Click here to go to the next issue

Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day

NDH - 10/26/02 - # 1239 - Christiana


art: "Rubicon" Freida Dean

Swami Beyondananda http://www.wakeuplaughing.com/bliss.shtml

Swami Launches Blisskrieg, Declares "All Out Peace!"

Swami Beyondananda, spiritual leader to millions of
FUNdamentalists (accent on "fun") has launched a
worldwide "blisskrieg"in a declaration of "all out peace!"

Speaking from a platform at his new virtual address at
www.wakeuplaughing.com, the Swami said, "We've been
holding our peace for far too long. It's time to let it out! Why
should peacekeepers keep the peace for themselves when
the world needs it so badly nowadays?"

The Swami was interrupted numerous times by gleeful
supporters shouting the peace mantra, "Ah .. peace on it!"
and waving banners reading "Our World: Love It Or Leave
It!" "Play For Nonjudgment Day" and "Disarmaggedon Is
Near!"

"It's a fight to the life!" Swami told his minions, vowing to
open the floodgates of love, light and laughter to cleanse the
body politic of cultural, economic and political toxins that
have caused folks to "take things poisonally" -- and
perpetuate war.

"These are challenging times," said the Swami, "which call
for Emerge-n-See measures. It is time for us to emerge from
our fearful and powerless hiding places and see the big
picture. We have met the Savior and He is Us. I see all these
Children of God praying for Jesus to intervene, but we
cannot expect to be fed intervenously forever. Time for
Children of God to grow up, for Christ's sake, and become
Adults of God for a change. Playful adults, that is."

Petros Petros-Truth@yahoogroups.com

"It is so much easier to throw oneself into social and political
activity than to understand life as a whole; to be associated
with any organized thought, with political or religious activity,
offers a respectable escape from the pettiness and drudgery
of everyday life. With a small heart you can talk of big things
and of the popular leaders; you can hide your shallowness
with the easy phrases of world affairs; your restless mind can
happily and with popular encouragement settle down to
propagate the ideology of a new or of an old religion. . . .
There is hope only in the integration of the several
processes of which we are made up. This integration does
not come into being through any ideology, or through
following any particular authority, religious or political; it
comes into being only through extensive and deep
awareness. This awareness must go into the deeper layers
of consciousness and not be content with surface
responses."

-- Krishnamurti (from Commentaries on Living I)

Mazie Lane AdyashantiSatsang@yahoogroups.com

When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

- Layman P'ang (c. 740-808)

"The Enlightened Heart"
An Anthology of Sacred Poetry
Edited by Stephen Mitchell
Harper & Row, New York , 1989

Michael Read DirectApproach@yahoogroups.com

god knows, everything the number of hairs on your head the
hidden song of bug farts everything

can you look at your entire life and accept it? god can and
does and is accepting it - right now good deeds and bad
laughter and tears hopes and fears the whole whirly drama
of it all

god knows, the news today is full of woe it has been for a
long long time

god knows, the world is exceedingly beautiful naturaly,
easily, gracefully beautiful

god hmm... what a concept - hooboy! rather a lot of concepts
exist about this god there are working concepts of god there
are concepts ready made for any situation there are abstract
concepts and romantic ones as well

here's one: god is everywhere another: god is doing it all
one more: god knows what god is doing

really? are we sure? if we are, why do we question and seek
and suffer about the whole thing? do we think that something
is wrong?

god is love - comfort concept god is everywhere -
universality concept god is doing it all - power/energy
concept

having a relationship with god rejoining with god doing god's
will seeking and finding and being god more concepts and
more and more and more what a dizzying array!

are you seeking god? do you want to rejoin with the divine
within you? well, why do you believe you are separate?
Somebody told you this and you bought into it. besides, you
feel separate, eh? also, you know that you couldn't possibly
be good enough because you know too much about
yourself!

so you seek and search and study and look for teachers.

you are what you seek - not your concept of what you seek

Sandy Carmichael allspirit@yahoogrouops.com

From "The Raft is Not the Shore":

Thich Nhat Hanh: "I spoke at a Buddhist meeting; I
said, 'In order to save the world, each of us has to
build a pagoda.'"

Dan Berrigan: "To build a pagoda?"

Thich Nhat Hanh: "Yes. To build a pagoda. There
were people who thought that I was urging them to
build more pagodas so Buddhism would become a
national religion. But this pagoda cannot be built by
stones and sticks and things like that, because this
pagoda is a sanctuary where you have a chance to
be alone and face yourself, the reality of yourself. If
you don't have a pagoda like that to go to each day,
several times a day, then you cannot protect the
Eucharist, you cannot protect yourself, and you
cannot protect the world from destruction."

Know Mystery (Joyce) HarshaSatsangh@yahoogroups.com
Subject to change

all things are subject to change...

your mind?
your heart?
the clocks tonight?

the past...a memory
the future...a fantasy
there is only now.

beyond motion...
beyond stillness...
Absolute Stillness.

So, tonight we change the clocks back an hour...
And tomorrow - what time does the sun rise?

Now.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit

This sort of unconflicted behavior manifested, it
seemed, from a split-second recognition, without
qualification or rationale, that death was a foregone
conclusion, an integral part of the very event, that
death was already within me. Death was not a
possibility to be avoided but a fact to be accepted as
it was already accomplished - death had already
happened.

Having accepted death without hidden qualifications,
it was clear to me that I could not be threatened by
the possibility of death or harm. I seemed to stand on
the cusp of being and nonbeing, to walk the line
between subtle and physical, observing but not fully
occupying my body. This shift of perception gave
what the anthropologist Mircea Eliade termed the
ability to "intervene in the ontological constructs of the
universe." This was Eliade's scholarly description of
the nonordinary events brought about by Tibetan
yogis.

I found that in any happening, through a kind of willful
and voluntary throwing away of self-preservation, the
ordinary course of events could be reversed,
changed, or modified. This was not one part of my
mind playing games of "let's pretend" with other
parts, nor some lofty psychological or spiritual death
of ego or loss of self. This was a genuine acceptance
of death as a certain part of that moment, of knowing I
held my nonbeing within my being. Therefore, there
was nothing to lose! I found that in this state not only
did fire not have to burn me, but also gravity did not
have to hold me in the usual grip and cause did not
have to produce its usual effect.

To find that the structure of reality was negotiable
when I was free of all internal conflict was a
momentous discovery for me - as was my realization
that all internal conflict is produced by our fear of
possible harm or death. The irony of this is that there
exists for us a state in which harm really can't occur
within the confines of a particular single event if we
bypass our block of fear and open to this other
perspective.

Not judging the actions of ourselves and others and
trying to modify behaviors accordingly may seem
negligent to us, but to the Senoi a persons actions
were simply the given of a situation, like the direction
of the wind or the slant of the sunlight. This mindset,
embodied in Jean Piaget’s description of early
childhood as "the unquestioned acceptance of the
given," Eckharts "living without a why," J.
Krishnamurti’s "choiceless awareness," Jesus’
"kingdom" of relationship, and Matthew Fox’s original
blessing, is a state of mind that can open us to higher
functions of our forebrain while freeing us from
enslavement to the hindbrain -- a shift that wholly
changes perception.

art: Souvenir d''Eté George Ball

The Watkins Review Good source for reviews and articles

http://www.watkinsbooks.com/index2.htm

Esther Veltheim http://www.parama.com

PaRama (Esther Veltheim) Online Forum

Nothing and no one can limit you. That you believe otherwise
is what sustains the experience of limitation. The secret is to
discover why you feel the need to fulfill desires - be it the
desire to know Self or the desire for a new car. The
experience of lack does not lie outside of you but within. To
realize this dispels the possibility of blaming anything
outside of you. Neither can you blame yurself for the
experience of lack. It is just an experience and one that is
lacking nothing. It is the belief that you need to be free of the
experience of lack and limitation that sustains the expeience
of them.

The Process of Individuation

Only when the mind becomes stable and steady enough can
the perception of duality be seen as that of simultaneously
occurring pairs of opposites. In that instant, the conditioned
mind is fully incapacitated because it has no way of
describing this perception. This is when all thoughts cease,
and because words are no longer being used to “name” and
describe the perception, duality/paradox finally reveals It-Self
for what it Is - non-dual, without relationship or contact of any
kind whatsoever. http://www.parama.com/html/individuation.html

Who Am I?: The Seeker's Guide to Nowhere

Gradually I began investigating concepts and unraveling
them. It became increasingly clear that everything is paradox
and that no concept can exist without its opposite in potential
within it. I began to realize that thought processes were
circular in nature and that it was impossible for my mind to
come up with one single concept that was an absolute unto
itself.

One day, embroiled in my investigation of concepts, I
realized that the use of the interrogative pronoun who in
asking "Who am I?" necessarily conjured up the idea of an
object-identity. I saw great value in Ramana's process of
self-enquiry in that it certainly tripped my thinking processes
up. But by this time it had become clear to me that all
familiar terminology held the risk of lulling me into habitual
thinking processes. This led me to look for another way of
questioning my identity. It was then that I began asking, "How
is the experiencing of anything possible?" and "How do I
know that I am?"

Gary Merrill ConsciousnessIsAll@yahoogroups.com

The where, why, who, and when

These can be looked at as variations on the same general
question. The quest for an answer. Reversing this process
we can say that the answer is in the question, doesn't exist
outside of the question. This question being always based
on a story. The question can't exist without a story to back it
up.
____________

Apperception

The idea of apperception comes up a lot, Ramesh uses it a
lot. No one ever seems to be quite clear about it.

I'd say perception is consciousness of an object by a
subject, then apperception is consciousness without such
subject/object reference.

This points to perception being time based, to an
understanding of what has gone before. Apperception being
perception just as it is, without any interpretation of the fact.

One can say that in these dialogues we indulge in
perception, in knowing the way of things, in understanding.
Whereas actually this is just story world and right now I can't
be apart from myself or anything and can't understand, not
without reference.

John Metzger NondualitySalon@yahoogroups.com

Brother Void salon.com

"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has
learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." --
Michel de Montaigne

Death is too important to be left to the end of life. Better to
face death now while you can still enjoy what it has to offer.
Fortunately, there are several ways to do this, and there's a
special outfit for each encounter. In jeans, chartreuse
windbreaker and parachute, you can dangle your legs out
the doorway of an old prop plane and push yourself into
oblivion. In fatigues and helmet, you can endure the daily
routine of terror and courage until death is an easy friend.
Sitting silently in a loose-fitting black meditation robe, you
can follow your inner corpse to its ultimate ego-annihilating
epiphany.

Maybe you shy away from these encounters. "I can't face the
truth," you say. "It's too intense. I'd like to have a destiny, but
not just yet." To find your resolve, remember what's at stake.
If you push death away, you'll be plagued by the nagging
dread of oblivion deferred. But when you face death now,
you avoid the long wait in the chamber of fear. You turn the
tables. No longer the hunted, you become the hunter. In this
way you get a head start on your destiny.

Once I learn to die, I can get on with my life.

Nisargadatta

I Am That: Talks With Sri Nisargadatta by Nisargadatta
Maharaj, Sudhaker S. Dikshit (Editor), Maurice Frydman

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and
light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of
all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles
will cause reality to rush in. (p260)

Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you
must know the knower. So far, you took the mind for the
knower, but it is not so. The mind clogs you up with images
and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take
remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever
fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you
know what you are, you also are what you know. Between
knowing and being there is no gap. (p520)

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do
this one thing thoroughly. That is all. (p197)

"You are like the point of the pencil - by mere contact with
you the mind draws its picture of the world. You are single
and simple - the picture is complex and extensive. Don't be
misled by the picture - remain aware of the tiny point - which
is everywhere in the picture."

top of page