Nonduality

THE NONDUAL DAILY NUGGET

Archive 9
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June 15, 2000: Nonduality and Financial Markets, by Robert Loest
June 16, 2000: The Mechanism of Competition, by Joshua Pritikin
June 17, 2000: A Course in Consciousness, by Stanley Sobattka
June 18, 2000: Strolling on St. George St., by Ed Arrons
June 20, 2000: Parrot-Eye-Vision' of the Life of Sri Ramana, by Sri Sadhu Om Swamigal
June 21, 2000: Star Birth Bardo in the Body of Orion, by Vincent Bridges
June 22, 2000: Daily Message for Transforming the Mind #182
June 23, 2000: Down the Up Fountain, by Gene Poole with Dave Pawlek
June 25, 2000: Like Water with a 9 on it, but Carlos Dwa
June 26, 2000: Berkow on Liquorman, by Dan Berkow, Ph.D.
June 27, 2000: Report on my Weekend Retreat, by Gene Poole
July 4, 2000: Aesthetics of Surrender, by Gene Poole
July 5, 2000: Tibetan Culture Exhibition, by Gloria Lee
July 6, 2000: Three Answers Origin, by OH
July 7, 2000: Silent Retreat with Gangaji and Eli, by Anonymous

June 15
Nonduality and Financial Markets
by Robert Loest, Ph.D., CFA Portfolio Manager:

http://www.ipsfunds.com/strategies.html June 14, 2000: Random Musings: A New Theory of Market Crashes

by Robert Loest, Ph.D., CFA Portfolio Manager:

It's worth reviewing the reasons behind our increased focus on the Mobile Internet (MI) and Optical Networking (ON) in both funds, because I think the focus of the entire market is going to change coming out this side of the most recent crash. Seems already to be changing, in fact. This is something that often happens with major corrections. Part of the reason for the correction is that the market itself (actually, our civilization, represented by the emergent intelligence known as The Market) is itself refocusing investment capital in a new direction. This may be a little hard to swallow, but if we assume the market is a form of emergent intelligence - and I think we have to, because it meets every criterion for one - then we also have to assume the possiblity of conscious direction by the market. Don't get all wierded out on me - the market is really just us. Sort of.

Anyway, whenever we go through a correction like this, it's always wise to examine the market to see if it's morphing, or assuming a new direction. Big market declines, much more often than not, mark important boundaries in the market between one type of capital investment emphasis and another, and to a large degree are the result of this transition in our capital markets toward a new direction. While there are always proximate causes, such as a series of Fed rate hikes, or an inventory correction in a major area of the economy like chips, cars or real estate, the real reason is that the economy is in the process of cannibalizing investment capital from one area of the economy where it's less needed, in order to fund another, more immediately important area.

If the area of capital withdrawal is large enough, it causes a major decline in the stock market, and sometimes even a recession. If the need is so massive there isn't enough capital to fund it, then the whole market declines drastically for years, and the balance comes out of our hides in the form of reduced living standards and productivity, and increased inflation. This happened in the late 1960s to the early 1980s, in the massive transition from a manufacturing to an information-based civilization. The full economic explanation is never this neat and clean, of course, but this is, in my opinion, a major factor, as well as a clue to where to invest after each major market decline, and it should be studied by economists more thoroughly.

A few examples will help clarify my point. A change in the focus of investment capital occured in a major way following the Panics of the 1890s, from mining and rails and into automobiles, telephones and electric power. After the Great Depression, capital again underwent a massive shift into pharmaceuticals and all kinds of consumer goods companies, and away from a focus on pure industrial giants like autos, steel and electric power. This doesn't mean those things did not continue to receive funding. They did, just at a significantly reduced level, which continued to decline as a proportion of GDP. There was another major reallocation of market capital following the great crash of 1973 - '74, from those earlier dominant sectors of the 1950s and '60s and into techs and real estate. The whole period can be roughly defined as the DJI peak around 1,000 in 1966 until it passed 1,000 again in 1982. This period saw the funding of the initial stages of the computer revolution on a large scale. Remember when you got your first hand-held calculator? The market crash of 1987,I'm convinced, marked the end of real estate as a defensive hedge against inflation, and the wholesale reallocation of capital from real estate into the beginning of the Internet and the shift toward investment in the early stages of connectivity solutions.

You'll recall that the worst real estate crash since the Great Depression occured in 1989. After decades of inflation, the marked decided that we had decades ahead of us of low and declining inflation, and capital invested in real estate was better directed now toward more productive uses. Don't ask me how it knew, it just did. It cannibalized the value of all our homes, business buildings, real estate limited partnerships, and other real estate assets, and redirected that capital into the Internet. It caused a recession and a bear market. It took until 1994 to really see the beginning of this effect. The bear market of 1994 saw the further major reallocation of capital from old economy companies into the building out of our physical base for connectivity (new types of chips and software for connectivity, not data processing; the laying of massive amounts of fiberoptic cable; the construction of cell phone towers and the switch to digital phones, etc.). If you doubt me, just go back and compare the companies that did well from 1987 - 1994, with the ones that took off after December, 1994.

I think the capital reallocation of the market that caused this last crash will mark a refocusing of the market, as well. As a portfolio manager, my challenge is to figure out where the capital is being reallocated, and to sell the companies from which capital is being withdrawn. In my opinion, it looks like the market is emphasizing new funding, at least in part, toward the MI and ON. This is the impetus behind my recent changes to the Funds.

June 16
The Mechanism of Competition: Selections from the Complete Work
by Joshua Pritikin

(Editor's note: From this point the author's analysis of competition begins in depth. The reader is referred to the website. (editor's note: The website is no longer active.) The present article continues with selections from the portion of the work which follows the detailed analysis.)

Most people seem to want a strong [+] personality. To the extent that you are pure [0], you can intuit and copy the personality of anyone you can imagine. You can be someone in relation to someone else. People do it all the time. However, these personalities build up and spin takes its toll. It is possible to forget what it feels like to be oneself.

To the extent that you forget, any new personality will be superimposed over the relatively fixed personality. Granted, your personality may be correct [+] for some situations but even the best intentions can misfire [-]. In general, there is no simple correspondence connecting the 1st and 3rd person perspectives. As an opponent with a moment to respond, grasping the many factual details that lead to a 3rd person classification of [+] or [-] necessarily involves trial and error, wherein mistakes can lead to serious consequences and there is always more to learn. It’s fun to be someone, but your personality can get overloaded or confused. You may weary of the constant demand for adaptation, perceiving through a fog or behaving inconsistently (or both).

A foolproof alternative exists. Choosing to feel perfectly neutral about all potiential competitive situations (2nd person) *always* corresponds with pure surrender (3rd person)! In fact, without the availability of such a perspective transcending avenue of intention, you would have no chance of gradually gaining definitive control over your destiny.

Admittedly, learning how to will absolute equanimity is challenging. By reading books one can acquire a vague sense for such an infinitely intense purity. "Cosmic Consciousness" by Richard M. Bucke, M.D. surveys a variety of realizers. Bucke’s book also encompasses a wealth of substantiating background information. If Bucke proves too dry, Dr. Frederick Lenz has written entertaining books on the same topic. These books and many others can inspire, but isn’t a personal mentor necessary? Without rivalry, can one learn how to manage any and all rivalry optimally?

So we arrive at the subtle question of mentor selection. Why not consider a meta-competition? Who can help you learn how to dissolve your personality the *most* safely and in the *least* amount time?

Time - Why not sooner rather than later? Also, consider that money is a product of time and effort. (Time isn’t really an obstacle but the longer your mentor takes, the more likely that you will develop aversion to [0] and [0] are at readiness.)

Safety - Some caution is justified. Even unintentional wickedness can become tragedy with the support of enough intensity.

Personality - Did it really dissolve or are you fooling yourself? Is there a difference between an enlightened teacher and a teacher of enlightenment?

A more specific recommendation is withheld. After all, the tools I use to analyze competition are now in your hands. You are invited to take initiative.

For the balance of this treatise to make sense, a precise definition must be given for the word ‘enlightenment’:

If there is a goal then ‘enlightenment’ is the achievement of that goal. If there are no goals then ‘enlightenment’ is present.

Some people say that the human mind is a hindrance to direct knowledge of reality. I am not sure if they are correct. To me, the mind is an evolutionary marvel. I have always wanted to know how it works but, unfortunately, the thinking mind cannot see itself. For example, how are you able to read and understand this sentence? Who is understanding and how does the process work?

At least we can say this much: the mind either assists in making things happen or witnesses what is happening (or both). But personally, whenever I have a choice I prefer to watch. I watch because I made a commitment to myself to always want to know to an even greater depth how the mind works. The fact is, there are situations you cannot predict with confidence until they happen. While seemingly tangential, I also investigated quantum physics, the current scientific theory of how the universe works at a fundamental level.

Quantum physics is a large detailed theory, but here the concern is mainly with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This theory bounds the precision to which a particle’s position and momentum can be measured. Perfect precision is impossible because measuring a particle’s position necessarily adds uncertainty to its momentum, and similarly, measuring its momentum necessarily perturbs its position. Leading physicists, including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, have puzzled over how to eliminate this *annoying* but seemingly unavoidable lack of certitude.

One way to approach enlightenment is to explore the hypothesis that you *are* that particle. This change of perspective changes everything. The uncertainty principle only applies to *separate* observers. As that particle, aren’t you *being* the (objective?) uncertainty? In fact, uncertainty is defeated exactly to the degree that you can locate your position [+] and control your momentum [0]. In other words, if there is a boundary between subject and object then it is negotiable:

 Objective             Subjective          
--------------------- ---------------------
 momentum              joy [0]              (Ida Nadi)
 uncertainty           intensity            (Sushumna Nadi)
 position              truth [+]            (Pingala Nadi)

If you are a scientific person then please do not accept these ideas on faith. On the contrary, you are challenged to disprove them. Delving into this question is worth your time. Perhaps the only reason that the mechanism of competition hasn’t been made common knowledge is that *fully* understanding competition confers the supreme competitive advantage (mastery).

Copyright © 1999, 2000 Joshua Nathaniel Pritikin. All rights reserved. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire treatise is permitted in any medium if this notice is preserved.
(editor's note: Although I have not copied the entire transcript here, I direct the reader to the Why Compete website where the complete treatise is kept.

June 17
A Course in Consciousness
by Stanley Sobottka, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Virginia

The book, A Course in Consciousness, is available in its entirety at http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/. Thanks to Professor Sobottka for permission to reprint.

Chapter 12. Nonduality, religion, and belief

There is an enormous difference between the natures of the teachings of nonduality and those of religion. There is no theology in the purest forms of nonduality, whereas theology is the basis of religion. By theology, I mean a belief system which contains critical concepts that one is asked to believe as Truth but which cannot be verified within the individual’s own experience. However, since Truth transcends concepts, Truth cannot be conceptualized. Nonduality as a teaching contains many concepts, but all of them are meant to be pointers to the Truth that can be verified by experience. To mistakenly believe the concepts as Truth Itself would actually prevent one from realizing Truth. In the end, the only validity of any concepts is in their usefulness in bringing about awakening and the end of suffering.

We can, however, make a general statement about the validity of two types of concepts, those that negate what is false, and those that assert what is true. The former always points away from what is false, while the latter attempts to point towards what is true. Concepts that assert what is true can be misleading pointers. For example, to assert that Consciousness is infinite implies that 1) Consciousness can be described in conceptual terms, and that 2) Consciousness has no limits. Neither of these concepts applies to Consciousness, which is beyond all concepts. On the other hand, concepts that negate what is false can be useful pointers. For example, the statement that Consciousness is not a concept, entity, or object clearly states that Consciousness cannot be described in any kind of conceptual terms. A very useful negative pointer is the statement that there are no individuals.

Because concepts are to be used only as pointers, it is clear that two different conceptual systems may both be effective pointers to Truth, but in fact may starkly contradict each other. This should not worry one who realizes the purpose of concepts. Which conceptual system one accepts will depend on how effectively it points to Truth in the intuitive eyes of the student. That is why different conceptual systems will usually appeal to different individuals. Clear examples of two perhaps equally effective conceptual systems are Ramesh’s teaching, which emphasizes deep understanding of the absence of the doer, compared with Ramana Maharshi’s teaching, which emphasizes inquiry into the I-entity in order to discover its absence. Which one is chosen depends on the personality characteristics of the individual. (In fact, this course is a composite of both of these teachings.) Other examples of nondual teaching are those of Ch’an and Zen Buddhism which also are regarded as systems of pointers to nondual experience rather than as any kind of literal Truth.

Because the awakened teacher is not an individual, but a body-mind organism through which Consciousness functions spontaneously, from the teacher’s point of view there is no personal sense of obligation or loyalty (although there will often be from the disciple’s point of view), so there is no concern about whether a specific person will accept the teaching. However, because a conceptual system of pointers to Truth can be effective only if it is understood and accepted by the disciple, as experience is gained by the teaching body-mind organism, the teaching will usually naturally become simpler and more focused. Somewhat ironically, the simpler and more focused the teaching becomes, the more some people will be driven away from it, and the more others will be drawn towards it.

In addition to the fact that spiritual beliefs cannot be true, no mere conceptual system can ever satisfy the yearning for wholeness which is the compulsion behind all spiritual seeking. Only clear seeing can satisfy this, and in the end, only clear seeing can lead to the realization that the individual does not exist. Because the intuition is constantly pulling us towards this realization, any practice based only on mentation rather than on inseeing must strive to ignore this pulling. Furthermore, any belief system is constantly being challenged by competing belief systems. The result is that any belief system, in order to be sustained, requires constant effort at defending it, reinforcing it, and shoring it up. This effort invariably strengthens the sense of separation that the belief system is supposed to dissolve.

June 18
Strolling on St. George St.
by Ed Arrons

June 20
'Parrot-Eye-Vision' of the Life of Sri Ramana
by Sri Sadhu Om Swamigal
translated from Tamil by Shankar
with discussion by Shankar and Andrew Macnab

(note: 15 verses have been translated and submitted to the email list by Shankar, so far. This article includes five of the verses along with commentary by Andrew Macnab and Shankar explaining the meaning of parrot-eye-vision. All 15 -- and more -- verses will appear on this website in the near future.)

further translations by Shankar

June 21
Star Birth Bardo in the Body of Orion
by Vincent Bridges
(taken from www.sangraal.com/bardorion.htm)

Introductory quotes from the article:

The Djedi story then presents us with the image of a King who doesn't know the secret chambers of his own tomb, if we are to believe the Egyptologists. But the enclosure of Tehuti is clearly no tomb, and Khufu is sincerely interested in discovering its secrets. What these shrines of the secret chambers might be is suggested by the archaic title for the ancient Nome or precinct of On, Sakhbu. The literal translation of this word is "soul star place," and the ancient Egyptians used it to describe the entire plateau at Giza.

The complex geometry of Giza, the Sakhbu or "soul star place," apparently was designed to embed and encode certain "truths" about the star fields of Orion. Giza's monuments function as a cosmic clock, ticking off the ages through cyclical stellar alignments while establishing galactic scale resonance with the regions of energetic star birth far off in Orion. This resonating clock reminds of us who we are and where we came from on a galactic scale. It holds our cosmic memory, that echo of self-awareness that allows us to overcome our monkey body programming.

This internal process is based on embedding fractality in the DNA by the realization of infinite compassion. Literally, the oldest trick in the book.

The geometry of Giza's monuments and their resonance with the star fields of Orion teaches us that human evolution has a cosmic, stellar component. The pyramid complex holds our contiguous memory through the implosion of galactic catastrophe, and offers us hope for our own evolution. The ancient star religion believed that sentience was evolving toward ever greater levels of compassionate awareness as a living stellar matrix, coalescing and nurturing the planetary jewels in hopes of nourishing life, which would in turn evolve toward stellar sentience.

As Nuit declared in the first section of the Book of the Law: "Every man and every women is a star."

One

Just west of where the Nile begins to widen out into the fan-shaped delta, a rough limestone escarpment rises a few hundred feet and then flattens off into a wind swept plateau. An ancient civilization built a complex pattern of structures on the edge of the plateau, structures which have fascinated humanity throughout its history.

Consider the tale, first written down in the XVIIth Dynasty from a Middle Kingdom version of a IVth Dynasty original, of Prince Radjedef, the Djedi and King Khufu. The King and his four sons are relaxing at the palace telling stories of famous magicians. Radjedef tops them all by announcing that he knows of a living magician equal to those of the past. Khufu is interested and Radjedef tells him of the Djedi, or stable one, who is apparently ageless and knows many things, including "the shrines of the secret chambers of the enclosure of Tehuti." Now Khufu is really interested, because the King "had spent much time in seeking for himself these secret chambers of the enclosure of Tehuti to fashion for himself their likeness for his horizon." Khufu dispatches Radjedef to bring the Djedi back to the palace.

He returns with the Djedi, who quickly charms and awes the court with his magickal abilities. Then the King comes to the point: "Now, as for the rumor that you know the number of the shrines of the secret chamber of the enclosure of Tehuti...?" Djedi says that he does not, although he knows where that information can be found. "There is a box of flint in a chamber called the Revision of On: in that box." The Djedi claims that he cannot recover this information, but the eldest of the triplets then in the womb of the wife of the high priest of "Re, Lord of Sakhbu," will discover the information and found a new Dynasty.

Whatever we may think of the miraculous origins of the Vth Dynasty, this tale poses some interesting questions. Just what is the "enclosure of Tehuti?" And what are the "shrines of the secret chambers" whose likeness Khufu wants for his own "horizon?" Why is it that the information concerning these secrets could be found in a chamber called "Revision" in On, or Heliopolis as the Greeks called it a thousand years into its decline?

The so-called Inventory Stele of Khufu, found in the Isis Chapel near Khufu's mortuary temple at Giza in the 1850's, suggests that the "enclosure of Tehuti" is none other than the Great Pyramid complex itself. The stele clearly states that at least the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx were in existence at the time Khufu ascended to the throne. Peter Lemesurier, a pyramid scholar, has speculated that Khufu, which means simply (he) "protects us," assumed the name of the traditional builder of the pyramid, Knum Khufu, or "Knum protects us," to symbolize his possibly reincarnative connection with this semi-mythical builder. One of the earliest artifacts of Egyptian civilization, the Narmer palette, indicates that the pyramids predated the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. A pyramid in a rectangular enclosure looms over the right shoulder of Narmer/Menes on the Lower Egypt side of the tablet like some relic from a forgotten age.

The Djedi story then presents us with the image of a King who doesn't know the secret chambers of his own tomb, if we are to believe the Egyptologists. But the enclosure of Tehuti is clearly no tomb, and Khufu is sincerely interested in discovering its secrets. What these shrines of the secret chambers might be is suggested by the archaic title for the ancient Nome or precinct of On, Sakhbu. The literal translation of this word is "soul star place," and the ancient Egyptians used it to describe the entire plateau at Giza.

The "soul star place," which contains the enclosure of Tehuti and its secret chambers, is the Duat on earth through which the King travels as he makes his journey toward re-birth in Re's Boat of a Million Years. Khufu wishes to know its secret so that his horizon, his transition, might truly result in immortality among the imperishable stars. This was no idle concern for Khufu. The Djedi story suggest that his failure to understand the mystery caused the failure of his Dynasty. It would be the Vth Dynasty Pharaohs who would bring forth or make public the secrets of the enclosure of Tehuti.

But the "soul star place" remains, and its inconceivably ancient monuments continue to haunt us with their mystery. But perhaps, just perhaps, the shrines of the secret chambers, like some time locked vault, have begun to open and we can glimpse an awe-filled universe of meaning and connection.

Two

The secret chambers began to open in 1989 with an article in the Oxford journal, Discussions in Egyptology. Engineer Robert Bauval argued that not only did the pyramids at Giza exhibit a grand unified pattern, but that pattern mirrored the stars in the constellation of Orion. In ancient Egypt, Orion was the "Place of Osiris," suggesting a deep connection between the constellation and the myth of death and rebirth. Bauval's idea made sense, (he would go on to co-author the bestsellers The Orion Mystery and The Message of the Sphinx) and further investigation has shown that the entire pyramid field, from Dashur to Abu Roash, mirrors the stars in the sky above it.

The plan of the Giza pyramids also exhibits an amazing degree of geometrical and mathematical coherence. For example, the three pyramids fit inside a rectangle formed from a vesicia piscis, from which the generative roots (the square root of 2, 3 and 5) are derived. The vesicia piscis also determines the angle of each face and the height of the floor of the King's chamber. R.J. Cook demonstrated that a geometrical axial system linked the smaller pyramids with the center pyramid. He found that this system of linkages was based on the use of 60 degree and 26.5 degree angles.

Sixty degrees is the angle of an isosceles triangle; 26.5 degrees is the angle of the diagonal of a double square. The floor of the King's Chamber is a double square and the ascending and descending passages are set at 26.5 degrees; this can hardly be accidental. The entire complex seems arranged to create a pointer indicating the helical rising of Orion/Osiris. Even more fascinating, a line drawn at 26.5 degrees north of east, the indicator point for the pre-dawn rise of Orion, runs from the second pyramid to Bethlehem in Palestine. Given the similarity between the dying god Osiris and the resurrected Christ, this alignment suggests an ancient stellar connection much too significant to be co-incidental.

A number of Giza researchers, including Max Toth, Rocky McCollum and William Buehler, have noticed that the arrangement of the three major pyramids produces a short section of a Golden Mean spiral. Extending this spiral on the ground leads to a small rise in the escarpment a few kilometers to the south-east of the pyramid complex. This area has received very little archeological attention since it covers a portion of the local village's cemetery. The 1947 survey map notes the existence, near the center of the spiral, of an unidentified ruin of which nothing seems to have survived to the present. Without more research, including on-site inspection, the ground level Golden Mean spiral seems to be a dead end.

But, adds journalist, author and esoteric philosopher Jay Wiedner, what if we draw the Golden Mean spiral in the sky? If the pyramids are a model of the stars in Orion's belt, then they should also describe a small section of the Golden Mean spiral. If we continue the line in the sky, following the yellow brick road of the Golden Mean, we arrive at the heart of the figure of Orion/Osiris.

Visually, this appears to be an empty region of space, but radio and x-ray astronomy reveal a seething area of collapsing stellar material below and to the left of the shoulder star, Bellatrix. Stars are being born in the heart of Orion. Indeed, the general area of Orion has more stellar formation occurring than anywhere else in our local galactic neighborhood.

The complex geometry of Giza, the Sakhbu or "soul star place," apparently was designed to embed and encode certain "truths" about the star fields of Orion. Giza's monuments function as a cosmic clock, ticking off the ages through cyclical stellar alignments while establishing galactic scale resonance with the regions of energetic star birth far off in Orion. This resonating clock reminds of us who we are and where we came from on a galactic scale. It holds our cosmic memory, that echo of self-awareness that allows us to overcome our monkey body programming.

Tron, the self-aware computer program in Disney's film of the same name, claims his identity through memory: "I have seen the starships burning off the shoulder of Orion."

Three

Our third question remains: If the enclosure of Tehuti is the pyramid complex itself and the shrines of the secret chambers are the stellar alignments and geometric resonance points on the Giza plateau, then how can this information be found in a flint box in a storeroom in Heliopolis?

Dan Winter, Gnostic alchemist and author of The Alphabet of the EartHeart, has suggested that the answer is perhaps a symmetry set alphabet of the phase angles of the nesting platonic solids, theosophy's greater maze. Or, in other "words," mathematics. And this does make sense; the monuments on Giza were there for all to see, no secret there. But how to use them was a secret that could be coded into a text and stored with a few models in a flint box.

Given that the "Book of Coming Forth unto the Light," the core of the Pyramid Texts, appeared near the end of the Vth Dynasty, maybe SahuRe, the eldest of the royal triplets, did indeed find that flint box with the secret operating manual for the "soul star place."

The Pyramid Texts, mankind's oldest religious writings, were carved on the internal walls of one Vth Dynasty pyramid and four more from the VIth Dynasty. Frozen, like an ant in amber, these inscriptions record the definitive expression of an ancient star religion, whose beliefs included the translation of the dead king into a star in the constellation of Orion. Even the Victorian Egyptologists with their Christian and solar bias agreed that the Pyramid Texts had greater antiquity than the Vth Dynasty. Gaston Maspero, their original discoverer and translator, thought that "the greater part were originally written during the pre-historic period of Egypt." That is, at least before about 3300 BC.

Professor R. T. Rundle Clark, who had a great respect for the Pyramid Texts, notes that "the rising of Orion in the southern sky after the time of its invisibility is the sign. . . Osiris has been transformed into a 'living soul.' " (Remember, the ability to mark this moment is one of the major design factors involved in the overall plan of the monuments on Giza. This line, indicated by the 26.5 degree angle north of east, points to the summer solstice sunrise at the time of Orion's return; it also runs to Bethlehem.) The Texts themselves are quite clear on this:

"Behold he has come as Orion, behold Osiris has come as Orion. . . O king, the sky conceives you with Orion, the dawn-light bears you with Orion. . . you will regularly ascend with Orion from the eastern regions of the sky, you will regularly descend with Orion in the western region of the sky." (Pyramid Texts, line 820-2)

"O king, you are this Great Star, the Companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with Orion, who Navigates the (Duat) Netherworld with Osiris; you ascend from the east of the sky, being renewed in your due season, and rejuvenated in your due time. The sky has born you with Orion. . ." (Pyramid Texts, line 882-3)

A little further along in the same passage, we find an important clue: "I am a soul. . . I (am) a star of gold. . ." (Pyramid Texts, Line 886-9)

Thus the dead King, as an "Osiris," evolved to inhabit a newly born stellar matrix in the constellation of Orion. The Duat, translated as Netherworld by most Egyptologists, actually appears to be the star birth Bardo field in the heart of Orion. There the newly immortal King must "Navigate the Duat" as a companion of Orion/Osiris. Significantly, the Osiris-king announces: "The sky is pregnant of wine (the dawn-light), Nuit has given birth to her daughter, the dawn-light, I raise myself indeed. . ." (Pyramid Texts, line 1082-3) I

In several places in the Pyramid Texts, a curious statement is made: "The (dead) king's sister is Sothis, (Sirius) his offspring is the Morning Star. . ." (Pyramid Texts, lines 357, 929, 935, 1707) It is easy to see Isis, Osiris' sister/wife, as the star Sirius, which follows Orion in the sky. But to see Horus, Osiris' offspring, as the Morning Star, Venus, takes a bit of understanding. Until we remember that Venus, rising against the zodiac of the ecliptic, creates a five pointed star through time. This symbol, a star made of five lines drawn from a common center toward the points in the zodiac of Venus' rising, covers the ceiling of Unas' pyramid where the earliest Pyramid Text is inscribed.

Horus, the son of Osiris, was the prototype of the earthly king; the Egyptian Pharaohs ruled in his name. As such, the symbol of Horus preserves the idea of transcendence and the possibility of stellar evolution. Again, the Pyramid Texts give a flavor of this: ". . .and Har-Sopd has come forth from you as Horus who is in Sothis (Isis). . . and he protects you in his name of Horus, the son who protects the father. . ." (Pyramid Texts, lines 632-3) Har-Sopd, or Horus who is the morning star, is depicted as a hawk-headed human with a Nuit star in a circle above his head.

If the Pyramid Texts are truly the operating manual for the monuments on Giza and their evolutionary resonance with the star fields of Orion, then they deserve much more study than they have received in the century or so since their discovery. Others, primarily Robert Bauval in The Orion Mystery, have drawn attention to these clues, but Egyptologists and archeologists have been slow to respond. No attempt has been made to examine other texts of comparable antiquity, such as the Builder Texts of Edfu and Dendera, for more clues. It is as if this tantalizing evidence of man's early fascination with this vibrantly creative area of stellar birth leads to a dead end.

Perhaps for the academics, with reputations to make and preserve, it does. But for the group of mystics, scientists and esoteric philosophers I call the "Post-Modern Alchemists," these clues provide startling evidence of ancient Egypt's knowledge of the equivalent of a spiritual unified field theory. For them, the monuments on Giza are reminders of humanity's galactic destiny.

Four

Let's start with the clue about gold. ". . .I am a soul. . . I (am) a star of gold. . ." Osiris/Pharaoh announces. Before we dismiss this as mere poetry, remember that the Egyptian hieroglyphic language was capable of a dense structure of meaning. The "soul," sa, has a precise meaning. It is the wave nature, the flow of the breath, of the spirit, the khu. The Hebrew word "ruach," breath or spirit, preserves this meaning. In Genesis, we are told that God's breath, His "ruach," moved across the waters of chaos to begin the process of creation. The sages of On would have agreed, saying that Re put forth his sa as he rose from the waters of Nun.

Therefore, the king is declaring that he has entered the state of being called "soul," a state where the flow of spirit is self-sustaining, self-referencing and self-aware. To be a soul is to have the possibility of immortality.

He reinforces this by declaring that he has become "a star of gold." This also has a very precise meaning. One of the deepest held secrets of the Egyptian mysteries was how to rearrange the Nuit star, five lines pointing out from a common center, into an interlocked pentagram, the same five lines crossing around the common center to create an infinite nest of Phi ratios. To the Egyptian sages, this symbolized the embedding of cosmic evolution, the Horus current, into biological evolution.

And indeed, this pentagonal array is a constant in nature, appearing in everything from the petals on a flower to the bipedal symmetry of the human form. The Pythagoreans claimed that the pentagram was the perfect symbol of humanity, and that its extension into space, the Gnostic "light in extension," the dodecahedron, was the ultimate symbol of spirit.

Just as the pentagram is a nest of phi ratio recursion, gold, by its atomic geometry, is the most fractally recursive element. The outer d/f electron sub-shells exhibit a 5/7 symmetry pairing, which gives gold the shape of the perfect dodeca-icosa fractal. The dodecahedron, the Pythagorean symbol of spirit, nests with the icosahedron, the symbol for water, to create a polygon that models the fractally attractive gravity well of our planetary jewel.

Alchemist Dan Winter comments that "because of this quantum recursion optimized in gold's electron valency, when gold is made soluble in blood, it has the function of creating wormhole magnetic implosion in the blood. (Implosion is the ultimate connectivity device, and sorts by shareablity of function among waves.)" The alchemical process of making gold soluble in blood, the white powder Elixir of Immortality of the medieval alchemists, has been described at length by another post-modern alchemist, David Hudson.

Basically, ionized gold particles are subjected to a powerful and recursively shaped capacitive charge. The gold particles then do a pop-corn-like inside-out maneuver in their electron geometry. David Hudson calls this new form of gold "Ormes," and suggests that it's now soluble in the blood. As Dan Winter noted: "Gold as a valence atomic fractal makes field effect sorting by implosion happen in the blood artificially making immune systems sustainable (immortal)."

So the newly dead king's statement can now be read as: "I am a self-sustaining, self-aware being, whose fractality is as infinite as the perfect shape of gold." Suddenly, we are on a different level of understanding. With a flash, we see that the Egyptians were not just superstitious priests worshipping the sky out of ignorance, they were spiritual scientists with deep insight into the nature of reality and the physics of immortality. This insight seems to have come from the original creators of the Giza complex, those ancient sages who wrote down the secret texts and stored them in that flint box in Heliopolis.

Whether we consider these ancient sages as part of the lost prehistory of the human race or as visitors from another star system, their interest in gold mining and processing is demonstrated by the ruins and traces they left behind. Z. Sitchin, in his extensive revisioning of the Babylonian myths, has suggested that these alien visitors were mining gold to help repair a damaged atmosphere on their home planet. The fractal quality of gold would help increase the gravity of a planet and therefore help hold an atmosphere, but even ionized throughout the planet's surface, it hard to see how even tons of gold would help. Yet, the ancient civilization, as shown by Graham Hancock in Fingerprints of the Gods, was certainly deeply concerned with mining and processing gold.

If the use of alchemical gold, (alchemy, remember, comes from Al Khem, the black land of Egypt) as a technological way to attain immortality suggests that embedding recursion into the blood, into the DNA, is the key, then there must be non-technological ways to produce the same effect. Dan Winter suggests that the use of alchemical gold produces a Borg-like collective consciousness, but does not facilitate the development of a soul, becoming in the end a materialist dead-end. The Pharaoh did not become a soul by eating alchemical gold alone, he underwent another, internal, process to become a star of gold, a soul inhabiting a stellar matrix in the heart of Orion.

This internal process is based on embedding fractality in the DNA by the realization of infinite compassion. Literally, the oldest trick in the book.

Work by Lee Sanella and Isaac Bentov has shown that the onset of neural superconductivity, the tantric kundalini, is mediated by the sonic entrainment of the heart's rhythm. Dan Winter, in Alphabet of the EartHeart, demonstrated that the heart's ECG rhythm embeds Phi ratios at the moment of compassion, or expressing love. In the same book, Dan speculated that coherent heart rhythms could braid immunity into the cell at the level of its DNA structure. A recent article, December, '96, by Dr. Irving Dardik in Cycles magazine entitled "Heart Waves as Fractality," confirms that fractal immune identity is a possible solution to chronic illness. Perfect fractality, perfect coherence and self-awareness produces perfect immunity, or near immortality of the body.

By meditating on compassion, feeling the feelings of all beings, DNA is braided into more complex and coherent patterns. These complex patterns can then contain the superconductive neural charge of kundalini onset and use this higher charge energy flow to braid a new being, the state of inhabiting a soul. This soul charge can then be used to open the magnetic wormhole to the star fields in Orion. Or, it can be used to create a diamond imperishable body for use as a teaching vehicle down here on earth.

From the Tibetan Buddhist tradition comes many examples of the latter use this implosive soul force. Padmasambhava, the tantric master who brought Buddhism to Tibet, is said to have attained his diamond body in the Asura Cave in Nepal after three years of tantric meditations. Something happened in that cave; the whole hillside is still pervaded with an astral intensity strong enough to grow a Tara image out of solid rock. Padmasambhava himself demonstrated the power of this transformation by melting the rock of the cave wall and pressing his hand into it like Clark Gable in wet cement on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Pharaoh then, as he began his journey to the star fields, should be seen as a kind of Boddhisatva, an enlightened being making a leap of evolution. The Pharaoh would, in theory, have completed the tantric-type compassion realization and then perhaps used a trace of alchemical gold to crystallize the process. Done properly, this would result in a compassionate, enlightened being capable of compassionately inhabiting a newly born star.

Carried to its end, the implications of this belief system suggests that our own star, the sun, is also inhabited by a vast compassionate and enlightened being. From this perspective, it is easy to understand the solar influence on Egyptian religion. Even Akhnaton's insistence on worshipping the sun's physical body, the Aton, as the only source of divinity makes sense as a way of establishing and strengthening a direct communication with that vast compassionate being whose star body is our sun.

Five

The monuments of the "soul star place" and their hieroglyphic operating manual, the Pyramid Texts, offer solid evidence of an advanced civilization far back in prehistory who understood both the stellar mechanics of our local galactic neighborhood and the psycho-dynamics of neural superconductivity. This alone should make us sit up and take notice. That it does not may have consequences far beyond our comprehension.

What happened to the advanced civilization that designed and built these monuments? Was it destroyed in some cosmic catastrophe predicted by its own cosmic clock? Is that catastrophe point approaching critical once again?

Such distant cultural groups as the Mayan and the Tibetan point to a date around 2012 as the crisis point. Terrence McKenna, in his "Time Wave Zero" computer program, which uses the permutation pattern found in the primal arrangement of the I Ching's trigrams, predicts that novelty, or lack of continuity in ideas, will also reach infinite around December of 2012.

A clue to the dynamics of this cosmic crisis can be found in the work of Nick Fiorenza on what he calls the "Erection of the Holy Cross." From our location in space, orbiting the sun, the center of the galaxy lies in the direction of the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. This unmoving axis locates us in space in relation to the center of the galaxy. The plane of our solar system is tilted 60 degrees from the galactic plane. The sun's orbit around a center point near Alcyone in the Pleiades and the earth's wobbling precession around the sun create another moving axis marked by the zodiacal sign of the spring and autumn equinoxes. As we approach a spring equinox that falls at the beginning of the sign of Aquarius, our two axis, galactic and local, approach a 90 degree angle.

When this happens, the informational and energetic inertia of the entire galaxy will implode in our local systems' backyard. This cyclical implosion of galactic energy may have caused the planetary disaster that destroyed the builders of Giza. Graham Hancock, in Fingerprints of the Gods, notes the powerful geological evidence for some kind of catastrophe around 11,000 BC. Curiously enough, this was the last time the "Holy Cross" alignment swept through our galactic neighborhood.

Perhaps this cosmic event is meant to be a harvesting mechanism for biologics who have learned to inhabit "souls" through the realization of compassion. If that is the case, then learning to weave your Bardo body into nicely fractal flows of self-awareness as infinite compassion may just become the ultimate survival skill.

The geometry of Giza's monuments and their resonance with the star fields of Orion teaches us that human evolution has a cosmic, stellar component. The pyramid complex holds our contiguous memory through the implosion of galactic catastrophe, and offers us hope for our own evolution. The ancient star religion believed that sentience was evolving toward ever greater levels of compassionate awareness as a living stellar matrix, coalescing and nurturing the planetary jewels in hopes of nourishing life, which would in turn evolve toward stellar sentience.

As Nuit declared in the first section of the Book of the Law: "Every man and every women is a star."

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June 22
Daily Message for Transforming the Mind #182
from M's Bhairava List

This is Message #182 for transforming the mind and realizing the true nature of the Self, or real God:

Some people came from the south for Bhagavan's darshan [seeing or being seen by a sage]. Among them was a small boy about five years old. He did namaskaram [prostration], and then approached Bhagavan and looked at him lovingly. Bhagavan placed his left hand on the boy's head and asked him, "What do you want?"

The boy replied firmly, "I don't want anything."

"Oho!" said Bhagavan, "You belong to us."

Then, addressing the people he came with he added, "If he remains in the 'don't want' state everything will come to him."

This reminded Bhagavan of an old incident from his own life.

"When I was staying at the Pachaiamman Temple my loincloth got torn. I never made any requests to anybody, so I had to stitch it myself. For a needle, I used a thorn from a cactus plant. I made a slit at the end which gripped a thread that I had removed from my loincloth. After the
repairs were finished, I was able to wear it for another two months.

"During the same period, my towel had so many holes it looked like a net. One day a shepherd, after seeing this towel, tried to ridicule me by saying, 'Swami, the [provincial] Governor wants this towel.'

"After washing and drying this towel, I used to wrap it around my hand so that no one could see what state it was in. Somehow, those who were with me came to know about it and brought three sets of new loincloths and towels. They took away my old towel and made me exchange my loincloth for a new one.

"If you remain in the 'don't want' state, everything will come to you. That is why both likes and dislikes are not wanted."

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June 23
Down the Up Fountain
by Gene Poole with Dave Pawlak

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June 25
Like Water with a 9 On It:
Recent Poetry by Carlos Dwa

Ultimately any useful mysticism can only be one
that is synthesized within the cauldron
of the being of an individual man.

Real mysticism is a man's internal endeavor to
synthesize from the mundane -- the precious, from the
consensus consciousness of humanity -- an enhanced
consciousness that is vividly primal in its immediacy
and lucid in its flexibility and humor.

-- Sig Wacca Jix, A Primer for the Newly Decanted

as recapitulated by Carlos Dwa

*****

Words are like the tracks of a beast.
They tell the hunter only this;
something living
did this way pass.

*****

Their fingertips touched
like lightning from the grave.
Soon he would be a slave,
to the gift he gave.

Sometimes the Queen would scream,
"Things are not what they would seem."
But then confide to her dusky dame,
"They are not something else
all the same."

I am the death in the living.
I am the taking of giving.

And I can have it both ways.

*****

Your perception of your doing
is your undoing.
By your sight are you blinded.
By your speech are you made deaf.

*****

Only an profound dolt finds it impossible
to learn from someone who is more of an idiot
then they are.

Xellian precorporate folk saying
(c) Carlos Dwa 2000

*****

Seeing it all before
keeps you from seeing.

If you've seen it all before
you don't see anything.

What you don't know
is more important
than what you do know.

What you don't know
is the greater part of
what you know.

What you don't know
that you know
is known
by the greater you

(c)Carlos Dwa 2000

*****

Once a most sincere, which is to say totally deluded, seeker of enlightenment approached his master and said, "We have been beating around the bush for decades now. What you please just this once just come right out and tell me, what is the nature of human consciousness?"

Now the master had the previous evening, through no fault of his own, been up late drinking and dancing and fucking far too much for a man of his age and above and beyond all this had eaten too much pizza with various toppings that are only put on top of pizza in regions which really have no understanding of pizza. Because of all this, or perhaps not, he turned to the no longer young aspirant and said,

"It's like water with a 9 on it
and it longs for the future."

(c) Carlos Dwa 2000

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June 26
Berkow on Liquorman
by Dan Berkow

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June 27
Report on my weekend retreat
by Gene Poole

Here is a brief report on my weekend retreat to the 21st annual Gathering of Healers, (also called 'the healing gathering') near Tonasket, Washington.

Tonasket is a tiny town far north of Spokane, several hours of driving, much of that through the extensive Spokane Indian Reservation, much green and rocks, creeks and deer.

I am driving north in my Chevy van, which I have outfitted with a nifty removable camping arrangement, a tiny mobile home, quiet and powerful. I am conscious of gasoline prices, my V8 engine, I drive evenly, listening to an audiobook, cassette tapes of a story by Dean Koontz, "Dark Rivers of the Heart". Night has fallen, I am wary of deer entering the roadway. I sip coffee enriched by an exotic Chines herb extract called 'Lo Han Quo'.

Up the final hill, to the communally owned land, dodging rocks and ruts, tired but pleased for a trouble-free trip. The gatekeepers greet me; they are young and do not recognize me. I drive across the mowed field, park parallel to the edge, and retire to my cozy bed. I fall asleep to the lulling sounds of wind and midnight congas.

Awakened by rocking... good heavens, it is dawn, and storming, high winds and rain pummel my metallic cocoon, I look out the window to see sodden hippies running after their tumbling tents, tarps flapping, rain drums in sheets and rolls on my steel roof. Well, at least the rain will keep the dust down, but will this storm blow over? By ten, all is well... wind continues, but rain has stopped. Sun shines.

I make coffee, breakfast, wash up, head to the 'nirv center' of the gathering to read the announcements, many hugs and greetings on the way. Old friends, seen yearly, this is some kind of commitment that we all have, informal, tribal I guess. I make the rounds, check the kitchen sanitation (excellent!) and the first-aid teepee (well stocked with both modern and traditional remedies) and ask my usual questions, beginning to collect any epidemiological data. I dread contagion of dysentery, knowing the high probablility of asymptomatic carriers being in attendance. So far so good, no reports of diarrhea.

The wind continues, tarps demolished, this is unusual, people are saying that it means something spiritual, like some cleansing force. Hypothermic hippies huddle around the main fire, unable to play moist drumheads, taking the morning toke, cadging rides to the upcoming Montana Rainbow Gathering, practicing their slurred 'egoless' speech patterns.

I sit beneath a lodgepole pine, in the lee of a natural rock wall, talking with a friend, and soon a small crowd has gathered to share. It is all about the latest updates and upgrades to the human operating system, about what has become obsolete, what is new, and what endures. I moderate by disabling idealists, giving space to the sincere upcoming, wary of the hypomanic survivors of last night's XTC trips. Being old and set in my ways, few bother to argue with me, which is a major benefit of being an elder. After a few hours, we disperse, in search of food. I return to my van, set up my kitchen, cook grits and coffee, eat a few hardboiled eggs, finishing with Feta cheese and crackers and a nice sip of Merlot. Evening is spent is pleasant socialization, a very mellow sharing time, fine friends.

Sunday morning is clear hard sun, baking mud to dust. The morning routine, then to relationship. I attend several sharings (called 'workshops'), finally one by Digital Deb, she is a Mac user, the local webmistress [link] www.planettonasket.com/index.html

She sings a song; she is an accomplished guitarist, has a very nice voice...

Linguistic Relativity

by :Digital:Deb

Linguistic relativity
What you hear and what you see
May not be the same to me
Linguistic relativity.

We store information into slots we define
By learning a language, programming our minds
Linguistic relativity, linguistic relativity
Connotative, denotative, function and formal
Cultures create meaning, its perfectly normal

Linguistic relativity
What you hear and what you see
May not be the same to me
Linguistic relativity.

But we can talk and communicate,
There may be a fence but there's always a gate
Linguistic relativity, linguistic relativity
Language influences the mind and its perceptions
We make up new words to describe new conceptions, uh huh...

Linguistic relativity
What you hear and what you see
May not be the same to me
Linguistic relativity.

Language is changing, adapting, rearranging
Language is coming from mind.
Language is coming from mind
Language is coming from mind
Language connects all our minds.

copyright Deborah Vester 1993

Linguistic Relativity - Spokane - Peaceful Valley 1993

I tell her that I will post her song to NDS. She may join our list.

On my way to the closing circle, a man on a bike skids to a halt, tells me to go to the sweat lodge; a young girl is having a seizure of some kind. I hurry down the hill to the shaded glade, she is laying, covered, naked, shaking. I diagnose and prescribe crackers, lacking an IV of glucose. Her blood sugar had plummeted due to skipping meals, smoking herb for the first time, and then taking an extreme sweat. Upon deeper interview, I learn that she is epileptic, on meds, and rebellious; her ideas of spiritual purity lead her to skip her meds. I advise regular meals and taking her Dilantin/Phenobarb as prescribed. She is soon sitting up, eating and drinking water and joking. I think she has learned something valuable about how to manage her special vulnerabilities.

I pack my things, hugs, tears, goodbyes, until the fall Barter Fair. Promises to stay in touch. I am encouraged by the acceptance of Internet; I pointed out that 'Luddites do not have websites'.

I return via the Keller ferry, a free crossing of the Columbia river, and am home by 10:30 PM. I check my email and go to bed.

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Remember that you need no justification for Being, only skill for existing.

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The Tibetans certainly do have a very noticable serenity and kindly cheerfulness in their willingness to talk to anyone and everyone and patiently answer questions.

This past Friday (June 30, 2000), I went into Washington, D.C. to see the Tibetan Village on the Mall. Their very finest craftsmen were demonstrating their arts. Several monks were continuing the sand mandala underway all week, which requires a steady touch. Fine colored grains of sand are put in a slender metal funnel and then rubbed gently with a metal wand so that the slight vibration causes a few grains at a time to drop out the small opening. The intricacy of this design is incredible.

The painting of the Thangkhas, religious images of Buddha and Bodhisattvas are also finely detailed. As well as painting, some are created by an applique technique of rich materials and fine sewing. Pashima shawls hand woven of tiny fine threads. The lettering of their texts is traditionally hand carved into wooden blocks for printing. The enormous amount of time to do these crafts is quite obvious, not to mention the time it takes to learn to do them well. It all gives an impression of having all the time in the world to do something just right.

At the Buddhist temple in a tent, there was a continous round of teachings and chantings. And the tent was full to overflowing. It's very encouraging to see such interest. The end of the talk I heard, the monk asked how many might be returning for the next talk an hour later and half the crowd raised their hands. He told the rest that if this might be their only hearing of Buddhist teachings they might wonder what they got from it, but to think of Buddhism as being not about getting, but more about what one might come there to leave. He made a few points about dropping stuff and said the essence of the message is how to relax and leave worries behind. Everyone clapped. The Tibetans certainly do have a very noticable serenity and kindly cheerfulness in their willingness to talk to anyone and everyone and patiently answer questions.

There were more crafts and yaks and a nomad's tent and a huge prayer wheel,dolls in Tibetan costumes. Anyway, I'll soon put a few pictures in the files in a Tibetan folder..the flash camera ones I haven't got back yet.

Be sure to at least see the incredible Sand Mandala pictures at:
www.artnetwork.com/Mandala/

On Friday, 50,000 people showed up to hear the Dalai Lama's talk on the mall. It was non-political, focusing on the illusory nature of wealth and power, and the role of hope and generosity toward others in bringing happiness.

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Go Anywhere, Do Nothing, Love Everybody

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Gangaji's deep purity and Eli's lazer clarity worked so well together in exposing the lies and revealing the truth

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