Posts Tagged ‘Mind’
De-condition the Mind
“Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique.
He has to find it through the mirror of relationship,
through the understanding of the contents of his own mind,
through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.”
“Our problem is how to be free from all conditioning. – – – –
When the mind is completely unconditioned then only can you experience or discover if there is something real or not. A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind; it is merely a repetitive mind.”
“When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience.
He will discover that this division is an illusion.
Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time.
This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.”
“When the mind is completely empty – only then is it capable of receiving the unknown.” …… “Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still – only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
“Our conditioning determines our condition.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
J. Krishnamurti ~ May 11, 1895 – February 17, 1986
De-condition the Mind
Our search for remission
From ills of the human condition
Will find its fruition
As we de-condition –
The mind.
Ron’s audio recitation of “De-condition the Mind”
Ron’s explanation of “De-condition the Mind”
Dear Friends,
The foregoing “De-condition the Mind” pithy poem was long ago inspired by renowned twentieth century philosopher J. Krishnamurti, whose independent spiritual philosophy helped me begin understanding what was happening to me soon after my spiritual awakening. To help you understand the poem, I have culled and posted the foregoing quotations, which include some of Krishnamurti’s core teachings.
Though born in India, Krishnamurti disclaimed allegiance to any nationality, caste, religion, guru or philosophy. He spent most of his life traveling and teaching worldwide.
Soon after a midlife spiritual awakening that I was pure awareness and not just my physical body and its story, I was given numerous glimpses of previously unknown clairvoyant and psychic phenomena which also persuaded me that the universe didn’t work the way I’d been taught or thought.
So I wondered about the true nature of this supposedly “real” world and the universe which we seem to inhabit. Krishnamurti had then become known to me as a contemporary sage. And to satisfy my newly aroused cosmic curiosities, I began reading Krishnamurti’s teachings.
Though initially I was puzzled by many of his enigmatic assertions about the human mind, I was determined to understand them. And gradually that seemed to happen.
In addition to Krishnamurti’s independent philosophic teachings, I began discovering similar wisdom teachings concerning Advaita Vedanta, the oldest extant school of Indian Philosophy. Advaita means non-dualism, and its teachings are about experiencing non-dual Self Realization via focused self-inquiry.
Ultimately I inferred from these philosophic teachings and from my spiritual awakening as Awareness, that everyone and everything else in space/time was like me the same pure Awareness mentally experiencing space/time through an impermanent energy form.
But, I also realized that our misperceptions and mental misconceptions of separateness have created an illusory world of suffering – an illusory mental mirage – with which we self-identify and reify. And that as long as we mistakenly perceive and believe ourselves to be separate from each other and nature, we suffer individually and societally from the universal law of cause and effect – karma.
From long lifetime experience, I have learned that as gradually we unselfishly open our hearts with compassion beyond personal desires and affections, our karmic sufferings diminish, and we reap increasing happiness.
Most postings on the SillySutras website, including “De-condition the Mind” are sincerely dedicated to helping all of us lead ever happier lives through increasing awareness of perennial spiritual wisdom.
Mystics say that ultimately, upon Self Realization of our true divine identity, our earthly sufferings end.
Today’s profound Krishnamurti quotations and De-condition the Mind poem can help remind us that since all our space/time “reality” arises from thought – that our mentality is our “reality” – we can vastly change our lives by observing and changing our thoughts, and by stilling and emptying our minds.
May these writings thereby help us live ever happier and soul fulfilling lives, as gradually we still our minds and open our hearts to remember that we are the unseen Source of the world we see.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Transmutation Beyond Computation
“What really counts in life can’t be counted.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“When one loves, one does not calculate.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux
Transmutation Beyond Computation
Computers are great
and demonstrate
technology that’s fine.
But we can’t compute
the Absolute —
The Mystery Divine.
We’ll never measure
our greatest treasure –
The gift of Life sublime.
But without computation —
in meditation —
To Heaven we may climb,
And find elation
beyond calculation –
Transcending space and time.
Ron’s spoken explanation and recitation of “Transmutation Beyond Calculation”
Ron’s written explanation of “Transmutation Beyond Calculation”
Dear Friends,
After retiring from legal practice in 1992, I immensely enjoyed many years of introspective semi-seclusion in my San Francisco high-rise hermitage, without a computer, TV, or daily newspaper. Rather than following worldly “news”, I preferred to pray, meditate and reflect about perennial spiritual wisdom.
Until then, my public behavior mostly continued to appear “normal” by worldly standards, though inwardly I was processing a radically zen-like change of life.
So many friends and relatives believing that Ron was still a “normal” worldly person, kept urging me to get a computer and go online. Especially because my beloved Guruji had encouraged my intention to “think about God” after retirement, I adamantly refused to go online with the rest of the world.
And privately I wrote these lines”, which I shared with few others:
Inner Net, Not Internet
Ron’s going off-line,
out-of-line, out of linearity.
While the world wants ever more information,
Ron seeks infinite inspiration:
In the Unknown, in the Mystery –
The Mystery of Divinity.
Ultimately, in 2004 I bought a computer to help my son Josh resolve legal problems with his corporate landlord. Soon afterwards I wrote and shared online the foregoing whimsical poem, “Transmutation Beyond Computation”, which I’ve posted above with spoken explanation and recitation, for your enjoyment and possible edification.
Fourteen years after reluctantly going online, I now greatly appreciate miraculous computer technology which has become an essential tool in my life. But still I adamantly endorse prioritizing mindfulness and introspection over following fake “news” or gossip or online worldly trivial pursuits like twittering, tweeting, messaging etc..
So the essential message of “Transmutation Beyond Computation” remains valid, and I hope you’ll consider it.
As George Orwell accurately observed in his prescient classic “1984”,
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
So especially in these dystopian times it is crucial that our mental programming come from the Sacred Heart of Humanity, and not from monopolistic corporate media.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Power Source
“If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs,
but from a holy realm that lives in us.”
~ Rumi – “That Lives in Us”
“You Have The Power: All the powers in the universe are already ours.
It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.”
~ Swami Vivekananda
“The power to think is a great gift;
but the power to not think is a greater gift.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Knowing you don’t know is wholeness.
Thinking you know is a disease.
Only by recognizing that you have an illness
can you move to seek a cure.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Without stirring abroad, one can know the whole world;
Without looking out of the window one can see the way of heaven.
The further one goes the less one knows.”
~ Lao Tzu
“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed,
you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”
and it will move.”
~ Matthew 17:20
Power Source
It is said that “knowledge is power”.
However, transcendent power comes
not from mental knowledge, but from thoughtless Knowing;
And, until we really Know,
it is approached from unknowing –
What we think we know, but don’t.
We become ever more powerful as we
forsake our false beliefs,
And ever open to the vast Unknown –
To the Eternal Mystery –
To the Tao –
To the Universal Source of all Power.
Ron’s audio recitation of “Power Source”
Ron’s Comments on “Power Source”
Dear Friends,
This is an especially appropriate time for us to consider the foregoing timeless quotations and online essay about Power Source.
As above so below.
Did you know that on Earth there already exists potentially unlimited ‘free energy’ yet to be revealed and used for everyone everywhere?
Or, similarly, that beyond our perceived space/time “reality”, there exists within everyone everywhere a timeless and infinitely potential divine Power Source, awaiting our discovery?
Nonetheless, because of ignorantly insane Human ‘power seeking’ activities, we face possibly imminent ecological or nuclear disaster which could end Earth life as we have known it.
So this is an extremely appropriate age for all of us who cherish our precious planet to awaken from our “deep state sleep state”, and to fearlessly and mindfully access for everyone everywhere our divinely bequeathed limitless free energy “on Earth as it is in Heaven”.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
That Lives in Us ~ by Rumi
“From wonder into wonder existence opens.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Consciousness is the basis of all life
and the field of all possibilities.
Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential.
The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.”
~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
“There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful
for the evolution of your consciousness.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
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
That Lives in Us ~ by Rumi
If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.
If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land –
that sacred earth that is your body.
If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.
Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.
Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.
Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.
(Source: Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, by Daniel Ladinsky )
More Enlightened Rumi Wisdom Words
“There is no reality but God,
says the completely surrendered sheik,
who is an ocean for all beings.”
“When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
“There is a life-force within your soul,
seek that life.
There is a gem in the mountain of your body,
seek that mine.
O traveler,
if you are in search of that
Don’t look outside,
look inside yourself and seek that.”
“Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.”
“I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door.
It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
“The world is a prison and we are the prisoners:
Dig a hole in the prison and let yourself out!”
“You were born with wings.
Why prefer to crawl through life?”
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? ”
“I long to escape the prison of my ego and lose myself in you.”
” You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood.
Come merge with me, leave this world of ignorance.
Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.”
~ Rumi
Take A Banker’s Holiday
“Mind is memory, at whatever level, by whatever name you call it; mind is the product of the past, it is founded on the past, which is memory, a conditioned state.” “Truth is not a memory, because truth is ever new, constantly transforming itself. (M)emory is a hindrance to the understanding of what is. The timeless can be only when memory, which is the `me’ and the `mine’, ceases.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
To think or not to think,
that is the question!
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Thinking and Being can’t coexist.
So stop thinking and start Being.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Forget who you think you are
to Know what you really are.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Take A Banker’s Holiday
Mind is a ‘memory bank’ where we keep
all past recollections and conceptions.
We are all memory bankers, using our memory banks to think –
mostly constantly and compulsively.
So thinking is always past, not present.
Thoughts are then, while life is NOW – not then.
And life is perpetual, while thinking is optional.
So to live optimally,
Let’s live presently,
But think optionally –
Not constantly or compulsively.
Let’s lock-up our ‘memory banks’, and
Take a banker’s holiday –
NOW!
Ron’s audio recitation of “Take A Banker’s Holiday”
Mind Your Mind: You Will Take It With You
“[Physical qualities] cannot be carried over into the next life.
The continuum of the mind, however, does carry on.
Therefore, a quality based on the mind is more enduring. …
So, through training the mind, qualities such as compassion, love, and the wisdom [of] realizing emptiness can be developed.”
~ H.H. Dalai Lama
Mind Your Mind: You Will Take It With You
My friend Konrad’s beloved mother used to say:
“If I can’t take it with me, I refuse to go.”
Despite her protestations – like every other person in the history of humanity – she was obliged to leave this world without taking with her anything fiscal or physical.
But her wonderful sense of humor survived her departure.
In this phenomenal world, everything’s energy; our worldly life-forms are but gross and subtle energy vortices in a field of universal awareness.
As the Dalai Lama observes, our subtle mental forms survive the death of our dense physical forms. So when we leave our physical body, our mind persists – and we will take it with us – somewhere.
Thus it’s wise for us to prepare for future ‘mind trips’ by training and stilling our mind to cultivate compassion, love and wisdom, with a wonderful sense of humor –
NOW.
“Choice” Quotations
“We must believe in free will,
we have no choice.”
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
“There is no such thing as chance;
and what seems to us merest accident
springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
~ Friedrich Schiller
“Since we cannot change reality,
let us change the eyes which see reality.”
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
“Choice” Quotations
“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust –
we all dance to a mysterious tune,
intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“What really interests me is whether God had any Choice in the creation of the world.”
~ Albert Einstein
“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
“Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others’ affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief”
~ Buddha
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
~ Albert Camus
“When you have to make a choice and don’t make it,
that is in itself a choice.”
~ William James
“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
Take which you please – you can never have both.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.”
~ Leo Buscaglia
“I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.”
~ A Course In Miracles
“Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing:
the last of the human freedom — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
~ Viktor Frankl
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore choose life.”
~ Deuteronomy 30:19
“Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength. ”
~ Hasidic Saying
A Stash of Cash For Y2K – a “Manifestation Miracle” ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles.”
~ Walt Whitman
“Synchronicity is choreographed by a great, pervasive intelligence that lies at the heart of nature, and is manifest in each of us through what we call the soul.”
~ Deepak Chopra, Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire
Before January 1, 2000, [the year “Y2K”] there was much societal fear in technically advanced countries about a possible planetary systemic break-down of crucial infrastructure institutions because of computer software bugs which would not facilitate or permit automatic transition to the new year and the new twenty first century.
As Y2K approached, I was then in a period semi-solitude with no computer, TV, or daily paper. So, I was largely insulated from exposure to mass media hysteria.
But, in conversations with friends, I learned enough about the technical facts to become a bit concerned. And, in case dire predictions of systemic failures proved prescient, my conservative lawyer attitude suggested that prudence required me to keep some cash at home.
So as our transition to the twenty first century became ever more imminent, I was thinking about withdrawing some cash from my neighborhood bank. But that trip to the bank proved unnecessary.
Here’s what happened:
One sunny afternoon, after praying and meditating that morning, I began my daily walk by the water in an elevated state of consciousness. As I was walking on a path beside the Bay toward Crissy Field beach, I noticed a small brown paper bag on the sidewalk near a waste disposal container. After walking just past the bag, I intuited that I should pick it up and put it into the trash receptacle. So I turned around, and picked it up.
Feeling something in the bag, I opened it before trashing it. To my amazement, I found ten new one hundred dollar bills in a small envelope, without any identification of the person who had put them there. They became my Y2K stash of cash.
Thus, the universe had provided my Y2K stash of cash with an amazing synchronistic “manifestation miracle”.
Thereafter, despite dire warnings, the new century dawned without great technological turmoil, and the stash of cash proved unnecessary. But it’s amazing synchronistic appearance enhanced my ever abiding faith in the benevolence of the universe. If you had asked me (as Einstein allegedly asked) “Is the universe friendly”, my emphatic answer would have been and still is, “Yes!”
So on New Year’s Day, 2000, I resolved to share my spiritual faith and optimism with others. And I wrote this poem:
MILLENNIAL OUTING
[January 1, 2000]
2000 years ago
Master Jesus counseled us
to pray in our closets alone.
But today we feel
a millennial urge
to emerge,
And to live
and share
our prayer
everywhere.
So, we’re coming out
of our spiritual closets,
Together,
to bless all life,
NOW
and evermore!
Epilogue.
My Y2K stash of cash had quickly manifested following thoughts about it. But only after many more years had elapsed did my millennial “outing” vow ultimately come to pass. And that happened only after the universe had synchronistically re-encouraged my prior determination to emerge from semi-seclusion.
In September, 2009, I received an inspiring astrological reading from Visionary Activist astrologer, Caroline Casey, who I much appreciate. Caroline intuitively and persuasively encouraged me to emerge at long last from my spiritual closet and to share my writings with the world.
Thereupon, with this encouragement from Caroline Casey, I began arrangements and preparations for starting SillySutras.com. The website was launched on May 22, 2010, with my heartfelt gratitude for our ‘friendly’ universe, and with deep aspiration to help bless all Life everywhere therein.
And so may it be!
Transmuting Agony to Ecstasy: An Unforgettable Indian Commuter Train Ride ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“The hurt that we embrace becomes joy.”
~ Rumi
“Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“Surrender, one could say, is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from “no” to “yes.” When you surrender, your sense of self shifts from being identified with a reaction or mental judgment to being the space around the reaction or judgment. It is a shift from identification with form–the thought or the emotion–to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form–spacious awareness.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“This is the miracle. Behind every condition, person or situation that appears bad or evil, lies concealed a deeper good. That deeper good reveals itself to you, both within and without through inner acceptance of what is. “Resist not evil” is one of the highest truths of humanity.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
We have nothing to surrender
But the idea
That we’re someone,
With something
To surrender.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Introduction
In January, 1992, just after my retirement as a San Francisco litigation attorney, I journeyed to India to pay respects to my then one hundred fourteen year old beloved Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, and thereafter to visit my daughter Jessica who – known as “Yogini” – was living an ascetic life on Ammachi’s ashram in Kerala.
During my six week stay in India, I was blessed with many wonderful spiritual experiences with Guruji, and with other holy people and places. But, apart from my brief visit with Guruji, [See https://sillysutras.com/introduction-to-rons-memoirs/] my most memorable and instructive spiritual experience happened unexpectedly on a commuter train to Bombay (now Mumbai).
By that time – sixteen years after my mid-life spiritual awakening – I had already learned from my traumatic divorce that life’s most painful and difficult experiences can prove disguised blessings. Suffering extreme sadness from unexpectedly being separated from my two young children – the most psychologically traumatic time of my adult life – had triggered my spiritual awakening process. A broken heart had opened my heart to new ‘realities’ and sparked a crucial new evolutionary period of spiritual self awareness and self inquiry – a tremendous blessing!
And prior to 1992 I had learned experientially and from many spiritual teachings the importance of spiritual surrender – of giving up imagined control and of letting go to go “with the flow”. For example, during a presumed 1979 ‘near death’ experience, when I mistakenly thought I was dying from a stroke, by watching within without resistance to presumed imminent death, I had an unforgettable inner experience. [ See https://sillysutras.com/my-near-death-experience/ ] But it is much easier to say “go with the flow” or “let go and let God” or “leave it to The Lone Arranger” than to practice that wise advice – especially when you are suffering. Except for very rare beings, like Guruji, we are all in the process of ‘undoing’ and letting go of who we think we are, to thereby realize what we really are – Divinity incarnate.
My Bombay commuter train experience proved an important demonstration of how accepting “what is” can bring great blessings, and how the blessings of letting go of ego, can be triggered by extreme pain and suffering.
Description
Here is what happened:
At the end of January 1992, I flew from San Francisco to Bombay, India [ now Mumbai] with my friends Pundit Pravin Jani, father of Shri Anandi Ma, Guruji’s successor, and Kusuma, Guruji’s former cook and translator. We were also honored to be accompanied by Shri Swami Shivom Tirth, a respected Indian shaktipat guru who, as successor to Swami Vishnu Tirth, headed India’s largest shaktipat lineage with several ashrams. We had known and learned from Swami Tirth for a few years before our trip to India and greatly honored and respected him.
With Pravinji and Kusuma as companions, I planned on visiting Guruji, who was then in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat State. However, our visit was delayed until after my Indian friends first attended to other personal matters.
Shri Swami Shivom Tirth
So Swami Shivom Tirth invited me to stay with him at his Bombay area ashram, until I was ready to fly to Ahmedabad. Gratefully, I accepted his kind invitation and was granted the honor and privilege of staying with him in his private quarters, rather than in the general ashram housing area.
Soon after my arrival at the ashram, Swami Tirth told me that he had arranged a special sight-seeing excursion for me to view legendary seventh century Hindu and Buddhist temples in rock-cut caves on Elephanta Island in the Bay of Bombay; that a senior Bombay area swami was to be my guide and companion on the excursion; that I was to meet him – in a few days – in central Bombay, where we would get ferry boat transportation to the island.
At the ashram it was very hot, so I wore light white clothes and sandals, instead of shoes. Before my scheduled tour day I suffered a wound on my left foot, which became infected. Despite first aid, the infection grew and became increasingly more painful. On the day of my scheduled tour I awakened with a very sore left foot. Nonetheless I was determined to see the Elephanta Island caves and relics.
So I walked to a nearby train stop, to catch a morning commuter train into central Bombay where I would meet my Swami tour guide. Instead of wearing sandals which were inappropriate for hiking on the rocky island paths, I was obliged to use shoes. It was a very hot day, with morning temperatures already approaching 100º fahrenheit.
My feet expanded as I walked to the train stop in the heat, and the already painfully infected left foot began aching more than ever before as I reached the train stop. Within fifteen minutes, the Bombay commuter train arrived, and stopped for boarding passengers. But there were no seats, and not even standing room in the vestibule. Yet in order to get to central Bombay on time, I needed to board that train for a forty minute ride.
Somehow I squeezed into the vestibule, which was already so filled with people that there wasn’t even an accessible pole or strap to hold for balance. People were packed in like sardines, and I was virtually unable to move. I stood there in the intense heat with excruciating pain that seemed to have become unbearable. But I could do nothing about it. Whereupon, suddenly and unexpectedly I had a radical change of attitude; I stopped resisting and stopped thinking how terribly I was suffering, and mentally accepted the situation just as it was.
With a surrendered and stilled ego/mind no longer resisting the intense heat, crushing proximity of sweaty human bodies, and excruciating pain, all at once I experienced an extraordinary and unforgettably indescribable state of extreme bliss which persisted for the remaining thirty minute train ride into central Bombay.
Even after that bliss state abated in Bombay, I was able to peacefully enjoy my tour to Elephanta Island because I was no longer resisting the pain in my foot.
Epilogue
The Bombay commuter train experience of transmuting agony to ecstasy has proven an invaluable lesson for this entire precious lifetime. It showed that by giving up and surrendering all we think we are we may gain deep experience and insight of what we really are; that it is in dying to ego life that we are reborn to eternal life; and, that such letting go of ego entity identity is perhaps our ultimate purpose in this precious human lifetime.
Human Body – A Precious ‘Prison’?
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“A yogi’s body is like a baby’s body.”
~ Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
“Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?
Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.”
~ Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching – Chapter 10, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.”
“To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear.”
~ Buddha
“The first preliminary practice consists of recognizing and giving value in its right measure to the precious human existence and the extraordinary opportunity that it gives to us to practice Dharma and to develop spiritually. It is naive to expect that such a favorable juncture will repeat continuously. Moreover, life is too short. ….If we bear in mind all these things, we will soon realize the need to take advantage of the opportunity that the precious human existence gives us to fully develop all the potential of our being.”
~ Kalu Rinpoche – Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism
Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Human Body – A Precious ‘Prison’?
Eastern spiritual paths identify human incarnation as an extraordinarily precious opportunity to evolve – beyond that of any other life-form; Buddhist and Hindu teachings say that for enlightenment it is better to be born human than even in a heavenly realm.
Before my mid-life spiritual awakening, I self-identified only with my body/mind and its story. Though I cherished my health, I was totally unaware of esoteric evolutionary perspectives about preciousness of human incarnation. But, since realizing that I was and am much more than my body and its story, I have deeply reflected on the significance and purpose of a human lifetime.
My 1976 realization that I was not my body or its thoughts, but pure awareness, followed a prior out of body experience [OOB] and sparked an amazingly intense ‘rebirth’ process, with convulsive crying, hyperventilation and spasmodic bodily movements. Immediately after that realization/rebirth process I briefly experienced myself not as pure consciousness but as meridians of flowing life-force energy, like those corresponding to ancient Chinese acupuncture teachings. Then I soon returned to “normal” bodily consciousness, but with greatly enhanced vital energies which continued for several months.
Thereafter, with great curiosity sparked by these new experiences, I began wondering about the nature and importance of the human body. And, synchronistically, I gradually learned with interest about body-work disciplines like massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathic, and various mind-body bio-energetic therapies. All these therapies aimed to stimulate or release flow of ‘trapped’ or blocked life-force energies.
I realized that my intense rebirth experience had temporarily released for me a previously unimaginable flow of vital energies (chi or prana), which gradually had abated as I returned to ‘normal’ consciousness. So, I became highly motivated to again access that hidden reservoir of vital energy. Thus, before meeting Guruji I had received chiropractic manipulations and had several sessions with a Reichian therapist to enhance and balance vital body energies. But I had not again experienced the extraordinary vitality which immediately followed my rebirth experience.
Then, after meeting Guruji and observing his amazing physical prowess, even as a centenarian, I learned that he received frequent massages from very few close disciples, which supposedly enhanced his physical well-being, while blessing those privileged disciple/masseurs who in touching his body experienced direct transmission of his extraordinarily intense and powerful cosmic life-force energy (“shakti”).
I began wondering about the relationship, if any, between Guruji’s regular massages, his extraordinary physical condition and his amazing ability to transcend ‘normal’ physical limitations. Then, while Guruji was staying at my apartment, just before his 1980 return to India, I had an unforgettable synchronistic experience with him that related to my mind/body questions.
One weekend morning when I was home from work, I was invited for the first and only time to give Guruji a massage – a rare blessing and privilege. As I began massaging Guruji’s then 100 year old body, I was astonished at its flexibility and softness.
Then, suddenly, I exclaimed in utter amazement:
“Guruji your body is so supple!”
Unforgettably, he replied:
“Rasik, a yogi’s body is like a baby’s body. Your body is like a prison. I am like a jailer with the prison key. I come and go as I please.”
I became and remained intensely curious about Guruji’s revelation that my body was like a prison. I wondered how and why ‘I’ was ‘imprisoned’, and how ‘I’ could get out of ‘jail’ – free like Guruji. Was I imprisoned by body stiffness from subconsciously stored traumas? It was apparent that my body was not supple like Guruji’s body. Though half his age, I couldn’t even sit with crossed legs, much less stand on my head or perform the other advanced yogic postures (asanas) that Guruji demonstrated.
As I remembered the extraordinary vitality which temporarily followed my rebirth “peek” experience, I intuited that it was a glimpse of a potentially achievable bodily state well beyond anything I had theretofore imagined. But how could I restore that state? And even if possible, would the restoration of such a state allow me to get out of prison at will, like Guruji? That remained a mystery.
Gradually and synchronistically, I have been given insights about the bodily ‘prison’ mystery, but haven’t yet ‘solved’ it.
Most memorably, in 1982 I was profoundly moved and inspired by Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”. There in Chapter 43, Yogananda recounts an unforgettable visit from his beloved Guru, Sri Yukteswar, who miraculously resurrected and reappeared to Yogananda in physical form a few months after his physical death. Yukteswar then explained to Yogananda the genesis of human physical, astral, and causal bodies, saying:
“The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires.” “The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery…”
“Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures.”
“So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers,
sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit.”
~ Sri Yukteswar
(As recounted by Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 43)
Upon reading Sri Yuktewar’s words, I intuitively and reflectively accepted them as true. And I remembered that Guruji had revealed in San Francisco lectures on “Death, Dying and Beyond” that during a 1971 ‘near death experience’ he had been sent back by Lord Rama from a heavenly realm to his physical body because of his unfulfilled desires to help people.
*[See footnote]
I realized that all phenomena and forms – including human forms – that appear in this space/time reality interdependently originate in subtle energy planes pursuant to mysterious laws of causality. And I remembered that even though Guruji had evolved beyond limits of ordinary human consciousness, he had remained in a human body, but with amazing ability to transcend ordinary physical limitations, only because of his unselfish desires to help others. Whereas it was obvious that I was ‘imprisoned’ by bonds of ego desire and ignorance mentioned by Sri Yukteswar.
So, thereafter, I became highly motivated to transcend all such egotistic bonds, and to get out of ‘prison’ – free like Guruji. Expressing these aspirations, I soon wrote (or channeled) sutras and poems like these:
DOING TIME
Time is how
“I” Measure “Now”
And space’s for places
Where I’m –
Entangled here in time.
But I long to be – FREE
Where there is no “ME”-
Nowhere,
Out of time,
Beyond I’m,
Beyond hereness/thereness-
As just Awareness –
NOW!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
WISH LIST
We’ll never have all we want ’til we want just all we have;
So – topping our wish list, is our wish to be wish-less.
For ’til we stop wishing, we’ll ever be wanting.
Though at first – longing to be merged with the Divine – I fervently aspired to transcend all physical and subtle desires, I came to realize that my aspiration was in itself a subtle desire. So, intuitively I began with ever increasing heartfelt faith in universal Awareness – the Tao – to surrender to the mysterious Infinite – “to let go, and go with the flow”.
Deeply inspired by the Buddhist Bodhisattva ideal of altruistically helping all beings end their sufferings, I gradually stopped trying to transcend this world. But with ever growing gratitude I began accepting my life as a cherished evolutionary opportunity; an opportunity to be in my precious human body in a compassionate and loving way which – at subtle levels – might help all life everywhere.
And the more I have gratefully accepted my human incarnation, the greater has been my happiness and the more I have experientially and synchronistically learned from this precious human life.
Though I always cherished and appreciated good health, more than ever before I have become mindful of my bodily needs for appropriate nourishment, exercise, and rest, and have tried to satisfy those needs in a natural way. And remembering that subtle life-force energies are the genesis of every physical form or phenomenon, I have become ever more alert to my thoughts, emotions and attitudes which may influence physical well-being.
Though, unlike Guruji, I have not yet transcended subtle desires and ignorance and am still ‘imprisoned’ in my body, I aspire to emulate his wise and compassionate way of being in this world. Recently, for the first time in this life, I have even started treating my body to regular massages.
Who knows, maybe some day I’ll be able to report to you the massage that ‘sets me free’?
*Footnote
In 1971, during a terrible Gujarati draught and famine, Guruji became extremely sick and exhausted from selflessly helping people and animals. Guruji’s physical body died, and his soul traveled to the heavenly domain of his “Ishta-Devata” Lord Rama – the principal Divine form of his devotional practices. Though Guruji wished to remain forever in Rama’s indescribably loving Presence, he was told that he would have to return to his Earthly body because of his unfulfilled desires to help people, whose images were then shown to Guruji. Rama told him: “So long as there are any desires in your mind, … you must return to fulfill those desires.”
