Neptune is the eighth major planet, measured from the Sun, discovered (1846) by Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory. Neptune’s mean distance from the Sun is 30 times greater than the Earth’s distance from the Sun. Its period of revolution is equal to 163,79 years. Neptune has two companions, Triton and Nereid and 11 smaller satellites. For many astrologers, Neptune is the ruling planet of Pisces and is exalted in Leo. In Greek mythology, is the god of the sea, and the deep, ocean blue color of the planet Neptune reflects it. Its glyph is taken directly from Neptune's trident, symbolizing the curve of spirit being pierced by the cross of matter. Astrologically, modern Western astrologers associate the planet Neptune with creativity, idealism and compassion, but also with illusion, confusion, and deception. Neptune governs hospitals, prisons, mental institutions, and any other place, such as a monastery, that involves a retreat from society. Its appearance coincided with the discovery of anesthetics and hypnotism.
Poseidon (the Greek name for the god Neptune) was given kingship over the sea and he is usually pictured lashing the ocean with his trident. Over all things said by the ancients to be governed by Poseidon, this god exercised a baneful and destructive influence, producing earthquakes, storms and disturbance. It is evident also, that Neptune had some mysterious influence in connection with the flood during the Atlantean period, and especially over the last portion to be submerged of ancient Atlantis, which was named after Poseidon.
Neptune has little or no direct influence over action upon the physical plane, its sphere of influence being largely confined to the psyche or emotional plane. In the phenomenal world it may be expressed as magic, black or white: but its power is manifested rather in the essence of things. Through Pisces, it may be connected with the waters of Lethe, in the oblivion to all objective expressions of consciousness these waters are said to produce. The connection to Neptune with the sign of Pisces may count for the strange attraction drugs have for certain types persons.
Astronomically Uranus, Neptune and Pluto have laws and rates of motion that vary from the seven planets of the ancients. None of them really belong to our solar system. Neptune, the planet of divinity, correlates to the seventh plane, or the World of God, and is of vital and mystic importance where the Ego has felt the altruism, for it is a welding of Uranus and Jupiter. Neptune’s process dissolves boundaries, just as Uranus breaks them and so it goes beyond Saturn’s limitations. His process is the subtle changing and shifting of consciousness. Psychologically the lack of realism, the passivity, and the desire to escape, all came under the afflictions to negative Neptune.
One of the most occult of planets, Neptune, presides over the “devas of the waters”; their presiding lord, Varuna, the raja of astral plane, being an emanation from that planet, Students will find it of profound interest to study the close interaction therefore between the astral plane and the sixth sub-plane of the physical plane, the liquid sub-plane. Herein will be found one reason why men of a relatively low type of physical body and having an astral body with some astral matter in it are responsive to higher things and have a spiritual aspiration. The influence emanating from the buddhic plane calls out a reciprocal response from the astral matter and the sixth principle of buddhi intensifies that vibration.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian wise and spiritual teacher (1897-1981), was born and raised in the village Kantalgkaon, south of Mumbai. At the age of 18 he went to Mumbai in order to find work and help his family. He worked for some time as an employee and later opened a small shop, where he was selling cigarettes. He had some success and opened other such small shops. At age 27 he married and had four children.
When Nisargadatta was 34, a friend of his, Yashwantrao Baagkar, introduced him to his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, the head of the Inchegeri branch of the Navanath Sampradaya. The guru told him, "You are not what you take yourself to be..." and gave him a mantra and some instructions. He died soon after. Sri Nisargadatta later recalled:
My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!
Nisargadatta arrived at self-realization after two and a half years and when his teacher died, became his successor in the tradition of the "Nine Masters" (Navnat Samprantaya). In 1937 he left his family. He became a saddhu and walked barefoot to the Himalayas, but eventually returned to Mumbai where he lived for the rest of his life, working as a cigarette vendor and giving religious instruction in his home.
You are this consciousness and out of this consciousness is born the entire universe. We consider ourselves as individuals; and that which is unlimited, we have limited to an insignificant thing. The infinite is narrowed down to a single body. That is our whole problem. – The Experience of Nothingness.
Sri Nisargadatta continued to live the life of an ordinary Indian working-man but his teachings, which he set out in his master-work I Am That and which are rooted in the ancient Upanishadic tradition, made a significant philosophical break from contemporary thought. Devotees were travelled from all over the world to hear Nisargadatta's unique message until his death in 1981.
The form of his life has always been orthodox Hindu and the essence of his teaching is the absolute monism of Advaita Vedanta. He lived what he taught. The path of Maharaj is direct and effective and leads directly to the notion of the true existence of man. In addition to the above work, I Am That, other books on the teachings are the Nectar of Immortality, The Experience of the Nothingness, The supreme Medicine etc. All these works are recordings of the teachings he had given to his students.