Einstein
Life is For Giving
“For it is in giving that we receive.”
~ St. Francis of Assisi, peace prayer
“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” …
“For in truth it is life that gives unto life –
while you, who deem yourself a giver,
is but a witness.”
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“You can give without loving,
but you can never love without giving.”
~ Robert Louis Stevenson and/or
~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The value of a man resides in what he gives
and not in what he is capable of receiving.
~ Albert Einstein
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
~ Lao Tzu
It’s not how much we give
but how much love we put into giving.
~ Mother Teresa
“If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama
St. Francis of Assisi
Life is For Giving
Life is for giving, not getting;
For Being, not having.
Love gives and forgives.
Ego gets and forgets.
It is in giving that we receive.
So, let us end our obsession with possession,
And live to give, and to be –
LOVE.
Ron’s audio comments and recitation of “Life is For Giving”
Ron’s Commentary on Giving Not Getting:
Dear Friends,
For many years I have regularly recited [with amendments] the peace prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, declaring in conclusion that:
“it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and, . . it is in dying – to ego life – that we are reborn to Eternal Life”.
Those oft-repeated lines have inspired many of my writings, including the above “Life is For Giving” poem. In the above posted quotes about giving, I have excerpted these lines from Kahlil Gibran’s perennial wisdom in “The Prophet”:
“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
“For in truth it is life that gives unto life –
while you, who deem yourself a giver, is but a witness.”
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “On Giving”
As we consider and reconsider those wisdom quotes and prayer lines, more and more it seems that each human lifetime is part of a cosmic process of transcending ego’s optical illusion of our imagined separation from each other, and from our true spiritual nature; a mysterious process of our returning psychologically to a state of “At-one-ment” and self-identity with Universal Intelligence or Awareness, as our ultimate Essence and our ultimate destiny.
In that evolutionary process, as we transcend mistaken ideas of who we think we are, we gradually realize what we truly are. We learn that apparent separation of ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’, or ‘pardoner’ and ‘pardoned’, or ‘I’ and ‘others’, is a persistent perceptual delusion – like a mirage.
And we find that by spontaneously giving of ourselves and forgiving others with LOVE our spiritual Self-awareness process is furthered, bestowing ever-more fulfilling life experience.
Today’s writings about giving and forgiving are offered with the aspiration they will help us realize – like Kahlil Gibran – that “it is life that gives unto life”, not “I” or “me” giving to others. And that we may so live ever happier lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Universal Intelligence
~ by Tom Atlee
“The harmony of natural law…reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
~ Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”
~ Albert Einstein, Telegram of 1929
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
~ Albert Einstein [As quoted in Dukas, Helen and Banesh Hoffman. (1979). Albert Einstein – The Human Side, Princeton University Press.]
Albert Einstein
Ron’s Introduction
Albert Einstein was not only a great scientist but a wise philosopher and a pragmatic “true mystic” … “of a deeply religious nature.” (New York Times Obituary, April 19, 1955)
Einstein did not believe in a formal, dogmatic religion, but was religiously and reverently awed and humbled with a “cosmic religious feeling” by the immense beauty and eternal mystery of our Universe. He often commented publicly on religious and ethical subjects, and thereby he became widely respected for his moral integrity and mystical wisdom, as well as for his scientific genius.
In a collection of essays entitled The World As I See It, first published 1933, Einstein explained thusly his reverence for God as supreme Intelligence:
“The harmony of natural law…reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
~ Albert Einstein, The World As I See It.
In December 2010, I discovered online and republished on SillySutras.com the excellent essay below about Universal Intelligence, believing it to be a verbatim extract from Albert Einstein’s “The World As I See It”, because it began with the above quote.
So I attributed the entire essay to Einstein. But I was mistaken.
Not until December 2016, did I discover that the essay was not written by Einstein, but by Tom Atlee of The Co-Intelligence Institute, a non-profit organization, which had published the Universal Intelligence essay commencing with the foregoing Einstein quotation at http://www.co-intelligence.org/Universal_Intelligence.html .
Since the essay is inspired by and harmoniously consistent with Einstein’s views, I am continuing to republish it with corrected attribution, and with sincere apologies to Tom Atlee and any prior visitors to the Silly Sutras website who may have been misled by my mistaken attribution.
Universal Intelligence
by Tom Atlee
“There is something about the universe — an elegant order in the way everything fits and unfolds, an inexplicable beauty in its living patterns, and the mysterious depth and expressiveness of it all — that reminds us of the brilliance we see in the works of great artists, scientists, engineers, and saints.
Some people believe that human intelligence is the pinnacle of natural evolution and can outdo anything nature has to offer — and that there is no God, and that nature has nothing remotely resembling consciousness or intelligence. Others say that nature’s (or God’s) brilliance is greater than any human intelligence — ultimately awesome in its scope and endlessly surprising in its details — and that human intelligence is a small but elegant expression of this larger intelligence and has much to learn from it.
More often than not, I find myself in this latter group — those who sense some kind(s) of universal intelligence. To some degree, this is a matter of faith. To some degree, it seems that the evidence surrounds us. For those of us who see things this way, I suspect it honors universal intelligence more if we contemplate it, share our sense of it, and tap into it rather than argue about it with others who see things differently. In any case, this article describes how I see it.
Christians see a higher intelligence they call God’s plan, or the will of God. Taoists see a higher intelligence they call the Tao, the Way of Nature. Meditative traditions speak of cosmic consciousness. Most indigenous peoples consider all of nature to be intelligent and alive. Scientists speak of natural laws — and some are now researching what they call complex, adaptive systems — systems that respond to the world around them, in ways that look a lot like learning. The whole process of evolution is clearly a learning process, a developing of new variations that work better, or work in new environments. Some people see evolution as the dynamic unfolding Great Story of the Living Universe and consciously celebrate and learn from it.
I bundle all these phenomena into one package and label it “universal intelligence.”
When I’m feeling esoteric, I might describe it something like this:
We live in a sea of information, a web of interconnection, a field of what some Buddhists call inter-being — a dynamic state of interactive, resonant existential communion. There are universal patterns, powers and wisdom at the core of our being, and the universe vibrates with our every act and thought. What happens in one place and time is linked to everything else far more intimately than we could ever imagine. Synchronicities and analogs abound. Certain patterns keep cropping up: We see BRANCHES in trees, rivers, roads, fields of study, computer circuitry. We see CYCLES in planets, electrons, food chains, wheels, the flows of water and carbon through the biosphere, and the recycling bin. It is no accident that we use the word VISION to describe perception, imagination, insight and prediction. Patterns like these (branches, cycles, vision, etc.) are alive with useful meaning. At every level, the universe is rich with lessons and resonances as it in-forms itself, intimately co-being and co-evolving, learning and remembering. Intelligence is everywhere. There is information and wisdom here we can tap into. There are flows and textures and energies, resistences and assistances, that we can join and follow, or grow stronger and wiser wrestling with.
Among those who see such intelligence operating in the world around us, there is endless speculation about its nature. Is universal intelligence built into nature by a human-like Creator and then left to unfold — or a sign of a Creator’s continual, contemporary engagement in creation? Are the natural patterns that we think of as intelligent merely analogs of our own intelligence, or are they somehow the same thing, writ large? Are we anthropomorphically projecting our experience of consciousness into the dumb matter of the world, or is our own intelligent consciousness somehow an expression or facet of some larger intelligent consciousness? Are we dreaming God, or is God dreaming us? I, myself, entertain several seemingly contradictory beliefs at once about all this, and keep it all balanced with a generous ballast of “maybes.”
For my purposes here, though, we don’t have to agree on the nature of universal intelligence. Despite all the disagreements about that, few will disagree that there is something ultimately mysterious and creative about the order of the universe. Even top scientists who see nothing “spiritual” in the world around them agree on that. At the very least, the word “intelligence” provides an excellent metaphor to describe that reality. So for now let us not argue over the exact nature of this thing I call universal intelligence. Rather, let us explore our relationship to it.
In the explorations that follow, I simply assume that there is an order that is larger than us, which has its own logic and direction which we are not in charge of. If this is true, then working against this higher power will demand more effort than working with it, and will generate little, if anything, of lasting value except learning — which is always available — and sometimes catastrophe. This would suggest that we subjugate ourselves to this higher intelligence. However, experience suggests that we can, to a certain degree and with great caution, manipulate this higher intelligence for our own ends — which we do through science and engineering by applying natural laws and through religion by praying. But natural order is complex beyond our capacity to know fully, and if our manipulations are at all arrogant — presumptuous that we know what we’re doing — we will likely end up creating a mess like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A third — and, to me, more satisfactory — strategy than total submission or manipulation is to respect, befriend, cooperate with and creatively move in harmony with this infinitely powerful and complex intelligence, to the best of our ability.
Humility is, naturally, an excellent place to begin in our efforts to cooperate with universal intelligence. Humility in this case simply means an honest appreciation of our own limitations and a real respect for the ancient and awesome wisdom of the greater intelligence(s) in which we’re embedded. Humility means starting from a place without arrogance, with flexible certainties, a place of respect, curiosity, wonder and willingness to learn — in every situation we can manage it.
“Letting go” is another part of cooperating with universal intelligence — being unattached to outcome, realizing we’re not in control. Not being in control doesn’t mean that we don’t have a significant role. Indeed, our influence is part of what shapes the unfolding of whatever happens next. But that is influence, and not control — sometimes more, sometimes less, and always participatory, not unilateral. (This also means leaving behind blame and shame and reconceptualizing responsibility as our [or another’s] actual role in events in which all of us have roles. Taking responsibility for the past would mean consciously acknowledging that what we did — whatever we did — played a role in what happened. Taking responsibility for the future would mean consciously choosing a role and playing it out as best we can, knowing that we are only one of many players.)
In what I experience as my best times, I feel more like a conduit for a larger, all-inclusive intelligence, or like my life is an active part of something larger that is trying to happen. When I’m in that state of awareness, there is a sense of being guided. It isn’t so much that I’m told what to do in so many words (although that has happened occasionally, too), but rather that I can feel when I’m “on track” or “off track.” It is a gut feeling that what I’m doing is the right thing (or not) at this time. Often it is more than a feeling of “being in the flow,” but an apparently objective fact. Ideas, resources, opportunities, and other openings inexplicably appear in ways that facilitate rapid progress in a particular direction — as if someone or something were clearing the way for me.
But sometimes “the way opens” (as the Quakers say) in directions that seem to me wrong. So I end up having to make judgments and choices anyway. How do I know that this impulse is aligned to universal intelligence while that other one is not? I’m not even sure we can talk about universal intelligence as something we can “know.”
So I certainly don’t believe that any of us can legitimately claim to know what its marching orders are, even if we wanted to follow its dictates. I see our challenge as more complex. In the spirit of co-intelligence — as noted above — I prefer to view what seem to be the patterns and promptings of universal intelligence not as something to submit to or manipulate, but as something to join in partnership with, in a sort of dance, as one would with a good friend or lover or comrade. We influence each other. My intentions have a role in shaping The Plan, and my actions have a role in realizing The Plan, but I never know exactly what The Plan is, although I often think I sense its patterns in my life and in the life of the world around me. I open myself to universal intelligence, and let my inevitably limited perception of it inform — but not control — my reason, my passion, my intuition, my action.
One part of that Plan — that intelligence — is crystal clear: Universal intelligence is definitely concerned with more than me. It is concerned with the operation and well-being of the Whole — a Whole so large I can’t fathom it. So opening myself to universal intelligence automatically influences me to keep my intentions for myself in perspective. And from that perspective, I know that when I try to benefit myself at the expense of someone or something else, it’s not going to work out as neatly as I think, because the Plan simply doesn’t operate that way. On the other hand, the closer I get to benefiting The Whole, the more aligned I become with the operations of universal intelligence.
And, since I can’t know The Whole, that translates into doing the best I can while giving universal intelligence lots of space to do what it does. In fact, I can become an ally with universal intelligence by providing contexts in which things can co-creatively self-organize, rather than forcing them into pre-determined outcomes. That doesn’t mean just standing back (although that’s often what’s called for); it means going with the grain of life, not against it. This can be quite active, like helping children learn what they really want to learn instead of forcing them to learn what they’re not interested in (or neglecting them) — or creating an open space conference where all the issues hidden inside the participants can emerge and get dealt with, rather than organizing a conference where experts tell people what to think. This is working with universal intelligence, giving universal intelligence the space it needs to do its thing through whatever aliveness is present.”
Source
http://www.co-intelligence.org/Universal_Intelligence.html
“Choice” Quotations
“We must believe in free will,
we have no choice.”
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
“There is no such thing as chance;
and what seems to us merest accident
springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
~ Friedrich Schiller
“Since we cannot change reality,
let us change the eyes which see reality.”
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
“Choice” Quotations
“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust –
we all dance to a mysterious tune,
intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“What really interests me is whether God had any Choice in the creation of the world.”
~ Albert Einstein
“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
“Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others’ affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief”
~ Buddha
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
~ Albert Camus
“When you have to make a choice and don’t make it,
that is in itself a choice.”
~ William James
“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
Take which you please – you can never have both.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.”
~ Leo Buscaglia
“I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.”
~ A Course In Miracles
“Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing:
the last of the human freedom — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
~ Viktor Frankl
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore choose life.”
~ Deuteronomy 30:19
“Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength. ”
~ Hasidic Saying
Synchronicity Story: An Amazing Experiment With Time ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“People .. who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Space and time are not conditions in which we live,
they are modes in which we think”
~ Albert Einstein
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control.
It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust,
we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”
~ The Kybalion
An Amazing Experiment With Time
Introduction
In April 1976, during a traumatic divorce, I experienced a transformative mid-life spiritual awakening. Thereupon, I began having many extraordinary psychic or mystical experiences previously unknown to me, including experiences which challenged my prior ideas about linear time and free will versus destiny.
In January and February, 1977, I was having so many unusual premonitions, dreams, synchronicities and precognitive experiences that I started making diary notations about them, though I’d never before kept any such diary. These extraordinary experiences radically challenged my “normal” linear time paradigm, and motivated me to try understanding what they meant and why they were happening.
At the end of February, 1977, I spent a week in New York City, so filled with amazing synchronistic and precognitive experiences, that I became convinced it was possible to mystically transcend serial time perception.
Before telling you what happened to me in New York that week, I must recount prior circumstances and events in San Francisco which were crucially related to those New York experiences.
Extraordinary experiences in San Francisco
One month before my New York trip, on January 22, 1977, I had an unforgettable mystical experience of traveling astrally super-fast to an unknown place. The inner experience happened when I was partially awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. I was out of my body and traveling with a whirring/whistling sound, so swiftly that intuitively it seemed I was moving faster than the speed of light – a supposed physical impossibility.
My first destination was a room which appeared from its furnishings to be a typical hotel room. After observing the room, I suddenly traveled right through many walls in the same building and stopped in another similarly furnished apparent hotel room – again a supposed physical impossibility.
In the second room, I looked out the window and saw far below what I thought was a kidney shaped swimming pool on a platform, surrounded by geometric designs. At that point I briefly awakened in wonderment about this unprecedented experience, and later recorded it in my diary.
At this time, I was seeking explanations for my extraordinary experiences by attending various psychic/spiritual programs, including events sponsored by Arica Institute. Arica was a spiritual mystery school founded by Chilean mystic Oscar Ichaso, who used enneagrams – nine star polygons – to esoterically model and analyze human personalities. On Monday, February 7, 1977, I attended an Arica program in San Francisco where I was encouraged to visit Arica’s new beautiful headquarters facilities in New York City.
Also, during this same time period, I experienced several unusually vivid dreams, wherein I saw an unknown dark haired woman with short bangs, and became very curious about her identity and why she was in my dreams.
After jogging to the Golden Gate bridge each morning, I regularly walked to my office in the financial district. On the way to my office I often passed a store front Christian Science reading room on Polk Street where I read the selected bible passages displayed in the window. On Tuesday, February 8, 1977, the day after the Arica meeting, I had walked a short distance past the Christian Science reading room without stopping, when suddenly I felt impelled to go back and read the bracketed bible passage then on display in the window.
It was from Genesis, Chapter 29, about Jacob and his uncle Laban and Laban’s two daughters, Lea and Rachel who were both betrothed to Jacob. Jacob loved Rachel, Laban’s youngest daughter, but couldn’t marry her until after he had first worked for Laban seven years, married Lea, the eldest, and then spent seven more years laboring for Laban as a condition to his marriage to Rachel.
The commentary noted that because of Jacob’s love and devotion for Rachel, the two seven year periods passed quickly – as if ‘time stood still’. That night I noted this in my diary.
In New York I was to participate in a week of class-action depositions. Since I was unfamiliar with New York city I asked my uncle Richard, a New York resident, to reserve a room for me at a hotel near the Rockefeller Center deposition site. He picked the Wellington. But thereafter I learned from other lawyers attending the depositions that the New York Hilton was closest to the deposition site. So I called the Hilton from San Francisco, but was told they were then booked. So, I planned to stay at the Wellington.
A miraculous trip to New York City
Here is what happened during my 1977 trip to New York which forever changed my views about the ‘reality’ of serial time:
On Monday, February 21, 1977, I boarded an airplane flight from San Francisco to New York City. En route I began reading a book by J. W. Dunne, entitled “An Experiment With Time” about precognition and human experience of time. I had just purchased the Dunne book, after reading “The Roots of Coincidence” by Arthur Koestler which discussed time seriality and synchronicity in light of observations by physicists. I was trying to understand the numerous precognitive and synchronistic experiences that then had been regularly occurring in my life for almost a year since my rebirth experience.
Dunne’s book proposed that past, present and future all happen concurrently, though ‘normal’ human consciousness experiences them linearly, except in dreams. Dunne’s theory was based on his own precognitive dreams and induced precognitive states. Though Dunne’s essay was originally published in 1927, this was my first exposure to these fascinating ideas about linear time. Soon, however, my amazing experiences during the week in New York convinced me of the probable validity of Dunne’s theory.
I arrived at JFK airport Monday evening, checked into the Wellington Hotel, and was assigned an uncomfortably warm room, in which I didn’t want to stay another night. On awakening Tuesday morning, I called the Hilton where I was able to reserve a room. So, I checked out of the Wellington and into the Hilton, where I was given room 2541.
On entering my new Hilton room I gazed out the window and was astonished to see below me an extraordinary mosaic art display of colored tiles arrayed in geometric forms. I immediately recognized it as the apparent “raised platform” with the same geometric design which I had mistakenly perceived as a swimming pool in my January 22 astral time travel experience. But instead of a swimming pool on a raised platform, I was viewing the roof of the Ziegfeld Theater, as covered with this artistic mosaic tile display.
Thereupon, I realized with amazement that my astral travel vision had been precognitive and, moreover, that my perception then that I was traveling faster than the speed of light – and thus traveling into the ‘future’ – was probably correct.
Soon after checking into the Hilton, I attended the first deposition at 1345 Avenue of Americas, in the offices of Arthur Anderson Co. Synchronistically, the extraordinary Ziegfeld Theater rooftop display was also visible from from the deposition conference room.
On Tuesday evening after the first deposition and before dinner, I decided to visit the New York Arica Institute headquarters, as suggested by San Francisco Arica people. Located at 24 West 57th Street, it proved unusual and beautiful as they told me – with even an interesting art gallery. There was only one other visitor when I arrived at Arica that evening – Pat, a dark haired woman with short bangs, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, who was viewing displayed art works.
We soon began chatting and learned that we were both quite interested in similar psychic phenomena. Pat, like me, had attended and valued Werner Ehrhard’s est training and had been having numerous psychic experiences following a recent divorce. She told me that she was self-employed as a free-lance model. (I later learned that she was then one of New York’s top fashion models.)
After talking for some time at Arica, we went to a nearby small restaurant where at dinner we were engrossed in conversation about logic versus experience of psychic phenomena and precognitive dreams – a conversation that seemed only to have begun when we needed to part. So we agreed to and did meet again for dinner the next night, Wednesday, February 23. And again we continued conversing about seemingly illogical but very real psychic phenomena which we had experienced.
On parting, I invited Pat to join me for dinner on Friday night, since I had a dinner engagement with my uncle and aunt on Thursday night. Until then, I had planned to return to San Francisco on Friday evening after the depositions, but decided that I’d like to stay in New York to see Pat again. She told me that she’d like to meet me again, but wouldn’t know if that was possible until Friday. So, we agreed that she would let me know by calling me at the deposition. I gave her a phone number which I’d been told would directly connect to the Arthur Anderson conference room where the depositions were happening.
That Wednesday night, I awakened suddenly from a sound sleep with the “ahaa!” realization that Pat was the dark haired woman with bangs who I’d earlier seen in San Francisco dreams. In a phone conversation the next day, I asked her if she’d always styled her hair with bangs. She replied that she hadn’t worn it that way for a long time, but that she had just had her hair cut with bangs, the week before we met. (So, when I saw her with bangs in my dreams, she wasn’t yet wearing them.)
On Thursday night I had dinner with my uncle Richard and aunt Roseanne. This was our first meeting since my spiritual awakening. So, tactfully, I tried to explain my recent experiences and new intense interest in psychic phenomena and precognition. But it seemed that these subjects were a bit too ‘far out’ for them.
On returning to my Hilton Hotel room before bed-time, I decided to read passages from the Gideon bible which I found in a drawer under the telephone. Randomly, I first opened that bible to the Book of Numbers where synchronistically I read this passage about significance of dreams and visions:
And the Lord said to them, “Now listen to what I say: “If there were prophets among you, I, the Lord, would reveal myself in visions. I would speak to them in dreams. But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! (Numbers 12:6-8)
Next, I decided to review again Genesis 29:16 et. seq., the passage about Jacob and Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, which had so intrigued me two weeks earlier in the Christian Science Reading Room window.
And finally I ruminated deeply about the meaning of this passage, suggesting infinite possibility of ‘miracles’:
“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes” ~ Mark 9:23.
An amazing day
Fiddler on the Roof
I arose Friday morning intending to stay in New York that night only if I could spend another evening with Pat, the lovely dark haired ‘woman of my dreams’. Otherwise, I would return to San Francisco on an evening non-stop flight. I received no phone message from Pat during the morning deposition session. Assuming she couldn’t meet me, I checked out of the Hilton at 1 p.m., and left my bags in the hotel lobby baggage room.
Only after checking out, was I informed by the Hilton desk clerk of Pat’s unsuccessful attempt to reach me there, and of her answering service call-back number. But I wasn’t able to contact her until after 5 p.m.
When I finally reached her, she told me she’d been trying to call me at Arthur Anderson all afternoon to arrange our meeting, but that no-one answered the Anderson private line number, so she had given up on seeing me, and had returned home outside Manhattan. By this time, it was too late for me to catch the hotel limousine bus service to JFK for the evening non-stop to San Francisco.
So I stepped up to the Hilton front desk and registered for a room for one night. Synchronistically, I was given room 2506 on the very same floor and very same side of the hotel as room 2541 (where I had been staying until then), except at the opposite end of the corridor. I entered the new room looked out the window, again beheld the extraordinary colored tile mosaic art display on the roof of the Ziegfeld Theater, and began crying. At long last I realized why in my January 22nd astral travels into the future I had moved through many walls from one hotel room to another. I had moved from Hilton room 2541 to room 2506. How AMAZING!!
Unexpectedly alone in New York on a Friday night when I had planned to return to San Francisco, and wondering how I would spend the evening, I went down to the hotel lobby bar for a drink. There I met an English woman named Pam, who told me she was visiting from London to spend time with her friend, actor Rex Harrison, who was then starring on Broadway in “Caesar and Cleopatra”, which had just opened at the Palace Theater.
Pam urged me to join her at the play that night and promised to introduce me to Rex Harrison after the performance. That sounded interesting, so I agreed to see “Caesar and Cleopatra” with her.
Then, I asked Pam what she did in London when not vacationing. She told me she was an actress on leave from the London production of “Fiddler on the Roof”. We talked a bit about Fiddler. I had seen the movie adaptation of the play, but not the play, and as we talked I was reminded of how much I had enjoyed the film.
Set in Tsarist Russia in 1905, the Fiddler story centers on Tevye, a village milk man and father of five daughters, and his thwarted attempts to follow religious traditions and maintain family unity in turbulent times; how he coped with both the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters and with the edicts of the Tsar banishing the Jews from their villages and dwellings.
The story was set at the very time when my beloved Jewish father, Harry, was born in Korostyshiv, a similar Ukrainian village. Especially because my father and his extended family were obliged to flee for their lives from Tsarist Russia, in the same way as the fictional characters in Fiddler were obliged to flee, I was exceptionally interested in the story and loved the music.
While Pam and I chatted about Fiddler, she mentioned that a Fiddler revival was then running on Broadway with Zero Mostel in the lead role, as Tevye the milkman. I had always wanted to see a Fiddler production but didn’t know until that moment that it was being performed on Broadway. On learning this, I diplomatically explained to Pam that though it would be fun to meet Rex Harrision with her, I would prefer seeing Fiddler on the Roof.
I’d heard that with Zero Mostel, the original star, the play was wonderfully entertaining, and perhaps better than the movie in which Mostel wasn’t cast. So, after explaining this to Pam, I quickly went to the Winter Garden Theater box office where I was able to get a good center balcony single seat.
Thus on Friday, February 25, 1977, I was unexpectedly about to see a Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof”, with Zero Mostel, because I had unexpectedly failed to return that night to San Francisco as planned, and had unexpectedly remained in New York City, where I was unexpectedly staying at the Hilton Hotel, in a 25th floor room at the opposite end of the corridor from the 25th floor room where I had unexpectedly stayed earlier in the week, after unexpectedly checking out of the Wellington Hotel.
As I sat that night in the Winter Garden balcony awaiting the opening curtain, I read the brief playbill story summary. But nothing therein prepared me for my emotional experience during scene six of the first act. Prior to that scene, a young man named Perchik – an itinerant bible scholar passing through Tevye’s village – had met kind hearted Tevye, who gave Perchik room and board in exchange for Perchik’s commitment to teach bible lessons to Tevye’s daughters.
Amazingly, act one, scene six, opened with Perchik giving Tevye’s daughters a lesson about Jacob and Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, from Genesis 29:16 – the same passage that had engrossed me in San Francisco when I read it in the Christian Science Reading Room window and again when I read it in my hotel room Gideon Bible.
For me this was such a miraculous, mysterious, and meaningful synchronicity, culminating so many similar amazing events during my extraordinary week in New York, that I spontaneously burst into tears. And I kept crying for the remainder of the play.
Conclusion
On returning to San Francisco from that miraculous week in New York, I began wondering:
“What is time?”
“Are there really any coincidences or accidents, or is everything that happens to us predestined by laws of causation or karma?”
“Do we really have free will as most people believe?
And if so, what free will?”
What do you think?
Kalu Rinpoche, the Zen Master and the Orange
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
~ Albert Einstein
Kalu Rinpoche (1905 – May 10, 1989)
Ron’s Introductory Comments.
Is “reality” absolute or relative?
And how should the answer to that question influence our worldly ways?
Our phenomenal Universe is miraculous, marvelous, and meaningful. But it is ever changing and impermanent – a “relative reality” of space, time and causality which some mystics call illusion, samsara, or maya.
It arises and appears in an unchanging mysterious matrix of Infinite Potentiality, which some call “Absolute Reality”.
When aware or awakening to this distinction between Absolute and relative reality, we may realize that while we are apparent entities in this world, our Source and ultimate identity transcends this world; that we are ‘in this world but not of this world’.
Thus realizing the impermanence and relativity of our phenomenal reality, we may ponder on its meaning and purpose and, accordingly, on how to best behave herein: viz. what thoughts, words or deeds (if any) are most appropriate and skillful?
SillySutras.com is dedicated to raising perennial questions about how to best be in this world. Even spiritual masters and great scholars can disagree on answers to such questions.
So, ultimately, each of us must intuitively answer such questions for ourselves.
In the opening chapter of “Thoughts Without a Thinker”, concerning psychotherapy from a Buddhist perspective, author psychotherapist Mark Epstein recounts this apt anecdote about a meeting at the home of a Harvard University psychology professor of two prominent teachers of Buddha-dharma with different ideas about dharma.
“Thoughts Without a Thinker”, by Dr. Mark Epstein – Excerpt From Chapter One.
“In the early days of my interest in Buddhism and psychology, I was given a particularly vivid demonstation of how difficult it was going to be to forge an integration between the two. Some friends of mine had arranged for an encounter between two prominent visiting Buddhist teachers at the house of a Harvard University psychology professor. These were teachers from two distinctly different Buddhist traditions who had never met and whose traditions had in fact had very little contact over the past thousand years. Before the worlds of Buddhism and Western psychology could come together, the various strands of Buddhism would have to encounter one another. We were to witness the first such dialogue.
The teachers, seventy-year-old Kalu Rinpoche of Tibet, a veteran of years of solitary retreat, and the Zen master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen master to teach in the United States, were to test each other’s understanding of the Buddha’s teachings for the benefit of the onlooking Western students. This was to be a high form of what was being called ‘dharma’ combat (the clashing of great minds sharpened by years of study and meditation), and we were waiting with all the anticipation that such a historic encounter deserved. The two monks entered with swirling robes — maroon and yellow for the Tibetan, austere grey and black for the Korean — and were followed by retinues of younger monks and translators with shaven heads. They settled onto cushions in the familiar cross-legged positions, and the host made it clear that the younger Zen master was to begin. The Tibetan lama sat very still, fingering a wooden rosary (mala) with one hand while murmuring, “Om mani padme hum” continuously under his breath.
The Zen master, who was already gaining renown for his method of hurling questions at his students until they were forced to admit their ignorance and then bellowing, “Keep that don’t know mind!” at them, reached deep inside his robes and drew out an orange. “What is this?” he demanded of the lama. “What is this?” This was a typical opening question, and we could feel him ready to pounce on whatever response he was given.
The Tibetan sat quietly fingering his mala and made no move to respond.
“What is this?” the Zen master insisted, holding the orange up to the Tibetan’s nose.
Kalu Rinpoche bent very slowly to the Tibetan monk near to him who was serving as the translator, and they whispered back and forth for several minutes. Finally the translator addressed the room: “Rinpoche says, ‘What is the matter with him? Don’t they have oranges where he comes from?”
The dialog progressed no further.”
What is Life? – Quotes
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
~ Crowfoot
What is Life? – Quotes
“Life is like an onion; you peel off layer after layer
and then you find there is nothing in it.”
~ James Gibbons Huneker
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life.
‘It goes on.’”
~ Robert Frost
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. ……
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach.”
~ Havelock Ellis
“In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.”
~ Charlie Brown
“If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z,
where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut.
~ Albert Einstein
“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust –
we all dance to a mysterious tune,
intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe,
to match your nature with Nature.”
~ Joseph Campbell
“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
~ James M. Barrie
“..the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
~ Walt Whitman, “O Me! O Life!”, Leaves of Grass
“Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.”
~ Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
“Life is a whim of several trillion cells to be you for a while.”
~ Author Unknown
“When we remember we are all mad,
the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
~ Mark Twain
The Lightworker Objective
~ by Owen Waters
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness
that created it. ”
~ Albert Einstein
Ron Rattner’s introductory comments
Except for timeless awareness, nothing is permanent ‘neath Heaven’s vast firmament’. Science shows us that our world and everything in it is ever changing energy. Yet we have been spell-bound by cultural conditioning, language and perception to believe ourselves separate subjects in a solid “objective” world.
Until now, acting on the illusionary belief that we are separate from Nature, we have ignorantly, fearfully and greedily been despoiling and exploiting our precious planet and its lifeforms, thereby creating immense ecologic, economic, humanitarian and interpersonal crises.
Yet, paradoxically, though confronted with extraordinary peril, we now have unprecedented potential for solving and transcending our planetary problems, intuitively, scientifically, and technologically.
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and Humanity is achieving a critical mass of higher consciousness which will resolve our critical mess as we transcend the separate subject-object illusion, realizing that Nature is our nature; that what we do to Nature and others we do to ourselves.
The news media are now filled with reports of important new social phenomena – like Occupy Wall Street – emblematic of elevated societal awareness of crucial need for revolutionary systemic change.
Here is an excellent essay by spiritual author and teacher Owen Waters, explaining how ultimate power to transcend human problems is within each of us; and how we are now experiencing a subtle shift in human consciousness which is being led by a critical mass of spiritual seekers – sometimes called “lightworkers”.
The Lightworker Objective ~ by Owen Waters*
We are in the midst of a revolution in consciousness which is affecting everyone. Even the most staunch traditionalists in society are being dragged into a vortex of ever-increasing change.
The 80-20 rule states that 80% of any change is typically caused by 20% of the people. The 20% consists of the leading thinkers of the day. In spiritual matters, these leading edge people are sometimes called lightworkers or old souls, indicating that they have learned more from their experiences through many incarnations. This advanced learning is stored as wisdom in their souls and they benefit from it consciously through intuitive inner guidance.
Today’s leading edge thinkers planned ahead to be incarnate at this time in history to help make the essential positive changes in society possible. Social science has begun to recognize them as a major group in today’s society.
A survey in the 1990’s by researchers Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson found that 26 percent of American adults had become what they termed Cultural Creatives. Over fifty million Americans now fit the definition of a newly emerging type of humanity that has made a comprehensive upward shift in worldview, values and way of life. In Europe, a 1997 survey conducted in fifteen European countries showed figures that are very similar to the United States.
So, in a social setting the term ‘leading edge thinker’ actually applies to more than 20% of the people today. Most of them don’t think of themselves as leading edge, nor do they typically realize how many other people are just like them.
The term ‘lightworker’ is synonymous with ‘spiritual seeker.’ You may or may not think of yourself a lightworker but, if you’re reading this, then you fit the definition perfectly.
The two categories of Cultural Creatives identified by Ray and Anderson fit exactly into the consciousness patterns of lower and upper fourth density. While our physical bodies are currently located in upper third density, our minds are free to soar through heart-centered fourth density and into fifth-density soul consciousness.
When a person moves from the third-density challenge of developing basic intellect into lower fourth density, their worldview expands and they become more aware of the needs of society. They take into account the local and global effects of their own actions and the actions of others that they support. Environmental, organic and peace-making concerns all come under this frequency band of consciousness.
Then, as outlined in my book, The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness, when people move from lower to upper fourth-density consciousness they pass through the gateway of the heart. This brings them into the first level of spiritual awareness and they become more concerned with inner development and enlightenment.
Leading thinkers are simply people whose normal frequency of consciousness is higher than average. The higher your frequency, the greater your awareness and the greater your ability to lead change by showing others how to resolve the challenges in life.
Two very popular issues today are control issues and self-empowerment. People who were raised to feel the need to be in control are now recognizing that this was just another form of fear which has no substance in reality. Reality comes from your soul’s intuitive guidance because, at a soul level, your consciousness sees everything that you need to succeed and achieve your purpose in life.
The opposite side of the same coin is the issue of self-empowerment, which is learned by people who break free of control by others and establish their own sense of inner strength and self-dependence.
The issue of self-empowerment is being explored at a societal level as well as an individual level. Every person who begins to realize that they are being deliberately disempowered and turns off the fear-inducing news broadcasts leads the world another step towards liberty from the chains that are designed to bind people to a life of servitude. Thanks to the awakening of lightworkers and leading thinkers, the world is waking up to a whole new standard of personal power and dignity.
Here is the point that I am being told to make by The Lord Protector of The Shift: Lightworkers often choose to experience major challenges in their lives, not because they need the experience, because they have mastered those challenges in previous incarnations. Instead, lightworkers choose to experience challenges because other people need leading thinkers to show them how to resolve these issues. The more the leading-edge people succeed in resolving these issues, the easier it becomes for the rest to follow.
There is a global mind atmosphere or ‘mind belt’ of human consciousness around the planet. You are subconsciously linked with the mind belt 24 hours a day. It affects you and you affect it. Your contribution to the mental and spiritual health of the world is made every second of every day.
The Lightworker Objective is to be a pioneer in the advancement of consciousness, often adopting certain challenges in order to work through them and, by doing so, creating a pattern in the mind belt to make it easier for others to follow.
If you are currently working through a major life challenge and feel as though you’re going round in circles and getting nowhere, STOP and look for the gift in that challenge.
The gift is that, by loving yourself and others more, you can rise above the challenge and become more of who you really are. Then, the experience changes from one of challenge to one of self-empowerment.
Real strength does not lie anywhere in the outside world. It lies within you. Once you find that inner power, you rise above any limitation and stand as a self-realized leading thinker in a world desperate for spiritual freedom.
——
*Owen Waters is the author of The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness, and other spiritual books and articles described at: http://www.infinitebeing.com/index.html
