Posts Tagged ‘human potential’

John Lennon at 80: One Man Against the Deep State ‘Monster’ ~ By John W. Whitehead

“You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”
~ John Lennon, “Imagine”
“A man of humble origin, [John Lennon] brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to be a good power for the world, and he was. He gave encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people regardless of their race, creed and gender.”
~ Yoko Ono




Ron Rattner’s Introduction to “John Lennon at 80”.

My last SillySutras posting honored departed hero John Lennon on his October 9, 2020, eightieth birthday anniversary. It featured a poetic essay and two embedded live video performances of Lennon singing “Imagine”, shortly before he died at age forty.

The posting’s introduction stated that John Lennon artistically bequeathed to us music and songs that continue to inspire countless people worldwide, like his legendary “Imagine”. (See Envisioning a Better World ~ With Imagination and Faith)

It also mentioned, but didn’t explain, that – like Dr. King and Malcolm X – Lennon was martyred at age forty at the pinnacle of his powers.

Today’s posting helps explain why John Lennon was murdered but is still remembered and honored as a politically influential peace advocate. It is especially shared for those who are inspired by Lennon’s music, but who haven’t yet learned or don’t remember that he was murdered as a nonviolent crusader for peace and social justice, and for relentlessly opposing US empire foreign policies – such as the notoriously immoral false-flag war in Viet Nam.

Like Mahatma Gandhi, Lennon’s life (as well as his music) was his message. Especially in these extraordinarily turbulent times, when millions of people (and other lifeforms) are being killed, harmed or threatened by unconscionably immoral acts of violence, it seems crucial that humankind at long last learn from departed heroes like Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King and John Lennon to live inner-directed loving lives dedicated to revealing spiritual truth as well as to pursuing political and social justice.

So I’m hereafter sharing with you an excellent article by skilled and erudite Constitutional Law attorney and author John W. Whitehead explaining why Lennon’s life remains legendary long since he was murdered after becoming “enemy number one — of the U.S. government”.

In concluding his article, Whitehead observes that:

“For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace,
it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state.”


I respectfully concur with Whitehead’s characterization of “the American police state” based on his skilled legal perspectives, and I appreciate his historic analyses. However, I will conclude this posting with an optimistic spiritual perspective, which is harmonious with John Lennon’s imagination that with Truth and LOVE “the world will live as one”.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner


John Lennon at 80: One Man Against the Deep State ‘Monster’
~ By John W. Whitehead

“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil.
The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.”
~ John Lennon (1969)
John Lennon, born 80 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon.

He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist, and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.

Long before Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.

For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Years after Lennon’s assassination it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, directed the agency to spy on the musician. There were also various written orders calling on government agents to frame Lennon for a drug bust. “The FBI’s files on Lennon read like the writings of a paranoid goody-twoshoes”, observed reporter Jonathan Curiel.

As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs.John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”

Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, over criminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.

For all of these reasons, the U.S. government was obsessed with Lennon, who had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Lennon believed in the power of the people. Unfortunately, as Lennon recognized: “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.”

However, as Martin Lewis writing for Time notes: “John Lennon was not God. But he earned the love and admiration of his generation by creating a huge body of work that inspired and led. The appreciation for him deepened because he then instinctively decided to use his celebrity as a bully pulpit for causes greater than his own enrichment or self-aggrandizement.”

For instance, in December 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., Lennon took to the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.

What Lennon did not know at the time was that government officials had been keeping strict tabs on the ex-Beatle they referred to as “Mr. Lennon.” Incredibly, FBI agents were in the audience at the Ann Arbor concert, “taking notes on everything from the attendance (15,000) to the artistic merits of his new song.”

The U.S. government, steeped in paranoia, was spying on Lennon.

By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear where Lennon stood. Having moved to New York City that same year, Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.

The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song and depicted President Richard Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung dancing together nude on the cover, only fanned the flames of the conflict to come.

The official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest in 1972 after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. Nixon, fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”

Then again, the FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures. Most notably among the latter are such celebrated names as folk singer Pete Seeger, painter Pablo Picasso, comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, comedian Lenny Bruce and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.

While Lennon was not —as far as we know— being blackmailed into suicide, he was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics.”

As Lennon’s FBI file shows, memos and reports about the FBI’s surveillance of the anti-war activist had been flying back and forth between Hoover, the Nixon White House, various senators, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration Office.

Nixon’s pursuit of Lennon was relentless and in large part based on the misperception that Lennon and his comrades were planning to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention. The government’s paranoia, however, was misplaced.

Left-wing activists who were on government watch lists and who shared an interest in bringing down the Nixon Administration had been congregating at Lennon’s New York apartment. But when they revealed that they were planning to cause a riot, Lennon balked.

As he recounted in a 1980 interview, “We said, we ain’t buying this. We’re not going to draw children into a situation to create violence so you can overthrow what? And replace it with what? . . . It was all based on this illusion, that you can create violence and overthrow what is, and get communism or get some right-wing lunatic or a left-wing lunatic. They’re all lunatics.”

Despite the fact that Lennon was not part of the “lunatic” plot, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an appeal. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country when he was granted a green card. As he said afterwards,

“I have a love for this country…. This is where the action is. I think we’ll just go home, open a tea bag, and look at each other.”


Lennon’s time of repose didn’t last long, however. By 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to become politically active again.

The old radical was back and ready to cause trouble. In his final interview on Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon mused, “The whole map’s changed and we’re going into an unknown future, but we’re still all here, and while there’s life there’s hope.”

The Deep State has a way of dealing with troublemakers, unfortunately. On Dec. 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows when Lennon returned to his New York apartment building. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI’s moniker for Lennon, called out, “Mr. Lennon!”

Lennon turned and was met with a barrage of gunfire as Chapman—dropping into a two-handed combat stance—emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into his back and left arm. Lennon stumbled, staggered forward and, with blood pouring from his mouth and chest, collapsed to the ground.

John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. He had finally been “neutralized.”

Yet where those who neutralized the likes of John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others go wrong is in believing that you can murder a movement with a bullet and a madman.

Thankfully, Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power. As Yoko Ono shared in a 2014 letter to the parole board tasked with determining whether Chapman should be released:

“A man of humble origin, [John Lennon] brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to be a good power for the world, and he was. He gave encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people regardless of their race, creed and gender.


Sadly, not much has changed for the better in the world since Lennon walked among us.

Peace remains out of reach. Activism and whistle blowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, with local police dressed like the military, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives across the globe.

For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of
the American police state.

Meanwhile, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, those who dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship, involuntary detention or, worse, even shot and killed in their own homes by militarized police.

As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:

“I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”


So what’s the answer?

Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“War is over if you want it.”
“Produce your own dream…. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders…. You have to do it yourself.
That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshiped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”

“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, And something you give away.”

“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”


And my favorite advice of all:

“Say you want a revolution
We better get on right away
Well you get on your feet
And out on the street
Singing power to the people”


* Source:
This article was originally published by The Rutherford Institute. Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People! is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.Copyright © John W. Whitehead, Global Research, 2020



Ron Rattner’s Concluding Comments about “John Lennon at 80”.

John Lennon was a charismatic and inspiring populist leader and peace advocate, who presciently envisioned a peaceful planet fulfilling our common needs and deepest desires for a radically new era when our “world will live as ONE.”

But since John Lennon’s death forty years ago, the Deep State satanic forces which he relentlessly opposed still persist. The world remains afflicted with insane and immoral wars, militarism, and violence. The US police state continues its unjust persecution of dissenting truth tellers, whistle blowers and peace proponents, while turning a blind eye to those responsible for dastardly crimes against humanity and Nature. Ubiquitous US economic inequality is more extreme than ever before, unjustly favoring the super-rich 1% at the expense of almost everyone else.

Thus, the US government has become an autocratic and exploitive “police state”, with much more hypocrisy than democracy, especially as its post–WWII imperial hegemony is being challenged (and imminently ended) by China and other non-allied competitive nations.

Thus author John W. Whitehead observes in his above article:


“Sadly, not much has changed for the better in the world since Lennon walked among us.” “For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state.”


Moreover Whitehead, who is a skilled and erudite constitutional law expert, has repeatedly an persuasively identified the US an authoritarian “police state” in his previously published articles and books.

For example Whitehead has metaphorically compared the Roman dominated land of Jesus’ birth with the present American nation as a “police state”, in Jesus Was Born in a Police State. And in The Slippery Slope to Despotism: Paved with Lockdowns, Raids and Forced Vaccinations he explains how the pretense of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic emergency has allowed the US and other governments to unconstitutionally and unlawfully oppress their constituents with “power grabs” possibly leading “to outright despotism”

As a still dedicated former social justice attorney, I concur with Mr. Whitehead’s description of the US government as an “American police state”.

However, as a spiritual author and philosopher, I respectfully wish offer this foreseeable alternative outcome of unjust worldwide coronavirus “emergency” edicts:

That, rather than leading us to global dystopian “despotism”, they will awaken humankind to awareness of our God-given powers and inherent rights, resulting in our nonviolently resisting and successfully overcoming psychopathic Deep State despotism, so that (at long last) “the world will live as one”.

In my view, we are inevitably destined to experience an urgently needed ‘tipping point’ in which a critical mass of awakened humanity will transcend parasitically divisive anger, anxiety, and fear to adamantly resist evil edicts with Truth and Love. Thereby we will begin to co-create a much more compassionate world, with bottom-up societies serving people and planet over profits, as envisioned by John Lennon.

This perspective is inspired by inner and outer experiences and observation, and by great social justice reformers like Lennon, and by Mahatma Gandhi who reminds us that: 


“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible,
but in the end they always fall—think of it. Always.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi


And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

The Sacred Secret of Life
~ Ron’s Memoirs, Quotes and Poem

“That which is timeless is found now.”
~ Buddha
Life can be found only in the present moment.
The past is gone, the future is not yet here,
and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment,
we cannot be in touch with life.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
~ Alan Watts
Remember then: there is only one time that is important – Now!
It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
~ Leo Tolstoy
“The more we live moment by moment,
the more momentous our lives.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Life is NOW

Ever NOW

Never then.”

~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Tao and Zen

are NOW,

not then.

~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings






Ron’s Introduction

The following ‘channeled’ poem and above quotations, are about a key wisdom concept which is so important for spiritual evolution that with poetic license I’ve called it “the sacred secret of life”. That spiritual secret and my process leading to composition of the ‘secret of life’ poem are explained in comments below.

The Sacred Secret of Life

We evolve and revolve
ever seeking to solve
the sacred secret of life.

But the further we go
the less we know
the sacred secret of life.

The longer our history,
the greater the mystery of
the sacred secret of life.

Yet we never stop trying –
keep birthing and dying, for
the sacred secret of life.

Tho’ we may never solve it,
we’ll ever evolve it:
The sacred secret of life.

So in Awe we bow
to the ever NOW—

The sacred secret of Life.



Ron’s audio recitation of “The Sacred Secret of Life”

Listen to



Ron’s explanation of “The Sacred Secret of Life”

Dear Friends,

The foregoing “secret of life” poem was inspired by previously unimagined and unforgettable experiences which began after my midlife spiritual awakening. After many years of inner reflection, prayer and meditation, the poem was composed spontaneously during my extended post-retirement reclusive period.

Soon after my awakening, I was synchronistically introduced to Eastern spiritual wisdom through a friend who urged me to read an extraordinary book with an intriguing title – “Be Here Now”. It told about the spiritual transformation of Dr. Richard Alpert, Harvard Ph.D, into Ram Dass, a Western teacher of Eastern wisdom, after meeting his Hindu guru – Neem Karoli Baba.

“Be Here Now” was for me unlike any other book I’d ever before seen or read. Filled with beautiful calligraphy, art, and photos, it imaginatively presented a fascinating melange of Eastern ideas previously unknown to me, with many suggestions and ‘recipes’ for spiritual practices.

Some suggestions interested me, though I didn’t immediately adopt any of them. But the book and its memorable title planted seeds for spiritual practices which I later adopted. The first of these practices – simple repetition as a mantra of the word “Rama” soon miraculously manifested in my life, in a previously unimagined way, and with remarkable continuing consequences.

Gradually the book’s memorable title “Be Here Now!” became for me a key slogan for spiritual awakening; a reminder to live with a quiet mind in the present moment. Through experience and other spiritual teachings, I began to realize the profound evolutionary importance of mental stillness.

I was especially influenced by the teachings of contemporary sage J. Krishnamurti about how “freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.” Much later I felt great resonance with the writings of contemporary teacher Eckhart Tolle, which emphasized “The Power of Now.” Perhaps most important were my experiences in following my beloved Guruji’s emphatic instructions to “meditate regularly”.

Only after many years of meditating regularly did my ‘monkey mind’ finally cease its ceaseless chatter, permitting me to choose whether “to think or not to think” – an option to enjoy precious moments of choiceless awareness. And by learning to live with a quiet mind in the present moment, I understood Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras’ key aphorism that “Yoga is the cessation of mind”; and I discovered that “The more we live moment by moment, the more momentous our lives;” and that “when all thoughts cease, we are at peace.”

Each of us has a unique space/time perspective and karmic history. So each of us has unique challenges and a unique ‘recipe’ for spiritual opening. But the ‘ingredients’ in every such ‘recipe’ are the same – only proportions differ. And precious presence – ‘being here now’ – is crucially important for everyone, not just those who knowingly seek spiritual advancement.

Being present is sometimes called being “in the zone” with a focused or stilled mind. Have you ever noticed how star artists and athletes perform at peak levels while “in the zone”?

Moreover, whether or not we are interested in Eastern wisdom or mindfulness or peak performance, every human being wants happiness, with minimal suffering. And to be in a state of precious presence with a stilled mind is of critical importance to experiencing happiness.

So for me “Be Here Now!” – like “Seek relief from belief” and “Undo Ego!” – has become a key motivational motto encapsulating a wisdom concept crucial to spiritual evolution from Earth life to Eternal Life.

Dedication and Invocation

Thus today’s quotations and poem are offered to inspire our ever expanding realization that “life can be found only in the present moment”, and that ultimately the Eternal happiness we all seek is beyond space and time, but paradoxically ever here NOW.

May we all experience growing happiness by learning to live in the precious present with ever quieter minds, thereby radiating Eternal LOVE and Light, which blesses the world, ever NOW.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Discovering and Escaping
an Illusory Matrix “Reality”
~ Ron’s Memoirs

“This world is wrought with naught but thought.
Mind is matrix; consciousness is context.”
“Everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way.”
“Love-thoughts bless the world, but fear-thoughts afflict it.”
~ Ron Rattner – Sutra Saysings
“Reality isn’t real.”

“Reality is a holographic theater of the mind.”

~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. 
There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, 
but in the end they always fall — think of it. Always.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
”This earth is nothing but movies to me. Just like the beam of a motion picture.
So is everything made of shadow and light. That’s what we are. Light and shadows of the Lord.
Nothing else than that. There’s one purpose. To get to the beam.”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda


Introduction

After my midlife spiritual awakening I gradually recognized that space/time “reality” is an ego-mind illusion; a thought-created dream-like mirage, from which we can awaken. But as an ardent social justice legal advocate I’ve always been concerned that our world is dominated by psychopathic “leaders” with immense financial, corporate and political power who without conscience or remorse promote their delusionally perceived selfish interests. [See Is the world being ruled and ruined by psychopaths? ]

So I’ve long wondered why the majority of humanity until now have followed and allowed insane and harmful orders and edicts by such “leaders’”. And why our world is thus steadily becoming more and more dystopian and Orwellian.

This memoirs essay-story tells how, only after confinement by recent worldwide Covid 19 lockdown edicts, I synchronistically discovered compelling evidence answering my questions: amazing evidence that our societies and “leaders” are probably afflicted and dominated by subhuman malignant energies or entities which parasitically polarize, divide and exploit humankind, by provoking anger, anxiety, and fear.

Yet it also tells how and why our coronavirus suffering can become a disguised blessing awakening Humanity to triumph democratically over the fearful illusion of unavoidable confinement in a totalitarian and ‘evil’ dystopian world. How we can soon nonviolently escape this mental-matrix confinement, when an awakened “tipping point” critical mass of concerned humans transcend parasitically divisive anger, anxiety, and fear to adamantly resist evil edicts with Truth and Love.

Our “Love-thoughts bless the world, but our fear-thoughts afflict it.”

Thus, President Franklin D Roosevelt presciently told deep truth upon proclaiming almost 88 years ago that:

“The only thing we have to fear is…fear itself —
nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror
which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
~ Franklin D Roosevelt, first Presidential inaugural address

So to join the critical mass of awakened humans which will inevitably end our descent into dystopia, please read and carefully consider the following essay/story.

Background summary

Following my midlife spiritual awakening, I radically revised concepts of self-identity and reality – from being a separate physical mortal, to universal eternal awareness emanating from infinite potentiality. So, for decades I’ve recognized that space/time “reality” isn’t really real, but a thought-created dream-like mirage or holographic/fractal theater of the ego-mind. These insights came mainly from inner experiences, synchronicities, and ancient Eastern teachings, rather than from contemporary media sources.

Upon reclusively living alone after my midlife awakening and traumatic 1977 divorce, I had no computer, no longer watched movies or TV dramas, and only read about spiritual subjects. So I never saw or read about science fiction films like “The Matrix”.

Thus, I didn’t suspect until watching the Matrix movie only a few years ago that metaphorically we’re probably living in a pre-programmed digital matrix. Since then my long-time concerns about psychopathic world “leaders” have synchronistically led to recent discovery that we suffer much earthly immorality and injustice because (as portrayed in the Matrix movie) our illusory mental-matrix is like a metaphoric mental prison, subliminally programmed by unseen parasitic astral energies or entities which dominate, control and feed upon humankind through such “leaders” and sub-human technocratic and psychopathic cultists.

But after I was recently locked down by irrationally harmful worldwide Covid 19 pandemic edicts, I synchronistically discovered numerous authorities supporting the existence of such sub-human astral entities or energies which cause collective subliminal psychoses and afflict many sociopathic, psychopathic and autocratic societal ‘leaders’, transhumanists, technocrats, and bureaucrats who are causing critical and catastrophic world  problems.

I’ll hereafter detail reasons for the foregoing conclusions.

Questioning how and why sociopaths or psychopaths can dominate humanity

For many years I’ve felt deep concerns about how insane “leaders” lacking normal human conscience are causing immense worldwide problems and catastrophes. [See Is the world being ruled and ruined by psychopaths? ] Because of such longtime concerns I once wrote a personal letter to the Dalai Lama asking:

“How can concerned citizens become actively engaged in helping our global family transcend critical societal problems fomented by psychopathic leaders lacking normal capacity for compassion and loving-kindness?


His Holiness didn’t answer my letter. So, I assumed that he’d advocate active engagement with love and compassion to safeguard our global family. [See e.g. 2020 Earth Day Message: Compassionate People In An Orwellian World ]

But I’ve curiously continued seeking explanations for societal problems attributable to people in positions of authority who without conscience, empathy or remorse, promote their delusional perceived self interests, amorally and often criminally and violently. [See e.g. The Psychopath/ The Mask of Sanity and The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley]

And I’ve long wondered why the majority of humanity until now have followed and allowed insane and harmful orders and edicts by such “leaders’”. And why our world is thus steadily becoming more and more dystopian and Orwellian.

Are we living in an illusory computer-generated metaphoric matrix ‘reality’?

For decades I’ve been convinced by inner experience and Eastern wisdom, that our space/time “reality” is a dream-like ego-mind illusion. But only recently did I explore the idea that the Earth and the physical universe we live in might be part of a virtual computer simulation.

Only about four years ago I began exploring the idea that the Earth and the apparently physical universe we live in, might actually be part of a metaphoric computer simulation, even though I’d long been convinced by inner experience and Eastern wisdom, that our space/time “reality” is a dream-like ego-mind illusion.

After learning of billionaire engineer/entrepreneur Elon Musk’s publicly professed belief that the world we know is just a very sophisticated computer simulation, I began thoroughly investigating that idea, already widely known as The Simulation Hypothesis. (Because this non-materialistic theory parallels mystic ideas about our ever impermanent space/time ‘reality”, I’ve called it: “Samsara 3.0”.)



On researching, I soon learned that the theory our virtual “reality” is in fact like a computer-generated digital simulation, has been proposed in science fiction stories, TV and movies for over fifty years. And that many mainstream scientists have now begun seriously entertaining – with some accepting – that what we deem “reality” is in fact like a computer-generated digital simulation.

So, for the first time, I mindfully watched the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix, which depicts a world in which artificially intelligent non-human parasitic entities have enslaved humanity within a simulated reality set in the present world. Later, I learned about and viewed a similarly themed earlier film They Live (1988). Also I heard about and viewed an apt Star Trek video about confronting hostile Archon aliens, and The Truman Show (1999) about subliminal TV ‘reality’ programming.






After watching the films I began researching writings about the legendary mental parasites to which they allude. And synchronistically I found many surprisingly credible and consistent sources (some ancient) confirming supposed existence of such parasitic entities or energies, which prevent human freedom and evolution to spiritual realms. (For convenience I’ll refer to these mental parasites as “archons”, a term used in the Gnostic traditions.)

What are archons, and how do they endanger humankind?

My research has revealed that various enduring spiritual and shamanistic traditions (like Gnosticism, Native American and Hawaiian Kahuna) have traditionally recognized and rejected (as demonic) sub-human parasitic forces, energies or entities devoid of conscience, compassion and empathy.

These forces are attracted to greedy, deceptive, cruel or controlling people and societies already emitting low thought-forms, which they infect or “possess” as vulnerable victims. Whereupon the archons exacerbate and provoke anger, controversy, panic and fear to further polarize, divide and control their human prey.

After some individual and collective victims are possessed or infected, their conscience gradually ceases to function, their spiritual light and life force dims, and they become unknowing and subconscious instruments of demonic darkness.

How archons pre-plan what happens to humans in a metaphoric Matrix.

Only after the March 11, 2020 World Health Organization’s (WHO) irrational declaration of a purported coronavirus pandemic, which was soon followed by extraordinary and unnecessary edicts against normal human activities, and threats of compulsory vaccinations, did I begin to discover overwhelmingly credible evidence that this pandemic had long been preplanned by demonic dark forces. And that the pandemic is insidiously intended as the pretense for a world-changing “new 9/11” era of unprecedented evil domination and control of humanity. (See e,g. COVID-911: From Homeland Security to Biosecurity )

In carefully analyzing incontrovertible factual and circumstantial evidence it became obvious to me that people like billionaire technocrat and eugenicist Bill Gates, with no health or medical expertise, have long-intended to control and depopulate humanity by illegally, unjustifiably and forcibly vaccinating everyone everywhere against fraudulently alleged massive health dangers of Covid-19, with an unnecessary, unnatural and toxic pathogen unquestionably created by humans in bio-weapons laboratories. So I’ve irreversibly concluded, as an expert legal evidence analyst, that the purported WHO pandemic is an evil “plandemic” pretense to intimidate and subjugate humanity.

Moreover, massive evidence already suggests that the pre-planned Covid-19 vaccinations are an immoral subterfuge intended to modify humans’ genes and brains to transform them into robotic trans-human artificial intelligence (AI) cyborgs. Apart from so-called world vaccination and depopulation authority Bill Gates, other influential people like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil, a top Google executive, are openly advocating and investing in transhumanist technologies for merging humans with AI, to become ‘Humans 2.0’.

Rudolf Steiner’s predictions and warnings about “spirits of darkness”.

Apart from aforementioned compellingly probative evidence, I recently discovered the following amazingly prescient statements made over 100 years ago by Western sage Rudolf Steiner in public talks about “spirits of darkness”:

“I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination toward spirituality out of people’s souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body.”

“The spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present.”

“There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve… If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity.


C. G. Jung’s recognition of humanity’s ‘shadow side’ demons

Throughout much of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung’s distinguished 20th century career as an eminent and acclaimed psychotherapist he recognized and analyzed the unconscious shadow side of humanity. At various times Dr. Jung referred psychologically to the above-described demonic forces which have been known to humanity, individually and collectively, since antiquity.

Here are only a few of Dr. Jung’s apt quotes, made at different times:

“The psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”

“Possession, though old-fashioned, has by no means become obsolete; only the name has changed. Formerly they spoke of ‘evil spirits,’ now we call them ‘neurosis’ or ‘unconscious complexes.'”

“If, for a moment, we look at mankind as one individual, we see that it is like a man carried away by unconscious powers.”

“When a situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.”

How humanity can escape our illusory psychic shackles

As suggested by Dr. Jung, humanity can escape dark side demonic afflictions, by consciously recognizing and resisting them.

In The Matrix film a skilled hacker named “Neo“, feels something is wrong with the world and is puzzled by repeated online encounters with the phrase “the Matrix”.

After voluntarily ingesting a revelatory “red pill” offered by wise man Morpheus, Neo awakens to discover that his entire world is an artificial universe created by computers which have imprisoned humans who believe it to be real; that, with countless other deluded souls, he’s existed like a ‘living-battery’ whose body has been energetically charging a computer simulation/dream in a digitally pre-programmed virtual or simulated world – the Matrix. He is thereby drawn into a rebellion against the parasitic captors, along with Morpheus and a few other righteous people who have been freed from the Matrix.

Although there is much truth in the “red pill” Matrix metaphor, our resistance to demonic forces does not require any violent rebellion by a few consciously aware and righteous people, led by a single saviour – the ONE. But it does require collective awareness of our psychologically subliminal and repressed shadow side afflictions by a critical mass “tipping point” of concerned humans.

Our immoral shadow side tendencies, or evil astral entities and energies, are parasitically nurtured and exist only through our negative thoughts and emotions. Hence, by elevating our vibratory fields with consciously compassionate and loving thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, we can transcend the demonic mental Matrix which can’t subsist without negative human energies to feed on.

But bringing the shadow side into consciousness is not as easy as simply ingesting a “red pill’. It will require a dedicated and arduous effort to discover and transcend long-repressed and subliminally inculcated false ideas about our “reality” and “self-identity”.

Since each person is unique there is no collective answer to how we can discover truth about our shadow side challenges. However if we decide to see and be the truth that sets us free, we definitely can succeed in elevating our energies so that they no longer sustain parasitic forces of darkness. No violent rebellion is required, only non-judgmental and nonviolent resistance to dark energies, with our light of inner awareness which illuminates current unconscious darkness.

And we don’t have to become “enlightened” Buddhas to succeed. We can soon escape these illusory psychic shackles, even while we’re still subject to space/time karmic causality. So we can collectively create a democratic and nonviolent “new reality” rather than permit an unprecedented evil era of demonic control over humankind.

By observing and elevating our negative emanations humans can evolve to co-create a compassionately just and benevolent new space/time “reality”

Cosmically our apparent space/time duality/reality is merely vibrating energy, emanating from humans, individually and collectively. And only at elevated heart levels of consciousness, beyond the fearful levels which originated them, can we solve our earthly problems..

As Albert Einstein ingeniously observed:

“What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”

“Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think”

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Thus, we Humans ‘create’ our illusory space/time polarity reality, and its fearful problems, with only our thoughts, behaviors and emotions.

Our fearful thoughts “create” a negative vibratory reality which nurtures parasitic archon forces that afflict us, while our loving thoughts bless us and create a positive vibratory reality which is inaccessible to such psychic vampires.

So by focusing upon and emanating positive energies we can be freed from demonic mental parasites. However, until we become collectively conscious of our subliminal negative thoughts and behaviors, we may be unable to end them.

The coronavirus emergency can be a disguised blessing, awakening Humanity to our deepest caring instincts.

Humanity is a “social species” which has survived and thrived mostly communally and interdependently.   And the demonically pre-planned “new normal” coronavirus pandemic crisis of worldwide anxiety, fear and panic is a once-in-a-lifetime ‘fork-in—the-road’ opportunity for humankind to co-create a new and wonderful world of happiness, harmony and health for everyone everywhere, rather than degenerate into a locked-down dystopian/Orwellian “Big Brother” era of unprecedented human control and enslavement by a few psychopaths.  
 
While prevented from pursuing normal activities, billions of people worldwide are observing and adamantly rejecting irrational and unwarranted edicts, fears and ‘lock-downs’, which cause enormous needless suffering. Thus we are remembering and realizing the crucial importance of compassionately caring for one-another.  And we are recognizing and rejecting the utter insanity of a tiny few of our autocratic “leaders”, who until now have been allowed to thwart expression and satisfaction of humankind’s primordial need for happiness as Love.

Our unwavering determination to resist undemocratic domination, and to replace such “leaders”, with democratic societies serving people and planet over profits, has been recently reflected by spontaneous worldwide citizen protests of the undemocratic and fraudulent Covid-19 restrictions. Speaking to over a million citizen protestors in Berlin, Germany, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr eloquently articulated our collective resistance by declaring: 

“We are not going to let you take our democracy away.
We are not going to let you take our health away.
We are not going to let you take our freedoms away.
We are not going to let you take our children away.”
~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr – Berlin, 8/30/20


Thus, our coronavirus suffering is becoming a disguised blessing awakening Humanity to triumph democratically over the fearful illusion of an ‘evil’ totalitarian prison.

So awakened, and determined to evolve beyond immoral official fetters, may we nonviolently prevail with timeless Truth and Love.

Invocation

Awakened to our innate infinite powers of Truth and Love, may we be inspired by words of Mahatma Gandhi to remember that despite our lives’ inevitable ‘ups and downs’ our ultimate success is divinely destined.   Gandhiji said: 

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. 
There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, 
but in the end they always fall — think of it. Always.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

So with supreme faith in our ultimate triumph as Truth and Love,
let us optimistically and unrelentingly resist
all evil autocracies and psychopathic hierarchies,
ever remembering that our destiny is Divinity.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

“Samsara 3.0”: The Simulation Hypothesis

“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion,
does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.”

~ Buddha
“Time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen.
In the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation.”

“Science and religion will meet and shake hands…
When the scientific teacher asserts that all things are the manifestation of one force,
does it not remind you of the God of whom you hear in the Upanishads?
Do you not see whither science is tending?”

~ Swami Vivekananda – “The Real and the Apparent Man”, 1894 lecture
“I regard consciousness as fundamental.
I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.
We cannot get behind consciousness.
Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

~ Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

~ Niels Bohr
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena,

it will make more progress in one decade
 than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

~ Nikola Tesla


Introduction

This essay explains how conventional science is about to confirm ancient mystic insights about our space/time reality by validating “The Simulation Hypothesis”, a former science fiction theory. And how matrix science fiction is becoming IT and quantum science fact.

(Because this non-materialistic hypothesis parallels ancient Eastern mystical ideas about the illusory nature of our ever impermanent space/time ‘reality”, I’ve called it: “Samsara 3.0”.)

Further it tells why I optimistically believe that – as presciently envisioned by Swami Vivekananda over a century ago – science and religion will soon agree on the ONENESS of phenomenal and Absolute “reality”. And why science is about to prove we are living and learning in a metaphoric matrix – like a digitally pre-programmed virtual or simulated soul-school ‘reality’.

Finally, it discloses my intuitive insight that realizing our ONENESS with all life everywhere, a critical mass of Humankind will at long last discard destructive illusionary beliefs and behaviors which have brought us to the brink of ecologic, economic, and international catastrophe.

Space/time “reality” isn’t really REAL

For millennia, mystic masters have revealed from their inner-explorations that all we see or seem is mental illusion, ‘samsara’ or ‘maya’ – like a persistent day-dream from which we can awaken, just as we awaken from nocturnal dreams.

But during the industrial age such non-materialistic world-views were largely supplanted by materialist Newtonian science which reified and objectified human perceptions. Only for the past hundred years have revolutionary quantum scientists – like Albert Einstein and Max Planck – begun confirming perennial mystic insights that “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”, so that “our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.” because “matter is derivative from consciousness”.

Like mystics, quantum scientists are now saying that all the forms we perceive and call “reality” are impermanent vibrating energy emanations – ever appearing and disappearing beyond time and space; and that “consciousness is fundamental”.

Although the relativity and quantum hypotheses of the last century were consistent with perennial mystical insights, most people still psychologically deny or repress non-materialistic ideas inconsistent with their deeply inculcated core beliefs about supposed material ‘reality’ or physical self-identity.

“The Simulation Hypothesis”


Thus, conventional societies and scientists have been extremely slow in accepting the revolutionary relativity and quantum hypotheses of the last century. But many mainstream scientists have now begun seriously entertaining – with some accepting – the theory known as “The Simulation Hypothesis” – that what we deem “reality” is in fact like a computer-generated digital simulation.

So this non-materialistic idea, formerly considered science fiction (as in the legendary Matrix film), is becoming accepted as mainstream science theory and probability. (Because this non-materialistic theory parallels mystic ideas about our ever impermanent space/time ‘reality”, I’ve called it: “Samsara 3.0”.)

“Science and religion will meet and ‘shake hands’.”

In 1894 Indian sage Swami Vivekananda predicted Western scientific confirmation of the ancient Vedic non-dual philosophy of ONE Infinite Existence beyond relative reality: saying that “science and religion will meet and shake hands.”



Vivekananda’s 19th century prediction is more and more proving prescient in the 21st century. Gradually, what was formerly considered science fiction is becoming accepted as mainstream science theory. Contemporary scientists are now seriously raising key questions about this theory, such as:

Are we living in a virtual reality? Is the universe appearing from an information processing system? And if so, could we ever tell? Is it possible to ‘hack’ the system and change reality?

These questions are carefully addressed in this excellent 50 minute documentary film titled “The Simulation Hypothesis” which includes contributions from leading researchers about physics, cosmology, mathematics and information sciences.

“The Simulation Hypothesis”




Ron’s comments on “The Simulation Hypothesis” as “Samsara 3.0”

Upon reclusively living alone after my midlife spiritual awakening and traumatic 1977 divorce, I had no computer, no longer watched movies or TV dramas, and only read about spiritual subjects. So I didn’t learn about science fiction ideas that our space/time world is like a digital pre-programmed simulated or virtual reality. And I neither saw nor read about science fiction films like The Matrix.

However, from unforgettable inner experiences, synchronicities, and ancient Eastern teachings, I had realized that space/time “reality” isn’t really real, but an illusory thought-created dream-like mirage or holographic/fractal theater of the ego-mind. Only after getting a computer in 2002 did I slowly began learning of and exploring science fiction ideas that our space/time world is like a digital pre-programmed simulated or virtual reality. And only a few years ago did I begin deeply reflecting upon “The Simulation Hypothesis”, after watching the classic 1999 science fiction film The Matrix.

That film depicts a world in which artificially intelligent non-human parasitic entities have enslaved humanity within a simulated reality set in the present world. Before viewing The Matrix I learned that its virtual “reality” theory about our “reality” as being like a computer-generated digital simulation, has been proposed in science fiction stories, TV and movies for over fifty years.

In The Matrix film a skilled hacker named “Neo”, feels something is wrong with the world and is puzzled by repeated online encounters with the phrase “the Matrix”. After voluntarily ingesting a revelatory “red pill” offered by wise man Morpheus, Neo awakens to discover that his entire world is an artificial universe created by computers which have imprisoned humans who believe it to be real; that, with countless other deluded souls, he’s existed like a ‘living-battery’ whose body has been energetically charging a computer simulation/dream in a digitally pre-programmed virtual or simulated world – the Matrix. Neo is thereby drawn into a rebellion against the parasitic captors, along with Morpheus and a few other righteous people who have been freed from the Matrix.

Because the film’s scenario and dialogue raise questions of perennial importance I viewed it as an artistic metaphor for our process of spiritual evolution and awakening from space/time samsara to realization of the ONE.

For example, here are a few noteworthy Morpheus quotes in dialogue with Neo:

“What is real? How do you define real?”
“If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?
What if you were unable to wake from that dream, Neo? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?
“The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this [ a copper-top D cell battery].”
“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
“The body cannot live without the mind.”
“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

The Matrix film, was consistent with my prior perspectives about the illusory nature and purpose of our world as a love-learning laboratory. So since watching the film I have continued to see our precious planet as the Earth branch of a great Cosmic University with only one evolutionary obstacle-course curriculum – LOVE.

Before viewing the Matrix I had long been deeply concerned about how insane “leaders” lacking normal human conscience, morality and empathy are causing immense worldwide problems and catastrophes. [See Is the world being ruled and ruined by psychopaths? ] So I considered the film’s evil Agents as metaphoric agents of the psychopathic billionaire “leaders” who cruelly exploit people and planet Earth. But I didn’t at first reflect about film’s portrayal of the Matrix as a psychic prison programmed by subhuman parasitic captors who feed off of our energies.

Initial “Simulation Hypothesis” Conclusions

Current scientific study of non-physical phenomena is resulting in rapid progress, as long ago envisioned by Nikola Tesla. So science fiction is becoming science fact.

Thus contemporary scientists will soon agree with ancient mystic inner explorers that humans exist in a thought created illusory vibratory reality emanating from universal consciousness; that space/time is a mere mental mirage or dreamlike optical illusion, from which we can awaken upon realization of our Source.

Until we so transcend this illusory reality as universal LOVE, we will continue living and learning in a metaphoric matrix – like a digitally pre-programmed virtual or simulated soul-school ‘reality’ subject to karmic causality. In this illusory space/time world of duality/causality, we shall reap as we sow: we’ll reap inner peace and joy from loving behaviors but inevitably suffer from selfishness. 

Post-pandemic Conclusions

After being locked down by worldwide Covid 19 pandemic edicts I synchronistically found numerous authorities leading to additional conclusions that our illusory space/time universe is like a digital mental-matrix prison, pre-programmed by parasitic astral energies manifesting and dominating humans through sub-human technocratic and psychopathic satanic cultists.

I will soon explain those further conclusions in a new memoirs posting which will also explain my intuitive insight that the coronavirus emergency is a disguised blessing, awakening our deepest caring instincts.

I think that realizing our ONENESS with all life everywhere, a critical mass of Humankind will at long last discard destructive illusionary beliefs and behaviors which have brought us to the brink of ecologic, economic, and international catastrophe.

Although there is much truth in the “red pill” Matrix awakening metaphor, our resistance to demonic forces must be nonviolent, and does not require any violent rebellion by a few consciously aware and righteous people, led by a single saviour. However, the new post will explain why our evolution toward realization of our infinite ONENESS does require collective awareness of our psychologically subliminal or repressed shadow side afflictions by a critical mass “tipping point” of concerned humans.

Invocation.

Regardless of whether we seek metaphoric ‘escape’ from psychic imprisonment in a virtual computer simulation,
everyone consciously or subliminally yearns for eternal peace and happiness.

May our reflections on The Simulation Hypothesis as “Samsara 3.0”

inspire discovery of such happiness,

and end our llusionary egoic fears, beliefs and harmful behaviors

which inevitably perpetuate karmic suffering.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner


‘Silence” ~ Sayings and Quotes

“Silence is the language of God,
all else is poor translation.”
~ Rumi
“Love said to me,

there is nothing that is not me.

Be silent.”
~ Rumi
“Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.”..
“Let silence take you to the core of life.”
~ Rumi


Silent Sunrise

Introduction.

The following timeless quotations about silence, are shared to help all of us keep calm, without harmful anxieties, emotions or fears, in these difficult times.

‘Silence” ~ Sayings and Quotes

“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”
~ Confucius

“There is something greater and purer than what the mouth utters.
Silence illuminates our souls, whispers to our hearts, and brings them together.
Silence separates us from ourselves, makes us sail the firmament of spirit, and brings us closer to heaven.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

“If you don’t know what God’s guidance for your life is,
you might try seeking in receptive silence.
I used to walk receptive and silent amidst the beauties of nature.
Wonderful insights would come to me which I then put into practice in my life.”
~ Peace Pilgrim

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity,

then and there is silence.

She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places,
and if we will

we may always hearken to her admonitions.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“It is as though he listened
and such listening as his
enfolds us in a silence
In which at last
We begin to hear
What we are meant to be.”
~ Lao-Tzu

“In the silence of the heart God speaks.
If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you.
Then you will know that you are nothing.
It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness,
that God can fill you with Himself.
Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”
~ Mother Teresa

“One opens the inner doors of one’s heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit,
out of whose abysses love wells up without fail and gives itself to all.”

~ Thomas Merton

“My friend, I am not what I seem.
Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

“The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore

“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

“Each one of us is called to become that great song that comes out of the silence,
and the more we let ourselves down into that great silence the more we become capable of singing that great song.”
~ David Steindl-Rast

‎”After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
~ Aldous Huxley

“The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.”
~ Baruch Spinoza

“Live laconically –
Speak little; say much.”
~ Ron Rattner (aka Swami Onandonananda)

“Eschew pedantry, punditry, and prolixity,
and seek profundity –
in silence, simplicity and serenity.”
~ Ron Rattner – Sutra Sayings



Ron’s comments about the power of silent minds

Dear Friends,

Have you ever noticed how it feels to be “in the zone” with a stilled or focussed mind? Or noticed how star athletes perform at their highest levels while “in the zone”?

Being in the zone implies a state of consciousness in which increased focus and attention support highest levels of physical or mental performance.

The secret of our success while “in the zone” is a thoughtless or focussed mind. And a thoughtless or focussed mind is often considered crucial to progress on the spiritual path.

That’s why spiritual teachers invariably endorse meditation and other mind-stilling techniques.

According to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras – a sacred Hindu treatise – “yoga” is much more than postures and exercises to keep the physical body strong and flexible:

“Yoga is the cessation of mind.”


By following my Guruji’s key advice to “meditate regularly” I have learned the importance of a stilled mind, and have written extensively on that subject.

Here are some of my “sutra sayings” about a silent mind:

“Bliss abides when thought subsides.”

“When all thoughts cease, we are at peace.”

“Spirit speaks when mind is mute.”

“Mute your mind to hear your heart.”

“The power to think is a great gift;

but, the power to not think is a greater gift.”

“So, to think or not to think, that is the question.”


Invocation

May today’s timeless quotations about silence,
help us remember and experience  through silent minds
the crucial power of NOW –
to enable our wise behaviors in these difficult times,
so as to help ourselves and all life everywhere.

May everyone everywhere be happy!

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Awakening to the “Secret of Secrets”

“If you could get rid of yourself just once,
the secret of secrets would open to you.
The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe
would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
~ Rumi
“You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.”
~ John 8:32
“You are “gods”;
you are all children of the Most High.”
~ Psalm 82: 6
“You cannot teach an ego to be anything but egotistic,
even though egos have the subtlest ways of pretending to be reformed.
The basic thing is therefore to dispel, by experiment and experience, the illusion of oneself as a separate ego.”
~ Alan Watts
“People can’t be talked out of illusions. If a person believes that the earth is flat, you can’t talk him out of that, he knows that it’s flat. He’ll go down to the window and see that its obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him that it isn’t is to say, “Well let’s go and find the edge”
~ Alan Watts
“The individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with Nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being.
This is—rather literally—to be spellbound”.
~ Alan Watts
“Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.

If you are conscious of anything,
you are essentially conscious of yourself.”

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi



Awakening to the “Secret of Secrets”

For millennia there has been a tacit taboo or ‘conspiracy of silence’ against disclosing to all Humankind our true spiritual and immortal identity.  

Except for those raised in so-called ‘primitive’ or indigenous societies, or those imbued with Eastern religious philosophy, most people have been acculturated from time immemorial into societies with “an unrecognized but mighty taboo — our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are.” (Alan Watts: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Preface.)

From childhood we are taught to self-identify only with an illusory and disempowering ego image; with a separate name, gender, and story about who and what we are. We are taught that we are each born into Nature as limited beings; but, not that Nature is our nature, or that we are Beings of Light sharing limitless immortal common consciousness with all life-forms.

Nor are we ever taught the greatest “secret of secrets”: that we are not mere powerless perceivers of our “reality”, but also its co-creators – that we co-create our reality with our thoughts, words and deeds; that everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way; and, that this worldly “reality” is dependent upon the awareness with which we envision, experience and co-create it.

To experientially realize that greatest “secret of secrets” is to Know Thyself. And to Know Thyself, is to know the Whole – the Truth that will set us free.

For countless ages sages, seers and mystics have been trying to tell us that we are not what we think we are!  That we suffer from perception-deception – with self-identity and reality not what they appear to be; that it is possible to experientially transcend the inevitable suffering of ordinary human existence through self-realization of and self-identification with an undivided eternal spiritual reality – which is the common essence of all space-time causality reality.

Mystics say that we share common Self identity – as Cosmic Consciousness or Non-Duality Reality; that we are not merely our mortal bodies – their names, genders, features, colors, religions, beliefs, emotions, habits or stories – or the ‘voices in our heads’.  We are non-dual immortal spirit experiencing fleeting earth lives from infinite perspectives in transitory physical vehicles.  But we’re all the same ‘under the hood’.  

Yet until now that greatest secret has been mostly concealed or denied: predominantly by subconscious suppression or psychological inability of humankind to accept or entertain non-experienced facts which contradict or threaten their cherished illusionary beliefs about “reality”; sometimes by institutions and individuals seeking selfish hierarchical exploitation of our precious planet and all its life-forms and resources.

Until now ignorance of our true identity and immortality, has resulted in humanity’s hallucination of separation from Nature, from each other, and from our sole Self and spirit, with consequent destructive insanity, selfishness and suffering.   

But now, facing ominous and enormous ecological, interpersonal and international crises which cannot be resolved from the same levels of consciousness which created them, we are at long last being awakened from our delusion of separateness and powerlessness. Spurred by increasing suffering and awareness of imminent catastrophe, we are finally dispelling the ignorance which has spawned these crises.

And we shall soon reach a tipping point, when a critical mass of Humankind will have awakened to the “secret of secrets”, uplifting all human consciousness and resolving harmoniously and compassionately the critical mess created by our prior unawareness of that “secret”.

Thus awakened, we shall harmoniously, cooperatively and lovingly resolve our common crises for our common good.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Ron’s commentary on the taboo against knowing who we really are.

The foregoing essay was inspired by the above Rumi “secret of secrets” quote, and by Alan Watts’:
“The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, ©1966.

Watts was a brilliantly insightful, erudite and articulate UK philosopher, author, and teacher, with post-graduate degrees in Theology and Divinity. After five years as an ordained Episcopal priest, he ‘converted’ to Zen Buddhism and in 1951 moved to Marin County, California from the UK. Thereafter, until his death in 1973, Watts became a counterculture icon,
best-known for introducing Eastern philosophical and religious thought to Westerners.

I first learned about Watts’ teachings listening to KPFA Pacifica radio, Berkeley, which posthumously broadcast his lectures on Sunday nights, while I was driving for visits with my aged parents. Those broadcasts helped me to learn about Eastern wisdom and philosophy of spiritual evolution – of which I was previously ignorant.

Only after launching the Silly Sutras website in 2010 did I discover and read Watt’s 1966 “The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”. By then I concurred with Watts’ assertions about origins of the illusion of a separate ego self, and how that illusion is central to our ominous and enormous ecological, interpersonal and international crises.

Moreover, before 2010 I’d already learned about extreme psychological reluctance of most people to entertain or accept true facts contrary to their cherished beliefs about “reality”. And soon after President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, I’d become quite aware of powerfully insidious Orwellian propaganda techniques used to ‘brainwash’ people about alleged truth of outrageous government lies, and to marginalize truth-telling dissidents by ridiculing them as “conspiracy theorists”, “kooks”, “foreign agents”, “communists”, or “socialists”, and blatantly censoring or dishonestly denying their ‘inconveniently’ truthful revelations.

So I concurred with Alan Watts’ contentions concerning a tacit taboo or conspiracy of silence against revealing our true identity and infinite potentiality. Thus I have composed the foregoing essay, and endorse Watts’ book “On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, linked below as an audio book file.

Invocation

May these writings inspire our awakening to “the secret of secrets”, and thereby to irreversibly realize ourselves as uniquely interdependent expressions of ONE universal, ineffable and eternal Reality – the cosmic Self matrix of all Life everywhere.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner


Audio: Alan Watts: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.



Other links:
https://binged.it/2E3SoYK
https://binged.it/2GzTYmG

Free Will or Fate?

“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.” . . . .
“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.”
~ Max Planck
“God alone is the Doer.
Everything happens by His will.”

~ Ramakrishna Paramahansa
Q. “Are only the important events in a man’s life,

such as his main occupation or profession, predetermined,

or are trifling acts also, such as taking a cup of water or

moving from one part of the room to another?”

A.  “Everything is predetermined.”

~ Ramana Maharshi 
“[T]here cannot be any such thing as free will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation. Everything that we know, or can possibly know, must be subject to causation, and that which obeys the law of causation cannot be free.”
“The only way to come out of bondage is to go beyond the limitations of law, to go beyond causation.”
“This is the goal of the Vedantin, to attain freedom while living.”
~ Swami Vivekananda – Karma Yoga
“In Hinduism, the very idea of free will is non-existent,
so there is no word for it.
Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.” . . . .
“To be free in the world you must be free of the world.
Otherwise your past decides for you and your future.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
“There is only one central issue, crisis, or challenge for man,
which is, that he must be completely free.
As long as the mind is holding on to a structure, a method, a system, there is no freedom.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
Ultimate freedom is not
freedom of choice,
but freedom from choice.
Ego is free to choose,
but is never free.
Self does not choose,
but is ever free.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“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
“Every action, every thought, reaps its own corresponding rewards. 
Human suffering is not a sign of God’s, or Nature’s, anger with mankind. 
It is a sign, rather, of man’s ignorance of divine law. . . .
Such is the law of karma: As you sow, so shall you reap. 
If you sow evil, you will reap evil in the form of suffering. 
And if you sow goodness, you will reap goodness in the form of inner joy.”
~ Paramhansa Yogananda
“It is true that we are not bound. 
That is to say, the real Self has no bondage. 
And it is true that you will eventually return to your Source. 
But meanwhile, if you commit sins, as you call them, 
you have to face the consequences. You cannot escape them.”
~ Ramana Maharshi
“Nothing perceivable is real. Your attachment is your bondage.
You cannot control the future.

There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage.
You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Free-will is a non-entity, a thing consisting of name alone.”
“The will of man without the grace of God is not free at all,
but is the permanent prisoner and bond-slave of evil since it cannot turn itself to good.”
“For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because “free-will” can do nothing.”

~ Martin Luther – The Bondage Of The Will
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
~ Baruch Spinoza 
“The only difference between a human being and a stone rolling down a hill, is that the human being thinks he is in charge of his own destiny.”
~ Baruch Spinoza
“There is no such thing as chance;
and what seems to us merest accident
springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
~ Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
“There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Not my will but Thy Will be done.”
~ Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42
“We must believe in free will, we have no choice.”
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Man plans, God laughs” (Mann traoch, Gott Lauch)
~ Yiddish proverb






Free Will or Fate?

Q.  Do we have free will, or freedom of choice, or is our life predetermined or fated?

A.  Our experience of apparent freedom of choice or of predestiny depends on our evolutionary history and perspective.

In space/time ego/mind causality/reality, most “normal” people experience freedom of choice, and make decisions and plans about ostensible options in their lives. And some people consciously choose the attitude or state of mind with which they experience earth life. Because each person is unique, with a unique evolutionary perspective and personality, we each choose our life experiences differently. And as our self awareness becomes more focused, our free will powers increase.

But according to mystics, our belief in free will is ultimately illusory. For example, both Albert Einstein and Ramana Maharshi have asserted that every detail of worldly life “is predetermined.” And Swami Vivekananda told us that “free will” is a self-contradictory concept; that with worldly will there can be no freedom, which is always constrained by the universal law of cause and effect. Similarly, Vivekananda’s master, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, taught that

“God alone is the Doer.
Everything happens by His will.”

Enlightened saints, sages, shamans and mystics for millennia have reported attitudinally transcending this ever impermanent world reality, and experiencing it as an illusory play of consciousness, sometimes called ‘samsara’ or ‘maya’. Such masters do not self-identify mentally as only mere mortal embodied beings, but experientially as non-dual universal intelligence or spirit, which is the Source and essence of this ever impermanent world. 


They report realizing experientially – as Albert Einstein explained scientifically – that:

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one;” [that] “space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think”, and [that our separate self-identity] “is an optical illusion of consciousness.” 


They define “freedom” as a timeless non-dual immutable spiritual Reality beyond thought or ego – beyond human comprehension, imagination, description or belief – which can only be known experientially, not mentally or rationally.

Free will requires ego/mind separation in space/time.

Since free will implies separation of one who wills or chooses from the objects of his/her will, there can be no free will or free choice without an imagined or conceived doer or chooser separate from objects of his/her actions or choices. And without time there can be no destiny of any supposedly separate doer or chooser.

Thus, in space/time causality/reality, as long as we self-identify as supposedly separate entities distinct from the apparent objects of our perceptions, choices or intentions, we have apparent freedom of choice, until we transcend separate self-identity and experience existence as universal choiceless and timeless awareness, or consciousness without an object.  [*See footnote]

So

Ultimate freedom is not
freedom of choice,
but freedom from choice.
Ego is free to choose,
but is never free.
Self does not choose,
but is ever free.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings


But, our ego/mind exercise of apparent freedom of choice creates karmic causes and conditions which can keep us believing in the “optical illusion” – that we are separate entities rather than ONE infinite Potentiality. And with the law of karma we reap as we sow. According to Swami Yogananda,

“If you sow evil, you will reap evil in the form of suffering. If you sow goodness, you will reap goodness in the form of inner joy.”

With Self realization there is transcendence of illusory separate self-identity; whereupon there remains only Being – only Infinite Potentiality – with no separate someone to will or intend or separately experience anything in time.


Thus, upon total transcendence of separate entity identity, there is no free will or free choice, nor is there time in which karmic fate or destiny unfolds –


Only choiceless “Freedom”,

Ever
 
NOW!

Footnote.

*According to Eastern philosophies, Karma is universal law of cause and effect applied at subtle levels to everything we think, do or say during repeated reincarnations as supposedly separate beings. A similar concept is implicit in Western teachings that we reap as we sow [e.g. Galatians 6:7-9]



Ron’s Reflections on Free Will or Fate.

After my midlife change of life, I reconsidered all prior paradigms about self-identity, reality, free choice or predestiny, and began entertaining intriguing ideas about reincarnation and karma.   After experiencing my self-identity as universal consciousness, gradually I realized that space/time reality – which previously I had considered as the only reality – is an ever impermanent projection of universal intelligence which is the essence and matrix of all worldly phenomena.

Ultimately, I concluded that  space/time “reality” is a digitally preprogrammed simulated world – a “holographic theater of the mind”;
so that space/time “reality isn’t really real”.

But even though it appeared to me that “reality isn’t really real”, like all other “normal” people I’ve lived this lifetime mostly behaving as if this crazy space/time world is very real – yet  ever aware of a deep intuitive aspiration to be ‘in this world but not of this world’.  And I’ve never stopped wondering with great curiosity about how and why space/time reality was created and why we are here.    

For example, on returning to San Francisco from a February 1977 miraculous week in New York  where I amazingly experienced many previously foreseen events, 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?”


Forty years since then, I am still uncertain about answers to those mysterious perennial questions.  But many aphorisms, essays and poems reflecting my theories, intuitions and speculations about them, are posted with apt quotations on SillySutras.com. 

Thus I have posted the above quotations and Q and A essay about free will or fate, proposing that karmically and cosmically our lives are predetermined, but that morally we must live as if we have freedom of choice to heal the world.  

I suggest that cosmically free will is an illusionary aspect of Nature’s predetermined evolutionary ‘incentive system’; that we are subjected to inevitable earthly sufferings which motivate us to transcend them by choosing to improve or peacefully accept our life’s circumstances.  Thus, I think that Nature’s determinism promotes evolution by fating us to make apparent choices, individually and collectively, which ultimately will advance human consciousness until we experientially realize our essential common self-identity beyond death as Infinite Potentiality – Universal spirit, Being, Awareness, Bliss, Eternal Life, Light, LOVE.

Mostly I agree with Einstein’s Mystical Views on Free Will or Determinism: that ‘God doesn’t play dice’, so

“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.” 
[* See commentary footnote]


Assuming predestination while always acting morally can help us find happiness.

Whether or not we agree with Einstein and rare mystics that what happens in space/time reality is like a preprogrammed dream predestined by mysterious karmic causes and conditions, I have found that assuming predestination, while always acting morally, can help us find happiness. We can experience ever growing peace of mind by more and more accepting each moment with the attitude that it could not be otherwise, and that it is happening in the best way and at the best time – as an evolutionary incentive and opportunity. 

Gradually we can thereby accept inevitable difficulties as evolutionary opportunities, without remorse or regret about the past, or worry or fear of the future.  This attitude of assuming everything as predestined has helped me experience ever increasing equanimity and contentment, and to enjoy countless unplanned synchronistic meetings with ordinary people as ‘holy encounters’ with divine beings wearing ‘space/time soul suits’.

Conclusion.

So, whether or not we believe in spiritual evolution or predestiny, I invite your careful consideration of the above quotations and essay.  I hope these ideas can help all of us find increasing happiness by accepting inevitable difficulties as evolutionary opportunities, and by finding blessings in unplanned events and interactions with others.  

And if we do accept predestined karma, let us remember that
when we sow love, we harvest happiness.

Accordingly, (whether or not predestined) I invite you to join with me frequently in the heartfelt affirmation which appears atop every SillySutras.com page.

“Infuse us, enthuse us, and use us, to bless all life as Love!”


And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Commentary Footnote.

*Until his death in 1955, Albert Einstein rejected the “uncertainty” principle of quantum mechanics advanced by most respected physicists of his time. Einstein stubbornly maintained his view, consistent with ancient mystical insights, that ‘God does not play dice with the universe’; that the principle of cause and effect (or karma) pervades the phenomenal Universe without exception; that the ideas of chance or “uncertainty” arise from causes and conditions not yet recognized or perceived.
Some quantum physicists now suggest that recent non-locality experiments show that Einstein erred in rejecting quantum uncertainty theory; that these experiments support what Einstein rejected as “spooky action at a distance”.  However, it is still possible that quantum physicists’ ideas of chance or “uncertainty” arise from predetermined causes and conditions not yet recognized or perceived by mainstream science.


Women in Art:
Morphing Madonnas as Metaphor

“Our separation of each other
is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
~ Albert Einstein

Sri Anandamayi Ma


Introduction

The “Women in Art” video (embedded below) sequentially morphs together many images of different unique female beings painted by the greatest Western portrait artists of the past 500 years, with a Bach cello musical background.

Apart from its exceptional artistic beauty and creativity, this award winning video can be deeply experienced as a metaphor for our ever evolving and expanding human consciousness.

From mistakenly seeing everyone and everything as discrete and separated by apparently immutable boundaries, we are gradually realizing that everyone/everything is inseparably connected by our common essence: ever-changing energy in a matrix of immutable Awareness.

Thus, we are evolving into the light of creation: from a Newtonian “reality” of polarized duality, to a quantum “reality” of holistic connectedness; from either this or that, to this and that are ONE.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner


Women In Art video:




Ron’s 2020 Comment on Women In Art video

Dear Friends,

In recent postings I’ve proclaimed my optimistic faith-based opinion that we are evolving from an illusionary and outmoded Newtonian worldview of seeing everyone and everything as discrete and separated by apparently immutable boundaries, into a quantum-connectedness worldview, which will inevitably uplift human consciousness to resolve current “new normal” crises and threatened catastrophes arising from our outdated beliefs and behaviors.

Despite unprecedented worldwide violence and divisiveness, I have supreme faith that Humankind are destined to transcend our mistaken illusions of separation; that our ultimate destiny is Self-identity as Infinite Awareness – the eternal Light of Divine LOVE.

May the above “Women in Art” video help elevate our consciousness
enabling us to envision and implement peaceful, compassionate, and harmonious solutions to current crises, bringing us an awakened new era of abiding peace, justice and goodwill for all life everywhere.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Is Personal Perfection Possible?

“Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth
who continually does good and who never sins”
~ Ecclesiastes 7:20
“Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.”
~ Chinese Proverb
“Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly materialistic,
and mankind is reaching toward the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative, they wander even further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind.”
~ H.H. the Dalai Lama
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
~ Leonard Cohen
“This is the very perfection of a man,
to find out his own imperfections.”
~ Saint Augustine
“The man with insight enough to admit his limitations
comes nearest to perfection.”
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection.”
~  Kahlil Gibran
“Incarnation is limitation.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
All people are flawed;

none are perfect.

But the most flawed,

are those who think or claim they’re perfect.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings





Is Personal Perfection Possible?

Q. Is personal perfection possible?

A. As Ecclesiastes 7:20 aptly observes:

“There are none on Earth so righteous that they never sin.”

Incarnation is limitation – and fallibility.

We’re here to learn and to evolve,
and evolution toward ‘perfection’ implies imperfection.

So, a perfect person’s not possible.



Ron’s explanation and dedication of
“Is Personal Perfection Possible?”


Dear Friends, 

The forgoing essay and quotations raise an important philosophical question for our consideration: “Is Personal Perfection Possible?”. 

The idea of “perfection” has different meanings for different people.  But, in our world of relativity and duality “perfection” implies “imperfection”.  You can’t have one without the other. And realizing that all humans are limited or flawed can help us accept others as spiritual siblings – children of the Divine in varying evolutionary stages of opening to the eternal Light of Infinite Awareness.

Upon mistakenly believing ourselves to be mere “mortals” separate from each other and Nature, we become subject to the karmic law of cause and effect.  And we are motivated by inevitable karmic sufferings to evolve beyond our supposed duality; beyond our conceptions of separate perfection or imperfection.  Thus we are advancing toward realization that cosmically we are not separate “persons”, but ONE Eternal Spirit or Infinite Awareness.  

But while we remain mentally caught by karmic cause and effect, we can’t ever achieve individual “perfection”. 

Soon after my spiritual awakening I enrolled in a ‘new age’ seminar called “est”, founded by Werner Erhard, a charismatic and controversial former salesman who claimed to be sharing an esoteric epiphany he experienced while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.  As discussed in my  Getting “IT” at est  memoirs chapter, the est training planted significant seeds for my spiritual evolution process by presenting some important and intriguing ideas from perennial wisdom teachings, which were then new to me, and which today remain important – like disidentifying with the “voice in my head” and “accepting the present moment”. 

Accepting “what is” NOW in the present moment remains for me a core principle for living a happy life, after over forty years of experience and reflection.  And since 1976 and est, I have repeatedly written about the illusory idea of individual “perfection”, as in the foregoing brief essay/poem and quotations. 

In philosophically reflecting and writing on “perfection”, I have concluded from experience that when we empathetically see all humans as imperfect or flawed it helps us experience ever growing happiness.

So this posting is offered to help us identify all humans as spiritual siblings in varying evolutionary stages of opening to the eternal Light of Infinite Awareness – children of the Divine with whom we are ‘fellow travelers’ on the spiritual path to “perfection” beyond incarnation.  
 
And so may it be! 

Ron Rattner

Another ‘Near Death’ Experience?
~ Ron’s Memoirs

“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Birth and death are virtual, but Life is perpetual.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings


tree_of_life

Introduction.

Nowadays, at age eighty seven, when commonly greeted by others with “Hello, how are you?”, almost always I spontaneously and enthusiastically respond: “Grateful to be alive! – Every day’s a bonus!”

I cannot recall when I began so exclaiming this attitude of gratitude. But mostly it has happened since six years ago, when (on June 29, 2014) I was suddenly run down by a taxicab and critically injured while crossing a busy San Francisco street.

Here is a memoirs story about that incident which I share hoping to inspire for others a similar attitude of gratitude, which has proven for me to be a great blessing. For

“It is not joy that makes us grateful;
it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast


My First ‘Near Death’ Experience [NDE]*

In 1979 I experienced and have written a prior memoir about an extraordinary and unforgettable out of body event [OOB] which I called a ‘Near Death’ Experience’ [NDE]*. [See https://sillysutras.com/my-near-death-experience/ and *footnote about NDE’s.]

During that experience, I mistakenly believed that I had suffered a stroke and was dying. But I later was told (by my Guruji) that I had not experienced illness but a sudden infusion of Divine shakti energy. So it is unlikely that I suffered from diminished vital signs which are usually associated with NDE’s. Nonetheless, that extraordinary and unforgettable OOB event significantly advanced the spiritual transformation process which had begun with my 1976 realization and rebirth experience.

That transformation process has blessed me with ever increasing self-identification as eternal spirit rather than as mere mortal body/mind. Ultimately, it has led to my realization that Life is perpetual while physical birth and death are virtual; that what most humans call death is merely a vacation – eternal Life-force vacating an inevitably mortal physical vehicle.

This crucial realization has resulted in ever decreasing fear of death, and ever expanding openness, empathy, gratitude and happiness.

Still, I recognize that human bodies are extraordinarily precious life-forms, enabling us to develop and to lovingly advance spiritually. So the longer we are able to skillfully inhabit a functioning physical body, beyond fear of death or disability, the greater our opportunity to learn and to evolve.

Past as Prelude; Another NDE?

In my first NDE* narrative I told how I hadn’t feared presumed peaceful death by a supposed stroke; but, how soon thereafter I experienced an instinctively fearful ‘fight or flight’ reaction when almost run over while crossing a street. (I’ve come to believe that such normal instinctive protection of a precious mortal body is distinguishable from ego’s ever fearful separate self-identification with a body rather than with eternal universal awareness.)

Paradoxically, my 1979 ‘fight or flight’ fear of being run down as a pedestrian ultimately materialized thirty five years later when I was suddenly run down by a taxicab and critically injured while crossing a busy San Francisco street. Today at age eighty seven, I have miraculously survived and largely healed from that incident, after perhaps another ‘near death’ experience.

The shock and trauma of my injuries have left me with continuing retrograde amnesia, so I am unable to recall what happened immediately before and after the taxicab incident, and while I was comatose. Thus for such details I must rely on paramedic and hospital records, and on a cam video showing the taxi hitting me.

Accident Injuries.

The following bodily injuries and symptoms, among others, were radiologically and clinically diagnosed:

Traumatic bleeding brain contusion and concussion, with extended loss of consciousness; large 2” chronic subdural hematoma pushing brain .6” out of normal alignment; massive soft tissue tears and other traumatic shoulder injuries, temporarily rendering both shoulders largely non-functional, with prosthesis recommended for left shoulder; multiple facial fractures, bruises and swelling, with broken nose, fractured sinus areas, etc.; facial lacerations requiring sutures; lacerated and bleeding liver; cracked ribs; slight spinal fracture; excessive external bleeding, with anemia requiring prompt two unit blood transfusion; tibial plateau (“bumper”) fracture and extreme swelling of right knee and leg, with large knee wound, open and seeping for over two months; continuing post-traumatic stress syndrome [PTSD]; retrograde amnesia; mental confusion, headaches, dizziness, and dyslexia.

Considering my advanced octogenarian age and the multiplicity and severity of my injuries and symptoms, my survival, recovery and healing so far have been miraculous. Moreover, I have amazingly survived without any pain drugs or brain or shoulder surgical interventions recommended by various allopathic doctors, and have been able to resume a largely independent pre-injury life style with frequent (pre-lockdown) walks, after extended convalescence, and treatment with acupuncture, organic herbs, and physical therapy.

Guruji, Rama mantra, and hints of heavenly help.

Unlike some NDE* survivors I have no memory of what happened while I was comatose, or of any contact with heavenly beings or departed loved ones. However I gratefully intuit that my survival and healing are blessings from my Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandasji, from Saint Francis of Assisi and other divine or celestial beings or emanations, and from prayers, acts of kindness and good wishes of many friends, health providers and others.

Previously I have explained the importance of the Rama mantra in my transformational process; how spontaneously I began reciting Rama before receiving shaktipat initiation by Guruji, who synchronistically gave me a Ram mantra. I believe that the power of my Ram mantra helped my miraculous survival and recovery.

Also I have told how recitation of the name Rama was the principle spiritual practice of Mahatma Gandhi – my first inner spiritual guide – who recited it from childhood until his assassination; how even as Gandhi fell to an assassin’s pistol fired point-blank into his heart, in forgiveness he uttered nothing but “Rama, Rama …” his last words from the eternal depths of his heart.

Referring to his repetition of “Rama” Gandhi said:

“that the Word is in my heart, if not actually on my lips, all the twenty-four hours. It has been my saviour and I am ever stayed on it.” “The mantram becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal….” “Each repetition … has a new meaning, each repetition carries you nearer and nearer to God.”


During weeks before my taxi rundown incident, I noticed that I was constantly reciting my Ram mantra; and that it was in my heart when not on my lips. So, I may have been reciting the mantra when hit by the taxicab.

On my ambulance arrival at San Francisco General Hospital trauma center, according to hospital records, I was “pleasantly confused and repetitive”, and was ‘repeating phrases’. And more than one doctor noted my positive attitude despite critical injuries.

Intuitively I believe that my repetitive utterances were Ram mantra recitations which helped invoke the subtle presence and assistance of my Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandasji.

Amongst my first hospital visitors were my long-time spiritual friends Carolyn and Monte, who are also Guruji devotees. Very soon after my admission to the ICU they synchronistically learned of my injuries, and immediately came to the hospital, where they were admitted after regular visiting hours.  On observing my completely bruised, discolored  and swollen head and face they became very concerned and did hands on healing, with repetitions of the Ram mantra.  Shortly after returning home, Carolyn prayed to Guruji for my health and recovery.  Whereupon Guruji responded telepathically that he was already helping me.

Similarly another spiritual friend, Michael, a long-time devotee of Guruji’s successor Shri Anandi Ma, reported to me his intuitive flash of insight that I could not and would not have survived the taxicab injuries but for Guruji’s intervention.

And soon after the accident I received an email assurance from my (now departed) friend Pravinji Jani, Anandi Ma’s father and Vedic pundit and astrologer, assuring me that “Guruji is always with you showering his blessings” for healing and for “return to your normal activities with inspiring sutras”.

These encouraging communications from Guruji devotees supported my intuitive insights of Guruji’s subtle presence and help.

Prayers, good wishes, and other acts of kindness and compassion.

The prayers and good wishes of family, friends, health care providers and many others who cared for and about me, and wanted me to get well, also helped my miraculous survival and healing. Many staff people at the hospital and rehab facility were kind and compassionate, and did their very best to help me.

I was especially touched when I awakened in the hospital ICU one morning to see taped on the wall this “get well” message:


It had been placed there by one of my loving nurses with whom I had discussed my “attitude of gratitude” for surviving the taxicab rundown and my love for Saint Francis of Assisi, whose peace prayer I’d recited for her. (Details of our “holy encounter” are posted at https://sillysutras.com/remembering-an-attitude-of-gratitude-a-holy-encounter-rons-memoirs/)

Other acts of loving-kindness and compassion by those attending me were too numerous for me to recall or recount. But they all helped me get well.

Prayers can be powerful, and have been integral to all enduring religious and spiritual traditions from time immemorial. Throughout recorded human history prayers have been offered by countless saints and sages, and by ordinary people of every religious or spiritual denomination.

Moreover, persuasive scientific evidence now confirms healing efficacy of prayer. So I am gratefully convinced that heartfelt prayers and good wishes of many people who cared about me helped my miraculous survival and healing.

Why was my life was endangered, and why have I miraculously survived?

I don’t know. Presumably this incident arose from mysterious karmic causes and conditions. And presumably I have survived because my predestined assignments for this lifetime have not yet been fulfilled.

Before the taxicab rundown, I already was happier, more grateful and less fearful than ever before. And I already had abiding faith in the Divine, which more than ever before enabled me to accept inevitable and inescapable life difficulties and uncertainties, and yet to live openly, spontaneously and authentically, without worry, fear or doubt. (See: I’ve Found A Faith-Based Life.)

But I’ve become even more grateful for this precious human lifetime, and for the opportunity to continue learning to live with ever expanding loving-kindness and compassion.

Now I feel that every day is a bonus; that every breath is a blessing. And I am convinced that I have been permitted to remain in this body only because I’ve not yet fully accomplished the purposes for which my soul incarnated; that the miraculous survival and healing have been Divine blessings bestowing an evolutionary opportunity for karmic ‘purification’ and enhanced incentive to spiritually make the most of what remains of this precious human life-time.
 
One of the greatest joys of living a long earth-life is that there is always something new to learn, and that through synchronicities we are led to ever new opportunities for learning to become more loving – our purpose here.
So I feel blessed to have been allowed to keep learning appropriate evolutionary lessons – and also to have been afforded an opportunity to continue honoring Guruji’s request that I write and publish spiritual memoirs so as to inspire others.

[**See footnote]

Moral of the story?

With an enduring ‘attitude of gratitude’, I share this story hoping to inspire our fearless faith in that Mysterious Power which eternally guides our lives
through inevitable and inescapable difficulties and uncertainties,
and which enables us to live gratefully with loving-kindness and compassion,
and without worry, fear or negative attachments.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner


Footnotes:

*NDE’s. The term ‘Near Death Experience’ [NDE] was coined in 1975 by Raymond A. Moody, Jr., PhD, MD, in his book Life After Life which sold over thirteen million copies worldwide. Since then numerous NDE accounts have been published and discussed in mainstream media, on the internet, in films and videos and in magazines and books – including NY Times best sellers. Many spiritually inspiring NDE stories have been published and researched by the International Association For Near-Death Studies [IANDS] and others. So NDE’s have become widely considered, especially by those who claim to have experienced them. And some leading-edge non-materialist scientists cite NDE’s as evidence that consciousness survives physical death. For millions of people NDE’s, and other extraordinary mystical experiences, have proven to be spiritually inspirational, and transformative events, diminishing or ending fear of death and encouraging a newly open, sensitive, trusting and loving lifestyle. (see e.g. Atlantic Monthly: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.)

**The Perennial Wisdom Foundation (PWF) plans to publish ebooks containing these memoirs and other on-line writings. Also, PWF has arranged to keep SillySutras.com on line for at least another ten years, whether or not I am able to continue writing.