O w n e r l e s s - M i n d

To Find Yourself

2012-02-18T23:55:00.001+08:00

To find yourself, think for yourself.
- Socrates

Samuel Palmer on the Art of Etching

2012-02-13T21:04:00.000+08:00

"The charm of etching is the glimmering through of the white paper even in the shadows; so that almost everything either sparkles, or suggests sparkle... those 1000 little luminous eyes which peer through a finished linear etching."

Palmer was the central figure of a group artists, influenced by William Blake, known as The Ancients. He was a friend and disciple of William Blake. Like Blake, Palmer had visionary experiences as a child. Contact with Blake reawakened this gift for the visionary, which was expressed in his paintings and etchings.
Since its rediscovery, the mystical, Blake-influenced work, he produced while living in Shoreham, Essex, has become a major influence on contemporary British artists.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman

2012-02-06T19:00:00.000+08:00

Bronze statue of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, by Lee Leunig and Sherri Treeby

The White Buffalo Calf Woman is central to the spirituality and culture of the Lakota Sioux people. Lakota oral tradition relates that she appeared to them from the north as a beautiful young woman dressed in a brilliant white dress to give the tribe the sacred rituals which form the basis of their religion. She also took the form of a sacred white buffalo calf. When she left the tribe, she told them that she will come back in the future.

The medicine man Crow Dog explains her importance:

"This holy woman brought the sacred buffalo calf pipe to the Sioux. There could be no Indians without it. Before she came, people didn't know how to live. They knew nothing. The Buffalo Woman put her sacred mind into their minds."

Perhaps the sacred pipe (chanunpa) represents the tube-like shushumna nadi, the central channel of the subtle body, through which the Kundalini, passes like smoke. She explained to them that it represented the living breath of the Great Spirit.

The pipe, is the holiest ritual object of the Lakota, and was traditionally loaded with a mixture of sweet smelling herbs, roots, leaves and barks, of which tabacco was only one ingredient. The smoke was not inhaled, and the use of the pipe was reserved only for very special occasions. It was in no way a habitual abuse of tabacco.

The Illusion of the Knower

2012-01-31T19:26:00.001+08:00

The Self never undergoes change; the intellect never possesses consciousness. But when one sees all this world, he is deluded into thinking, “ I am the seer, I am the knower.”
Mistaking one’s Self for the individual entity, one is overcome with fear. If one knows oneself not as the individual but as the supreme Self, one becomes free from fear.

The entire universe is truly the Self. There exists nothing at all other than the Self. The enlightened person sees everything in the world as his own Self, just as one views earthenware jars and pots as nothing but clay.
~Shri Shankaracharya (probably 788 CE - 820 CE).

The Illusion of the Doer

2012-01-31T19:23:00.000+08:00

Events happen, deeds are done.
There is no individual doer of any deed.
~The Buddha

Greg Colbert

2012-01-16T15:48:00.000+08:00

In his sepia images, the Canadian film-maker and photographer Greg Colbert depicts the sacred bond between the human and animal worlds, a connection in the realm of thoughtless awareness and meditation.
I had assumed that these works were montages, but apparently they are not, which makes them even more wonderful.

The Boundless Self

2012-01-05T22:23:00.001+08:00

"For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night."

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

A Joyful Christmas

2011-12-22T21:00:00.001+08:00

Persian paintings of Mary and Jesus.

Kuan Yin

2011-12-19T23:33:00.002+08:00

Digital montage by Graham Brown.
Like the Indian goddess Shri Jagadamba, Kuan Yin was said to have ridden a tiger.

Shri Nimbarka

2011-12-18T00:32:00.001+08:00

Shri Nimbarka is a philosopher saint from the 13th or 14th century AD, who is believed to be an incarnation of the Sudarshana Chakra (discus) of Lord Vishnu. He was born in the region of India now known as Andhra Pradesh, and taught the philosophy of Dvaitadvaita - duality and non-duality at the same time.

To illustrate this principle he used the analogy of a snake in a coiled state. The coil is different to the snake yet it consists of the snake. The myriad forms that we see in the world are different to the Self/Brahman and yet they consist of the Self. So in one sense, world and Self are different, but in another sense they are one and the same.

The god Brahma, disguised as a renunciant, once visited Shri Nimbarka. When they had finished discussing philosophy, the renunciant got up to take leave but Nimbarka told him that he should stay and accept a meal. Lord Brahma replied that the sun had already set, and it was against the rules of ascetics for a renunciant to eat after sunset. Nimbarka did not want to break the rules of hospitality, neither did he want his guest to break the rules of asceticism, so he placed some of his radiance in a neem tree where it shone as brightly as the sun, making a day of night. Lord Brahma was pleased with the saint, and gave him the name Nimbarka, meaning sun in the neem tree.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

2011-12-03T19:41:00.001+08:00

“He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his reflection in the glass.”

“I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.”

“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.”

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.”

“But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.”

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

“He who must travel happily must travel light.”

“The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.”

“We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.”

“Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d'un rêve, une réalité.”
(make of your life a dream, and of a dream, a reality)

“The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together.”

“Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself.”

“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...”

“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”

“For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have; and if you go to draw at the fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.”

“Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.”

“if you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to collect wood and dont assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.”

“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself”

Flora

2011-11-18T20:15:00.001+08:00

Digital Painting by Graham Brown

The World is a Bridge

2011-11-17T20:01:00.001+08:00

Islam and Christianity are not as far apart as is generally believed. Indeed, a bridge was once made between the two faiths.

The Muslim Emperor Akbar the Great had the following saying of Jesus inscribed prominently on the entry gate to the Mosque adjacent to his palace and administrative capital, at Fatehpur Sikri:

"Jesus, Son of Mary (on whom be peace) said: The World is a Bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen."

Visiting Fatehpur Sikri as a young backpacker, the English writer, William Dalrymple, was surprised to discover this inscription on a muslim monument, and later to find out that it is one of several sayings that Islam has retained but which western Christianity has lost.

These sayings of Jesus circulated around the Muslim world from Spain to China, and many are still familiar to educated Muslims today. They fill out and augment the profoundly reverential picture of Christ painted in the Koran where Jesus is called the Messiah, the Messenger, the Prophet, Word and Spirit of God, though – in common with some currents of heterodox Christian thought of the period – his outright divinity is questioned.

There are also frequent mentions of his mother Mary who appears in no fewer than 13 surahs (chapters) and who is said to be exalted "above the women of the two [celestial and temporal] worlds" and, like Jesus, a "model" for Muslims. Mary is in fact the only woman mentioned by her proper name in the entire Koran, and appears more often in the Koran (34 times) than she does in the Gospels, where she is mentioned only 19 times.

- William Dalrymple

Mughal Nativity Scene, National Museum, Delhi

Akbar the Great laid the foundations for the non-denominational religious neutrality of the modern, secular Indian state.

Read the full article

Sophia

2011-10-23T18:25:00.013+08:00

Vladimir Solovyov (sometimes written in English as Soloviev) (1853-1900), was a Russian philosopher, poet and mystic. He is considered by many Western academics to be Russia's greatest philosopher.
Solovyov had three encounters with Sophia, the Divine Feminine.

The first encounter occurred in childhood. The second time he was in London, studying at the British Museum, and he saw her under the gold and azure dome of the Reading Room. He saw only her face, but he pleaded with her to see her full form.

"She asked him to meet her again in Egypt. He went to Egypt and Sophia once again appeared to him in the desert at dawn. This time she revealed herself to him fully, completely transforming him. She also showed him a vision of the Earth transfigured, all of nature, all things, unified within her form as the Divine Feminine. After his return to Russia, Solovyov briefly taught philosophy at Moscow University, but soon left because he disliked university politics. He then moved to St. Petersberg where he wrote and taught. Solovyov taught an engaged Christianity of service and activism, in which the binding power of Sophia - the Mother/Wisdom/Love nature of God - could heal the world. For Solovyov art could be a modern form of prophecy to bring greater awareness of this mystical unity to humanity. Among his many works of poetry, his masterpiece is Tri Svidaniya or "Three Meetings" describing his three mystical encounters with Sophia. In his poetry, his encounters with Sophia are permeated with radiant azure and violet.

Solovyov was a good friend of the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky."

- Source Poetry Chaikhana

What is, what was, what shall forever be -
All, all was held here in one steady gaze...
The seas and rivers blue beneath me,
Distant woods, snow-capped peaks.

I saw all, and all was one --
A single image of womanly beauty...
Pregnant with vastnesses!
Before me, in me -- only You.

-Vladimir Solovyev, Three Meetings, 1875

How to Make an Origami Lotus

2011-10-21T17:32:00.004+08:00

This could be fun for the kids to try on a wet day. YouTube is full of these wonderful instructional videos these days. So much easier than trying to follow diagrams in a book.

It's in Portuguese, but there are English subtitles. I probably could have found an English video of something similar, but I love the sound of Portuguese. Their word for red sounds like English vermillion.
Strictly speaking, there are no red lotuses, as far as I know; only pink or white. Waterlilies come in many other colours, however. The blue lotus, is actually a type of waterlily.

Miniature Painting

2011-10-07T22:15:00.001+08:00

Graham Brown, Angel Reading, Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2011.

Emptiness and Joy

2011-10-04T12:11:00.000+08:00

"To enjoy Sahaja Yoga, in Niranand (absolutely without anything else but joy) then one has to know that he should give up all the myths with which he is living. All kinds of myths there are. Some people have myths: “We are very poor”. Some have myths: “We are very rich”. Some have this thing that “We are very unhappy”. Some have that “We are very happy”. All kinds of myths these are. These are all myths. What is the thing is the complete emptiness; complete emptiness. That is joy. This emptiness is filled with joy. Complete emptiness. Then you don’t expect anything from anyone. And this emptiness from within, it actually gives chance to compassion and love to enter into you. Supposing there is something in a pot already, what can you pour into it? What can you give into it? So if you are completely empty within, there’s nothing of this nonsense of the past and the future: the aspirations, the ambitions, all those things, and falsehood. If you just become empty, it is filled in with nothing but joy, and joy of such a eternal nature. You never asked for it; you do not look forward to it. It is there, all the time. And this is what I wish today you people can feel it: the quality is of compassion and love, fearlessness and courage and the complete emptiness. In this emptiness, then, you are not worried about what you have to achieve."

- Shri Mataji's Navaratri talk 1994

Ganges

2011-10-01T21:59:00.009+08:00

Here are some stills from the beautifully shot BBC documentary series Ganges.
The last image is a photo of a Hindu personification of the river, the goddess Shri Ganga.

I once visited the Ganges at Haridwar. I recall the water seemed to be carrying flecks of mica, which gave it a magical glitter. Splashing some of the water on my head, and soaking my feet, I found that a cold and various aches and pains I'd been nursing for several days, simply vanished instantaneously. Perhaps is was psychological, but the effect was unexpectedly dramatic. The water was too cold and the current too fast to risk a full emersion, though I did do this on a subsequent trip to the confluence of the Ganges and Jumuna rivers, at Allahabad, where the water is much warmer.

The Self is like the Ganga, which has its source in majestic peaks, originating from the purity of snow, and ultimately merges with the ocean of the universal.
A river has many 'selves' - sources, tributaries, rapids, wide slow meanders, deltas, mouths - yet all these aspects are inseparable from the Self of the entire river. The identity of a river is not altered by its currents and waves.
In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, the protagonist learns from a river that time is an illusion. From the perspective of an object floating down the river, it seems as if passing things are lost irretrievably; but from the perspective of the river itself, nothing is ever lost. All the past and future are contained within the present moment. This is why meditation is such a powerful thing. Though it seems like it contains nothing, it contains all that ever was and will be.

Annihilation of ego

2011-09-25T20:21:00.005+08:00

"Fanaa (فناء) is the Sufi term for extinction. It means to annihilate the self, while remaining physically alive. Persons having entered this state are said to have no existence outside of, and be in complete unity with, Allah.

Fanaa is similar to the concepts of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism or moksha in Hinduism, which also aim for annihilation of the self. Fanaa may be attained by constant meditation and by contemplation on the attributes of God, coupled with the denunciation of human attributes."

-Wikipedia

The 'self' to be annihilated refers to the ego, while 'Allah' is the Self of the universe.
The term Jihad originally referred to the struggle against one's own inner enemies: the false desires and aversions, and ego that drag us away from the Self. Like so many things in religion, a spiritual, internal concept has been debased into a physical, external one, and has come to be interpreted as war against others instead of the ego-self.

"In western societies the term jihad is often translated by non-muslims as "holy war". Scholars of Islamic studies often stress that these words are not synonymous. Muslim authors, in particular, tend to reject such an approach, stressing non-militant connotations of the word."
-Wikipedia

The Goddess fighting demons (symbolising inner enemies such as lust, greed and the ego), Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Goddess in Shelley

2011-09-20T13:43:00.002+08:00

Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries.
-Shelley

Foot-soaking

2011-09-10T19:32:00.003+08:00

Mughal miniature painting of a princess cooling her feet in a pool of water.

Meditation is the best way of connecting with the Universal Self, beyond thought. Often, especially with busy modern lifestyles, the subtle energies in the body are not in balance, which disturbs the attention and makes it difficult to go into a state of thoughtless awareness. One method to balance the energies of the subtle body, as an adjunct to meditation, is to use water as a treatment. Foot-soaking is a simple and relaxing technique taught by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the founder of Sahaja Yoga. It is used to cool down the fiery sun channel on the right side of the subtle body, to bring it into balance. For an even more cooling effect, a bag of ice can be held on the right side of the body over the liver.

When I was a child, if I was feeling unwell, my own mother used to fill a basin of water with salt in for me to put my feet in. This seems to be a traditional treatment that has been forgotten about.

You can footsoak at the sea, as the water is salty. The salt acts to absorb the negative energy and toxins from the body. The soles of the feet seem to have larger sweat pores that can exude the toxins more readily.

Shri Ganesha Chaturthi Greetings

2011-09-01T23:55:00.003+08:00

Shri Ganesha, Bangladesh, 11-12th century.

I was a little late posting this; Ganesha Chaturthi was on Thursday this year, and it's now the early hours of Friday. Anyway, this Hindu festival is an auspicious day sacred to the Elephant-headed son of Lord Shiva and Lady Parvati. Chatur means 'four', referring to the fourth day of the lunar cycle, at this time of year. The number four is associated with Lord Ganesha, who is connected with the earth and the foundation of all things.
He is usually depicted with four arms, (though often with more) perhaps representing the four directions of space, as He gives us our sense of direction. He also rules over the carbon atom, which has four valencies, and is the basis of life.

In Australia, the land of Shri Ganesha, this special day also coincides with the start of Spring, when the earth becomes fragrant.

Swa

2011-08-30T14:15:00.000+08:00

In Sanskrit, the ancient Indo-Euroean language of India, Swa means "self" or "own".

Swedish, like most European languages is descended from an ancient Indo-European tongue very similar to Sanskrit, and reading a brief history of Sweden recently, I was interested to discover that the "Swe" in Swede is thought to have come from an old Indo-European word meaning "us" or "our own" (people). It suggests that the ancient term for self could be used in a collective sense. Today the word 'self' refers to something entirely limited to the individual.

The Owner of the Organism

2011-08-20T23:00:00.002+08:00

The Innermost principle of man's nature,
the so-called 'Owner of the Organism''
is unmanifest, unthinkable, unchangeable...
One person beholds the Self as a marvel,
another speaks of It as a marvel,
still another hears and learns of It as a marvel,
being instructed in the sacred esoteric tradition by a guru.
Yet, though having heard and learned,
no one has any real understanding of what It is.
-Bhagavad Gita

Below: Shri Krishna reveals his universal form (Vishvarupa) to Arjuna.

The Treasure of the Heart(h)

2011-07-26T18:30:00.004+08:00

There once was a pious rabbi who had a dream in which a voice told him to go to far off Prague, where under the great bridge to the royal castle he would discover a hidden treasure. This same commanding dream was repeated twice.

He finally decided to go, making the long journey by foot. On arriving in Prague he found the bridge; but as there were sentinels posted there day and night, he did not venture to dig. However, day after day he returned and loitered around, unostentatiously trying to study the situation.

Finally, he attracted the attention of one of the guards. "Have you lost anything, my good man?"he asked. The rabbi told him of his dream. The officer laughed and exclaimed, "You poor man, to have worn out a pair of shoes travelling all this way only because of a dream! Why I had a foolish dream once. A voice commanded me to go to Kracow and search for the home of a rabbi Eisik, son of Jekel, where I would find a great treasure buried in a dirty corner behind the stove. Imagine believing is such a dream." and he laughed again.

Rabbi Eisik bowing politely bid the officer farewell. He then hurried back to Kracow. There he dug under the neglected corner behind his stove and found the treasure, thus putting an end to his poverty.

In commenting on this tale, Heinrich Zimmer in The Choice is Always Ours writes:

Now the real treasure, to end our misery and trials, is never far away; it is not to be sought in any distant region, it lies buried in the innermost recesses of our own home, that is to say, our own being. And it lies behind the stove, the life-and-warmth-giving center of the structure of our existence, our heart of hearts - if we could only dig. But there is the odd and persistent fact that it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region, a foreign country, a strange land, that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide our quest can be revealed to us. And together with this odd and persistent fact there goes another, namely, that the one who reveals to us the meaning of our cryptic message, must be a stranger, of another creed and a foreign race.

The German Indologist, Heinrich Zimmer was one of Carl Jung's few male friends. After Zimmer's death in 1943, the well-known anthropologist Joseph Campbell (another great friend) edited his writings for publication.

Zimmer felt that Western civilisation was at a crossroads; a turning point that had been reached in India around 700 BC: an encounter with the Self of the Universe.

Rembrandt, The Philosopher in Meditation.
A wonderful interpretation of the symbolism behind this painting here.

The Last Threshold

2011-07-08T21:42:00.003+08:00

A Hall
The road led straight to the temple.

Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side,
Not to the main building- to its left wing,
The one in green copper, worn into gaps below.
I pushed. Then it was revealed:
An astonishing large hall, in warm light.
Great statues of sitting women-goddesses,
In draped robes, marked it with a rhythm.
Color embraced me like the interior of a purple-brown flower
Of unheard-of size. I walked, liberated
From worries, pangs of conscience, and fears.
I knew I was there as one day I would be.
I woke up serene, thinking that this dream
Answers my question, often asked:
How is it when one passes the last threshold?

Czeslaw Milosz

Czesław Miłosz (30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator of Lithuanian origin.

Miłosz observed that those who became dissidents were not necessarily those with the strongest minds, but rather those with the weakest stomachs; the mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can take only so much.

His nonfiction book The Captive Mind (1953) is a classic of anti-Stalinism.

Love over Ego

2011-07-07T14:15:00.004+08:00

An early Chola Bronze Figure of Siva Nataraja. Tamil Nadu, South India. Circa 950-1000 A.D

This exquisite South Indian bronze represents Lord Shiva, the embodiment of Universal Self or Love.

He is shown with one foot subduing a dwarf demon, representing the ego and ignorance (the small self). One of the left hands gestures towards the other foot, signifying that the way to Self-realisation is through devotion (in Indian culture, the feet of divine beings are a particular focus of worship). Poet saints have often referred to the Feet of the Lord or the Goddess as a place of refuge from the devastating illusions of the world.

The upper right hand holds a damaru (small drum), a symbol of creation; while the far left hand holds the fire of cosmic dissolution.

For the Self there is no Creation and end of the world. Self and World are one and the same. The world is brought into being, and annihilated, from moment to moment. There is no such thing as a time of creation in the distant past, nor a future doomsday to dread.
The fourth hand is held in the abhaya mudra (gesture of reassurance), telling the viewer not to have fear.

image source: Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Antiquities, Indian and Islamic Art

Kamadhenu and Al Buraq

2011-06-27T20:42:00.003+08:00

Kamadhenu, The Wish-Fulfilling Cow, with Shiva and Parvati, Indian calendar art.

The Hindi Goddess Shri Kamadhenu is sometimes depicted as a cow, but also as a winged cow with a peacock's tail and the head of a woman. This iconography is very similar to that of Al Buraq, the feminine angelic being who carried the Prophet Muhammad on Her back on the Night Journey, and who is an example of the Divine Feminine in Islam.
Read more.

Anatta

2011-06-17T14:16:00.003+08:00

A parable is given in the Pali Stanzas of the Sister Elders. There was a mother, we read, who had lost six children: one remained, a daughter. But eventually this child too died, and the mother was disconsolate. The Buddha came to her; and he said: "Many hundreds of children have we buried, you and I, hosts of kindred, in the times that are gone. Do not lament for this dear little daughter; four and eighty thousand with the same name have been burned on the funeral pyre by you before. Which among them is the one whom you mourn?".

- Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India.

It seems highly improbable that any one individual could have had scores of thousands of children with the same name, even if they had lived thousands of lives. And regressing only a few hundred lifetimes, one would reach a prehistoric period in which the name did not even exist. So the sense received from the Buddha's words is that "you and I" - the woman, himself, all beings that are and ever were - are the immortal, universal Self who has lived all lives, borne and lost all children.

One of the central teachings of Buddhism is the concept of anatta (non-existence of self); which is often interpreted to mean not only that individual egos are an illusion, but that there is no universal Self either - all is void of being (sunyata). However, this story suggests that the Buddha did believe in the universal Self described in the Upanishads. Though believe is the wrong word - He knew.

(painting by Waldmuller)

That is Self

2011-06-17T11:30:00.002+08:00

"He through Whom we see, taste, smell, feel, enjoy, know everything, He is that Self.

Knowing that by which one perceives both dream and waking states, the great omnipresent Self, the wise man goes beyond sorrow.

Knowing that the individual self, eater of the fruit of action, is the universal Self, maker of past and future, he knows he has nothing to fear.

Born in the beginning from meditation, born from the waters, having entered the secret place of the heart, He looks forth through beings. That is Self.

- Katha Upanishad

The Indian actor Sabu, in a scene from the 1947 film Black Narcissus.

"There was no self"

2011-05-29T21:44:00.002+08:00

One night in 1977, at the age of 29, after having suffered from long periods of suicidal depression, Eckhart Tolle experienced an inner transformation. That night he awakened from his sleep, suffering from feelings of depression that were "almost unbearable," but then experienced a life-changing epiphany. Recounting the experience, Tolle says:

I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.

Tolle recalls going out for a walk in London the next morning, and finding that “everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic." The feeling continued, and he began to feel a strong underlying sense of peace in any situation. For a period of about two years after this, he spent much of his time sitting, “in a state of deep bliss," on park benches in Russell Square, Central London, "watching the world go by.” He stayed with friends, in a Buddhist monastery, or otherwise slept rough on Hampstead Heath. His family thought him “irresponsible, even insane." Tolle changed his first name from Ulrich to Eckhart, reportedly in homage to the German philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart. Tolle's books on spirituality have become best-sellers.

John Constable
Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi once described Hampstead Heath, in London, as the "trigger" of the Heart Chakra of the World. It is a wild place miraculously preserved in one of the biggest cities on Earth, where William Blake would often walk.

Silence Quotes

2011-05-28T19:14:00.000+08:00

"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... "
-- Jean Arp

"We can do more work in the silence than we can by moving the lips and letting the mouth make a continuous noise. That interferes with our own thinking as well as with other people's. There is a stillness in a thinker's mind; there is a quietness in a thinker's presence, where even words are entirely unnecessary."
--Robert Beesley

"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute."
-- Josh Billings

"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together."
--Thomas Carlyle

"Sound has spoiled the most ancient of the world's arts, the art of pantomime, and has canceled out the great beauty that is silence. "
-- Charlie Chaplin

"Silence is a true friend who never betrays."
--Confucius

"The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid. "
-- Daniel Day-Lewis

"The words the happy say Are paltry melody But those the silent feel Are beautiful-- "
-- Emily Dickinson

"A properly kept silence is a beautiful thing; it is nothing less than the father of very wise thoughts."
--Diodicus

"Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent."
--Dionysius the Elder

"Silence is the mother of truth."
--Benjamin Disraeli

"Sometimes the silence can be like thunder. "
-- Bob Dylan

"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in an clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

"Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools."
--Charles de Gaulle

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind, yet, I'm ungrateful to those teachers. "

-- Kahlil Gibran

"Silence is argument carried on by other means."
-- Che Guevara

"We in the "developed" world seem to have many auditory strategies that insulate us from the presence of silence, simplicity, and solitude. When I return to Western culture after time in desert, mountain or forest, I discover how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our won thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range."
--Joan Halifax

Tron Legacy

2011-05-04T01:39:00.003+08:00

The science fiction film Tron Legacy explores Buddhist/yoga themes of non-duality (advaita) and humanity's struggle with the ego.

Jeff Bridges, plays Kevin Flynn, a character trapped inside a virtual universe, the Grid, he has initially designed, but which has taken on a life of its own. His ego self has manifested as Clu, a ruthless perfectionist control freak seeking total domination of, not only the cyber world, but the 'real' world.

Realising that direct confrontation with Clu (ego) only strengthens him, Flynn uses meditation to integrate himself with the digital world he has created, while his companion and confidante Quorra (played by Olivia Wilde) fights Clu's minions. She is a kind of shakti figure (divine feminine active principle) who acts while Flynn rests in a state of non-action. Quorra tells Flynn's son, who has entered the Grid in order to find his father, that Flynn is trying to "remove the self from the equation".

Wilde describes Quorra as being like Joan of Arc, a child warrior, with innocence and optimism, led by some greater power.

Alcohol and Cancer

2011-05-01T13:36:00.002+08:00

Forget safe drinking levels - any amount of alcohol could give you cancer. Alcoholic drinks and ethanol are carcinogenic to humans and there's no evidence there's a safe consumption threshold to avoid cancer, the Cancer Council says in the Medical Journal of Australia. There's convincing evidence that alcohol is a cause of cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, bowel (in men) and breast (in women), the council says in a position statement. Drinking alcohol increases the risk of bowel cancer in women, and liver cancer, and, because it might contribute to weight gain, it could also be associated with cancers linked to excess weight and obesity, the council says. It's bad news for those justifying the occasional drink as a preventer of coronary heart disease. "The previously reported role of alcohol in reducing heart disease risk in light-to- moderate drinkers appears to have been overestimated," the council said. Drinking alcohol might have played a dominant role in defining Australian culture for more than 200 years, the council says. "It is also an important cause of illness, injury and death, whether resulting from short-term episodes of intoxication or from long-term, chronic use," it says. The only way to reduce the risk of cancer is to limit your drinks or avoid alcohol altogether.

Source: news.yahoo.com

Shri Chakra

2011-04-25T16:35:00.003+08:00

Also called S(h)ri Yantra, the Shri Chakra is a sacred Indian cosmological diagram consisting of 9 isosceles triangles, 5 downward pointing (representing 5 aspects of the Shakti - the primordial divine feminine power) and four pointing upwards (representing four aspects of Shiva - the primordial unmanifest masculine principle) forming a structure of 43 triangles, representing 43 deities, or aspects of the Self.

The central diagram is enclosed within two lotuses, the inner of 8 petals, and the outer of 16 petals. Then three concentric circles. Around this is the bhupura (palace of the Earth) with four gates representing the four directions of space.

At the centre of the diagram is a dot known as the bindu, which represents the undivided Self, beyond the duality of male and female.

The Shri Chakra was described by Shri Shankaracharya, in his Soundarya Lahari (Wave of Beauty). Shri Mataji has commented that the diagram also represents the chakra system seen looking down from the sahasrara (Crown Chakra)

The central part of the diagram, is a lot harder to construct than it looks, as the lines must intersect accurately or small superfluous triangles will be created. Additionally, the apexes of the triangles must touch the horizontal lines.

Here's a link to some interesting research on Shri Chakra: sriyantraresearch.com

Nikola Tesla

2011-04-23T22:45:00.000+08:00

"What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the Earth and the elimination of egoism and pride. Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment."

- Nikola Tesla 1919
(thanks to Peter H for this quote)

Tesla studied Sanskrit, and used various terms from Vedic philosophy, in his scientific writings.

Sage Kapila

2011-04-19T18:58:00.000+08:00

Sage Kapila in his Hermitage, Illustration from the Ramayana, Kangra or Garhwal.

This miniature resembles some of the cosmographical paintings that are a feature of Indian art. The sage, like the innermost Self, sits at the centre of all things, in a state of Kaivalya (isolation, detachment).

C.S. Lewis' Vision of the Goddess

2011-04-19T16:48:00.001+08:00

"The reason why I asked if there were another river was this. All down one long aisle of the forest the undersides of the leafy branches had begun to tremble with dancing light; and on earth I knew nothing so likely to produce this appearance as the reflected lights cast upward by moving water. A few moments later I realised my mistake. Some kind of procession was approaching us, and the light came from the persons who composed it.

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers - soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, though by the standards of the ghost-world each petal would have weighed a hundredweight and their fall would have been the crashing of boulders. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys on one hand, and girls on the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who reads that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done. …

‘And who are all these young men and women on each side?’

‘They are her sons and daughters.’

‘She must have had a very large family, Sir.’

‘Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.’

‘Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?’

‘No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. …

‘Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.’

I looked at my teacher in amazement.

‘Yes’, he said, ‘It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life’."

(C.S.Lewis, The Great Divorce: a dream (London, 1946)

Self-rule

2011-04-18T21:21:00.002+08:00

The Goddess Bhavani giving Her sword to Shivaji Maharaj.

According to legend, the Goddess Bhavani, presented Her sword to Shivaji Maharaj, to help him free the Maratha nation from oppression, and to establish self rule ("Hindavi Swarajya").

Without political freedom, or self-rule, it is difficult for a people to attain Self-realisation. For this reason Shri Mataji took part in the freedom struggle of India prior to giving Self-realisation.

The sword was given to the British Royal Family at the end of the 19th century, and - I like to think - acted as a kind of amulet helping to save Britain from invasion in two world wars.

But perhaps now is the time for it to return to Maharashtra where it means most to people.

Shri Bhavani is a form of the Goddess worshipped particularly in Maharashtra. Her name means 'Giver of life'.

Despite the persecution of his people by a so-called 'Muslim' Empire, Shivaji respected all religions, including Islam. The Muslim Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, was a fundamentalist, intolerant of other religions, and oppressed Hindus, undoing the interfaith reforms of his ancestor Akbar the Great. Shivaji wrote a letter to Aurangzeb, telling him that Islam and Hinduism are two complementary aspects of the Sacred. As in a painting, one is the outline and the other the colouring, he said.

May the Goddess free the oppressed peoples of the word from despotism and persecution.

The First Mother

2011-04-16T20:48:00.001+08:00

“This primordial nature is the breath of the Merciful God in his aspect as Lord. It flows throughout the universe and manifests Truth in all its parts. It is the first mother through which Truth manifests itself to itself and generates the universe”.

-Ibn al 'Arabi

Ibn 'Arabī (1165 – 1240) was an Andalusian Moorish Sufi mystic and philosopher.

Neo-surrealism

2011-04-15T22:22:00.000+08:00

Some Neo-surrealist images by Shana and Robert Parke Harrison

Monotheism

2011-04-13T12:50:00.000+08:00

"We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great "spiritual invention of the religious leader Moses." This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess."

Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor
The Great Cosmic Mother

Haruki Murakami

2011-04-12T23:41:00.004+08:00

Many years ago a friend lent me a copy of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It was unlike any other novel I'd read previously, not necessarily one I'ld recommend, but certainly unique. Below is his take on ego and the Self in relation to the Tokyo Sarin attacks by the pseudo-Buddhist sect Aum Supreme Truth.

A much debated point is whether the Tibetan Government-In-Exile leader the Dalai Lama XIV has met, endorsed or supported Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo. He did meet Asahara; he doesn't deny this, and there are photos to prove it. His inner circle members supported Aum Shinrikyo during the time when the group struggled to obtain the legal religious organization status. The Dalai Lama at least admitted that this error offered proof that he was not a “living Buddha” but it's a shame he neglected to tell us all that before making the error.

In Eastern spirituality, guru and Self are said to be one and the same. Surrendering the ego to the guru is surrendering it to one's own true Self. But the guru has to be a Satguru (true master) like the Buddha himself. To surrender to a false guru is disastrous.

Of course, the individual is free to try to overcome desires and attachments and so on, but from an objective point of view it seems extremely dangerous to allow another, a guru, to take control of your own ego. Are there still many believers or ex-believers who don't recognize this?

I don't think many have thought about it properly. Gautama Buddha said: "The Self is the true master of the Self" and "Keep the Self an island, approaching nothing." In other words, Buddhist disciples practice asceticism in order to find the true Self. They find impurities and attachments, and attempt to extinguish these. But what Mr. Matsumoto (Asahara) did was equate "Self" and "attachments." He said that in order to get rid of the ego, the Self must be disposed of as well. Humans love the "Self," so they suffer, and if the "Self" can be discarded then a shining true Self will emerge. But this is a complete reversal of Buddhist teachings. The Self is what should be discovered, not discarded. Terrorist crimes like the gas attack result from the process of easily giving up on the Self. If the Self is lost, then people will become completely insensitive to murder and terrorism.

In the final analysis, Aum created people who had discarded their Selves and just followed orders. Therefore enlightened practitioners in Aum, those most steeped in Aum doctrine, are not truly enlightened people who have mastered the truth. It's a perversion for believers who supposedly have renounced the world to run around collecting donations in the name of "salvation."

Haruki Murakami

The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (interview with members of Aum Shinrikyo)

Self-Knowledge

2011-04-12T23:01:00.003+08:00

"Knowledge of the Self is the only true knowledge."
-Unknown

"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and whoever knows himself shall find it. Know your Self."
-Jesus, Oxyrhynchus Manuscript.

"Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature."
-Lao-tzu

"This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
-William Shakespeare

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie."
-William Shakespeare

"But if a man happens to find himself he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the the days of his life."
-James Michener

"He who knows himself, knows the All"
-Hermes Trismegistos

"Learn what you are and be such."
-Pindar

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself."
-Montaigne

"Resolve to be thyself: and Know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery."
-Matthew Arnold

"Gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself....is to know human nature and human destiny.....Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously, to know God."
-Elaine Pagels

I am not I
I am this one
Who goes by my side without my seeing him
whom, at times, I go to see
and whom, at times, I forget.
He who is silent, serene, when I speak,
he who pardons, sweetly, when I resent,
he who passes through places I am not,
he who will remain standing when I die."
-Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958)

"It's wrong to say I think. Better to say: I am thought....I is an other."
-Arthur Rimbaud, 1871

"Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self."
-May Sarton Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing

The Self as Infinite Beauty

2011-04-09T21:54:00.001+08:00

Estranged from Beauty - none can be -
For Beauty is Infinity -
And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was leased.

-Emily Dickinson

The Gentlest Mother

2011-04-09T21:28:00.000+08:00

Nature - the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no child -
... Her Golden finger on Her lip -
Wills Silence - Everywhere -

-Emily Dickinson

Dennis Doheny, Renewal

The Goddess in the Bible

2011-03-27T00:28:00.008+08:00

In this detail from the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo depicts the serpent in the Tree of Knowledge as a female entity. Serpents are ancient symbols of wisdom associated with the Goddess. It's interesting that Michelangelo visually links, through juxtaposition and hair colour, the serpent of wisdom and the angel driving Adam and Eve out of Eden, suggesting almost that they were one being, a single aspect of the Self which manifested to push humanity out the blissful ignorance of a pre-human, animal-like state into a higher level of evolution.

For Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me. For in Her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure and most subtle. For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of Her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.

- The Book of Wisdom of Solomon (Volume IV)

Book of Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon or simply Wisdom is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books of the Septuagint Old Testament, which includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), and Ecclesiasticus (Sirach).

There are instances in the book of Proverbs where Wisdom is personified as a female. Female imagery begins the book of Proverbs in Chapters 1-9 and also ends the book in chapter 31. In Proverbs 9:1-6 she is depicted as a figure with a home inviting those in need of wisdom to enter. She says "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight." In Proverbs 8:15-21, she not only identifies herself as the divine companion, but also as the source of order in society and success in life. In chapter 31:10 she is personified as the ideal woman for an Israelite man in a section titled Ode to a Capable Wife. There is debate about the status and place of Woman Wisdom in relation to the divine. Some have interpreted her as a companion to the divine, an abstraction, an extension to the divine, or a Goddess. Further information about the nature of Wisdom is found in Proverbs 8:22-30. In these verses "wisdom speaks of herself as having been created before anything else and as Yahweh's companion and even assistant at the creation of the ordered world." It has also been argued that personifying Wisdom as a woman adds a mythical nature to proverbs. This would line up with the ancient Near Eastern view that every male deity had a female counterpart.

-Wikipedia

Boteh (Paisley)

2011-03-26T21:25:00.005+08:00

Resembling a twisted teardrop, the kidney-shaped paisley is Iranian and Indian in origin, but its western name derives from the town of Paisley, in central Scotland.

In Tamil the design is known as mankolam and has long been used in India. It resembles a mango and has sometimes been associated with Hinduism.

In Persian the design is known as boteh jegheh and it has long been used in Iran since the Sassanid Dynasty.

Some design scholars call the distinctive shape boteh and believe it is the convergence of a stylized floral spray and a cypress tree: a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity. A floral motif called buteh, which originated in the Sassanid Dynasty (200–650 AD) and later in the Safavid Dynasty of Persia (from 1501 to 1736), was a major textile pattern in Iran during the Qajar Dynasty and Pahlavi Dynasty. In these periods, the pattern was used to decorate royal regalia, crowns, and court garments, as well as textiles used by the general population.

The pattern is still popular in Iran and South and Central Asian countries. It is woven using gold or silver threads on silk or other high quality textiles for gifts, for weddings and special occasions.

-Wikipedia

In Hinduism the design is symbolic of the goddess, or so I've been told. I seem to remember hearing on a TV documentary that the image of a cypress tree bowing in the wind was taken up by Islamic artisans as a symbolic motif representing submission to the will of Allah. My wife, who is from a Hindu background, calls the boteh a "mango design".

-Jeronimus

2011-03-22T11:20:00.000+08:00

Some digital artworks depicting the Cosmic Mother, by the American visionary artist Greg Spalenka.

my

2011-03-19T22:16:00.000+08:00

You go on saying, "my nose, my ears, my hands, my, my, my, my." Go deep down.

Till you say "my" there is some duality. But when I say, "I, the nose" then there is no duality.

- Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Pandharpur, India, 1984

Los

2011-03-09T16:10:00.006+08:00

Los is a character from William Blake's mythological writings, and perhaps the figure Blake himself most identified with. Blake had a vision in which he met and became one with Los.

Blake refers to him as the "eternal prophet", creator of the visionary city of Golgonooza. Los is regularly described as a smith, beating with his hammer on a forge, which is metaphorically connected to the beating of the human heart. The bellows of his forge are the human lungs.

Los resembles the archangel Michael, who brings light to the gloomy regions of the subconscious, and the Ida nadi of yoga.

In this illustration by Blake, Los is seen entering a tomb, carrying the sun in his right hand. Los is an anagram of sol, the sun.

In Greek folklore, St Michael also assumed the god Hermes' role as the psychopomp who leads souls to Hades after death, going where other angels would fear to tread. In this he is like the Hindu deity Shri Bhairava, an aspect of the ascetic god Shiva, who, in his asceticism and absorption in the innermost Self, is completely unaffected by the world of the living and the dead, and can happily inhabit a graveyard without fear, aversion, and risk of possession. Shri Shiva/Bhairava presides over the heart chakra on the left side.

The Immortality of Self

2011-02-27T18:16:00.003+08:00

When Arjuna is reluctant to go to battle, because some of the princes on the enemy side are his relations, Shri Krishna explains to him that the Self cannot be slain:

I have always existed, you too have always existed, and those princes have always existed. The time shall never come when we shall all cease to exist. Just as the Self within the body goes through childhood, manhood and old age, so also it passes to other bodies; a wise man is not puzzled by this.

What is not there cannot exist; what is there cannot be anything but existent. The distinction between these states has been recognized by those who study truth. That which pervades this universe is imperishable; no one can destroy that changeless being. It is these bodies that house the everlasting, imperishable, incomprehensible self that have an end. Therefore fight.

He who thinks the Self can be a slayer, and he who thinks the Self is slain, are both mistaken. The Self does not kill, nor is it killed. For the Self is never born and never dies, nor may it ever become non-existent. This unborn, everlasting, abiding Self is not slain when the body is slain. Knowing the Self to be unborn, imperishable, everlasting, changeless, Arjuna, how can a man slay anyone or be slain?

As a man gets rid of worn out clothes and put on new ones, so the Self puts away outworn bodies and puts on others that are new. Weapons do not cut the Self, fire does not burn it, waters do not wet it, the wind does not dry it. Not capable of being cut, burned, wetted, or dried, the Self is everlasting, present in all things, unchangeable, unmoveable, for ever the same.

Knowing that the soul is immaterial and unalterable, you should not grieve, Arjuna.

The Passing of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

2011-02-26T10:54:00.001+08:00

H.H. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founder of the worldwide meditation movement called Sahaja Yoga, passed away peacefully on 23rd February, 2011 in Genoa, Italy, aged 87.

Hers was a life unlike any other. Whether walking with kings or walking barefoot with Gandhi, it was a journey of extremes managed effortlessly, living as she did with grace, dignity and, always, loving guidance.

Born of a royal dynasty, she conferred as a child with Mahatma Gandhi, living for a time in his ashram, was a medical student and a freedom fighter, was an adored mother, grandmother, great grandmother and the wife of a distinguished diplomat who himself was decorated by the kings and presidents of innumerable countries and knighted by the Queen of England. But incredibly, after all this, with her family grown and settled, she then embarked on an even more extraordinary mission.

Shri Mataji was born to Christian parents in India. Spiritually enlightened, she knew from very early on that her unique spiritual gift must be made available to everyone. And so it was that in 1970 she founded Sahaja Yoga meditation, which she shared freely. Using simple techniques, she discovered a unique process of Self Realisation through which huge masses of people could easily achieve the peace of true meditation. She charged no money, and instead insisted this was a birthright which should be available to all who desired it, at no cost. She said “There can be no peace in the world until there is peace within”.

Joseph Campbell Quotes

2011-02-22T13:35:00.001+08:00

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The Lake Questions Yudhishthira

2011-02-21T05:58:00.000+08:00

A Midsummer Night's Dream

2011-02-19T21:39:00.002+08:00

William Blake, an illustration of a scene from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

A reading of Shakespeare gives the clear impression that he had realised the Self very deeply. Many of his works explore the theme of Selfhood, identity, and the ultimately tragic nature of ego.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream he suggests that the true nature of selfhood lies in a collective self (not in a Stalinist, statist sense, but as a natural consequence of the unity of being - Advaita).

As a playwright working with a troupe of actors, Shakespeare would have experienced this collective selfhood in which each member has a unique role but depends on the others. The play is much more important than individual egos.

The play within a play is a device Shakespeare loved to use. The play within A Midsummer Night's Dream is performed by a group of labourers, called 'mechanicals' by the character Puck.

"Identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create a type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible. It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest."

"David Marshall, an aesthetics scholar and English Professor at the University of California – Santa Barbara, takes this theme to an even further conclusion, pointing out that the loss of identity is especially played out in the description of the mechanicals their assumption of other identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes 'Two construct or put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered'. In Marshall's opinion, this loss of individual identity not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in community, which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare's opinions on love and marriage. Further, the mechanicals understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Marshall remarks that 'To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself in two parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part'. He claims that the mechanicals understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has a sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It seems that a desire to lose one's individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is the primary sense of motivation and is even reflected in the scenery and mood of the story."

-Wikipedia

It's a little past midsummer here in Australia, but feels hot enough to be.

Materialism

2011-02-11T17:12:00.002+08:00

"Actually to be materialistic, in the real sense,
is that we understand the value of matter.
And the value of matter is aesthetics:
artistic things, real artistic things.
And beyond that, the value of matter
is that you can give love to others."

-Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Wimbledon, UK, 1986

The Mantra for Overcoming Ego

2011-01-31T08:35:00.001+08:00

"Just say 'I forgive, I forgive', and you can overcome your ego."

-Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Sant Dynaneshwar

2011-01-25T20:33:00.005+08:00

Whether It is the seer or the seen,
It doesn't matter;
There is only the Self
Vibrating everywhere.

From the Amritanubhava by Dnyāneshwar or Jñāneshwar (1275–1296), also known as Jñanadeva

Excerpt from the 1940 Marathi film Sant Dynaneshwar:

"I" is a dream

2011-01-17T15:41:00.002+08:00

Shri Anantasayana Vishnu, Lord Vishnu sleeping on the cosmic serpent, Ananta (Endless), dreaming the world into existence.

I am not even dust. I am a dream
That weaves itself in sleep and wakefulness.
My brother and my father, Captain Cervantes,
Fought nobly on the waters of Lepanto,
Learned Latin and a little Arabic...
That I might be allowed to dream the other
Whose fertile memory will be a part
Of all the days of man, I humbly pray:
My God, my dreamer, keep on dreaming me.

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 –1986)

Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of Borges: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."

The New World

2011-01-11T21:08:00.007+08:00

The Italian film Nuovomondo (English title: The Golden Door) follows an impoverished Italian family as they migrate to the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. An English woman, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, attaches herself to the family (unmarried women were not allowed to sail unaccompanied).

Despite the poverty and crowding, the film is beautiful to look at. Women from all parts of the Old World, move in files, in their best and most beautiful traditional attire.

In one scene a sea of people, filling the entire frame, unexpectedly and breathtakingly parts, and we realise that half of the crowd are on the deck of the ship moving irrevocably away, and the other half are being left behind on the quay. It's an incredibly powerful piece of cinematography.

Later, on Ellis Island, the women contemplate the new life they are about to enter, and the the film pauses to a still image, inviting viewers to witness the present moment of their own lives in a rite of passage.

In one of the most moving scenes, the grandmother, who is denied entry for refusing to submit to an intelligence test, asks immigration officers: "Who are you to decide who enters the New World and who does not. Are you God?" She asks her sons and grandson to continue without her through the "Golden Door" into the land flowing with milk. The final scene, in which the immigrants literally swim through this milk, dissolves into magic realism.

There is some nudity in this film, but it is not gratuitous since it shows the dehumanising effect of the physical and mental examinations immigrants were subjected to.
The film is a heart-felt testament to the pluck and initiative of all those torn from their homelands to join the great migrations throughout history. As the descendant of immigrants it struck a chord with me.

The Problem of Self

2011-01-02T15:11:00.002+08:00

It is our ignorance which makes us think that our self, as self, is real, that it has its complete meaning in itself. When we take that wrong view of self then we try to live in such a manner as to make self the ultimate object of our life. Then we are doomed to disappointment like the man who tries to reach his destination by firmly clutching the dust of the road. Our self has no means of holding us, for its own nature is to pass on; and by clinging to this thread of self which is passing through the loom of life we cannot make it serve the purpose of the cloth into which it is being woven.

-Rabindranath Tagore, The Problem of Self. One of a series of lectures delivered at Caxton Hall, Westminster, 1913.

As Tagore points out, in the rest of his lecture, ridding ourselves of ego does not mean destruction of personality or uniqueness. Once the illusion of ego is removed the universal Self illuminates a person, and their true personality and uniqueness shines through.

A Peaceful Christmas

2010-12-24T16:42:00.001+08:00

Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

-Gospel of Thomas

William Blake, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.

The Kingdom is a symbol for the Self, which Jesus exhorts us to know. It is coextensive with the Universe, and therefore both inside and outside us.

Be Your Self

2010-12-19T18:09:00.002+08:00

Be yourself. There is no one better qualified.

- Mary Dunbar

I want you to be everything that's you, deep at the center of your being.

- Confucius

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

- Emerson

Square Painting

2010-12-09T13:15:00.003+08:00

I've long been interested by paintings in a square format. This is a wonderful composition by Thomas Buechner.

The Spindle of Necessity

2010-12-08T11:04:00.005+08:00

"After seven days in the meadow the souls and Er were required to travel further. After four days they reached a place where they could see a rainbow shaft of light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters and the Sirens were present. The souls were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token apart from Er."

From the Myth of Er, ascribed to Socrates by Plato.

This image of a rainbow spindle spinning out reincarnations, recalls the Kundalini, from Yoga tradition, a divine energy associated with the Goddess.

William Blake, illustration for the poem Jerusalem.

On the right a woman with the moon (feminine principle), spins a thread emerging from the crown of the head of a divine creator figure.

In yoga philosophy, the Kundalini shakti emerges through an aperture at the crown of the head, called the Brahmarandra (rent of Brahma).

Jerusalem is a symbol of the Sahasrara and the Eternal Self.

"Myths of weaving exist around the world as metaphors for creation."

"The spindle is often an axis mundi and its whirling whorls serve a cosmogonic function. Plato, for example, had a vision of the great goddess Ananke, "Necessity," spinning the universe; the sun, moon, and planets were her spindle's whorls; sirens sang through the webs of time and fate that she wove, and souls endlessly moved through the strands on their way to and from death and rebirth. Many goddesses are spinners and weavers: the Fates of ancient Greece; Athena, also of Greece; Neith of ancient Egypt; in Teutonic myth the Norns spin secret meanings into life."

The Norse goddess Frigg

Hypatia

2010-11-27T09:46:00.008+08:00

Agora, a film by the Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside), revolves around the life of Hypatia, the greatest mathematician, scientist and philosopher of her time, played admirably by Rachel Weisz. In her native 4th century AD Alexandria she was much esteemed for her dignity, intellect and virtue. Many of her students, both pagan and Christian, rose to positions of political power, which meant that she was seen as a woman of great influence, putting her into the crosshairs of the power-hungry. Her death, to some historians, marks the end of the Classical Era, although Hellenistic philosophy did survive her for a few hundred years in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

The villain of the piece is Cyril, patriarch/pope of Alexandria, a man described, even by Christians of his day as "a monster, born to destroy the church". He persecuted the Jews and other non-Christians of Alexandria, as well as Christians who disagreed with him, and probably incited the mob of zealots who brutally killed and mutilated Hypatia for her refusal to kneel to his power. Historians disagree over the extent of his responsibility for these events, but the Church's own resistance to his canonisation is telling.

Amenabar certainly has an agenda - firstly to warn against the overthrow of reason by ignorance, and secondly to show that so-called Christians have been, at certain times and places, no better than the Taliban. The second part of the message has infuriated certain reviewers allied to the Church. Agendas tend to distort historical accuracy, but the inaccuracies of the film are not as great as commentators, with their own ideological agenda, have made out. For example, some have deplored Agora for apparently blaming Christians for the destruction of the great Royal Library of Alexandria. There were several libraries in the city, and the film deals with the destruction of the library in the Serapeum temple, not the burning of the great library. The Serapeum was destroyed by either a Christian mob or by Roman soldiers, depending on which ancient account one reads. We will probably never know who was responsible for the tragic loss of the more famous library.
I saw the film with my librarian sister, which was quite appropriate.

Hypatia as imagined by Raphael

Spiral Time

2010-11-17T00:42:00.001+08:00

David Pearson is a plastic surgeon who enjoys using Photoshop to distort clock faces into spirals.
There's something a bit worrying about a plastic surgeon who likes distorting things with Photoshop!

The Left Brain as Narrator/Interpreter

2010-11-17T00:00:00.003+08:00

"We are our narratives" has become a popular slogan. "We" refers to our selves, in the full-blooded person-constituting sense. "Narratives" refers to the stories we tell about our selves and our exploits in settings as trivial as cocktail parties and as serious as intimate discussions with loved ones. We express some in speech. Others we tell silently to ourselves, in that constant little inner voice. The full collection of one's internal and external narratives generates the self we are intimately acquainted with. Our narrative selves continually unfold.

State-of-the-art neuro-imaging and cognitive neuropsychology both uphold the idea that we create our "selves" through narrative. Based on a half-century's research on "split-brain" patients, neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga argues that the human brain's left hemisphere is specialised for intelligent behaviour and hypothesis formation. It also possesses the unique capacity to interpret - that is, narrate - behaviours and emotional states initiated by either hemisphere. Not surprisingly, the left hemisphere is also the language hemisphere, with specialised cortical regions for producing, interpreting and understanding speech. It is also the hemisphere that produces narratives.

Gazzaniga also thinks that this left-hemisphere "interpreter" creates the unified feeling of an autobiographical, personal, unique self. "The interpreter sustains a running narrative of our actions, emotions, thoughts, and dreams. The interpreter is the glue that keeps our story unified, and creates our sense of being a coherent, rational agent. To our bag of individual instincts it brings theories about our lives. These narratives of our past behaviour seep into our awareness and give us an autobiography," he writes. The language areas of the left hemisphere are well placed to carry out these tasks.

Full article at New Scientist

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has identified the left hemisphere of the brain as the area of the subtle body in which the ahamkara (ego) accumulates.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The narrator or the ego?

Drawing Hands is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January 1948. It depicts a sheet of paper out of which rise, from wrists that remain flat on the page, two hands, facing each other and in the paradoxical act of drawing one another into existence. Although Escher used paradoxes in his works often, this is one of the most obvious examples.

The lithograph may signify mutual constitution; that is, the principle of one entity being formed by the other and vice versa (e.g., the state vs. the demos, predator–prey co-evolution, the subject and objects, "chicken or the egg?", agency-structure).

It is referenced in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, who calls it an example of a strange loop.

Gibran Exhibition in Sydney

2010-11-15T17:48:00.000+08:00

A few days ago, for no particular reason, I suddenly thought about the Lebanese poet/painter/philosopher, Kahlil Gibran (a Lebanese friend once told me his surname is pronounced with a soft 'g' in Lebanon, and with a hard 'g' in other parts of the Arabic speaking world). His work had inspired me in my early twenties but I had forgotten about it since then. Now I had a renewed desire to study his paintings closely. When I thought about it I felt that cool, refreshing goose-bump feeling of something serendipitous working out in mysterious ways. To my knowledge his work is not in the collection of any Australian Art Gallery, and the reproductions online are not of the best quality, so it didn't seem very likely "my" wish would be fulfilled.

A couple of days later a friend emailed to let me know about an upcoming exhibition on his work, right here in Sydney where I live!

Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, The Artist, The Man

Open:: 4 December 2010 – 20 February 2011
Venue:: Dixson Galleries, Mitchell Library

This exhibition will introduce audiences to Kahlil Gibran. While many Australians of the baby boomer generation have read The Prophet or heard of Gibran, few know about his life or artworks.

Gibran left Lebanon in 1895 at the age of 12 with his mother and three siblings for a better life in America. Settling in Boston, his early artistic talent was noticed by pictorial photographer F Holland Day of the Boston avant-garde. Gibran gradually developed into a romantic who read widely and drew compulsively.

This exhibition provides an overview of Gibran’s artistic output, featuring oil paintings, works of art on paper — including the original watercolours used as illustrations in the first edition of The Prophet — and writings selected from Gibran’s personal collection at the Gibran Museum in Bsharri, North Lebanon.

Kahlil Gibran on the Self

2010-11-11T18:17:00.010+08:00

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Ran

2010-11-06T22:27:00.009+08:00

The film Ran (chaos), by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear but introduces original elements such as the ruthless hi-brow Lady Kaede, whose thirst for revenge plunges the world around her into strife and mayhem.

The story world first begins to descend into chaos when the autocratic warlord in charge decides to abdicate power to his cruel and power-hungry older children. Blinded by ego, he rewards their flattery and exiles those who try to show him the truth, including his youngest child.

King Lear and Ran have both been seen as nihilistic because the chaos and ensuing suffering envelops good and bad characters indiscriminately. However, if seen as a tale of Self-realisation through the deflation of ego, the suffering is not without purpose, and the end is not entirely tragic.

Perhaps the most poignantly tragic figure in Ran is the young lord Tsurumaru, whose family is destroyed when the warlord burns down their castle. Eventually he loses his surviving sister, Lady Sué, a devout Buddhist who is able to forgive the warlord for the ruin of her family.

The film ends with a shot of Tsurumaru, blind and alone on top of the ruined castle, the only survivor of the film's events. Stumbling on the precipice he loses the icon of Amida Buddha his sister has given him for spiritual comfort. Even the gods have abandoned him it seems. Yet, in the often painful stripping away of externals, the Self remains unchanged, here symbolised by the radiant Enlightened One, the witness of the world's endless flux.

The Sacred Feminine: Mary Magdalene

2010-11-02T11:50:00.005+08:00

Mary Magdalene, Attributed to the Master of the Mansi Magdalene (Dutch)

The idea that Mary Magdalene was a fallen woman is a falsehood invented by medieval clerics who wanted to make her into an ideal of the penitent sinner, and so had to turn her life before meeting Christ into something sinful.

She was in fact an incarnation of the Purity of the Divine Feminine, which makes the slurs on her character an even greater wrong.

Mary Magdalene is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles." In apocryphal texts, she is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement, who was loved by Jesus more than the other disciples.

She is often depicted opening a vessel of ointment (which suggests the vessel of the Spirit, the Kundalini) She is also sometimes shown meditating in the wilderness with a skull in one hand, symbolising the renunciation of the body. These depictions are reminiscent of Indian paintings of Shri Mahakali, the renunciant aspect of the Goddess.

The name Mary occurs in 51 passages of the New Testament. There are several people named Mary in the Gospels. There also are several unnamed women who seem to share characteristics with Mary Magdalene. At different times in history, Mary Magdalene has been confused or misidentified with almost every woman in the four Gospels, except the mother of Jesus. "The idea that this Mary was 'the woman who was a sinner,' or that she was unchaste, is altogether groundless." There is no scriptural or historical evidence that Mary’s relationship with Jesus was anything other than that of a disciple to her teacher, definitely not a lover or wife. Although in the past she has suffered from a case of mistaken identity, Mary Magdalene was never reviled, demeaned or dismissed.

-Wikipedia

Here's a link to an apocryphal text mentioning three Marys in the circle of Christ: Sahaj-A-Z

Tradition

2010-10-28T12:10:00.000+08:00

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." - Gustav Mahler

People often use the word 'traditional' to lend weight to the ideas or products they are trying to sell. As Richard Dawkins points out in his critique of alternative medical practices which claim to be based on 'traditional' medicine: just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's right.

But there's also the point that things made, or thoughts inspired, by the heart, the abode of the Self, tend to last over time. Time exposes the flaws in works which may initially appear original but are actually based on ego and conditionings. Over time, egoistic things appear idiosyncratic and ugly; things produced by conditioning appear old-fashioned or derivative.

Reality

2010-10-19T00:53:00.005+08:00

Reality is simply the loss of ego.

Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.

Because the ego is not a real entity

it will automatically vanish

and reality will shine forth by itself.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

"it is very important to understand that Raghwindra Swami was in this area, and he did a lot of work, and now the time has come to complete his work; also Ramana Maharshi. They didn't know how to explain, so they took to mauna (silence)."

- Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Madras, India, 1991

Wikipedia entry on Raghavendra_Swami

Art Find of the Century

2010-10-12T12:57:00.002+08:00

A renaissance painting, believed by art experts to be an original by Michelangelo, has been discovered behind a sofa. It depicts the Virgin Mary and Christ in a Pieta scene. In medieval versions, the Virgin is shown to the side of, and below the figure of Jesus, but Michelangelo places Her centrally. Read the news article.

Goddess of the Mountain

2010-09-29T14:44:00.005+08:00

Detail, Allegory of Chastity, Hans Memling, Nederlandish, 15th century.

The Hindu goddess Parvati is the wife of Shiva, the personification of the Eternal Self. Parvata is one of the Sanskrit words for "mountain"; "Parvati" translates to "She of the mountains" and refers to Parvati being born the daughter of Himavan, lord of the mountains and the personification of the Himalayas. Shri Parvati is also called Gauri, meaning "of white or golden complexion". Gauri Mata (Mother Gauri) is the goddess of purity and chastity, and a benevolent aspect of Devi (Goddess); the 'brilliant'. Another form taken by Parvati, is the warrior goddess Durga, whose name means "inaccessible", or "fortress'.

The Veil of Self

2010-09-23T23:51:00.004+08:00

According to Plutarch, the Egyptian temple of the goddess Neith bore the inscription:

I am All That Has Been, That Is, and That Will Be.

No mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers Me.

There was one who arrived there.
He lifted the veil of the goddess.
But what did he see?
Wonder above wonder,
he saw himself.

Georg Philip Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), 18th century.

Hymn to Isis

2010-09-23T22:33:00.007+08:00

O Wealth-giver,
Queen of the Gods,
Lady Hermouthis,
Omnipotent
Good Fortune,
Greatly Renowned Isis,
Exalted Deity,
Highest Discoverer of all life.

Many are the miracles You have performed so that mankind could exist,
and morality be established for all.
You taught us customs so that justice might in some measure prevail,
You taught us skills so that human life might be comfortable,
And You found the blossoms that produce nourishing fruit.

Because of You heaven and the whole earth have their being,
And the gusts of the winds, and the sun with its sweet light.
By Your power the channels of the Nile are filled, every one,
At the harvest season, and its turbulent water is poured out
On the whole land so that produce may be unfailing.

All mortals who live on the boundless earth:
Thracians, Greeks and Barbarians,
Express Your fair Name, a Name greatly honored among all,
Each speaks in his own language, in his own land.
The Syrians call You: Astarte, Artemis, Nanaia,
The Lycian tribes call You: Leto, the Lady,
The Thracians also name You as Mother of the gods,
And the Greeks (call You) Hera of the Great Throne, Aphrodite,
Hestia the goodly, Rheia and Demeter.
But the Egyptians call You ‘Thiouis’ (because they know) that You, being One, are all the goddesses invoked by the races of men.

Mighty One, I shall not cease to compose hymns to Your great Power,
Deathless Saviour, many-named, mightiest Isis,
Saving from war, cities and all their citizens:
Men, their wives, possessions, and children.
Those who are bound fast in prison, in the power of death,
Those who as are in pain through long, anguished, sleepless nights,
All who are wanderers in a foreign land,
Those who sail on the Ocean in winter,
When men may be destroyed, and their ships wrecked and sunk.
All of these are saved if they pray that You be present to help.

Hear my prayers, O One whose Name has great Power;
Prove Yourself merciful to me, and free me from all distress.

Isidorus, c 100 BCE

Anahita

2010-09-15T11:13:00.002+08:00

A 4th century BC depiction of the Iranian goddess Anahita, radiant and mounted on a lion, being worshipped by Artaxerxes II. She was an important deity in the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia, responsible for fertility but also skilled in the arts of war. A virgin goddess, Her name means "the immaculate one".

The Indian goddess, Shri Devi, also rides on a lion or tiger and is indomitable in combat.

"Creation Delights in the Recognition of Itself"

2010-09-02T15:10:00.003+08:00

At the end of Huston Smith's autobiography, Tales of Wonder, he describes an experience his friend Ann Jauregui had as a young girl in Michigan:

In summer she would lie on a wooden raft anchored in the bay, listening to the the waters lapping, drowsy in the warm sunshine. The warm day, the clear northern light, and the water's gentle motion together worked a semi-hypnotic effect.

Then suddenly Ann would snap alert and feel intensely alive, or rather that everything was alive and that she was part of it. The rocks, the water itself - everything seemed pulsating with a kind of energy. She found she put questions to the experience. 'What is my role in all this,' she whispered. 'Show me.'

The rocks, the trees, the water - all in silent chorus 'answered' - not in words, of course - that the wanting to know, just that, was her part in the pulsating landscape.

'Creation delights in the recognition of itself', is how she would later put it.

Inquiry (called vichara in Sanskrit, the language of yoga) is the posing of questions to the Self/Spirit. It is an initial step on the way into Self-realisation or Self-recognition.

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi recommends asking the simple question: 'am I the Spirit?'

As meditation deepens, there is less need for Self-inquiry (atmavichara) - at least in words - and the thoughtless awareness state of nirvichara (without inquiry) is established.

Self as Universe

2010-08-16T21:15:00.002+08:00

The little space within the heart is as great as a vast universe.

The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun,

and the moon and the stars, fire, lightning and winds are there,

and all that now is, and all that is not:

for the whole universe is the Self and the Self dwells within the heart.

- The Chandogya Upanishad

Dream and Reality

2010-08-05T18:06:00.005+08:00

Self-realisation is sometimes compared to the moment of awakening from a dream state. But how is one to know that the waking state is not itself a further dream?

After receiving Kundalini awakening and the opening of the Sahasrara Chakra, one is not entirely free of Maya - The World-Dream continues - but one begins to dream lucidly, to participate in it's creation from moment to moment. This is how one begins to distinguish illusion and reality after Self-realisation.

In the film Inception, the character Ariadne tells Leonardo DiCaprio's character to "remember yourself" just before he plunges into a dream state of indeterminate length. The film does not explore the nature of the Self, however.

The idea that the world is an illusion or dream can become an infectious meme. As we see in the character of Mal (Leonardo DiCaprio's character's wife), a kind of self-destructive madness results, if the ego claims ownership of the world-dream, rather than seeing it as an aspect of the Supreme Self.

According to Advaita philosophy, the world is a dream if seen as separate from the Subject; real if seen as the Subject.

Reincarnation

2010-07-29T17:42:00.005+08:00

The Buddha, by the Mexican artist Octavio Ocampo.
After Enlightenment the Buddha remembers countless past existences.

From the viewpoint of the Self, there is no reincarnation; there is not even incarnation. The Self does not incarnate. If Self and World are indeed one and the same, how can it be said that the Self enters into a particular physical form? How can the all-pervading Self enter into itself?

However, from a human viewpoint, there is reincarnation.

Self-realisation is not an action

2010-07-27T22:11:00.002+08:00

As soon as I say, 'You cannot put in any effort about it,' our ego gets challenged. How is it? It's difficult for a modern person to understand, that God's grace is going to work it out. Even Shankaracharya, you know Adi Shankaracharya, the one who propounded Hinduism in India, said that "Na yogena, na samkhyena," [Neither by observances nor by analysis] not by any of these things that it is going to happen, but by Mother's grace it's going to work out that you are going to be realized. There's no way out. No way thinking about it, writing about it, preaching about it, talking about it, it has to happen to you.
-Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 1979

Praises of the Divine Mother by Four Incarnations of the Primordial Master, Shri Adi Guru Dattatreya

2010-07-23T16:17:00.015+08:00

William Blake, The Mother Goddess whom he called Jerusalem, the Emanation from Albion (Shiva, the Self)

"The beginning of the universe is the Mother of all things."
-Master Lao Tse

"A son's paradise is found at the feet of his mother."
-Lord Muhammad

"The Primordial Mother came into being by Herself, mysteriously,
and She created three deities: one was the Creator, one the Sustainer, and one the Destroyer."
-Shri Guru Nanak (Founder of the Sikh religion), first lines of the Guru Granth Sahib

"Surrender to me and I will take care of you as a Mother takes care of a little child."
-Shri Shirdi Sai Nath

2010-07-14T19:05:00.003+08:00

"Let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls."
Barack Obama

We have a stake in one another, and what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Vibrations

2010-07-09T18:32:00.000+08:00

This is, apparently, a real answer to a question in a school physics test.

Self-forgetting

2010-06-22T12:20:00.005+08:00

Shri SitaRama Enthroned, Gouache on Japanese paper.

Lord Rama was an Incarnation of the Supreme Self who deliberately forgot His divine identity in order to become a human being (an ideal one).

After performing intense and prolonged austerities, the demon Ravana had won a boon from the god Brahma (or Shiva?), and asked that he become invulnerable from death at the hands of any god or fellow demon. Contemptuous of apparently frail human beings, he neglected to ask for immunity from them, thus creating a loophole which allowed Shri Rama (the all-powerful Lord Vishnu in human form) to kill him and free the world from oppression.

The Dishonesty of Ego

2010-06-22T10:57:00.003+08:00

In Western culture, ego is often thought of as 'healthy', or at worst a necessary evil. But constructing an artificial sense of self based on the lie of separateness, can have catastrophic consequences not only for the person but for entire societies. Dorothy Rowe writes:

Can you bear to remember that time in your life when you were going along feeling secure and thinking, "This is me, this is my world, that was my past, this will be my future," when suddenly you found that you had made a major error of judgement? When you realised that many of the ideas underpinning your whole sense of being a person - that sense of "I", "me", "myself" - had been invalidated by events?
Have you ever had the sensation of falling through infinite space, shattering, crumbling, of being about to disappear like a raindrop into the ocean? Perhaps you knew that what was falling apart was not your sense of self but some of your ideas. You knew that you now had to go through a period of uncertainty until new ideas emerged. But if you did not know this, you would have been utterly terrified, so terrified that you would do anything never to go through such an experience again.
Psychiatrists and psychologists have either ignored this experience, maximised its significance as a full-scale "breakdown", or minimised it as a "panic disorder". Yet this feeling of falling apart is an essential part of our lives and of most of our narratives. In The Wizard of Oz, for example, Dorothy and her companions emerge wiser and strong from the invalidation of their idea that the wizard could solve their problems, while paradoxically Othello is destroyed by the invalidation of his belief that his wife Desdemona had been unfaithful.
We first experience the terror of being invalidated when we are small children, but by the time we are 3 or 4 we have learned a way of avoiding it: we have learned how to lie. From then on, whenever we glimpse the faintest possibility that our "selves" might be threatened with annihilation, we lie.
First of all, we lie to ourselves. Why? Because we fear that we do not have the strength and courage to face the truth of our situation. We even lie about lying, preferring to call our lies anything but a lie. We say: "He's in denial" or "She's being economical with the truth".
All lies have networks of consequences we did not expect or intend. The lies we tell may well protect us and our personal - or collective - sense of self in the short term, but in the long term and in a linked-up, complex world, the consequences can be truly disastrous. After all, when we lie to ourselves and to others, we multiply a thousandfold the inherent difficulties we have trying to determine what is actually going on inside us and around us.

-New Scientist, 21 June 2010
Dorothy Rowe is an Australian psychologist and emeritus associate of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Read the full article

The Self is infinite

2010-06-15T23:38:00.002+08:00

The Self appears to be finite because of ignorance.
When ignorance is destroyed, the Self,
which does not admit of any multiplicity,
reveals itself by itself:
just as the sun reveals itself
when it evaporates the clouds covering it.

-Shri Adi Shankaracharya, Atmabodha

Research on Meditation

2010-06-03T20:12:00.001+08:00

Spiral Jetty

Meditation helps to anchor someone in the present. A new study has found it also stops people from anticipating pain.

Brain scans revealed that the most advanced meditators were the least likely to anticipate pain induced by a laser device, which made the experience more bearable.

Lead researcher Dr Christopher Brown, said: 'Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a way to treat chronic illness such as the pain caused by arthritis.

'Recently, a mental health charity called for meditation to be routinely available on the NHS to treat depression, which occurs in up to 50 per cent of people with chronic pain.

'However, scientists have only just started to look into how meditation might reduce the emotional impact of pain.'

The study, to be published in the journal Pain, found that participants who meditated showed unusual activity in the brain region known to be involved in controlling attention and thought processes when potential threats are perceived.

Dr Brown said: 'The results of the study confirm how we suspected meditation might affect the brain.

'Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events. This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse.'

Dr Brown said the findings should encourage further research into how the brain is changed by meditation practice.

dailymail.co.uk

Racial Purity

2010-05-14T19:44:00.005+08:00

In the latest New Scientist: A long-awaited rough draft of the Neanderthal genome has proved what was long-suspected: Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. Our own DNA contains clear evidence of this. The genome of humans today is roughly 1-4% Neanderthal, a species not generally considered "human". This holds true for all non-Africans. It turns out that Africans are actually pure homo sapiens.

White supremacists should rethink their ideas about Africans being less "human" or less "racially pure" than themselves. More likely they will attempt to reinvent Neanderthals as some kind of superior species, despite the fact that they went out of evolution.

Inhere as the Self

2010-05-08T00:02:00.003+08:00

"Therefore become dispassionate
and inhere as the Self.
Such inherence is spontaneous and effortless.
It is realised after thoughts are eliminated
and investigation ceases.
Return to your state after you break off from it,
and then you will know all,
and the significance of its being knowable
and unknowable at the same time.
Thus realising the unknowable,
one abides in immortality
for ever and ever.

-Tripura Rahasa, (The Mystery Beyond the Three States of Consciousness,
or The Secret of the Supreme Goddess)
Attributed to Shri Adi Guru Dattatreya

40th Sahasrara Day

2010-05-05T19:12:00.005+08:00

The Celestial Rose, Illustration to Dante's Paradiso

Today is the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Sahasrara Chakra of the Virata, by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi.

"(Sanskrit: सहस्रार, Sahasrāra) is the seventh primary chakra according to Hindu tradition. Often referred as thousand-petaled lotus, it is said to be the most subtle chakra in the system, relating to pure consciousness, and it is from this chakra that all the other chakras emanate. When a yogi is able to raise his or her kundalini, energy of consciousness, up to this point, the state of Samādhi, or union with God is attained."

- Wikipedia

The Goddess and the Volcano

2010-04-29T21:17:00.009+08:00

Archangel Michael, Peruvian Icon, Oil on Canvas

In many traditions around the world, volcanoes are considered to be manifestations of the Goddess, particularly in Her terrific or destructive aspect.

In Hawaii She is known as the indomitable Pele. In Amerindian mythology Mt St Helens is the form taken by the maiden Luwit, and Mt Fuji in Japan is presided over by the goddess Konohana Sakuya Hime.

The blood-like lava flows, the black smoke, the grey ash reminiscent of the cremation ground, the lightning and destructive fury, are all suggestive of the Hindu goddess Shri Mahakali, the terrifying destroyer of negative forces.

This painting depicts not the Goddess Herself but the Archangel Michael, who presides, with Shri Mahakali, over the left, lunar channel of the Subtle Body. This channel (also known as the Ida Nadi) has the universal quality of Tamas, the cold, dark energy of inertia, which acts as a brake to the overactivity of the solar channel of Rajas. The Icelandic volcano certainly applied a braking force to European air travel.

People who doubt that human activity has a significant effect on global warming often point to the huge amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted during volcanic eruptions. However, volcanoes also emit ash and sulphur, which can remain suspended in the atmosphere for several years, partially shielding the planet from solar radiation. This cooling effect is known as the haze effect. Volcanic eruptions enhance the haze effect to a greater extent than the greenhouse effect. Observational evidence shows a clear correlation between historic eruptions and subsequent years of cold climate conditions. Volcanoes have a net cooling effect on global climate.

Another Good Letter to NS

2010-04-12T16:49:00.003+08:00

From Maggie Hamand:

"As someone with a first degree in biochemistry and an MA in theology. I am always fascinated by debates about religion and science. I was dismayed, however, to read [in New Scientist magazine] that belief in God is equated with belief in "supernatural beings". In Christian theology God is not seen as an object of our consciousness, and therefore cannot be described as a "being" or as a "thing". God is held to be both beyond being (transcendent) and being itself (immanent). As far as I am aware Judaism, Islam and indeed Buddhism and Hinduism have similar doctrines. It is human to constantly reify things which are abstract - as scientists do when talking about particles and black holes - or which are divine: but this should be resisted if we are to truly understand things."

London, UK.

Similarly, the Self is not a thing. Reification (also known as hypostatisation, concretism, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea. The habit of thinking about abstractions in terms of concrete objects is probably an inborn tendency in human beings. The word 'real' is quite vague, philosophers can't even agree on what the word 'existence' means. To say that God/Self should not be reified does not necessarily mean It does not 'exist'.

The Collective Self

2010-04-12T13:49:00.006+08:00

"The idea that consciousness is the product of interaction between different areas of the brain may have begun with Bernard Baars in 1983, but German philosopher Jurgen Habermans (born in 1929) has long argued that knowledge arises from interaction between people. George Herbert Mead argued that mind itself arises from such interaction, rather than the other way around. It is far from surprising that the social and individual processes of the mind would mimic, or perhaps mirror, each other, and comes as no surprise to those of us who question the assumption that each of us has, or is, a fundamental single self from which all else proceeds."

-Steve Wilson, letter published in New Scientist

The conscious brain evolved at the level of the Visshuddhi Chakra, which is characterised by the quality of collectivity, the interaction, or play, between variegated parts of a whole. According to Advaita philosophy, the Self is singular, but also has innumerable aspects which can interact through the principle of collectivity. Many scientists are tending towards the idea that individual 'selves' are fictitious - a simulation, or an illusion. However, to answer what has been called the 'hard problem' of consciousness - how subjective experience arises from the physical brain - we will always need a single universal subject, or Self.

3D chess game from Star Trek. Consciousness arises through interaction and play.

The Tyranny of the Discontinuous Mind

2010-03-14T10:51:00.003+08:00

"The boundaries of objects are vague - and that goes for us too... Describing the world in terms of discrete objects is a useful fiction."

- Kees van Deemter, a computational linguist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and author of Not Exactly: In praise of vagueness

Richard Dawkins calls this tendency to think in discrete categories "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind".

Avadhuta Gita

2010-03-11T17:10:00.004+08:00

All that exists in this world of forms

Is nothing but the Self, and the Self alone.

How, then, shall the Infinite worship Itself?

Shiva is one undivided Whole!

-Avadhuta Gita (The Song of the Renunciant)

Probably 9th or 10th century

Traditionally ascribed to Shri Dattatreya