Esoteric Teaching Introductory Seminar

The Vedic Science of Consciousness

by David Bruce Hughes

Part 1-E: The Disciplic Succession

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

In our last video we talked about the Vedas as the context of the Esoteric Teaching and of yoga, meditation, tantra and other spiritual practices. Now in this section I’d like to enlarge on that point, and give a little bit more detail on how the teachings fit together. 

As I said before, the Esoteric Teaching and the Vedic literature are the content and context, you cannot separate one from the other. The Esoteric Teaching is coming down through the chain of enlightened masters, Master Teachers, from one generation to the next. It’s a living teaching, it’s a mystery, and a mystery school forms around each Master Teacher in turn. So this is the living transmission of the Esoteric Teaching. At the same time we have the literary transmission of the Esoteric Teaching through the Vedic literatures; one cannot exist without the other. The literary teaching will be misunderstood unless there is a living Master Teacher to exemplify it and to pass on the state of consciousness given by the Esoteric Teaching in person. At the same time the lineage of the Esoteric Teaching could not exist without the context of the Vedic literature to give it background, and also to safeguard it from alterations.

So just as trying to study yoga and tantra outside the context of the Esoteric Teaching is sure to lead to false results, similarly any attempt to study the Esoteric Teaching outside the context of the Vedic literatures is going to lead to total confusion. Now obviously we cannot reconstruct the Vedic civilization as it was five thousand years ago when the Vedic literatures were put to paper. But we can understand their intent and purpose, and with the help of the contemporary self-realized Master Teacher, we can adjust the Teaching to the time and circumstance in order to get the same result. The Master Teacher knows the result and personifies that result; therefore we can be sure to get the original result by following the instructions of the Master Teacher in the context of the Vedic literatures of the Esoteric Teaching. 

Unfortunately, so far in the West, only a handful of teachers have given the original complete Esoteric Teachings of yoga and tantra. Most have only given disconnected fragments and have not made reference to the original literatures, so we have no way of verifying the fidelity of their teaching. 

Any spiritual teaching is simply a means to an end, just like an automobile or an airplane is a means to transport your body from one place to another. Similarly yoga and tantra are a means of changing our consciousness from conditioned material consciousness to blissful, free unconditioned spiritual consciousness. So the idea for using yoga simply for physical conditioning is very limiting, it's ignorant really; it ignores the true potential of yoga, which is to mitigate all material sufferings. Similarly the idea of tantra of being just about sex is completely misleading; the sexual teachings of tantra are only a very small part of the entire canon of the Tantras, and they are part of the tantras that is very, very difficult to practice in today’s atmosphere. So anyone who tries to practice the tantras has to be familiar with the complete Tantric literature, and they have to also be aware of the threefold division of the Vedas into goodness, passion and ignorance that we discussed before. And they need to put the emphasis on the parts of the Vedic literature that teach goodness rather than passion or ignorance, then they’ll really start to get some really good results. 

So why is there so much confusion in the West about the Vedic teaching and the Esoteric Teachings and their meaning? Because anytime you take anything out of its context you change the meaning, actually you lose the meaning completely. So by taking yoga and tantra out of the Vedic culture we have transformed them from powerful vehicles of self-realization to disempowered, disconnected, misunderstood teachings that can only end in futility and failure.

Remember, the Esoteric Teaching in particular and the Vedic literatures in general are not a sectarian, religious or spiritual path; they are universal and they are eternal. They were written down five thousand years ago, but that’s only because in Kali-yuga people can't remember things properly, so the original teaching would have been lost. Even so, because people don’t follow the original teachings of the Vedanta, the original writings of the Vedas and the actual meaning of the Esoteric Teachings, all the spiritual technologies imported from India have been more or less destroyed in the West. 

The real method of handing down Vedic knowledge from one generation to the next is through the disciplic succession of self-realized Master Teachers. In the Vedas this is called paramparä. Paramparä means disciplic succession; in other words the original teaching was given by Krsna and it was written down by Vyäsadeva in the four Vedas and the other Vedic literatures. These literatures and their practices were passed down in four lineages and these four lineages still continue to the present day, however three of them are inaccessible to Westerners and the rest of the world, and are only available in India. So the one bone fide disciplic succession that remains available to the entire world is the Esoteric Teaching, and this is the only vehicle that has all of the original complete instructions on yoga, tantra, meditation and spiritual life. 

The Teaching has to be handed down from a living Teacher to a disciple who practices it and becomes enlightened; then the real meaning of the teaching is displayed in the life and character of the disciple. That disciple goes on to become a teacher or even a Master Teacher, and in that way the teaching is propagated. The original source literatures have to be translated into contemporary language so that anyone who reads them can understand, and it was only recently, within twenty-five years, that the original scriptures of the Esoteric Teaching have become available in the English language. So, we can understand from this that the literature on yoga, tantra, meditation and so forth that was distributed in the West before these translations became available is more or less bogus; by bogus I mean inaccurate biased, misleading and incomplete.

The specific quality of the Esoteric Teaching is that when a qualified Master Teacher is speaking them and a qualified student is hearing them, they become sweeter and sweeter and more relishable and you can hear them over and over and over again and never grow tired of them. In fact, repeated hearing only deepens one's realization and bliss. So we can understand that the actual Esoteric Teaching is a transcendental experience of association between a Master Teacher and a disciple. This is the eternal drama of the teaching; this is the eternal drama of enlightenment and liberation from material existence, and it is still going on today as it shall go on forever. If we accept the Esoteric Teaching as it is, without our own misguided deletion, addition or misinterpretation, then we shall get not only material benefits such as peace and prosperity, we shall also get spiritual benefits such as compassion, love, insight, illumination, emancipation, liberation, timeless knowledge and eternal bliss. This is the source of all benefits, and it is the actual civilizing agent that has guided the growth and evolution of humanity since time immemorial. 

This Teaching does not require belief, because belief is a form of hypocrisy. Some people say, "I believe in this religion or that religion," but then someone comes along and convinces them and they take up another religion, we’ve seen this. So what is that belief? A person says "I believe in this scripture or that teaching or this savior or that religion," but do they follow all the teachings of that religion? No, this is hypocrisy; so we do not ask you to believe, we ask you to have faith that there is a path that leads to the highest goal, and to walk that path and in this way develop knowledge. Trust can only come from knowledge, love can only exist in an atmosphere of trust. 

Therefore we ask you to try the Esoteric Teaching. It is not an ordinary religion, its not an ordinary spiritual path; for example the writings of the Esoteric Teaching are encoded in very wonderful Sanskrit poetry. If you acquire some knowledge and appreciation of Sanskrit, you will see that these literatures are far and away the most beautiful, poetic and exalted literatures of all the planet. Not only that, but that are encoded with a checksum system similar to that used to the upkeep of filing technology in computer networks, and by this means their transmission from generation to generation without alteration was assured. This method of checksum has only been discovered in Western science in the last fifty years, but it's been known by the Esoteric Teaching forever. So just how advanced is this Teaching?

So this Teaching has been handed down through four different disciplic lineages or paramparas since the beginning of he universe. However in recent times, due to the interference of colonial governments and the use of disinformation and propaganda, this Teaching has been broken and its public manifestations have deviated from their original exalted goals. This is a tragedy that has affected the entire planet, and this was the reason for the formation of the Brotherhood of the Esoteric Teaching: to safeguard and if necessary hide the original source materials on this Teaching, so they would not be changed or damaged in any way; and at the proper time, then disseminate these teachings to the entire world. 

So we are representative of the Brotherhood of the Esoteric Teaching deputed with the assignment to bring the Teaching out and to disseminate it all over the world via the internet. This is the time of the calling; you're being called to serve as a laborer in a great harvest, and just as the laborers in the harvest in the field have no lack of grain, similarly anyone who shares in the work of this harvest shall not lack for anything material or spiritual. Even though we’re going through a time great trouble, devastation and confusion, those who follow the esoteric path will always be protected; Krsna promises this in the Bhagavad-gita. He says "I always protect My devotee," and we experienced this directly in the recent storm Katrina; even though our temple is on the top of a hill, nothing happened to it, even though places near by were totally devastated. So we could understand that because we are doing this special work of the Esoteric Teaching, everything in the scriptures was confirmed and we are protected from harm as long as we follow accurately. Those who don’t follow accurately, we can't say what’s going to happen to them; but we know that those who follow are protected, guided and loved. 

I’ll tell you a secret. This is not in any book, but comes from my own experience: that the human being needs love, more love and more compassion, more caring that is available from any being in the material world. Here in the material world we're limited; our intelligence is covered by this material body and this false material identity. We can not give even the love that really is there in our hearts. So no human being or no material entity can give the kind of love and the amount of love that is needed by the real spirit soul; this love can only come from God, and the Esoteric Teaching brings us directly into contact with God by means of mystic powers and mantras. 

By chanting these mantras you get access to the heart of God and to His power of infinite ecstasy, and you become linked in a network of love that extents to infinity in all directions. You actually become connected by a transcendental means of communication bigger than the Internet, faster than light, faster even than the mind. So all of us in this Esoteric Teaching are united. We are here to implement the purpose of God in this world, which is that everyone should be peaceful, prosperous and happy. Without love, who can be happy? And human love is not enough, therefore we practice our spiritual teachings to be situated in the love of God; this is the real meaning of the Esoteric Teaching.