' Thoughts on a Sunday Night '...
I have learned that it is boring to not speak with God..
In the silent moments of your life without Thought is painful..
To Be within God is investigating..
To Be Light is without other..
No personality to confuse You..
This State of Existence is called Love..
To Be Without self..
It is to Be Within Heaven...
-thomas
' Tao Te Ching '...
"The creatures of the world are born from something,
and something from nothing."
Lao-Tzu
_Tao Te Ching_, 4
Translation of Ma Wang Tui Manuscripts
by D. C. Lau
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, p. 6
' Surangama Sutra '...
Then King Prasenajit stood up and said to the Buddha, “Before I was instructed by the Buddha, I met Kātyāyana and Vairāṭiputra [Kātyāyana and Vairāṭiputra were contemporaries of the Buddha who taught forms of skepticism.].
Both of them said that after this body dies, we cease to exist and become nothing. That very nothingness itself is what they called nirvana. Now, though I have met the Buddha, I still have doubts that make me cautious. How can I come to realise the true and fundamental mind that neither comes into being nor perishes? All in this great assembly who have outflows wish to hear the answer.”
The Buddha said to the king, “May I ask, is your body as indestructible as vajra, or is it subject to decay?”
“World-Honored One, this body of mine will keep on changing till in the end it will perish.”
The Buddha said, “Your Majesty, you have not perished yet. How is it that you know you will perish?”
“World-Honored One, my body is impermanent and subject to decay, although it has not perished yet. But now, upon reflection, I can see that each one of my thoughts just fades away, followed by a new thought which also does not last, like fire turning into ash, constantly dying away, forever perishing. By this I am convinced that my body, too, must perish.”
The Buddha said, “So it is. Your Majesty, you are in your declining years. How do you look now, compared to when you were a boy?”
“World-Honored One, when I was a child, my skin was fresh and smooth, and I was full of vital energy when in my prime. But now in my later years, as old age presses upon me, my body has withered and is weary. My vital spirits are dulled, my hair is white, my skin is wrinkled. Not much time remains for me. How can all this compare to the prime of life?”
The Buddha said, “Your Majesty, your body’s appearance cannot have deteriorated suddenly.”
The king replied, “World-Honored One, the change has in fact been so subtle that I have hardly been aware of it. I’ve reached this point only gradually through the passing of the years. Thus when I was in my twenties, I was still young, but I already looked older than I did when I was ten. My thirties marked a further decline from my twenties, and now, at two years past sixty, I look back on my fifties as a time of strength and health.
“World-Honored One, as I observe these subtle transformations, I realize now that the changes wrought by this descent toward death are evident not only from decade to decade; they can also be discerned in smaller increments. Considering more closely, one can see that changes happen year by year as well as by the decade. In fact, how could they happen merely year by year? Such changes happen every month. And how could they occur from month to month only? These changes happen day by day. And if one contemplates this deeply, one can see that there is ceaseless change from moment to moment, in each successive thought. Thus I can know that my body will keep on changing till it perishes.”
Reeds and Geese,dated 11th month, 1343 Tesshū Tokusai Japanese. © The Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Buddha said to the king, “Observing these changes — these never- ceasing transformations — you know that you must perish. But do you also know that when you perish, something in you does not perish with you?”
Putting his palms together, King Prasenajit replied to the Buddha, “Indeed I do not know.”
The Buddha said, “I now will reveal to you what it is that does not come into being and does not perish. Your Majesty, when you first saw the River Ganges, how old were you?”
The king replied, “I was three when my beloved mother took me to pay respects to the goddess Jīva. When we went past a river, I knew that it was the Ganges.”
The Buddha said, “Your Majesty, you said that when you were in your twenties, you had already aged compared to when you were ten. Year after year, month after month, day after day, in each successive thought there have been changes till you have reached your sixties. Consider, though: when you were three years old, you saw the river; ten years later, when you were thirteen, what was the river like?”
The king replied, “It looked the same when I was thirteen as it did when I was three, and even now, when I am sixty-two, it is still the same.”
The Buddha said, “Now you are mournful that your hair is white and your face is wrinkled. Your face is certainly more wrinkled than it was when you were in your youth. But when you look at the Ganges, is your visual awareness any different from your visual awareness as it was when you saw the river in your boyhood?”
The king replied, “No different, World-Honored One.”
The Buddha said, “Your Majesty, your face is wrinkled, but the es- sential nature of your visual awareness itself has not wrinkled. What wrinkles is subject to change. What does not wrinkle does not change. What changes will perish. But what does not change neither comes into being nor perishes. Then how could it be affected by your being born and dying? So you have no need to be concerned with what such people as Maskari Gośālīputra say: that when this body dies, you cease to exist.”
-SurangamaSutra: A New Translation with Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsuan HuaFrom Surangama Sutra: A New Translation with Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Buddhist Text Translation Society, ISBN 978-0881399622
' Universal Intelligence '...
The intellectual knowledge of the Truth is merely its shadow and not the Truth itself.
The Truth is a higher state of awareness which leads you out of the little personal and physically materialistic everyday life into a new world of being--the world of your higher self which transcends these things.
It is a real experience and not a mere speculation.
It brings with it the peace which passeth understanding of which Saint Paul spoke, frees you from anxieties, fears, and all other negative ideas.
It reveals to you that God, in the sense of a Universal Intelligence and Universal Power, is actually the basis of all existence.
-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect > Chapter 1:
The Place of Intellect > # 203 Paul Brunton
' The Seventh Spiritual Plane '...
"In Reality and as the only Reality, the soul is always God without beginning and without end.
False illusion begins with the descent of the soul in seven material stages and real illusion ends with the ascent of the soul to the seventh spiritual plane.
"God is a macrocosm, God is a microcosm and God is also always beyond both.
Knowingly man is body and man is mind, but unknowingly, as in deep sleep, man is also beyond both."
-Meher Baba
God Speaks: The Theme of Creation
Walnut Creek, CA: Sufism Reoriented, 2nd revised edition, 1997, p. 69
' For Freedom '...
As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.
As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.
As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.
~ John O'Donohue ~
(To Bless the Space Between Us)
' The Metaphysics of Truth '...
Two things have to be learned in this quest.
The first is the art of mind-stilling, of emptying consciousness of every thought and form whatsoever.
This is mysticism or Yoga.
The disciple's ascent should not stop at the contemplation of anything that has shape or history, name or habitation, however powerfully helpful this may have formerly been to the ascent itself.
Only in the mysterious void of Pure Spirit, in the undifferentiated Mind, lies his last goal as a mystic.
The second is to grasp the essential nature of the ego and of the universe and to obtain direct perception that both are nothing but a series of ideas which unfold themselves within our minds.
This is the metaphysics of Truth.
The combination of these two activities brings about the realization of his true Being as the ever beautiful and eternally beneficent Overself.
This is philosophy.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 4:
Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 134 Paul Brunton
' Thought is Absent '...
Thought is absent in seeing things intuitively.
When you perceive directly, there is no thinking.
When you think you understand, you don't.
You do not think that you are alive,
you know that you are alive.
- Ramesh Balsekar
' The Seeker of Love '...
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva
' Projections of Consciousness '...
In the ordinary man's cosmic picture any one object is separate from any other object.
In the scientist's cosmic picture they are also separate, but intellectually he may have arrived at the point of holding them together in the idea that they are all different forms of one and the same ultimate Energy.
But this remains only an idea.
In the philosopher's picture, the ordinary man's and the scientist's are both included, but there is an addition, namely, he knows by his transcendental experience that these two are projections of Consciousness and that this Consciousness is the reality.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5:
The Key To the Spiritual World > # 182
Paul Brunton
' The Stage of Revelation '...
As one goes further in the soul's unfoldment one finally arrives at
the stage of revelation.
Life begins to reveal itself, and every
condition, every soul,
every object in the world will reveal its
nature and character to one.
From The Teachings of¡
HAZRAT PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged by¡
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
' Nirvikalpa Samadhi '...
Why be afraid of this declaration: that the final goal is to merge in the Absolute?
Is it because it promises the same as death--annihilation?
Yet whenever deep sleep is entered this merger happens.
The ego with its thoughts, desires, and agitations, is gone; the world, with its relativities, is no more.
Time, space, form, memory are lost.
Yet all reappears next morning.
So it is not a real death.
It is pure Being.
Meditation tries to reproduce this condition, to achieve a return to deep sleep but with the added factor of awareness.
In the final phase--Nirvikalpa Samadhi--it succeeds.
Man dissolves but his divine Source remains as the residue, as what he always and basically was.
This is why philosophy includes meditation.
- Paul Brunton
' A Moth into a Flame '...
What a blessed life
What a lucky find
The ending of the search
The stopping of my mind
How can I express
The changes taking place
The only words I guess
Would be amazing grace
And I cannot say how
This blessing came to be
I only know that now
An arrow's piercing me
And so you have my heart
And nothing is the same
I am falling into love
Like a moth into a flame
~ Kirtana from the song Blessed Life
' Beads on a String '...
"I am not come to establish any cult, society or organization; nor even to establish a new religion.
The religion that I shall give teaches the knowledge of the One behind the many.
The book that I shall make people read is the book of the heart that holds the key to the mystery of life.
I shall bring about a happy blending of the head and the heart.
I shall revitalize all religions and cults, and bring them together like beads on one string."
-Meher Baba
_God Speaks_
San Francisco: Sufism Reoriented,
Inc. 2nd. ed., 1973, p. xxxvi
' Being and non-being '...
The subtle body is created with the emergence of the ‘I am’ idea.
The two are one.
It is momentary.
Real when present, unreal when
over. Call it empirical, or actual, or factual.
It is the reality of
immediate experience, here and now, which cannot be denied.
You can question the description and the meaning, but not the
event itself.
Being and non-being alternate and their reality is
momentary.
The immutable reality lies beyond space and time.
Realize the momentariness of being and non-being and be free
from both.
- Sri Nisargadatta
' The Overself '...
The ego self is the creature born out of man's own doing and thinking, slowly changing and growing.
The Overself is the image of God, perfect, finished, and changeless.
What he has to do,
if he is to fulfil himself,
is to let the one shine through the other.
-Paul Brunton (#10574)
' The Best Loss of All '...
There is a silence which swallows your mind.
You have
the feeling you know nothing at all but you are without
confusion.
It is like your body becomes completely empty
and a deep silence is looking out.
You may say Awareness
looks out as Silence.
Few know the profundity of this
state.
They may even think you have lost your mind,
and maybe you did.
But it would be the best loss of all.
- Mooji
' Those Tiny Tender Waves '...
I wouldn’t underestimate the power
of a tiny, tender impulse
from the heart.
An impulse that’s that small
can rock and soothe us all,
or tear our safe, complacent lives apart.
But I’ve learned to trust
those tiny, tender waves,
despite my fear or habits of defense,
though they lead me, in some cases,
to unexpected places
that at the time,
frankly make no sense...
~ Kirtana from the song And So
' Who You Are '...
Be that ‘I am’,
once you know who you are,
remain stabilized in
the experience of the Self.
Be like Arjuna, Awareness of his Being
remained with him constantly,
even when he went into the thick of
battle.
Because he was with Krishna, he could go into battle,
knowing that there is nobody who kills and no one who is killed.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Salvation '...
Not until the ego is completely deflated and falls into the Void will he know,
feel, and fully realize the blissfulness of salvation.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 4:
Detaching from The Ego > # 447 Paul Brunton
' Merged into Consciousness '...
I have many photographs of my Guru here,
because my Guru ‘is’
I
know ‘I am’.
You presume that your Guru is a body-mind and that
is a mistake.
I do not look upon my Guru like that.
He is merged
into Consciousness and I see him as that.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Gravitation Theory of God '...
Anirudh Kumar Satsangi said...
Apropos an article on Logic of Reincarnation by Steven J Rosen published in The Speaking Tree of 11the July 2010. In this article the author enquires what is it that reincarnates from one body to another? Is it the soul? the mind? the intellect? To understand this we should suggest answer to these questions. We all know that there are four fundamental forces in the universe viz., gravitation force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force.
I have written a paper entitled ‘Gravitation Force is the Ultimate Creator’ and presented it at the 1st International Conference on Revival of Traditional Yoga held in Lonavla Yoga Institute, Lonavla in January 2006. In this paper I have defined soul (individual consciousness), mind and body. According to this every point of action of Gravitational Force Field is individual consciousness or soul, electromagnetic force as the force of mind and weak and strong nuclear force as the gross material force which constitute physical frame of body.
Consciousness is All Intelligent and pervades everywhere. Although all other remaining three forces are also intelligent but they are subordinate to Gravitational Force. THIS DESCRIPTION WILL HELP TO UNDERSTAND ‘WHAT IS IT THAT REINCARNATES FROM ONE BODY TO ANOTHER.
According to Buddhism this is not the supreme atman or soul that ties one life to another, instead it talks about past lives as evolvement of consciousness, emergence of a new personality from the same stream of consciousness.
Unaccomplished activities of past lives are also one of the causes for reincarnation. Some of us reincarnate to complete the unfinished tasks of previous birth. The is evident from my own story of reincarnation:
“My most Revered Guru of my previous life His Holiness Maharaj Sahab, 3rd Spiritual Head of Radhasoami Faith had revealed this secret to me during trance like state.
HE told me, “Tum Sarkar Sahab Ho” (You are Sarkar Sahab). Sarkar Sahab was one of the most beloved disciple of His Holiness Maharj Sahab. Sarkar Sahab later on became Fourth Spiritual Head of Radhasoami Faith.
Since I don’t have any direct realization of it so I can not claim the extent of its correctness. But it seems to be correct. During my previous birth I wanted to sing the song of ‘Infinite’ (Agam Geet yeh gawan chahoon tumhri mauj nihara, mauj hoi to satguru soami karoon supanth vichara) but I could not do so then since I had to leave the mortal frame at a very early age. But through the unbounded Grace and Mercy of my most Revered Guru that desire of my past birth is being fulfilled now.”
I am one the chief expounder and supporter of Gravitation Force Theory of God. This is most scientific and secular theory of God. I have also discovered the mathematical expression for emotional quotient and for spiritual quotient.
Austrian Scientist Rudolf Steiner says,
"Just as an age was once ready to receive the Copernican theory of the universe, so is our age ready for the idea of reincarnation to be brought into the general consciousness of humanity".
' The Sufi way '...
“… They say it is to burn up in Love’s fire —
The Sufi way is to be utterly inflamed with the light of the Beloved …”
~ Aksarayi Şeyh İbrahim Efendi
(Dervish of Turkey)
' Within the Self '...
No matter what the appearance,
there is perfection,
tranquillity,
harmony and happiness
wherever one is,
wherever he goes,
whatever he is doing or not doing.
Perfection is no more present in one spot than another.
Tranquillity does not reside more in one place than another.
One does not have to seek out the quiet places
mountain trails, meadows and mill ponds
to find the "peace that passeth understanding."
While the world rushes to other places for recreation,
we have a place right where we are –
a secret refuge wherein we find the end of sorrow and tribulation, where there is rest from every effort.
Where is this wonderous place?
Within the Self within within.
All the while, peace has been closer than breathing,
closer than fingers and toes,
here and now within us,
not out there at all.
All the while,
Peace has been the Identity we are.
The above William Samuel quotes are from the book
Experience Your Perfect Soul.
' Finding Truth through Love '...
"The Truth do I utter,
let all hear,
Who loveth,
he alone findeth the Lord."
-Guru Gobind Singh
quoted in Huzur Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji
Tales of the Mystic East
Punjab: Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1961, p. 95
' Mastery over self '...
Do we not see, even in our own limited experience, how things go
wrong when we have become weak in will or mind in one affair or
another?
It is not possible to master the conditions of life until we
have learned to control ourselves.
Once we have mastery over our self
everything will go right
From The Teachings of
HAZRAT PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged by
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
' When the 'I is all' ...
When ‘I am myself’ goes the ‘I am all’ comes.
When the ‘I am all’
goes, ‘I am’ comes.
When even ‘I am’ goes, reality alone is,
and in
it every ‘I am’
is preserved and glorified.
- Nisargardatta
' The Buddha-name as a Mantra '...
"Reciting the buddha-name is equivalent to upholding a mantra.
After you have gained power by reciting the buddha-name, you will face objects with equanimity.
the first gate to liberation is feeling weary and becoming detached from it.
But how can you get independent of it?
If you keep on reciting the buddha-name for a long time,
the time when you accord will naturally arrive."
-Master Chu-hung
in J. C. Cleary, Tr.
Pure Land, Pure Mind The Buddhism of Masters Chu-hung and Tsung-pen
NY, San Francisco & Toronto: Sutra Translation
Committee of U.S. and Canada, 1994, p. 59
' The Level of Labels '...
The sensations in the mind that we explain at such length are on the level of labels.
Only when there is awareness right at awareness will you really know that the mind that's aware of awareness doesn't send its knowing outside this awareness.
There are no issues.
Nothing can be concocted in the mind when it knows in this way.
- Upasika Kee Nanayon, from Pure and Simple,
' The Ten-Fold Delusions '...
The water of the mind, how clear it is!
Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even a slight thought arises,
ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them, and they become real.
Be carried by them, and it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person trapped in the ten-fold delusions.
~Ryokan
' Self-Inquiry '...
Do you really want to erase all your deluded beliefs,
memories, stories, tendencies and identities one by one,
or would you prefer to find the factory where they are
produced, and blow the whole thing up?
I say this because right now, I don’t have time for all
this tiny pruning.
You hold on to your little nail clipper,
but I am giving you a great chainsaw to bring down this
old tree of suffering.
This chainsaw is self-inquiry.
This
is your good fortune.
- Mooji
' Further Identification '...
"The moment you think you have spiritual knowledge or that you know how it works,
identity is present,
mind is active,
and further identification is taking place."
~Jac O'Keeffe
' A Mental Universe '...
Mentalism, the teaching that this is a mental universe,
is too hard to believe for the ordinary man yet too hard to disbelieve for the illumined man.
This is because to the first it is only a theory, but to the second it is a personal experience.
The ordinary man's consciousness is kept captive by his senses, each of which reports a world of matter outside him.
The illumined man's consciousness is free to be itself,
to report its own reality and to reveal the senses and their world to be mere ideation.
- Paul Brunton
Thoughts on a Thursday Night '...
To the Mystics, I will write words of poetry..
They speak in words that only wisdom can understand..
I am not speaking from ego, I only speak of understanding..
The rest of readers will only wonder about Parables..
The Silent Ones will speak Truth..
The Ego is a Prison..
Non-Desire of manifestation is Freedom..
How is this Possible ?...
Look Within....
-thomas
' Rig Veda '...
"The stranger asks the way of him who knows it:
taught by the skilful guide he travels onward.
This is, in truth, the blessing of instruction:
he finds the path that leads directly forward."
Rig Veda 10.32.7
in The Hymns of the Rig Veda
Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith
London, 1889
' The Optimist and the Pessimist '...
It is the optimist who takes the initiative;
the pessimist follows him.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
The Obstruction to Awakening '...
From the beginning nothing is.
There really has never
been any beginning, nor is there any end.
The universe
is a dream.
So is the one who is supposed to understand
this!
Belief in oneself is, in fact, the only real obstruction to
awakening from delusion.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' Three Things not hidden '...
“Three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun,
the moon,
and the truth.”
– Gautama the Buddha
' The Imaginary Wall '...
Practice is not for freedom but to remove your old habits.
Freedom is standing in front of you, smiling at you, as you do your practices.
Your old tendencies, which you grasp, are an imaginary wall.
This wall is the thought,
"I am bound and suffering."
~ Papaji
' The Pure State of Love '...
Miguel Unamuno's declaration that "love is the child of illusion" is one of those statements which are themselves the product of illusion.
For the pure state of love is the Cosmic Energy which holds together and continuously activates the entire universe.
It is those shadows of shadows of love which appear in the beasts as lust, in the humans as affection, which represent states that are transient and in that sense unreal.
This transiency is obvious enough in the beast's case but less so in the human's.
-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 2:
Re-Educate Feelings > # 98 Paul Brunton
' On the "Witness" '...
At this point, higher reason has almost finished all the work it can do. The gross world, the subtle world, that body and mind are no longer seen as though they exist outside of awareness.. Nothing is experienced as self-sustaining, independent thing, but rather as made of spontaneous arisings in the witnessing awareness.
Having realized the witness, you discover that you've always been home. You no longer feel that you were born or that you will die. If the universe itself perishes, you as awareness will be there.
You don't take any of this personally, because the structures that allowed this are seen never to have existed. You no longer feel lonely, separate or alienated in any way at all. You no longer compare your own spiritual attainments to those of another. You no longer wish to have another's experience, since it no longer seems that experience is in any way personal. Experience has become another term for this same global awareness.
Your experience is utterly sweet and open. The earlier descriptions of awareness as love now fully agree with your direct experience at every moment. It's not that sweetness is experienced as arisings which are pleasant. The sweetness is much deeper than that. It is not an arising object. Rather sweetness is globally felt as the very source and nature of the arisings. Even arisings that would normally be called "pain" are lovingly held as sweetness by this very same sweetness. Nothing is felt to be an exception to this perfect openness, clarity, love and sweetness. This is radical and revolutionary. And it is your natural state.
-Greg Goode, Standing as Awareness, Non-Duality Press
' The Real Work '...
The Real Work .
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
- Wendell Berry (Collected Poems)
' Compelling Insight '...
Mentalism is the study of Mind and its product, thoughts.
To separate the two, to disentangle them, is to become aware of Awareness itself.
This achievement comes not by any process of intellectual activity but by the very opposite--suspending such activity.
And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 2: Our Relation To the Absolute > # 119
-- Perspectives > Chapter 28: The Alone > # 3 Paul Brunton
' Mind at Rest '...
Sadhana (spiritual practices) do not wake you up by themselves.
They have no awakening powers.
But they put your mind to rest.
When your mind is at rest you awaken.
~ Robert Adams
' Sadhana '...
Sadhana (spiritual practices) do not wake you up by themselves.
They have no awakening powers.
But they put your mind to rest.
When your mind is at rest you awaken.
~ Robert Adams
' Look into your Heart '...
Your vision will become clear
only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens.
- Carl Jung,
' By His Grace '...
"The heart is the innermost man or spirit. Here are located self-awareness, the conscience, the idea of God and of one's complete dependence on Him, and all the eternal treasures of the spiritual life....
Where is the heart?
Where sadness, joy, anger, and other emotions are felt, here is the heart.
stand there with attention....
Stand in the heart, with the faith that God is also there, but how He is there do not speculate.
Pray and entreat that in due time love for God may stir within you by His grace."
-Saint Theophan the Recluse
in George A. Maloney, S.J.
Prayer of the Heart
Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1981, p. 25
' God is That which You can See '...
It is natural for man to make God that which he thinks to be best;
therefore whether people belong to the same religion or nation or
not,
each one of them has his own God,
depending on the way he looks
upon Him.
Each person's God is as he looks upon Him;
and if one says
that there are as many Gods as there are people in the world,
that
is also true.
-A Meditation Theme For Each Day:
From The Teachings of
HAZRAT PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged by
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
' A Letter to an Ex-Wife '...
"JACK KEROUAC's LETTER TO HIS EX-WIFE
"I have lots of things to teach you now,
in case we ever meet,
concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina
on a cold winter moonlit night.
It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry.
It’s all like a dream.
Everything is ecstasy, inside.
We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds.
But in our true blissful essence of mind is known
that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.
Close your eyes,
let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
stop breathing for 3 seconds,
listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,
and you will remember the lesson you forgot,
which was taught in immense milky ways
of cloudy innumerable worlds
long ago and not even at all.
It is all one vast awakened thing.
I call it the golden eternity.
It is perfect.
We were never really born,
we will never really die.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea
of a personal self,
other selves,
many selves everywhere,
or one universal self.
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea.
That which passes through everything, is one thing.
It’s a dream already ended.
There’s nothing from staring at mountains months on end.
They never show any expression,
they are like empty space.
Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away.
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space,
which is the one universal essence of mind,
the one vast awakenerhood,
empty and awake,
will never crumble away because it was never born.
The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks dont see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes."
—Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969) was a literary iconoclast in the mid-1950s, and sent the text above in a letter to his first wife, a decade after their marriage had been annulled. Excerpted from "The Portable Jack Kerouac," (Penguin Books, 1996).
"The Portable Jack Kerouac made clear the ambition and accomplishment of Kerouac's "Legend of Duluoz"-the story of his life told in his many "true story" novels. Featuring selections from Kerouac's autobiographical fiction, as well as from his poetry, criticism, Buddhist writings, and letters, The Portable Jack Kerouac offers a total immersion in an American master."
' Recital of the Sarmoun Brotherhood..(Sufi Mystics) '...
He who knows and does not know that he knows:
he is asleep. Let him become one, whole.
Let him be awakened.
He who has known but does not know:
let him see once more the beginning of all.
He who does not wish to know, and yet says that he needs to know:
let him be guided to safety and to light.
He who does not know, and knows that he does not know:
let him, through this knowledge, know.
He who does not know, but thinks that he knows:
set him free from the confusion of that ignorance.
He who knows, and knows that HE IS:
he is wise. Let him be followed.
By his presence alone man may be transformed.
I who know, and do not know that I know:
let me become one, whole.
Let me be awakened.
I who have known, but do not know:
let me see once more the beginning of all.
I who do not wish to know, and yet say that I need to know:
let me be guided to safety and light.
I who do not know, and know that I do not know:
let me through this knowledge, know.
I who do not know, but think that I know:
set me free from the confusion of that ignorance.
He who knows, and know that HE IS:
he is wise. Let him be followed.
By his presence alone man may be transformed.
We who know, and do not know that we know:
let us become one, whole.
Let us be transformed.
We who have known, but do not know:
let us once more see the beginning of all.
We who do not wish to know, and yet say that we need to know:
let us be guided to safety and light.
We who do not know, and know that we do not know:
let us, through this knowledge, know.
We who do not know, but think that we know:
set us free from the confusion of that ignorance.
He who knows, and knows that HE IS;
he is wise. Let him be followed.
By his presence alone man may be transformed.
As with our forebears
So with our successors.
So with us.
We affirm this undertaking.
So let it be.
' Partial Knowledge '...
Mind is not capable
of knowing everything
fully;
it's always knowing something
which is equal
to knowing nothing.
Partial knowledge
is no knowledge
and any knowledge
devoid of absoluteness
doesn't free us.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
' The Pain of Love '...
The pain of love is the dynamite that breaks up the heart, even if it
be as hard as a rock.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The effect of love is pain. The love that has no pain is no love. The
lover who has not gone through the agonies of love is not a lover, he
claims love falsely. ... Rumi describes six signs of the lover: deep
sigh, mild _expression, moist eyes, eating little, speaking little,
sleeping little, which all show the sign of pain in love. Hafiz
says, 'All bliss in my life has been the outcome of unceasing tears
and continual sighs through the heart of night.'
The sorrow of the lover is continual, in the presence and in the
absence of the beloved: in the presence for fear of the absence, and
in absence in longing for the presence. According to the mystical
view the pain of love is the dynamite that breaks up the heart, even
if it be as hard as a rock. When this hardness that covers the light
within is broken through, the streams of all bliss come forth as
springs from the mountains.
'Nothing but Consciousness '...
Chandrakirti, a Mahayana Buddhist guru, said, "We teach the illusion of existence only as an antidote to the obstinate belief of common mankind in the existence of this world."
What he means by this is that the world is only relatively existent in relation to the physical senses and the physical brain.
The senses report its existence quite correctly and Mentalism agrees with mankind in the factuality of this experience.
But it says this is only a relative truth, that the basic or real truth is that both world and self exist in consciousness, that they are nothing else than Consciousness itself.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5:
The Key To the Spiritual World > # 135
Paul Brunton
' What is the ego ?'...
The ego is a mirror to see Yourself..
You allow the vision of separation to enter Your Consciousness to experience the opposite..
To Know Yourself,
You must Know,
what is not Self..
It is as easy as that...
-thomas
' Seeking '...
Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of
old;
seek instead what they sought.
- Chinese parable
' Attainment of Higher Consciousness '...
How is higher consciousness attained?
By closing
our eyes to our limited self and by opening our heart
to the God who is all perfection,
who is in heaven and
on earth and who is within and without,
the God who is
all in all, who is visible, tangible, audible, perceptible,
intelligible, and yet beyond man's comprehension.
-Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid `Inayat Khan
From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day
Selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat `Inayat Khan
' The Mystical Experience '...
Outside of the mystical experience wherein the whole universe rolls up and vanishes away,
leaving the man "conscious only of consciousness,"
the next overwhelming realization of mentalism comes to dying persons.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5:
The Key To the Spiritual World > # 113
Paul Brunton
' There is a Lake '...
There is a lake so tiny
that a mustard seed would cover it
easily, yet everyone drinks from this lake.
Deer, jackals, rhinoceroses, and sea elephants
keep falling into it, falling and dissolving
almost before they have time to be born.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
' The Long Path leads to the Short Path '...
The limitation of the Long Path is that it is concerned only with thinning down, weakening, and reducing the ego's strength.
It is not concerned with totally deflating the ego.
Since this can be done only by studying the ego's nature metaphysically, seeing its falsity, and recognizing its illusoriness, which is not even done by the Short Path, then all the endeavours of the Short Path to practise self-identification with the Overself are merely using imagination and suggestion to create a new mental state that, while imitating the Overself's state, does not actually transcend the ego-mind but exists within it still.
So a third phase becomes necessary, the phase of getting rid of the ego altogether; this can be done only by the final dissolving operation of Grace, which the man has to request and to which he has to give his consent.
To summarize the entire process, the Long Path leads to the Short Path, and the Short Path leads to the Grace of an unbroken egoless consciousness.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 5: Balancing the Paths > # 206
-- Perspectives > Chapter 23: Advanced Contemplation > # 3 Paul Brunton
' Total Presence is Required '...
Total Presence is Required.
Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.
Have you ever gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of it?
Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening?
To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still.
You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, of last and future, as well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear.
Your total presence is required.
- Eckhart Tolle, from Practicing the Power of Now, posted to The_Now2
' Freedom Dream '...
All wisdom and holiness are but streaks of lightening - Huang Po
I love the mystery of it all. I love the ancient Chinese Zen Master Huang Po's declaration that all our spiritual insights are at best momentary lightening flashes in the vast mystery beyond all understanding.
I am delighted that thought can never grasp its source and there is no way to explain it.
There are times of identification, of emptiness and fullness, of expansion and contraction.
The awakening is reborn and refreshed each day as quiet releases, small epiphanies, gratitude and wonder.
At each time it is the same awakening - the realization of being the silent presence, the enduring ground of wholeness and peace that is always here beneath the surface activity.
All the variations in experience - including identification and sense of separation - are seen to be the expressions of this ever present reality underlying and sourcing it all.
-Dasarath
Freedom Dream
' Thoughts '...
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd's purse.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Ryokan
' Silent Awareness '...
It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change.
This change is completely spontaneous.
Making an effort to change, we do no more than shift our attention from one level, to another, remaining in the vicious circle.
This only transfers energy from one point to another.
It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably inevitably back to the other.
Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biological, emotional and psychological nature has undergone.
There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices.
-Jean Klein from I Am
' Self Pervades Creation '...
"As ghee pervades milk,
So does the Lord pervade creation.
Many are the praters and listeners of this;
But few are those who churn themselves
To get the all-pervading Lord."
-Kabir
in Issac A. Ezekiel
Kabir: The Great Mystic
Punjab: Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1966, p. 319
' Ashtavakra Gita '...
What is yesterday, tomorrow, or today?
What is space,
or eternity?
I sit in my own radiance.
What is the self,
or the not-self?
What is thinking, or not thinking?
What
Is good or evil?
I sit in my own splendor.
- Ashtavakra Gita
' Deep Silence '...
“That deep silence has a melody of its own,
a sweetness unknown amid the harsh discords of the world's sounds.”
― Paul Brunton
' What is the name of my God ?'...
The name of my God is Truth..
Of course Love is entangled within this Word..
You do not like those that lie,
and yet, you do not seek those that do not..
The 'ego' is a lie..
You remain trapped within this hell because,
you believe that 'You' are the ego..
This is the 'food' of Reincarnation..
'You' enter this 'play' and still remain asleep..
It is not easy to 'Wake-up'..
But, it is necessary..
-thomas
' Thoughts within Dreams '...
Controlling the mind (ego) is the object of life..
Continuing to incarnate into this hologram is the desire of the false ego..
The Luciferians will declare that he was the first declaration of freedom,
but Reality speaks and says that you have chosen to choose things over Reality..
This 'illusion of entity' called Lucifer or Satan is just a selfish desire of ego..
This entity is created by the Consciousness of Separation from Source..
This Evil Entity is the Destroyer of Creation..
Source always wins, when falsehood is seen..
Therefore, choose Reality and Truth..
It is Joy, especially compared to Hell..
This is where you now exist..
Perhaps, it is Purgatory..
Perhaps, It is Hell..
Or if you are Fully Awake,,
Fear, no longer exists..
It is Heaven..
" The Kingdom of God is within You "...
-thomas
' Quiet Attention '...
Be interested in yourself beyond all experience,
be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate
security is found only in self-knowledge.
The
main thing is earnestness.
Be honest with
yourself and nothing will betray you.
Virtues
and powers are mere tokens for children to play
with.
They are useful in the world, but do not
take you out of it.
To go beyond, you need alert
immobility, quiet attention.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' Awakening to the Self '...
A popular notion and prevalent idea about awakening to the Self with a capital "S"/the Christ Nature/Buddha Nature./"who you really are"..etc..is that the Self is some kind of undifferentiated "blob" of consciousness that is exactly the same in everyone that awakens to it.
But in the incarnational spirituality of the Christian Tradition of mysticism, who you really are is actually an amalgam, a blending, a mixture of the Christ Nature and the personal you! Your True Nature is a combination of Spirit or Pure, Absolute Consciousness clothing itself with you, incarnating as the personal and particular you inhabited and filled with the Spirit.
The mystery of the Indwelling Christ is not some kind of impersonal blob of pure consciousness that has absolutely no personal element to it. You offer your humanity to it so that it can come forth into the world as you! Not only does it NOT annihilate your humanity or the personal you, it fulfills it.
The particular incarnation of the Christ or the Self that you are will be different from the Christ that I will be in the world. Each divine incarnation of the Christ in each person is utterly unique, precious, personal and specific. It has never been seen before and will never be seen again for all eternity.
That is how precious and unique you are!
-Francis Fran Bennett
' What Is '...
"Let attention be at rest in that which is deeper than all stories.
There is rest and peacefulness in that which is deeper than mind.
Be with your sense of what is.
Simple presence.
"What is" is more than enough."
~Jac O'Keeffe
' Worshiping Teachers '...
Unless a teacher is deeply entrenched in the wisdom of a particular tradition of Guru that wards off the potential for abuse and projection, when a teacher thinks of him or herself as God, there is bypassing inherent in that, both for the teacher and the students.
Why?
Simply because the more a teacher allows projections towards him or her, the more he encourages students (and the teacher) to not come into their own bodies to feel and release the suffering and emotions connected to lack of self worth that are driving the projections in the first place.
Don’t believe me.
Just watch what happens as people worship teachers.
It’s surrogate parenting 101.
Deconstruct your teacher and yourself!
-Scott KIloby.
' Mentalism '...
Mentalism leads neither to solipsism (one's own existence is the only existence) nor to Hindu Advaita's denial of the World's existence.
The first is a misreading and consequent misunderstanding of it caused by a failing to see that the individual ego is itself a projection of Mind.
The second fails to see that as an experience in the field of awareness of that ego, as a given and fundamental idea in that consciousness, it is a coexistent and not to be denied without impairing sanity.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 4:
The Challenge of Mentalism > # 112 Paul Brunton
' Breaking - Through '...
In the breaking-through, when I come to be free of will, of myself and of God's will and of all his works and of God himself, then I am above all created things, and I am neither God nor creature, but I am what I was and what I shall remain, now and eternally.
Then I receive an impulse, I receive such riches that God, as he is "God," and as he performs all his divine works, cannot suffice for me; for in this breaking-through I perceive that God and I are one.
Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.
Here God finds no place in man, for with this poverty man achieves what he has been eternally and will evermore remain.
Here God is one with the spirit, and that is the most intimate poverty one can find.
-Meister Eckhart
' Enlightenment '...
Gautama, Jesus, and millions of other Mystics have achieved the painful suicide of the Ego..
Enlightenment is not something that is achieved,
It is something that is granted by a Loving Wind of Wisdom..
It will knock you to the ground..
It is Awakening to your Real Nature..
It is Freedom,
It is Love..
Sometimes, It is called God...
-thomas
' A Sad Friend '...
Do not sit long with a sad friend.
When you go to a garden,
do you look at thorns or flowers?
Spend more time with roses and jasmine.
- Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"
Threshold Books, 1984
' Separation Through Thought '...
If anything, "enlightenment" is pointing to the absence of reaching towards anything called "enlightenment."
Or stated another way, it is the realization that you were only ever reaching for your own thoughts, which were arising now. Insane, isn't it?
You realize that "enlightenment" is just an idea arising now, as is the notion of "you."
So the word "enlightenment" is pointing to the complete stepping out of the self-centered dream that there is a "you" on a "path" to "enlightenment."
When the dream goes, you see the whole.
You see 'This.'
You realize you are not separate from 'This' despite all your efforts to separate yourself through thought.
You see all thoughts about 'This' are simply arising in 'This.'
The seeking and finding arise and fall in 'This.'
'This' does not answer every question that gave rise to the illusion of the path.
It merely makes them not matter.
You realize that 'This' is what you were seeking on the illusory path.
-Scott Kiloby
Love's Quiet Revolution, p.78
' The Existence of Consciousness '...
It would be absurd for him to deny the actuality, the living presence, of all that is happening to him in every moment of the day.
They are there and they are real as experiences and he would be a fool indeed to deny them.
Nor does mentalism ask him to do so.
What it does say is that if he analyses the actuality of all these experiences, if he tries to trace out their beginning and end, their existence and continuity, he will discover that consciousness is their seat, that this consciousness can by profound thought be separated from its projections--the thoughts, the scenes, the objects and events, the people and the world--in short, that everything including himself is in the mind.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 2:
The World As Mental > # 99 Paul Brunton
' Forgiveness '...
The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness,
is the attribute of the strong.
- Mahatma Gandhi
' Who should search for what ? '...
It is objected, why search at all if one really is the Overself?
Yes, there comes a time when the deliberate purposeful search for the Overself has to be abandoned for this reason.
Paradoxically, it is given up many times, whenever he has a Glimpse, for at such moments he knows that he always was, is, and will be the Real, that there is nothing new to be gained or searched for.
Who should search for what?
But the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every Glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again.
While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Overself, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages.
No! through the understanding of the Short Path he searches knowingly, not wanting another experience since both wanting and experiencing put him out of the essential Self.
He thinks and acts as if he is that Self, which puts him back into It.
It is a liberation from time-bound thinking, a realization of timeless fact.
- Paul Brunton
' Consciousness having bodies '...
"You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.
Q: We are told there are many levels of existence. Do you exist and function on all the levels? While you are on earth, are you also in heaven (swarga)?
M: I am nowhere to be found! I am not a thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things. You are telling me about the superstructure while I am concerned with the foundations. The superstructures rise and fall, but the foundations last." ...
Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?
M: You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded... You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire. They appear and disapppear according to their own laws.
That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love yourself absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are."
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from "I Am That"
' Simply Attention '...
No tension, no intention, simply attention.
No struggle between the in and the out,
just stay relaxed and at ease.
- Papaji
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
' Awakened Mind '...
The “pure crystal globe” as well as the term “scope” describe the “Nature of Mind” (sem nyid) where all phenomena, perceptions, sensations, thoughts and images appear and disappear within, without altering or obscuring the transparent clarity of that pure inner space of changeless awareness:
"Perfection in awakened mind” refers to the fact that all phenomena— all appearances and possibilities—regardless of’ how they manifest, whether perceived as pure or impure, are fundamentally subsumed within the scope of naturally occurring timeless awareness, arise within that scope, and abide within that scope.
The situation is similar to the way in which a person’s state of sleep, and the various dream images that manifest therein, are subsumed with in the scope of that person’s awareness, arise within that scope, and are dependent on that scope.
And so there is perfection in mind itself, awakened mind."
-Longchenpa
' Mentalism '...
We must take a higher position than ordinary religion offers and come face to face with the mystery that is Mentalism.
The nonbeing of the universe, the nonduality even of the soul may be too mathematical a conclusion for our finite minds; but that this matterless world and all that happens in it is like a dream is something to be received and remembered at all times.
We are important only to ourselves, not to God.
All our whining and praying, chanting and praising, gathering together and imagining that this or that duty is required of us is mere theatre-play: Mind makes it all.
In this discovery we roll up the stage and return to the paradox of what we really are--Consciousness!
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 3:
Religion As Preparatory > # 104 Paul Brunton
' Like a Herd of Luminous Deer '...
You come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently, almost without a shudder.
Of all those who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.
We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow. For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.
Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest.
You are a wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer to the center.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.
_ Rainer Maria Rilke, Love Poems to God, The Book of Monastic Life
' Everything Under the Sun '...
Look around you; there is only one reality. The reason that you are here, wherever here is for you, is because it is the only place that you can be right now. But even though reality is right here, and even though there is quite literally nothing but reality, it is very possible for you to miss it altogether. By miss it I mean to imagine that reality is something or somewhere other than here. As strange as it may sound it is very possible, even probable, that even though you have eyes to see, you do not see. And even though you have ears to hear, you do not hear. What you see and hear is not exactly what is actually here, but what you imagine is here.
Our imagination is a very powerful force in determining what we perceive. If we imagine that the world is teeming with evil forces, we will surely perceive the world as evil. But if we imagine the world to be essentially good, we will perceive it as good. Either way it is the same world that we are looking at. But the world is neither good nor bad in and of itself; it is simply what it is. And if we see the world as either good or bad, we will not be able to see it as it actually is. We will only be able to see it as we imagine it to be.
Now take this idea and apply it to everything and everyone in your life. Try it for a moment, or an hour, or a day. And if you do, you may begin to notice that the world you imagine to exist does not exist at all. This may cause you some fear, or possibly the thrill of discovery, but either way the important thing is to get some distance from the habitual way the mind contorts and creates perception.
But even though our mind imagines the world and everything in it to be other than the way it actually is, the reality of existence remains eternally untouched by our misperception of it. This is both relatively good and bad. It is good in that existence is eternally what it is. We need not worry about reality becoming something other than reality. But it is bad in the sense that the world we imagine to exist is always colliding with the world as it actually is. This collision is the cause of immense human suffering and conflict.
So we are trapped within our illusions and misperceptions. And the greatest illusion of all is to believe that we are not trapped. But even when we realize that we are confined within a prison of our own making, we are trapped because all the ways we struggle to get out of our illusions are illusions themselves. So, yes, we are trapped, and helpless to boot.
But there is a very strange thing that can occur at exactly the point where you realize that there is no escaping the imaginary world of your illusions. You bare your heart open to illusion, surrender your eternal struggle against it, and admit to being bound by its cunning imagination. I don't mean that you become despondent or resigned to your fate. I mean that you truly let go in the face of your utter defeat and stop struggling.
And when all the struggle ceases, we realize that the prison of our mind cannot hold us in anymore, because the prison was all along something we imagined into existence. And imagined things aren't real, they don't exist. But we could never really see this as long as we were fighting the phantoms of our minds. We needed the one thing that our imaginary minds could not bring about, could not fake or create: the genuine surrender of all struggle.
In the blink of an eye, we are no longer confined within illusion nor our attempt to avoid illusion. When all struggle ceases, there is nothing to bind us to a distorted perception of existence and we can finally see. What we see is that we do not simply exist within existence, but all of existence exists within us as well. And although everywhere we look we see the endless diversity of life, we also now see our own true face in everything under the sun.
- Adyashanti
' Brahman '...
It is a pity that one word is used for opposite methods.
We separate drsyam from drik only in preliminary stages, only temporarily in order to be able to point out later that this drsyam is Brahman (as every dream object can be pointed out to be only mind) and thus the ALL is explained as Brahman.
The final stage of Yoga (asparsa) is emphatically not to get rid of drsyam (thought objects) but to recognize all of them as Brahman.
The lower yogi suppresses them, but our aim is entirely different.
We do not kill the thought but examine it.
To carry out this examination we must have concentrated sustained thinking, and this is the use of lower yoga; then we have first to separate it--this is preliminary.
Afterwards we discover all thoughts to be as waves of one ocean, to have Brahman as their real essence or nature.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5:
The Key To the Spiritual World > # 173
Paul Brunton
' Did Buddha believe in God ?'...
Gautama never mentioned an aspect called God, because the definition of God is different to every soul..
He spoke of 'Source', the Mental Creation of Dreams and Illusions that we call existence..
He knew that All is Consciousness and has no name except Love for those that have experienced Reality and Truth..
-thomas
' Divine Pride '...
One day, someone asked Rumi, "We see that certain ancient sages were
extremely proud - what does such pride mean?"
He replied, "In people of God, pride is a pride of divine greatness,
and not a pride of opinions or passion, nor a presumption that arises from
high spiritual rank.
When the Imam Dja'far Cadiq, who purified his soul
and paid no attention to caliphs and Kings, was asked about this pride, he
replied, "I myself am not proud.
I have abandoned my own existence, the
greatness of God has annihilated me and installed itself in place of my
pride;
the pride I am speaking of springs directly out of the heart of the
greatness of God; as for me, in the middle of all this glory, I do not exist."
-from "The Teachings of Rumi," compiled by Andrew Harvey
' A Fisherman '...
A Fisherman
By Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)
(1394 - 1481)
Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
-- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens
' The Secret of It All '...
All problems vanish from his mind as though they had never been.
He is under no necessity to concern himself about anything or anyone.
"God's in his heaven and all's well with the world."
There is no tormenting situation to be cleared up, no difficult decision to be made, no quest to be followed through drawn-out struggles and personal self-disciplines, and inevitable disappointments.
He now has the secret of it all, the blissful state of enlightenment.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 13
Paul Brunton
' Divine Providence '...
"Everything is by Divine Providence.
If a leaf is turned over by a breeze,
it is only because this has been specifically ordained by G‑d to serve a particular function within the
purpose of creation."
-The Baal Shem Tov
Thirty-Six Aphorisms of the Baal Shem Tov
' To Be Human '...
Hazrat Inayat Khan was extremely kingly by nature, with a special attraction
for beauty and grandeur, and his atmosphere was Godly. His legendary
wideness of spirit inspired deep feelings of liberation, and in his
uplifting presence, all fanatic ideas were blown away in a moment's time.
Hazrat Inayat Khan said that the first lesson to learn on the inner path is
to be human, and when developing selflessness one realizes that Spirituality
is natural nobleness, and the unfoldment of innate nobleness is
Spirituality. This divine heritage, hidden in every soul, expresses itself
when discovering that one has inherited it, and when treasuring it within
one's heart.
These highly inspiring teachings explain the tremendous attraction which
numberless disciples from many parts of the world experienced in the
presence of the Master, and were privileged in feeling liberated from the
various religious misinterpretations of one and the same "Truth".
The Sufi message is a message of Love, Harmony and Beauty, inviting all to
unite above distinctions and differences, in answer to the call of the
"Divine Spirit of Guidance", which is constantly present.
On this special occasion, may we all unite in memory of the Master of us
all, whose historical appeal for "Spiritual Liberty" on the Spiritual path
offers the answer to all secret questions in our hearts. Let us have a
moment silence.
-Hidayat Inayat-Khan
' Many Roads '...
There is no single path to enlightenment.
Yoga has no monopoly.
Life itself is the great enlightener.
I met a man once who, after the shock of hearing his wife tell him that she had ceased to love him, that she had for some time had a secret lover, and that she requested a divorce so as to be able to marry him, felt a collapse of all his hitherto confidently held values and beliefs.
For some days he was so affected that he could not eat.
But his mind by then had become so extraordinarily lucid concerning these matters and himself, that he experienced moments of truth.
Through them he came into a great peace and understanding, an inner change.
What was the morning sun which awakened him?
He did no yogic exercises, entered no churches, was too intent on his worldly business to read spiritual books.
This brings me back to the theme: do not submit to the pressure of those who say there is only a single way to salvation (the way they follow or teach) do not let the mind be trammelled or narrowed.
The truth is that the ways are many, are spread out in all directions, are individual.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 5:
Self-Development > # 209 Paul Brunton
' The Pearl of Great Price '...
The Pearl of Great Price..
To buy this Pearl, you must give everything that you own..
Especially, the personality called egoic-consciousness..
How many can face the death of the body with a smile ?..
How many can face the death of the ego with courage ?..
" you must die to be Born ",
said the Nazarene...
-thomas
' Beyond personal identity '...
The intuition 'I Am' is your truest name.
Love, joy, peace
and wisdom are your real nature.
This is true for all living
beings.
But, you will not fully know and be this until you
are willing, open and ready to go beyond your personal
identity into Truth.
- Mooji
' The Unborn '...
There is, Oh Monks, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made,
a not-compounded.
Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made,
not-compounded were not,
there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded.
-Gautama the Buddha
' Drop the "you" ...
"Right now, check to see if are you aware.
Are you aware?
Can you see that you stop for a moment to check to see if you are aware?
This pause serves to relocate your attention within.
If you're awake (and not asleep!) then you will see that you are aware.
Next, be aware of that awareness.
Final step on this methodology is to drop the "you" who is being aware of awareness."
~Jac O'Keeffe
' Cosmic Consciousness '...
The ordinary mentalness of the world and the superior reality of Mind illustrate the reign of relativity.
This does not mean that the world is so utterly illusory that it is non-existent.
It has a relative existence for everyone.
But the enlightened ones are aware of the truth that Mind-in-Itself is there.
They know it also by the wonderful experience of cosmic consciousness when everything falls away--including their own personal ego--and only THAT remains.
This is not merely their point of view but something far and away beyond it that can only happen in the state of contemplation; hence it is a temporary one but--as Plotinus mentioned--a recurrent or accessible one.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 0:
Introductory Paras > # 2 Paul Brunton
' Thoughts on a Thursday Night '...
This Night, I met a few strangers that are Awake..
It is always strange to see the minds of those that have Awakened..
They finally see the World as it is..
The Characters that rule the different groups of humans always lead back to the Octupus..
Their many arms surround this Hologram..
It has always been the Desire of Power, Wealth, and Fame..
The Three Desires of Ego..
The Three Desires of Separation from Source..
We find ourselves within this Horror Graphic of Dream..
The Wars and Pain created by these beings..
And yet, they almost, always fool the workers..
And then,, sometimes, the workers wake up...
-thomas
' Your Real Nature '...
The intuition 'I Am' is your truest name.
Love, joy, peace
and wisdom are your real nature.
This is true for all living
beings.
But, you will not fully know and be this until you
are willing, open and ready to go beyond your personal
identity into Truth.
- Mooji
' Single Essence '...
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things are as they are,
of single essence.
- Seng-tsan, from Verses on the Faith Mind
' Walk into Paradise '...
If you choose presence now,
because you realize strongly that that is what wants to realize itself through you,
then it's less likely that life will have to force you into presence.
You can either voluntarily walk into paradise or be dragged into it screaming "No!"
- Eckhart Tolle
' Inquiry '...
Psychological inquiry is about content, and
it’s directed towards solving some problem.
Spiritual inquiry, however, is about context,
and it’s more directed towards discovering
who has the problem.
- Chuck Hillig
Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003
' Fundamental Basis of all Religions and Beliefs '...
As water in a fountain flows as one stream, but falls in many drops
divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream
of truth.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
In a fountain there is a big stream which flows up and then breaks
into many drops. The stream is like the divine will, and the
different drops like the wills in us. One drop goes higher, another
lower, one falls to the left, another to the right, one goes north,
another south. But the source of all this activity is one; it is one
thing that turns into so many, scattering in all directions. Thus
from unity there has come variety.
Different methods called religions and philosophies have been adopted
by different nations at various periods. Though the form and
teachings of the several religions appear so unlike, their source is
one and the same. But from the very beginning the differences have
created prejudice, envy, and antagonism between man. Such dissensions
occupy a large portion of the histories of the world and have become
the most important subject in life.
So many castes and so many creeds,
So many faiths, and so many beliefs,
All have arisen from ignorance of man,
Wise is he who only truth conceives.
A wise man realizes that the fundamental basis of all religions and
beliefs is one: Haqq, or truth. ... Those who see the truth uncovered
abandon reason and logic, good and bad, high and low, new and old;
differences and distinctions of names and forms fade away, and the
whole universe is realized as nothing other than Haqq. Truth in its
realization is one; in its representation it is many, since its
revelations are made under varying conditions of time and space.
As water in a fountain flows in one stream but falls in many drops,
divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream
of truth.
' That Which Is '...
When a man has reached this stage different terms can be used to label this unique attainment.
It is insight, awakening, enlightenment. It is Being, Truth, Consciousness.
It is Discrimination between the Seer and the Seen. It is awareness of That Which Is.
It is the Practice of the Presence of God.
It is the Discovery of Timelessness.
All these words tell us something but they all fall short and do not tell us enough.
In fact they are only hints for farther they cannot go: it is not on their level at all since it is the Touch of the Untouchable.
But never mind; just play with such ideas if you care too.
Ruminate and move among them. Put your heart as well as head into the game.
Who knows one day what may happen?
Perhaps if you become still enough you too may know--as the Bible suggests.
-Paul Brunton
' Understand one thing well '...
Understand one thing well, and you have arrived.
What prevents you from knowing is not the lack
of opportunity, but the lack of ability to focus
in your mind what you want to understand.
If you
could but keep in mind what you do not know, it
would reveal to you its secrets.
But if you are
shallow and impatient, not earnest enough to look
and wait, you are like a child crying for the moon.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' The Self '...
Inquiry is making the mind abide firm in the Self,
until the false ego,
illusion's seed, has perished.
The Self, our Being,
is Awareness.
- Ramana Maharshi
' The Higher Laws '...
There is some confusion on this point in the minds of many students.
On attaining enlightenment a man does not attain omniscience.
At most, he may receive a revelation of the inner operations of life and Nature, of the higher laws governing life and man.
That is, he may also become a seer and find a cosmogony presented to his gaze.
But the actuality in a majority of cases is that he attains enlightenment only, not cosmogonical seership.
-Paul Brunton
' Now is the Time '...
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.
Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.
My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
- Hafiz
"The Gift"
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
Penguin/Arkana, 1999
' A Single Short Happening '...
It is the making the man ready,
the preparation of his mind and heart which take so much time,
so many years even in many cases;
but the enlightenment itself is a single short happening:
the effect remains permanently.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 56 Paul Brunton
' No Past or Future '...
“Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if you realize that there is no past or future in Christ. To say that Christ was or will be is a contradiction in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived two thousand years ago and realized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said:
“Before Abraham was, I am.” He did not say: “I already existed before Abraham was born.” That would have meant that he was still within the dimension of time and form identity. The words 'I am' used in a sentence that starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like statement of great profundity.
Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through discursive thought, the meaning of presence, of self-realization. He had gone beyond the consciousness dimension governed by time, into the realm of the timeless. The dimension of eternity had come into this world. Eternity, of course, does not mean endless time, but no time. Thus, the man Jesus became Christ, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God’s self-definition in the Bible? Did God say, “I have always been, and I always will be?” Of course not. That would have given reality to past and future. God said: “I AM THAT I AM.” No time here, just presence.
The “second coming” of Christ is a transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman. If “Christ” were to return tomorrow in some externalized form, what could he or she possibly say to you other than this:
“I am the Truth. I am divine presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now.”
-- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
' The Real Lord's Prayer '...
The Aramaic Lord’s Prayer...
-- transliteration by Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz from the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus
Abwoon d’bwashmaya
Nethqadash shmakh
Teytey malkuthakh
Nehwey sebyanach aykanna d’bwashmaya aph b’arah
Hawvlan lachma d’sunqanan yaomana.
Washboqlan khaubayn wakhtahayn aykana daph khnan Shbwoqan l’khayyabayn.
Wela tahlan l’nesyuna
Ela patzan min bisha.
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l’ahlam almin.
Ameyn.
-- as translated by Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz from the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus
O Thou from whom comes the breath of life, which is present in all realms of vibration and light.
Let thy light/sound be experienced in my own ‘holy of holies.’
Let your ideals and counsel rule.
Let your desire be, as in the universe (all that vibrates), so also on earth.
Give us bread (understanding/support) for our needs from day to day.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ faults.
Do not let surface things delude us.
But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.
To you belongs the ruling will, the life and power to do, the song which beautifies all, from age to age it renews.
Amen (Sealed in trust and faith.)
-Posted by thomas meehan
' Nothing is mine '...
"There is no Path safer and smoother than that of bakalama.
Bakalama means resigning the self to the will of the Almighty,
to have no consciousness that anything is 'mine.'"
-Sri Ramakrishna
in F. Max Mueller
Ramakrishna: His Life and Saying, 343
London: Longmans, Green, 1898, p. 178
' i was a word '...
in the beginning
in the endless space of awareness
i was a word
i answered to
a name of recognition
and memory
soon i fell silent
in the question of who i am,
my own distant shore, my own Lover
for there is no other,
never was,
never will be
how can there be two?
a me and a not you?
and if, in the course of water and
my own womb of tranquility, I should
meet thee,
i shall call upon myself and
love thee,
My Beloved,
-Ana
' A Temporary Glimpse '...
Neither deep meditation nor the experience can give more than a temporary glimpse.
The full and permanent enlightenment,
which is to stay with a man and never leave him,
can only come after he has clear insight into the nature of Overself.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 8:
Glimpses and Permanent Illumination > # 11 Paul Brunton
' The Present Moment '...
The past is an interpretation.
The future is an illusion.
The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future.
Instead, time moves through and within us, in endless spirals.
Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.
If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
~ Shams-i-Tabrizi
' Believing thoughts '...
I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered,
but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer,
and that this is true for every human being.
Freedom is as simple as that.
I found that suffering is optional.
I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.
That joy is in everyone, always.
~ Byron Katie
' An Abrupt Awakening '...
Enlightenment is always "sudden" in the sense that during meditation or reverie or relaxation the preliminary thought-
concentrating gestatory period usually moves through consciousness quite slowly until,
at some unexpected moment,
there is an abrupt deepening,
followed by a slipping into another dimension,
a finding oneself alive in a new atmosphere.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 6:
Experiencing a Glimpse > # 10 Paul Brunton
' Loving yourself '...
So then,
the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself,
is impossible without loving
everything defined as other than yourself.
- Alan Watts
' Rearranged the furniture '...
Striving to improve or to progress only confuses us even more.
Our appearances may lead us into believing
that we have reached a state of stability,
that changes are taking place,
that we are progressing
and are on the threshold of grace.
But in fact nothing has changed.
We have merely rearranged our furniture.
All this activity takes place in the mind,
it is a segment of imagination.
~ Jean Klein
' The Long Path '...
The end of all his efforts on the Long Path will be the discovery that although the ego can be refined, thinned, and disciplined, it will still remain highly rarefied and extremely subtle.
The disciplining of the self can go on and on and on.
There will be no end to it.
For the ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant busy in self-improvement, thus blinding him to the fact that the self is still there behind all his improvements.
For why should the ego kill itself?
Yet the enlightenment which is the goal he strives to reach can never be obtained unless the ego ceases to bar the way to it. At this discovery he will have no alternative to, and will be quite ready for, the Short Path.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 4:
The Changeover To the Short Path > # 119 Paul Brunton
' Ordinary people '...
We must be willing to be ordinary people,
which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become
greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful.
If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily,
they we can use them as part of the path.
But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they
will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our
"self-Improvement”.
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
' St. Francis and the Sufis'...
Even though you tie a hundred knots
-the string remains one (Rumi).
“The atmosphere and setting of the Franciscan Order is closer to a dervish organization than anything else.”
Most people know that St. Francis of Assisi was a lighthearted troubadour of Italy who experienced a religious conversion and became a saint with an uncanny influence over animals and birds. It is on record that the troubadours were a relic of Saracenic musicians and poets. It is often agreed that the rise and development of the monkish Orders in the middle ages was greatly influenced by the penetration of Moslem dervish organization in the West. Studying St. Francis from this point of view, certain interesting discoveries become possible.
Francis was born in 1182, the son of Pietro Bernardone, a merchant of fine stuffs, and his wife, Madonna Pica. He was originally named Giovanni, but his father was so attached to France (where he spent much of his commercial life) that “for love of the land he had just quitted” he renamed the child Francesco.
Although considered an Italian, Francis spoke Provenal, the language used by the troubadours. There is little doubt that he felt in the spirit of the troubadours a glimpse of some thing deeper than appeared on the surface. His own poetry so strongly resembles in places that of the love poet Rumi that one is tempted to look for any report which might connect Francis with the Sufi order of the Whirling Dervishes. At this point we come across the first of a number of tales considered inexplicable by Western biographers.
The Whirling Dervishes can attain intuitive knowledge partly by a peculiar form of spinning, presided over by an instructor. Rumi’s school of Whirling Dervishes was in full operation in Asia Minor, and its founder was still alive, during the lifetime of St. Francis.
Here is the puzzling “spinning” tale:
Francis was walking through Tuscany with a disciple, Brother Masseo. They arrived at a fork in the road. One path led to Florence, another to Arezzo, a third to Siena.
Masseo asked which branch they should take.
“The road which God wills.”
“And which is that?”
“We will know by a sign. I command you, by your path of obedience, turn round and round as children do, until I tell you to stop.”
So poor Masseo twirled and twirled, till he fell down from giddiness. Then he got up and looked beseechingly at the saint; but the saint said nothing, and Masseo, remembering his vow of obedience, began again to twirl his best. He continued to twirl and to fall for some time, till he seemed to have spent all his life in twirling, when, at last, he heard the welcome words: “Stop, and tell me whither your face is turned.”
“To Siena,” gasped Masseo, who felt the earth rock round him.
“Then to Siena we must go,” said Francis, and to Siena they went.
That Francis felt the source of his troubadour inspiration to lie in the East, and that he was connected with the Sufis, seems clear from much evidence. When he went to the Pope, trying to have his Order accepted, he used a parable which shows that he must have been thinking in terms of the orphaning of a tradition and the need to reestablish its reality. The phrases which he uses in the parable are of Arabia, and the terminology, of a King and his court, of a woman and her sons in the desert, is not Christian but Saracen.
“Francis,” says Bonaventura, recording an audience with Pope Innocent, “came armed with a parable.
“There was, “he said, “a rich and mighty king who took to wife a poor but very beautiful woman, who lived in a desert, in whom he greatly delighted and by whom he had children who bore his image. When her sons were grown their mother said to them, “My sons, be not ashamed; ye are the children of a King.” And she sent them to the court, having supplied them with all necessaries. When they came to the King, he admired their beauty; and seeing in them some resemblance to himself, he asked them, “Whose sons are ye?” When they replied that they were the sons of a poor woman dwelling in the desert, the King, filled with much joy, said, “Fear not, ye are my sons, and if I nourish strangers at my table, how much more you, who are my legitimate children.”
The tradition that the Sufis are the esoteric Christians out of the desert, and that they are the children of a poor woman (Hagar, wife of Abraham, because of their Arab descent) fits completely with the probability that Francis had tried to explain to the Pope that the Sufi stream represented Christianity in a continuing form.
At his first meeting with the Pope, we are told, Francis did not make much impression, and he was sent away. Immediately afterward, however, the Pope had a strange dream. He saw “a palm tree gradually grow up at his feet until it grew a goodly stature, and as he gazed upon it wondering what the vision might mean, a divine illumination impressed on the mind of the Vicar of Christ that this palm tree signified the poor man whom he had that day driven from his presence.”
The palm tree is the symbol used by the Sufis, and this dream is probably the consequence of Francis using it as an analogy during his audience.
In the early part of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III, convinced of the validity of the saint’s mission, granted permission for the foundation of the Minor Brothers, or Franciscans. The “Lesser Brethren,” considered to be a title assumed from pious humility, might lead one to ask whether there was any Order known as the “Greater Brethren.” If so, what might the connection be?
The only people known in this way who were contemporary with St. Francis were the Greater Brothers, an appellation of the Sufi Order founded by Najmuddin Kubra,, “the Greater.” The connection is interesting. One of the major characteristics about this great Sufi teacher was that he had an uncanny influence over animals. Pictures of him show him surrounded by birds. He tamed a fierce dog merely by looking at it — just as St. Francis is said to have cowed the wolf in a well-known tale. Najmuddin’s miracles were well known throughout the East sixty years before St. Francis was born.
When St. Francis was praised by anyone, it is reported, he replied with this phrase: “What every one is in the eyes of God, that he is no more.”
It is related that the dictum of Najmuddin the Greater was: El Haqq Fahim ahsan el-Haqiqa—”The Truth it is which knows what is True.”
In or about 1224, the most important and characteristic of all of St. Francis’ songs was composed: the Cantico del Sole —Song of the Sun. Jalaluddin Rumi, the Whirling Dervish chief and greatest poet of Persia, wrote numerous poems dedicated to the Sun, the Sun of Tabriz. He even called a collection of his poems the Collection of the Sun of Tabriz. In this poetry the word “sun” is used again and again.
If it were true that St. Francis was trying to establish contact with the sources of his troubadour poetry, we would expect him to visit, or try to visit, the East. We would also expect him to be well received by the Saracens if he reached them. Further, he would be expected to produce Sufic poetry as a result of his Eastern travels. Now we can see whether these facts accord with history, and whether they were understood by his contemporaries.
When he was thirty, Francis decided to try to reach the East, and specifically Syria, which abutted upon the area of Asia Minor where the Whirling Dervishes were established. Prevented by financial troubles, he returned to Italy. Then he started out again, this time toward Morocco. He set off with a companion and traversed the whole kingdom of Aragon in Spain, though nobody can say why he did this, and some biographers are actually puzzled. Spain was very much penetrated with Sufi ideas and schools.
He did not actually reach Morocco, being driven back by illness, In the spring of 1214 he returned home. Now he set out for the Crusades, where the siege of Damietta was in progress. Sultan Malik el-Kamil was encamped across the Nile—and Francis went to see him. He was well received, and the theory is that he went there to try to convert the Sultan to Christianity. “The Sultan,” says a chronicler, “not only dismissed Francis in peace, with wonder and admiration for the man’s unusual qualities, but received him fully into his favor, gave him a safe-conduct by which he might go and come, with full permission to preach to his subjects, and an entreaty that he would frequently return to visit him.”
This visit to the Saracens is assumed by biographers to be prompted by a desire to convert the Sultan. And yet it is said of him that “These two aimless journeys break in somewhat strangely upon the current of his life.” They would be strange if they were not those of a troubadour looking for his roots. His desire to get to Morocco is dismissed in terms such as these: “It is impossible to tell what incident in his unrelated story may have suggested this new idea to the mind of Francis.”
The Saracenic armies and the courts of their princes were at that time foci of Sufi activity. There can be hardly any doubt that it was here that Francis found what he was looking for. Far from having converted anyone in the Moslem camp, his first action upon re crossing the Nile was to try to dissuade the Christians from attacking the enemy. By the usual process of hindsight this is explained by historians as being due to the saint’s having had a vision of the forthcoming calamity to Christian arms. “His warning was received with contempt, as he had foreseen; but in the month of November following was fully verified when the Crusaders were driven back with great loss from the walls of Damietta. The sympathies of Francis under such circumstances must have been divided, for it is impossible that he could have been without some personal feeling toward the tolerant and friendly prince who had received him with such kindness.”
The “Song of the Sun,” hailed as the first-ever Italian poem, was composed after the saint’s journey to the East, although because of his troubadour background it is impossible for his usual biographers to believe that he was not composing similar poetry before this:
It is impossible to suppose that during all these years [before 1224, when he wrote the "Song"] Francis, who was the leader of the young troubadours of Assisi in his early days, and who went through the woods and fields, after his conversion, singing to himself, still in French, songs which could not surely be the same songs he had sung through the streets among his joyous companions—the days of war and love—it is impossible, we say, to suppose that it was for the first time at this late date that he had woven together canticles to the glory of God; but we are assured that these quaint and unskilled rhymes were the first beginning of vernacular poetry in Italy.
The atmosphere and setting of the Franciscan Order is closer to a dervish organization than anything else. Apart from the tales about St. Francis which are held in common with Sufi teachers, all kinds of points coincide. The special methodology of what Francis calls “holy prayer” indicates an affinity with the dervish “remembering,” quite apart from the whirling. The dress of the Order, with its hooded cloak and wide sleeves, is that of the dervishes of Morocco and Spain. Like the Sufi teacher Attar, Francis exchanged his garb with a mendicant. He saw a seraph with six wings, an allegory used by Sufis to convey the formula of the bismillah. He threw away spiked crosses which were worn for purposes of self-mortification by many of his monks. This action may or may not have been exactly as it is reported. It may resemble the dervish practice of ceremonially rejecting a cross with the words, “You may have the Cross, but we have the meaning of the Cross,” which is still in use. This, incidentally, could be the origin of the Templar habit, alleged by witnesses, that the Knights “trod on the Cross.”
Francis refused to become a priest. Like the Sufis, he enrolled into his teaching laymen, and again like the Sufis but unlike the Church, he sought to spread the movement among all the people, in some form of affiliation. This was “the first reappearance in the Church, since its full hierarchical establishment, of the democratic element—the Christian people, as distinguished from the simple sheep to be fed, and souls to be ruled.”
The striking thing about the rules laid down by Francis was that, like the Sufis and unlike the ordinary Christians, his followers were not to think first of their own salvation. This principle is stressed again and again among the Sufis, who consider regard for personal salvation to be an expression of vanity.
He “began his preaching everywhere with the salutation which God, he said, had revealed to him—”The peace of God be with you.” This is, of course, an Arab salutation.
In addition to Sufi ideas, legends and practices, St Francis retained many Christian aspects in the Order. The consequence of this amalgam was to produce an organization which did not fully mature. A nineteenth century commentator sums up the inevitable development
“We who, with all the enlightenment of six additional centuries, can look back and see the Inquisition grimly shadowing from under the robes of the Spanish priest, and see hordes of mendicant friars, privileged and impudent beggars, appearing behind the genial countenance of Francis, may perceive how much of evil mixed with the good, and how the enemy of all truth had cunningly mixed the seed of the tares with that of the wheat.”
-Idries Shah
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