The spiritual teachers OM C. Parkin, Dr. Jacques Vigne, and Mary Angelon Young are the speakers at the foundation’s international conference in September 2024 at Gut Saunstorf Monastery: “Knowledge and Devotion – the Ascending and Descending Spiritual Paths.”
In the following interview, they each answered three questions that concern the distinction and unification of the two paths on the inner journey, providing insight into the teachings they will convey during the weekend.
OM C. Parkin
OM is a spiritual master, mystic, philosopher and book author as well as the initiator of the OM Foundation Inner Science. His teaching of the silent tradition is based on the Eastern advaita tradition (teaching of non-duality) and the teachings of the Integral Yoga.
1. “Knowledge and Devotion – the Ascending and Descending Spiritual Paths” is the title of our conference. What do you see as the essential distinction between the path of devotion and the path of knowledge?
OM: All existing spiritual paths are either paths of knowledge or paths of devotion. They are two different gateways into reality: through the male soul, or through the female soul. Only in the beginning can they be travelled separately. Ultimately, all paths lead to union.
2. What difficulties do you see for a seeker in the process of unification of these two paths?
OM: Every ordinary person is identified with the thinking mind, which thinks linearly and creates a world of opposites. The ordinary mind initially interprets these two paths as opposites. This leads to incompatibilities. A quiet mind is required in order to experience how the imagined opposites become one.
3. What essence of your teaching would you like to convey to the participants at the conference?
OM: The Inner Wedding.
Dr. Jacques Vigne
Jacques is a French psychatrist. After his studies, he went to India. There he studied yoga and traditional Indian philosophy at the University in Varanasi. Then he lived for a decade with his master Swami Vijayânanda, a close Western disciple of the sage Mâ Anandamayî.
1. “Knowledge and Devotion – the Ascending and Descending Spiritual Paths” is the title of our conference. What do you see as the essential distinction between the path of devotion and the path of knowledge?is?
Jacques: This question recalls to me a gesture of Mâ Anandamayî. When my master Swami Vijayânanda, who spent almost 60 years in Mâ’s ashrams doing intense sadhana, spoke to her about the awakening of energy, she put her two index fingers together vertically but in opposite directions and said, “Kama-krodha and Bhagavan ki shakti, this is how it is!” In other words, “Intense desire and anger, in relation to the Lord’s energy, are like this!” Whether one follows the path of devotion or the path of knowledge, purification of the mind is a foundation and accompanies one all along the way. All spiritual paths of India are paths of purification, including Vedanta.
2. What difficulties do you see for a seeker in the process of unification of these two paths?
Jacques: Mâ Anandamayî said: “When one realises God, one realises the Self; when one realises the Self, one realises God”. The path of devotion enables an intense transformation of emotions and accustoms to concentration; the path of realisation has a direct, easy aspect, it is compared to a parrot which, unlike other birds, makes no detours and goes straight to its destination. They are two sides of the same coin.
3. What essence of your teaching would you like to convey to the participants at the conference?
Jacques: I don’t have an original teaching, I try to pass on the two teachings that have most influenced me: that of Swami Vijayânanda, who was very close to Mâ Anandamayî and with whom I was for 25 years until he left his body in 2010, and that of Tenzin Palmo, with whom I have been connected since 2010. A fundamental message could be that of Confucius and Mencius 15 centuries ago, which the Dalai Lama takes up again today: If we want to be happy and make others happy, we should develop the two basic qualities of human beings: Mindfulness and benevolence.
Mary Angelon Young
Mary Angelon has been practicing and studying a synthesis of Bhakti and Tantra – associated with the wandering, radical mystics of Bengal, the Bauls – under the guidance of her American teacher Lee Lozowick (1943-2010).
1. “Knowledge and Devotion – the Ascending and Descending Spiritual Paths” is the title of our conference. What do you see as the essential distinction between the path of devotion and the path of knowledge?
In the ultimate sense there is no distinction between the paths of knowledge and devotion or ascending and descending, which are often called jnana and bhakti or even masculine and feminine. As pairs of opposites, they are two sides of one gold coin; if either path is lived fully, to its truest possibility, without rejecting the other, then each path contains and reveals the seed, bud, and flower of its opposite.
The path of knowledge is essentially non-theistic; it seeks clarity of mind and intention through peeling away layers of identity, renouncing the self and shedding attachment to realize the truth of nonduality. Methods focus on a more “masculine” (not referring to gender) mode aimed toward a direct experience of Reality: meditation, austere disciplines, inquiry (“Who am I?”) and study on a “via negativa”—or neti neti—“not this, not this”—path. Most forms of nondual practice assert that all we see and experience is unreal, empty and illusory, including any images of the Absolute as Divinity or a personal God. Key precepts: Nonduality, Masculine, Realization, Being, Ultimate Reality, Infinity.
The path of devotion is essentially theistic or polytheistic; it seeks to soften, open and awaken the heart as the doorway to the Divine as personal Beloved. Methods focus on mantra, ritual, chanting, prayer, creativity, and devotion to deity as means to a direct experience of Divinity. As a “via positiva,” created beings, things, and experiences of Life are perceived as Real—the lila of the Divine. Through various means of worship, divine moods (rasa) arise in praise of the Divine in form and in formlessness. Key precepts: Enlightened Duality, Feminine, Awakening, Becoming, Grace, Divinity.
2. What difficulties do you see for a seeker in the process of unification of these two paths?
Both ascending and descending paths are necessary; both have potential fixations, delusions and dead ends. Fundamentalism and rigid conceptualizing is a powerful obstacle on both paths. Because the religions and dominant culture of our times are embedded in a bias toward “masculine” values, means and ends, even the sincerest among us tend to place one path over the other, as if one is prior to or superior to the other. This very bias denies the totality and wholeness of the gold coin, and when one polarity is repressed and denied, the other will be twisted and in shadow, resulting in layers and complexes of delusion.
On the nondual path the sacredness of Creation and of the human experience is often negated and repressed, or the practice becomes dry, intellectual, and rigid, repressing the intuitive and feeling functions. On the path of devotion, it becomes difficult to access clarity and self-agency if we become bound up in projections on one’s teacher or guru as the object of devotion. Too often “devotees” become zealots or blind followers, avoiding personal responsibility, self-knowledge and reality as it is and hiding in the “safe place” of a spiritual community or ashram.
3. What essence of your teaching would you like to convey to the participants at the conference?
The practice of tantra involves both ascending and descending paths of practice in daily life, and yet tantra focuses on the feminine aspect. My teacher, Lee, called this the perspective of Enlightened Duality; he spoke of the feminine aspect as “the only doorway to God.”
The human heart both feels and knows; through an inner yoga of the heart, we come into direct experience of both Infinity and Divinity. The spiritual heart is a mystical tangent point, a liminal “betwixt and between” wherein the alchemical tension between the opposites awakens Goddess Awareness within the vessel of one’s humanity. Holding the tension of paradox, staying present in both ascending and descending experiences of the path, at some point distinctions between knowledge and devotion become meaningless in the dance of RadhaKrishna; the path itself is revealed as a living mystery.
