Jagad Guru Chris Butler | quotes on "Impersonalism" pt. II

AM I GOD?

The impersonalist “I am God”ist Swami Muktananda advised his students:

Meditate on your Self. Honor and worship your own Self. Kneel to your Self, because the supreme reality, the highest truth lives within you as you.*

Obviously, such an “I am God”ist or impersonalist can be very dangerous to others and society. Many of these “I am God”ists end up as the most extreme of all hedonists—having illicit sex with their disciples, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking, eating meat, and engaging in all kinds of debauchery. They declare that they can do so without being contaminated karmically because they are so “spiritually advanced.” At the moment, the Western world (as well as India) is crawling with such charlatans.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

*Swami Muktananda, Getting Rid of What You Haven’t Got (Oakland: S.Y.D.A. Foundation, 1978), p. 43.

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Buddhists do not believe in a life of hedonism because they believe in the law of karma (that is, a person’s actions in this life will affect his existence in his next life) and because they preach that happiness can be obtained not through sensual enjoyment but only through ceasing to exist (the bliss of nonexistence—nirvana).

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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The no-self philosophy is made to order for people (for the most part highly educated) who really can’t or won’t make the necessary effort and sacrifice to become enlightened masters of the senses but who nonetheless wish to think of themselves as enlightened and wise.


Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler | quotes on "Impersonalism"

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 Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

¹Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1976), p. 166.
²Swami Muktananda, Siddha Meditation, p. 59.
³Ram Dass, Remember, Be Here Now (Albuquerque, NM: Lama Foundation, 1971), p. 86.
⁴Quoted in Adelaide Bry, est (Erhard Seminars Training): 60 Hours That Transform Your Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 66.

BRAHMA AND NARADA – BONAFIDE GURU, BONAFIDE DISCIPLE | Jagad Guru Chris Butler

Mystic yogis, by the practice of mystic or psychic powers, can do things that ordinary people consider very wonderful and miraculous. Such yogis then exploit the people, claiming that they are God Himself. And millions of foolish people believe such charlatans and blindly follow them. This is very unfortunate.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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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 Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Narada is a perfect example of a bona fide disciple. Even though his guru, Lord Brahma, was immensely powerful, still Narada did not blindly accept him as the Supreme Lord Himself.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Silent Witness Meditation - by Jagad Guru Chris Butler

Quotes by Jagad Guru Chris Butler

Despite the difference between sense perception and thoughts and feelings, both are perceived by you, the self. Both are seen or perceived, whereas you are the seer or perceiver.

Jagad Guru - Science of Identity Foundation

Silent Witness Meditation - by Jagad Guru Chris Butler

Relax, and sit or lie in a quiet place. Don’t attempt to control the thinking process by trying to think certain thoughts and not think others. Instead, let your mind think about whatever it may. Now watch your mind and become aware of how you are actually aloof from the thinking process. Say to yourself, “I am the silent witness. I make no effort to think, but thoughts come automatically. I am watching thoughts flow through my mind, but I am aloof from them. I am the silent witness to my mind’s activities.” In this way, you’ll be able to experience that you are separate from the mind.

You can also watch the passing emotions, feelings, desires, fears, and so on as they rise to the surface of the mind and then pass away. The stream of mindstuff thus flows along, and you are the viewer of it. Just as a person sits by an ever-moving stream, so you, the self, sit by the stream of mindstuff. Just as a stream may be very clear or very polluted, so the stream of mindstuff may be very clear or very polluted. In either case, you are the witness of that stream—not the stream itself.

You may not be content to watch the stream of mindstuff flow freely, but instead may try to control it, redirect it, or stop it completely. But the very fact that you can try to redirect or control your mind, combined with the fact that it is so difficult to succeed in the endeavor, further shows that you, the self, are not the mind or stream of mindstuff.

Jagad Guru - Science of Identity Foundation