Blessings
Darshan of Sathya Sai Baba ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“There is no liquid like a tear from a lover’s eye.”
~ Rumi
“Crying to God for five minutes is equal to one hour of meditation.”
“The state that we attain by calling and crying to God
is equal to the bliss that the yogi experiences in samadhi.”
~ Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi)
Tears are the solution
for dissolution
of other
into Mother –
Mother of All,
Mother of Mystery.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Sai Baba blessing Ron – Bangalore, 1982
In January and February 1982, four years after receiving shaktipat from my beloved Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, and with his approval, I journeyed on a wonderful spiritual pilgrimage to Japan and India led by Sant Keshadavadas, another Indian guru.
On embarking for India I wanted to learn about Indian spiritual culture and its many saintly beings, other than my beloved Guruji. And I was very curious about how I could best advance my quest for “enlightenment” – my spiritual “sadhana”.
During that marvelous guided pilgrimage tour I had numerous unforgettable spiritual experiences from which I learned much. Thus, the journey became and has remained the most important trip of my lifetime. So I am recounting some highlights in these memoirs.
At the time of our pilgrimage, one of the few living Indian gurus of whom I’d previously heard was Sri Sathya Sai Baba, who was the claimed reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba, a legendary saint who had died in 1918. I synchronistically learned about Sai Baba shortly before our tour departure on meeting an ardent Swedish devotee, Carin, who was in San Francisco en route to seeing him India.
Carin said that Sai Baba was renowned for his extraordinary powers (siddhis)* [see footnote].And she recounted to me many amazing stories about Sai Baba – of miraculous materializations, healings, clairvoyance, bilocations, and alleged omniscience – including her own experience of his appearing to her in Sweden in a vivid vision and beckoning her to visit him in India. And I learned from Carin that Sai Baba had millions of devotees worldwide, even though he had never left India, except for one trip to Africa. So I became quite curious about Sai Baba and wished to but didn’t expect to see him in India.
Sai Baba usually resided at his main ashram at Puttaparthi, India, and our pilgrimage itinerary did not include any planned visit there. But Carin told me that Sai Baba had a large ashram in Bangalore at Whitefield, where he occasionally visited. Our tour was scheduled to be in Bangalore for three days. So on Carin’s departure for an extended stay at Puttaparthi, I gave her our tour itinerary and she promised to call me in case Sai Baba might visit his Whitefield ashram when we were in Bangalore. I didn’t think that would happen. But synchronistically it did.
Shortly after our tour group checked into the luxurious Hotel Ashoka in Bangalore, I received a phone call from Carin telling that Sai Baba would be giving public darshan at Whitefield the next Monday morning – when fortuitously we had open time. Carin promised to pick me up in a taxi very early Monday morning to assure our finding space at Whitefield, and she suggested that I bring any other interested tour members. Thereupon I arranged for my friends Ramdassi and Tara, and Tara’s friend Pat, and a few others to join us.
Before dawn on Monday, February 1, 1982, Carin arrived at our hotel as promised. And together with my friends and other tour companions we went by taxi to Whitefield for Sai Baba’s darshan. En route, Carin suggested that we ask Sai Baba for a private audience, since he sometimes granted such last minute requests to spiritual pilgrims.
I immediately agreed, hoping to ask Sai Baba how I could best advance my quest for “enlightenment” – my spiritual “sadhana”. So Ramdassi artistically wrote an audience request for me to show him, if possible.
Although Sai Baba didn’t later grant a private audience, I had with him one of the most memorable darshan experiences of my life. Here is what happened.
On arrival at the Whitefield ashram, we were guided to a large canopied outdoor area next to the ashram building. There, we awaited Sai Baba’s appearance with hundreds of others who were already sitting side by side in numerous rows. Women and men were seated separately. I was seated near the end of the men’s darshan area furthest from the portal through which the Swami would later appear.
Ron meditating at Sai Baba Ashram, Bangalore 1982
Soon I went into a deep meditation and lost track of time. But even from that state, I was aroused and opened my eyes on sensing Sai Baba’s immense shakti field as he emerged from the ashram and entered the darshan area. With spontaneous emotion of devotion, I began weeping intensely.
Through my tears I could glimpse Sai Baba slowly walking up and down the aisles of aspirants. Though he looked at each person he did not stop at anyone – until ultimately he reached me.
Whereupon, Sai Baba stopped in front of me. With extraordinarily beautiful eyes he intently gazed at me as I was crying uncontrollably and wondering how to further my “sadhana”. Then he hit me on top of the head three consecutive times with his right hand, each time uttering only one word:
”Enough!” ”Enough!” ”Enough!”
With these hits on the head, I experienced a remarkable infusion of “shakti” energy.
Then Sai Baba soon left without stopping anywhere else. On his departure, I was left highly “enshakticated”, but in an unprecedented state of confusion.
It seemed that in exclaiming ”Enough!” ”Enough!” ”Enough!” Sai Baba had admonished me to stop crying. But that would have been completely inconsistent with my devotional path (bhakti) which strongly encourages and stresses the importance of crying for God.
Though my confusion about the meaning of Sai Baba’s darshan persisted for many years, I did not – and could not – stop weeping for God with emotion of devotion. And gradually I became confident that Sai Baba was not discouraging my gift of tears; that, rather, he was encouraging and blessing me to at long last ‘say sayanara to samsara’.
Epilogue
Since my unforgettable darshan with Sai Baba, the universe has given many messages and hints that Sai Baba’s exclamation
”Enough!” ”Enough!” ”Enough!”
was not an admonition to stop or limit spontaneous devotional crying.
The first of these messages happened later that same Monday in Bangalore. Our previously scheduled afternoon tour activities were cancelled at the last minute. So we were given unexpected free time. Thereupon my friends Ramdassi, Tara and Carin and I decided to visit the beautiful Bangalore temple of Shiva Bala Yogi, a reputedly powerful God Realized shaktipat guru who was previously unknown to us.
Shiva Bala Yogi
Fortuitously, on our arrival at his temple, Shiva Bala Yogi was there giving darshan – and even answering written questions from spiritual aspirants. So, still “enshakticated” from Sai Baba’s three hits on the head, I asked Shiva Bala Yogi the question I hadn’t been able to ask Sai Baba:
“What should I do for my sadhana?”
He replied, simply:
“Do what you are doing.”
And so I did.
**[see footnote]
Soon afterwards, I received another memorable message from Sai Baba. The next day, Tuesday, our tour departed Bangalore, which was in the center of India, and we flew westward to Mangalore near the Arabian Sea. There we were lodged at an oceanside beach resort. Awakening early Wednesday morning, I decided to jog on the beach before our scheduled activities for that day. Whereupon, I had an unforgettable reminder of Sathya Sai Baba and a possible hint about the meaning of his darshan.
While jogging by the ocean with a stilled mind, I suddenly perceived that I was surrounded and completely enfolded by the body of Sai Baba; that my entire physical body was totally enveloped by the subtle body of Sai Baba. Later I took that unique experience as a metaphoric reminder and symbolic portent that we are as but cells in the body of the Divine with which we will inevitably merge, after we’ve had “enough” worldly suffering.
Footnotes
* Patanjali’s renowned Yoga Sutras, describe yogic powers which may be attained through control of life-force energies. But Patanjali warns aspirants against premature use of of such powers prior to God union, as possibly raising egotistic obstacles to attainment of the spiritual goal. Only after being irrevocably established in God union may the yogi employ powers, without karmic consequences. Especially after Sai Baba’s death in 2011, his frequent display of siddhis became controversial, with various claims that they were sometimes not used for Divine purposes. Also, there were other allegations of questionable conduct.
Despite these allegations, I remain convinced that Sai Baba’s darshan blessed and helped me. In hitting me on the head three times he imparted a tremendous infusion of divine shakti; and his concurrent admonition ”Enough!” ”Enough!” ”Enough!” was probably a blessing helping me to use that precious life force energy to transcend all remaining worldly attachments with inevitable suffering of which I’d had “enough”.
**A month later, I asked Guruji the identical question, “What should I do for my sadhana?” Guruji answered it differently, but unforgettably. See https://sillysutras.com/a-long-but-short-guruji-satsang-story-rons-memoirs/
A Long But Short Guruji Satsang Story
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“Silence is the language of God,
all else is poor translation.”
~ Rumi
“We search for Him here and there,
while looking right at Him
Sitting by his side, we ask:
Oh Beloved, where is the Beloved?
Enough with such questions
Let silence take you to the core of life
All your talk is worthless
when compared with one whisper of the beloved”
~ Rumi
Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
As explained in other memoirs chapters, during a traumatic 1976 divorce I experienced a transformative mid-life spiritual awakening. Two years later, I met a one hundred year old Hindu guru, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, and evolved from being a secular Hebrew, to becoming a “born-again Hindu”. And thereupon I developed an ever increasing interest and curiosity about Indian spirituality and culture. After a few years, the “universe” presented me with an ideal opportunity to satisfy that curiosity.
In 1981, soon after my beloved Guruji, Dhyanyogi, had returned to India, I met Sant Keshadavadas, a devotional Indian spiritual teacher known as a singing saint. Thereafter, on learning that Sant Keshadavadas would be conducting a spiritual tour of Indian holy places, I wanted to join that tour, if it was okey with Guruji.
Guruji had always told us that it was not necessary to see other spiritual teachers, but permissible. So I succeeded in getting his approval for me to tour with Sant Keshadavadas.
Thereupon, in January and February 1982, I journeyed with Sant Keshadavadas on a wonderful spiritual pilgrimage to Japan and India. That guided tour was, and remains for me, the most important trip of my lifetime. Never before had I been in a land with such a palpably spiritual ambiance as I experienced everywhere in India.
Our tour group crossed the length and breadth of that vast country (mostly by airplane and local buses) visiting many spiritual shrines and meeting saintly beings, like Mother Teresa, Anandamayi Ma and Satya Sai Baba. And I had numerous wondrous experiences. (In other chapters I will recount some of those experiences.)
Throughout the tour I was constantly seeking to learn how I could best advance my quest for “enlightenment” – my spiritual “sadhana”. By the time that the guided tour ended in New Delhi, I was quite weary from following the intense tour schedule. But I was determined to remain in India to pay my respects to my beloved Guruji, and to receive his guidance and blessing for my “sadhana”.
With unexpected difficulty, I finally succeeded in having only one brief ‘satsang’ with Guruji. This proved much more complicated – and much more memorable – than I could have previously imagined. (Satsang is a sanskrit word meaning being with a Sat Guru or being with “highest Truth” – https://endless-satsang.com/nondual-advaita-satsang.htm)
Here is the story of what happened.
After four years of tireless efforts in the US, Guruji had become extremely debilitated and was obliged to return to India in 1980 to recuperate. After his arrival in India, his whereabouts were sometimes kept confidential so he could rest and recover without constant interruption.
Before I departed for India in January 1982, I was told that after my guided tour ended I would be able to learn Guruji’s whereabouts by calling Shri Anandi Ma’s father, Pundit Pravin Jani. And I was given his Bombay phone number.
Over a month later, just before our guided tour ended in New Delhi, I began trying to phone Pravin Jani – who was in Bombay – from my New Delhi hotel. In those days India had not yet joined the digital communication age, and surprisingly I could never get a long-distance telephone connection from Delhi to Bombay.
After repeated unsuccessful attempts, I decided to make a brief trip to Katmandu, Nepal to see Buddhist and Hindu holy places there. But, I remained determined to see Guruji. So on return to Delhi from Nepal, I again repeatedly tried calling Bombay to learn his whereabouts.
But I was still never able to get a long-distance telephone line from New Delhi to Bombay. So I had to book a flight across all of India from Delhi to Bombay, so that I could then make a local Bombay phone call to Pravin Jani. Only by so flying to Bombay was I finally able to reach him by telephone.
Whereupon he readily told me that Guruji was then staying in Godhra a small town not far from Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujurat state. Paradoxically, my flight from Delhi to Bombay had overflown Ahmedabad long before it reached Bombay. If I had known Guruji’s whereabouts while in Delhi I would have flown directly to Ahmedabad. But that hadn’t happened.
So, it was now necessary for me to book a flight from Bombay to Ahmedabad, and to arrange ground transportation from there to Godhra.
But I then learned that the only flights to Ahmedabad had been cancelled, and that I could only get to Godhra by train. So, I needed to take an eight hour trainride from Bombay to Godhra, and learned of a departure later that day.
Thereupon, I promptly took a taxi to the Bombay central railroad station where I arrived less than an hour before the train was scheduled to leave. At the station ticket booth, I was told that no first class train compartment was available; that only non air-conditioned second class space was available for the long trip. With no other choice, I attempted to purchase a second class ticket using my American Express dollar travelers checks or credit card, which until then had been accepted everywhere I traveled in India. But they were both rejected by the train station cashier, who told me that they only accepted rupees, which I could get at a nearby American Express office in downtown Bombay.
Hurriedly, I left the train station and on the sidewalk asked the first knowledgable looking person I encountered if he could direct me to the nearby American Express office. Instead of telling me he couldn’t help me, he pleasantly and unequivocally told me where to go. I quickly followed his directions, which turned out to be completely wrong.
Frantically, I finally got proper directions which I speedily followed. Arriving at the American Express office soon after it had opened, I obtained necessary rupees from a very lackadaisical clerk and rushed back to the central station, arriving just as my train was scheduled to depart.
At the last minute I purchased a ticket and boarded the train just before its departure. Up to then my body – already quite weary from over a month of intense travel and last minute stress in getting directions to Guruji – had been running on extra adrenaline. But on boarding the train I soon realized that I needed to rest. However, that proved difficult.
The seating was not very comfortable, my compartment companions were not quiet, the sultry temperatures required that we keep windows open to outside disturbances, including noises from many interim station stops. So my first long journey on an Indian train proved very interesting, but not restful.
On disembarking at Godhra that evening I was quite travel weary but excited at the prospect of seeing Guruji again for the first time since he left my San Francisco apartment in 1980. I called the Godhra phone number given me by Pravin Jani and was courteously welcomed by one of Guruji’s hosts, a woman lawyer. I learned that Guruji was convalescing at the home of her father, a retired judge, and that I could see him for a short while at an appointed time the next morning.
That night I stayed at a Godhra guest house in a very warm room with a mosquito netted bed. Because of heat and bugs, I did not sleep soundly. But nonetheless I awakened with great excitement about my imminent satsang* with Guruji.
A few hours later I arrived at the judge’s house where Guruji was staying. There I was pleasantly greeted and told that Guruji was then in the garden, but that he would soon come in to greet me. I was brought into a lovely room with an altar and fresh cut flowers and an empty prominent throne-like seat for Guruji.
As I waited there, my ‘monkey mind’ became quite active. Despite all of my wondrous experiences during the pilgrimage tour, I was busily dialoguing with “the voice in my head” about questions for Guruji. So when Guruji came into the altar room and sat down in front of me, I was feeling far from peaceful. But I sat there quietly gazing at him, waiting for him to entertain my questions.
Though Guruji looked physically healthier than when he had been carried out of my apartment to return to India, he still looked quite fragile and much weaker than when I first met him four years earlier. But he was emanating indescribably intense ‘shakti’ life-force energy, which seemed as strong as ever. His aura was so extraordinarily powerful that it soon transformed my previously agitated state of mind. As I sat there I began harmoniously resonating with Guruji’s supernal ‘shakti’ life-force and felt more and more peace of mind.
And so “the voice in my head” stopped ‘talking’ and my previous questions for Guruji gradually seemed to melt into silent infinite awareness. But they didn’t all dissolve. So after sitting there in silence for a while, I asked Guruji a preliminary question. But he kept gazing at me without answering the question, and remained silent. Whereupon, supposing that he might not have understood me, I asked Guruji another question. But he still remained silent.
Finally, in desperation I exclaimed:
“Guruji, I’ve come halfway around the world to see you.
Please tell me what I should do for my sadhana.”
After a pregnant pause, Guruji at long last replied:
“Meditate regularly!”
We had no further dialogue. And soon I was politely informed by Guruji’s host that it was time to leave.
Epilogue
As you might imagine, the unforgettable memory of Guruji’s profoundly silent ‘satsang’ has remained indelibly imprinted in my heart and on my ‘mental software’. His words “Meditate regularly!” were not merely spiritual instructions, but a timeless heartfelt blessing or sankalpa that my deepest aspirations for Truth might be fulfilled through regular meditation!
Moreover, beyond words but only with deep mental silence, Guruji eloquently demonstrated that the eternal LOVE we all seek is within each of us; and he ineffably validated Rumi’s profound observation that
“Silence is the language of God,
all else is poor translation.”
~ Rumi
Since 1982 by faithfully following my beloved Guruji’s emphatic instructions and blessing for me to “meditate regularly” I’ve been learning about living with a stilled mind.
In 1996 (after Guruji’s 1994 mahasamadhi and during an extended post-retirement period of reclusion), I was inspired to compose this poem “In Silence Sweet”, which only hints at Guruji’s profound blessing bestowed in that unforgettable silent ‘satsang’.
In Silence Sweet
In silence sweet
we may retreat
from every care and woe,
and there we’ll learn in perfect peace
all we need to know.
In silence sweet
we shall meet
the thrill of ecstasy.
and thus we’ll learn in perfect peace
we’ve nothing more to be.
In silence sweet
we shall find
all we’ve ever sought.
And thus we’ll learn in perfect peace
that all our wants were naught.
In silence sweet
we shall see
that everything is light.
And thus we’ll learn in perfect peace
there’s naught to fear but fright.
In silence sweet
we shall greet
our own true Self and Soul.
And thus we’ll learn in perfect peace
we are the timeless Whole.
In silence sweet
we shall enjoy
Eternity’s repose.
For perfect peace we e’er shall be,
Peace no mortal knows.
Human Body – A Precious ‘Prison’?
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“A yogi’s body is like a baby’s body.”
~ Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
“Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?
Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.”
~ Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching – Chapter 10, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.”
“To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear.”
~ Buddha
“The first preliminary practice consists of recognizing and giving value in its right measure to the precious human existence and the extraordinary opportunity that it gives to us to practice Dharma and to develop spiritually. It is naive to expect that such a favorable juncture will repeat continuously. Moreover, life is too short. ….If we bear in mind all these things, we will soon realize the need to take advantage of the opportunity that the precious human existence gives us to fully develop all the potential of our being.”
~ Kalu Rinpoche – Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism
Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Human Body – A Precious ‘Prison’?
Eastern spiritual paths identify human incarnation as an extraordinarily precious opportunity to evolve – beyond that of any other life-form; Buddhist and Hindu teachings say that for enlightenment it is better to be born human than even in a heavenly realm.
Before my mid-life spiritual awakening, I self-identified only with my body/mind and its story. Though I cherished my health, I was totally unaware of esoteric evolutionary perspectives about preciousness of human incarnation. But, since realizing that I was and am much more than my body and its story, I have deeply reflected on the significance and purpose of a human lifetime.
My 1976 realization that I was not my body or its thoughts, but pure awareness, followed a prior out of body experience [OOB] and sparked an amazingly intense ‘rebirth’ process, with convulsive crying, hyperventilation and spasmodic bodily movements. Immediately after that realization/rebirth process I briefly experienced myself not as pure consciousness but as meridians of flowing life-force energy, like those corresponding to ancient Chinese acupuncture teachings. Then I soon returned to “normal” bodily consciousness, but with greatly enhanced vital energies which continued for several months.
Thereafter, with great curiosity sparked by these new experiences, I began wondering about the nature and importance of the human body. And, synchronistically, I gradually learned with interest about body-work disciplines like massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathic, and various mind-body bio-energetic therapies. All these therapies aimed to stimulate or release flow of ‘trapped’ or blocked life-force energies.
I realized that my intense rebirth experience had temporarily released for me a previously unimaginable flow of vital energies (chi or prana), which gradually had abated as I returned to ‘normal’ consciousness. So, I became highly motivated to again access that hidden reservoir of vital energy. Thus, before meeting Guruji I had received chiropractic manipulations and had several sessions with a Reichian therapist to enhance and balance vital body energies. But I had not again experienced the extraordinary vitality which immediately followed my rebirth experience.
Then, after meeting Guruji and observing his amazing physical prowess, even as a centenarian, I learned that he received frequent massages from very few close disciples, which supposedly enhanced his physical well-being, while blessing those privileged disciple/masseurs who in touching his body experienced direct transmission of his extraordinarily intense and powerful cosmic life-force energy (“shakti”).
I began wondering about the relationship, if any, between Guruji’s regular massages, his extraordinary physical condition and his amazing ability to transcend ‘normal’ physical limitations. Then, while Guruji was staying at my apartment, just before his 1980 return to India, I had an unforgettable synchronistic experience with him that related to my mind/body questions.
One weekend morning when I was home from work, I was invited for the first and only time to give Guruji a massage – a rare blessing and privilege. As I began massaging Guruji’s then 100 year old body, I was astonished at its flexibility and softness.
Then, suddenly, I exclaimed in utter amazement:
“Guruji your body is so supple!”
Unforgettably, he replied:
“Rasik, a yogi’s body is like a baby’s body. Your body is like a prison. I am like a jailer with the prison key. I come and go as I please.”
I became and remained intensely curious about Guruji’s revelation that my body was like a prison. I wondered how and why ‘I’ was ‘imprisoned’, and how ‘I’ could get out of ‘jail’ – free like Guruji. Was I imprisoned by body stiffness from subconsciously stored traumas? It was apparent that my body was not supple like Guruji’s body. Though half his age, I couldn’t even sit with crossed legs, much less stand on my head or perform the other advanced yogic postures (asanas) that Guruji demonstrated.
As I remembered the extraordinary vitality which temporarily followed my rebirth “peek” experience, I intuited that it was a glimpse of a potentially achievable bodily state well beyond anything I had theretofore imagined. But how could I restore that state? And even if possible, would the restoration of such a state allow me to get out of prison at will, like Guruji? That remained a mystery.
Gradually and synchronistically, I have been given insights about the bodily ‘prison’ mystery, but haven’t yet ‘solved’ it.
Most memorably, in 1982 I was profoundly moved and inspired by Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”. There in Chapter 43, Yogananda recounts an unforgettable visit from his beloved Guru, Sri Yukteswar, who miraculously resurrected and reappeared to Yogananda in physical form a few months after his physical death. Yukteswar then explained to Yogananda the genesis of human physical, astral, and causal bodies, saying:
“The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires.” “The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery…”
“Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures.”
“So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers,
sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit.”
~ Sri Yukteswar
(As recounted by Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 43)
Upon reading Sri Yuktewar’s words, I intuitively and reflectively accepted them as true. And I remembered that Guruji had revealed in San Francisco lectures on “Death, Dying and Beyond” that during a 1971 ‘near death experience’ he had been sent back by Lord Rama from a heavenly realm to his physical body because of his unfulfilled desires to help people.
*[See footnote]
I realized that all phenomena and forms – including human forms – that appear in this space/time reality interdependently originate in subtle energy planes pursuant to mysterious laws of causality. And I remembered that even though Guruji had evolved beyond limits of ordinary human consciousness, he had remained in a human body, but with amazing ability to transcend ordinary physical limitations, only because of his unselfish desires to help others. Whereas it was obvious that I was ‘imprisoned’ by bonds of ego desire and ignorance mentioned by Sri Yukteswar.
So, thereafter, I became highly motivated to transcend all such egotistic bonds, and to get out of ‘prison’ – free like Guruji. Expressing these aspirations, I soon wrote (or channeled) sutras and poems like these:
DOING TIME
Time is how
“I” Measure “Now”
And space’s for places
Where I’m –
Entangled here in time.
But I long to be – FREE
Where there is no “ME”-
Nowhere,
Out of time,
Beyond I’m,
Beyond hereness/thereness-
As just Awareness –
NOW!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
WISH LIST
We’ll never have all we want ’til we want just all we have;
So – topping our wish list, is our wish to be wish-less.
For ’til we stop wishing, we’ll ever be wanting.
Though at first – longing to be merged with the Divine – I fervently aspired to transcend all physical and subtle desires, I came to realize that my aspiration was in itself a subtle desire. So, intuitively I began with ever increasing heartfelt faith in universal Awareness – the Tao – to surrender to the mysterious Infinite – “to let go, and go with the flow”.
Deeply inspired by the Buddhist Bodhisattva ideal of altruistically helping all beings end their sufferings, I gradually stopped trying to transcend this world. But with ever growing gratitude I began accepting my life as a cherished evolutionary opportunity; an opportunity to be in my precious human body in a compassionate and loving way which – at subtle levels – might help all life everywhere.
And the more I have gratefully accepted my human incarnation, the greater has been my happiness and the more I have experientially and synchronistically learned from this precious human life.
Though I always cherished and appreciated good health, more than ever before I have become mindful of my bodily needs for appropriate nourishment, exercise, and rest, and have tried to satisfy those needs in a natural way. And remembering that subtle life-force energies are the genesis of every physical form or phenomenon, I have become ever more alert to my thoughts, emotions and attitudes which may influence physical well-being.
Though, unlike Guruji, I have not yet transcended subtle desires and ignorance and am still ‘imprisoned’ in my body, I aspire to emulate his wise and compassionate way of being in this world. Recently, for the first time in this life, I have even started treating my body to regular massages.
Who knows, maybe some day I’ll be able to report to you the massage that ‘sets me free’?
*Footnote
In 1971, during a terrible Gujarati draught and famine, Guruji became extremely sick and exhausted from selflessly helping people and animals. Guruji’s physical body died, and his soul traveled to the heavenly domain of his “Ishta-Devata” Lord Rama – the principal Divine form of his devotional practices. Though Guruji wished to remain forever in Rama’s indescribably loving Presence, he was told that he would have to return to his Earthly body because of his unfulfilled desires to help people, whose images were then shown to Guruji. Rama told him: “So long as there are any desires in your mind, … you must return to fulfill those desires.”
Love is Our New Religion
“There is only one religion,
the religion of Love.”
~ Sathya Sai Baba
“Our purpose is process –
Metamorphic process.
Gleaning meaning in matter,
We learn all that matters –
We learn all that matters is LOVE!”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Love is joyous consciousness.
That consciousness is the Creator,
and it is out of Love and joy
that (S)He creates.”
~ Swami Amar Jyoti
Ron’s Introduction
Knowingly or unknowingly, we are awakening to our true Essence and nature, which is LOVE. As we awaken we are co-creating an ever better reality – as we intend, intuit, and imagine it to be.
Spiritual author and teacher Brian Piergrossi has beautifully captured and communicated our re-awakening to LOVE with his poem “Love is the New Religion” .
Thanks to Aluna Joy Yaxkin and harpist Peter Sterling,
Brian’s powerful message is displayed with beautiful multimedia, photography and music on a You Tube video.
Here is the video version:
Here is an edited version of Brian’s poem:
Love is the New Religion
On the surface of our world right now
There is war, violence, and craziness
And things may seem dark.
But calmly and quietly
At the same time
Something is happening underground.
An inner revolution is taking place
And certain individuals
Are being called to a higher light.
It is a silent revolution
From the inside out
From the ground up.
This is a global co-operation
That has sleeper cells in every nation.
It is a planetary Spiritual Conspiracy.
You won’t likely see us on T.V.
You won’t read about us in the newspaper.
You won’t hear from us on the radio.
We don’t seek glory.
We don’t wear any uniform. We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles.
We are in every country and culture of the world
In cities big and small, mountains and valleys
In farms and villages, tribes and remote islands.
Most of us work anonymously
Seeking not recognition of name
But profound transformation of life.
Working quietly behind the scenes
You could pass by one of us on the street
And not even notice.
We go undercover
Not concerned for who takes the final credit
But simply that the work gets done.
Many of us may seem to have normal jobs.
But behind the external storefront
Is where the deeper work takes a place.
With the individual and collective power
Of our minds and hearts
We spread passion, knowledge, and joy to all.
Some call us the Conscious Army
As together
We co-create a new world.
Our orders come from the Spiritual Intelligence Agency
Instructing us to drop soft, secret love bombs
when no one is looking.
Poems ~ Hugs ~ Music ~ Photography ~ Smiles ~ Kind words Movies ~ Meditation and prayer ~ Dance ~ Websites Social activism ~ Blogs ~ Random acts of kindness…
We each express ourselves
In our own unique ways
With our own unique gifts and talents.
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
That is the motto that fills our hearts.
We know this is the path to profound transformation.
We know that quietly and humbly
Individually and collectively
We have the power of all the oceans combined.
At first glance our work is not even visible.
It is slow and meticulous
Like the formation of mountains.
And yet with our combined efforts
Entire tectonic plates
Are being shaped and moved for centuries to come.
Love is the religion we come to share
And you don’t need to be highly educated
Or have exceptional knowledge to understand it.
Love arises from the intelligence of the heart
Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse
Of all living beings.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Nobody else can do it for you.
Yet don’t forget, we are all here supporting you.
We are now recruiting.
Perhaps you will join us
Or already have.
For in this spiritual conspiracy
All are welcome, and all are loved.
The door is always open.
Invocation
May the Universe empower us to realize together our common dream for an ever better world – where LOVE is our common religion, blessing everyone everywhere.
And so shall it be!
Transcending Transcendence?
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness.
The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness
penetrate into Matter and transform it.”
~ Sri Aurobindo – The Mother 15: p.191
“Cosmic consciousness is
infinite evolutionary impetus in each of us.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“As we experience our universality,
we transform our reality.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Maitreya Bodhisattva
Transcending Transcendence
My miraculous “sight seeing” trip with Dhyanyogi, and subsequent experiences, inspired ever increasing faith in his saintly good will and yogic powers. But questions arose for me about his Hindu path.
In writings introducing his path to Americans, Guruji said that Kundalini Maha Yoga was not a religion but a spiritual practice bringing “lasting inner peace and happiness to individuals of any belief or religious affiliation.” But his prescribed spiritual practices mostly included Sanskrit prayers and mantras associated with Hinduism, in addition to daily meditations.
At first I was uncomfortable reciting Sanskrit prayers and mantras which I didn’t understand, except for the Ram mantra with which I have always felt deep affinity. But intuitively I relied on Guruji’s extraordinary being and benevolence, and on his assurances that initiates would enjoy “a happy life”. So gradually I became more and more engaged in these practices, trusting that they would help me live a happy life.
Then, during a public meditation program, Guruji said these sanskrit practices would lead us to “the spiritual goal”. And I wondered: “what spiritual goal?” Amazingly, though I was still then an ‘uptight’ skeptical lawyer, I had taken an initiation from an unknown Hindu guru and was repeating his esoteric Sanskrit prayers and mantras not knowing what they meant or that their purpose was to achieve some “spiritual goal”.
So, after the meditation program, I asked others about this “spiritual goal”. I was told that the object of Hindu practices was to achieve “mukti” or “moksha” or “self-realization”; that the kundalini purification process, viz. the “evolutionary process taking place in [my] nervous system”, would some day in some lifetime lead to a state of Divine illumination where the Self, soul, or “Atman” would experience its Oneness with “Brahman” [Supreme Reality] – the pinnacle of human experience. Only then did I begin considering these ideas of “self realization”.
Though Guruji’s assurance of our finding lasting peace and happiness was appealing, I hadn’t consciously been drawn to him by this assurance but by a deep intuitive heartfelt connection. Before meeting Guruji I was not ‘goal oriented’. Instinctively hesitant to pursue materialistic societal goals, I was mostly inner – not outer – directed. But never before had I considered any inner ‘goals’.
In the late 1950’s I had been deeply influenced on reading “The Sane Society” by then prominent psychotherapist Erich Fromm, about the pathology of ‘normalcy’ in our materialistic society. Fromm suggested that Western society as a whole was lacking in sanity; that the inequities and disharmonies of the entire society were pathological, not just the mental illnesses of people therein. Fromm’s essay had confirmed and enhanced my instinctive reluctance to selfishly follow materialistic societal goals.
So, in becoming a lawyer and throughout my professional career, my main motivation was to help others; it was not to become rich or famous. Long before my spiritual awakening, I had a deep inner instinct to pursue social justice causes, with considerable sensitivity to the “insanity and iniquity of inequity in our society”.
But, with the Yosemite inner experience of “ten thousand suns” I realized that beyond my instinct for social justice was an extraordinarily intense longing for the Divine – to return from this crazy world back to God, back to Ram. However, not until hearing Dhyanyogi’s teachings about a spiritual “goal”, did I consider pro-actively seeking such an inner goal.
Though initially it seemed desirable to aspire to “self realization” or “enlightenment”, I was unable to relate experientially to those illumined states as ascribed to rare beings like Gautama Buddha. So, I was never clear about what to “seek” until, ultimately, I stopped seeking it, whatever it was.
After considerable reflection, I abandoned goal oriented spiritual seeking, and intuitively began with more and more heartfelt faith to surrender to the Infinite – “to let go, and go with the flow” – and to “leave it to the Lone Arranger.” * Perhaps, I transcended transcendence aspirations.
Inspired by the Buddhist Bodhisattva ideal of altruistically helping all beings end their sufferings, I stopped trying to be beyond this world, but rather to be in it in a way which might help all life everywhere. And I ceased regarding “enlightenment” as a “goal” but rather as an endless evolutionary process.
Experientially, I had realized that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’, Buddha nature, and Love, were the Essence of everything in our phenomenal “reality”. And my core spiritual motivation became and remains:
“Infuse us, enthuse us, and use us, to bless all Life as LOVE.”
But paradoxically I have learned from experience that we cannot change others, only ourselves; that by furthering our own evolution we help elevate humanity’s common consciousness and thereby subtly help others. So, I consider it my responsibility to aspire to be the change I wish to see in the world, with the intention and dedication of so helping everyone everywhere.
And in this process, as Guruji promised, with unspeakable gratitude I am now enjoying “a happy life” beyond anything that I could have imagined when I received a shaktipat initiation in 1978.
*Footnote
Many ideas about “enlightenment” are in articles posted elsewhere on SillySutras.com. E.g. see https://sillysutras.com/?p=2925 and https://sillysutras.com/?p=1180
Beholding The Eternal Light Of Consciousness ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth, …
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in your Heart.”
~Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7
“Beholding the higher light beyond the darkness
we came to the divine light Sun in the Godhead,
to the highest light of all.”
~ Rig Veda
“You are the light of the world.”
~ Matthew 5:14
Every particle of the world is a mirror.
In each atom lies the blazing light of a thousand suns.
~ Mahmud Shabestari, Sufi Mystic, 15th century.
Beholding The Eternal Light Of Consciousness
Though I’ve always loved walking in nature, such walks rarely happened during my married years, as it was not an interest shared by my wife. But soon after our divorce, in summer 1976 I vacationed at Yosemite National Park, where for the first time I spent days hiking in the Sierra Nevada high country, while sleeping and eating at various park tent camps at differing elevations.
I arrived at Yosemite with many new questions arising from recent re-awakening and high energy experiences, and left with even more new experiences and new questions. But an amazing, unforgettable and unforeseen answer to one question – “Why I am crying so much?” – was soon bestowed.
After spending my first night at Merced Lake, the lowest elevation Yosemite tent camp, the next day I hiked over ten miles and more than two thousand feet upward to one of the highest camps, Sunrise, where I arrived just before sunset. I was assigned a bunk where I deposited my backpack, and then decided to ascend to the summit of a ten thousand foot granite dome adjoining the camp.
As I climbed up I felt unusually invigorated yet tired from hours of hiking. On reaching the summit of the granite dome, it seemed as if I was on top of the world. It was the end of a glorious clear summer day in Sierra Nevada high country. Turning southward, I beheld a magnificent mountain vista of the Cathedral Range.
The extraordinary beauty of that alpine panorama at sunset seemed unworldly, and evoked for me strange feelings of déjà vu – of being in the Himalyas – and of entering ‘God’s cathedral’. Spontaneously I began sobbing and crying intensely torrential tears.
Then, completely overcome with emotion, suddenly and instinctively I threw my body to the ground and with crying eyes closed, silently importuned a momentous request. Earnestly addressing the Highest Power with utmost urgency, I implored: “Take me. Take me now. I want nothing more; there is nothing more left for me in this life!”.
Whereupon, I beheld within an unimaginably intense and ethereal effulgence, which I can only now describe as the ‘light of ten thousand suns’. Ancient Vedic scriptures have thus alluded to this inner light:
“If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One –.”
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, Verse 12
Until that transformative inner light revelation at Yosemite, I had been puzzled about why I had continued crying so much since the realization that I was pure Awareness – not my body, my thoughts or my story. Sadness at the divorce was not an adequate explanation for what was happening to me. But the puzzlement began resolving with that unforgettable Yosemite inner light revelation.
Before Yosemite my intense crying had begun with the realization that I was pure Awareness. And at Yosemite while suddenly and intensely crying and yearning to end my ‘imagined’ sojourn in this world, I beheld the transcendental Light of that Awareness.
My tears then were not tears of sadness, but tears of intense longing to merge with that Light, and so to end the illusion of separation from it. I had beheld Divinity in that magnificent panorama of God’s cathedral, and with all my Heart intensely yearned to be eternally merged with it.
But this realization of why I was crying, raised a new mystery: “How could it be that a secular lawyer who hadn’t cried or fervently prayed during his entire adult life, was now intensely crying and praying for God?”
Ultimately, I learned that I had been graced with “the gift of tears” – a blessed spiritual path of longing and crying for the Divine associated for millennia with devotional mystics in Catholicism, Sufism, Sikhism, Hinduism and other paths. The Universe gradually provided answers to that question, and other questions about my many mystical experiences, through a series of extraordinary synchronistic happenings and experiences which were bestowed after the Yosemite experience.
Though these happenings and experiences were too numerous for me to now recall and recount, I shall share some of the most memorable ones with you.
At Mid-Life: A Spiritual Mystery Story Begins ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“In this ever-changing space/time world,
nothing is immutable, but much is inscrutable.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
At Mid-Life: A Spiritual Mystery Story Begins
Both inner and outer life changed radically for me after my self-realization rebirth experience, and upon living alone after divorce. From living a ‘normal’ middle class life style, I began living outwardly like a Western ascetic, and inwardly with formerly unknown rich spiritual experiences.
I now realize retrospectively that my unforeseen new life unfolded and evolved perfectly, as if a Divine novelist was writing my life story’s script; and, that I have been and am now continually guided in my new life by increasingly frequent ‘miraculous’ synchronicities – meaningful or noteworthy ‘coincidences’ and premonitions – which Western science can’t yet explain.
Long-time worldly habits changed. Though I had always walked to my financial district law office, now almost every morning before walking to work I jogged alone for about an hour to the Golden Gate bridge.
Intuitively, and not because of anything I’d then heard or read, I gradually evolved from a common Western flesh food diet to a largely raw food vegetarian diet. Upon experiencing ‘withdrawal symptoms’ when I forgot my morning coffee one day, I realized that I’d become addicted to caffeine. So I stopped drinking coffee, and drank peppermint tea instead. As a vegetarian I became gradually unable to metabolize alcohol. So I stopped drinking beer and wine and all other alcoholic beverages (which I’d enjoyed since adulthood).
Instead of sleeping on a raised bed, I began sleeping on a futon on the floor. Instead of living in rooms filled with furniture and furnishings, I preferred a simple ‘Zen-like’ austere residential environment.
My ascetic new eating, drinking, sleeping and exercise habits have continued for over thirty years, though after suffering leg injuries in a 1988 car accident, I stopped jogging but kept walking usually for at least an hour a day.
Why did I turn to asceticism? Was it because of ascetic past lives? These remain yet unanswered but recurring questions.
Aside from changed worldly habits, my inner life became – and continues to be – like a spiritual detective novel, with ever new questions arising from new experiences and new realizations.
For many years, beginning with my three month period of extraordinarily high energy, I had numerous amazing mystical and psychic experiences, which repeatedly substantiated my post-out of body realization that the universe didn’t work the way I’d been taught or thought and sparked an intense quest for a new “reality” paradigm.
All these new incidents seemed quite “real”. They could not be readily rationalized away as “unnatural hallucinations” as they were not prompted by ingestion of any biological or chemical psychedelic or drug (which I didn’t use). Nor did I appear to have ‘gone crazy’, since I continued to function effectively as a litigation lawyer despite my new secret life.
After the unforgettable inner experience of seeing each of my thoughts manifest as a separate kaleidoscopic thought-form outside my body or brain, I intuited that thought was the genesis of all phenomenal reality. But I had no idea of how that could happen, and wondered about any such process. So with great curiousity I sought a new paradigm or world-view encompassing my new experiences of “reality”.
Ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find. Gradually, I was given synchronistic answers to my questions.
This process was accompanied by an ever increasing sense of awe and gratitude for our marvelous, miraculous and mysterious universe. Intense longing with ever growing gratitude gradually transformed a secular lawyer into a deeply devotional seeker of Truth – of answers to ultimately unanswerable questions of perennial philosophy.
And never again since the long-locked floodgate of tears was opened during the self-realization rebirth experience have tears failed to flow regularly. For many years, I cried so often and so profusely with deep longing for the Divine, that I was puzzled about what was happening to me.
But gradually, through synchronicity, I came to realize that I was experiencing a great transformative blessing known in the Catholic tradition of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius of Loyola as “the gift of tears”; a blessing similarly recognized in various other devotional and mystical spiritual traditions, including the ecstatic Sufism of Rumi, Hafiz and numerous others, and the Hindu tradition of bhakti yoga, which I followed for many years after synchronistically meeting my venerable Hindu guru, Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas (Guruji).
Though never a frequent flyer, for many years I became – and remain – a very frequent crier. Tears have helped purify my body and nervous system permitting ‘peek experiences’ of higher states of consciousness. And I regularly experienced numerous other spontaneous and unpremeditated activities, feelings and sensations which helped further my spiritual evolution. For example, when not crying I often had what I now call ‘alternative LSD experiences’ of spontaneous (and sometimes ecstatic) Laughing, Singing, and Dancing.
Many years have passed since Guruji told me to write and publish my spiritual memoirs, so the memoirs have gradually shortened as they have been ‘edited’ and abridged by time. But the most valuable experiences were unforgettable. Hereafter, I will share with you some of them, with theories of what they might mean.
At Mid-life, a Rebirth to a New Life ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“Birth and death are virtual, but Life is perpetual.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“The soul never takes birth and never dies at any time nor does it come into being again when the body is created. The soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is never destroyed when the body is destroyed. Just as a man giving up old worn out garments accepts other new apparel, in the same way the embodied soul giving up old and worn out bodies verily accepts new bodies.” “The soul is eternal, all-pervading, unmodifiable, immovable and primordial.”
~ Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Krishna to Arjuna
At Mid-life, a Rebirth to a New Life
Soon after my life-changing out of body experience (OOB) at a 1974-5 New Year’s ‘pot luck’ party, I learned that the experience had been triggered by my unwitting (and only) ingestion of cannabis; that the home-made desert cake which I had so enjoyed then was laced with marijuana. Though this initially raised doubts about the “reality” of the experience, it did not end my irresistible determination to find out what really had happened.
The New Year’s Eve experience was too vivid and too authentic to dismiss it peremptorily as a mere psychedelic hallucination. Yet it was so challenging to my egoic sense of self identity, that I was afraid to then share the experience with others. And as an upright, uptight officer of courts, I didn’t want to admit to anyone my ingestion – even unwittingly – of an illegal substance. So, I didn’t promptly tell Naomi or anyone else about my out of body experience.
Instead, sparked by the momentous question: “Who or what am I?”,
I began covertly exploring what happened.
Though busy with my law practice, I sporadically read articles and books about parapsychology and psychic phenomena, but not about sacred mysticism or spirituality, of which I remained ignorant. As I read and reflected, I intuited the validity of various reported metaphysical phenomena, but still hadn’t encountered information about out of body experiences, which I didn’t yet know were common.
However, irresistibly I kept thinking about my New Year’s Eve experience and its meaning. Though convinced of the authenticity of that experience, I suppressed conscious confirmation of it’s true significance until April, 1976 – fifteen months later – when it burst into consciousness from the subconscious, shattering the ego’s psychic shell, which until then had censored and suppressed such awareness.
By that time my marriage was ending and I was confused and troubled, trying to cope with the shock and trauma of divorce and its consequences. Naomi and I were then living separate and apart, but still in the same house, pending legal agreement on sale of the house, our only major economic asset. I had temporarily moved into a third floor attic room, anxiously awaiting my lawyer’s permission to move out. It was the unhappiest time of my life.
My heart was broken at the prospect of being permanently separated from our young children, Jessica and Joshua. But, I hadn’t yet experienced the depth of my emotional sadness, and – as an uptight man – hadn’t shed any tears during my entire adult life.
Then it began happening. I awakened one Monday in April, 1976, feeling an unprecedented slight pressure inside my head. It lasted all day, and was still present the next day – only slightly more intense. For the entire week, the feeling of pressure inside the head intensified each day.
With growing apprehension I began wondering whether I was developing a serious neurological disorder. But, ambivalently, I continued with my busy schedule without consulting a doctor. By the time the weekend arrived, I was experiencing, with considerable concern, great pressure inside my head – as if it was about to ‘explode’ from the inside out.
That weekend Naomi went away with the children, and I was alone in the attic room, when the ‘explosion’ finally happened. I was again wondering about the meaning of my New Year’s Eve out of body experience and the question “Who or what am I?”, when, at long last, I had a profound but simple insight that:
“I am not my body or its thoughts, but pure awareness; I am not my role in life – lawyer, husband, father – with which I’ve identified, but pure awareness.”.
Thereupon the pressure in my head immediately ended, and I burst into unending flood of tears. [Synchronistically, I later realized that the head pressure was a symptom of ascending “kundalini” energy spontaneously purifying my nervous system, by opening subtle body energy channels (nadis).]
As I intensely and uncontrollably cried as never before, my body went into fetal position and spontaneously and convulsively I began gasping and hyperventilating with spasmodic movements. It was as if I was replicating a newborn baby’s emergence from the womb into this world via the mother’s birth canal. The crying, sobbing and ‘rebirthing’ process continued intermittently and spasmodically for twenty four hours, until finally I fell asleep.
Upon awakening, I felt extraordinarily different than ever before. Initially, instead of experiencing myself as a physical body, I experienced only consciousness of flowing lines of vital subtle energy channels , which I later associated with the ‘chi’ meridians described by Chinese acupuncture medicine and with nadis described by kundalini yoga.
Thereafter for almost three months, I needed very little sleep. I would habitually get into bed every night but slept very little, finding that customary restorative sleep wasn’t necessary. Though this extraordinary energy gradually waned and my former physical body experience returned, never again have I experienced life as I did before that self-identity insight and ‘rebirthing’ process.
Paradoxically, my prolonged mid-life birth canal emergence process may have been the first time in this life that I had an experience like a normal newborn’s journey through the birth canal. Prior to this ‘rebirth’ event, my highest spiritual energy experiences had happened when I was present in the delivery room at the births of Jessica and Joshua, our two beautiful children. But these were births of other beings. My own birth was a different story.
Early on November 8, 1932, the day of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first election, I was traumatically extracted with forceps from my mother’s body – a breech birth – after an exceptionally protracted but incomplete labor period.
Because of the psychological significance of perinatal trauma, I have wondered whether that breech birth extraction affected my personality, and whether it in any way triggered or contributed to my mid-life rebirth experience.
Some Western astrologers say that because I emerged at a very propitious time, when the Moon was in Pisces, I came into this world with an open Hearted tendency, not so characteristic of other Moon signs. So, despite the breech birth trauma, that birth time may have been a great blessing.
What do you think?
Beginning a New Year and a New Life With a New Mystery: “Who Am I?” ~ Ron’s Memoirs
An “identity crisis” can be life’s greatest opportunity,
because it raises life’s most crucial question – “Who am I?”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Upon graduation from the University of Chicago law school in 1958, I became a Chicago lawyer. Two years later I was married and moved to San Francisco, rather than settling into married life in Chicago. An idealist then, I had quickly become disillusioned with the Cook County Illinois court system and felt that there must be another place where courts administered justice more consistent with truth, law and equity than politics. And because I previously had a very positive experience of the San Francisco ambiance and “vibes”, I thought the Bay Area might be such a place. Also, my new wife, Naomi, and I both believed that starting married life might be easier if there was a two thousand mile distance between us and our parents. So adventurously we moved to San Francisco after our marriage in June, 1960.
Unlike many others, I didn’t move to California to participate in significant Bay Area social ferment and transformation of that era. I wasn’t interested in Beatniks, Hippies, Flower Children, the Haight-Ashbury scene, or Eastern spirituality (of which I was then totally ignorant). As a San Francisco lawyer, I just wanted to – and often did – help unjustly exploited or downtrodden people with legal problems. But I felt compelled to work within the legal system on cases which came to me, and not pro-actively – except for certain civil liberties issues. Though as an idealistic lawyer I abhorred the tragic injustice and insanity of the Viet Nam war, and the authoritarian suppression of free speech at U.C. Berkeley, I wasn’t politically active in those causes, or in the feminist revolution with which I ambivalently sympathized. And I was quite ‘uptight’ about breaking any social ‘norms’ or doing anything illegal, like using psychedelics.
While keeping distance between us and our parents may have initially been helpful for Naomi and me, it wasn’t enough to prevent irreconcilable differences from ending our marriage fifteen years later. While we had long been stressed by our incompatibilities, for me the psychological seeds of our parting and of a new life beyond married life, were first sown at a 1974-5 New Year’s Eve party, at the Clarendon Heights home of doctor friends who weren’t as uptight about certain social norms as their lawyer friend Ron Rattner.
As we embarked for the party I felt inexplicably happy – happier than I had felt for a long time. And at the party this happiness kept growing as the evening progressed. So by the time that the new year arrived, I was very high in Clarendon Heights. All evening I had been sipping champaign and singing old Broadway songs around an upright piano played by a pianist with an unending repertoire of Tin Pan Alley favorites. The singing brought me back to happier times in high school and college when Dave Weiner, my multi-talented friend since kindergarten, would often lead similar singing from the piano.
After mid-night and customary “happy new year” proclamations, we ate a ‘pot luck’ buffet dinner. I enjoyed the food very much, especially the desert – a home baked cake. But soon after eating it, I began feeling very strange – like I’d never felt before. My brain felt anesthetized, so that I could hardly think. Believing that I was becoming quite ill, I asked Madlyn, the hostess, for a place to lay down. She showed me into a very small, dark utility room furnished with little more than a bed, upon which I quickly fell face down, after removing my eyeglasses.
Then, after lying face down on a pillow for a short time, I had an unprecedented and unforgettable out of body experience (OOB). It seemed that I floated out of my body and up to the ceiling of that small dark room. And from the ceiling, with my glasses on a bedside table, I clearly saw my body lying face down on the pillow. Then, with difficulty I thought: “How can I be up here, when my body’s down there?” And with every thought, I beheld a vividly colored kaleidoscopic form – a surreal thought form, which appeared below the ceiling (where I was) and above the bed (where my body was lying face-down).
All these perceptions seemed very real – not dreamlike or hallucinatory. And for the first time in my life they irresistibly raised an urgent new question: “Who or what am I?”
In later reflecting on my OOB experience, I reasoned that if I was on the ceiling of the room, while my body was face-down on the bed, I couldn’t be the body; and, that if I was on the ceiling of the room, while my thoughts were appearing below me, I couldn’t be the thoughts. Then, if not my body and not my thoughts, who and what am I?
Until then, I had always assumed that I was only my mortal physical body, its thoughts and its story; that I was a middle-aged secular Jewish litigation lawyer, married, with two kids, born in Chicago and living in San Francisco. But with ‘pot luck’ on New Year’s Eve 1974-5, those assumptions were forever shaken.
Thereupon, irresistibly and persistently I began asking the question “Who Am I”, intensely longing for an answer. This self-inquiry process proved an enormous blessing which changed my life forever.
One of The Most Unforgettable Persons I’ve Known – a Synchronicity Story
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“Though we can’t always see it at the time,
if we look upon events with some perspective,
we see things always happen for our best interests.
We are always being guided in a way
better than we know ourselves.”
~ Swami Satchidananda
When I was growing up, my parents subscribed to the Reader’s Digest magazine, where I sometimes read a continuing feature called: “The Most Unforgettable Person I’ve Known”. It mostly told stories about people who were unusual because they were inner – not outer – directed; people who were ‘self-actuated’ and authentic. And I began to appreciate and respect such people.
Particularly since my mid-life spiritual awakening, I have come to recognize and especially appreciate people who follow their heart and not the herd. Of all such people I’ve met, my friend Carol Schuldt is one of the most extraordinary – an amazingly free spirit with great intuitive wisdom. We met long ago while sitting at Aquatic Beach on San Francisco Bay (across from Ghirardelli Square), where she often comes to escape ocean fog and swim in the sun. Since then, we’ve had innumerable synchronistic encounters and exchanged many “miracle” stories about our lives. [Other synchronicity stories about our magical meetings are linked below.]
Carol is such an extraordinary person that, she’s become well-known throughout and beyond her San Francisco neighborhood; so newspaper and magazine stories have been written about her. An excellent and recommended story: “A Benevolent Queen of the Beach” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 25, 2000.
It tells of Carol’s exceptional inner directness even from childhood, when she adamantly refused to attend obligatory church services at Catholic school and was the only student exempted therefrom by the nuns, who recognized her extraordinary inner wisdom. The article also tells that Carol has been dedicating her life to helping troubled souls – especially young people – but that paradoxically Carol has had great family tragedy with all of her three children: her two daughters whose lives were lastingly impacted by drug addiction, and her son who was permanently brain damaged in a childhood car accident.
During the many years I’ve known Carol, she’s almost always been in good spirits whenever we’ve met. But when I saw her on a recent foggy June afternoon at Aquatic Beach, Carol seemed uncharacteristically melancholy and taciturn. And even though she had come to the beach to swim, Carol decided to stay out of the water because she was cold – a rare occurrence. As we parted that afternoon I wondered what was troubling Carol. The next night my question was answered.
Carol excitedly phoned to tell me this story, about a “miraculous” incident that had just happened:
First she explained that she had been in a deeply melancholy state for several days because of an apparent staph infection and because she’d just had great difficulty with her mentally ill daughter Simone who was then living with her. So Carol began feeling very sorry for herself and was nostalgically dwelling on happier family days when her daughters were growing up, and before their lives had gone amiss with drugs and mental illness.
Unable to shake off her deep melancholy and nostalgia, that evening Carol had just impulsively jumped into the fog-enshrouded ocean across the street from her house. Carol told me that she couldn’t recall ever before doing that, rather than swimming earlier in quieter, clearer and more secluded places. After a brief swim she emerged from the water, crossed the street in front of her house and was just about to retrieve some things from her car parked there when another car stopped beside her. A handsome man – about her daughters’ age – got out and addressed Carol.
He asked: “Are you Celeste and Simone’s mother?”
“Yes”, she replied.
Thereupon he said:
“I was in love with Celeste. I’ve never seen such beautiful girls. You raised them to be beautiful and strong.”
Then looking directly in Carol’s eyes, he said: “Mom, it’s not your fault.”
Whereupon he got into his car and drove off, leaving Carol in a state of amazement.
On entering her house, Carol excitedly called me to report this “miraculous” incident while it was fresh in her memory. As Carol spoke she seemed lifted out of the dark melancholy miasma which had enveloped her. And as we talked I typed the above quotes (on my iMac) with tears in my eyes and chills up my spine – psychic signals of the deep importance to Carol of this meaningful miraculous “coincidence”.
For Carol, this incident confirmed that she has been a good mother, and is blessed with Divine protection. How do you interpret it? How did the Universe arrange it?
Ron’s moral of the story: Look for the hidden blessing in every difficult experience.
