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ANDREW MACNAB

There's life as we know it, experience it, mortal,
temporal, life and death life. Relative life. About time.
Then there's a notion of absolute life, of a living goddess
or god, of reality as alive. Words and thoughts seem to
fall into some kind of black hole when I try to approach
this by intellect. I disappear. It seems forever unknown
either by presence or abscence. How hard it is to forget
everything I've learned about this from culture and
scripture and holy people and try to understand for myself
from a blank empty place.

DAN BERKOW

The words of the past, the words spoken by others,
by myself in memory: such words will not suffice.

I speak a new Word, an unknown Word.
A Word unknowable by me, a Word that
knows itself by speaking Itself
through me.
This Word has used me as a butterfly
uses a cocoon. It is my time
to be discarded. There is joy.

Word speaking itself as an
imploding explosion.
Constant newness without change:
no one there to comment.

This Word is electric and more.
It conducts itself without moving.

Life!

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XAN AND JAN

XAN: Whether one is the puppet of the grace of instant and
permanent samadhi, or the puppet of the grace of gradual
deepening of awakening awareness .... Who deserves credit
for catalyzing discovery of eternal happiness, and who is
blamed for nightmares of suffering? Who is doing this?

I am the holy hand within the glove-with-eyes of body, mind
and soul that is this so-called me.

JAN: The joke is that what looks like instant nirvana from
one perspective is gradual awakening from another. The
analogy with waking up at dawn, observing the birds
starting to sing and the sun rising or, waking up at noon
and being blinded by the blazing light of the sun. Or
waking up at sunset, enjoying that and going through the
suffering of a dark night... From yet another perspective
the sun neither rises nor sets, analogous to "there is no
one awakening".

The mind-body is able to function perfectly without any
sense of "me": from the perspective "as above, so below"
there isn't a "Me" either. As there are as many
perspectives as there are events, take your pick, but
nothing is really happening as unconditional happiness
leaves no room for desires nor for memory. When
identifying, identify with happiness or love: as you
meditate, so you become.

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JAN BARENDRECHT

I was quite relaxed "before" and became somewhat tense,
after realizing to have been overlooking the most obvious
for twenty-five years :) How could such an enormous
stupidity have lasted for so long.... All "normal" thoughts
and feelings from one moment to another changed into pesky
intruders and I started to ponder how to change that... not
without success, only to discover that some unknown process
started and was going on auto-pilot with an incredible
speed which can be read in more on:
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/umbada/jb.htm Relief came when
experiences ended which isn't the same as physical death :)

...

...a story of (discovery of) true happiness and love is
more inspiring than anything else. No lecture could have
conveyed a pointer to the girls working at the supermarket
where I regularly buy a drink. They were baffled by the
speed with which I ascend the stairs and said that no
youth, not even even a sportsman, could do that and wanted
to know the secret :) Who said that the body is worthless
as a pointer?:)

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JERRY AND MANCHINE

JERRY: This may not be the answer that's blowing in the
wind, but it's something that's in my mind:

Death is like deep sleep. Life is the awakening from that
sleep or the potential to awaken. 'Reality' is neither life
nor death, neither deep sleep nor awakening from sleep.
It's the atmosphere in which that cycle appears to occur.

MANCHINE: It's a small point, but death seems to be the
transition from being consciously separate to being one.

It's most probable that the state of oneness is more like
"reality" once we are gone, than when we are here....

Not necesarily becasue we go back to something, but because
it is less influenced by our opinion.

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NEO: ACIM

LESSON 7.

I see only the past. W-7.1. This idea is particularly
difficult to believe at first. 2 Yet it is the rationale
for all of the preceding ones. 3 It is the reason why
nothing that you see means anything. 4 It is the reason why
you have given everything you see all the meaning that it
has for you. 5 It is the reason why you do not understand
anything you see. 6 It is the reason why your thoughts do
not mean anything, and why they are like the things you
see. 7 It is the reason why you are never upset for the
reason you think. 8 It is the reason why you are upset
because you see something that is not there.

W-7.2. Old ideas about time are very difficult to change,
because everything you believe is rooted in time, and
depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. 2
Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. 3
This first time idea is not really so strange as it may
sound at first.

W-7.3. Look at a cup, for example. 2 Do you see a cup, or
are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking
up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the
rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on?
3 Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based
on past experiences? 4 How else would you know whether or
not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? 5 What do
you know about this cup except what you learned in the
past? 6 You would have no idea what this cup is, except for
your past learning. 7 Do you, then, really see it?

W-7.4. Look about you. 2 This is equally true of whatever
you look at. 3 Acknowledge this by applying the idea for
today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye.

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MELODY:Once you discover that God himself is hidden in
breath, you have come to know yourself.

GLORIA:

"In the beginning...the spirit (breath) of god moved upon
the face of the water."

The "breath" of our planet is more than just the air that
we breathe. The thin skin of atmosphere which made possible
the beginning of all forms of life on earth was first
created by one-celled bacteria in the oceans which
breakdown and release oxygen into the air. They are such
tiny and invisible one-celled organisms that their presence
was only known by the fact of their necessity to account
still for the amount of oxygen replenishing the air.
Recently, their DNA has been detected in analysis of deep
ocean waters where no other life forms can exist. What they
are made of and how they do what they do and what sustains
their life is still a mystery, but without them there could
be no life on earth. So yes, the breath of all life does
indeed come from the waters.

Loving the poetry of science as much as the poetry of
religion,

Gloria

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MELODY CONTRIBUTES:

from Osho: Tao: The Three Treasures, Volume 4, Chapter
9......

"It is said that God created Adam but Adam was dead. Then
God breathed in him and he became alive.

The same story is told in many creation myths all over the
world: Christian, Hindu, Jewish and many others.

The story seems to be very significant. The meaning is that
when you breathe, you don't breathe, God breathes in you.
The whole breathes in you. This has to be understood very
deeply because the whole method of Tao, the whole science
of Yoga, depends on breath.

The breath is the most important thing. With it life starts
and with it life ends. It is the most mysterious thing;
without it there is no possibility of life.

Life seems just a shadow of breath. When breath disappears,
life disappears. So this phenomenon of breathing has to be
understood.

Every child born is not really alive until he breathes. He
has just a few moments left. If he breathes after the
birth, in those few moments life enters. If he does not
breathe he will remain dead.

Those first few moments of life are the most important. The
doctors, the parents, all become concerned when a child is
born. Will he breathe? Will he cry and start breathing? Or
will he remain dead? Again, as in all the myths created, in
every man Adam is born again.

The child cannot breathe on his own. To expect that is
impossible because the child does not know how to breathe,
nobody has taught him. This is going to be his first act,
so this cannot be his act.

Let me repeat it: This is going to be his first and the
most significant act -- that's why it cannot be his act. If
God does it -- okay; if God is not willing -- finished.

The whole has to breathe in him, that's why those few
moments are full with suspense, doubt, apprehension, fear
-- because both possibilities are still open. The child can
remain dead. Then nothing can be done. The child cannot do
anything, the parents cannot do anything, the doctors
cannot do anything; humanity is helpless. It is up to the
whole.

Only prayer can be done. We can only wait in deep prayer.
If the whole moves into the child, the child becomes alive,
otherwise not.

This first breath is taken by the whole. And if the first
breath is taken by the whole then everything else which
depends on breathing cannot be your act. If you think you
are breathing then you have taken a very wrong step. And
because of this wrong step ego will be created. Ego is
accumulated ignorance.

You missed. You have not been breathing, the whole has
breathed into you, but you have taken it as if you are
breathing.

The first act of breath bridges you with the whole, makes
you one with the whole, and all that follows will not be
your activity; all that is going to happen after this first
breath till you die, till the last breath, is going to be
the activity of the whole. The whole will live within you.

You can think that you are doing all those things -- then
you live in ignorance. If you become aware that the whole
is doing everything, you are being possessed by the whole,
breathed by it, you are just a hollow bamboo, a flute, the
sound comes from the whole, the whole life comes from it --
then you live a life of enlightenment.

This is the only difference between ignorance and
enlightenment.

One step in error, that: "I have done it!" -- and the whole
journey goes wrong. One step right, that: "The whole has
been doing it in me, I am not the doer, I am just the field
of his play, a flute of his songs, a reed, nothing more, an
emptiness in which he flows, moves, lives!" -- then you
live a totally different life, a life of light and bliss.

[] Once you discover that God himself is hidden in breath,
you have come to know yourself. That's why there is so much
insistence and so much search in yoga, Tao and tantra about
breathing. If you simply go on breathing and thinking that
this is just air coming in and going out you will never be
able to penetrate the mystery of it. And you will remain
completely oblivious of yourself. Then you will remain
rooted in the body. You will never be able to know that
which goes beyond the body, that which is within but yet
beyond, that which is hidden in the body but not obstructed
by the body, not limited by the body. A beyond within.

In each breath that life has to be discovered.

Yoga calls those methods pranayama. The word pranayama
means expansion of life. One has to expand life to infinity
in each breath.

Buddha has called his own methods of discovering the
innermost core of breath anapana-sati yoga: the yoga, the
science, of incoming and outgoing breath; and Buddha has
said no other yoga is needed. If you can deeply watch your
own breathing, and watch so meditatively that anything that
is hidden in the breath does not remain hidden but becomes
revealed, you will come to know all.

That looks simple, but it is difficult.

Buddha said to his monks: "Sitting, walking, standing,
whatsoever you are doing, go on doing these things, but let
your consciousness be aware of the breath coming in, going
out. Go on looking at your own breath -- one day with the
very continuous hammering on the breath, the temple opens."

The God is hidden in the temple of the breath. Suddenly one
day you become aware that it is not just air. If for you it
is just air, you have a scientific mind but you don't have
the awareness which can reveal the innermost core of it.
Then you can analyze and come to know how much oxygen is
needed, how much hydrogen, how much nitrogen, how much
carbon dioxide, and you can go on playing with the body of
the breath -- but you missed the innermost real phenomenon.

That's why, if a man is dead, you can give him, pump into
him, the right proportion of oxygen, but he will not be
alive.

Unless God breathes in it, unless it contains the innermost
consciousness of the whole, it is a dead breath. Oxygen
will pass through the lungs -- nothing will happen."

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