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Issue #1279 - Thursday, November 5, 2002 - Edited by Jerry
Emanuel Martinez <http://www.webpan.com/emanuel/
The meaning of life is to see.
~ Hui Neng
(from Joseph Riley, Panhala)
_____________________________________________________________________
from The Other Syntax
"A warrior could be injured but not offended. For a warrior
there
is nothing offensive about the acts of his fellow men as long as
he himself is acting within the proper mood."
Journey To Ixtlan,
Carlos Castaneda
Warriors, bronze, 18", Emanuel
Martinez http://www.webpan.com/emanuel/
_________________________________________________________________________
RAM CHANDRAN
Advaitin
Namaste:
I find this introductory paragraph of the book is an excellent
summary of An Advaitic Explanation of Dreams!
Instead of dreaming about dreams, we should learn to accept and
convert the present world as heaven instead of treating it as
hell!
regards,
Ram Chandran
----------------------
Title of the Book: What is Spiritual Freedom Author: Harold Klemp
"You can make your heaven here and now. The more you
understand
this, the greater your spiritual freedom. Imagine you're locked
in a tiny, dark room. Feeling sad and alone, you lie down on the
floor. Then you have a dream. In the dream you're visiting with a
friendly stranger. His face is pleasant, familiar. He explains
you've made this room of problems for yourself. You shut and
locked the door when you started pushing against these problems.
However, he says you can get to the spiritual root of your
problems. The door can be unlocked and opened from the inside -
if
you know the secret.
"When you awaken, you see he is right. You unlock the door,
pull it
toward you, and step out... "
Viuda, oil, 24"x30",
Emanuel Martinez <http://www.webpan.com/emanuel/
_____________________________________________________________
STANLEY SOBOTTKA
from The Course in Consciousness
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/
Chapter 16.
Love seeking Itself
(updated Nov. 1, 2002)
Most religions and spiritualities teach the value, power, and
necessity of love. What is the role of love in Advaita? In order
to answer this question, one must distinguish between what the
world thinks is love, and what Love really is as seen by the
jnani
(the sage). According to the jnani, Love is a term which can be
used to describe Consciousness expressing itself as the
manifestation. In enlightenment, this is seen directly (see
Chapter 25).
Ramesh has said, "The presence of separation is the absence
of
love, and the presence of love is the absence of
separation". In
the meditation for January 13 in A Net of Jewels (1997), he says,
"It is only when you arrive at the deepest conviction that
the same
life flows through everything, and that you ARE that life, that
you
can begin to love naturally and spontaneously" and in the
meditation for June 26, he says, "Love, not as an expression
of
separateness based on emotion, but as compassion, is that which
holds the world together in Unicity. In Unicity we do not love
others we ARE them." In From Seekers to Finders (2000),
Satyam
Nadeen says, "....my only definition of love is embracing
whatever
is, just as it is, and only because it is---without conditions
that
it be other than what it is". In As It Is (2000), Tony
Parsons
says, "All and everything emanates from silence and
unconditional
love." In The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1992) by
Robert
Powell, Nisargadatta Maharaj is quoted as saying, "When all
the
false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is
all-embracing love."
Those who still see themselves as individuals are usually unaware
of the transcendental love which even they are part of. Religion
sometimes points to it, but since it is not a concept or rule of
behavior, it cannot be packaged in a doctrine and taught.
How is transcendental love different from worldly love?
Transcendental love is always unconditional since it recognizes
no
change, and it is impersonal since it recognizes no person. It
transcends all objects so it cannot be directed towards any
object.
On the other hand, since the perception of separation is the
distinguishing feature of ignorance, worldly love is always
dualistic, and hence is based on the desire-fear polarity. It is
highly personal and can take the form of pleasure, completeness,
joy, desire, loneliness, jealousy, possession, guilt,
responsibility, need, identification, subjugation, or surrender.
It
is emotion or sentiment felt while perceiving separation and is
thus in a different realm from transcendental love. However,
since
transcendental love is the background of everything in
manifestation, even worldly love partakes of it while remaining
largely unaware of it.
Personal love relationships have also been called special
relationships because they occur only between specific people in
special circumstances. They are conditional and changing, but all
are a form of bondage because they are always infected by power
struggles (see Sections 11.3 and 11.4) and are invariably
guilt-ridden (see Section 11.5). Furthermore, because they are
barter relationships, they depend on the mutual satisfaction of
expectations and demands. When these are met, there is temporary
gratification, gratitude, and enhanced self-esteem, but when they
are ignored or refused, there is dismay, rejection, and guilt.
Because barter relationships can survive only as long as each
side
has, and is willing to give, something the other wants, many
personal love relationships end in disillusion. Others, after a
long period of partly met and partly disappointed expectations,
settle down to resigned acceptance (not true acceptance, see
Chapters 19 and 24). Still others, after surviving their initial
specialness, approach the unconditional nature of transcendental
love.
In romantic love, especially as reflected in popular culture, the
much sought "soul mate" is the perceived missing half
of a
perceived duality ("opposites attract"). Ironically,
when the soul
mate is finally found and possessed, the ego feels even more
needy
and incomplete. (Here, we shall speak as though the ego exists,
while knowing that it does not.) It fears the loss of both the
other and itself. Guilt is seen as a necessary part of this
"love",
both for its intensity ("love hurts"), and as a tool to
manipulate
the other ("if you really loved me you would.......").
So as not to
lose the other, the ego may become neurotically dependent
("I can't
live without you") or remorseful ("please forgive
me"), or make
promises ("I'll never do it again"). And it may try to
regain its
lost self-esteem by inducing jealousy ("if you don't love
me, I'll
find somebody who will") or by belittling ("without me
you would be
nothing").
A more exalted form of worldly love is identification with an
object or person. This can occur in marital and familial
relationships. It can also occur in bhakti, the practice of
devotion and surrender to God or to a guru, which we shall
discuss
in Chapter 19. In identification with another, separation tends
to
vanish. When it extends to the entire human race, it becomes the
universal love that was taught as a spiritual practice by Jesus.
Identification with another is perhaps as close as we can come to
transcendental love while still retaining a belief in separation.
Because intuition is the link between separation and wholeness,
it
is intuition that gives us a sense of transcendental love even
within the illusion of separation.
Identification with another may be a result of nonlocality of
mind,
defined in Section 14.2. The feeling of closeness and identity
that
exists between many people may be more real than they suspect
because two or more minds may actually overlap if their subtle
bodies overlap, as was suggested in Section 14.2. Those who are
able to sense auras can easily sense when one person’s aura
expands
to include another person’s. A very common experience among
spiritual seekers is the feeling of peace and serenity that
prevails in an ashram or other gathering of seekers. This
experience is especially striking when one is enveloped in the
aura
of a powerful yogi like Master Charles of the Synchronicity
Foundation. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental
Meditation, has elevated it into a guiding principle, which he
calls the "Maharishi Effect". This states that, when a
group of
people are meditating together, they create a harmonious,
tranquil
influence that is felt not only by the meditators, but also by
anybody else in their vicinity. He has even formulated it into a
quantitative principle by stating that the number of people whose
mental states are harmonized by a group of people meditating is
equal to one hundred times the square of the number of people
meditating.
Some spiritual teachers (e.g., Gangaji) speak of a single,
profound
experience of awakening that occurred while they were in the
presence of their master. They call this phenomenon
"transmission",
and it might result from the overlap of subtle bodies discussed
in
the previous paragraph (see also Section 18.4). Other teachers
say
it happens more gradually over time. Ramesh has called it
"magic",
and some teachers (e.g., Francis Lucille) at times call it the
"direct path", but this is only one form of the direct
path (see
Section 22.3).
In his 1993 book, The Self-Aware Universe, Amit
Goswami has
suggested that, if the brain has a quantum part, nonlocal mind
might be an effect of a Bell-Aspect type of correlation (see
Section 4.3). From this we might speculate that, if two people
are
initially in substantial mental agreement or alignment when they
are in close proximity, their quantum brains might overlap, and a
correlation might be established that could persist even if they
become separated by large distances. Perhaps this correlation
would
then be experienced as love.
Love, whether worldly or transcendental, always includes
acceptance. Acceptance of Totality as it is in every moment is
one
of the characteristics of whole mind, as we shall see in Chapter
19. Even in split mind, the more acceptance there is, the less
separation and the more love (see Chapter 24).
Ardent transcendental love can be present even while the
perception
of separation still exists. An example is the all-encompassing
love
for Truth by the Truth seeker (see Section 17.3). This is Love
seeking Itself. (See Chapter 25 for a discussion of Love finding
Itself).
____________________________________________________________________________
MICHAEL READ
NDS
A pastor was giving the children's message during church. For
this
part of the service, he would gather all the children around him
and give a brief lesson before dismissing them for children's
church. On this particular Sunday, he was using squirrels for an
object lesson on industry and preparation. He started out by
saying, 'I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise
your hand when you know what it is.' The children nodded eagerly.
'This thing lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)...' No
hands went up. 'And it is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail
(pause)...' The children were looking at each other, but still no
hands raised. 'And it jumps from branch to branch (pause) and
chatters and flips its tail when it's excited (pause)...'
Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor
breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. 'Well...,' said the
boy, 'I *know* the answer must be Jesus...but is sure sounds like
a squirrel to me!'