POETRY and SPIRITUALITY A One Year set of Course teachings
POETRY and SPIRITUALITY A One Year set of Course teachings
Ver 1 22nd April 2023
Introduction: These One Year sets of teachings are the product of research for
more than 500 half-day seminars, and
decades of questing to find the
deepest and clearest teachings that have the characteristics of being
whole-person and which deal with
mystical experience in an irrevocably
inter-spiritual context and which also have a
‘dual-Non Dual’ perspective
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The poets and and teachers of the spiritual below are of the best;
Mary Oliver: Great Souls, Great Prayers
Mary Oliver – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mary+Oliver
Coleman Barks: Rumi, Grace, And Human Friendship
Mary Oliver — Listening to the World
Ram Dass x Alan Watts: The Spiritual Pendulum
Alan Watts – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+watts
Louise Gluck – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Gl%C3%BCck
RP PhD – https://sunwalkmodelofholisticeducation.wordpress.com/
Ram Dass – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Ram+Dass
Ram Dass – Addiction and Attachment
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What is true meditation?
Children meditating in school – WIKIPEDIA
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All the actions that people call meditation are really just warm ups as athletes do before a race.
Meditation consists of two wings.
The first is the state silence.
The second is to be silent.
With silence and stillness we can fly up into the ineffable Nondual
and we also experience the material dual world as a myriad of
radiant pointers that all point us back to heaven aka the Nondual.
Salaam, Shalom, Shanti, Peace – Namaste.
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MY PREFERRED DEFINITION OF NAMASTE:
“I honor the place in you
in which the entire Universe dwells.
I honor the place in you which is of Love,
of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace.
When you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
we are One.”
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Landing Page
Welcome to my Landing Page
Roger
DrRogerEPrentice
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| https://sunwalked.wordpress.com/ | A | 162.159.153.4 Copy |
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We are all in the process of recovering our true Self
We are all in the process of recovering our true Self
Photo CopyRight Dr Roger E Prentice
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RUNNING LIST FOR NEW PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP
RUNNING LIST FOR NEW PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP
Ver 1 – 30thDec 2022
QUESTIONS that name a potential article
Q What is art photography
Q What is the distinctive Truth, Beauty and Goodness of Nick Turpin?
Q What is the distinctive Truth, Beauty and Goodness of Martin Parr
Q ………..
Q ……….
PEOPLE
Photographers – for example Nick Turpin, Martin Parr and ………
Aesthetes (Aficionados)
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THEORY OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY – largely matters of what is and what isn’t Street Photography
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PHILOSOPHY OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY – ways in which Street Photography
informs the human spirit
And
enforms the human spirit
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THE JOY OF BEING IN THE SPIRITUAL ONE GARDEN — A COURSE: PART 1
‘One Garden’
‘One Garden’ — The Inter-spiritual Way for our life journey
‘One Spiritual Garden’ — The Inter-spiritual Way for our life-journey
Introduction for newcomers Part 1
WikiPedia — source details
Imagine a beautiful garden in which people of all cultural backgrounds & beliefs found themselves networked by a spirit of unity, as well as representing diverse origins, & walking together along an inter-spiritual path
This article of questions & answers is from a decades-long experiment in which we have listened to more than 70 spiritual teachers whose teachings point to one thing, Oneness.
That Oneness can be seen at several levels. Those levels include;
the personal integration of us as individuals,
the oneness of groups from families to our one human family globally and
oneness from which both this dual earthly material world makes its demands on us and the Non-dual realm into which we step every day, often without realizing it.
The Questions & Answers, practices — and examples from the great wisdom traditions
Q What are the great wisdom traditions?
We honour all the authentic traditions; as in the Golden Rule. poster from Scarboro missions in Canada;
https://www.scarboromissions.ca/golden-rule/golden-rule-across-the-worlds-religions
Q Which of the teachers do you find most helpful?
There are quite a number. They include; Rumi, Eckhart Tolle, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Joan Tollifson, Adi Shankara, Wayne Teasdale and Iain McGilchrist.
Joan Tollifson’s site is here — https://www.joantollifson.com/. All the rest have reasonably reliable pages on WikiPedia.
Q What about the Messengers or Manifestations of God?
Yes they are at the heart centre. Their lives and teachings are each and all, progressively the ‘primal point’ that links earth and heaven.
Out of no disrespect for others, just because of limits of time and energy we focus on seven. In reverse alphabetical order they are; Taoism, Sufism, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Baha’i.
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Q In One Garden do you have to have a physical garden in which to sit?
It’s very pleasant to have that experience, most towns have one or more formal gardens, but it’s not really necessary.
Q Why?
Because One Garden refers primarily to a state of being
All who realize or sense the Oneness, are already ‘members’ .
They might already have been seeking such companionship and acting in service to others.
To adapt the simplicity that the Baha’is use To be a One Garden person simply means to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.
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Welcome then to the ‘One Garden’ project and to the ‘inter-spiritual way’.
Another apt metaphor is that the truth, beauty and goodness of reality is like a mountain which has ‘many paths but one summit’.
In a later article I will write about ‘how to build a spiritual One Garden group in a village near you’.
Q So there’s us, teachers, sages and saints and Messengers/ Manifestations of God?
Yes.
Yet another metaphor is to say ‘many gate-keepers pointing to the One Garden’.
You can be born into a religion and yet realize the Oneness and the inter-spiritual way.
The inter-spiritual Way is the same as Taoism’s ‘Way’.
I take ‘Universalism’ and ‘interfaith Inter-spirituality’ as the mystical core that unites all great faith traditions — along with its philosophical framework known as Perennial Philosophy.
Fundamentalists always try to claim exclusivity for their understanding of their group. This they use to persecute other groups and minorities in their own group
I also here suggest the idea of ‘spiritual federalism’ — a framework for humanists, agnostics, theists & all people of good-will to explore the realization of a universal heart-mind and an inclusive world-view.
Q But what does all this mean as experiences for individuals?
Here’s a re-creation of the essential experience of the Non-dual state by the 8th Century Chinese poet Li Po
“The birds have vanished from the sky,
and now the last clouds slip away.
We sit alone, the mountain and I,
until only the mountain remains.”
This short account creates the experience of stepping out of the dual, material realm into the Non-dual which is timeless, spaceless and massless, rather like being in a flotation, sensory-deprivation tank.
The Li Po piece, or even such a sensory-deprivation tank is ‘it’, as opposed to just talking about ‘it’.
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One version of the ultimate summary is: Awaken to reality; detach from the egoic self; serve others.
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HERE ARE SOME POINTERS
All is spirit — energy and matter interchange. Our inner life and the life of the universe are a complex of energy systems.
Spirit is life-force. Life-force is ‘chi’ as in ‘tai-chi’.
The oneness derives from systems at three levels; physical energy at the body level, intellectual level at the mind level, consciousness at the spiritual level.
I take the soul level to be the interchange between us as egoic individuals and ultimate Reality’s ‘I = Awareness’
Spiritualization is refinement of the human spirit, and integration of the physical, intellectual and soul levels.
The purpose of spiritualization is moral action, understanding & the realisation of joy.
Art is spirit en-formed.
An aesthetic experience is form dis-enformed back into spirit. Everyday Non-dual experience can be, a child’s smile, a beautiful landscape or the ‘being taken out of your self’ by a work of art in a gallery, or a theatre or TV.
Religions are simply forms for the flow of spirit — unfortunately most are more or less corrupted by man-made accretions — light is light in whatever lamp but some lamps are given dark shades by men!
The true and universal heart of spirituality is mystical experience
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Mystical knowledge is the heart-knowing we receive via at-one-ment.
We call these insights, en-light-en-ment, or satori etc.
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At-one-ment improves as we subject ourselves to appropriate disciplines of practice.
Q. How?
We can start with the profoundly simple practices given by Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hahn
‘Smile: breathe: go slowly’ — to respond to the ‘simple’ challenge’ of ‘Awaken; Detach: Serve’.
Even simpler: don’t say any words, just slowly breathe in and out for as long as seems appropriate. True meditation is in stillness and silence
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Q. Why do you make so much of the Chinese Li Po ‘poem’ on the page above?
A. It demonstrates mystical experience — the experience of ‘oneness with the universe’ or ‘Ultimate Reality, the experience of ‘no-self’.
Q. So where’s my ‘self’ gone in such an experience?
For the timeless duration of the oneness experience you have forgotten your self!
Upon returning to the dual, material realm we can have a kind of knowing and knowledge called Gnostic in ancient Greek, or Ma’rifa in Sufism.
This is not part of Non-dual experience. There is no you to have the experience. That’s why ultimate Reality is ‘I = Awareness’
For what is accepted by most people as normal everyday life reality is in fact fake reality. It can be poor or even hellish.
There is often turmoil when you have nothing but your normal ego-self.
The frenetic yelps and screams of the ego-self can be like a manic radio jumping from station to station — ‘Oh God why did I do that?’, ‘Why did she let me down again?’, ‘I thought if I loved him enough he would change!’, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’, ‘It’ll never work!’, and so on and so on goes the torturous voice of the ego-self.
Q. How can I get away from all of this inner turmoil?
Drugs and alcohol work well for many people. Of course they are massively destructive as well.
However there is a way that isn’t personally or socially destructive. It is to use the wisdom as taught by all of the great teachers and sages down through the ages. They show us how to deal with the world, and how to deal with our inner suffering that the egoic-self brings, and how to maintain the sense of unitive ‘presence’.
By presence I mean our sensing of the Whole, and its Wonder-full and Awe-inspiring Mystery, an experience we get when we take succour from the treasure of our spiritual heritages.
Q. Why do you keep saying ‘sense’ — ‘sense the Whole’ or’ Ultimate Reality’
Because it isn’t a mind thing. Eckhart Tolle says at the beginning of his book Stillness Speaks: ‘Lost in thought — the human condition’. The mind, our greatest gift, can also be our enemy when there is nothing but mind — in the sense of the self-induced suffering that comes from the egoic-self.
This suffering Tolle calls the ‘The pain-body’
Tolle begins a description of this locked-in pain with,
As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This, of course, includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born.
A key to release is,
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We finite beings cannot comprehend the In-finite
We are finite. We cannot embrace the Whole anymore than we can embrace the physical sun.
But we can know of it — we can sense its presence, when we have sufficiently quietened the clamour of the egoic self.
In theistic terms the finite human cannot approach on equal terms the infinite God.
It stands to reason. We cannot embrace the physical sun.
We cannot have direct intercourse with the infinite God. But we can feel the warmth of God’s love and learn to see by the light of God’s love — and we do that experientially, not via book-learning.
But books are the records of the teachers who have gone before — to supplement and amplify and verify and qualify and justify the conclusions we come to from our own sensing, our own experiences.
In our concept-driven world we have lost one half of our being, one half of our way of knowing — the sensing of the Whole. We are struggling to get back this lost half of ourselves. Some people refer to this restoration as re-sacralizing the world, and ourselves. Another way to describe it is the restoration of heart-knowing, of wholism, of the feminine principle, of yang with yin etc.
One interesting way of explaining this is to consider Greek terms such as biology, geology, zoology. They originally meant, to give one example, the study of plants ‘bio’ — as part of the Whole, ‘ology’.
We have lost, and need to recover, our ‘ology’!
From that time when we started to get the benefits of powerful reason and science we started forgetting the ‘ology’. The approach to the ology part of any class of the world was always a matter of reverence, or Awe and Wonder — because the Whole is inevitably a very large amount of phenomenon as compared to the little bits we know!
But of course we are talking about the inner landscape of consciousness, not just the physical universe. It is via the nature and quality of the inner landscape that we are truly human — or monstrous.
The great Jewish poet-Mystic-activist Abraham Joshua Heschel summed up this unbalanced dependence on mind, and corresponding neglect of the Whole, in two beautiful ways.
First he said;
“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement”
Secondly he taught;
“The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions.
We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.
Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another.
Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.”
From Man is not alone: a philosophy of religion by Abraham Joshua Heschel.
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The thing, more correctly the no-thing, about the Whole or Mystery, is essential to a full understanding of Reality. In that respect it is like the need of yang for yin or vice versa.
All we can do if we don’t prepare, through practices, for experiences of transcendence is to pretend that the Non-dual is not existent. We have to deny not just whatever is beyond the furthest stars but also all the potential within the heart of being human.
Everything we know, not just scientifically but morally and artistically was once part of Mystery, part of the Whole as potential. Not every discovery was an invention. The process of discovery is more a process of manifestation than of assembling a box of spare parts. Insights are not add-on spare parts!
The reason that insights are not add-ons is that people at different times and places reveal the same insights. This shows that such insights are potentialities within human beings, waiting to be manifested. The presentation of the Golden Rule is a better example than say the discovery of photography.
Moral truth or spiritual insight are manifested within the consciousness of the individual. They are not book-learning. Such experiences range from a blink of being relieved of the burden of self to experiences of such power and intensity that the existing self is demolished and decades are needed to process the experience. Eckhart Tolle’s description of his self ‘demolition’ is an example.
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The mystical experience is a sensing of the Whole through a temporary laying down of the noisy dominance of the egoic self. Its episodes are out of time. We inevitably return to the temp-orary. As we shall see we sense the presence of the Whole and can gradually come to bring that sensing it to all of our experiencing and reading of the world, including the reading of our own selves.
Q What if I’ve never had such an experience?
You almost certainly have — though it might have been more like a blink than a five-act opera!
Most of us have become de-sensitized to this heart-knowing of the Whole.
Our wretched education system, and/or unenlightened parenting, socializes us out of balanced wholeness. It was Aristotle who gave us the basis of scientific classification by which we sort and label all the bits we see — camels and granite, cakes and fancy hats etc. Very useful but only half of our whole self. I will be attempting to show that Iain McGilchrist has shone more light than anyone on this imbalance that we have been living with, and the absolute need for a reversal — see HERE
The ‘thingy world’ and the ‘non-thingy world’
Tolle points out that our education can remove us from the oneness we’ve experienced previously — in the womb, given a healthy and loving gestation.
In answer to a question on one of his audio talks, he points out that as soon as a child is given a label such as , ‘That’s an oak tree’, the child will never truly see that particular object with the eye of wholeness again.
Perhaps he got that insight from Ludwig Wittgenstein because Wittgenstein said the same.
I call this de-holizing ‘progressive it-ifi-cation’.
The most extreme and horrific such labeling in history was the labeling of Jews, gypsies, and the mentally handicapped as sub-human by the Naziis.
For the child, we need to speak in such a way that keeps the mystery alive.
“See how the light shines through and makes patterns with the leaves,’, ‘I wonder how many creatures the oak tree is a home for,’, ‘Why in England is the oak tree so important for people,’ etc.
When we see knowledge as labelling we narrow the ‘isness’ of the object — its wonder and magic as part of the Whole is erased and the child can no longer read the beauty of objects, most of which beauty comes from the object as being part of many networks of meaning in the Whole.
In One Garden teachings we walk the Inter-spiritual way with a sense of wonder.
Walking the One Garden Inter-spiritual Way
Physically there are a variety of beautiful gardens to enjoy and remind us of the spiritual One Garden;
WikiPedia — Cquest — Own work — SOURCE DETAILS
Art & Nature perfectly combined?
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This is the first of a series of articles about our spiritual One Garden but many of my earlier articles are relevant such as;
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The life-goal for all of us is;
I = Awareness
Arthur J. Deikman, 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, 401…
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A Taste of recent British humour
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MY PREFERRED and inspiring DEFINITION OF NAMASTE
MY PREFERRED and inspiring DEFINITION OF NAMASTE:
“I honor the place in you
in which the entire Universe dwells.
I honor the place in you which is of Love,
of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace.
When you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
we are One.”
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8 ways that India’s best kept secret can benefit us
Treasures & wisdom that can help us care for ourselves along the life-journey
A chuckle or a smile to start with I hope — Alan Watts says that we want to know that we know and he has a limerick for that;
“There once was a man who said,
though it seems that I know that I know,
what I’d like to see,
is the ‘I’ that sees me,
when I know that I know that I know.”
In this humorous poem Watts sums up the supreme truth I = Awareness
In the Hindu Advaita Vedanta, when translated from Sanskit to English,
We find these several meanings; the eternal self, spirit, essence, soul, or breath.
Atmat then is your true self as opposed to the ego; it is
that aspect of the self which becomes part of Brahman (the force underlying all things).
I teach that our being is taken up into Being as-a-Whole.
Many languages around the world have sanskrit roots. Here we see;
So Ātman is a Sanskrit word which refers to “essence, or breath.”
In Old High German atum it is “breath,”
In Modern German it is atmen “to breathe”Atem “respiration, breath”, in Old English it is eþian).
Ātman, then sometimes means “real Self” of the individual, her or his “innermost essence.”
While often translated as “soul,” it is best translated as “self”.
……..
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DJ teaches skills for better health
DJ teaches skills for better health
Fatboy Slim links up with the BBC to help boost people’s mental health
Fatboy Slim — “daniel m” — https://www.flickr.com/photos/dmnyc/217950325/
The UK is lucky to have its National Health Service — the NHS
Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook) has linked up with the NHS to help people with severe mental health problems.
He’s teaching DJ sessions, among other things to help boost people’s mental health.
Could similar generosity as Fatboy Slim’ work in other parts of the world?
The BBC’s Annabel Rackham and Jonathan Sumberg went to see Fatboy Slim teaching a session before he heads off to the Glastonbury festival.
Fatboy Slim DJ workshops to help mental health
Fatboy Slim might be about to head off to Glastonbury this week, but not before running a DJ workshop in his hometown…
Spread the word.
Find the other generous souls.
Find those who are in need.
You can hear a lot more of Fatboy Slim’s music and DJ-ing on YouTube.
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10 Reasons you might be experiencing a change of heart
10 Reasons you might be experiencing a change of heart
Are you one of the new light-houses showing others the way?
UnSplash — Evgeni Tcherkasski @evgenit
It only takes about 25 percent of us to stand up for an issue —
like stopping sexual harassment in the workplace.
Changes in us can indicate we are ready to help
Check below to see how many of the 10 indicators are going on in you —
drop me an email at onesummit (copy & paste into your email)
if you had any kind of similar experience
for example a near-death experience
so that I can improve the list.
1 You might be one of 25% of sensitive people
Such folk are called HSP Highly Sensitive people –
you might like to dip into this book;
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron Ph.D
2 If you are a Highly Sensitive Person
you will certainly have a high degree of empathy –
through which you sense other people’s pain.
3 You might be battling the effects
of negative experiences early in your life
including negative religious experiences.
4 SBNR You might be starting to feel that
you are spiritual but not religious.
5 You might feel increasing respect
for other traditions.
6 You might have ‘caught the accents’
of great teachers
such as Rumi,
“Earth turns to gold in the hands of the wise”
7 You might find that Music,
in languages, you don’t speak,
makes you weep.
8 You might feel you are experiencing SSAs
Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings.
These are subjective experiences
characterized by
a sudden sense of direct contact, union,
or complete nondual merging (experience of oneness)
with perceived ultimate reality,
the universe, “God,” or
what is your term for ultimate reality
the source etc.
9 You start to have insights that,
when you check them out,
you find have been taught by sages and great teachers
down through the ages.
10 You find yourself more and more upset
with racism, sexism
and all kinds of abuse, stereotyping, and exploitation of others.
My experience with all of these led me to understand
the spirit of this age –
in the German language, it is called ‘zeitgeist’.
What can trigger this inner process?
Answer — you receive a major kick up the backside
My kick was being told
11 years ago that
I had just 30 months to live.
What was the cure?
a massively increased sense of purpose
with which I focused on
all those activities that meant the most to me.
Purposelessness is poison
a worthy purpose can be healing and integrative.
It also led me to create
One Garden inter-spirit groups –
so far we have had more than 600 weekly half-day seminars.
There is so much suffering we can help with;
Summary and takeaway
This waking up energizes you.
You can feel the life-force flowing
through you more vigorously.
So be happy,
use the energy for creativity,
and sharing with others –
you are uplifting the honor of being an agent of change
as your light shines brighter
mirroring as it does
the zeitgeist — the new spirit
of today.
Let me know of your experiences — email me at onesummit — (copy & paste into your email)
so that I can improve this article.
You might enjoy other articles in this series………
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Sappho’s Moon and Pleiades
I love this series of Brief Poems. Thank’s so much for putting this series together. I am happy that I can share this set with the readers on my blog. Namaste – Roger
Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, near Asia Minor, around 650 BC. She was a contemporary of the poet Alcaeus. Little is known with certainty about her life. It seems she was born to an aristocratic family of wealth and that she had a brother named Larichus who, it seems, poured wine in a ceremonial manner in the town hall. It seems that she had a child named Cleis whom, it seems, she took with her into exile in Sicily during a period of political unrest. The appearance of so many “seems” in this paragraph attests to the uncertainty that continues to surround her reputation. What is certain, however, is that she was thought of as “The Tenth Muse” by Plato in one of his epigrams
Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!
Look, there’s Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth
and that she was so well known in Greek civilization that the city of Mytilene put her likeness…
View original post 1,670 more words
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Being in the Present Moment – in honour of the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh
Being in the Present Moment
"… go home to the present moment.
PHOTO – Duc (pixiduc) from Paris, France. – Thich Nhat Hanh Marche meditative 06
Q. What does Thich Nhat Hahn say about the practice of ‘returning home’ to the present moment?
“Breathing in, I calm body and mind.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is the only moment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
Three more teachings that help us to always return to Now, the present moment – 2 from TNH and 1 from Eckhart Tolle
1
For me this calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh works more like an affirmation
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2
Here the act of conscious breathing linked to the image of the sky & clouds is a perfect way to bring ourself back into the Now
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.
Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Stepping into Freedom: Rules of Monastic Practice for Novices
NB See if the lines reversed work better for you;
“Conscious breathing is my anchor.
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. ”
3
Eckhart Tolle
To return to he NOWness of the present moment ask yourself;
“Am I at ease in this moment?
&
– What can I witness that’s blocking me from
being in the Now, the present moment?
NB Three Realizations
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We slip out of the Now and into the a vicious circle of the past or into
anxiety about the future – which of course never comes. Life is only in the Now.
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As soon as you can witness those thoughts, feelings and sensations that take you out of Nowness you are on your way to managing returning to the Now at will.
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As soon as you realize you are not your thoughts, but that you can witness those thoughts, you can see that the real Self and Reality are infinite Awareness.
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Whether you call that The Source, Brahman, God, or another appropriate name you are Home.
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Staying in the Present Moment | Thich Nhat Hanh (short teaching video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiaxqGsyld8&t=322s
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Eknath Easwaren a great inter-spiritual teacher
WP
Eknath Easwaran was a professor of English literature at the University of Nagpur in India
In 1959 he came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught courses on meditation.
In 1961, Easwaran founded the Blue Mountain Centre of Meditation and Nilgiri Press, based in northern California. Nilgiri Press has published over thirty books that he authored.
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Get your portion of Eknath Easwaren’s Thought for the Day posts in your email inbox by signing up here https://www.bmcm.org/subscribe/
For the last day of 2021 Blue Mountain Meditation Centre posted this wonder-full passage from Saint Augustine
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Non-dual experience – Would you like to know the essence of Hindu Advaita Vedanta? Here it is in 6 verses by Adi Shankara
Heart is Thy Name, O Lord – "The supreme calling of every human being is to aspire to Self-realization. All other obligations are secondary" ~ Anandamayi Ma
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The great Hindu sage Adi Shankara of the eighth century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas.
When a young boy of eight, while wandering in the Himalayas, seeking to find his guru, he encountered a sage who asked him, "Who are you?"
The enlightened boy answered with 6 short verses – see below.
WP – Anandamayi Ma (née Nirmala Sundari; 30 April 1896 – 27 August 1982) was an Indian saint and yoga guru, described by Sivananda Saraswati (of the Divine Life Society) as "the most perfect flower the Indian soil has produced." …..
Paramahansa Yogananda translates the Sanskrit epithet Anandamayi as "Joy-permeated" in English. This name was given to her by her devotees in the 1920s to describe her perpetual state of divine joy.
The Youtube video is here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBduhdem3Os&t=9s
Chant performed by Deva Premal with Maneesh De Moor.
The great Hindu sage Adi Shankara of the eighth century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas.
When a young boy of eight, while wandering in the Himalayas, seeking to find his guru, he encountered a sage who asked him, "Who are you?"
The enlightened boy answered with these stanzas:
1. I am neither the mind, intellect, ego, nor memory.
I am neither the five sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue nor skin).
I am neither the five elements (earth, wind, fire, water nor ether).
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva.
2. I am neither energy, the five types of breath, the seven material essences, nor the five coverings.
I am not the organs of elimination (rectum), procreation (genitals), motion (legs), grasping (hands) nor speech (mouth).
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva.
3. I have neither hatred nor dislike, neither affiliation nor liking, neither greed nor delusion, neither pride nor haughtiness, neither feelings of envy nor jealousy.
I have neither duty, nor wealth, neither desire nor liberation.
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva.
4. I have neither merit, nor demerit.
I do not commit deeds bad nor good, I am neither happy nor sad, I have neither pain nor pleasure.
I do not need mantras, holy places, scriptures, rituals or sacrifices.
I am neither the seer nor the seen, neither the experiencer nor the experience.
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva.
5. I fear no death as I am deathless.
I have no separation of Self, nor doubt of my existence, I have no caste discrimination.
I have no father nor mother, I am not born.
I am no one’s relative, friend, guru, or disciple.
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva.
6. I am all-pervasive. I have no attributes, I am formless.
I have no world attachment, nor am I liberated.
I have no wish for anything as I am everything, everywhere, always, always in equilibrium.
I am consciousness-bliss, I am Shiva. -0-
These stanzas, are known as "Nirvana Shatakam" or "Atma Shatakam."
"Nirvana" is complete equanimity, peace, tranquility, freedom and joy. "Atma" is the True Self. -0-
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NB RP cf Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be -eeeeeeeeee – St. Patrick (based upon Psalm 46:10) –
NB Link HERE is to a whole range of YouTube videos & is not intended to suggest that I subscribe or value all.
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SEE ALSO – Find Some Time to Watch This because It WIll Help You For the Rest of Your Life 7 MIN SILENT VIDEO – Sri Ramana Maharshi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrtJnvHW2t4&t=269s
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SEE ALSO ‘I AM THAT"
I AM THAT – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj – Audiobook – Chapters 1-10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjoGzmwUn8U&t=2574s
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Mirroring Oneness in Baha’i Teachings
Mirroring Oneness in Baha’i Teachings
Photo credit Nick Harris on WikiPedia
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Who would you like to be with for eternity in the next world? A spouse, partner or friends – or Rumi perhaps?
“This is how I would die / into the love I have for you: /
As pieces of cloud / dissolve in sunlight.” – Rumi
Or perhaps Socrates, Shakespeare or another person – a grand-mother perhaps, who taught you about being truth, goodness, beauty-creating and justice?
At the heart-centre of all of our longings is the longing for ‘at-one-ment’, i.e. atonement.
Happiness and fulfilment rest in ‘being at-one’. It is the summit.
The deep mystical reality, is to be at-one with the unknowable Mystery of the Whole. For some God is Ultimate Being and the ‘ground of all being’. For others God is a personal God.
The summit of at-one-ment strengthens our ability to be at-one with closer levels of relationship such as with our partner or friends.
Each of the first six papers in the first stage of this series suggested that mirroring exists within and between the great Traditions Sufism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity. I chose three ‘religions’ from each of the two lines of prophets – the Semitic and the Aryan. Others are equally valid but the 6 more suffices in my teaching work – enveloped by my own community’s Baha’i teachings.
Inter-spiritually mirroring exists as a self-appraisal as well as between the Founders as Perfect Mirrors of the great Traditions.
Oneness is the summit. There are many paths to realizing Oneness.
All of the paths below are experiential ways that can take us there. The steps are sequenced differently depending on the make-up and personal history of each individual.
Spirit flows unless temporarily blocked. We witness spirit forming and transforming – in ‘the world’, in others and most importantly in ourselves. The human spirit I take to be the reality behind human consciousness.
1 Good parents and teachers strive to enable us to raise up our consciousness. Such consciousness is not just the absence of concussion or a coma!
2 In the great religions the true, real, mystical heart-centre teachings overwhelmingly One. Baha’u’llah of His own religion said, ‘This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.’. – (The Kitáb-i-Aqdas)
When we have self-knowledge we recognise those teachings as our own heart-centre.
3 To counterbalance the experiential, and avoid the diseases of exclusivity and fundamentalism, we need at least a ‘Nutshell theology’. Mine’s very simple. ‘There is One God, One Holy Spirit, there’s just one human family and an unending series of Prophet-founders, aka Messengers or Manifestations.’
The Manifestations of God are perfect Mirrors – mirroring the Love and Light of God.
4 Through our life-experiences we suddenly, or gradually, realize the ‘dual-Nondual worldview’ – two realms. The first is the contingent realm, including the material world. The second is the realm of spirit – a step out of self and into the Presence of God in God’s creational form. Ultimately the two are one.
5 We realize, that we have a passport as Citizens of the two realms – that ultimately are One – the dual and Nondual.
As we learn appropriate practices, meditation, prayer, study and service to others we learn to step out of the time-bound world into the eternal ‘now’. The simplest, successful meditation is HERE – Apps iPhone – Android keep smiling!
The eternal realm of ‘now’ is spaceless and mass-less as well as timeless.
6 We realize that broadly there are two Kinds of knowing. First there is the theoretical – book-learning.
Secondly there is what is called gnostic knowing – the gifts (not to be demanded) of God.
Gnosis signifies a spiritual knowledge or insight into humanity’s real nature as divine.
In Baha’i teachings ‘Irfan’ is a Persian-Arabic word referring to mystical, theological, and spiritual knowledge
In Islamic teachings ma’rifa is the mystical intuitive knowledge of spiritual truth reached through ecstatic experiences, rather than revealed or rationally acquired.
Metaphorically we each have our island of knowledge – a speck in an infinite ocean. On the island we cultivate such knowledge that enables us to survive and function in the dual world. On the shoreline facing out to the sea, the Infinite Ocean, we, as Heschel says, are where “only the sense of the ineffable can glide”
We realize capabilities of truth-testing. ‘Triangulation’ is one tool for truth-testing – comparing a teaching on insights with two other sources. Another is consultation.
7 The continuous and pre-eminent search for Self-knowledge ends in sudden or gradual realization – or failure. Wisdom comes with age for some.
8 Maturation feels like healing – its the sound of a door closing, as we let go of attachments and addictions, and learn to mirror the mirroring, the Love and Light of God from the Divine Mirrors – the Manifestations of God.
9 Along the way, suddenly or gradually we realize All is God. God is Ultimate being and reality, but some prefer a personal God.
There are 7,800,000,000 people on earth (as of March 2020,) In one sense that’s also the number of ‘gods’. The sense of each having a different experience is clear from the story of the blind people who came across an elephant. Transcending our limited vision is a vital challenge for all individuals!
We learn to read, suddenly or gradually, the mystical metaphors used by great teachers over the last few thousand years or example the Hindu ‘Two birds on the self-same tree’ – one ego-centred and ego transcended. They are, of course, two sides of our own inner heart-mind consciousness – and as they ‘heal’ they become one mature, integrated Self. That is God, seen more clearly.
We can learn to read the ‘way’ as in the Tao Te Ching, the prototype of the mystical heart-core – ‘The tao that can be told / is not the eternal Tao….
Or we learn to ‘read the book of his own self’ as in the Seven Valleys – Baha’u’llah‘s greatest mystical composition.
As a combination of the above paths carries us forward we return to our spiritual practices with increasing certitude and joy;
Prayer, our talking to God, and expressing the joy of gratitude.
Meditation, in stillness and silence is listening – to hear God talking to us.
Our study aided by a clear sense of our identity and purpose.
and service which is the way to keep us grounded, as well as being empathic responses to our fellow humans.
We realize that all great religions of the past have outstanding, saintly individuals striving to rescue dis-orded religions. In Christianity this is often called rescuing Christianity from Churchianity.
These then are ways to the summit of Oneness.
But has anyone ventured into even higher realms or stages?
Perhaps Cynthia Bourgeault in her book ‘Eye of the Heart; a spiritual journey into the Imaginal Realm’ which she defines as ‘a meeting ground, a place of active exchange between two bandwidths of reality’ – for example between this world and the world hereafter. Other definitions are HERE
Another essay by Golgonooza (pen name of Brian Keeble?) reveals HERE more about the imaginal realm; ‘The rational path of philosophers and theologians needs to be complemented by the mystical intuition of the Sufis, the “unveiling” (kashf) that allows for imaginal—not “imaginary”—vision. The heart, which in itself is unitary consciousness, must become attuned to its own fluctuation, at one beat seeing God’s incomparability with the eye of reason, at the next seeing his similarity with the eye of imagination. Its two visions are prefigured in the two primary names of the Scripture, al-qur’ân, “that which brings together”, and al-furqân, “that which differentiates”.’
Does it mean that I accept everything that Cynthia says? No.
You can catch a glimpse of Cythia’s soaring in the spiritual realm from the talk HERE to the Ibn Arabi Society at Oxford by the Baha’i Professor Todd Lawson. With the YouTube video I suggest you start at 50mins.
Intuitively I feel that all that Cynthia Bourgeault is discovering is in the Baha’i Revelation, and probably in other Revelations as well – but we are still seeing through a glass darkly.
As with ‘reading’ autostereograms. Success, by God’s grace, enables us to see into our own heart-mind.
In the old days electricity was metered. You put a coin into the meter and the lights came on. Metaphorically when the ‘penny drops, we see for the first time the image in the auto-stereogram.
Don’t worry if you can’t see the creature in the above Wikipedia auto-stereogram picture.
If it works for you we can say there are two stages. Firstly just a fog of dots. Secondly we see the creature in 3-D. If it doesn’t work for you there are other pictures or metaphors.
The stereogram links us back to higher-level meditation which should be objectless – Thomas Mc Farlane article HERE. Videos Bourgeault HERE, and here Spira
Gradually all will come more into focus. And then instead of saying we are seeing ‘through a glass darkly’ we will instead say;
“We can see more clearly now,
as we oscillate between the two worlds.
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Oneness in the mirroring of the Christian Mystical Renewal
Oneness in the mirroring of the Christian Mystical Renewal
Picture source is the Integral Church
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Are you tuning in? “Into what should I be tuning? My answer is into the spirit of this age.
We are so fortunate to be living in this time, despite the pandemic of negatives.
For Baha’is Baha’u’llah ushered in a new age and a fulfillment of prophecies:
To ‘Israel He was neither more nor less than the incarnation of the “Everlasting Father,” the “Lord of Hosts” come down “with ten thousands of saints”; to Christendom Christ returned “in the glory of the Father,” to Shí’ah Islám the return of the Imám Husayn; to Sunní Islám the descent of the “Spirit of God” (Jesus Christ); to the Zoroastrians the promised Sháh-Bahrám; to the Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna; to the Buddhists the fifth Buddha.’
With the appearance of Baha’u’llah as Christ come ‘in the glory of the Father’ re-formations are rising in other Traditions. Outstanding people are inspired, usually unknowingly, to ‘clean out their stables’ in their religion and to restore the Christianity out of its ‘churchianity’. For them it was and remains a wake up call.
Essential in each of these blessed souls is that their lives mirror the light in response to the ‘Word’.
In the Bible the ‘word’, ’ is, according to Alan Watts, sound not words. Mystical being is closer to reverberance or resonance than to perpetually disgorging words
Einstein, also one of our great mystics, is relevant. There is the view that Energy and Matter are the Same or mass–energy equivalence.
When ordinary souls do tune in to the forces released by the most recent Manifestation, (aka as High prophet or Messenger), they receive, and can be creative with, the great positive energies that always flow into this world from the most recent Manifestation. We need to tune ourselves to filter out negative interference and enable the good energies to flow through us.
The simplest statement of pan-religious theology that I can present is; all is One, All is God, there is only one God, there is only one Holy Spirit.
That Holy Spirit is reflected preeminently by the perfect Mirrors of the Manifestations. Such Messengers have appeared approximately every 500 to 1000 years.
At the heart-centre of their Teachings is the mystical;
“We liken God to the Sun, which gives us all our life. So the Spirit of God reaches us through the Souls of the Manifestations. We must learn to commune with Their Souls, and this is what the Martyrs seemed to have done, and what brought them such ecstasy of joy that life became nothing. This is the true mysticism, and the secret, inner meaning of life which humanity has at present, drifted so far from.”
If you want a single book of all the major mystical teachings in the Baha’i Revelation go to The Call of the Divine Beloved – Selected Mystical Works of Bahá’u’lláh
Interestingly in Christian the theologian Karl Rahner said; “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”
All of us, in some measure, are affected by the re-newal, or re-flowering within the other great religions. The energy and potential can be felt and used by all of us as individuals as well as by groups; "a rising tide lifts all boats”
Science also undergoes a re-formation. Islam at its height brought astonishing progress in the scientific and technological world that outshone the western dark ages and eventually led to our renaissance and to the mixed blessing of the Enlightenment.
All the negatives then and now can be attributed to the same lacking in individuals and institutions – the failure to realize the Oneness of God, the Holy Spirit and the Manifestation, the Perfect Mirrors and that humankind is one family.
Our true, real, mystical self needs to be prepared to say with Socrates "I know that I know nothing" is the key to diminishing destructive egotism via humility. He also of course said "The unexamined life is not worth living.
That Socratic principle is strengthened whenever we can celebrate the oneness of all paths through reverence for the unknown and unknowable Mystery of the Infinite God, instead of asserting exclusivity over some theology. “Theologians of the world may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”
Mysticism can be understood as maintaining the stillness and silence of not knowing!
The Institute for Mystical Experience Research & Education, IMERE, lists more than eighty examples of people who have given their stories of mystical experiences. These include; the living at the height of their influence such as Cynthia Bourgeault; the ‘recently’ deceased, such as Father Thomas Keating and Thomas Merton; poets such W B Yeats; 19thC figures such as Walt Whitman and so on.
I’m inspired by Matthew Fox best known for Creation Spirituality. He points to the “ground of being” as a vital turning point in theology for all people – Christians and those of other traditions.
Fox has taught a lot about Thomas Merton, a much-loved and revered Christian who extended his heart and mind into dialogues with people of many traditions. HERE
I take delight, with Fox, that the great Vietnamese zen master Thich Naht Hanh says the ‘ground of being’ is his favorite name for God. He was a close friend of Merton.
In his essay “Buddhism and the Modern World,” published in Mystics & Zen Masters in 1961, Merton applauds Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki who taught that the “True Self” is the formless, original mind. Merton explicitly compared this concept to that of the Godhead in Meister Eckhart.
He explains Suzuki’s use of the word ‘mind’ in Zen as not meaning;
. . . the intellectual faculty as such but rather what the Rhenish mystics [including Eckhart] called the ‘ground’ of our soul or of our being, a ‘ground’ which is . . . enlightened and aware, because it is in immediate contact with God.
Merton credits Suzuki with “obviously thinking of Eckhart” when Suzuki talks of the light of Prajna penetrating “the ground nature of consciousness” and illuminating things inside and outside.
. . . metaphysical intuition of Being . . . an intuition of a ground of openness, indeed of a kind of ontological openness and an infinite generosity which communicates itself to everything that is.
‘The good is diffusive of itself,’ or ‘God is love.’ Openness is not something to be acquired, but a radical gift. In other words grace.
In contrast to God as object, and the idols that result from that consciousness, Merton saw another option:
Another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man and woman. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject [that is, not from anthropocentrism] but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division.
Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self, there is an immediate experience of Being. This is totally different from an experience of self-consciousness. It is completely non objective. It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as a quasi-object. The consciousness of being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness. It is not ‘consciousness of’ but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such ‘disappears.’
Matthew Fox’s videos on his YouTube channel are HERE. Some Merton books are available online HERE
Have you had a ‘Ground of Being’ experience of immediate contact with God, and immediate experience of Being? If so, how did it transform your view of the world and your place in it? You can report such experiences anonymously on IMERE HERE
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true teachers across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium – HERE.
The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion.
"All these studies," wrote Merton, "are united by one central concern: to understand various ways in which men of different traditions have conceived the meaning and method of the ‘way’ which leads to the highest levels of religious or of metaphysical awareness." See his message
Cynthia Bourgeault is possibly the greatest spiritual teacher of this time. She is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, and theologian. She has evolved her teaching through a long series of books culminating in Eye of the Heart i
In Eye of the Heart, Cynthia Bourgeault investigates the imaginal realm – an energetic realm well known to the mystical traditions but often forgotten in our own times – it’s the most challenging and exhilarating multi-sphere set teachings I have engaged with, outside of Baha’i.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” In Lakota language cante ista means “the eye of the heart.”
Whether we are from a Christian background or some other background the benefits are legion if we tune in to the positive reformations within major faith communities.
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Oneness mirrored in Zen Buddhism
Oneness mirrored in Zen Buddhism
It’s a joy. Do you love music and have a diverse taste? My wife and I watch ‘Playing for Change’ on YouTube. We love these guys for what they are doing to make people happier. ‘Playing for Change’ helps with music projects in many places around the world.
Playing for Change like all music can be a benign refuge from the pain that life brings.
Many people try to take refuge in becoming rich, in alcohol, drugs, inapproriate sex, or violence. But all these have major disadvantages as places of refuge. Such attachments or addictions can be a way for some to answer the question “Who am I.” For some one of these ‘negatives’ is to get a better life.
We don’t have a life. We are life. The life-force, through us flows.
It flows unless the egotistic self creates a blockage. Sometimes we have an intimation about the Awakened state which is all the Buddha claimed for Himself. Nourish the spark.
Awakening can be incremental or a satori flash;
A lightning flash:
between the forest trees
I have seen water.
(1867-1902)
Awakening is a temporary experience of Awareness which is reality and our true self. Buddha-hood is maintaining that state of being (almost) permanently!
The story of the Samurai Warrior and the Zen Master
The warrior was large and strong and had won many battles. The Zen Master was a rather small old man, and was well-known far and wide as being one of the wisest and kindest men in the land.
One day, the Samurai warrior went to the Zen master for instruction. “Please,” the huge man asked, “teach me about heaven and hell.”
The master scowled, then broke into mocking laughter. “Me, teach you about heaven and hell? I wouldn’t waste a moment trying to instruct the brain of an overweight ignoramus like you! How dare you ask me for such a lofty insight?”
Well, upon hearing these words, the Samurai grew furious. His face flushed, he drew his sword to chop off the teacher’s head.
Just as he was about to strike, the master raised his hand and calmly said, “That, sir, is hell.”
Upon hearing this, the samurai suddenly realized the profound lesson the master had just taught him – that we make our own hell by indulging in anger and resentment.
The warrior was so grateful for this teaching that he dropped his sword and fell to his knees in front of the Master, bowing in humility and gratitude.
When he looked up, the old man was smiling.“And that, sir,” the teacher said, “is Heaven”.
I suspect that the Awareness generated by the awakening lasted.
In Zen terms such successful teaching brings satori, awakening, or even Nirvana. Nirvana literally means "blown out", as in an oil lamp but means salvation, the release from egotistic self.
Every time we are tested and found wanting we are shown a challenge, a state of being that we need to transcend. We need to abandon the ‘wanting mind’ , says Bryan Thompson – “Nothing lasts – nothing but awareness.”
Buddhists take refuge in three different expressions of awakened mind: buddha, dharma, and sangha – the teacher, the teachings and the community. Each of these is a precious and necessary element of the Buddhist path, and so they are called the three jewels of Buddhism.
Buddhism’s focus is to help us to get the right relationship with change. Why? It’s because in this earthly, dual, contingent world shift happens. The only certainty is change.
Buddhism offers the tools for deeper self-understanding. Here are insights from four versions of a famous ancient Zen Buddhist teaching, which the great Master Dogen taught;
The first version I discovered says:
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. … To be enlightened by the 10,000 things is to recognize the unity of the self and the 10,000 things.
When all things point to their source, ‘no-thing’, there is no duality. It is similar in teaching about yin and yang. The yin and yang ‘model’ indicates polar, but complementary, opposites. However as Alan Watts points out, were there no opposites there would be no knowing on our part.
Stated more strongly we would have no way to raise our level of consciousness if the dual, contingent world was not binary. That is if it was not made up of opposites; hot and cold, tall and short, smooth and rough we would not be conscious – and God would not be the Creator whose creation is continuously unfolding and evolving.
From the teachings of Taizan Maezumi Roshi we learn that;
‘Awakening is the very core of the Buddha’s teaching, but if we are thinking about awakening we are separating ourselves from it.
So how do we practise without being dualistic? That’s what Dogen Zenji talks about in the famous passage from the Genjokoan:
To study Buddhism is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand dharmas.
When you really become one with yourself, you forget the self. And when the self is forgotten, the Buddha Dharma, in an instant, reveals itself as the whole of life — the life of each of us. So in studying the self, in practising zazen, put yourself completely into it and be zazen itself. In following the breath, just be the breath; in working on a koan, be the koan; if you do shikantaza, completely be shikantaza – zazen or silent meditation. Practicing in this way, the subject-object dichotomy will fall away and you will have a glimpse of your true nature. But this is not all. Dogen Zenji goes on to say:
To be enlightened by the ten thousand dharmas
Is to free one’s body and mind and those of others.
No trace of enlightenment remains,
And this traceless enlightenment is continued forever.
Having seen your own true nature, that awareness then expands to include everything, and the Buddha Dharma functions without hindrance as one self and others. Going still further, beyond any trace of enlightenment and non-enlightenment, being completely ordinary, traceless enlightenment continues accomplishing itself endlessly.’
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
When you first seek dharma, you imagine you are far away from its environs. But dharma is already correctly transmitted; you are immediately your original self. When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.
“To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by ten thousand things. When enlightened by ten thousand things, the body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.”
Here on the ASOKA site there are 16 lessons about the Genjo Koan – each version adds something to practice and realization.
In Baha’i teachings, from a prayer, we find; O compassionate God! Thanks be to Thee for Thou hast awakened and made me conscious. Thou hast given me a seeing eye and favored me with a hearing ear, hast led me to Thy kingdom and guided me to Thy path……..
O Thou the Compassionate God. Bestow upon me a heart which, like unto glass, may be illumined with the light of Thy love, and confer upon me thoughts which may change this world into a rose garden …… – Abdu’l-Bahá
The mystical poet William Blake said, “He who binds to himself a joy, does the winged life destroy, he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
In a beautiful talk Abdu’l-Baha teaches ‘Joy gives us wings.’
Let’s fly
and be in such a way that we help
others awake to their Awareness –
and be free to serve others more deeply.
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Oneness Mirrored in The Taoist Way
Oneness Mirrored in The Taoist Way
Zhang Lu 張路 -Laotzu riding an ox SOURCE – Picture SOURCE Wikipedia
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“How spiritually hungry are you? To dive deep in the spiritual Ocean is to apply a key truth. That truth is the difference between spiritual experience and writing about spiritual experience.
The former is real, the latter is just signs, words, concepts. You can’t quench your thirst with the word water, nor can you take a bath in the word bath. Watch the face of a child if she wants an ice-cream and then you give her a picture of one!
Real life is in the now, and it is experiential. Right now do you have the tools, attitudes and qualities to live life so fully?
‘Deep spiritual experience’ is just another name for mystical experience. It’s any experience that takes you out of your ‘self’ – a child’s smile, a landscape, a work of art.
Words alone won’t satisfy the longing for deep spirituality. Unfocused Comparative Religion is useless to help us on our spiritual quest toward self-knowledge. That would cause us to get lost in a sealed maze of what Taoism and Zen calls the 10,000 things. Unless they’re illuminated by sufficiently deep nondual experience.
Taoism is a philosophical and spiritual tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with ‘theWay’.
Taoism might best be seen as a prototype of the mystical heart of the religions that have followed. It is the way of en-light-en-ment – it brings light to the path we tread. Baha’i author Professor Roland Faber has written a challenging paper entitled Laozi: A Lost Prophet?
Taoism’s main text is The Tao Te Ching – translated more than 250 times.
It has been called – the way of integrity and the way to let go of the compulsive need to answer unanswerable questions!
Tao, a Chinese word signifying "way", "path", "route", "road" or sometimes more loosely "doctrine".
The first chapter of the Tao Te Ching as translated by Stephen Mitchell says;
The tao that can be told / is not the eternal Tao / The name that can be named / is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real./
Naming is the origin /of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery. / Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations / arise from the same source.
/ This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness. /
The gateway to all understanding – 53 words 8 sentences
Ron Hogan’s helpful everyday language version starts with; “If you can talk about it, / it ain’t Tao.
We need to live life with a permanent connection to the nondual realm.
That connection can, in this dual, material world transform the myriad ‘ten thousand things’ as we begin to see them as ‘pointers to the ineffable’ (unspeak-able) Non-dual realm – like fingers pointing to the moon.
Then we can say, “Now I see this dual world more clearly”. Without the Nondual connection this everyday world is wrongly called the ‘real’ world. As Baha’i teachings say – this world is;
……. like the vapor in a desert,
which the thirsty dreameth to be water and striveth after it with all his might, until when he cometh unto it, he findeth it to be mere illusion. It may, moreover, be likened unto the lifeless image of the beloved whom the lover hath sought and found, in the end, after long search and to his utmost regret, to be such as cannot “fatten nor appease his hunger.”
That which is ineffable, that is un-speak-able, is the eternally real. When we start to name things we are making differences, distinctions, dualities, comparisons, judgements. We bring focus to particular things to show them against their background or context. The ultimate context from which things arise is no-thing also called ‘darkness’, i.e. the Non-dual or God manifest in Creation.
The Desire for things is the challenge we have in the dual world. It prevents many people from awakening to the Awareness that is their true Self. The more we are free from desire the more we can tune in to the Nondual.
Trapped in desire we can become slaves to material things or to cosmetic versions of the ‘I’ in ‘I-Am’. This is to fail in the quest for deep spirituality. It needs us to let go book-learning and worldly knowledge’
The Darkness within darkness is the No-thing that is the source of all things. It is the source to gnostic or Irfan-ic knowledge. This we receive by the Grace of God.
Of course there is much wisdom in the other 80 chapters but these 83 words are the golden thread of Oneness that appears in all religions since Taoism.
Taoist ethics vary in general tend to emphasize wu wei (action without intention), "naturalness", simplicity, spontaneity and the Three Treasures: 慈, "compassion", 儉, "frugality" and 不敢為天下先, "humility".
The roots of Taoism go back at least to the 4th century BCE. “In any age the keys are always right here now for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.”
Go deep into your heart to find the deep essentials including the ‘dual-Non-dual’ reality of our earthly lives.
In spirituality, Non-duality, means "not two" or "one undivided without a second". It primarily refers to a mature state of consciousness, in which the dichotomy of I-other is "transcended", and awareness is described as "centerless" and "without dichotomies".
While the term Non-duality is derived from Advaita Vedanta, descriptions of nondual consciousness can be found within all major Traditions, though often neglected. Nonduality in Taoism is seen as ‘one unified whole that originates all the elements of the Universe’.
Currently since The Age of Enlightenment scientific materialism rules – but mystical truth has a much longer pedigree than scientific truth.
Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328), and Rumi and others, agree that ‘theologians may quarrel but the mystics of the world agree’.
With Non-dual experience what enables the penny to drop and the light to come on? With a quietened egotistic self, deep spiritual experiences generate insights – into ‘the world and into the self.
Always forms of practice precede what many describe as an experience by ‘the Grace of God’. Practices help keep us in a state of readiness and sensitivity and deepen our sensibility. We can’t demand such experiences.
Might it be that our enlightenment hangs on a hyphen? – Non-duality is more easily entered if we read ‘nothing’ as ‘no-thing’. In the teachings of spiritual teachers, ancient or modern we find the admission, “I know that I know nothing”.
What is the essential difference between; “I know that I know nothing,” and “I know that I know no-thing.”? The latter makes clear a relationship with the infinite Mystery, the unknowable Godhead.
The hyphen is also a reminder of the mark on our gravestone – the dash between our birth-date and our death-date.
Why is the Tao te Ching so important? As one writer contentiously puts it in lauding the Tao Te Ching; ‘This book has held up under the test of time in a way few other works can ever hope to do. Deeper than Heraclites, far more coherent than the Bible, far less dogmatic than the Buddhist Sutras, this is the cat’s meow of philosophy books, today or then.’
In this Oneness series we laterally weave four themes:
Firstly Perennial wisdom’, or what the Baha’i teachings call “the changeless faith of God.”
Secondly Realizing the mystical dimension of being human – mystical experience is an everyday occurrence.
Thirdly, deepening our integrated maturity via our self-knowledge, is the transformation that enables us to progressively gain freedom from the egoistic.
Fourthly Realizing that in all great spiritual traditions we are citizens of two realms – the material and the spiritual.
However Reality is that the two ultimately are One, just as yin and yang are complementary within a single boundary. Opposites dissolve when placed in sufficiently wider or deeper contexts.
For me watching, on Youtube, the The Tao Te Ching is endlessly inspiring – don’t miss Jacob Needleman’s brilliant commentary at 1 hr, 04 minutes and 59 secs
My experience is that it is worth doing relevant practices to realize more deeply who we really are, and what is meant by “I AM”.
You too can add the Tao Te Ching as a guide to your deeper experience – to gain sufficient self-knowledge to become your true Self;
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name…….
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Oneness mirrored in Judaism
Oneness mirrored in Judaism
Elekes Andor – Own work – Mirror statue. Győr, Hungary. Saturday, 31st of October, 2015 – Wikipedia
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I walk every day. He was drunk. It was a few minutes after 7AM. The supermarket opens at 7am. The bottle of wine was half-empty. I was turning into the street where I live – walking with trekking poles. He asked me about my ‘walking sticks’. I explained that I use them because I have an achilles heel injury. His face was round and shone with subdued alcohol-radiance. In his alcoholism he was still curious – a good sign perhaps? An image of him as a Buddhist monk flashed in my imagination.
We can take one of two attitudes to fellow humans. Firstly there is ‘othering’ – in which we view or treat a person or group of people as alien to ourself.
Alternatively we can instead see the face of God in everyone.
Guess which one is really challenging!
Perhaps I passed muster on that one encounter. Often I fail, but life is about connecting. That includes connecting with religions other than our own. Such connections are vital. Why? Such vital connections help us to reduce our othering, and help lessen the grip of our egotistic self.
That grip step by step lessens the covering up of our True and Real Self that is there all the time. Lessen the grip and light breaks through. Then we can say, “I can see more clearly now!”
In addition to connections with fellow humans we need a gateway to other religions. To get that we need a key teacher, and a key teaching that together reveal the underlying Oneness. That’s what I look for, to have a gateway into the heart of other Traditions.
Why are we setting out to create that connection? We all will have our own reasons. As a Baha’i I am commanded by Baha’u’llah to see all Messengers as One. After more than half a century of practice and study I have two guiding views.
The first is that elites tell me that the mystical is the prerogative of only special people – whereas I see it as part of being human – like loving and philosophising.
The second view is that mysticism shows the true heart of a religion – or of an individual human being.
How do we set out to create that connection? Constant prayer and meditation might reduce the time required to study. Having said that, it has taken me more than half a century!
What do we actually do to set out to create that connection? We need to seek out what is the same at the heart-centre of the religions. This is a spiritual quest not a collection of information. Superficial surface facts are ‘true’ but irrelevant to deeper, mystical, experience and the knowing that comes with it.
When should we set out to create that connection? The answer is ‘If not now, when’?
With Whom shall we seek to set out to create that connection?
Firstly choose carefully those with whom to walk the talk – that’s essential.
Secondly I have found that triangulating helps. What’s that? If three major religions say that same thing about, for example ‘duality and Nonduality’ or ‘God is love’ or the ‘ineffable and inscrutable’, then that is a strong pointer. To what? To their being in touch with truth, beauty, goodness or justice and with Reality and our true Self. But we must always start with our felt experience.
Thirdly on my walks, I walk in the company of outstanding spiritual teachers – in addition to Baha’i teachers. How? – by listening to recordings of their teachings.
What are the benefits to our selves, and to others, if we have such gateway relationships?
Firstly we are less in danger of becoming exclusivists or fundamentalists about our own faith community and its teachings.
Secondly we benefit from reading one text in the light of another. It develops sensitivity, sensibility and humiity.
It is always important to take insights out of their normal context. The context of a prayer might enable an experience, even an experience of the ineffable nondual. Insights might also enable us to deal better with the dual, contingent world.
If we are on a spiritual quest we are in some measure entering on the Hero’s Journey – as in The Lion King and many other Hero’s Journey films. We all need heros.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) for me is a hero. He walked the talk – literally as well as metaphorically. He marched on the Selma protest alongside MLK. Heschel said, "When I march in Selma, my feet are praying."
Photo credit – Wikipedia Abraham Joshua Heschel
Heschel is not just a great Rabbi for Jews,he was a gift to the whole of humankind.
In his masterpiece Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, he, exquisitely describes, a range of key teachings including, a cosmology, the two worlds or realms in which we have dual citizenship, what it is to be fully human, pointings from the dual to the Non-dual.
He does that in a passage of eight sentences. I have read this passage many times and always I return with more insights.
‘The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions.
We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.
Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another.
Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.’
Heschel’s passage reminds me of a passage by Abdu’l-Baha that was an ‘aha’ moment for me about;
THE SINGLENESS OF SOUL, MIND & SPIRIT
it (Human Reality) is the same reality which is given different names, according to the different conditions wherein it becomes manifest.
Because of its attachment to matter and the phenomenal world, when it governs the physical functions of the body, it is called the human soul.
When it manifests itself as the thinker, the comprehender, it is called the mind.
And when it soars, and travels in the spiritual world, it becomes designated as spirit. – Star of the West 7.19 (March 1917):190.
Heschel’s piece also led me in another direction. The European ‘En-light-en-ment’ was just as much an ‘en-dark-en-ment’. Reason became a god. Women supposedly weren’t so good at reasoning. Other ways of knowing were discounted including the heart-centred and the feminine.
It’s all delightfully satirised in Charles Dickens novel Hard Times – read the first few chapters HERE
Reason is limited. Why? because it starts somewhere – and starts with a set of (hidden) assumptions.
‘The immense expanse beyond’ is beyond the tools of reasoning, and it’s infinity points to God and the unknowableness of God.
Our sense of the ineffable takes on a journey – soaring into the atmosphere of God as Abdu’l-Baha says.
The beloved Rabbi Heschel has also emphasized deep, mystical spirituality as opposed to concept swapping; “Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.” – p.88
Heschel also says; “In information we are alone; in appreciation we are with all things.”
“We may doubt anything, except that we are struck with amazement. When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question.
Doubts may be resolved, radical amazement can never be erased. There is no answer in the world to [our] radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.”
(Man Is Not Alone, p. 13)
Insights to be gleaned from Heschel also include –
On the ineffable and inscrutable – “To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words … the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable.”
On Radical amazement Heschel says; "Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed."
Watch Heschel on PBS with a transcribed interview.
There-is-no-other. There-is-no-Other.
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Oneness mirrored in Hindu Advaita Vedanta
Oneness mirrored in Hindu Advaita Vedanta
The swan is an important motif in Advaita. The swan symbolises the ability to discern Satya (Real, Eternal) from Mithya (Unreal, Changing), just like the mythical swan Paramahamsa discerns milk from water. – Wikipedia
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Does just ‘being’ alive make you feel good? Does just being alive expand your consciousness and sometimes tip you into bliss? Don’t just wake up and smell the coffee. We need the change of waking up more deeply?
We must wake up to the perfume of all the Prophet-Founders, such as Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Christ, Mohammad and Baha’u’llah. They teach us how to deal with life’s challenges of change to focus on that which is of eternal value.
What is the key passage in Hindu teachings that offers core Hindu spiritual insights? Perhaps it’s this;
‘Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the individual self and the immortal Self are perched on the branches of the self same tree. The former tastes of the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree; the latter, tasting of neither, calmly observes.
The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of his identity with the divine Self, bewildered by his ego, grieves and is sad.
But when he recognizes the worshipful Lord as his own true Self, and beholds his glory, he grieves no more.’
Baha’u’llah in His ‘Book of Certitude’, revealed in two days and two nights in 1862, explains; ‘It is clear and evident to thee that all the Prophets are the Temples of the Cause of God, …… If thou wilt observe with discriminating eyes, thou wilt behold them all ….. soaring in the same heaven, seated upon the same throne, uttering the same speech, and proclaiming the same Faith….’ Should any of them say; “I am the return of all the Prophets,” He verily speaketh the truth. In like manner, in every subsequent Revelation, the return of the former Revelation is a fact …..’
We are united, if we will it, by the reality of One God, One Holy Spirit, a series of Messengers, and our One human family.
But there are also the teachers who receive love and light from the Revelations of the Prophet-Founder’s Revelations and go on, in turn, to reflect that love and light in their lives. They walk the talk. That’s you and me if we will it.
In the desert of materialism there are many wells of sweet water – from both the Messengers, and their true reflectors, who can quench our spiritual thirst.
That sweet water is now more accessible than ever before in history; “Peerless is this Day, for it is as the eye to past ages and centuries, and as a light unto the darkness of the times.”
Why is it that the vast majority of discoveries and inventions have appeared since the middle of the 19thC? Might it be because of the energies released by the most recent Messenger – Baha’u’llah?
Take a look at the 1970 book Future Shock by American futurist Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell. They defined Future Shock as "too much change in too short a period of time" – information overload.
The overload now is not just such things as evermore technologies such carbon dating, DNA, genomic analysis and myriad other developments. It is because our human and spiritual side hasn’t equaled our technical capabilities. We are lopsided, not balanced.
We now can gain insights and inspiration as never before.
Here we cherish, in particular, inspiration from the Hindu Advaita Vedanta teachings. We also ask if there are co-responding teachings in Baha’i teachings – including in Baha’u’llah’s The Hidden Words.
The Hindu teachings, as with all of the great religions help us transform into our best and true self. Mantras, or similar practices, can pave the way to transformative insights.
The earliest mantras were composed in Vedic Sanskrit in India. They are at least 3500 years old. The word ॐ (Aum, Om) serves as a mantra. It is believed that aum was the first sound on earth and chanting Aum creates a reverberation in the body which helps the body and mind to be calm. In more sophisticated forms, mantras are melodic phrases with spiritual interpretations such as a human longing for truth, reality, light, immortality, peace, love, knowledge, and action. Some mantras without literal meaning are musically uplifting and spiritually moving.
Below are two symbols. On the left, is from the Hindu teachings and the right-hand one is from the Baha’i Revelation;
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Oneness mirrored in Rumi Teachings
Oneness mirrored in Rumi Teachings
Roger Prentice – Revised – ver 2 2nd Aug 2021
Rumi – the 13th century Sufi mystic and poet – is a good place to start a spiritual journey, while asking the profound question, “How deep does our shared oneness go?” This Rumi video and re-presentation poem explains:
Only Breath
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen.
Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the East
or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or any origin story.
My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
In this YouTube video Rumi’s poem “Only Breath” is re-presented by poet and translator Coleman Barks, taking us deeper into what and who we truly are.
Interestingly, throughout the Baha’i writings Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha quote Rumi many times. The author Arjen Bolhuis has so far found more than thirty examples here.
Rumi wrote from a Sufi perspective, but parallel teachings from many other traditions also nurture our realization in inter-spiritually derived oneness. As the Baha’i teachings affirm, there is one God, One Holy Spirit, and one unending series of prophets and messengers to guide humanity.
All of those spiritual teachers teach similar core themes.
We are citizens of two realms – the material and the spiritual. Spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer enable self-knowledge. We are fed by wisdom from “the changeless faith of God.” When we absorb that wisdom and translate it into action, gradually egotistic tendencies diminish. Our mystic heart expands with more moments of ineffable union in this world and the non-dual worlds. Eventually the two become one.
From the teachings of Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, we read:
The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence. To this most excellent aim, this supreme objective, all the heavenly Books and the divinely-revealed and weighty Scriptures unequivocally bear witness. Whoso hath recognized the Day Spring of Divine guidance and entered His holy court hath drawn nigh unto God and attained His Presence, a Presence which is the real Paradise.
Baha’u’llah’s son and successor Abdu’l-Baha said that “… all parts of the creational world are of one whole,” but also “God contains all …. The whole is greater than its parts …” On change and changelessness, Abdu’l-Baha said:
Time changes conditions, and laws change to suit conditions. We must remember that these changing laws are not the essentials; they are the accidentals of religion.
The essential ordinances established by a Manifestation of God are spiritual; they concern moralities, the ethical development of man and faith in God. They are ideal and necessarily permanent – expressions of the one foundation and not amenable to change or transformation.
Every major Faith includes these mystical elements. Taoism, for example, sums up the most important themes from the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching:
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
The Hindu teachings offer similar spiritual insights, as in this translation of a Vedantic hymn by Swami Prabhavananda:
Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the individual self and the immortal Self are perched on the branches of the self same tree. The former tastes of the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree; the latter, tasting of neither, calmly observes.
The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of his identity with the divine Self, bewildered by his ego, grieves and is sad. But when he recognizes the worshipful Lord as his own true Self, and beholds his glory, he grieves no more.
In his book Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, the great Jewish teacher and activist Rebbe Abraham Joshua Heschel described these two worlds exquisitely:
The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.
Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.
This ancient Zen Buddhist teaching, which the great Zen master Dogen taught, proclaims:
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. … To be enlightened by the 10,000 things is to recognize the unity of the self and the 10,000 things.
RELATED: The Mystery of Progressive Revelation
The work of Christian author and scholar Tim Redfern, in particular his article “That God may be all in all: Christianity and Nonduality” informs us about these core themes and their primacy in Christianity:
The basis for these claims about “nondual Christianity” lies in the New Testament, salvation is frequently displayed as a process of unification and becoming One.
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus prays “that they may all be one, as thou, Father, art one in me, and I in You, that they may be one in Us” [John 17:21].
In his Second Epistle, Peter writes that through the promises of Christ we will become “partakers of the divine nature” [1 Peter 1:4], a passage usually cited as the basis for the doctrine of deification.
John, in his First Epistle, writes “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” [1 John 3:2], and when this happens…
Paul tells us, “we will all, beholding the glory of the Lord, be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory” [2 Cor 3:18] and God will be “all in all” [1 Cor 15:28].
According to Paul, “as many of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female: for all are one in Christ Jesus” [Gal 3:27–28].
In this vision, individual identities seem to fall away; as elsewhere, incorporation into Christ is depicted as a unifying process that transforms the creature into ‘part’ of the Creator: “you are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it” [1 Cor 12:27].
There is clearly a strong current within Christian theology that views union with God as the ultimate spiritual destination…. and the priority of unio mystica in contemplative mysticism — literally “oneing,” as Julian of Norwich (1343–1416) called it.
So How Deep Does Our Oneness Go?
The teachings shared here all show the true heart of the core themes of religion. We can find a short version of those insights in this striking definition of Namaste, the traditional Hindu greeting which loosely means “salutations to the divine child in your heart:”
“I honor the place in you
in which the entire Universe dwells.
I honor the place in you which is of Love,
of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace.
When you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
we are One.”
Baha’u’llah wrote; “Meditate on what the poet hath written, “Wonder not, if my Best-Beloved be closer to me than mine own self.”
When we ponder that single line, we address the most mystical depths of our Selves.
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One of my favourite chants Mahamrityunjaya Mantra
One of my favourite chants
Mahamrityunjaya Mantra – Sacred Sound Choir – Ancient Chant For Healing & Peace
YouTube Notes from Lok3
This mantra in ancient Sanskrit, is a call for enlightenment and is practiced for purifying karma of the soul at a very deep level. It is said to be very beneficial for emotional and physical health. Mrityunjaya Mantra, also known as “Rudra mantra” is found in “Rig veda VII.59.12”, “Yajur Veda III.60″, Atharva Veda XIV.1.17”, “Shiva Purana” among others.
According to the legend Mantra was given by Lord Shiva himself to sage Sukracharya. ==Oṁ houm om joom saha Boorbhuvassuaha== Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe sugandhiṁ puṣṭi-vardhanam ǀ Urvārukam-iva bandhanātmṛtyormukṣīya māmṛtāt ==Boorbhuvassuvarom joom saha houm om ǁitiǁ== Meaning of Lyrics in English
We worship the Three-eyed Lord who is fragrant and who nourishes and nurtures all beings. (1)
As is the ripened cucumber (with the intervention of the gardener) is freed from its bondage (to the creeper), may he liberate us from death for the sake of immortality. (2)
Word by word Meaning of Lyrics
ॐ = oṁ = is a sacred/mystical syllable in Sanatan Dharma or hindu religions, i.e. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism (symbol of ultimate reality). त्र्यम्बकम् = tryambakam, त्रि (Try=Three)+ अम्बकम् (Ambakam=Eyes)= “one who has three eyes” referring to Rudra or Siva who share the same attributes. (1) Firstly, in His ‘vishwaroopa’ or universal form, the three eyes symbolically signify the sun, moon and fire. Sunlight during the day, moon at night and fire in their absence signify illumination. (2) Secondly, the pair of eyes give sight to the material world and its experiences.
The third eye is symbolic of ‘atma-jnana’ or knowledge of the Self through which one sees the higher reality. Kamadeva or Manmatha is the God of Desire perennially churning the mind and causing restlessness. यजामहे=yajāmahe = We worship, adore, honour, revere you सुगन्धिम् = sugandhim = sweet smelling, the fragrant (spiritual Essence).
The fragrance The word in the mantra does not refer to physical fragrance, ie perfume but fragrance of character. Perfume emanates from a source and spreads to a reasonable distance. As such noble character spreads with warmth. पुष्टि = puṣṭi = A well-nourished condition, thriving, prosperous, fullness of life. वर्धनम् vardhanam = is one who nourishes, strengthens or restores (in health, wealth, well-being); a good gardener. उर्वारुकमिव urvārukamiva: उर्वारु, (Urvaaru=Cucumber) इव (Iva=Like, In the same manner)= like the cucumber, here ‘urva’ means ‘vishal’ or big, powerful or deadly. ‘Arukam’ means disease.
Thus ‘urvarukam means deadly and overpowering diseases. The pumpkin or cucumber interpretation is given to show detachment. The diseases are those caused by the negative effects of the three gunas and therefore (a) ‘avidya’ – ignorance or falsehood and (b) ‘sadripu’ – a constraint of the physical body. बन्धनात् (bandhanāt)=means bound down, Bondage [of Samsara or
Worldly Life]’I am bound down just like a cucumber (to a vine)’. मृत्यु (mrtyu) = Death मुक्षीय (mukṣīya) = Liberation मृत्योर्मुक्षीय mṛtyormukṣīya = Free, Liberate us from the fear of Death मामृतात् (Maa-Amrtaat): Liberate us from the death (for the sake of Immortality); मा (Maa) = Not, अमृत (Amrta) = Immortal
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The benefits of letting go of our fear of death – Cynthia Bourgeault
Listen as Cynthia Bourgeault, modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, and Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member, names a fear of death as the true source of the scapegoating, hoarding, and other destructive human forces stemming from the COVID-19 crisis. We must seek out the courage and wisdom to adjust to global change or the planet will do it for us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2gBJOCyxG4&t=55s
Photo Unsplash Joshua Earle@joshuaearle
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Abdu’l-Baha and Rumi on on the real world and the illusory dream world – how we are existent and non-existent
This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief………
……..
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.
~~ Rumi To read the full Rumi article go to StillnessSpeaks HERE
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Abdu’l-Baha one of our great spiritual teachers says;
Certain sophists think that existence is an illusion, that each being is an absolute illusion which has no existence—in other words, that the existence of beings is like a mirage, or like the reflection of an image in water or in a mirror, which is only an appearance having in itself no principle, foundation or reality.
This theory is erroneous; for though the existence of beings in relation to the existence of God is an illusion, nevertheless, in the condition of being it has a real and certain existence. It is futile to deny this. For example, the existence of the mineral in comparison with that of man is nonexistence, for when man is apparently annihilated, his body becomes mineral; but the mineral has existence in the mineral world. Therefore, it is evident that earth, in relation to the existence of man, is nonexistent, and its existence is illusory; but in relation to the mineral it exists.
In the same manner the existence of beings in comparison with the existence of God is but illusion and nothingness; it is an appearance, like the image reflected in a mirror. But though an image which is seen in a mirror is an illusion, the source and the reality of that illusory image is the person reflected, whose face appears in the mirror. Briefly, the reflection in relation to the person reflected is an illusion.
Then it is evident that although beings in relation to the existence of God have no existence, but are like the mirage or the reflections in the mirror, yet in their own degree they exist.
That is why those who were heedless and denied God were said by Christ to be dead, although they were apparently living; in relation to the people of faith they were dead, blind, deaf and dumb. This is what Christ meant when He said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” 1
1. Matt. 8:22.
Abdu’l-Baha (Some Answered Questions, pp 278-279)
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When sublime gifts come to us
Q. How sublime it is when gifts come to us that show the mystic oneness that is the only way Unity will come – is it not the case?
"Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you – indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you.
Be in yourself a matter of all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another.
The ignorant one does not see his ignorance as he basks in its darkness; nor does the knowledgeable one see his own knowledge, for he basks in its light.
I am in love with no other than myself and my very separation is my union…I am my beloved and my lover; I am my knight and my maiden."
~ Ibn Arabi
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A modern application is here;
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Keats and Abdu’l-Baha and kirtan singer Krishna Das
Joy gives us wings
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The English poet John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) says in a long poem
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
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1 A man living with his thoughts in this Kingdom knows perpetual joy. The ills all flesh is heir to do not pass him by, but they only touch the surface of his life, the depths are calm and serene. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, p. 109
2 Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, p. 109
3 Joy is the best cure for your illness. Joy is better than a hundred thousand medicines for a sick person. If there is a sick person and one wishes to cure him, let one cause joy and happiness in his heart. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá v2, p. 417
4 When a man has found the joy of life in one place, he returns to that same spot to find more joy. When a man has found gold in a mine, he returns again to that mine to dig for more gold. This shows the internal force and natural instinct which God has given to man, and the power of vital energy which is born in him. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, p. 33
Kirtan Singer Krishna Das https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc8X37oJBE
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Mooji helped me put several jigsaw pieces together. Ding-dong the penny dropped.
http://online-satsang.com/hp_wordpress/?p=79
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Helping the penny drop about Now-ness
I love how great spiritual teachers say the same thing in slightly different ways.
Leonard Jacobson says;
“The journey is from here to here and the only time you can arrive is Now.”
Rupert Spira says;
There is no separate entity present that gets into the ‘nowness’ of Consciousness. Consciousness is always ‘now,’ that is, it is ever-present. So ‘now’ is not a moment in time nor even a present moment. There is no present moment. There is the ‘nowness,’ the timeless, ever-presence of Consciousness, IN WHICH the idea of time appears ‘from time to time.’
Each has special virtues. Both are brilliant.
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Inter-faith Fireside No1. Love, finding God, and revealing your true Self
LOVE: What has love got to do with it?
Many people accept the idea that God is Love. Here is an extraordinary Baha’i teaching by Abdu’l-Baha about love. Below there are some relevant teachings by Ken Wilber.
1 Love is the secret of God’s holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings.
2 Love is heaven’s kindly light, the Holy Spirit’s eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul.
3 Love is the cause of God’s revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things.
4 Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next.
5 Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul.
6 Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the diverse elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms.
7 Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe. (Abdu’l-Baha – from Baha’i writings) -0- https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAB/sab-13.html
Q. Where do we find go to find God?
Divinity has one ultimate secret, which it will also whisper in your ear if your mind becomes quieter than the fog at sunset: the God of this world is found within, and you know it is found within: in those hushed silent times when the mind becomes still, the body relaxes into infinity, the senses expand to become one with the world- in those glistening times, a subtle luminosity, a serene radiance, a brilliantly transparent clarity shimmers as the true nature of all manifestation, erupting every now and then in a compassionate Radiance before whom all idols retreat, a love so fierce it adoringly embraces both light and dark, both good and evil, both pleasure and pain equally…. – Ken Wilber
Q. What is our true Self?
The Self doesn’t live forever in time, it lives in the timeless present prior to time, prior to history, change, succession. The Self is present as Pure Presence, not as everlasting duration, a rather horrible notion. – Ken Wilber
Q. What insights can you see having these three teachings set together?
Soul Needs - One Garden 
