Even though The Northern Star interviewed me about my CAB spirituality class, there still remains a great deal of misunderstanding about what I teach.

What I teach is a form of Vedanta and Siddha yoga. Vedanta simply means the fundamental truth; and it contends that the fundamental truth is that every being is identical to God. Siddha yoga means the yoga of Siddhas, those beings who have perfectly realized their identity with God, who have become one with infinite consciousness.

I have been constantly asked if what I teach is ‘religion’ (as if religion was a bad word!). It certainly isn’t religion in the conventional sense. But in an unconventional sense it is, because Vedanta declares that your religion is whatever you take to be real. The realization of Siddhas is that reality is one, is indivisible, infinite, unbroken consciousness of the nature of bliss, and that we are that reality—in total.

The logical outcome of this realization is that we are all equal. Everyone being your own divine self, no one can be exploited or forgotten about. If one person in the whole world is neglected, is homeless, the whole world is a failure, no matter how fancy our technology becomes or how wealthy some people become. The great Siddha and Vedantin, Swami Vivekananda, said, “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”

Vedanta is true cosmic consciousnss, not in the hippie-dippy, sappy New Age sense, but in the sense where all selfishness, personal ambition and egocentric desires are renounced, so that you live only for mankind and the creatures of the world. This cosmic consciousness is the meaning of the mantram OM.

Arthur Shimkus

Siddha Yoga Worker