The Last Threshold

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

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

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

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

"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"

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

"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

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

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

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

"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

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).

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C.S. Lewis' Vision of the Goddess

"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

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

“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

Some Neo-surrealist images by Shana and Robert Parke Harrison