Reflections on the meaning of life
By Ivo Nardi
Riflessioni.it is the perfect place to stop and reflect on the meaning of life and we will do it through the answers that people of culture have given ten questions formulated by me.
Good reading.
Reflections on the meaning of life
Interview with Stuart Sovatsky
November 2010
Stuart Sovatsky (AB, Ethics/Psychology, Princeton University; PhD, California Institute of Integral Studies), was first choice to co-direct Ram Dass's "prison ashram" and first in the US to bring meditation to the homeless in the 1970s that led to being selected to the 1977 Princeton University Outstanding Alumni Careers Panel. Copresident of the premiere professional organization for spiritually-oriented psychologists in the US, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology since 1999, he was a board trustee for the California Institute of Integral Studies for 20 years and in 1999, recipient of its Most Outstanding Alumni Award 1978-2008.
Reflections on the meaning of life
Stuart Sovatsky
1) Generally the big questions about life arise out of grief, illness, death and seldom during happy moments– which we all chase. What is happiness for you?
Inner happiness has no external cause, it is a happiness of life energy itself. In my Sanskrit translations, soma-rasa is a secretion from many glands in the body, but only through a puberty that comes after teenaged puberty of fertility. Pineal gland, adrenals, spinal cord, sex glands are all involved. Soma rasa (endorphin, melatonin) give constant sense of happiness as fully matured human body, complete puberty of spine and glands.
Outer happiness with friends and good experiences involves these same glandular secretions as with inner happiness. But, without the full puberty of spine and glands, the happiness-response to good experiences fades away and there is no on-going secretion of soma rasa, so people must constantly create new happy experiences, because they are operating only at teenaged, genital puberty level of maturity. Some take drugs to simulate the inner chemistry of the full maturation. Yoga, meditation, sustained romantic love and creative family life, high moral values and helping others is natural way to this maturation.
2) What is love for you?
In Sanskrit, Srinagar Rasa is greatest love between romantic partners. It is based in puberty of spine and pineal, as noted above. The male and female interaction, based in this puberty, appears like god and goddess and love brings out the best qualities in each person and great love and happiness. This is common in first stage of falling in love, for most people. With the puberty of pineal and spine, this love only gets deeper and deeper, for the whole lifetime. Most people do NOT have this puberty, so the love tends to weaken, as problems replace the happiness and love. Tantra is the way to awaken puberty of pineal and spine and so on. This requires 10-20 years of yoga brahmacharya for glands to mature. This is yoga plus “erotic celibacy” of singing and dancing and devotion and hatha yoga, for 10-20 years. Then bod becomes mature for life long romantic love and love of children, grandchildren and so on.
3) How do you explain suffering in any form?
There are accidents and accidental diseases that cause suffering, even old age involves suffering at some point. Other suffering comes from bad habits, like smoking or over eating or lying and greed that causes imbalance in oneself and in relationships with others. With lots of money, one can minimize suffering with expensive pleasures and even medical treatment. But underneath, there is hidden suffering of karma of hurting others or oneself. This suffering will be experienced during the hours of dying and perhaps afterwards, maybe in next lives in reincarnation. Yoga, prayer, devotion to Truth and Love eliminates suffering, sometimes all at once, but usually only a little bit at a time.
4) What is death for you?
Death is the body falls apart. Consciousness is indestructible. It is like Light and “evaporates” out of the dead body, and returns to realm of energy, like electricity that returns to power generator when some appliance is unplugged from the wall outlet. Death is transition from realm of earth to realm of very subtle energies. There are three such realms of energy and the transition between them is also a death and then entering into another realm. Then is the return to birth as a human, for most souls.
5) We know we are born, we know we will die and within this temporal space we live and build up a route; for some this is lived consciously, for others unconsciously. What are your objectives in life and what do you do to realize them?
Lifelong happy marriage and creating happy families and a whole world of happy families helping each other is the GOAL. Very inexpensive to be happy this way. Much money is then shared to create schools, hospitals, and to repair life after natural disasters, famines, earthquakes, etc. No war, no animosity between people, all happy marriages and families.
6) Do we have an existential project to perform?
See 5.
7) We are social animals, our life would have no meaning without the others, notwithstanding that we live in an era where individualism is more exalted than ever. This brings about a social involution: what do you think of that?
Our era is immature. People like Freud gave modern society a map of development that is INCOMPLETE. It lied about this and claimed teenaged puberty was “final puberty of complete maturation.” This is mere self-centered ego level. Pineal puberty opens heart love for all. We must get beyond Freud. Tantra that I have translated in Eros Consciousness and Kundalini (book), Words From the Soul (book), Your Perfect Lips (book) and in On Being Moved: Kundalini and the Complete Maturation of the Ensouled Body (chapter in Internal Alchemy edited by Livia Kohn and in Journal Transpersonal Psychology Fall 2009) all describe this, with extensive bibliography.
8) How can we recognize good and evil?
Evil is more selfish and causes minimal good in the world and often causes horrible things. Good causes more good in the world. But, the world (of immature people) can treat very good people in very bad ways, out of jealousy, greed and so on. Many saints have been murdered or ruined by immature people with great “worldly power.”
9) Man has always been distressed by the unknown. Religions, and afterwards philosophies with the aid of reason, gave him some help. What help did you have?
Gurus who awaken life energy and kundalini are most important human beings. They can also heal conflicts between people and restore love, they are Peacemakers. They reveal the simple Truth of lifelong happiness and natural death and perhaps show the Light of consciousness that does not die.
10) What is for you the meaning of life?
To nourish Kundalini in self and in others and to heal conflicts in marriages, families and between large groups of people and even between whole countries, so that Humanity can live on a healthy Earth as One Loving Family.
Versione italiana: Intervista a Stuart Sovatsky
Su Amazon il libro RIFLESSIONI SUL SENSO DELLA VITA Un libro in cui sono raccolte risposte a domande esistenziali, date da diversi personaggi di cultura. L'autore è riuscito a cogliere, da ciascuno di loro, una personale considerazione su temi che coinvolgono l'intera specie umana e consentono al lettore di condividerla o confrontarla con la propria. |
