Esoteric Teaching Introductory Seminar

The Vedic Science of Consciousness

by David Bruce Hughes

Part 1-D: Vedas and Vedangas

Hello, I’m David Hughes; and this is the Esoteric Teaching Introductory Seminar continued.

So far we’ve gone over the origins of yoga, tantra and meditation, and how they are all originally found in the Vedic literatures of India. The Vedas are the sacred Sanskrit literatures of India that are actually eternal, but were written down five thousand years ago because people's memories were becoming faulty, and that would safeguard them from change and deterioration. What are the Vedas? And how do they safeguard the teachings of yoga, tantra and meditation? How are they structured? And how can we understand their meaning in present-day society? 

The Sanskrit root word ved means to know, so the Vedas are books of knowledge; actually any knowledge that leads towards spiritual development and ultimate freedom is accepted as Veda or knowledge, but specifically the Vedas are the four ancient works used in Vedic sacrifices, which were the method of self-realization in the Treta-yuga, a previous historical age. The Vedas are the foundation of Vedic culture, which is a civilization based on the principal instruction of universal self-realization; in other words the Vedas do not teach material or economic development, they don’t teach political power, and they don’t teach scientific materialism.

The four original Vedas—Rg, Sama, Yajur and Atharva—are the liturgical works used in Vedic sacrifices. The four priests would sit around the sacrificial fire and chant these four books of sacred lore while sacrifices were being offered into the fire, which is conceived of as the mouth of God. It is also considered a gateway into higher dimensions where spiritual existence is eternal, and where we are not subject to the principles of material suffering such as birth, death, old age and disease; where there’s full knowledge and perfect engagement of the soul of the service of God.

So these four Vedas, when they are chanted as liturgical works, they give rise to philosophical questions. In other words, the four Vedas do not answer the questions of philosophy, such as: Who are we? Why are we here? What is God? Where are we going after death? The four Vedas are strictly for ceremonial practices only. So even though they mention so many things about the spiritual world, they don’t explain them. If you read or hear the Vedas, any intelligent person will be left with more questions than answers. 

These questions are called Upanisad, and therefore there are many Upanisads which give philosophical questions and answers based on the four Vedas. The 108 Upanisads are only the tip of the iceberg; there are thousands of Upanisads on different subjects. But 108 Upanisads are considered the cream of the crop, and the essential questions that everyone must know, for example: Why is the soul dear? Why do we worship God? Why is God so all famous and why do we offer sacrifice? and so on and so forth. All these questions are answered perfectly in the 108 Upanisads. 

The questions and answers and philosophical questions and answers in the Upanisads is summarized in the Vedanta-sutra. Veda means knowledge and anta means the end or conclusion. Sutras are codes or short pithy expressions that give the essence of a subject without mentioning the details. The Vedanta-sutra are like meditation notes or authors notes by Vedavyäs as he wrote down all the conclusions of the Vedas in meditation. He didn’t want to break his meditation to write prose, so he wrote these pithy little notes that nowadays we scratch our heads over and try to puzzle out the meaning. But there’s really no need to do that because he wrote a perfect commentary on his own Vedanta-sutra, and this is the Esoteric Teaching that we follow. 

Once the conclusions of the Vedas are firm, then the tantras are there to give us practical instructions on how to implement them. Tantras are not just about sex; they’re about every possible concern of human life on planet earth. They are actually instructions on how to live a spiritual life in the material world, and there are over ten thousand tantras on different subjects like how to build a home, how to farm, how to manage a community, how to manage a family, how to bring up children, how to become educated, how to chose a guru, how to perform worship ceremonies, on and on and on, even science and technology—everything is included in the tantras. 

Then there are also the Puranas, puran means history and ana means ancient. So Puranas are histories of the Vedic civilization that go back thousands and thousands of years, sometimes millions of years into the past. They even explain the creation of the universe—and not just in a few verses but in a very detailed way, very scientific way, the construction of the cosmic creation and the evolution of the different species of human and non-human beings. Everything is there in the Puranas that you could ever want to know about the world, about the universe and about life. Also given in the Puranas, which is very significant are the histories on self-realized beings and how they attained their state of spiritual emancipation. These are very instructive for anyone who aspires towards spiritual advancement. 

Now all these esoteric literatures require commentaries, because for one thing they are very ancient—in fact they’re eternal, and the Vedas contain instructions for all four historical ages: Satya-yuga, Dväpara-yuga, Tretä-yuga and Kali-yuga which is our present age. However only the instructions that are meant for the Kali-yuga will do us any good; therefore we have to have commentaries for, among other things, to discriminate which of the instructions in the Vedas are appropriate for us at the present time, and which are meant for people of other times or even other planets. 

So the commentaries are called exegesis or exegetical writings, and there are four authorized Vedic lineages of these writings coming down from a very ancient time. Now many schools nowadays follow different lineages which are not authorized by the original author of the Vedas, that is Vedavyäs, Vyäsadeva. So we have to be careful which commentaries we accept, because they can very easily lead us astray and into confusion. Vaisnavas, or those following the Esoteric Teaching, only accept the commentaries written by authorized followers of the original author of the Vedas himself. That simplifies things a great deal as we’ll see in the future. And finally there are books called Vedängas or limbs of the Vedas, such as the Itihasas the Brahmanas and the Samhitas. These are mainly prayers, worship and lawbooks meant to guide people in their everyday spiritual practices and engagements in life.

Now there’s another division in the Vedas, which is very interesting, based on the three modes of material nature. The Vedas recognize that there are different kinds of people in this world, and although spiritual life is for everyone, still there are different methods appropriate to different types of people. Therefore the Vedas broadly divide the people into three types: those who are based in the mode of goodness, those who conduct the mode of passion, and those who are influenced by the mode of ignorance. And there are three principal demigods: Lord Visnu, Lord Brahma and Lord Siva respectively govern those under the mode of goodness, passion and ignorance. 

Now who are the people under it influence of the different modes and how can we recognize them? Well that’s an elaborate topic that we will cover in the Initiates' Course, but for now we can understand that Vaisnavas, yogis, brahmanas and Vedic scholars are people in the mode of goodness. They’re generally nonviolent, vegetarians, deeply thoughtful and contemplative people; people who practice meditation and yoga, not superficially but deeply, with the aim of self-realization or emancipation from material suffering. These are people n the mode of goodness. 

The people in the mode of passion are generally materialists, religionists, fruitive workers, scientists, tradesmen, businessmen, people like that; people who are working for material goals, and you’ll find these people are generally mundane religionists. They follow a human-made religion, a religion that has a past, was started at a particular place and time. In other words they are not following sanatana-dharma (the eternal religion of the Vedas) but they are following some mundane religion. They consider themselves members of a certain race or a certain country. They organize themselves into different types of groups that compete with one another for material advantages. And thus we see that the history of human kind is largely driven by the mode of passion. 

And finally we have the people in the mode of ignorance; and these are demoniac people, people who are driven by their senses. Demons, ghosts, sensualists, madmen, people who are addicted to intoxication, people who do strange and perverted things—these are people who are influenced by the mode of darkness or ignorance, and their only joy in life is to sleep. These are people driven by the mode of darkness and governed by Lord Siva. 

Now these three kinds of people also, as you’d expect, have three kinds of religion. The people in the mode of goodness they follow the eternal sanatana-dharma, the path of spirituality. In other words they are after a personal direct experience of God through meditation. People in the mode of passion, they follow mundane religion as we already discussed; and the people in the mode of ignorance, they follow magic you know black arts, voodoo, things like that. 

So those who are involved in the different modes of material nature have different Vedic literatures that are designed just for them. So, not the Vedas themselves, or the Upanisads or Vedanta—those are transcendental—but all the other Vedic literatures: the Puranas the Itihasas the Brahmanas the Tantras are divided into three categories according to the modes of material nature. Those who are following the mode of goodness are vegetarians and are following the rules and regulations of spiritual life, and they avoid contact with the material energy as far as possible. Those who are in the mode of passion, they’re interested in religion for material purposes; they want wealth, power, prestige, fame and knowledge, so they perform religious sacrifices for those purposes. And those people in the mode of ignorance, they perform religious or spiritual work for the purpose of cursing others, hurting others and casting magic spells, and so on like that. 

So the Vedas are divided into three groups of literatures, and different methods are prescribed for these three different groups of people. Now the Esoteric Teaching is actually above all these three; it is for people who have been practicing in the mode of goodness for some time—yoga, meditating and things like that—and who want complete release from material existence. People who actually want to find their spiritual eternal identity, people who want to go back to the spiritual world and leave this material world of suffering forever. That is the nature of the Esoteric Teaching, and that is the type of person that this teaching is aimed at.

So again the point here is that we must become familiar with the Vedic literature if were going to understand yoga, meditation, tantra and allied subjects. The Vedas or Vedic literature in general are both the source and the context for all these teachings and practices. And here’s a very, very important point: any system or technology which is taken out side of its intended context basically becomes useless for its intended purposes. Let me give you an example: suppose I have a very nice computer and I take this computer into the middle of the jungle in Brazil, in the rainforest, OK? Now I have this wonderful computer but I cant plug it in, I don’t have any Internet access, I don’t have any software, I can't go down the street and get a new mouse or other peripherals, so my wonderful computer is basically useless

The same is true of yoga, tantra and other spiritual technology which comes from the Vedas, but if we take it outside the context of Vedic culture it basically becomes useless for its intended purposes. You’ll find we come back to this point over and over again because its really important; it determines whether or not we can use the things we learn about yoga, meditation and so forth. In order to be successful in yoga or spiritual life we must perform the practices within culture of Vedic sanatana-dharma or eternal religion. That is, we must be living in a place which is a little removed from general society, and we must be in contact with a disciplic lineage of the Vedas which is approved by the original author of the Vedas and which follows his conclusions and his understanding. 

The Esoteric Teaching is the teaching going back to the original author of the Vedas , Srila Vyäsadeva; it is one of the four disciplic lineages that he started. The other three are still going on in India but they are basically inaccessible to Westerners. So if we’re going to become real students of yoga and get the result of yoga that’s intended in the original literatures, then we have to study from a teacher in the original disciplic line from the author of the Vedas. That makes sense doesn’t it? It sure does to me. 

So if we try to practice yoga or tantra outside the context of the Vedic literature or Vedic culture we will certainly get it wrong, and we will certainly will not get the result that yoga can actually give us. Yoga is a tremendously powerful discipline, to simply use yoga to trim your figure or to increase you physical endurance is like using a 747 to go down to the corner store; I mean it just a ridiculous thing, this is not what yoga was designed to do. Although this is one of the side benefits of practicing yoga it is not the purpose of yoga. Yoga means to bring us face-to-face with God; that’s the real meaning of yoga. 

It comes from Sanskrit word yukt which means to hook up, to join; like you would use it for hitching up a cart to a horse, you would say yukt. So yoga is that which joins; well, what does it join? It joins the individual soul with the Supersoul, it joins the person to his origin, it joins the soul with God; that’s the real meaning of yoga, and that’s how we will use the word from now on in these Seminars, because that’s the Vedic definition of the term. 

OK: yoga is a far grander and powerful thing than the people down in the corner yoga center are going to teach you, because they will not give you access to the original source codes of yoga in the Vedas. However the Esoteric Teaching is the summery of those codes. In our advanced classes we do give you access to the source codes and the means to interpret those codes for daily living today. 

So stay with us and as we go deeper into the Esoteric Teaching you will learn all these things, not only in theory but in practice.