Bhagavan

The Personality of Godhead, who possesses in full the six opulences (bhagas) of perfection—strength, fame, beauty, knowledge, renunciation, and power to control.

(See also: Bhagavan , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Advaita Siddhanta: (Sanskrit) "Nondual perfect conclusions." Saivite philosophy codified in the Agamas which has at its core the nondual (advaitic) identity of God, soul and world. This monistic-theistic philosophy, unlike the Shankara, or Smarta view, holds that maya (the principle of manifestation) is not an obstacle to God Realization, but God's own power and presence guiding the soul's evolution to perfection. While Advaita Vedanta stresses Upanishadic philosophy, Advaita Siddhanta adds to this a strong emphasis on internal and external worship, yoga sadhanas and tapas. Advaita Siddhanta is a term used in South India to distinguish Tirumular's school from the pluralistic Siddhanta of Meykandar and Aghorasiva. This unified Vedic-Agamic doctrine is also known as Shuddha Saiva Siddhanta. It is the philosophy of this contemporary Hindu catechism. See: Advaita Ishvaravada, dvaitaadvaita, monistic theism, Saiva Siddhanta.

(See also: Advaita Siddhanta , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

RIGHT-HAND PATH - journey to wisdom based on faith, light and avoidance of sensual pleasures; the perfection’s. (NAD)

(See also: RIGHT , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Yogi:

One who practices yoga; also, one who has attained perfection through yogic practices.

(See also: Yogi , Kundalini, Kundalini Yoga, Kundalini Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Ten Pythagorean Virtues. Virtues of Initiation, &c., necessary before admission.

(See " Pythagoras ".) They are identical with those prescribed by Manu, and the Buddhist Paramitas

of Perfection.

(See also: Ten Pythagorean Virtues , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

1. Bharata

The second brother of Lord Ramachandra. When Bharata’s mother, Kaikeyi, obliged her husband to send Rama into exile and give the throne to Bharata instead, Bharata placed Rama’s shoes on the throne and ruled as His representative until Rama returned.

The eldest son of Rishabhadeva. He was close to achieving pure love of God but became attracted to a helpless deer and so himself had to be born a deer. Then once again he was born as the seemingly dull brahmana Jada Bharata. In this third life he instructed King Rahugana and achieved ultimate perfection.

The son of Dushmanta (Dushyanta) and Sakuntala.

(See also: Bharata , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

bhakti yoga: n (Sanskrit) "Union through devotion." Bhakti yoga is the practice of devotional disciplines, worship, prayer, chanting and singing with the aim of awakening love in the heart and opening oneself to God's grace. Bhakti may be directed toward God, Gods or one's spiritual preceptor.

Bhakti yoga seeks communion and ever closer rapport with the Divine, developing qualities that make communion possible, such as love, selflessness and purity. Saint Sambandar described bhakti as religion's essence and the surest means to divine union and liberation. He advised heartfelt worship, unstinting devotion and complete surrender to God in humble, committed service. From the beginning practice of bhakti to advanced devotion, called prapatti, self-effacement is an intricate part of Hindu, even all Indian, culture.

Bhakti yoga is embodied in Patanjali's Yoga Darshana in the second limb, niyamas (observances), as devotion (Ishvarapranidhana). Bhakti yoga is practiced in many Hindu schools, and highly developed in Vaishnavism as a spiritual path in itself, leading to perfection and liberation. In Saiva Siddhanta, its cultivation is the primary focus during the kriya pada (stage of worship).

See: bhakti yoga, prapatti, sacrifice, surrender, yajna.

(See also: Bhakti yoga , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Advaita-vada - the doctrine of non-dualism, monism - the doctrine that emphasizes the absolute oneness of the living entities with God. This is often equated with the Mayavada theory that everything is ultimately one; that there is no distinction whatsoever between the Supreme Absolute and the individual living entities; that the Supreme is devoid of form, personality, qualities, and activities; and that perfection is to merg oneself into the all-pervading impersonal brahma. This doctrine was propagated by Sri Sankaracarya.

(See also: Advaita-vada , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Epicureans

Followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC). The Epicurean school in Athens consisted of a number of people living together in accordance with the master's teachings.

Most of our knowledge of these teachings comes from Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers and Lucretius's On Nature. Epicurean physics derived from the atomism of Democritus: there exists nothing but atoms moving in void, and their rearrangement accounts for all change. Our cosmos is one of many such temporary arrangements of atoms, brought into being by purely natural forces. Our souls are also perishable collections of atoms, perceiving the world by means of the atoms emanating from the surfaces of objects.

Perfect, imperishable, blessed gods exist, but, contrary to popular opinion, their perfection entails that they cannot have any projects or concerns and so do not intervene in our world. It is good for human beings to respect and admire these beings but not to expect rewards or punishments from them.

Epicureanism was concerned, above all, with ethics, with providing a practical guide to living a happy life. Notoriously, Epicureans saw this as a matter of fulfilling the natural human desire for pleasure. But contrary to the ancient prejudices against them, they did not advocate a life of reckless, sensual pleasure seeking. Rather, they recommended only those pleasures caused by the satisfaction of natural, necessary desires (e. g. , for food) and not those that are unnecessary or involve pain (e. g. , desire for delicious but unhealthy food). The ideally happy life was one of bodily health and "freedom from anxiety. "

(See also: Epicureans , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Kshanti (Sanskrit). Patience, one of the Paramitas of perfection.

(See also: Kshanti , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Parashakti: (Sanskrit) "Supreme power; primal energy."

God Siva's second perfection, which is impersonal, immanent, and with form - the all-pervasive, Pure Consciousness and Primal Substance of all that exists. There are many other descriptive names for Parashakti - Satchidananda ("existence-consciousness-bliss"), light, silence, divine mind, superconsciousness and more. Parashakti can be experienced by the diligent yogi or meditator as a merging in, or identification with, the underlying oneness flowing through all form. The experience is called savikalpa samadhi.

See: raja yoga, Shakti, Satchidananda, tattva.

(See also: Parashakti , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Patanjali: (Sanskrit) "Possessed of reverence."

A Saivite Natha siddha (ca 200 bce) who codified the ancient yoga philosophy which outlines the path to enlightenment through purification, control and transcendence of the mind. One of the six classical philosophical systems (darshanas) of Hinduism, known as Yoga Darshana. His great work, the Yoga Sutras, comprises 200 aphorisms delineating ashtanga (eight-limbed), raja (kingly) or siddha (perfection) yoga. Still today it is the foremost text on meditative yoga.

See: Kailasa Parampara, raja yoga, shad darshana, yoga, Patanjali yoga sutras, patanjali.

(See also: Patanjali , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Gayatri or Savitri (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root ga to sing)

A verse of the Rig-Veda (III, 62, 10): Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi dhiyo yo nah prachodayat, "Let us meditate on that excellent splendor of the divine sun; may it illumine (inspire) our hearts (minds)."

Every orthodox Brahmin is supposed to repeat this archaic hymn, at least mentally, at both his morning and evening religious devotions. An explanatory paraphrase, giving the inner meaning of the Gayatri is: O thou golden sun of most excellent splendor, illumine our hearts and fill our minds, so that we, recognizing our oneness with the divinity which is the heart of the universe, may see the pathway before our feet, and tread it to those distant goals of perfection stimulated by thine own radiant light.

"First it (the light of the Logos) is the life, or the Mahachaitanyam of the cosmos; that is one aspect of it; secondly, it is force, and in this aspect it is the Fohat of the Buddhist philosophy; lastly, it is wisdom, in the sense that it is the Chichakti (Chichchakti)

of the Hindu philosophers. All these three aspects are . . . combined in our conception of the Gayatri" (N on BG 90).

(See also: Gayatri, Savitri , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Astrology (Ancient Greek) The Science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the position of the stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of human learning.

It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its final expression remains so to this day, its exoteric application having been brought to any degree of perfection in the West only during the period of time since Varaha Muhira wrote his book on Astrology some 1400 years ago. Claudius Ptolemy, the famous geographer and mathematician, wrote his treatise Tetrabiblos about 135 A.D., which is still the basis of modern astrology.

The science of Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads: viz.,

(1) Mundane, in its application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry, etc.

(2) State or civic, in regard to the fate of nations, kings and rulers.

(3) Horary, in reference to the solving of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject.

(4) Genethliacal, in its application to the fate of individuals from the moment of their birth to their death.

The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern practices differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the Chaldees, a scion of the divine Dynasty, or the Dynasty of the king-gods, had belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it, to found a colony from Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple ministered by priests in the service of the "lords of the stars" was built, the said priests adopting the name of Chaldees.

Two things are known:

(a) that Thebes (in Egypt) claimed the honour of the invention of Astrology; and

(b) that it was the Chaldees who taught that science to the other nations.

Now Thebes antedated considerably not only "Ur of the Chaldees", but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped - Sin, his son (the moon), being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the Sabean and Astrolatrer, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of biblical tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim.

If later on the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing to the fraud of those who wanted to make money by means of that which was part and parcel of the sacred Science of the Mysteries, and, ignorant of the latter, evolved a system based entirely upon mathematics, instead of on transcendental metaphysics and having the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of the adherents of Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very great.

If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then its later votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted form. As said in Isis Unveiled (1. 259): "Astrology is to exact astronomy what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit." (See " Astronomos.")

(See also: Astrology , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

A Theosophical definition of Nirvana :

Nirvana

(Sanskrit) This is a compound: nir, "out," and vana, the past participle passive of the root va, "to blow," literallly meaning "blown out." So badly has the significance of the ancient Indian thought (and even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many years erudite European scholars were discussing whether being "blown out" meant actual entitative annihilation or not. But the being blown out refers only to the lower principles in man.

Nirvana is a very different thing from the "heavens." Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete, untrammeled consciousness, a state of absorption in pure kosmic Being, and is the wondrous destiny of those who have reached superhuman knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really is personal-individual absorption into or rather identification with the Self  - the highest SELF. It is also the state of the monadic entities in the period that intervenes between minor manvantaras or rounds of a planetary chain; and more fully so between each seven-round period or Day of Brahma, and the succeeding day or new kalpa of a planetary chain. At these last times, starting forth from the seventh sphere in the seventh round, the monadic entities will have progressed far beyond even the highest state of devachan. Too pure and too far advanced even for such a condition as the devachanic felicity, they go to their appropriate sphere and condition, which latter is the nirvana following the end of the seventh round.

Devachan and nirvana are not localities. They are states, states of the beings in those respective spiritual conditions. Devachan is the intermediate state; nirvana is the superspiritual state; and avichi, popularly called the lowest of the hells, is the nether pole of the spiritual condition. These three are states of beings having habitat in the lokas or talas, in the worlds of the kosmic egg.

So far as the individual human being is concerned, the nirvanic state or condition may be attained to by great spiritual seers and sages, such as Gautama the Buddha, and even by men less progressed than he; because in these cases of the attaining of the nirvana even during a man's life on earth, the meaning is that one so attaining has through evolution progressed so far along the path that all the lower personal part of him is become thoroughly impersonalized, the personal has put on the garment of impersonality, and such a man thereafter lives in the nirvanic condition of the spiritual monad.

As a concluding thought, it must be pointed out that nirvana, while the ultima thule of the perfection to be attained by any human being, nevertheless stands less high in the estimate of mystics than the condition of the bodhisattva. For the bodhisattva, although standing on the threshold of nirvana and seeing and understanding its ineffable glory and peace and rest, nevertheless retains his consciousness in the worlds of men, in order to consecrate his vast faculties and powers to the service of all that is. The buddhas in their higher parts enter the nirvana, in other words, assume the dharmakaya state or vesture, whereas the bodhisattva assumes the nirmanakaya vesture, thereafter to become an ever-active and compassionate and beneficent influence in the world. The buddha indeed may be said to act indirectly and by long distance control, thus indeed helping the world diffusively or by diffusion; but the bodhisattva acts directly and positively and with a directing will in works of compassion, both for the world and for individuals.

See also: Nirvana , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Parasiva: (Sanskrit) "Transcendent Siva."

The Self God, Siva in His first perfection, Absolute Reality. God Siva as That which is beyond the grasp of consciousness, transcends time, form and space and defies description. To merge with Him in mystic union is the goal of all incarnated souls, the reason for their living on this planet, and the deepest meaning of their experiences. Attainment of this is called Self Realization or nirvikalpa samadhi.

See: samadhi, Siva.

(See also: Parasiva , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

void: An empty space. Philosophically, emptiness itself.

The absence of time, form and space. God Siva in His

perfection as Parasiva, as a sacred void, but not "like the

emptiness inside of an empty box....[It] is the fullness of

everything."

See: Parasiva.

(See also: Void , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

sadhana-siddhi

the achievement of perfection by the practice of regulated devotional service.

(See also: sadhana-siddhi , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

mantra:

mantra (manthra). Sacred syllable or word(s) to be repeated (often silently) for attaining perfection or self-realization; a mystic formula for spiritual enlightenment.

(See also: mantra , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Dhyana (Sanskrit). In Buddhism one of the six Paramitas of perfection, a state of abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above this plane of sensuous perception and out of the world of matter.

Lit., "contemplation". The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.

(See also: Dhyana , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Sadhya, susiddha, siddha and ari - These are four kinds of dosa (faults) calculated according to jyotisa-sastra concerning the nature of a sisya in accordance with his purva-karma. Some of them appear to be good qualities, but from the absolute perspective, anyone who takes a material birth has fault.

In this context sadhya indicates that the candidate has the adhikara to attain  prema-bhakti if he endeavors fully in this life. Susiddha has the adhikara to attain perfection with very little endeavor and siddha has somewhat less  adhikara than him. Ari indicates that the sisya has so many ari (inauspicious planets) in his chart that almost any endeavor he makes for bhaktiwill simply create further hindrances. However, when these four kinds of sisyas accept krsna-mantra from sad-guru all of their hindrances can be removed.

(See also: Dosa , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

What is perfection?
Some people say nothing is perfect, does this apply to the creation of the Universe also?

Kalki, or Sri Kalki Bhagavan, the founder of Golden Age Foundation, is considered to be the Kalki Avatar capable of bringing enlightenment and to introduce the Golden Age. Here he is commenting on Perfection.

Read more here: » Kalki on Perfection