Social Harmony

On social harmony:

Hatred and conflict are often rooted in differences between people of different races and religions. We all need to respect people of different races as well as people of different faiths and religions. We need to unite by recognizing our common desire and need for a harmonious society—a society in which we and our children and families and friends and communities can all live our lives in peace and harmony. Regardless of our race or religion, we all want and need such social harmony.

~Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler)
Science of Identity Foundation

Social Harmony Continued ...

On social harmony:

Without respect for people of different races or ethnicities or religions, how can we have a peaceful and harmonious society or world? And without a harmonious society, how can there be the necessary economic development and atmosphere conducive to spiritual happiness and self-realization?

~Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler)
Science of Identity Foundation

Impersonalist Yogis

An impersonalist yogi can be very dangerous because he may try to take the position of the Supreme Lord, believing himself to be the Supreme dominator and enjoyer of all that he surveys. This is the darkest region of ignorance. He may try to act on the illusion that he is God and that the world is his playground. He may become, in other words, a “super-hedonist.” One such “I am God”ist, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), formerly a professor at Harvard University, declares that no one exists except oneself, and that after merging with the impersonal Brahman, one returns to the world and is the world and is everyone.

If you come back into form from having merged with God ... you fill the forms [bodies] though there is no one home, it is just more lila, the dance of God.¹

The late Swami Muktananda, a well-known “I am God”ist who had thousands of followers, wrote:

Assuming physical bodies, He appears as separate entities.²

According to the “I am God”ist, the apparent existence of others is just a hallucination. And since you are God, you are the creator of the laws of the universe (or as Ram Dass puts it, “You are the laws of the universe!”).³ And since you are the laws of the universe—since you are God—then there is no higher person or law to which you must subject yourself. Your will, your desire, is God's desire—God's will—so there is no need whatsoever to check or control your desires or actions. As another “I am God”ist, Werner Erhard puts it:

What you're doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy.⁴

So according to the “I am God”ist, since you and I—each of us—is God, whatever you and I and others are doing is what God wants us to do. You can be engaging in the most illicit or the most heinous activities, but since you are God, you are doing the will of God. Your will is God's will. In other words, he believes his will is God's will because he wrongly believes he is God.

~Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler)
Science of Identity Foundation

¹ Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1976), p. 166.

² Swami Muktananda, Siddha Meditation, p. 59.

³ Ram Dass, Remember, Be Here Now (Albuquerque, NM: Lama Foundation, 1971), p. 86.

⁴ Quoted in Adelaide Bry, est (Erhard Seminars Training): 60 Hours That Transform Your Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 66.

Quotes about fake gurus

A fake guru wants his followers to believe that he is God Himself—that's why he tries to impress them with his mystic powers. If the disciple of a phony guru were to express doubts about his guru's lordship, the guru would surely be angered. So how did Brahma react when Narada asked the questions, “Under whose protection are you standing? And under whom are you working? What is your real position?” And how did he react when Narada asked, “Yet we are moved to wonder about the existence of someone more powerful than you when we think of your great austerities in perfect discipline”? In response, Brahmaji was not angry. In fact, he was extremely pleased.

~Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler)
Science of Identity Foundation