goes by the wayside.

By the time they get to the ‘thuggee cult’ stage, after many, many incarnations, people are pretty much ready to give up the Soul altogether. I doubt that happens with many people; but it could happen. And it could also happen that we would reincarnate in the normal manner, in a very difficult situation with a lot of polarity in it, and then attempt to resolve that in a new incarnation.

What has been happening recently, is that these thuggee cult individuals, as they are ready to come back into incarnation on Earth, are not finding the suitable Light Quotient for them to be able to come back; and that is because their Light Quotient is not so bright, and everybody on Earth is brightening up quite a bit.

So they are roiling around, and turmoiling around, and gangstering around, on the astral plane, here and there, whenever they can … whenever a person manifests some kind of yearning for a physical experience that is similar to their own inclinations. On these they descend in furious hunger, though only on the astral plane, and only for a moment. In such moments, 

So it is kind of dangerous, right now, to go out on the astral plane, especially when you are sensing emotions of hatred or anger or extreme fear … because they will be waiting for you, you know? Even now, they are playing about … [zooms up above head] … up above the head, up there. In the eighth to the tenth chakra, they are zinging about, attempting mischief, attempting to produce people’s astral plays, and just generally causing havoc in the eighth to tenth dimensions.

I do not know how they get an ‘assist’ up there that high … because, in my opinion, their dimensionality is not that good. Maybe it is the superpowers that they have gained, that allow them to do that. It is a big bother. It is what is clearing from the world right now: That energy up through there … [zooms up above head] … in the pranic column above the head.

It is kind of cool too: We are the explorers, and we are finding out all about all of this.

Optimizing Timelines to Avoid Using Yogic Superpowers for Worldly Gain

• Timeline optimization may help, if temporarily sidetracked by using drugs: Spirit to Team! Optimize Timelines! For the All, through Free Will!

The thing about drugs is, they can give you superpowers, but they can throw you into that category called the ‘thuggee cult’ category. And then there is karma to pay … payback. [signs]

Maybe if you optimize your timelines …

Spirit to Team!
Optimize My Timelines!
For the All, through Free Will!

Try that, if you feel you have gone sideways for a little bit, and you want to come back straight and steady on the spiritual path. Or if you just took a left turn to look at the view [laughs] and you want to go on, that might get you there right away. So there is that.

For the Skeptic: A ‘What-If’ Exercise

• What if this is the time of the All? If so, we might think about how things might change, and how all beings might benefit, and how there might be plenty for everybody too.

Even if your spiritual path, I feel, is not about drugs at all, but rather about all these other possibilities, like bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, concentration … whatever it is … if you find yourself tempted to put your group, or your person, or your family first … as has been done, for long ages, in the past … the thing to also consider is that this is the time of the All. This is the time when we join in harmony and unity with all beings everywhere, in the upliftment of this Universe.  And so what worked in the past, what served in the past, in the near future will not be working, and will not be serving.

It is just something to think about, as we continue on with what we are doing … to think about how things might change, and how all beings might benefit, and how there might be plenty for everybody, too. Kind of cool!

We could do a ‘what if’: Clearly, things are just the way they are, but what if they should change? Then, how would it be? And what would I do? What would my family, or my group do?

In love, light and joy,
Alice B. Clagett
I Am of the Stars

Filmed on 16 May 2016; published on 29 May 2016, revised on 5 April 2023
Previously titled: Thoughts on Ways to Attain Liberation … and … Attaining Liberation: Overcoming the Pitfall of Yogic Superpowers

Photos by Alice

Image: “Joshua Tree 3,” by Alice B. Clagett, 16 May 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0 International, from “Awakening with Planet Earth,” https://awakeningwithplanetearth.com ..  

Image: “Joshua Tree 4,” by Alice B. Clagett, 16 May 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0 International, from “Awakening with Planet Earth,” https://awakeningwithplanetearth.com ..  

…………………..

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

…………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………….

ascension, liberation, walk-ins, thuggees, drugs, Patanjali, kama rupa, desire elemental, groups, spiritual groups, God consciousness, yogic superpowers, spiritual adepts, concentration, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, chanting God’s name, concentration, advaita, Divine Mother, School of Theosophy, enlightenment, drug use, hallucinogenics, astral planes, ceremony, rites of passage, rite of manhood, rite of womanhood, mysticism, stories, stories by Alice, temptation, karma, psychic powers, kama rupa, transpersonal chakras, eighth chakra, ninth chakra, tenth chakra, All, free will, photos by Alice, my favorites,