The Expanded View: Exploring Sacred Wisdom and the Way to Lasting Joy

By Laura A. Brusca

The Expanded View by Laura A. Brusca guides the reader toward a broader understanding of sacred teachings asserted by spiritually enlightened masters and mystics, revealing key principles that take us beyond spiritual development to complete conscious expansion. This book moves us past ordinary belief and explores belief founded on wisdom while confirming that we can live beyond the confines of duality in a space of oneness, also known as Advaita. The Expanded View also highlights language barriers that block us from true understanding and keep us confined in limited beliefs. Laura brings an inspiring message through commentaries on the revelations of multiple spiritual exponents who seek to guide us out of darkness and into a world of unencumbered joy. She attempts to bring new insight and understanding of spiritual scripture that has been honored and worshiped by many but often misunderstood. It is her mission, not to necessarily change, but widen the view to which we see our universe and empower our quest for enlightenment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667837147

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Everyone wants to be happy—everyone. Yes, even masochists want pain to be satisfied, fulfill a need, in order to be happy. Happiness is our inherent yearning for fulfillment in some form, to gain pleasure or to avoid pain. We believe we will be fulfilled through material pleasures, but these successes will not cause lasting happiness. The rewards are only temporary. Subsequently they will create more desires to which we reach for again and again, eventually leading us to the same void.

When striving for happiness in this way, there is a cost. In a dualistic world—where both subject and object exist—a seed of sorrow flows with every happiness attained. Nature balances itself through its opposite. The yin-yang symbol depicts a white circle within black, and a black circle within white. Within every dark, there is light; within every light, there is darkness. Although these forces seem opposing, they are also complementary. One could not exist without the other, for how would you know happiness unless you also knew sorrow? Likewise, how would you know up unless you knew down? Opposites are necessary for us to form a reality.

Self-realized masters describe our personal reality as a great illusion. They teach that truth lives in the present moment. Yet this moment soon becomes a remembrance to talk about, compare, diagnose, or judge. All becomes a quantification based on the standards we set and the interpretation we adhere to. No longer living in the present moment, we are thrown into a dual world: past and future, good and evil, birth and death.

The Eastern term advaita (not-two) was explained ages ago within Vedantic literature as well as by twentieth-century philosophers such as Rupert Spira and Francis Lucille. It is written within pages of age-old scriptures and in the beautiful poetry and prayers of great saints and sages.

Advaita is not a belief, but a realization that you are one with the greater whole. So long as we perceive ourselves as separate, life will appear to have opposites. Once we come to this realization, we attain lasting joy, also known as bliss—a term used to describe an eternal joy unencumbered by desires and ultimately by sorrow. It is a state of consciousness we all knowingly or unknowingly seek. Bliss is found only in the state of oneness, and the methodology to reach this state was taught by those who accomplished it.

Jesus said to them, When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer, and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom. (Gospel of Thomas, Saying 22, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures)

Could we be searching for happiness in all the wrong places? In his book The Science of Religion, Paramahamsa Yogananda explains that our sensory self, which perceives all outer influences and all material processes, may be the main cause of seeking tangible objects or situations—that is, owning a business, getting married, or buying a new car—for what we believe will achieve lasting happiness. Still, our happy moments are later encumbered by bouts of sadness or even depression. He explains that once we control the outer senses and go inward, we discover an internal silence that holds the deepest experience of ourselves and our true nature. We often hold dreams of a future filled with lasting joy while indulging in life’s superficial desires or toying with the dream of final happiness when we die and go to a heavenly place. The mystic poet Kabir warns us:

If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive,

Do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

Just because the body is rotten –

That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

An empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life

You will have the face of satisfied desire. (The Kabir Book, by Robert Bly)

Jesus has a similar warning: Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you release on earth will be released in heaven (Matthew 18:18 [English Standard Version]). Many people have been drawn to spirituality, most with happiness in mind. They are seeking an alternative path to lasting joy. Can we really have a life free of sorrow? Many men and women have walked the earth and achieved the highest state attainable: the power to rise above duality into the oneness state of pure joy. They are called the enlightened masters. In this book, I dive into their world and explore what it takes to raise ourselves to a state where pure joy, unencumbered by sorrow, awaits.

I am pleased to have explored the core teachings of many religions, focusing on centuries-old traditions and scriptures in various expressions. Yet the evolution of languages has often hindered the proper interpretation of the original writings. In many cases, it has altered our perception of God and nature to the point of war, both with our neighbors and within ourselves.

Raised Roman Catholic, I experienced my first cognition of God through my Catholic mother, who told me, God is everywhere and in all things. I am grateful to her for embedding the most crucial cognition needed to look out into the world and see God in all. Through my middle years, I explored and practiced multiple arts and sciences: metaphysics, martial arts, religion, yoga, meditation, and energy healing. Finally, my path led me to the yogis of India and the teachings of Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda—I was initiated into kriya yoga through the organization he founded, Self-Realization Fellowship. Then, in 2017, I traveled to Bangalore, India, to learn and to receive initiations from the living enlightened master, Sri Bhagavan Nithyananda Paramashivam, whose mission is reviving the ancient Vedic Agama scriptures of the Hindu tradition to secure a future enlightened humanity. The time I spent with him was life changing.

Only through intense work on my own consciousness have I been able to create my inner world with increased clarity and renewed purpose. The past must become less significant and quality cognitions formed. Although this is an ongoing process, peace becomes regularly attainable. New ideas and strong commitments arise while greater strength is noticed.

Much of what I learned throughout the years is written