Hinduism : The Eternal Tradition Sanatana Dharma
Major Sections
Books By David Frawley
PERENNIAL WISDOM

It requires spiritual practice and realization, not merely a good education or an open mind. Without actually experiencing the Universal Truth we cannot truly talk about it. This requires purification of body and mind, while mere philosophizing, trapped as it is in the realm of ideas, can be an obstacle to it.  As thought is conditioned by time, space, causation and language, all formulations of mind must remain partial. No philosophy can or should be acceptable to everyone, any more than we must all like the same food. 

While a philosophy of the Eternal should be developed, it must remain adaptable.  It can only be preliminary, a helpful preparation of the mind. More important is an inner purification, which alone leads to real meditation, and this requires that the mind be humbled before the Infinite it can never grasp.  The idea of a tradition of universal spiritual wisdom is closer to a real eternal teaching. This idea of a universal can be found in mystical groups throughout the world which base themselves upon the pursuit of higher consciousness. 

Unfortunately, such wisdom tends to be defined on an occult level through psychic powers, magic, miracles and other subtle phenomena rather than through a deep knowledge of consciousness which is its real basis. There is a tendency to identify it with an invisible hierarchy of various ascended masters, which different groups remake in their own image. Such masters may exist - not in the form they are portrayed in the popular imagination as supermen, but as beings who have transcended the ego - but a universal tradition would not rest upon them. A universal tradition must rest on Universal Truth and its immutable laws, not on a particular set of leaders, who could never be the same for all people.

 

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