The Course is a system of mind training is what it really is. Its main objective is to reduce fearful thinking and guilt and to promote forgiveness, kindness, healing and inner peace. It is easy going. Students typically share with me that the course opens them to joyfully experiencing and practicing loving kindness. You might begin with this video introduction, <‘What It Says’>.
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Any level student will be welcome. All of the study materials are free. There is no charge.
From A Course In Miracles, let’s examine the opening statements:
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles makes a distinction between the real and the unreal; between knowledge and perception. Divine “Knowledge” is truth, under one law, the law of Love. “Truth” is unalterable, eternal and unambiguous. Truth might be unrecognized, but it will not be changed. Truth applies to everything that God created, and only what God created is real and true. This is beyond learning because it is beyond time and beyond the limited awareness of processing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
Truth has no opposite; no beginning and no end. Truth is real, unchanging and it is the serene peace of faithfulness.
“It is particularly helpful to remember applying it when we read in the news about such fearful things as terrorist attacks. If there is anything that seems frightening to us, we can remember this opening statement and it can remind us again that we need not make illusions of attack and death real in our mind. We can return to the Truth. It is our choice. We need not make the sharp edged children’s toys of belief in separation real in our mind. We can ask the Holy Spirit for a different way to see what seems to be in front of us. The Holy Spirit reminds us that there is only Love or a call for Love. And no matter which it is, the appropriate response is Love.”¹
Program Description Introduction and Principles of Miracles from A Course in Miracles
Fear originates from fractured ego mind-like-experiences. An experience of fear is an experience that reinforces belief in separation. Fear is a sharply occurring illusion. Every fearful experience is useful only to remind us that the peace of God is real truth. So, with practice, fear becomes a signal that a fractured ego mind-like-experience is really a call for help and a need for healing, peaceful faith.
The ego cannot understand the difference between real and unreal. With practice, peaceful faith will remove the habits of fear and fearful thoughts. So, if we practice using the opening statement we’ll understand and remember that only Love is real, no matter what sensations or images appear. Consciously return to the serene peacefulness of faith. Practice reinforces our enthusiasm and motivation for continuing training and studying the Course. …
. 1 “A Course in Miracles” Foundation for A Course in Miracles. Web. 06 May 2016. <facim.org/what-is-acim.aspx> .
Any level student / teacher will be welcome. The training sessions cover all 31 chapters, the Song Of Payer, and the Manual for Teachers. Students will have the reading assignments and online resources before each session. There are no fees or expectations. My main objective is to extend joy and to promote discovering serenity, honesty, openness and comfortable willingness to advance in spiritual growth.
“I am a son of God, well there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”
Some years ago I had just given a talk on television in Canada when one of the announcers came up to me and said “You know, if one can believe that this universe is in charge of an intelligent and beneficent God, don’t you think he would naturally have provided us with an infallible guide to behavior and to the truth about the universe?” And of course I knew he meant the Bible. I said “No, I think nothing of the kind. Because I think a loving God would not do something to His children that would rot their brains.”
Because if we had an infallible guide we would never think for ourselves, and therefore our minds would become atrophied. It is as if my grandfather left me a million dollars: I’m glad he didn’t.” And we have therefore to begin any discussion of the meaning of the life and teaching of Jesus with a look at this thorny question of “authority.” And especially the authority of Holy Scripture. Because in this country in particular [the USA] there are an enormous number of people who seem to believe that the Bible descended from Heaven with an angel in the year sixteen-hundred and eleven, which was when the so-called King James – or more correctly Authorized – version of the Bible was translated into English.
I had a crazy uncle who believed that every word of the Bible was literally true including the marginal notes. And so whatever date it said in the marginal notes, that the world was created in 4004, B.C., and he believed it as the Word of God. Until one day he was reading – I think – a passage in the book of Proverbs and found a naughty word in the Bible. And from that time on he was through with it. You know, how Protestant can you get?
Now, the question of “authority” needs to be understood, because I am not going to claim any authority in what I say to you, except the authority – such as it is – of history. And that’s a pretty uncertain authority. But from my point of view the four Gospels are I think to be regarded on the whole as historical documents. I’ll even grant the miracles. Because, speaking as one heavily influenced by Buddhism, we’re not very impressed with miracles! The traditions of Asia – Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and so forth – are full of miraculous stories. And we take them in our stride. We don’t think that they’re any sign of anything in particular except psychic power. And we in the West have by scientific technology accomplished things of a very startling nature. We could blow up the whole planet, and Tibetan magicians have never promised to do anything like that.
And I’m really a little scared of the growing interest in psychic power because that’s what I call “psycho-technics.” And we’ve made such a mess of things with ordinary technics that Heaven only knows what we might do if we got hold of psycho-technics and started raising people from the dead, and prolonging life insufferably, and doing everything we wished.
The whole answer to the story of miracles is simply imagine that you’re God and that you can have anything you want. Well you’d have it for quite a long time. And then after awhile you’d say “This is getting pretty dull because I know in advance everything that’s going to happen.” And so you would wish for a surprise. And you would find yourself this evening in this church as a Human being.
So, I mean, that is the miracle thing. I think miracles are probably possible. That doesn’t bother me. And as a matter of fact when you read the writings of the early fathers of the church – the great theologians like Saint Clement, Gregory of Nissa, Saint John of Damascus, even Thomas Aquinas – they’re not interested in the historicity of the Bible. They take that sort of for granted but forget it. They’re interested in its deeper meaning. And therefore they always interpret all the tales like Jonah and the whale. They don’t bother even to doubt whether Jonah was or wasn’t swallowed by a whale or other big fish. But they see in the story of Jonah and the whale as a prefiguration of the resurrection of Christ. And even when it comes to the Resurrection of Christ they’re not worrying about the chemistry or the physics of a risen body. What they’re interested in is that the idea of the resurrection of the body has something to say about the meaning of the physical body in the eyes of God. That the physical body – in other words – is not something worthless and unspiritual, but something which is an object of the Divine Love.
Now, as a matter of fact, in the text of the Gospel of Saint John the local color, his knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem, and his knowledge of the Jewish calendar is more accurate than that of the other three writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it seems to me perfectly simple to assume that John recorded the inner teaching which He gave to His disciples and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the more exoteric teaching which He gave to people-at-large.
Now, what about them, the authority of these scriptures? We could take this problem in two steps. A lot of people don’t know how we got the Bible at all. We Westerners got the Bible thanks to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church and members of the church wrote the books of the New Testament. And they took over the books of the Old Testament which even by the time of Christ had not been finally decided upon by the Jews. The Jews did not close the canon of the Old Testament until the year 100 A.D. – or thereabouts – at the Synod of Jamnia. And then they finally decided which were the canonical books of the Hebrew Scriptures and embodied them in the Masoretic Text, the earliest copy of which dates from the tenth century – early in the tenth century A.D.. The books to be included in the New Testament were not finally decided upon until the year three hundred and eighty-two – A.D. again – at the Synod of Rome under Pope Damasus. So it was the church – the Catholic Church – that promulgated the Bible and said “we are giving you these scriptures on our authority and the authority of the informal tradition that has existed among us from the beginning, inspired by the Holy Spirit.”
So you receive historically the Bible on the church’s say-so. And the Catholic Church insists, therefore, that the church collectively, speaking under the presumed guidance of the Holy Spirit, has the authority to interpret the Bible. And you can take that or leave it. Because obviously the authority of the Bible is not first of all based on the Bible itself. I can write a bible and state within that book that it is indeed the Word of God which I have received. And you’re at liberty to believe me or not. Hindus believe that the Vedas are divinely revealed and inspired with just as much fervor as any Christian or any Jew. Muslims believe that the Koran is divinely inspired. And some Buddhists believe that their Sutras are of divine – or rather Buddhic – origin. The Japanese believe that the ancient texts of Shinto are likewise of divine origin. And who is to be judge?
“If we are going to argue about this – as to which version of the Truth is the correct one – we will always end up in an argument in which the judge and the advocate are the same person. And you wouldn’t want that if you were brought into a court of law, would you? Because if I say that, “Well, thinking it all over I find that Jesus Christ is the greatest being who ever came onto this Earth,” by what standards do I judge? Why obviously, I judge by the sort of moral standards that have been given to me as somebody brought up in a Christian culture. There is nobody impartial who can decide between all the religions because more or less everybody has been in one way or another influenced by one of them.
So if the church says the Bible is true it finally comes down to you. Are you going to believe the church or aren’t you? If nobody believes the church it will be perfectly plain, won’t it, that the church has no authority. Because the people is always the source of authority. That’s why de Tocqueville said that the people gets what government it deserves. And so you may say “Well, God Himself is the authority!” Well, how are we to show that? That’s your opinion. Well you say “Well, you wait and see. The Day of Judgment is coming, and then you’ll find out who is the authority!” Yes, but at the moment there is no evidence for the Day of Judgment, and it remains until there is evidence simply your opinion that the Day of Judgment is coming. And there is nothing else to go on except the opinion of other people who hold the same view and whose opinions you bought.
So really, I won’t deny anybody’s right to hold these opinions. You may indeed believe that the Bible is literally true and that it was actually dictated by God to Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles. That may be your opinion and you are at liberty to hold it. I don’t agree with you.
I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a sense in which the Bible is divinely inspired. But I mean by “inspiration” something utterly different from dictation, receiving a dictated message from an omniscient authority. I think inspiration comes very seldom in words. In fact almost all the words written down by automatic writing from psychic input that I’ve ever read strike me as a bit thin. When a psychic tries to write of deep mysteries instead of telling you what your sickness is or who your grandmother was, he begins to get superficial. And psychically communicated philosophy is never as interesting as philosophy carefully thought out.
But divine inspiration isn’t that kind of communication. Divine inspiration is, for example, to feel – for reasons that you can’t really understand – that you love people. Divine inspiration is a wisdom which it’s very difficult to put into words. Like mystical experience. That’s divine inspiration. And a person who writes out of that experience could be said to be divinely inspired. Or it might come through dreams. Through archetypal messages from the collective unconscious, through which the Holy Spirit could be said to work. But since inspiration always comes through a Human vehicle it is liable to be distorted by that vehicle. In other words, I’m talking to you through a sound system. And it’s the only one now available. Now if there’s something wrong with this sound system whatever truths I might utter to you will be distorted. My voice will be distorted. And you might mistake the meaning of what I said.
Now so therefore everybody who receives divine inspiration – and I’m using that in a very loose way – you could mean anything you like by “divine” – that’s your option – but anybody who receives it will express it within the limits of what language he knows. And by language here I don’t only mean English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit. I mean language in the sense of what sort of terms are available to you; what kind of religion were you brought up with.
Now you see, if you were brought up in the Bible Belt – you came out of Arkansas somewhere – and that’s all the religion you knew, and you had a mystical experience of the type where you suddenly discover that you are one with God, then you’re liable to get up and say “I’m Jesus Christ!” And lots of people do. Well the culture that we live in just can’t allow that. There is only one Jesus Christ. And so if you don’t look like you’re Jesus Christ coming back again – because it said in the scriptures that when He comes back there’ll be no doubt about it: He’ll appear in the Heavens with legions of angels, and you’re not doing that; you’re just old Joe Dokes we knew years ago. Well now you say you’re Jesus Christ. Well, he says that when Jesus Christ said he was God nobody believed him and you don’t believe again. You know you can’t answer that argument. (laughter)
But you see, he says it that way because he is trying to express what happened to him in terms of the religious language which is circumscribed by the Holy Bible. He’s never read the Upanishads. He’s never read the Diamond Sutra. He’s never read The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the I-Ching or the Lao-Tsu, and therefore there is no other way in which he can say this.
But if he had read the Upanishads he would have had no difficulty, and nor would the culture – the society in which he was talking – have any difficulty. Because it says in the Upanishads we are all incarnations of God. Only they don’t mean by the word “God” – in fact they don’t use that word; they use “Brahman” – they don’t mean the same thing that a Hebrew meant by “God.” Because the Brahman is not personal. Brahman is – we would say – supra-personal. Not impersonal, because that is a negation. But I would say supra-personal.
Brahman is not he or she, has no sex. Brahman is not the creator of the world – as something underneath and subject to Brahman – but the actor of the world, the player of all the parts, so that everyone is a mask (which is the meaning of the word “person”) in which the Brahman plays a role. And like an absorbed actor the divine spirit gets so absorbed in playing the role as to become it, and to be bewitched. And this is all part of the game, hereto believing that I am that role. When you were babies you knew who you were. Psychoanalysts refer to that as the oceanic feeling. They don’t really like it, but they admit that it exists. Where the baby cannot distinguish between the world and the way it acts upon the world. It’s all one process. Which is of course the way things are.
But we learn very quickly because we are taught very quickly what is you and what is not-you, what is voluntary, what is involuntary, because you can be punished for the voluntary but not for the involuntary. And so we unlearn what we knew in the beginning. And in the course of life if we are fortunate we discover again what we really are, that each one of us is what would be called in Arabic or Hebrew “a son of God.” And the word “son of” means “of the nature of” as when you call someone a “son of a bitch,” or in Arabic you say “Ibn-kalb” which means “son of a dog,” “Ibn al-Himar”: “son of a donkey.” So, “a son of Belial” means “an evil person.” “Son of God” means “a divine person,” a Human being who has realized union with God.
Now my assumption – and my opinion – is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Human being like Buddha, like Sri Rama Krishna, like Ramana Maharshi, etc., who early in life had a colossal experience of what we call “cosmic consciousness.” Now you don’t have to be any particular kind of religion to get this experience. It can hit anyone anytime, like falling in love. There are obviously a number of you in this building who’ve had it in greater or lesser degree. But it’s found all over the world. And when it hits you, you know it. Sometimes it comes after long practice of meditations and spiritual discipline.
Sometimes it comes for no reason that anybody can determine. We say it’s the “Grace of God,” that there comes this overwhelming conviction that you have mistaken your identity, that what you thought, what I thought was just old Alan Watts – who I know very well is just a big act and a show – but what I thought was, you know, “me!” – was only completely superficial, that I am an expression of an eternal something-or-other: “X,” a name that can’t be named, as the name of God was taboo among the Hebrews; “I am.”; and that I suddenly understand why – exactly why – everything is the way it is. It’s perfectly clear.
Furthermore I no longer feel any boundary between what I do and what happens to me. I feel that everything that’s going on is my doing, just as my breathing is. Is your breathing voluntary or involuntary? Do you do it or does it happen to you? So you can feel it both ways. But you feel everything like breathing. And it isn’t as if you had become a puppet. There is no longer any separate “you.” There is just this great Happening going on. And if you have The Name in your background you will say “This happening is God,” or “the Will of God,” or “the Doing of God.” Or if you don’t have that word in your background you will say with the Chinese “it is the flowing of the Tao.” Or if you’re a Hindu you will say “it is the Maya of Brahman.” “The Maya” means “the magical power,” “the creative illusion,” “the play.”
So you can very well understand how people to whom this happens feel genuinely inspired. Because very often there goes along with it an extremely warm feeling. Because you see the Divine in everybody else’s eyes. When Kabir, a great Hindu Muslim mystic, was a very old man he used to look around at people and say “To whom shall I preach?” Because he saw the Beloved in all eyes, and could see – sometimes I look into people’s eyes, and I can look right down, and I can see that Beloved in the depths of those pools, and yet the expression on the face is saying “What, me?!” Ha ha ha ha, it’s the funniest thing! But there is everybody, in his own peculiar way, playing out an essential part in this colossal cosmic drama. And it’s so strange, but one can even feel it in people you thoroughly dislike.
So, let’s suppose then that Jesus had such an experience. But you see, Jesus has a limitation that he doesn’t know of any religion other than those of the immediate Near-East. He might know something about Egyptian religion, a little bit maybe about Greek religion, but mostly about Hebrew. There is no evidence whatsoever that he knew anything about India or China. And we – people who think that, you know, Jesus was God assume that he must have known because he would have been omniscient. No! Saint Paul makes it perfectly clear in the Epistle to the Phillipians that Jesus renounced his divine powers so as to be Man. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought not equality with God a thing to be hung onto, but humbled himself and made himself of no reputation and was found in fashion as a man and became obedient to death.” Theologians call that “kenosis,” which means “self-emptying.”
So obviously an omnipotent and omniscient man would not really be a man. So even if you take the very orthodox Catholic doctrine of the nature of Christ, that he was both true God and true Man, you must say that for true God to be united with true Man, true God has to make a voluntary renunciation – for the time-being – of omniscience and omnipotence… and omnipresence for that matter. Now therefore if Jesus were to come right out and say “I am the son of God” that’s like saying “I’m the boss’s son,” or “I AM the boss,” and everybody immediately says that is blasphemy. That is subversion. That is trying to introduce Democracy into the Kingdom of Heaven. That is –– you are a usurper of the throne. No man has seen God.
Now, Jesus in his exoteric teaching – as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels – was pretty cagey about this. He didn’t come right out there and say “I and the Father are one.” Instead he identified himself with the Messiah described in the second part of the prophet Isaiah, “the suffering servant who was despised and rejected by men.” And this man is the non-political Messiah, in other words. It was convenient to make that identification even though it would get him into trouble.
But to his elect disciples as recorded in Saint John, he came right out “Before Abraham was, I am.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the living bread that comes down from Heaven.” “I and the Father are one, and he who has seen me has seen the Father.” And there can be no mistaking that language.
So the Jews found out and they put him to death – or had him put to death – for blasphemy. This is no cause for any special antagonism toward the Jews. We would do exactly the same thing. It’s always done. It happened to one of the great Sufi mystics in Persia who had the same experience. Now, what happened? The Apostles didn’t quite get the point. They were awed by the miracles of Jesus. They worshipped him as people do worship gurus, and as you know to what lengths that can go if you’ve been around guru-land. And so the Christians said “Okay, okay: Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God but let it stop right there! Nobody else.” So what happened was that Jesus was pedestalized. He was put in a position that was safely upstairs so that his troublesome experience of cosmic consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance. And those who have had this experience and expressed it during those times when the church had political power were almost invariably persecuted. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake. John Scotus Eriugena was excommunicated. Meister Eckhardt’s theses were condemned. And so on, and so on. A few mystics got away with it because they used cautious language.
But you see what happens. If you pedestalize Jesus you strangle the Gospel at birth. And it has been the tradition in both the Catholic Church and in Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated Gospel. Gospel means “good news,” and I cannot for the life of me think what is the good news about the Gospel as ordinarily handed down. Because, look here – here is the revelation of God in Christ, in Jesus, and we are supposed to follow his life and example without having the unique advantage of being the boss’s son. Now, the tradition – both Catholic and Protestant Fundamentalist – represents Jesus to us as a freak! Born of a virgin, knowing he is the son of God, having the power of miracles, knowing that basically it’s impossible to kill him, that he’s going to rise again in the end. And we are asked to take up our cross and follow him when we don’t know that about ourselves at all! So what happens is this: we are delivered, therefore, a Gospel which is in fact an impossible religion. It’s impossible to follow the Way of Christ. Alright. Many a Christian has admitted it. “I am a miserable sinner. I fall far short of the example of Christ.” But do you realize the more you say that the better you are? Because what happened was that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue. (enthusiastic applause) You see, you can never come up to it. Never.
And therefore you will always be aware of your shortcomings, and so the more shortcomings you feel the more – in other words – you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself.
[Audience member] “You are just setting up straw men and knocking them down!” You will have your opportunity to speak during the question period, madam. So, you go to confession…. (laughter and applause) … and if you’ve got a nice dear understanding confessor he won’t get angry with-at you. He’ll say, “My child, you know you’ve sinned very grievously but you must realize that the love of God and of Our Lord is infinite and that naturally you are forgiven. As a token of thanks-giving say three ‘Hail Mary’s.” And you know, you’ve committed a murder and robbed a bank and fornicated around and so on, but the priest is perfectly patient and quiet. Well you feel awful! “I have done that to the love of God? I have wounded Jesus, grieved the Holy Spirit,” and so on. But you know in the back of your mind that you’re going to do it all over again. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll try. But there’s always a greater and greater sense of guilt.
Now, the lady objected that I was putting up a straw man and knocking it down. This is the Christianity of most people. Now there is a much more subtle Christianity of the theologians, the mystics, and the philosophers. But it’s not what gets preached from the pulpit, grant you. But the message of Billy Graham is approximately what I’ve given you, and of all – what I will call – fundamentalist forms of Catholicism and Protestantism.
What would the real Gospel be? The real Good News is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was THE son of God, but that he was a powerful son of God who came to open everybody’s eyes to the fact that you are too. Now this is perfectly plain. If you will go to the tenth chapter of Saint John, verse 30, there is the passage where Jesus says “I and the Father are one.” And this is – there are some people who aren’t intimate disciples around, and they are horrified! And they immediately pick up stones to stone him. He says “Many good works I have shown you from the Father, and for which of these do you stone me?” And they said, “For a good work we stone you not, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God.” And he replied “Isn’t it written in your law ‘I have said you are gods’?” (He’s quoting the 82nd Psalm.) “Isn’t it written in your law ‘I have said you are gods’? If God called them those to whom he gave his word ‘gods’ – and you can’t deny the scriptures – how can you say I blaspheme because I said I am a son of God?” Well there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
Of course if you read the King James Bible that descended with the angel you will see in italics in front of these words “son of God,” “The son of God” – “…because I said I am The son of God.” And most people think the italics are for emphasis. They’re not. The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators. You will not find that in the Greek. The Greek says “a son of God.” So it seems to me here perfectly plain that Jesus has got it in the back of his mind that this isn’t something peculiar to himself.
So when he says “I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by ME,” this “I am,” this “me” is the divine in us which in Hebrew would be called the “Ruach Adonai.” This – a great deal is made of this by the esoteric Jews, Kabbalists and the Hasidim. The Ruach is the breath that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. It is differing from the soul. The individual soul in Hebrew is called “Nephesh.” And so we translate the “Ruach” into the Greek “pneuma” into “psyche” [see´kay] or “psyche” [sy´kee]. The spirit – and you ask the theologian what’s the difference between the soul and the spirit and he won’t be able to tell you – but it’s very clear in Saint Paul’s writings.
So the point is that the Ruach is the divine in the creature by virtue of which we are sons of, or of the nature of God: manifestations of the divine. This discovery is the Gospel. That is, the Good News. But this has been perpetually repressed throughout the history of Western religion because all Western religions have taken the form of celestial monarchies, and therefore have discouraged Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven. Until, as a consequence of the teachings of the German and Flemish mystics in the Fifteenth Century there began to be such movements as the Anabaptists, the Brothers of the Free Spirit, and the Levelers, and the Quakers. A spiritual movement which came to this country and founded a republic and not a monarchy.
And how could you say that a republic is the best form of government if you think that the Universe is a monarchy? Obviously, if God is top on a monarchy, monarchy is the best form of government. But you see, ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic.
It is from, principally, white racist Christians that we have the threat of Fascism in this country. Because you see, they have a religion which is militant, which is not the religion of Jesus – which was the realization of divine son-ship – but the religion ABOUT Jesus which pedestalizes him and which says “Only this man – of all the sons of woman – is divine, and you had better recognize it.” And so it speaks of itself as The Church Militant, the onward Christian soldiers marching as to war. Utterly exclusive. Convinced, in advance of examining the doctrines of any other religion that it is the top religion. And so it becomes a freak religion, just as it has made a freak of Jesus, an unnatural man. It claims uniqueness, not realizing that what it does teach would be far more credible if it were truly “Catholic” – that is to say: restated again, the truths which have been known from time immemorial, which have appeared in all the great cultures of the world.
But even very liberal Protestants still want to say, somehow – so as, I suppose to keep the mission effort going or to pay off the mortgage – “Yes, these other religions are very good. God has no doubt revealed himself through Buddha and Lao-Tsu. But…!”
Now, obviously, it is a matter of temperament. You could be loyal to Jesus just as you’re loyal to your own country, but you are not serving your country if you think that it’s necessarily the best of all possible countries. That is doing a disservice to your country. It is refusing to be critical where criticism is proper. So of religion. Every religion should be self-critical. Otherwise it soon degenerates into a self-righteous hypocrisy. If then we can see this, that Jesus speaks not from the situation of a historical deus-ex-machina [god from the machine] – a kind of a weird, extraordinary event – but he is a voice which joins with other voices that have said in every place and time “Wake up, Man. Wake up and realize who you are.”
Now I don’t think, you see, until churches get with that that they’re going to have very much relevance. You see, popular Protestantism and popular Catholicism will tell you nothing about mystical religion. The message of the preacher, fifty-two Sundays a year, is “Dear people, be good.” We’ve heard it ad-nausea-um! Or: “Believe in this.” He may occasionally give us a sermon on what happens after death or the nature of God, but basically the sermon is “Be good.” But how? As Saint Paul said, “To will is present with me, but how to do that which is good I find not; for the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” How are we going to be changed?
Obviously, there cannot be a vitality of religion without vital religious experience. And that’s something much more than emoting over singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” But you see what happens in our ecclesiastical goings-on is that we run a talking shop. We pray. We tell God what to do, or give advice as if He didn’t know. We read the scriptures, and remember: talking of the Bible Jesus said “You search the scriptures daily, for in them you think you have life.” Saint Paul made some rather funny references about the spirit which giveth life and the letter which kills. I think the Bible should be ceremoniously and reverently burned every Easter. We need it no more because the Spirit is with us. It’s a dangerous book. And to worship it is of course a far more dangerous idolatry than bowing down to images of wood and stone. Because you can –– nobody’s senses can confuse a wooden image with God, but you can very easily confuse a set of ideas with God, because concepts are more rarefied and abstract.
So with this endless talking in church we can preach, but by-and-large preaching does nothing but excite a sense of anxiety and guilt. And you can’t love out of that. No scolding, no rational demonstration of the right way to behave is going to inspire people with love. Something else must happen. But we will say “What are you going to do about it?” Do about it? You have no faith? Be quiet. Even Quakers aren’t quiet.
They sit in meeting and think. At least some of them do. But supposing we get really quiet; we don’t think; be absolutely silent through-and-through? We say “Well, you’ll just fall into a blank.” Oh? Ever tried?
I feel then, you see, that it’s enormously important that churches stop being talking shops, they become centers of contemplation. What is contemplation? “Con-temp-lum” – It’s what you do in the temple. You don’t come to the temple to chatter, but to be still and know that “I am God.” And this is why, if the Christian religion – if the Gospel of Christ – is to mean anything at all instead of just being one of the forgotten religions along with Osiris and Mithra we must see Christ as the Great Mystic. In the proper sense of the word “mystic,” not someone who has all sorts of magical powers and understands spirits and so on. A mystic – strictly speaking – is one who realizes union with God, by whatever name. This seems to me the crux and message of the Gospel, summed up in the prayer of Jesus which Saint John records as he speaks over his disciples praying that “they may be one even as you, Father, and I are one.” That they may be all one. All realize this divine son-ship, all oneness, basic identity with the eternal energy of the universe and the love that moves the Sun and other stars.
“One night I put my head down on the table where the computer sat and I cried; I just want to know what creates reality. How did I do this to myself? I accidentally hit the enter key and there it was, a quote from Neville Goddard; “Imagination creates reality” and I burst into tears of relief. I knew instantly that was true. My life passed by and I saw all the things I had called to me. I knew it was true.”
I recently decided to retire from the hustle and bustle life. I have a comfortable enough life and I am happy, especially, on the inside. I have a mission. I want to share my joys and experiences, to extend joy, and to increase happiness and abundance in joy.
I came upon Neville Goddard a few years ago, similar to how Rita (above) describes her discovery. Now, I have time to listen to Neville’s lectures and read about his life and his accomplishmens. He was a teacher, as am I. He discovered a personal importance of imagination and spirituality, as do I.
I’d come upon his work, probably 10 years ago. I listened to some of the lectures and I liked his message. He was addressing some of my doubts about the ‘law of attraction’ teachings that were popular at the time. Neville was clearly saying that our imagination and our genuine abilities are activated when we connect with our divine nature.
I’ll have more to say about him in the future. Meantime, here is a brief introduction.
Neville Goddard
Neville Lancelot Goddard (1905-1972) was a prophet, profoundly influential teacher, and author. He did not associate himself as a metaphysician, with any ‘ism’ or ‘New Thought’ teaching as commonly advertised by these collective groups. Goddard was sent to illustrate the teachings of psychological truth intended in the Biblical teachings, and restore awareness of meaning to what the ancients intended to tell the world.
Program description
This is a reading of a 09-09-1968 lecture by Neville . There is only a TEXT version of this lecture by Neville’s students. We now offer a read audio version of this lecture to you.
I’ve been wanting to get back here again, posting blog updates, articles, and recommendations for self-improvement. So, I’ll look forward to connecting more often again with my WordPress friends.
Alan Watts… “I warn you, that by explaining these things to you, I shall subject you to a very serious hoax.”
Here we have a video and transcript (Part 1, Being Let Go; Samadhi):
The World As Emptiness, Alan Watts
This particular weekend seminar is devoted to Buddhism, and it should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export. Last week, when I discussed Hinduism, I discussed many things to do with the organization of a Hindu society because Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion; it’s a whole culture. It’s a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else.
Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. But you see, when a religion and a culture are inseparable, it’s very difficult to export a culture, because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.
So the question arises, what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that approximately, you’ll get Buddhism. As I explained, the essential of Hinduism, the real, deep root, isn’t any kind of doctrine, it isn’t really any special kind of discipline, although of course disciplines are involved.
The center of Hinduism is an experience called moksha, liberation, in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, in a way, on one level an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call ‘the self,’ the one self, which is all that there is.
The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays ‘hide,’ it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don’t know it because it’s playing ‘hide.’ But when it plays ‘seek,’ it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one’s eyes.
Alan Watts – The World As Emptiness, Part 1
Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism, the only really important thing about Buddhism is the experience which they call ‘awakening.’ Buddha is a title, and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root, ‘bheudh,’ and that sometimes means ‘to know,’ but better, ‘waking.’ And so you get from this root ‘bodhih.’ That is the state of being awakened. And so ‘Buddha,’ ‘the awakened one,’ ‘the awakened person.’ And so there can of course in Buddhist ideas, be very many Buddhas.
The person called the Buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that Buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes, you see, there comes into the world what you might call a ‘big Buddha.’ A very important one. And such a one is said to have been Guatama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in a part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date, like 564, which some people think it was, but I give you a vague date–just after 600 BC is probably right.
Most of you, I’m sure, know the story of his life. Is there anyone who doesn’t, I mean roughly? OK. So I won’t bother too much with that. But the point is, that when, in India, a man was called a Buddha, or THE BUDDHA, this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is first of all necessary for a Buddha to be human. He can’t be any other kind of being, whether in the Hindu scale of beings he’s above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods or angels–angels are probably a better name for them than gods–all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma–that is action that requires more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They’re still, according to popular ideas, going ’round the wheel from life after life after life after life, because they still have the thirst for existence, or to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the self is still playing the game of not being itself.
But the Buddha’s doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occurred after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism, fasting, doing all sort of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But Buddha found that all that was futile; that was not The Way. And one day he broke is ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish.
So long as you think, and feel, that you are a someone contained in your bag of skin, and that’s all, there is no way whatsoever of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you’re still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehavior.
So, you know how people are when they get spiritually proud. They belong to some kind of a church group, or an occult group, and say ‘Of course we’re the ones who have the right teaching. We’re the in-group, we’re the elect, and everyone else outside.’ It is really off the track. But then comes along someone who one-ups THEM, by saying ‘Well, in our circles, we’re very tolerant. We accept all religions and all ways as leading to The One.’ But what they’re doing is they’re playing the game called ‘We’re More Tolerant Than You Are.’ And in this way the egocentric being is always in his own trap.
So Buddha saw that all his yoga exercises and ascetic disciplines had just been ways of trying to get himself out of the trap in order to save his own skin, in order to find peace for himself. And he realized that that is an impossible thing to do, because the motivation ruins the project. He found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. Trap and trapped are one, and when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left. I’m going to explain that of course more carefully.
So, as a result of this experience, he formulated what is called the dharma, that is the Sanskrit word for ‘method.’ You will get a certain confusion when you read books on Buddhism, because they switch between Sanskrit and Pali words.
The earliest Buddhist scriptures that we know of are written the Pali language, and Pali is a softened form of Sanskrit. So that, for example, the doctrine of the Buddha is called in Sanskrit the ‘dharma,’ we must in pronouncing Sanskrit be aware that an ‘A’ is almost pronounced as we pronounce ‘U’ in the word ‘but.’ So they don’t say ‘darmuh,’ they say ‘durmuh.’ And so also this double ‘D’ you say ‘budduh’ and so on. But in Pali, and in many books of Buddhism, you’ll find the Buddhist doctrine described as the ‘dhama.’ And so the same way ‘karma’ in Sanskrit, in Pali becomes ‘kama.’ ‘Buddha’ remains the same. The dharma, then, is the method.
Now, the method of Buddhism, and this is absolutely important to remember, is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn’t teach a doctrine. You cannot anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialog.
So the concern of the Buddha as a young man—the problem he wanted to solve—was the problem of human suffering. And so he formulated his teaching in a very easy way to remember. All those Buddhist scriptures are full of what you might call mnemonic tricks, sort of numbering things in such a way that they’re easy to remember. And so he summed up his teaching in what are called the Four Noble Truths. And the first one, because it was his main concern, was the truth about duhkha. Duhkha, ‘suffering, pain, frustration, chronic dis-ease.’ It is the opposite of sukha, which means ‘sweet, pleasure, etc.’
So, insofar as the problem posed in Buddhism is duhkha, ‘I don’t want to suffer, and I want to find someone or something that can cure me of suffering.’ That’s the problem. Now if there’s a person who solves the problem, a buddha, people come to him and say ‘Master, how do we get out of this problem?’ So what he does is to propose certain things to them. First of all, he points out that with duhkha go two other things. These are respectively called anitya and anātman. Nnitya means permanant, so anitya is impermanance. Flux, change, is characteristic of everything whatsoever. There isn’t anything at all in the whole world, in the material world, in the psychic world, in the spiritual world, there is nothing you can catch hold of and hang on to for safely. Nuttin’ … not only is there nothing you can hang on to, but by the teaching of anātman, there is no you to hang on to it. In other words, all clinging to life is an illusory hand grasping at smoke. If you can get that into your head and see that is so, nobody needs to tell you that you ought not to grasp. Because you see, you can’t.
Buddhism is not essentially moralistic. The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Because what happens is he simply sweeps the dust under the carpet, and it all comes back again somehow. But in this case, it involves a complete realization that this is the case. So that’s what the teacher puts across to begin with.
The next thing that comes up, the second of the noble truths, is about the cause of suffering, and this in Sanskrit is called trishna. Trishna is related to our word ‘thirst.’ It’s very often translated ‘desire.’ That will do. Better, perhaps, is ‘craving, clinging, grasping,’ or even, to use our modern psychological word, ‘blocking.’ When, for example, somebody is blocked, and dithers and hesitates, and doesn’t know what to do, he is in the strictest Buddhist sense attached, he’s stuck. But a buddha can’t be stuck, he cannot be phased. He always flows, just as water always flows, even if you dam it, the water just keeps on getting higher and higher and higher until it flows over the dam. It’s unstoppable.
Now, Buddha said, then, duhkha comes from trishna. You all suffer because you cling to the world, and you don’t recognize that the world is anitya and anātman. So then, try, if you can, not to grasp. Well, do you see that that immediately poses a problem? Because the student who has started off this dialog with the buddha then makes various efforts to give up desire. Upon which he very rapidly discovers that he is desiring not to desire, and he takes that back to the teacher, who says ‘Well, well, well.’ He said, ‘Of course. You are desiring not to desire, and that’s of course excessive.
All I want you to do is to give up desiring as much as you can. Don’t want to go beyond the point of which you’re capable.’ And for this reason Buddhism is called the Middle Way. Not only is it the middle way between the extremes of ascetic discipline and pleasure seeking, but it’s also the middle way in a very subtle sense. Don’t desire to give up more desire than you can. And if you find that a problem, don’t desire to be successful in giving up more desire than you can. You see what’s happening? Every time he’s returned to the middle way, he’s moved out of an extreme situation.
Now then, we’ll go on; we’ll cut out what happens in the pursuit of that method until a little later. The next truth in the list is concerned with the nature of release from duhkha. And so number three is nirvana. Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism; it’s the state of liberation corresponding to what the Hindus call moksha. The word means ‘blow out,’ and it comes from the root ‘nir vritti.’ Now some people think that what it means is blowing out the flame of desire. I don’t believe this. I believe that it means ‘breathe out,’ rather than ‘blow out,’ because if you try to hold your breath, and in Indian thought, breath–prana–is the life principle. If you try to hold on to life, you lose it. You can’t hold your breath and stay alive; it becomes extremely uncomfortable to hold onto your breath [moksha: release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma… a transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth].
And so in exactly the same way, it becomes extremely uncomfortable to spend all your time holding on to your life. What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do. They spend enormous efforts on maintaining a certain standard of living, which is a great deal of trouble. You know, you get a nice house in the suburbs, and the first thing you do is you plant a lawn. You’ve gotta get out and mow the damn thing all the time, and you buy expensive this-that and soon you’re all involved in mortgages, and instead of being able to walk out into the garden and enjoy, you sit at your desk and look at your books, filling out this and that and the other and paying bills and answering letters. What a lot of rot! But you see, that is holding onto life. So, translated into colloquial American, nirvana is ‘whew!’ because if you let your breath go, it’ll come back. So nirvana is not annihilation, it’s not disappearance into a sort of undifferentiated void. Nirvana is the state of being let go. It is a state of consciousness, and a state of, you might call it, being, here and now in this life.
We now come to the most complicated of all, number four and magha. Magha in Sanskrit means ‘past,’ and the Buddha taught an eight-fold path for the realization of nirvana. This always reminds me of a story about Dr Suzuki, who is a very, very great Buddhist scholar. Many years ago, he was giving a fundamental lecture on Buddhism at the University of Hawaii, and he’d been going through these four truths, and he said ‘Ah, fourth Noble Truth is Noble Eightfold Path. First step of Noble Eightfold Path is called shoken. Shoken in Japanese means ‘right view.’ For Buddhism, fundamentally, is the right way of viewing this world. Second step of Noble Eightfold Path is—oh, I forget second step, you look it up in the book.’
Well, I’m going to do rather the same thing. What is important is this: the eight-fold path has really got three divisions in it. The first are concerned with understanding, the second division is concerned with conduct, and the third division is concerned with meditation. And every step in the path is preceded with the Sanskrit word _samyak_. In which you remember we ran into _samadhi_ last week, ‘sam’ is the key word. And so, the first step, _samyak- drishti_, which mean–‘drishti’ means a view, a way of looking at things, a vision, an attitude, something like that. But this word samyak is in ordinary texts on Buddhism almost invariably translated ‘right.’ This is a very bad translation. The word IS used in certain contexts in Sanskrit to mean ‘right, correct,’ but it has other and wider meanings. ‘Sam’ means, like our word ‘sum,’ which is derived from it, ‘complete, total, all-embracing.’ It also has the meaning of ‘middle wade,’ representing as it were the fulcrum, the center, the point of balance in a totality. Middle wade way of looking at things. Middle wade way of understanding the dharma. Middle wade way of speech, of conduct, of livelihood, and so on.
Now this is particularly cogent when it comes to Buddhist ideas of behavior. Every Buddhist in all the world, practically, as a layman–he’s not a monk–undertakes what are called pancasila, the Five Good Conducts. ‘Sila’ is sometimes translated ‘precept.’ But it’s not a precept because it’s not a commandment.
When Buddhists priests chant the precepts, you know: pranatipada: ‘prana (life) tipada (taking away) I promise to abstain from.’ So the first is that one undertakes not to destroy life. Second, not to take what is not given. Third—this is usually translated ‘not to commit adultry’. It doesn’t say anything of the kind. In Sanskrit, it means ‘I undertake the precept to abstain from exploiting my passions.’ Buddhism has no doctrine about adultery; you may have as many wives as you like.
But the point is this: when you’re feeling blue, and bored, it’s not a good idea to have a drink, because you may become dependent on alcohol whenever you feel unhappy. So in the same way, when you’re feeling blue and bored, it’s not a good idea to say ‘Let’s go out and get some chicks and have some sex fun.’ That’s exploiting the passions. But it’s not exploiting the passions, you see, when drinking, say, expresses the vitality and friendship of the group sitting around the dinner table, or when sex expresses the spontaneous delight of two people in each other.
Then, the fourth precept, Musavada, ‘to abstain from false speech.’ It doesn’t simply mean lying. It means, abusing people. It means using speech in a phony way, like saying ‘all niggers are thus and so.’ Or ‘the attitude of America to this situation is thus and thus.’ See, that’s phony kind of talking. Anybody who studies general semantics will be helped in avoiding musavada, false speech.
The final precept is a very complicated one, and nobody’s quite sure exactly what it means. It mentions three kinds of drugs and drinks: sura[?], mariya[?], maja[?]. We don’t know what they are. But at any rate, it’s generally classed as narcotics and liquors. Now, there are two ways of translating this precept. One says to abstain from narcotics and liquors; the other liberal translation favored by the great scholar Dr Malanesecreta[?] is ‘I abstain from being intoxicated by these things.’ So if you drink and don’t get intoxicated, it’s OK. You don’t have to be a teetotaler to be a Buddhist. This is especially true in Japan and China; my goodness, how they throw it down! A scholarly Chinese once said to me, ‘You know, before you start meditating, just have a couple martinis, because it increases your progress by about six months.’
Now you see these are, as I say, they are not commandments, they are vows. Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver. The reason why these precepts are undertaken is not for a sentimental reason. It is not that you’re going to make you into a good person. It is that for anybody interested in the experiments necessary for liberation, these ways of life are expedient. First of all, if you go around killing, you’re going to make enemies, and you’re going to have to spend a lot of time defending yourself, which will distract you from your yoga. If you go around stealing, likewise, you’re going to acquire a heap of stuff, and again, you’re going to make enemies. If you exploit your passions, you’re going to get a big thrill, but it doesn’t last. When you begin to get older, you realize ‘Well that was fun while we had it, but I haven’t really learned very much from it, and now what?’ Same with speech. Nothing is more confusing to the mind than taking words too seriously. We’ve seen so many examples of that. And finally, to get intoxicated or narcotized–a narcotic is anything like alcohol or opium which makes you sleepy. The word ‘narcosis’ in Greek, ‘narc’ means ‘sleep.’ So, if you want to pass your life seeing things through a dim haze, this is not exactly awakening.
So, so much for the conduct side of Buddhism. We come then to the final parts of the eightfold path. There are two concluding steps, which are called Samyak smriti and Samyak Samadhi. Smriti means ‘recollection, memory, present-mindedness’ … seems rather funny that the same word can mean ‘recollection or memory’ and ‘present-mindedness’ Bbut smriti is exactly what that wonderful old rascal George Gurdjieff meant by self-awareness, or self-remembering. Smriti is to have complete presence of mind.
There is a wonderful meditation called ‘The House that Jack Built Meditation,’ at least that’s what I call it, that the Southern Buddhists practice. He walks, and he says to himself, ‘There is the lifting of the foot.’ The next thing he says is ‘There is a perception of the lifting of the foot.’ And the next, he says ‘There is a tendency towards the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ Then finally he says, ‘There is a consciousness of the tendency of the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ And so, with everything that he does, he knows that he does it. He is self-aware. This is tricky. Of course, it’s not easy to do. But as you practice this–I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, which I suppose I shouldn’t do–but you will find that there are so many things to be aware of at any given moment in what you’re doing, that at best you only ever pick out one or two of them. That’s the first thing you’ll find out. Ordinary conscious awareness is seeing the world with blinkers on. As we say, you can think of only one thing at a time. That’s because ordinary consciousness is narrowed consciousness. It’s being narrow-minded in the true sense of the word, looking at things that way. Then you find out in the course of going around being aware all of the time–what are you doing when you remember? Or when you think about the future? ‘I am aware that I am remembering’? ‘I am aware that I am thinking about the future’?
But you see, what eventually happens is that you discover that there isn’t any way of being absent-minded. All thoughts are in the present and of the present. And when you discover that, you approach samadhi. Samadhi is the complete state, the fulfilled state of mind. And you will find many, many different ideas among the sects of Buddhists and Hindus as to what samadhi is. Some people call it a trance, some people call it a state of consciousness without anything in it, knowing with no object of knowledge. Some people say is is the unification of the know-er and the known. All these are varying opinions.
I had a friend who was a Zen master, and he used to talk about samadhi, and he said a very fine example of samadhi is a fine horse rider. When you watch a good cowboy, he is one being with the horse. So an excellent driver in a car makes the car his own body, and he absolutely is with it. So also a fine pair of dancers; they don’t have to shove each other to get one to do what the other wants him to do. They have a way of understanding each other, of moving together as if they were Siamese twins. That’s samadhi, on the physical, ordinary, everyday level. The samadhi of which Buddha speaks is the state which, as it is, the gateway to Nirvana; the state in which the illusion of the ego, as a separate thing, disintegrates.
Now, when we get to that point in Buddhism, Buddhists do a funny thing, which is going to occupy our attention for a good deal of this seminar. They don’t fall down and worship. They don’t really have any name for what it is, that is, really, and basically. The idea of anatman, of non-self, is applied in Buddhism not only to the individual ego, but also to the notion that there is a self of the universe, a kind of impersonal or personal god, and so it is generally supposed that Buddhism is atheistic. It’s true, depending on what you mean by atheism. Common or garden atheism is a form of belief; namely that I believe there is no god. The atheist positively denies the existence of any god. All right. Now, there is such an atheist, if you put dash between the ‘a’ and ‘theist,’ or speak about something called ‘atheos’–‘theos’ in Greek means ‘god’–but what is a non-god? A non-god is an inconceivable something or other.
I love the story about a debate in the Houses of Parliment in England, where, as you know, the Church of England is established and therefor under control of the government, and the high ecclesiastics had petitioned Parliament to let them have a new prayer book. Somebody got up and said “It’s perfectly ridiculous that Parliament should decide on this, because as we well know, there are quite a number of atheists in these benches.” And somebody got up and said “Oh, I don’t think there are really any atheists. We all believe in some sort of something somewhere.”
Now again, of course, it isn’t that Buddhism believes in some sort of something somewhere, and that is to say in vagueness. Here is the point: if you believe, if you have certain propositions that you want to assert about the ultimate reality, or what Paul Tillich calls ‘the ultimate ground of being’ you are talking nonsense. Because you can’t say something specific about everything. You see, supposing you wanted to say God has a shape. But if god is all that there is, then God doesn’t have any outside, so he can’t have a shape. You have to have an outside and space outside it to have a shape. So that’s why the Hebrews, too, are against people making images of God. But nonetheless, Jews and Christians persistently make images of God, not necessarily in pictures and statues, but they make images in their minds. And those are much more insidious images.
Buddhism is not saying that the Self, the great Atman, or what-not… it isn’t denying that the experience which corresponds to these words is realizable. What it is saying is that if you make conceptions and doctrines about these things, your liable to become attached to them. You’re liable to start believing instead of knowing. So they say in Zen Buddhism, “The doctrine of Buddhism is a finger pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” Also, we might say in the West, the idea of God is a finger pointing at God, but what most people do is instead of following the finger, they suck it for comfort. And so Buddha chopped off the finger [metaphor], and undermined all metaphysical beliefs.
There are many, many dialogues in the Pali scriptures where people try to corner the Buddha into a metaphysical position. ‘Is the world eternal?’ The Buddha says nothing. ‘Is the world not eternal?’ And he answers ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world both eternal and not eternal?’ And he don’t say ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world neither eternal nor not eternal?’ And STILL he don’t say ‘nuttin’. He maintains what is called the noble silence. Sometimes called the thunder of silence, because this silence, this metaphysical silence, is not a void. It is very powerful. This silence is the open window through which you can see not concepts, not ideas, not beliefs, but the very goods. But if you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. It’s better to destroy people’s beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it is The Way.
Dharma: is a key concept that signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with the order that makes life and universe possible. Dharma is “cosmic law and order” and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living” as taught by the Buddha.
Moksha: in Indian philosophy and religion is a liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra); derived from Sanskrit, the term moksha literally means freedom from saṃsāra.
Samadhi: a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached (before or at death).
Saṃsāra: is a Sanskrit word that means “wandering” or “world”, with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. It also refers to the theory of rebirth and “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence” and liberation from Saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvana, Mukti or Kaivalya.
The Noble Eightfold Path: is the fourth of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, and asserts the path to the cessation of dukkha (suffering, pain, un-satisfactoriness). The path teaches that through restraining oneself, by cultivating discipline, in practicing mindfulness and meditation, the enlightened ones stop their craving, clinging and karmic accumulations, and thus end rebirth and suffering. It is used to develop insight into the true nature of reality, achieve liberation from rebirths in realms of Samsara, and to attain nirvana. In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel (dharmachakra), with eight spokes representing the eight elements of the path. The eight Buddhist concepts in the Noble Eightfold Path are:
right view: the belief that there is an afterlife, that not everything ends with death, that Buddha taught and followed a successful path to nirvana;
right resolve: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving-kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
right speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him, speaking that which leads to salvation;
right conduct: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts.
right livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life;
right effort: guard against sensual thoughts; this concept, states Harvey, aims at preventing unwholesome states that disrupt meditation.
right mindfulness: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; encourages the mindfulness about impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five skandhas, the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
right samadhi (concentration): practicing four stages of dhyana meditation.
“Authentic wisdom is the ability to monitor yourself at all times to determine your relative state of weakness or strength, and to shift out of those thoughts that weaken you.” Wayne Dyer, 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace
I was reflecting on authenticity and that as I am out and about or busy with my work that the love that I seek is not really Love… but that it is a state of consciousness in my mind and that it really is based on body sensations and notions, however subtle, that are not true and wholesome like the ideal of love. True love does not come and go and it cannot be found in the world and as I stayed with this, with the stillness, I knew love cannot be found one moment and then lost in another. This presence with Love is timeless, without objects and it might be characterized, although there are no properties in the stillness, I’m saying it is a Self-knowing, Self-recognizing peaceful and serene consciousness of I know this awareness.. a consciousness I recall the experience of as like I’d been in a deep sleep and it is refreshing like a deep object-less sleep.
John Wheeler demonstrated “the universe is a self-referential ‘strange loop’ in which physics gives rise to observers, then rise to information, which in turn gives rise to physics.” What we find here is something quite similar. We’ll discover that mirror relationships create a strange loop as well. An observation changes the perceiving when we focus upon the lessons, changes the information, changes the relationship, changes the information, changes the evolution, changes the observers, changes the physics.
Within, consciousness is fractal-holographic to the exact same awareness and health and state of mind in our every fiber as the mind is aligned. It is as though the past is healed when we heal an emotional wound in the present. THIS IS TRUE: When a pattern occurs in the present and it is healed, the pattern is healed throughout the past… everywhere.
David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, overall worldview, and Special Relativity use what he referred to as the holomovement. Holomovement is “undivided wholeness” in process of becoming by “universal flux” not static oneness. By dynamic wholeness-in-motion, everything moves with an interconnectedness as though separared in space and time and yet is always every thing connected with everything else. Bohm expanded his ideas in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980. He included this in Special Relativity afterwards in 1981.
In this note (post), I include a course for you in holo-mirror, holo-movement. This is VERY POWERFUL work as this video demonstrates:
At 13:41 Gregg presents a graphic with a list of the seven mirrors:
1. Mirror of the Moment
2. Mirror of that which is Judged
3. Mirror of that which is Lost/Given Away/Taken Away
4. Mirror of Most Forgotten Love
5. Mirror of Father/Mother
6. Mirror of Your Quest into Darkness
7. Mirror of Self Perception
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— everyone is a mirror —
every important person is an important mirror
— this always applies —
every important person is an important mirror
— everyone is a mirror —
seven mirror patterns
The First Mirror is my presence in the now moment… what we reflect by others in the present… what we radiate in the moment.
The Second Mirror is only very subtlety different but it reflects back to us that which we judge. It is what we have been wounded by and have an emotional charge on. It can be something we have done in the past that we have not forgiven. It is good to discern however that when we condemn another with an emotional charge we are most likely judging ourselves. This mirror is more difficult to understand as most people find it difficult to see the deeply wounded emotions within. We often think we have forgiven people and situations, when in fact they weaved subtlety into the very fabric of our being.
The Third Mirror reflects back to us something we have lost, given away or had taken away. When we see something we love in another it is often something we have lost, given away or that has been stolen within our personal lives. Every relationship is a relationship with the self and often we try to reclaim what we lost, gave away or had taken away as a child. All of which can be reclaimed within self. When we give away our power to another person, we suffer a form of soul loss, without realizing we send out a subtle frequency that others can feel, if they are experiencing the same energy loss, you will attract the same pattern of behavior back to you.
The Fourth Mirror reflects back to us our most forgotten love. This could be a way of life, or a lost or unfinished relationship. Often it is a past life where a wrong conclusion from a prior experience was made. These will recreate themselves over and over and over again until the conclusion is registered in the soul as wisdom. This is the most difficult to come to terms with as we all have made these sort of choices in our life, to leave someone, a place or much loved home, the pain of such a decision will imprint upon the soul or body hologram, once the lesson has been recognized you no longer attract these circumstances to you.
The Fifth Mirror reflects back Father/Mother. It is frequently stated that we marry our father or mother. We may display both healthy and unhealthy patterns we learned as a child. Our father and mother are often like Gods to us and so we will often reflect aspects of our relationship with them onto our partners. We often choose our partners based on our relationship with our parents.
The Sixth Mirror reflects back to us the Quest for Darkness or what is often referred to as a dark night of the soul. This is where we meet our greatest challenges, our greatest fears, and have been gathering the tools from life to confront and deal with. The most important thing to remember is that our soul is giving us the opportunity to grow and evolve, this will help us remove the vibration of victim. If we see these as opportunities for spiritual growth and from a perspective of soul advancement, they do not have to be feared; it is just passing through our life, asking us to seek answers from within rather than relying on others for answers.
The Seventh Mirror reflects back to us our self-perception. Others will perceive and treat us according to how we perceive and treat ourselves. If we are under a low self-esteem and do not accept our wisdom and beauty, others will not acknowledge them. If we are angry, bitter and unloving to others, they in turn will often react in the same way towards us. If we find another perception of ourselves, we alter the world. Maybe it is time to be kind, loving and compassionate with ourselves and others.
Combine mirror work with asking yourself… “Am I playing a role?” If you can recognize that you or the other is playing a role as Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor, you will be able to accomplish far easier use of the mirror lessons.
This Essene work is tremendously powerful but very subtle.
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Pay close attention to the training.
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The ancient Essene had a very sophisticated understanding of interpersonal human relationships and the role of emotion in those relationships. It’s the role of emotion that we have carefully sifted out of our Western experience up until very recently. Now, as we go back into these texts, we see that it is emotion that proves the power and, when coupled with logic, true magic and miracles occur.
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Qualities that we see in the people around us are directly related to our own traits that attract the mirroring others.
This is a summary of a panel conversation with scientists that have varying experiences and approaches to what is consciousness, or, mind and awareness. The two hour program is facilitated by A. H. Almaas (the pen name of Hameed Ali) featuring panelists Chris Fields, Henry Stapp, Julia Mossbridge, Stuart Hameroff, and Donald Hoffman (right to left).
I was asked to comment on this program at Facebook and as I watched it, I made some notes and I gave the program content some serious thought. This is not deeply steeped in scientific jargon. It isn’t an easy conversation for the average person either though. I do my best here to break it down. Here is the video program first, and my notes follow.
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Notes:
First off, as Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am” means to me that I cannot doubt that I have consciousness and awareness. Each of us may agree or not that what Descartes said is true or not. What I mean is that I cannot deny or doubt that consciousness is fundamental and essential to and for advancing human life. We may know little about how to advance awareness, and we may even doubt that our own past awareness is valid or reasonable, but we cannot doubt that there is awareness and that we are conscious. Consciousness is fundamental and essential for normal living; we must agree. Yet, our own experiences demonstrate that there are limits of conscious awareness.
So, I’d expect that if we are attempting to define consciousness that we’d agree to contemplate the present moment and what awareness we can attain in a moment so as to progress. Working together for evolving collaborative science requires expanding this awareness, realizing of course that we each have a different realty. We’ll each benefit if we pay attention to the sensations of breathing; notice the feeling in our feet when walking; and whenever finding that the mind wandered simply call our awareness back to sensations. We begin this way to discover contemplative science; evolving science and our own awareness.
Science, according to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary simply is “knowledge attained through study or practice,” or “knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world.” Science can move us forward into studies of consciousness by focusing on experiences of life, with increasingly good questions about consciousness and how consciousness is evolving in us as we attain awareness that we are connected in consciousness. Pause… we may not agree presently on that this occurs within consciousness. However, that we may explore, scientifically.
We all will agree that our awareness may expand to include more of what we had previously been unaware. Thus, as humans evolve awareness consciously, science may progress, and we might evolve further in truth toward global peace, human integrity, personal freedom, and social harmony. Or is that right? Do we care about those ideals?
My disappointment is that this discussion panel program is not really science, yet. I was surprised, these scientists stop short of agreement on a purpose. Consciousness science is necessary even though we do initially not understand that the varying experiences and limitations of a collective awareness. For example, the program did not advance a better question even as to what to look at…. such as, “How did absolute consciousness—indivisible, still, and unchanging—become this world of multiplicity and change?”
The purpose of science is to advance our understanding of reality. A purpose for advancing scientific studies of consciousness may include any hypotheses (scientific guesses) as to the outcome of experimentation. We’ll need a process that will be inclusive and still produce the best explanations for what we observe about consciousness. However, if consciousness is also evolving individually, indwelling, and cosmic, then reality is evolving and we may advance in progress to evolve language.
I hope that my comments are worth something, so, I did my best to live up to the commitment that I made and to give this program an honest look, to provide some notes for readers, and to give some useful feedback about it.
The panel conversation presents contributions, individual working experiences and views related to consciousness, exploring scientific theories, consensus about anything relating to consciousness, and attempts at an operating definition of consciousness with an eye on a non-dual view of consciousness… looking deeper into assumptions and conclusions of perceptions.
They present a program that discusses consciousness, yes. However, as the program moves along, we discover that the distinguished participants do not each have a solution for making progress that is agreeable.
Panel Questions (paraphrased and just briefly summarized with my notes):
Q-1) As we explore the hard question of science – what is consciousness… What is your working definition for consciousness (in your scientific work)?
Youtube Fast-Forward Question 1
Chris Fields begins the field focusing upon RAW (phenomenal) awareness… touch, taste, auditory, visual … giving emphasis to how people experience memories as distinguishing them from now experiences. I wondered as I listened if many even have an awareness of self or that some experiences occur in the present (moment) more so than others.
Henry Stapp recalls William James declares that ‘States of mind’ succeed each other. According to James: (1) Every ‘state’ tends to be part of a personal consciousness. (2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing. (3) Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous. (4) It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects — chooses from among them, in a word — all the while. I am not sure from the initial description what is causing joining of mind into matter.
Julia Mossbridge says that there is great importance in that our conscious experience and unconscious experience differ. Here she focuses initially on that our personal experiences of consciousness differ and that this is greatly important and reminds us that there is an importance to our experiences of “me, not me.” Stapp and then Almaas pipe in regarding states of consciousness “waking, sleeping, dreaming, enlightenment.”
Stuart Hameroff, not at all addressing the question, asserts that there are collapses (by the uncertainty principle) due to separation in underlying of space-time geometry instabilities that will self-collapse randomly entangling with the quantum ‘environment’ and without ‘history’ or ‘memory’ of occurring in whatever state, one or another, they manifest into these cease in time. In living systems he says, shielding from random environment occurs. He then describes a bit about this as an evolution process. He says in defining consciousness, “it’s kind of like pornography, you know it when you see it.” So, as it seems from Hameroff, consciousness with memory, meaning and causal behavior is ‘tied’ to living being and platonic (space-time) values orchestrate consciousness with wisdom. He qualifies that the source entity of consciousness space-time geometry (matter not being fundamental). I’m not sure but how matter and mind are being joined in the initial statements that Hameroff is making at around 21 minutes in the program. Stapp points out that personal values seem to be entering into the evolution (rather? from platonic values). Hameroff describes how he and Sir Roger Penrose determined that platonic values govern choices as predominant influences. He eventually explains that there is structure at the Planck scale to develop space-time fractal geometry. Hameroff finishes up his introduction saying that consciousness is driving the evolution of the universe.
Donald Hoffman begins in agreement that consciousness experiences are important and summarizes many of the previous points of the definition. He adds that for moving forward, the assumption that consciousness has a structure that can be mathematically described. He summarizes that space-time is a representation of some consciousness and that space and time are not at all fundamental. Essentially, he’s saying that space and time are useful for experiences and to reproduce – a species specific solution for living situations.
So, there are functions of consciousness that the panel describe. However, as Almaas points out, a fundamental universal definition for consciousness is not defined. A common understanding, so far, is that consciousness is active; doing… feeling for example, perceiving, experiencing, and thinking. However, that consciousness is a fundamental and underlying unifying spiritual medium of living is not agreed upon with scientists. Yet, apparently, there is agreement that consciousness may be a fundamental necessity for human life. [I’ll note here, none of the scientists specifically address consciousness that interests me; that is the consciousness that is me.] Julia Mossbridge indicates that using the term, here, consciousness is confusing. She says spiritual teachers are referring to something different from what the scientists are discussing. The scientists are talking about consciousness is the fundamental ingredient for experiencing – anything. The spiritual teachers are saying consciousness is the fundamental essence of life; one mind. Chris Fields points out that the core concept of physics is energy and that energy is an undefined term similar here to the way this discussion is going about what is consciousness. He says it may be that it must be left undefined.
Q-2) How is your research/work addressing “the hard problem of consciousness” to contribute toward understanding that?
Youtube Fast-Forward Question 2
Stuart Hameroff leads off this time. Mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia are accessed via human experiences and these are organized into full rich conscious experiences. He relates this to an orchestra warming up. Each musician has been piping in random notes and then in concert, we hear them produce a whole beautiful symphony. He adds that an orchestra has a conductor but with consciousness that the brain must self-organize the rich experiences [I somewhat disagree]. Hameroff says, “You can have consciousness even without biology” [I didn’t expect that]. He said, “I believe that consciousness is a process on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds.” He mentions that molecular geometry may be involved in the process of giving rise to consciousness.
Henry Stapp introduced a complex function of change into this saying, “we are left with a fundamentally idea-like universe” as he describes how matter forms according to mathematical rules and this is well defined and predictable but when we get knowledge about the structure, changes occur based upon the findings and the new form is compatible with the information and yet evolved. This, he indicates, is similar to how an idea leads to changes based on the findings of how useful the idea turns out to be. He says “matter really behaved like an idea, and so, we are left with a fundamentally idea-like universe.” Stapp indicates later that it must be taken to be a fundamental fact that consciousness is there… as the essential fact, we must become accepting that the hard problem takes us further from materialist views.
Chris Fields says, “If we understand the hard problem as why is there any awareness at all and if the question is have we come any closer to explaining why there is any awareness at all, I would say the answer is no. I don’t think we have a theory, at all, as to why there is awareness anywhere in the universe [I agree].” He points out that scientific work is contributing towards what awareness does, why awareness is useful, under what conditions a system will be aware of a particular phenomenon (mathematics allow prediction) but not why there is awareness. He thinks that pushing ahead, that science will recognize that awareness must be a fundamental assumption. “We really do have to drop this business of awareness being generated by a particular organization of neurons, which is the standard view in neuroscience, or a particular of something else [material]. It became very clear in the early twentieth century that there aren’t any material objects. We all agree that there are objective boundaries around things. We believe that there is an objective boundary around me and around the lectern and so on and so forth. If you look at the formulas… those boundaries cannot be objective.” Modern physics and science of particles demonstrate that boundaries do not really nicely divide realities that we perceive via our physical senses. Physical reality is not really so much what Newton taught.
Julia Mossbridge: “I don’t know that I agree that out individual consciousness does anything….” She acknowledges that to her understanding that the questions put to science as “the hard problem” originating from David Chalmers is the wrong sort of tact for questioning for scientists to answer and that she didn’t think that science might ever get answers that are fully philosophical or theologically satisfying. There can be correlations of the brain to consciousness. She explains that since experimentation indicates that the past can occur after the future, this makes investigating consciousness not the most interesting question for a neural scientist. For a neural scientist, ordering things occurs in time in one direction. [I didn’t understand what she’d think is unattractive. The next part made sense to me.] She makes a distinction between that she has private observer awareness but that everything else of which she does not have conscious awareness is so much more… that consciousness for her is the awareness that she has as ‘the observer’ and everything else is part of her unconscious. [Interestingly, Almaas asks, “…but they are happening? Where are they happening?” Now, here is what is interesting to me… I don’t agree that what is unconscious for me is happening. That is in my opinion a delusion. I cannot agree that we are one if I cannot know you consciously. I cannot agree that I am part of this body if I do not know it consciously.] Julia’s point is well taken, I think to agree that I am not conscious of most of what is perceived as reality. [Thus, perhaps this brain that I am linked to by some awareness is making up reality mostly unconsciously because reality is not something that I can comprehend. This seems consistent with what we know about how the unconscious works. It makes a cohesive experience from what is in the awareness and then it fills in the gaps.] Now, Stuart pipes in making an example that consciousness can occur in the brain before a dilemma that gets solved by the brain and that we can respond correctly, yet unconscious of what has occurred as processed in the brain then as we respond correctly. [I’ll add here that I have read many stories about people saying that time slowed or even stopped while they acted to save themselves or a loved one or a pet. I agree that consciousness must therefore be able to place in the brain the correct information that the brain then can use and thus, it may seem as though time slows or even stops as the person acts on that was stored by consciousness in the brain even though the person actually records the event differently, as though time slowed down or even stopped for several seconds.]
Donald Hoffman wants a mathematical model of consciousness and to work from that to solve the hard problem. So, from there, with consciousness assumed, a given, science must demonstrate how we get useful consciousness laws out of our physical reality. What I do find in published works is more in line with what Julia Mossbridge suggests… for example, a paper entitled “Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem” PDF seeks to explore relationship between biology and consciousness.
I mention (earlier, above) that this ‘hard problem’ is not well-stated as a question.
Almaas points out that spiritual teachings indicate that we must ‘know’ consciousness and that in the knowing, there is release from suffering—of human suffering—occurring; that happiness depends upon this.
Q-3) How is science going to address the human need to discover consciousness is essential for progress in successful living that eliminates suffering? Youtube Fast-Forward Question 3
Julia Mossbridge suggests the question for science ought not to be the hard question of consciousness, saying: “How do I bridge the gap between this fundamental duality of individual consciousness and everything of which I am [we—individually—are] not conscious?” Julia says that Almaas is speaking about a different consciousness. So, here we have the division. This being a conference of exploring non-duality, bringing into conference scientists is in dialog discovering that individual experience is something that we hold to dearly. Julia makes reference to ‘the one mind state’ as the unconscious.
A successful science of consciousness must address aspects of ending suffering. A successful non-duality that begins with idea that the universe and all its multiplicity are ultimately expressions or appearances of one essential reality must guide science. Where we are exploring the brain, our experience of consciousness, science is reducing its focus onto mechanisms. Where we are exploring the mind and consciousness, non-duality is advancing non-physical awareness.
Donald Hoffman says that a mathematical theory that describes consciousness will include in it surprises of the greater, as yet, unknown reality.
Stuart Hameroff pipes in that spiritualists tend to classify his works as materialist and scientists complain that it is mystical but that there are advancements in medicine occurring because his science is undertaking to include contemplation on the hard problem of consciousness. Microtubules have quantum resonant vibrations in megahertz and kilohertz frequencies and from qualia form by quantum microtubule vibrations inside brain neurons 1) conscious experience, and 2) regulate neuronal firings and synaptic plasticity. As synapses are formed, these are maintained and regulated by microtubules and the associated proteins. Hameroff gives examples of medical breakthroughs.
Where Hameroff considers the qualia primitive, Donald Hoffman pipes in to assert that neurons do not exist, at all, when they are not perceived; nor do microtubules or space and time. These are forms of perception.
Who is who? A.H. Almaas is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali, an author and spiritual teacher who writes about and teaches an approach to spiritual development informed by modern psychology and therapy which he calls the Diamond Approach.
Chris Fields is an independent scientist interested in both the physics and the cognitive neuroscience underlying the human perception of objects.
Henry Stapp is a mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics and the place of free will in quantum mechanics.
Julia Mossbridge teaches courses in consciousness, cognition, perception and the influence of music on the brain. She is the CEO and Research Director of Mossbridge Institute, LLC.
Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness.
Donald Hoffman is Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine.
So, it is a diverse panel and they are operating with a variety of definitions about consciousness. I didn’t take much time to accurately record the opening statements and some closing statements and their views are not mine, so, please listen carefully and make your own interpretations. I am not a fast typist so I left out much of what was said so I could keep on moving through this presentation. I may inadvertently have changed the meaning of what was intended… not on purpose, I surely didn’t do that. I’ll appreciate any comments on how I might improve this article… thanks in advance.
Additional video and other resources are found in the comments following this post.
Take a look with me at how to reduce anger… anger that would interfere with enjoying life. I believe we can eliminate much of it. One problem with anger is it builds up. It can hide out and hit you when least convenient… and most dangerous. Sometimes, anger is left over from past lessons in life; from lessons that we’ve not completed. Until we can let that anger go — letting go of that futile regret from the past — dropping it like it is too hot or too heavy along with it’s troubles that you don’t need or want… it is too dangerous to react.
STOP … pause… let this lesson sink in.
We mustn’t fail to realize when we’re making life out as though it is in service to our misery. Who will be accountable for the havoc and harmful attitudes, for the burn-out and self-delusion game of blame and shame, guilt, bitterness and resentment?
Let’s put this into perspective real quick.
For simplicity sake… let it go whenever possible… view the signs and the symptoms of anger as stimulating your foresight that there are some hurdles ahead… challenges and hurdles yet just ahead that you’ll want to overcome with patience and your good character.
Sensation, emotion, feeling, and thoughts are reactions to perception, to belief and to conditioning associated with fear, insecurity, worry, sadness, frustration, etc… any of which may trigger, by way of failing to accept circumstance, situation or conditions, contracted agreements, commitments, and so forth. The pressures of carrying on with anger may generally dim the light of higher awareness.
Accept what is. Find or return to a simple relaxed comfortable presence if possible, as soon as possible. Living in the now is the wisdom way. Peace and serenity is necessary if you want to fully resolve stressing and trying urgency… those trying problems that just can’t wait can usually wait for you to collect yourself together so you can give it your best.
Meantime, in between, mightn’t you consider this: work on unloading some stored up anger… we all have some… try it — it works for anyone that can read and follow directions.
First, its important to acknowledge that we all need to delve into problems like unresolved anger — already knowing that identifying and working on solutions is going to be our best bet. Here’s how to do it:
The solution always will involve making a change; and in the case of unresolved anger that change is going to come about with knowing how the story is infecting us with living in the past — how the past is being perceived — revisiting the anger story.
I always say a prayer first — asking God to unblock me from my frustrations and from my negative emotions (being specific if I can). I next focus on something or someone that I absolutely love like my son or my dog. After I have a feeling of positive energy, I begin to state my problem and work out a comprehensive solution. A solution is unlikely until finding a peaceful presence in self. .
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The remainder of this particular post is helpful mainly for delving into unresolved anger — when able and ready to move on. This isn’t the last word on dealing with anger. I do want to start off to focus on anger that we can purge and that is from whatever can be finished with; getting it out of the way will make room for positive emotions. If you use the techniques from this post, you can probably resolve a lot of resentment problems and thus free up more energy for happier living. I’ll post another time to cover the daily trials of living with toxic spiritually sick persons. That is a bit more involved but this material helps there too.
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Unresolved Anger
Read the question, the answer, and also watch the videos.
source: Ask Deepak (Deepak Chopra) and Deepak Youtube videos
Question: I’m curious about what advice you could share with me about dealing with anger. I recently turned 30, I am single, no babies and live in Arizona.
I live a little life, but I am overcome with huge anger. It started after a devastating break up about 5 years ago. For an entire year after that break up I COMPLETELY shut down. I was not the same person anymore. I became very depressed, suicidal and isolated.
Although I somehow got through that period and I now have a new love, a wonderful love in my life, why am I still so angry?
There are many triggers that set me off; from someone cutting me off while driving to something non-significant like not finding a pen when I need one. I punch the wall, throw a tantrum; scream. I never was this type of person. Never. Not even as a child.
Now as I am getting a little older, I DO NOT want to spend the rest of my days this way. So many others around the world are suffering from starvation, disease, abuse; so many are in far worse circumstances than myself. So what’s my problem?
Why is it so hard for me to deal with my anger? I get plenty of sleep, I exercise, I eat right. Unfortunately, with no health insurance, I cannot speak with a mental health professional.
Answer: You need to address the underlying belief holding your old anger in place. You are holding on to the belief that you were wronged by the break-up, that you were victimized by his unfair behavior and that you did not deserve to be treated that way.
So now even though the ending of that relationship has allowed you to find a loving relationship, you are still held in the old anger because you insist on the story of the old relationship in terms of injustice, instead of seeing it as a positive step toward a lasting love.
It is your self-image as a victim that feels justified in holding on to this anger. Unfortunately, you are only hurting yourself.
Make a long list of all the positive things that have happened to you since the break-up that would not have occurred if you two were still together. List all the ways you have become stronger and have grown inside since then. You certainly deserve all these good things that have happened to you and the ways you have matured.
Perhaps your story that the break-up was a bad thing is not completely true. If it was what needed to happen for both of you to move ahead in your lives, then it’s pointless to blame anyone or hold onto anger and resentment. Admit to yourself that you really don’t know whether the break-up was right and wrong in the context of your whole life. So, maybe you’ll discover that the story of him being the bad guy and you as the good guy who was wrongly victimized isn’t really helping you.
Create a new story based on the actual positive events that have happened lately to replace the old story. You don’t have to pretend that everything that happened was for the best, you only need to allow that your ego doesn’t really know what is right or justice in this case.
From there you can recognize that your higher self or cosmic intelligence has still led you forward in life.
Learning to trust this loving force of evolution can be your new story.
When you start to see your life this way, your belief in the old you as a weak victim lashing out at injustice will fade away. You will let go of the anger and start to appreciate the love and beauty around you.
~ Love, Deepak
Program Description
Above, video one is what you need to learn about in order to be able to work on anger. Video two is the solution. No matter how big the challenge, spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra says, a four-step process can help you solve the problem at hand. Learn how the STOP method can help you overcome any obstacle. In summary: Any time you have a problem you are in contracted awareness (habitual anxieties — instinctual — egoism — fearful) and that influences 1) perceptions, 2) expectations, 3) assumptions, 4) beliefs, 5) moods and feelings. Contracted awareness brings about problems.
Any time you have a problem, question and evaluate all of those five areas.
How do you shift away from the anger or hurt and to a healthy level of awareness?
Go to your feelings and remember to STOP!
S T O P. Stop to evaluate, Transform your mood, Observe the sensations in your body and images in your mind and Proceed with kindness and compassion.
As you move into a higher level of awareness, solutions will start to emerge.
Here is a much longer lesson given by Deepak shortly after his new book “Spiritual Solutions” hit the marketplace — if you have time.
Program Description
The most fundamental fact of existence is not the universe nor even space, time or gravity, but that we are aware of the universe, Deepak Chopra, author (Spiritual Solutions, 2012 and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, 1994 and others) and co-author of over 60 books on spirituality and mind-body connections, told a National Press Club luncheon audience April 4, 2012.
___ ___ ___ ___ Letting go of resentments — grudges and painful bitterness felt as a result of a real or imagined wrong — means making self available to a higher expanded awareness of compassion, kindness and peace. Even if not a believer in God, the spiritual essence of these benefits is available.
Thanks for learning with me. There is lots more to discover — so, come back often.
Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy. He spent most of his life travelling the world, speaking to large and small groups and individuals… more
Freedom from the Known
TRANSCRIPT
Pursuit of Pleasure Jiddu Krishnamurti
We said in the last chapter that joy was something entirely different from pleasure, so let us find out what is involved in pleasure and whether it is at all possible to live in a world that does not contain pleasure but a tremendous sense of joy, of bliss.
We are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasure in some form or other – intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming, telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good – the pleasure of greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understanding of life, all the clever, cunning things of the mind – and the ultimate pleasure is, of course, to have God.
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.
You may ask why then should life not be guided by pleasure? For the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrow and fear, and, out of fear, violence. If you want to live that way, live that way. Most of the world does, anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure
To understand pleasure is not to deny it. We are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do so with our eyes open, knowing that a mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitably find its shadow, pain. They cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try to avoid pain.
Now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure? Why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? Why is it we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? What is pleasure and how does it come into being? I wonder if any of you have asked yourself these questions and followed the answers to the very end?
Pleasure comes into being through four stages – perception, sensation, contact and desire. I see a beautiful motor car, say; then I get a sensation, a reaction, from looking at it; then I touch it or imagine touching it, and then there is the desire to own and show myself off in it. Or I see a lovely cloud, or a mountain clear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valley full of loveliness and splendour, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent, alive, not self-conscious and therefore no longer beautiful. I look at these things with intense delight and as I observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty like love. For a moment I am absent with all my problems, anxieties and miseries – there is only that marvellous thing. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seen and thinks how beautiful it was; I tell myself I should like to see it again many times. Thought begins to compare, judge, and say `l must have it again tomorrow’. The continuity of an experience that has given delight for a second is sustained by thought.
It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralysed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again.
Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.
Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. And the struggle breeds memory. That memory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. Anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It is sheer nonsense.
Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge. Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new.
So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in – at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight – if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and therefore tremendous joy.
It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same, as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you.
Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied a little pleasure? When you don’t get what you want you become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinking or smoking or sex or whatever it is – have you noticed what battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn’t it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have. When some particular faith or ideology which you have held for years is shaken or torn away from you by logic or life, aren’t you afraid of standing alone? That belief has for years given you satisfaction and pleasure, and when it is taken away you are left stranded, empty, and the fear remains until you find another form of pleasure, another belief.
It seems to me so simple and because it is so simple we refuse to see its simplicity. We like to complicate everything. When your wife turns away from you, aren’t you jealous? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you hate the man who has attracted her? And what is all that but fear of losing something which has given you a great deal of pleasure, a companionship, a certain quality of assurance and the satisfaction of possession?
So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don’t just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure – not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding – but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
How may we overcome the illusion of separateness
from each other
from “other countries”
from the universe?
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Take a few deep breaths… and be of good cheer.
Spontaneous Evolution Our Fractal Nature
Separateness from God-source is on our cells credit: Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.
Although fractal geometry was theorized at the beginning of the 20th century, it was not until the development of the super computer that we have been able to see the full implications of fractals. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist, explains here, our fractal nature of the universe and how it applies to our biology… mutations are not mistakes and the evolution is not entirely random. Mutation comes about by changes — by choices made at the cellular level. Lipton explains that because of fractal geometry, we can see that the evolution of humanity is a fractal projection that is tied directly into the evolution of the earth, and the universe.
I watched cichlid family fish evolution in a documentary and the process is explored and reported in many places including here and here. The cichlid caught by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species were in Lake Victoria.
In this video, Lipton explains how each cell has a backbone and the shape is determined by the distribution of positive and negative charges. Proteins can move by changing the charges. They respond to signals from the environment such as energy fields that cause constructive or destructive interference. Such signals cause the backbone to change. A specific stimulus binds to the cell membrane at a specific receptor. When the right signal is present, they work. When the wrong signal is present, they might not work or they might move away. The skin of the cell is the brain of the cell or the mem-brane.
The skin, membrane, is two rows of molecules, mirror image to each other — crystal, but movable. The outside, polar heads are water loving, and the interior, the legs are oil loving lipids. Much like a butter sandwich; neither water nor oil objects would easily move through. However, the membrane also has integral membrane proteins. These proteins have antennae which are tuned to specific items. These proteins are able to perceive and respond to changes in their environment, similar to how we perceive environmental change and then adjust.
The work that Lipton is promoting here, in the video (don’t go by what I write please) is revealing even of how we, as humans may be separate from our source — following from our cellular disconnection right through into any conscious thoughts — it being then necessary to consciously direct the body to be mindful of divinity — or surely we may forget this importance. The receptors on each and every cell that make us individuals are what maintain us separate from our source. Thus, the ancient wisdom that teaches that we must look inward for the stillness of source rather than draw upon experiences and previous perceptions is quite wise – isn’t it… so, as it turns out, biology is poised to discover that each and every cell membrane is what is preventing us from direct contact with the origin of true-self. The dream of separate reality continues in the meantime. Now, you probably know, I am always right back to my central theme of this blog – inner peace, stillness and serenity through ceaseless prayer and meditation is key to living more and more completely God’s will and to accepting the grace of God that is always available.
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The video was originally released in eight parts, here is the entire talk:
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A premise that genetic mutations are random is an error. Darwin’s idea that nature selects the strongest does not hold true. Mutations usually detract from the viability of an organism. Nature eliminates the weakest mutations and doesn’t really care about the strongest. Genetic determinism went in the wrong direction. Our health is determined by perceptions, not by genetics. In the ground breaking work introduced here, Dr. Lipton demonstrated that a cell is able to perceive and respond to perceptions at its level — individually, each cell morphing in time according to its perceptions.
When you allow Him to correct your mind,
the rest of your life will fall into place.
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People I know really need this message. I’ll invest time as Dr. Dyer’s suggesting to practice staying obscure. I see the wisdom of letting God direct this universe without me pushing my nose up front as though it has mostly to do with me. Do you see the wisdom of letting God direct the universe? Hmm… would it be possibly as beautiful a universe if we followed my or your directions? Humility… letting what we know is coming come to us.
The sea stays low, and because the sea
stays low, all of the rivers and all of the
streams empty into it.
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I want to share with you this inspiring poem. As you may reflect and resolve for yourself improvement for your life, I hope that this will be a help. I pray that you may be filled with joy, peace, and love.
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The Slow work of God…
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually — let them grow, — let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
This clip demonstrates — dramatically how and why. I don’t care about proving it scientifically … I proved it for myself. This video along with some strong leadership skill and a group of people that will practice mindfulness … and all of the elements for awesome healing are present…
I posted the entire lecture in the comment section.
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This video demonstrates fields that are invisible… this is not magic.
Did you watch the healing?
This video demonstrates what once was a miracle — its a law of nature now.
So, I’ve been posting on the power of meditation and mindfulness… and … that is only half of the solution to mind healing… preparation (as demonstrated in the video) with mindfulness. The other half is emotion and the heart. This is a new technology that is especially ripe for support groups like for PTSD and even for mental illness, recovery from cancer, and so on — wherever groups are meeting for healing. The power of the mindful emotion for healing is awesome when we can use it in groups. If you understand what this post is giving to groups for PTSD and depression and so on; put it to use… let me know if you need help.
What if there is physical evidence that the brain is a quantum device, and that its design reflects the cosmos in an uncanny way that cannot be by chance? In the Vedic tradition of India, it is held that “as is the smallest, so is the greatest. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.” Spiritual beings could not win in the past, but the times are changing, and thanks to worldwide communication, spiritual people can win now. Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will teach you all things.”
Creating Stability of Mind and Finding Liberation…
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“It’s not what’s happening that’s important. What’s important is our relationship to what’s happening“
~Joseph Goldstein
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Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and loving kindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. I really enjoy listening to Goldstein’s calm voice and strong insights. I decided to feature two of his talks today.
Before finding a path of deepening spiritual awareness, I was to discover by trial and error and failures and successes a lot about myself and others. In family life, in my career experiences, and then via other activities, life took its course for me more by happenstance than by having good directions for living that I could count upon. I had a vision one day. It was an awakening to purpose then that became important to me. Many of my thoughts afterward still led me to dissatisfaction. I need to practice daily and to change according to spiritually fit living.
I have two videos today. The first is about reaching for stability. This particular video represents well my first greatest lesson in the awakening to my deeper needs.
The first video is short enough to listen and reflect upon about weakness or strength of mind and habits. The second is an hour and it contains reference to Buddhist teachings and terminology. I hope you may enjoy them both. However, my purpose is only to continue my journal here. I post here about my progress to attain inner peace, serenity and to practice being loving kindness. Both videos are available from Youtube.
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1. Creating Stability of Mind
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Program Description This program provides information about how mindfulness and meditative practice may lead to skillful awareness, stability of mind and gradual freedom from addictive habits and patterns.
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2. Liberation Through Non-Clinging
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Program Description Do you or did you ever feel like you’re a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by desperate and irrational clinging? Let’s not submit to living in a trance from birth to death. There is an easier and gentler way.
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This post presents techniques
for beginning, tuning and improving mindfulness.
Take some time… invest in your well-being and… share this one around.
Rutgers atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis talks about connections between climate change and severe weather events:
The original 112-minute conference video of Jennifer Francis’s presentation is the official product of StormCenter Communications Inc. You can use the index at the Youtube page: watch?v=ETpm9JAdfcs or download the PowerPoint: http://www.stormcenter.com/wxcsummit/
Jennifer Francis earned a B.S. in Meteorology from San Jose State University in 1988 and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 1994.
As a professor at Rutgers University since 1994, she taught courses in satellite remote sensing and climate-change issues, and also co-founded and co-directed the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative.
Presently she is a Research Professor with the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and studies Arctic climate change and Arctic-global climate linkages with ~ 40 peer-reviewed publications on these topics.
During the 13 months from July 2009-July 2010, her family of four spent a year sailing through Central America. She and her husband circumnavigated the world in a sailboat from 1980-1985, including Cape Horn and the Arctic, which is when she first became interested in Arctic weather and climate.
A study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, recently published online in the Journal Psychological Science, is the first to investigate whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.
Discover your divinity, find your unique talent, serve humanity with it, and begin to experience your life as a miraculous expression of divinity — not just occasionally, but all the time. You are to know true joy and the true meaning of success — the ecstasy and exultation of your own spirit.
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Everyone has a purpose in life
….
a unique gift
or special talent
to give to others.
And when we blend this unique talent
with service to others,
we experience the ecstasy
and exultation of our own spirit,
which is
the ultimate goal
of all goals.
When you work
you are a flute
through whose heart
the whispering of the hours
turns to music.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth
with threads drawn
from your heart,
even as if
your beloved were to wear that cloth
….
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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This is the seventh Deepak Chopra law for success from his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.
If you’d like,
open the series
from its beginning point
or continue along from here.
Each skill builds on the previous skill.
If you want to make maximum use of the Law of Purpose, then you will make several commitments. The first commitment is: I am going to seek my higher self, which is beyond my ego, through spiritual practice.
The second commitment is: I am going to discover my unique talents, and finding my unique talents, I am going to enjoy myself, because the process of enjoyment occurs when I go into timeless awareness. That’s when I am in a state of bliss.
The third commitment is: I am going to ask myself how I am best suited to serve humanity.
According to this law, you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing your specific talent. There is something that you can do better than most anyone else in the world — and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that makes you right to fulfill your purpose.
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I will put the Law of Purpose (Dharma) into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:
(1) Today I will pay attention to the spirit within me that animates both my body and my mind. I will awaken myself to this deep stillness within my heart. I will carry the consciousness of timeless, eternal Being in the midst of time-bound experience.
(2) I will make a list of my unique talents. Then I will list all the things that I love to do while expressing my unique talents. When 1 express my unique talents and use them in the service of humanity, I lose track of time and create abundance in my life as well as in the lives of others.
(3) I will ask myself daily, “How can I serve?” and “How can I help?” The answers to these questions will allow me to help and serve my fellow human beings with love.
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Summary of the 7 Laws The universal mind choreographs everything that is happening in billions of galaxies with elegant precision and unfaltering intelligence. Its intelligence is ultimate and supreme, and it permeates every fiber of existence. Everything that is alive is an expression of this intelligence.
Every cell has its birth in the Law of Pure Potentiality. DNA is a perfect example of pure potentiality; in fact, it is the material expression of pure potentiality. The same DNA existing in every cell expresses itself in different ways in order to fulfill the unique requirements of that particular cell. Each cell also operates through the Law of Giving. A cell is alive and healthy when it is in a state of balance and equilibrium. This state of equilibrium is one of fulfillment and harmony, but it is maintained by a constant give and take. Each cell gives to and supports every other cell, and in turn is nourished by every other cell. The cell is always in a state of dynamic flow and the flow is never interrupted. In fact, the flow is the very essence of the life of the cell. And only by maintaining this flow of giving is the cell able to receive and thus continue its vibrant existence.
The Law of Cause and Effect is exquisitely executed by every cell, because built into its intelligence is the most appropriate and precisely correct response to every situation as it occurs. The Law of Least Effort is also exquisitely executed by every cell in the body: it does its job with quiet efficiency in the state of restful alertness.
Through the Law of Intention and Desire, every intention of every cell harnesses the infinite organizing power of nature’s intelligence. Even a simple intention such as metabolizing a molecule of sugar immediately sets off a symphony of events in the body where precise amounts of hormones have to be secreted at precise moments to convert this molecule of sugar into pure creative energy.
Of course, every cell expresses the Law of Detachment. It is detached from the outcome of its intentions. It doesn’t stumble or falter because its behavior is a function of life-centered, present-moment awareness.
Each cell also expresses the Law of Dharma. Each cell must discover its own source, the higher self; it must serve its fellow beings, and express its unique talents. Heart cells, stomach cells, and immune cells all have their source in the higher self, the field of pure potentiality. And because they are directly linked to this cosmic computer, they can express their unique talents with effortless ease and timeless awareness. Only by expressing their unique talents can they maintain both their own integrity and the integrity of the whole body.
The internal dialogue of every cell in the human body is, “How can I help?” The heart cells want to help the immune cells, the immune cells want to help the stomach and lung cells, and the brain cells are listening to and helping every other cell. Every cell in the human body has only one function: to help every other cell.
By looking at the behavior of the cells of our own body, we can observe the most extraordinary and efficient expression of The Seven Spiritual Laws. This is the genius of nature’s intelligence.
In the series, I used descriptions and text from Chopra almost exclusively — because his work works as he wrote it. I just want to add this:
This is the language of God. If you begin with this and prayers and meditation to build a positive inner serene peaceful outlook then you are on your way to a deep understanding of the profound mysteries in life. The miracles — the seemingly supernatural occurrences — are natural — not really so unusual; not at all. If your science or if your education tells you otherwise, let it go — it may be flawed. You don’t need it if it isn’t bringing you inner peace, happiness, joy, and freedom to be who you are intended to be. The realization that you can be, do, and have the genuine you is extraordinary and exhilarating. Listen to your heart and when it tells you to get more positive, do that. You are meant to know your maker. This series is only about love. Do it that way.
“We have more than five senses, and not everything meets the eye.“
~ Roman Krznaric
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PDF: How Should We Live?
by Roman Krznaric
Publisher: Bluebridge
(December 1, 2013)
Book Description
Twelve universal topics including work, love, and family; time, creativity, and empathy are explored in this book by illuminating the past and revealing the wisdom that people have been missing. Looking to history for inspiration can be surprisingly powerful. In How Should We Live?, cultural thinker Roman Krznaric shares ideas and stories from history each of which sheds invaluable light on decisions made every day. There is much to be learned from the ancient Greeks about the different varieties of love, for example, from the Renaissance about living with passion and facing the realities of death, from various indigenous cultures on bringing up our children, and from Japanese pilgrims on the art of travel. History is usually read for pleasure or for insight into current affairs, but this book is practical history showing that history can teach the art of living, using the past to think about day-to-day life. note: A survey is required to get the free PDF book. .
Probably the greatest investment that I’ve personally made in myself is to work on and develop, deeply, empathy skills. Here is an outstanding video and article that I think you’ll enjoy
The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People
We can cultivate empathy throughout our lives,
says Roman Krznaric — and use it as a radical
force for social transformation.
If you think you’re hearing the word “empathy” everywhere, you’re right. It’s now on the lips of scientists and business leaders, education experts and political activists. But there is a vital question that few people ask: How can I expand my own empathic potential? Empathy is not just a way to extend the boundaries of your moral universe. According to new research, it’s a habit we can cultivate to improve the quality of our own lives.
But what is empathy? It’s the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you — they might have different tastes.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes.
The big buzz about empathy stems from a revolutionary shift in the science of how we understand human nature. The old view that we are essentially self-interested creatures is being nudged firmly to one side by evidence that we are also homo empathicus, wired for empathy, social cooperation, and mutual aid.
Over the last decade, neuroscientists have identified a 10-section “empathy circuit” in our brains which, if damaged, can curtail our ability to understand what other people are feeling. Evolutionary biologists like Frans de Waal have shown that we are social animals who have naturally evolved to care for each other, just like our primate cousins. And psychologists have revealed that we are primed for empathy by strong attachment relationships in the first two years of life.
But empathy doesn’t stop developing in childhood. We can nurture its growth throughout our lives — and we can use it as a radical force for social transformation. Research in sociology, psychology, history — and my own studies of empathic personalities over the past 10 years — reveals how we can make empathy an attitude and a part of our daily lives, and thus improve the lives of everyone around us. Here are the Six Habits of Highly Empathic People!
Habit 1: Cultivate curiosity about strangers Highly empathic people (HEPs) have an insatiable curiosity about strangers. They will talk to the person sitting next to them on the bus, having retained that natural inquisitiveness we all had as children, but which society is so good at beating out of us. They find other people more interesting than themselves but are not out to interrogate them, respecting the advice of the oral historian Studs Terkel: “Don’t be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.”
Curiosity expands our empathy when we talk to people outside our usual social circle, encountering lives and worldviews very different from our own. Curiosity is good for us too: Happiness guru Martin Seligman identifies it as a key character strength that can enhance life satisfaction. And it is a useful cure for the chronic loneliness afflicting around one in three Americans.
Cultivating curiosity requires more than having a brief chat about the weather. Crucially, it tries to understand the world inside the head of the other person. We are confronted by strangers every day, like the heavily tattooed woman who delivers your mail or the new employee who always eats his lunch alone. Set yourself the challenge of having a conversation with one stranger every week. All it requires is courage.
Habit 2: Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities We all have assumptions about others and use collective labels — e.g., “Muslim fundamentalist,” “welfare mom” — that prevent us from appreciating their individuality. HEPs challenge their own preconceptions and prejudices by searching for what they share with people rather than what divides them. An episode from the history of US race relations illustrates how this can happen.
Claiborne Paul Ellis was born into a poor white family in Durham, North Carolina, in 1927. Finding it hard to make ends meet working in a garage and believing African Americans were the cause of all his troubles, he followed his father’s footsteps and joined the Ku Klux Klan, eventually rising to the top position of Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK branch.
In 1971 he was invited — as a prominent local citizen — to a 10-day community meeting to tackle racial tensions in schools, and was chosen to head a steering committee with Ann Atwater, a black activist he despised. But working with her exploded his prejudices about African Americans. He saw that she shared the same problems of poverty as his own. “I was beginning to look at a black person, shake hands with him, and see him as a human being,” he recalled of his experience on the committee. “It was almost like being born again.” On the final night of the meeting, he stood in front of a thousand people and tore up his Klan membership card.
Ellis later became a labor organizer for a union whose membership was 70 percent African American. He and Ann remained friends for the rest of their lives. There may be no better example of the power of empathy to overcome hatred and change our minds.
Habit 3: Try another person’s life So you think ice climbing and hang-gliding are extreme sports? Then you need to try experiential empathy, the most challenging — and potentially rewarding — of them all. HEPs expand their empathy by gaining direct experience of other people’s lives, putting into practice the Native American proverb, “Walk a mile in another man’s moccasins before you criticize him.”
George Orwell is an inspiring model. After several years as a colonial police officer in British Burma in the 1920s, Orwell returned to Britain determined to discover what life was like for those living on the social margins. “I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed,” he wrote. So he dressed up as a tramp with shabby shoes and coat, and lived on the streets of East London with beggars and vagabonds. The result, recorded in his book Down and Out in Paris and London, was a radical change in his beliefs, priorities, and relationships. He not only realized that homeless people are not “drunken scoundrels” — Orwell developed new friendships, shifted his views on inequality, and gathered some superb literary material. It was the greatest travel experience of his life. He realized that empathy doesn’t just make you good — it’s good for you, too.
We can each conduct our own experiments. If you are religiously observant, try a “God Swap,” attending the services of faiths different from your own, including a meeting of Humanists. Or if you’re an atheist, try attending different churches! Spend your next vacation living and volunteering in a village in a developing country. Take the path favored by philosopher John Dewey, who said, “All genuine education comes about through experience.”
Habit 4: Listen hard—and open up There are two traits required for being an empathic conversationalist.
One is to master the art of radical listening. “What is essential,” says Marshall Rosenberg, psychologist and founder of Non-Violent Communication (NVC), “is our ability to be present to what’s really going on within — to the unique feelings and needs a person is experiencing in that very moment.” HEPs listen hard to others and do all they can to grasp their emotional state and needs, whether it is a friend who has just been diagnosed with cancer or a spouse who is upset at them for working late yet again.
But listening is never enough. The second trait is to make ourselves vulnerable. Removing our masks and revealing our feelings to someone is vital for creating a strong empathic bond. Empathy is a two-way street that, at its best, is built upon mutual understanding — an exchange of our most important beliefs and experiences.
Organizations such as the Israeli-Palestinian Parents Circle put it all into practice by bringing together bereaved families from both sides of the conflict to meet, listen, and talk. Sharing stories about how their loved ones died enables families to realize that they share the same pain and the same blood, despite being on opposite sides of a political fence, and has helped to create one of the world’s most powerful grassroots peace-building movements.
Habit 5: Inspire mass action and social change We typically assume empathy happens at the level of individuals, but HEPs understand that empathy can also be a mass phenomenon that brings about fundamental social change.
Just think of the movements against slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries on both sides of the Atlantic. As journalist Adam Hochschild reminds us, “The abolitionists placed their hope not in sacred texts but human empathy,” doing all they could to get people to understand the very real suffering on the plantations and slave ships. Equally, the international trade union movement grew out of empathy between industrial workers united by their shared exploitation. The overwhelming public response to the Asian tsunami of 2004 emerged from a sense of empathic concern for the victims, whose plight was dramatically beamed into our homes on shaky video footage.
Empathy will most likely flower on a collective scale if its seeds are planted in our children. That’s why HEPs support efforts such as Canada’s pioneering Roots of Empathy, the world’s most effective empathy teaching program, which has benefited over half a million school kids. Its unique curriculum centers on an infant, whose development children observe over time in order to learn emotional intelligence — and its results include significant declines in playground bullying and higher levels of academic achievement.
Beyond education, the big challenge is figuring out how social networking technology can harness the power of empathy to create mass political action. Twitter may have gotten people onto the streets for Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, but can it convince us to care deeply about the suffering of distant strangers, whether they are drought-stricken farmers in Africa or future generations who will bear the brunt of our carbon-junkie lifestyles? This will only happen if social networks learn to spread not just information, but empathic connection.
Habit 6: Develop an ambitious imagination A final trait of HEPs is that they do far more than empathize with the usual suspects. We tend to believe empathy should be reserved for those living on the social margins or who are suffering. This is necessary, but it is hardly enough.
We also need to empathize with people whose beliefs we don’t share or who may be “enemies” in some way. If you are a campaigner on global warming, for instance, it may be worth trying to step into the shoes of oil company executives—understanding their thinking and motivations — if you want to devise effective strategies to shift them towards developing renewable energy. A little of this “instrumental empathy” (sometimes known as “impact anthropology”) can go a long way.
Empathizing with adversaries is also a route to social tolerance. That was Gandhi’s thinking during the conflicts between Muslims and Hindus leading up to Indian independence in 1947, when he declared, “I am a Muslim! And a Hindu, and a Christian and a Jew.”
Organizations, too, should be ambitious with their empathic thinking. Bill Drayton, the renowned “father of social entrepreneurship,” believes that in an era of rapid technological change, mastering empathy is the key business survival skill because it underpins successful teamwork and leadership. His influential Ashoka Foundation has launched the Start Empathy initiative, which is taking its ideas to business leaders, politicians and educators worldwide.
The 20th century was the Age of Introspection, when self-help and therapy culture encouraged us to believe that the best way to understand who we are and how to live was to look inside ourselves. But it left us gazing at our own navels. The 21st century should become the Age of Empathy, when we discover ourselves not simply through self-reflection, but by becoming interested in the lives of others. We need empathy to create a new kind of revolution. Not an old-fashioned revolution built on new laws, institutions, or policies, but a radical revolution in human relationships.
I worked during December 2013 to post content for self-improvement. In January 2014, I’ll begin posting on how we can improve the world. I hope you’ll come back often — there is more to be discovered.
From his book, “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Success“ — Chopra lays out another of seven laws of spiritual success — The Law of Intention — practicing one each day is recommended.
If you’d like, open the series from its beginning point or continue along here, the fifth day in the series.
Everything we do and think affects the people in our lives and their reactions in turn affect others. Getting every day grounded in a solution for my whole self is essential, I think. Thus, I declared for myself that December is a month for self-improvements. Thanks for looking in on my blog. I hope this post is helpful for you personally or someone that you know.
There is always abundant energy and information necessary for creating. We are so fortunate of being capable to accept training of our minds to become consciously aware of the abundance of energy and information. The lesson today is about tuning toward this energy and information to accept the tremendous enlightenment of effortless living in abundance.
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The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
The seven spiritual laws aren’t difficult or mysterious but are easy to understand and to apply. Dedicate each day of the week to one of the seven spiritual laws. Develop a daily practice in which you meditate or take a few moments to quiet your mind, and then read the spiritual law of the day and practice applying it throughout the day.
The Law of Intention (and desire) Inherent in every intention and desire is the mechanics for its fulfillment . . . intention and desire in the field of pure potentiality have infinite organizing power. And when we introduce an intention in the fertile ground of pure potentiality, we put this infinite organizing power to work for us.
This law is based on the fact that energy and information exist everywhere in nature. A flower, a rainbow, a tree, a human body, when broken down to their essential components are energy and information. The whole universe, in its essential nature, is the movement of energy and information. The only difference between you and a tree is the informational and energy content of your respective bodies. You can consciously change the energy and informational content of your own quantum mechanical body, and therefore influence the energy and informational content of your extended body—your environment, your world—and cause things to manifest in it. Intention lays the groundwork for the effortless, spontaneous, frictionless flow of pure potentiality.
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Put the Law of Intention into effect making a commitment to the following steps:
1. I will make a list of all my desires. I will carry this list with me wherever I go. I will look at this list before I go into my silence and meditation. I will look at it before I go to sleep at night. I will look at it when I wake up in the morning.
2. I will release this list of my desires and surrender it to the womb of creation, trusting that when things don’t seem to go my way, there is a reason, and that the cosmic plan has designs for me much grander than even those I have conceived.
3. I will remind myself to practice present-moment awareness in all my actions. I will refuse to allow obstacles to consume and dissipate the quality of my attention in the present moment. I will accept the present as it is, and manifest the future through my deepest, most cherished intentions and desires.
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Mind Body Spirit Wellbeing Longevity and Health with Deepak Chopra The Atlantic Meets the Pacific 2013
Steve Clemons (re book: Super Brain)
conference interview (begins at 2:10)
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December is self-improvement month at this blog — let’s all get in touch with our best true selves and make this our month to end the year at our best. I’ll feature lots of content to improve the inner and outer us. Check back frequently.
This post continues to cover another of Chopra’s seven laws of spiritual success that are detailed in his book, “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Success“ — practicing one each day is recommended. If you’d like, open the series from its beginning point or continue along here, the fourth day in the series.
Many of us grew up with the belief that achieving success requires relentless hard work, grim determination and intense ambition. As a result, we may have struggled for years and even reached some of our goals but wound up feeling exhausted, our lives out of balance. Such desperate striving isn’t necessary or even desirable. In the natural world, creation comes forth with ease. A seed doesn’t struggle to become a tree―it simply unfolds in grace.
The seven spiritual laws aren’t difficult or mysterious but are easy to understand and to apply. Dedicate each day of the week to one of the seven spiritual laws. Develop a daily practice in which you meditate or take a few moments to quiet your mind, and then read the spiritual law of the day and practice applying it throughout the day.
The Law of Least Effort Nature’s intelligence functions with effortless ease . . . with carefreeness, harmony, and love. And when we harness the forces of harmony, joy, and love, we create success and good fortune with effortless ease.
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Put the Law of Least Effort into effect making a
commitment to the following steps:
1. Practice Acceptance. Today I will accept people, situations, circumstances, and events as they occur. I will know that this moment is as it should be, because the whole universe is as it should be. I will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. My acceptance is total and complete. I accept things as they are this moment, not as I wish they were.
2. Having accepted things as they are, take responsibility for any and all those events that seem to be problems. I know that taking responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for my situation (and this includes myself). I also know that every problem is an opportunity in disguise, and this alertness to opportunities allows me to take this moment and transform it into a greater benefit.
3. Today my awareness will remain established in Defenselessness. I will relinquish the need to defend my point of view. I will feel no need to convince or persuade others to accept my point of view. I will remain open to all points of view and not be rigidly attached to any one of them.
December is self-improvement month at this blog — let’s all get in touch with our best true selves and make this our month to end the year at our best. I’ll feature lots of content to improve the inner and outer us. Check back frequently.
This post covers Chopra’s Law of Cause and Effect from his seven laws of spiritual success that are detailed in his book, “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Success“ — practicing one each day is recommended. If you’d like, open the series from its beginning point or continue along here, the third day in the series.
Law of Cause and Effect This is commonly understood even in the West as Karma. “Karma” is both action and the consequence of that action; it is cause and effect simultaneously, because every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in kind.
Everyone recalls the expression, “What you sow is what you reap.” If we want to create happiness in our lives, we must learn to sow the seeds of happiness.
We must become consciously aware that the future is generated by the choices we are making in every moment of life.
Do this on a regular basis, making full use of this law. The more you bring your choices into conscious awareness, the more you will make those choices which are spontaneously correct — both for you and for those around you.
The energy flow of life is a harmonious interaction of all the elements and forces that structure the field of existence — that maintain reality. Because your body and your mind and the universe are in constant and dynamic change, stopping the circulation of energy is like stopping the flow of blood. Whenever blood stops flowing, it begins to clot, to stagnate. That is why you must give and receive in order to keep anything you want circulating in your life. Thus, the more you give, the more you will receive.
Deepak Chopra defines success as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. This definition is quite different to society’s rules for success, which is almost always connected to material gain or external recognition. Although these things are often the result of success, it is by no means the cause or even the definition of success.
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The abundance of the universe is circulating in our lives. When choosing actions that bring happiness and success to others, the result is that happiness and success abound.
Here are three steps for putting the Law into effect:
1. Today I will witness the choices I make in each moment. And in the mere witnessing of these choices, I will bring them to my conscious awareness. I will know that the best way to prepare for any moment in the future is to be fully conscious in the present.
2. Whenever I make a choice, I will ask myself two questions: “What are the consequences of this choice that I’m making?” and “Will this choice bring fulfillment and happiness to me and also to those who are affected by this choice?”
3. I will then ask my heart for guidance and be guided by its message of comfort or discomfort. If the choice feels comfortable, I will plunge ahead with abandon. If the choice feels uncomfortable, I will pause and see the consequences of my action with my inner vision. This guidance will enable me to make spontaneously correct choices for myself and for all those around me.
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The Secret of Creativity
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Program Description
Deepak Chopra explores the dynamics of a creative life and relationship of creativity and age (we don’t have to lose imagination as we grow older). How do you keep your creative spirit alive even as you progress further into adulthood? Rediscover plasticity.
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You’ll possibly enjoy the debate and comments in “what danger?” where Chopra and Dawkins debate on consciousness and the origin of mankind and so on.
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December is self-improvement month at this blog — let’s all get in touch with our best true selves and make this our month to end the year at our best. I’ll feature lots of content to improve the inner and outer us. Check back frequently.
Eric
a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else. 
Eric
Eric
Jennifer Francis earned a B.S. in Meteorology from San Jose State University in 1988 and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 1994.
The second commitment is: I am going to discover my unique talents, and finding my unique talents, I am going to enjoy myself, because the process of enjoyment occurs when I go into timeless awareness. That’s when I am in a state of bliss.
But what is empathy? It’s the ability to step into the 
Highly empathic people (HEPs) have an insatiable curiosity about strangers. They will talk to the person sitting next to them on the bus, having retained that natural inquisitiveness we all had as children, but which society is so good at beating out of us. They find other people more interesting than themselves but are not out to interrogate them, respecting the advice of the oral historian Studs Terkel: “Don’t be an 
We all have assumptions about others and use collective labels — e.g., “Muslim fundamentalist,” “welfare mom” — that prevent us from appreciating their individuality. HEPs challenge their own preconceptions and prejudices by searching for what they share with people rather than what divides them. An episode from the history of US race relations illustrates how this can happen.
So you think ice climbing and hang-gliding are extreme sports? Then you need to try experiential empathy, the most challenging — and potentially rewarding — of them all. HEPs expand their empathy by gaining direct experience of other people’s lives, putting into practice the Native American proverb, “Walk a mile in another man’s moccasins before you criticize him.”
There are two traits required for being an empathic conversationalist.
1. I will make a list of all my desires. I will carry this list with me wherever I go. I will look at this list before I go into my silence and meditation. I will look at it before I go to sleep at night. I will look at it when I wake up in the morning.
the Hunt for Truth 