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Plotting The Route Around A Blog

Alas, at that point real life took over and what with going off to college, getting married soon after, having a family, and eventually a career, this course of speculation was soon forgotten.  That is until 40 years later when blogs were becoming popular, and someone said that I should start one.  I did enjoy reading those of my sister-in-law and niece - they were always off doing something of interest that I wouldn’t otherwise know about (this was before Facebook).  But I felt that no one would care about my hum-drum daily activities.

However, I did want others to understand some of my beliefs, and why I held them.  Not necessarily to convince them to believe the same way, but as a background for understanding where my ideas were coming from so that this might form a foundation from which to base further future conversations, and not have to “go back and start from the beginning” each time a controversial topic arose in order to establish a foundation of common understaning - if not agreement - from which to build further dialogue.  But that would take multiple blogs, and if someone missed any of them it would demolish any continuity I was trying to create.

Someone then suggested a web site.  That seemed to be the perfect solution, because then my folly could be shared with others who might find it intriguing.  So I created one.  I threw up some preliminary stuff about green living and music, and a link to what would be reviews and synopses of books I had read that pertained to social issues, political thought, and philosophy.  But I needed – or at least wanted – to tie these “branches” together to my spiritual “roots” by way of a story that would serve as the “trunk” to this tree of thought, demonstrating how these separate limbs were derived from those roots, and how those roots fed the upper portion of the tree.

But how to proceed??

Like the many spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same central hub, I knew that each person’s path was different.  This meant that as many different aspects as possible of this vision should be included so that everyone could hopefully find some part of the story that they could identify with.  After looking at what led me to my current lookout point, I realized that the steppingstones along my way included the experiences of Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) the first time they took LSD, delved a bit the occult and mysticism (including the Kabbalah), and included the writings of the Gnostics, Plato, and others - eventually leading to the wonders of the Advaita Vedanta (2).  All of this had started in that geometry class where my mind drifted off-topic to think about Mobius strips, Klein bottles, Flatland, and the possibility of a fourth dimension.

How much more exciting could the story be than to relate all those unique experiences??

But wait a minute!!  Would you believe!!  That list of topics I planned to include in my story matched perfectly with the one I had made 40 years before and had totally forgotten!!  Talk about my jaw hitting the floor!!  Was that just a coincidence, or was I being guided – perhaps by my subconscious??  But then why??  Why would I be compelled to spend my entire life doing all that reading and contemplating if it meant nothing in the end??  It seemed to me there had to be a reason.  Perhaps this story was meant to be shared??

Looking back, I saw that each of those pieces tried to point me in the direction of my final vantage point, but I was not yet ready to go there until I had soaked in a little of each one and formed a more complete picture from them myself.

Once I had arrived at a working notion of the cosmic universe that satisfied me, along with its meaning and humankind’s place in it, I looked around for something new to read, and found an old book my aunt had given me many years before, entitled The Spiritual Heritage Of India by Swami Prabhavananda.  It describes the many strains of Hindu thought, starting with a short history and a synopsis of what they all have in common, and a link to it will be found on my Eastern Wisdom page at the end of this exposition..

And that was when my jaw dropped once again!!  

I was totally astonished to discover that what I had put together from all those diverse sources was repeated thought-for-thought in what I was now reading!!  And now I had gone through the background preparation necessary to seriously contemplate, comprehend, and accept it.

So this story has been swirling around in my head for years…decades…since then, waiting to be written down for sharing with others.  Until now.

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(2) Literally “after the Vedas”.  The Vedas were the earliest Hindu scriptures, replete with praise and homage to their many gods.  The Vedantic texts included a set of sruti - the Upanishads – that were added to them later, signifying a spiritual evolution that had arrived at an understanding that these were not separate deities at all, but various aspects or manifestations of a single higher being.  This period also saw a transformation from rituals involving animal sacrifice to internal meditations and yogic practices meant to connect to that higher being.

This page was last updated on February 12, 2023

Always remember to "Think Green" because good planets are hard to find!!  

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