2-19-98 SWAMI PRAJNANAPADA AND SIMONE WEIL: TWO MODERN DAY CONTRIBUTORS TO THE ART OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL LIVING

Honoring the differences which permeate manifest existence is easier said than done. There is a very strong egoic tendency in most people to want everyone to agree with them on what they deem to be essential matters, even though this attitude cultures boredom as well as friction. Two great individuals who focused on the need to appreciate differences in others were Swami Prajanapada and Simone Weil.

Swami Prajnanapada was a Vedic teacher who never spoke to groups because he felt anything worthwhile needed to be communicated on a one to one basis, so as to honor individual differences in approach to spirit, mind and body. Such a strategy would probably have guaranteed his anonymity had not one of his disciples decided to publish a book about his life and teachings entitled "Talks By Swami Prajnanapada.

Many Vedic teachers have sought to emphasize the principle of oneness without being able to properly articulate the archetypal differences which make up life and serve as the fabric of this oneness. This inability was primarily due to the loss of a true astrological science, which could have effectively highlighted these differences displayed in the lives of great and ordinary people. The fact that Swami Prajnanapada could clearly reinstate this principle without the technology provided by The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, demonstrates his spiritual genius and explains why he is a forerunner to the subjective science I now promote.

Another forerunner was Simone Weil, the great French thinker and activist, who suggested that honoring differences in others includes the practice of removing one's self from the central stage when dealing with others or the natural world, by letting them exist in their own right rather than as something useful to us. To Weil, this is the meaning of love -- consciously divesting ourselves of self-interest and self-protection, or what Da Avabhasa calls "the process of self-contraction.

This process of releasing self-contraction is made much easier with the advent of The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, because now we can observe how these differences play out in the lives of great and ordinary people. Clearly seeing archetypal differences automatically results in first appreciation for them, and later, an honoring of them in daily life.