There is only one kind of magic and this is `doing.'

All energy spent on conscious work is an investment;
that spent mechanically is lost forever.

We must destroy our buffers. Children have none;
therefore we must become like little children.

We attract forces according to our being.

Humanity is the earth's nerve-endings through which
planetary vibrations are received for transmission.

Everything in the universe has a place in a scale.

No energy is ever lost in the cosmic scheme.

One twentieth of all our energy goes to emotional and
instinctive centers. Self-remembering is a lamp which
must be kept alight by energy from these two centers.
Our thinking centre is not really a center, but an
apparatus for collecting impressions.

Formatory apparatus resembles a hired typist who works
for a firm and has a large number of stereotyped replies
for external impressions. She sends printed replies to
other centers who are the `directors' of the firm and
who are strangers to each other. Wrong replies are often
sent, as the typist is asleep or lazy.

In deep sleep all communication between centers is closed.
Our sleep is bad because we do not cut off lines of communication.

We have good and bad angels. The good angels work
by way of our voluntary, active nature and the bad through
our passive nature.

Mr. Self-love and Madame Vanity are the two chief agents of the devil.

Do not be affected by externals. In themselves they are harmless;
it is we who allow ourselves to be hurt by them.

We never reach the limits of our strength.

If we do what we like doing, we are immediately rewarded
by the pleasure of doing it. If we do what we don't like
doing the reward must come later. It is a mathematical law
and all life is mathematics.

Man is a symbol of the laws of creation; in him there is
evolution, involution, struggle, progress and retrogression,
struggle between positive and negative, active and passive,
yes and no, good and evil.

Men have their minds and women their feelings more highly
developed. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you
feel and feel what you think. Fusion of the two produces
another force.

For some people religion is useful but for others it is
only a policeman.

We are sheep kept to provide wool for our masters who feed
us and keep us as slaves of illusion. But we have a chance
of escape and our masters are anxious to help us, but we
like being sheep. It is comfortable.

He who can love can be; he who can be can do; he who can do is.

Sincerity is the key to self-knowledge and to be sincere
with oneself brings great suffering.

Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter.

Free will is the function of the Master within us.
Our `will' is the supremacy of one desire over another.

Eastern art has a mathematical basis. It is a script with
an inner and an outer content. In Persia there is a room
in a monastery which makes one weep owing to mathematical combinations of
different parts of its architecture. Real
art is knowledge and not talent.

An ordinary man has no `Master.' He is ruled now by the
mind, now by the feelings and now by the body. Often the
order comes from the automatic apparatus and still more
often he is ordered about by the sex centre. Real will
can only be when one `I' rules, when there is a `master'
in the house.

Morality is a stick with two ends; it can be turned
this way and that.

From the time when man began to live on the Earth, from the
time of Adam onwards, there started to be formed within him,
with the help of God, of Nature, and of all his surroundings,
an organ whose function is conscience. Every man has this
organ, and whoever is guided by it automatically lives
according to God's commandments. If our consciences were
clear, and not buried, there would be no need to speak
about morality, for consciously or unconsciously everyone
would behave according to God's commandments. Unfortunately conscience is
covered up with a kind of crust which can be
pierced only by intense suffering; then conscience speaks.
But after a while a man calms down and once more the organ
becomes covered over and buried.

You should forget about morality. Conversations about morality
are simply empty talk. Your aim is inner morality.

External morality is different everywhere.

You should understand, and establish it as a firm rule,
not to pay attention to other people's opinions. You must
be free of people surrounding you, and when you are free
inside you will be free of them.

To be just at the moment of action is a hundred times more
valuable than to be just afterwards.

To gain anything real, long practice is necessary. Try to
accomplish very small things first.

There are two kinds of doing—automatic and doing what
you `wish.' Take a small thing which you `wish' to do
and cannot do and make this your God. Let nothing interfere.
If you `wish,' you can. Without wishing you never `can.'
`Wish' is the most powerful thing in the world.

To bear the manifestation of others is a big thing.
The last thing for a man.

In the river of life suffering is not intentional. In conscious
life suffering is intentional and of great value.

To love one must first forget all about love. Make it your
aim and look for direction. As we are we cannot possibly love.

Until a man uncovers himself he cannot see.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically
authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that
this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web
constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material
(as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes
of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.

ddaccounting@... wrote:
>
> Wow... very complex. Some of the statements shared make me think and bring me
back to some of the questions I have yet to find an answer to:
> "In deep sleep all communication between centers is closed. 
> Our sleep is bad because we do not cut off lines of communication. ".. I have
read/heard that all things are the way they're supposed to be, that "all as is"
is the devine plan..??
> "We have good and bad angels. The good angels work 
> by way of our voluntary, active nature and the bad through 
> our passive nature. "... why is there a duality?  .. why do we "need?"
positive & negative, why is the one always trying to change the other?  
> "Men have their minds and women their feelings more highly 
> developed. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you
> feel and feel what you think. Fusion of the two produces 
> another force."... which force is created by the fusion of feeling and mind? 
> Thank you,
>
> Patricia Valle
>
Yo Patricia,
Gurdjieff taught that there are 3 forces that are the basis
of "All and Everything". They are stated as the Law of Three:
Holy-Affirming, Holy-Denying, Holy-Reconciling, and it is with
the Reconciling force that the Universe activates fulness of
Being. Too much Affirming or too much Denying causes states of
disharmony, just as a radio only gets static unless tuned in
"just right". So, he shared methods that placed one in this
balanced Reconciling position, and potentially let the
practitioner stay in this cosmic consciousness state.
Another way of describing this is saying there are Active,
Passive and Neutral forces, and this motif is found in many
methodologies/religions......
In Taoism the Reconciling/Neutral force would be the Tao,
the line/point where they Yang and the Yin meet. In
Christianity there is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the
Son is the transforming  energy. In Hinduism we find Brahma
is the creator, Shiva is the destroyer, and Vishnu is the
preserver.

The moments we spend in this holy spiritual posture are
when the evolution of our consciousness has the potential to
happen. When we meditate and assume the "Witness of our life
as it takes place position", without positive or negative
commentary or mental, physical, emotional, or egoistic reaction
is when the Reconciling energy erupts... and we have the
potential to "live happily ever after".

Peace and blessings,
Bob

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> There is only one kind of magic and this is `doing.'
>
>
>
> All energy spent on conscious work is an investment;
>
> that spent mechanically is lost forever.
>
>
>
> We must destroy our buffers. Children have none;
>
> therefore we must become like little children.
>
>
>
> We attract forces according to our being.
>
>
>
> Humanity is the earth's nerve-endings through which
>
> planetary vibrations are received for transmission.
>
>
>
> Everything in the universe has a place in a scale.
>
>
>
> No energy is ever lost in the cosmic scheme.
>
>
>
> One twentieth of all our energy goes to emotional and
>
> instinctive centers. Self-remembering is a lamp which
>
> must be kept alight by energy from these two centers.
>
> Our thinking centre is not really a center, but an
>
> apparatus for collecting impressions.
>
>
>
> Formatory apparatus resembles a hired typist who works
>
> for a firm and has a large number of stereotyped replies
>
> for external impressions. She sends printed replies to
>
> other centers who are the `directors' of the firm and
>
> who are strangers to each other. Wrong replies are often
>
> sent, as the typist is asleep or lazy.
>
>
>
> In deep sleep all communication between centers is closed.
>
> Our sleep is bad because we do not cut off lines of communication.
>
>
>
> We have good and bad angels. The good angels work
>
> by way of our voluntary, active nature and the bad through
>
> our passive nature.
>
>
>
> Mr. Self-love and Madame Vanity are the two chief agents of the devil.
>
>
>
> Do not be affected by externals. In themselves they are harmless;
>
> it is we who allow ourselves to be hurt by them.
>
>
>
> We never reach the limits of our strength.
>
>
>
> If we do what we like doing, we are immediately rewarded
>
> by the pleasure of doing it. If we do what we don't like
>
> doing the reward must come later. It is a mathematical law
>
> and all life is mathematics.
>
>
>
> Man is a symbol of the laws of creation; in him there is
>
> evolution, involution, struggle, progress and retrogression,
>
> struggle between positive and negative, active and passive,
>
> yes and no, good and evil.
>
>
>
> Men have their minds and women their feelings more highly
>
> developed. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you
>
> feel and feel what you think. Fusion of the two produces
>
> another force.
>
>
>
> For some people religion is useful but for others it is
>
> only a policeman.
>
>
>
> We are sheep kept to provide wool for our masters who feed
>
> us and keep us as slaves of illusion. But we have a chance
>
> of escape and our masters are anxious to help us, but we
>
> like being sheep. It is comfortable.
>
>
>
> He who can love can be; he who can be can do; he who can do is.
>
>
>
> Sincerity is the key to self-knowledge and to be sincere
>
> with oneself brings great suffering.
>
>
>
> Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter.
>
>
>
> Free will is the function of the Master within us.
>
> Our `will' is the supremacy of one desire over another.
>
>
>
> Eastern art has a mathematical basis. It is a script with
>
> an inner and an outer content. In Persia there is a room
>
> in a monastery which makes one weep owing to mathematical combinations of
different parts of its architecture. Real
>
> art is knowledge and not talent.
>
>
>
> An ordinary man has no `Master.' He is ruled now by the
>
> mind, now by the feelings and now by the body. Often the
>
> order comes from the automatic apparatus and still more
>
> often he is ordered about by the sex centre. Real will
>
> can only be when one `I' rules, when there is a `master'
>
> in the house.
>
>
>
> Morality is a stick with two ends; it can be turned
>
> this way and that.
>
>
>
> From the time when man began to live on the Earth, from the
>
> time of Adam onwards, there started to be formed within him,
>
> with the help of God, of Nature, and of all his surroundings,
>
> an organ whose function is conscience. Every man has this
>
> organ, and whoever is guided by it automatically lives
>
> according to God's commandments. If our consciences were
>
> clear, and not buried, there would be no need to speak
>
> about morality, for consciously or unconsciously everyone
>
> would behave according to God's commandments. Unfortunately conscience is
covered up with a kind of crust which can be
>
> pierced only by intense suffering; then conscience speaks.
>
> But after a while a man calms down and once more the organ
>
> becomes covered over and buried.
>
>
>
> You should forget about morality. Conversations about morality
>
> are simply empty talk. Your aim is inner morality.
>
>
>
> External morality is different everywhere.
>
>
>
> You should understand, and establish it as a firm rule,
>
> not to pay attention to other people's opinions. You must
>
> be free of people surrounding you, and when you are free
>
> inside you will be free of them.
>
>
>
> To be just at the moment of action is a hundred times more
>
> valuable than to be just afterwards.
>
>
>
> To gain anything real, long practice is necessary. Try to
>
> accomplish very small things first.
>
>
>
> There are two kinds of doingâ€"automatic and doing what
>
> you `wish.' Take a small thing which you `wish' to do
>
> and cannot do and make this your God. Let nothing interfere.
>
> If you `wish,' you can. Without wishing you never `can.'
>
> `Wish' is the most powerful thing in the world.
>
>
>
> To bear the manifestation of others is a big thing.
>
> The last thing for a man.
>
>
>
> In the river of life suffering is not intentional. In conscious
>
> life suffering is intentional and of great value.
>
>
>
> To love one must first forget all about love. Make it your
>
> aim and look for direction. As we are we cannot possibly love.
>
>
>
> Until a man uncovers himself he cannot see.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
>
> copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically
>
> authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that
>
> this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web
>
> constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material
>
> (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
>
> If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes
>
> of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
>
> permission from the copyright owner.
>

I just saw a butterfly fluttering higher than I ever thought possible. My
Newfoundland dog Dante is resting his enormous
head on my lap, and the clip clop sound of an Amish buggy going
by is in the air along with the scent of the just mowed lawn.
These sensations appear, float away, and are not commented on
again. Always and in all ways, as soon as anything is sensed or witnessed, it
leaves and new things arise. It is sense-less to
hold onto the past ones at the cost of not experiencing life as
it takes place. There is an eternal loving awareness and infinite unity that is
present and available that can be, and usually is, obscured by mental chatter,
physical sense sensations, emotional or physical reactivity, or many other
distracting types of energy plays. Meditation is the most functional method for
removing the barriers  to waking up to this Reality. It is the easiest, most
ancient and safest vehicle for seeding the soil where Self knowledge and Self
control can grow. Meditation is the best thing you can do for your Self. There
is no better thing you can do for others than share
those things that have helped you evolve in consciousness.

So...witness your life as it is now, not wasting time rehashing
the past or fantasizing about the future. Cease mental chatter or
suffer the weird and negative places it takes you to if you let it run wild. Put
it on a leash and use your mind as a tool and not
let it be your master. Meditation will lead you to knowing how to drive the
vehicle you are in that is reading this now. Find a specific method or a few
that you actually practice and you will surely gain mastery over reactivity and
be able to act as you wish. And you will Realize that the big "Thy" in the sky
is in your heart and is you, and then effortlessly "Thy will be done", and you
will  live happily ever after.

Peace and blessings,
Bob

Thanks amazing gent.  Thy will be done.  Heartful blessings

For the first time in years I've revisited the site
of an artist I really like, and I enjoyed it so much
that I thought I'd recommend it to you.
http://www.billyrose.net/
His words are also well worth paying attention to if you
can un-glue your eyes a little and hear them. I've had
a few of his works in my house for years and it
often just takes a glance and my inner chatter gets
"interesting" or simply (and blessedly) stops. Nice
to hang up and hang with.
BTW, Billy and I are not related, but in a way I'll
always have him in my heart closer than a brother.
After all, a Rose by any other name is still a Rose.

A Simple Equation

"Everything, even the world, outside is your projection.
According to your mental condition, you see things in a
particular way. If you see the city in which you live as
a heavenly one, then there is a sort of heaven within you.
If you see hell in the city, that is how your mind views it.
So the world is nothing but your own projection. Everything
begins from the mind. Within us is a godly element and a
human element. If we remove the human side, we become divine.
If we ignore the divine side we become human.
So the mathematical equation will be:
Divine + mind = human being. Human - mind = divine.
If you don't attach to the mind or feel that you are
the mind, then you'll feel the divine and you'll
always be in heaven. That's the simple equation.

"God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

The Self or the Seer or the Witness is not any
particular thought--I can see that thought as an
object. The Seer is not any particular sensation--
I am aware of that as an object. The observing Self
is not the body, it is not the mind, it is not the ego--
I can see all of those as objects. What is looking
at all those objects? What in you right now is looking
at all these objects--looking at nature and its sights,
look- ing at the body and its sensations, looking at
the mind and its thoughts? What is looking at all that?

Try to feel yourself right now--get a good sense of
being yourself-- and notice, that self is just another
object in awareness. It isn't even a real subject,
a real self, it's just another object in awareness.
This little self and its thoughts parade by in front
of you just like the clouds float by through the sky.
And what is the real you that is witnessing all of that?
Witnessing your little objective self? Who or what is that?

As you push back into this pure Subjectivity, this pure
Seer, you won't see it as an object--you can't see it
as an object, because it's not an object! It is nothing
you can see. Rather, as you calmly rest in this observing
awareness--watching mind and body and nature float by--
you might begin to notice that what you are actually
feeling is simply a sense of freedom, a sense of release,
a sense of not being bound to any of the objects you
are calmly witnessing. You don't see anything, you simply
rest in this vast freedom.

In front of you the clouds parade by, your thoughts parade
by, bodily sensations parade by, and you are none of them.
You are the vast expanse of freedom through which all
these objects come and go. You are an opening, a clearing,
an Emptiness, a vast spaciousness, in which all these objects
come and go. Clouds come and go, sensations come and go,
thoughts come and go--and you are none of them; you are
that vast sense of freedom, that vast Emptiness, that vast
opening, through which manifestation arises, stays a bit, and goes.

So you simply start to notice that the "Seer" in you that is witnessing all
these objects is itself just a vast Emptiness.
It is not a thing, not an object, not anything you can see
or grab hold of. It is rather a sense of vast Freedom, because
it is not itself anything that enters the objective world of
time and objects and stress and strain. This pure Witness is
a pure Emptiness in which all these individual subjects and
objects arise, stay a bit, and pass.

So this pure Witness is not anything that can be seen!
The attempt to see the Witness or know it as an object--
that's just more grasping and seeking and clinging in time.
The Witness isn't out there in the stream; it is the vast
expanse of Freedom in which the stream arises. So you can't
get hold of it and say, Aha, I see it! Rather, it is the Seer,
not anything that can be seen. As you rest in this Witnessing,
all that you sense is just a vast Emptiness, a vast Freedom,
a vast Expanse--a transparent opening or clearing in which
all these little subjects and objects arise. Those subjects
and objects can definitely be seen, but the Witness of them
cannot be seen. The Witness of them is an utter release from
them, an utter Freedom not caught in their turmoils, their
desires, their fears, their hopes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically
authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that
this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web
constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material
(as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes
of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.

The sound of one hand is perhaps the best known
Zen koan. Here we have a classic telling of its
functionality in practice. Enjoy!

The Sound of One Hand

The master of Kennin temple was Mokurai, Silent Thunder.
He had a little protégé named Toyo who was only twelve
years old. Toyo saw the older disciples visit the master's
room each morning and evening to receive instruction in
sanzen or personal guidence in which they were given
koans to stop mind-wandering.

Toyo wished to do sanzen also.

"Wait a while," said Mokurai. "You are too young."

But the child insisted, so the teacher finally consented.

In the evening little Toyo went at the proper time to
the threshold of Mokurai's sanzen room. He struck the
gong to announce his presence, bowed respectfully three
times outside the door, and went to sit before the master
in respectful silence.

"You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together,"
said Mokurai. "Now show me the sound of one hand."

Toyo bowed and went to his room to consider this problem.
From his window he could hear the music of the geishas.
"Ah, I have it!" he proclaimed.

The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate
the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas.

"No, no," said Mokurai. "That will never do. That is not
the sound of one hand. You've not got it at all."

Thinking that such music might interrupt, Toyo moved his
abode to a quiet place. He meditated again. "What can the
sound of one hand be?" He happened to hear some water dripping.
"I have it," imagined Toyo.

When he next appeared before his teacher, he imitated
dripping water.

"What is that?" asked Mokurai. "That is the sound of
dripping water, but not the sound of one hand. Try again."

In vain Toyo meditated to hear the sound of one hand. He heard
the sighing of the wind. But the sound was rejected.

He heard the cry of an owl. This was also refused.

The sound of one hand was not the locusts.

For more than ten times Toyo visited Mokurai with different
sounds. All were wrong. For almost a year he pondered what
the sound of one hand might be.

At last Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all
sounds. "I could collect no more," he explained later,
"so I reached the soundless sound."

Toyo had realized the sound of one hand.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically
authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that
this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web
constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material
(as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes
of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.

May I be far removed from contending creeds and dogmas.
Ever since my Lord's grace entered my mind,
My mind has never strayed to seek such distractions.
Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion,
I have forgotten all difference between myself and others.
Accustomed long to meditating on my Guru as enhaloed over my head,
I have forgotten all those who rule by power and prestige.
Accustomed long to meditating on my guardian deities as inseparable from myself,
I have forgotten the lowly fleshly form.
Accustomed long to meditating on the secret whispered truths,
I have forgotten all that is said in written or printed books.
Accustomed, as I have been, to the study of the eternal Truth,
I've lost all knowledge of ignorance.
Accustomed, as I've been, to contemplating both nirvana and samsara as inherent
in myself, I have forgotten to think of hope and fear.
Accustomed, as I've been, to meditating on this life and the next as one, I have
forgotten the dread of birth and death.
Accustomed long to studying, by myself, my own experiences,
I have forgotten the need to seek the opinions of friends and brethren.
Accustomed long to applying each new experience to my own spiritual growth, I
have forgotten all creeds and dogmas.
Accustomed long to meditating on the Unborn, the Indestructible, the Unchanging,
I have forgotten all definitions of this or that particular goal.
Accustomed long to meditating on all visible phenomena as the Dharmakaya,I have
forgotten all meditations on what is produced by the mind.
Accustomed long to keeping my mind in the uncreated state of freedom,
I have forgotten all conventions and artificialities.
Accustomed long to humbleness, of body and mind,
I have forgotten the pride and haughty manner of the mighty.
Accustomed long to regarding my fleshly body as my hermitage,
I have forgotten the ease and comfort of retreats and monasteries.
Accustomed long to knowing the meaning of the Wordless,
I have forgotten the way to trace the roots of verbs, and the
sources of words and phrases.
You, 0 learned one, may trace out these things in your books
[if you wish].

Jetsun Milarepa (1052 - 1135)

GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES IN YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY THE LATEST VOLUME OF THE
SPIRITUAL WEB SITE www.ahwan.org (or www.ahwan.com) : VOLUME 139, September 2012
ISSUE,  has been published and uplinked with "SATCHIDANANDA AND SIGNIFICANCE OF
MAHAVAKYAS (profound pronouncements". If you visit the site, and have any
observations to make, I shall be grateful. In this issue we have also
interesting questions from readers dealing with "How soul moves from body to
body", "World enjoyment", "Brahman changes and changes not", "Faith versus
Science", "Power of Science"etc.
You can also browse the previous articles by clicking on the ikon `articles'.
Please share it with your friends and dear ones.  God bless you-  Sri Bimal
Mohanty. (bimalmohanty@...)
PS – To continue spreading the benefit of AHWAN to all, we need your assistance
if you please. Click on `special information' on the homepage of www.ahwan.org.
If you do not wish to receive this information about future issues, please
e-mail accordingly - Thank you.
If you wish someone to receive this information as compliments from you please
indicate his/her e-mail address.
____________________

You can usher a qualitative change in your life, the spiritual way- the
effective way. Visit the website www.ahwan.org. or www.ahwan.com.

Once Gautama Buddha was going to another village with
his disciple Ananda. On the way they came across a small
water stream but they did not stopped there and kept on moving.

After around half an hour, Buddha sat down under a big tree
and asked Ananda to bring some water from the water stream
they have crossed few minutes ago. When Ananda reached the
water stream, it was muddy and water was not looking clean.
So Ananda came and reported to Buddha that water is not good
for drinking. Its better to wait till we reach the next village.

But Buddha insisted on drinking the water from the same
water stream and he asked Ananda to wait at the stream till
it water become clear again. So Ananda went there again.
To his surprise water was looking more clean this time but
was still little muddy. Nothing else to do, Ananda just sat
there looking at the water. To his surprise, after some time
mud had settled down to the bottom and water was for drinking again.

Then Ananda suddenly realized that the first time when he
was coming back to the stream, A bullock cart must have passed through the
stream and all the mud has come on the surface
of water, thus making it unclean. He came back and reported
all this to Buddha.

Buddha smiled and said this is the case with all of us.
When any thought or emotion comes then we get identified
with them and we become unconscious. But on the contrary,
If we just witness these thoughts and feelings silently,
with out doing any thing with them then they will affect us
and will leave on their own.

Our mind is that bullock cart which brings thoughts and
emotions to cloud our consciousness and make us unconscious.
A meditator just witness these thoughts and his consciousness
always remains clean and undisturbed. But if we get identify
with any emotion then we our consciousness become disturb
and full of disturbance like that of the water stream.
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We all have a predisposition to react either
physically, emotionally, or intellectually.
This makes us unbalanced, habitual, compulsive,
and slave-like in our reactivity. A good
Meditation teacher will be able to advise
us how to recognize which of these characteristics
is our most predominate and suggest ("prescribe")
meditation techniques that help us gain control
over our primary reactivity, and others that
strengthen the other 2 aspects of our nature.
The end result is being well balanced with Self
knowledge and Self control. As an example, let's
say that we are primarily reactive emotionally.
Our meditative task would be to gain control over
our emotional reactivity, and to strengthen our
physical and intellectual awareness and reactions
to the strength level of our emotions. This will
leave us well balanced. So, for example, the
emotionally reactive person, who is trying to get
this reactivity under control, may do well to do
meditation techniques that emphasize dispassion,
while doing intellectual techniques like pondering
the ancient formula of "I am not my body, I am not
my mind, I am not my emotions", as well as doing
physical awareness exercises such as the Zen tea
ceremony.

In some traditions, like the Sufi, or "4th way"
of Gurdjieff, it is only the person who has achieved
this balanced, Self controlled state who is able
to act. Until that point is reached, the teaching
is that we are merely in a robot-like dream state,
and cannot "do" anything. And our life is just one
reaction after another.

Meditation is the methodology that shines the light
of our inner Witness and wakes us up from our dream.

Paradoxical though it may seem, the passage through
consciousness or self moves contrary to self, rubs it
the wrong way - and in the end, will even rub it out.
Because this passage goes against the grain of self,
it is, therefore, a path of suffering. Both Christ and
Buddha saw the passage as one of suffering, and basically
found identical ways out. What they discovered and revealed
to us was that each of us has within himself or herself a "stillpoint" -
comparable, perhaps to the eye of a cyclone,
a spot or center of calm, imperturbability, and non-movement.
Buddha articulated this central eye in negative terms as
"emptiness" or "void", a refuge from the swirling cyclone
of endless suffering. Christ articulated the eye in more
positive terms as the "Kingdom of God" or the "Spirit within",
a place of refuge and salvation from a suffering self.

For both of them, the easy out was first to find that
stillpoint and then, by attaching ourselves to it, by
becoming one with it, to find a stabilizing, balanced
anchor in our lives. After that, the cyclone is gradually
drawn into the eye, and the suffering self comes to an end.
And when there is no longer a cyclone, there is also no
longer an eye. So the storms, crises, and sufferings of
life are a way of finding the eye. When everything is going
our way, we do not see the eye, and we feel no need to find
it. But when everything is going against us, then we find
the eye. So the avoidance of suffering and the desire to have everything go our
own way runs contrary to the whole movement
of our journey; it is all a wrong view. With the right view,
however, one should be able to come to the state of oneness
in six or seven years - years not merely of suffering, but
years of enlightenment, for right suffering is the essence of enlightenment.
Because self is everyone's experience underlying
all culture. I do not regard cultural wrong views as an excuse
for not searching out right views. After all, each person's
passage is his or her own; there is no such thing as a
collective passage.
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The Cosmic Sound

"When we stop disturbing the cosmic sound—by breaking
the cosmic sound into many other words and other
sounds—we can hear that cosmic sound within us. That's
possible only when you tune your mind to a particular
wave by stopping all other waves. That is what you call
transcending the mind. The mind is to be made completely
still. When the mind is stilled you can say that you have
transcended the mind. In other words, the very same mind
becomes your very soul. The moment it starts moving it
gets the name, `mind.' Each wave gets the name, `thought.'
Attune your mind to the cosmic sound, the cosmic vibration
and then you will transcend.

"God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

  MAKE THE CALL:

Hear monthly messages from Sri Swami Satchidananda on
the Inspiration Line (434-WOW-GURU).

In this moment there are sounds. Listen.
In this moment there are smells. Sniff.
In this moment there are contacts. Touch.
In this moment there are flavors. Taste.
In this moment there are sights. See.
In this moment there are feelings. Feel.
In this moment, there are thoughts. Think.
In this moment, without any inner or outer comment, BE.

Heaven Is Real: A Doctor's Experience With the Afterlife
By Dr. Eben Alexander

Oct 8, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
When a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, he experienced
things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.


As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon
of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific
world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father's
path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at
Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand
what happens to the brain when people are near death,
and I had always believed there were good scientific
explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described
by those who narrowly escaped death.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely
delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives
by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big
surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would
return from their experiences with strange stories. But that
didn't mean they had journeyed anywhere real.

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so
more in name than in actual belief. I didn't begrudge those
who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good
man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized
deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there
who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I
envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt
provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to
believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during
which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated,
I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to
believe in consciousness after death.

I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I
will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an
extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the
part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that
in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg
General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked
as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted
a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns.
E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in
anything beyond a vegetative state were already low.
They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a
deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally
offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my
doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

`You have nothing to fear.' `There is nothing you can do wrong.'
The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. (Photo
illustration by Newsweek; Source: Buena Vista Images-Getty Images)

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while
my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was
alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned
to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them,
my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger
dimension of the universe: a dimension I'd never dreamed existed
and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy
to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described
by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other
mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned
there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where
we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is
not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably
positive, journey.

I'm not the first person to have discovered evidence that
consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses
of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know,
no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while
their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body
was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full
seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest
that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient,
or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took
place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but
while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and
duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical
involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to
current medical understanding of the brain and
mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced
even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma,
much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me.
Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious
during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened
during that time. Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was
in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed
up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.

Reliving History: The search for the meaning of the afterlife
is as old as humanity itself. Over the years Newsweek has run numerous covers
about religion, God, and that search. As Dr. Alexander says, it's unlikely we'll
know the answer in our
lifetimes, but that doesn't mean we won't keep asking.

Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering
beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.

Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing
down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to
the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have
known on this planet. They were more advanced.
Higher forms.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I
wondered if the winged beings were producing it.
Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy
of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had
to make this noise—that if the joy didn't come out of them this
way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it.
The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you
can feel on your skin but doesn't get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now
was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of
those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging,
joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could
not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming
a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way.
Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you
couldn't look at anything in that world at all, for the word
"at" itself implies a separation that did not exist there.
Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of
everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a
Persian carpet ... or a butterfly's wing.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was
with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked
like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue
eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I
saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface,
which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions
of butterflies were all around
us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods
and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and
color, moving through the air. The woman's outfit was simple,
like a peasant's, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel
orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness
that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if
you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to
that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so
far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship.
It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different
compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher,
holding all those other kinds of love within
itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through
me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I
knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real—was not
some fantasy, passing and insubstantial.

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly
language, I'd say they ran something like this:

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever."

"You have nothing to fear."

"There is nothing you can do wrong."

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief.
It was like being handed the rules to a game I'd been playing all
my life without ever fully understanding it.

"We will show you many things here," the woman said, again,
without actually using these words but by driving their
conceptual essence directly into me. "But eventually, you will
go back."

To this, I had only one question.

Back where?

The universe as I experienced it in my coma is ... the same one
that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.

A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the
most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and
flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything,
shifting the world around me into an even higher
octave, a higher vibration.

Although I still had little language function, at least as we
think of it on earth, I began wordlessly putting questions to
this wind, and to the divine being that I sensed at work behind
or within it.

Where is this place?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Each time I silently put one of these questions out, the answer
came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty
that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important
about these blasts was that they didn't simply silence my
questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a
way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But
it wasn't thought like we experience on earth. It wasn't vague, immaterial, or
abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter
than water—and as I received them
I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts
that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense
void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting.
Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over
with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb
that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of "interpreter" between me and
this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if
I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself
was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was
somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing)
was guiding me through it.

Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet
Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast,
inky-black core that was the home of
the Divine itself.

"There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness ..."

That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to
brimming with light.

I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable,
all this sounds. Had someone—even a doctor—told me a story like
this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they
were under the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me
was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any
event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of
my two sons.

What happened to me demands explanation.

Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it
is undivided. Though we seem to live in a world of separation
and difference, physics tells us that beneath the surface,
every object and event in the universe is completely woven up
with every other object and event. There is no true separation.

Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they
are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it
is also—I now know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced
it in my coma is—I have come to see with both shock and joy—the
same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different
ways.

I've spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most
prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that
many of my peers hold—as I myself did—to the theory that the
brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness
and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion,
much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the
universe have toward us. But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our
feet. What happened to me destroyed it, and I
intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true
nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more,
much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both
to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

I don't expect this to be an easy task, for the reasons I
described above. When the castle of an old scientific theory
begins to show fault lines, no one wants to pay attention at
first. The old castle simply took too much work to build in
the first place, and if it falls, an entirely new one will have
to be constructed in its place.

I learned this firsthand after I was well enough to get back
out into the world and talk to others—people, that is, other
than my long-suffering wife, Holley, and our two sons—about
what had happened to me. The looks of polite disbelief,
especially among my medical friends, soon made me realize
what a task I would have getting people to understand the
enormity of what I had seen and experienced that week while
my brain was down.

One of the few places I didn't have trouble getting my story
across was a place I'd seen fairly little of before my
experience: church. The first time I entered a church after
my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass
windows recalled the luminous beauty of the
landscapes I'd seen in the world above. The deep bass notes
of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that
world are like waves that move through you. And, most important,
a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked
the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we
are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand
and unfathomably glorious than the one I'd learned of as a child
in Sunday school.

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion
have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road
to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this
was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The
plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain
as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness
is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge,
and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal
measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always
valued above all: truth.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together.
It won't be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons'
either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly
mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be
absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe
as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last
atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than
any parent ever loved their child.

I'm still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much
as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I'm
very different from the person I was before, because I've caught
a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality. And you can believe
me when I tell you that it

Dr. Eben Alexander has been a neurosurgeon for the past 25 years.
His book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, will be
published by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 23, 2012.
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Worship God as Virtue

"Have no other God. You can contemplate God, you can
contemplate eternity, infinity, ocean of bliss, Light of
lights beyond all darkness — all these things you can contemplate,
think about, reflect over, but you cannot love and worship peace,
or ananda, or jnana. Because they are abstruse, abstract concepts,
and you want something more, something for which you can live and something for
which you can be prepared to die also. That is virtue.

Read the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita*, you will understand. Worship
God as Virtue. Worship virtue by practicing virtue.
This is a way to spiritual transformation and realization."

Swami Chidananda

*CHAPTER 16

16.01 The Supreme Lord said: Fearlessness, purity of heart, perseverance in the
yoga of knowledge, charity, sense restraint, sacrifice, study of the scriptures,
austerity, honesty;

16.02 Nonviolence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation, equanimity,
abstaining from malicious talk, compassion for all creatures, freedom from
greed, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness;

16.03 Splendor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, absence of malice, and
absence of pride; these are the qualities of those endowed with divine virtues,
O Arjuna.

"Every day people are straying away from the church
  and going back to God."

Peace Begins at Home

“Peace should be found within oneself first.
If you don’t have peace within yourself, you
can’t find peace outside. Set the person right,
and the world becomes all right. First you
should have peace within yourself in order to
see the peace outside. There’s a proverb:
‘Charity begins at home.’ Not only charity
begins at home, but peace begins at home too.
In the same way, hatred begins at home. Everything
is in the mind, so by changing the mind we can easily
change the world outside.

“God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”

Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

"Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts,
only you can change them. You will want to change them
when you realize that each thought creates according
to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all
times and that you are always demonstrating according
to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain.
Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that
will bring you health and happiness."

--------------------------------------------------------
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of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain
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First you look outside for Truth/Love/Bliss/Wisdom/etc.
You look at material things, relationships, concepts,
things to touch physically, emotionally, and mentally,
and other "stuff". At best, these all bring a temporary
"good", and then inevitably a sort of "not so good" or even...
"bad". Then you look within and find that even incredibly
wonderful physical or emotional feelings fade away and end,
as do mental revelations no matter how lofty and uplifting
these experiences are. Then you look to see who has been
having these events occur and who has been doing the looking.
And then when "you" can't be found, you do find all that
has always been, and is, and will always be; loving, conscious,
aware, and  unlimited by labels, time or space, unaffected by
all without or within, yet their basis as is the ocean to all
of it's drops.

And all the ???'s become ! and "You" live happily ever after.

Without Expectation

"When you do an act, if you have a personal motive
behind it or if you expect a reward by that action,
even before you start doing it, you build up tension.
There is an expectation, there is anxiety. There is
fear of losing something also. So you spoil the mind
with which you are doing the action. Then the action
itself is spoiled. Instead, if the mind is kept free
from any expectation whatsoever and if your action is
done just for the sake of action, for the sake of others,
then that action is a perfect one.

"God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."

  Follow Swami Satchidananda on Twitter at
twitter.com/SwSatchidananda for daily inspiration.

Man's real nature is primarily spiritual life,
which weaves its threads of mind to build a
cocoon of flesh, encloses its own soul in the cocoon,
and, for the first time, the spirit becomes flesh.
Understand this clearly: The cocoon is not the silkworm;
In the same way, the physical body is not man but
merely man's cocoon. Just as the silkworm will break
out of its cocoon and fly free, so, too, will man
break out of his body-cocoon and ascend to the spiritual
world when his time is come. Never think that the
death of the physical body is the death of man.
Since man is life, he will never know death.

Seicho-no-ie. Nectarean Shower of Holy Doctrines.

The three pillars of self, time, and space all undergo
profound transfiguration in a mystical experience.
There no longer is any separation between the self and
what is not the self.Personal identity and all of existence
become one and the same. In fact, there is no "personal"
identity because we understand at the most basic level
the underlying unity and interdependence of all existence.

Past, present, and future merge together into a timeless
moment, the now of eternity. Time stops, in as much as it
no longer "passes." There is existence, but it is not
dependent upon time. Now and then, before and after,
all combine into this exact point. On the relative level, short
periods of time encompass enormous amounts of experience.

As our self and time lose their boundaries, space becomes
vast. Like time, space is no longer here or there but
everywhere, limitless, without edges. Here and there are
the same. It is all here.

In this infinitely vast time and space with no limited self,
we hold up to examination all contradictions and paradoxes
and see they no longer conflict. We can hold, absorb, and
accept everything our mind conjures up: good and evil,
suffering and happiness, small and large. We now are certain
that consciousness continues after the body dies, and that
it existed long before this particular physical form. We see
the entire universe in a blade of grass and know what our
face was like before our parents met.

Extraordinarily powerful feelings surge through our consciousness.
We are ecstatic, and the intensity of this joy is such that
our body cannot contain it - it seems to need a temporarily disembodied state.
While the bliss is pervasive, there's also an underlying peace and equanimity
that's not affected by even this incredibly profound happiness.

There is a searing sense of the sacred and the holy. We contact
an unchanging, unborn, undying, and uncreated reality. It is a personal
encounter with the "Big Bang," God, Cosmic Consciousness, the source of all
being. Whatever we call it, we know we have
met the fundamental bedrock and fountainhead of existence, one
that emanates love, wisdom, and power on an unimaginable scale.

We call it "enlightenment" because we encounter the white
light of creation's majesty. We may meet guides, angels, or
other disembodied spirits, but we pass them all as we merge
with the light. Our eyes now, finally, are truly open, and we
see things clearly in a "new light."

The import and momentousness of the experience stands alone
in our history. It may serve to focus the rest of our life
toward the completion, filling out, and working through of the insights
obtained.