Steve Taylor - Sacred Days

There are no special days -
there is only the spinning of the earth
towards the sun and away again,
warming its face before the fire
then turning again to the cold black space.

The year has no end or beginning.
There is only the floating of the earth,
tilting through the seasons like a yacht at sea.
circling a course laid down by gravity.

Every day is sacred -
every moment of this journey,
every spin and tilt and curve,
every forward flow through space.
And I will celebrate them all.

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Art Robby Donaghey

Valery Larbaud - "the gift of oneself"

art Martin Stranka

i offer myself to each as his reward; 

here it is, even before you deserved it.

there is something in me,

in the deepest part of me, at the center of me, 

something infinitely barren 

like the tops of the highest mountains;

something comparable to the blind spot in the retina,

and with no echo, 

and yet which sees and hears; 

a being with a life of it's own, which nonetheless 

lives my whole life, and listens, impassive, 

to all the chitchat of my consciousness.

a being made of nothing, if that's possible, 

insensitive to my physical suffering,

that doesn't weep when i weep,

that doesn't laugh when i laugh, 

that doesn't blush when i do something shameful,

and that doesn't moan when my heart is aching;

that doesn't make a move and gives no advice,

but seems to say eternally: "i'm here, indifferent to everything."

maybe it is as empty as emptiness is, 

but so big that good and evil together do not fill it.

where hatred dies of suffocation and the greatest love never penetrates.

so take all of me: the meaning of these poems, 

not what can be read, but what comes across in spite of me:

take, take, you have nothing. 

wherever i go, in the whole world, 

i always meet, 

around me as in me, 

the unfillable void,

the unconquerable nothing.

   

— " the gift of oneself" by valery larbaud

translated from the french by ron padgett & bill zavatsky

for the random house book of twentieth century french poetry

Naomi Stone - Bewildering beauty of the Beloved

art Rassouli

There is a song ….

the words sing the sad story….

that the thrill is gone….

and what happens

when they no longer feel

the currents of desire …..

no longer feel able to see

someone or something with the eyes

of bewildering disorientation

which so many mistake for love…

 

Like earthly wine…

earthly love is a beginning….

opening the senses…

 

but when love comes in its purity arises…..

awakens……………..expands ……

and grants us divine vision….

……the thrill is forever new……

something lifts us

in the sheer lightness of Spirit….

delicately spun spreading..

gliding…………..sheer……..invisible wings…

orbs………..shimmering cloud…

catching the light..

bears us on the breath of love

 

When the Beloved gazes through

our earthly eyes

the solid illusion dissolves

and melts away…..

and a different seeing emerges…

…i call it “beholding” ……….

 

Behold…………the kingdom is at hand……..

the Beloved brushes by………

and touches with the softness of air

spirit to spirit

a movement of beauty……..

felt in the heart………….

that softens the soul

the soothing sound

of the sighs of creation 

love overflowing ……

shimmering strings of the heart

sing like the harp……….

quivering with music

only the Beloved can play

Naomi Stone: "I am a contemplative, a mystic, a pilgrim, a seeker, a woman deeply in love with the God hidden in all of us, in all of His Creation, who comes shining out when we least expect it and takes my breath away and breathes me with His sublime Presence in everything. I have two sons and loved raising them. I was a teacher for years, taught at the university level, did some community work, helped start a hospice in our area, and worked with patients and families for years. I am consoled by Nature and the natural world and have embraced the life of a spiritual hermit." You may visit Naomi on her website here where she has shared over 700 of her poems over the last four years. You may contact her via Facebook here. 

Wei Wu Wei - The pure land

Q. Is IT possible to be rid of the concept of “other” without at the same time 

being rid of the concept of “I”, or to be rid of the concept of “I”' 

without at the same time being rid of the concept of ”other”?
☼ Wei Wu Wei : It is not possible.
Q. With which should one begin?
☼ WWW : With neither. An identified subject cannot rid itself of either concept.
Q. That is news, bad news! I thought that was what is required of us?
☼ WWW : As well be required to scoop up the moon by baling its reflection out of a puddle!
Q. What then?
☼ WWW : Until an identified subject knows what he is, 

he cannot be expected to realize what he is not.
Q. Cannot I say also that until he knows what he is not, he cannot realize what he is?
☼ WWW : You can. You should. You must.
Q. There seems to be no way out!
☼ WWW : That is why we are not all Buddhas. 

If it seemed to be possible should we not have done it long ago?
Q. But there must be a way out!
☼ WWW : There is no 'way', and nothing 'out'. It is here and now.
Q. Then what is it?
☼ WWW : What it is—is quite obvious.
Q. Not to me.
☼ WWW : If you can't find it by looking—don't look, 

if you can't find it by thinking—don't think! 

It is where there is no looking, and no thinking.
Q. Because it cannot either be seen or thought?
☼ WWW. : Not at all.
Q. Why, then?
☼ WWW : Not because it cannot be seen or thought, 

but because there is no 'one' to look or to think!
Q. Then what does one do?
'☼WWW : One' does not do. 'One' does not even cease to do.
Q. And so?
☼ WWW : It is better for you to tell me. 

Is what your identified subject is—anything he can know?
Q. Surely not.
☼ WWW : Is what he is—anything he can not-know?
Q. What he is—is not likely to be an object of knowledge.
☼ WWW : Can he see, know, or find what he is or what he is not?
Q. I do not think so.
☼ WWW : Why is that?
Q. Probably because what he is looking for, trying to know, seeking to find, 

is what is looking, trying, seeking?
☼ WWW : Exactly. That is the answer.
Q. But is it an answer?
☼ WWW :It is the only answer. 

Finding no 'thing', he finds that he is what he is, which is also what he is not.
Q. So that what he is not is what he is?
☼ WWW : In so far as words can suggest it.
Q. But does that answer my question?
☼ WWW : You asked me how to be rid of the interdependent concepts of 'other' and “I”. 

They have been mutually abolished.
Q. So that. . . ?
☼ WWW : No 'other', no “I”.
Q. And what I am is also what I am not, and what I am not is also what I am! 

No room for self, no room for other-than-self! 

Is that not a definition of Nirvana or of the Pure Land?
☼ WWW : It is also a definition of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Q. Is there a historical precedent for such an approach?
☼ WWW : There are many. 

For instance when Hui K'o had 'his' supposed mind tranquillized by Bodhidharma, 

by being unable to find it—that was not the result of his having no mind to find, 

but because there was no 'he' to have anything. 

The mind was not missing: it was he that could not be found.
Q. It was mind that was looking for mind and not finding itself as an object?
☼ WWW : And not-finding was finding!

Open secret PDF  HERE

The Wei Wu Wei archives 

Stardust from Adrien Servadio on Vimeo.

 The result of my life
is no more than three words:

I was raw,
I became cooked,
I was burnt.

Rumi

Don Miguel de Ruiz - A Story of Discovery

““Miguel,” he said gently, with a sweet smile on his face, 

“all the things you’ve learned in school, and everything you think you understand about life, 

comes from knowledge. It isn’t truth.”

“Don’t take offense, my child,” he went on. 

“This is the mistake everyone makes. 

People put their faith in opinions and rumors—and out of this, they construct a world, 

believing that their constructed world is the real world. 

They don’t know whether what they believe is true. 

They don’t even know whether what they believe about themselves is true.

 Do you know what is true, or what you are?”

“Yes, I know what I am!” I insisted.
How could I not know myself? I’ve been with myself since birth!” 

“M’ijo, you don’t know what you are,” he said calmly, 

“but you know what you’re not. 

You’ve been practicing what you’re not for so long, you believe it. 

You believe in an image of you, an image based on many things that aren’t true.”

I didn’t know what to say next. 

I had expected praise, or at least an argument against my point of view. 

I would have been happy to participate in an intellectual boxing match with my grandfather. 

In my opinion, I had enough information to debate the master, and to win. 

Instead, what he gave me was a knockout punch to the self. 

Everything I thought about Miguel, my grandfather disqualified in a few hard sentences. 

Everything I knew about the world was now in doubt. 

Doubt! It’s hard to overstate the importance of doubt 

when we’re bringing down the intellectual house we’ve built. 

We learn words, we believe in their meaning, 

and we practice those beliefs until our little house is solid and strong. 

Doubt is the tremor that brings it down, when it’s time. 

Doubt can cause a citadel of beliefs to crumble; 

and that kind of tremor is necessary if we want to see beyond our private illusions. 

An earthquake is necessary. 

I looked at my grandfather, and he smiled back at me, as if we had just shared a happy secret. 

Did he even notice that my self-esteem had been shattered?

The Toltec Art of Life and Death:A Story of Discovery–Don Miguel de Ruiz

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Mooji - Christmas Blessing

True love never goes away.
The shape it takes may change, but it itself never changes,
except to get sweeter and sweeter and more full.
It is not born from human effort or fantasy;
it is the love which is the unicity of pure Being
being recognised.
Perhaps if duality has any real value,
it is to provide love the room to demonstrate its own unicity
and to manifest the sense of showing gratitude to the Supreme.
It is love that really connects us all through truth and wisdom,
and makes ignorance ashamed to show itself.
That wisdom that comes from love, from God, from our own divinity, cannot be studied.
In its own time it simply blossoms inside the heart
and gives light to the world.

 The very significance of Christmas is this Christ Consciousness,
the Christ-light, which is the real light of the world.
The light of consciousness,
the light of the Self in its purest dynamic expression,
is what we call the Christ
that manifested in the human form called Jesus
so many years ago,
but the source and origin of this light is timelessly unchangeable

Continue reading and

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Vedanta Desikan - In a single home

Our bodies touch
in the southern wind.
Our eyes meet
in the moon.
We live together in a single home–
the world, and the earth
is the one bed we share.
The sky scattered with stars
is a canopy stretched above us.
Think of this, my lean beauty:
however far away
fate has taken you from me,
I still find my way
into you.

 Hamsa-Sandesha or “The message of the Swan”
is a Sanskrit love poem written by
Vedanta Desika in the 13th century AD.
A short lyric poem of 110 verses,
it describes how Rama, hero of the Ramayana epic,
sends a message via a swan to his beloved wife, Sita,
who has been abducted by the demon king Ravana.

 

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - Mystical Prayer

 

..."To know that beneath all the divisions of the outer world 

there is this single stream of mystical prayer is in itself a refuge and deep reassurance. 

It is so easy to get caught up in the forms and images of the outer world, 

and yet, as Rumi writes, "God does not look at your outer forms, but at the love within your love." And here, within the heart of each of us, is a place where we can enter the formlessness of love. And as I have discovered from my own journey into the heart, 

this is a love that embraces each of us with a tenderness and passion known only to lovers. 

We are taken by love to love."

From: Mystical Prayer: Opening a Door to Silence and Love

read more HERE

 

Fred LaMotte - I have a thousand gurus

I have a thousand gurus.
I have countless paramours.
I have eight billion children
whining to be fed.
But there is only one Beloved
who enters the bridal chamber
of this heart
veiled in my own breath
to anoint me with a kiss
that turns the darkness
of yearning
into true night.
I do not wait for dawn.
I burn now
in the fire of awakened
emptiness.

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Rumi - When i die...

 

When I die
when my coffin
is being taken out
you must never think
i am missing this world

don’t shed any tears
don’t lament or
feel sorry
i’m not falling
into a monster’s abyss

when you see
my corpse is being carried
don’t cry for my leaving
i’m not leaving
i’m arriving at eternal love

when you leave me
in the grave
don’t say goodbye
remember a grave is
only a curtain
for the paradise behind

you’ll only see me
descending into a grave
now watch me rise
how can there be an end
when the sun sets or
the moon goes down

it looks like the end
it seems like a sunset
but in reality it is a dawn
when the grave locks you up
that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen
a seed fallen to earth
not rise with a new life
why should you doubt the rise
of a seed named human

have you ever seen
a bucket lowered into a well
coming back empty
why lament for a soul
when it can come back
like Joseph from the well

when for the last time
you close your mouth
your words and soul
will belong to the world of
no place no time

~ RUMI, ghazal number 911,
translated May 18, 1992, by Nader Khalili.

Jean Klein - It knows itself by itself

Let your mind be very clear that when you are looking for your real self, 

it is it which is looking for itself. 

That is why you can never find it – because it is the ultimate looker which looks for itself. 

In other words, you are fundamentally already what you are. 

Any movement you undertake is a going away from it. 

You sit on this chair and you cannot find yourself on the chair by going somewhere else. 

So the inevitable question is, “How can I become aware of what I am?” 

But we cannot be aware of the “I am.” We can only be aware of things. 

All that we are aware of is an object, but what we already are, our real nature, is not an object. 

It is consciousness, the light behind all objects. 

It is the ultimate perceiver in which the perceived appears and disappears. 

It is its own perceiving. 

So it can never be understood in terms of subject-object relationship. 

The perceiver can never be perceived, as the eye cannot see its seeing.
All that is perceived, you are not. 

When you understand this, you are no longer concerned with what you are not, 

and there is a natural giving up of what you are not. 

All the energy that was eccentric, spent in achieving, becoming, grasping 

and so on, comes to a stop. 

And there is only stillness, silence, which is the original perception of the real self. 

It is your globality. 

In this globality, there is not a knower of the globality; otherwise, it could not be globality. 

We can only say, as in all the sacred sayings, it knows itself by itself.

from Open to the Unknown

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Ultimatum

The Nisargadatta Ultimatum

 By Pradeep Apte

1. Are you a mere body or something else? Or, maybe nothing at all?
2. Before all beginnings, after all endings – I am.
3. What you are, you already are.
4. Everything is local and temporary, except you. Don’t forget what you are.
5. Ultimately I am beyond being and non-being.
6. Find him who was present at your birth and will witness your death.
7. Stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on.
8. You were never born nor will you ever die.
9. There is a state beyond forgetting and remembering.
10. The beginningless begins forever.
11. Find what is it that you have never lost.
12. Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present.
13. Whatever happens, I remain.
14. I was never born. How can I grow old?
15. I am neither born nor can I die. I have nothing to remember or to forget.
16. You are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless.
17. Reality is not an event, it cannot be experienced, for reality neither comes nor goes.
18. There is no such thing as experience of reality. 

19. Only reality is, there is nothing else.
20. There was no coming. It was so – always.
21. You can only be what you are in reality; you can only appear to be what you are not.
22. What comes and goes has no being.
23. What changes is not real, what is real does not change.
24. Don’t pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be what you are.
25. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least.
26. The real does not die, the unreal never lived.
27. You are neither the body nor in the body – there is no such thing as body.
28. The Absolute precedes time. The Absolute – is.
29. Your body is short of time, not you. Just understand yourself – that itself is eternity.
30. I know for myself. I was never born.
31. Both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither.
32. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.
33. That which makes you think you are human is not human.
34. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are.
35. You are not what you perceive.
36. You are yourself without knowing.
37. No happening affects your real being – this is the absolute truth.
38. Transiency is the best proof of unreality.
39. You cannot know your real being. You can only be what you are.
40. Whatever you are changelessly, that you are beyond all doubt.
41. To be, you must be nobody.
42. To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledge.
43. In reality you were never born and shall never die.
44. Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing.
45. One can only be it, without knowing.

text source Pradeep Apte

Jeff Foster - What they taught you

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/ 

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Paramahansa Yogananda - What is Love?

Love is the scent with the lotus born.
It is the silent choirs of petals
Singing the winter's harmony of uniform beauty.
Love is the song of the soul, singing to God.
It is the balanced rhythmic dance of planets -
sun and moon lit
In the skyey hall festooned with fleecy clouds –
Around the sovereign Silent Will.
It is the thirst of the rose to drink the sunrays
And blush red with life.
'Tis the promptings of the mother earth
To feed her milk to the tender, thirsty roots,
And to nurse all life.
It is the urge of the sun
To keep all things alive.

Love is the unseen craving of the Mother Divine
That took the protecting father–form,
And that feeds helpless mouths
With milk of mother's tenderness.
It is the babies's sweetness,
Coaxing the rain of parental sympathy
To shower upon them.
It is the lover's unenslaved surrender to the beloved
To serve and solace.
It is the elixir of friendship,
Reviving broken and bruised souls.
It is the martyr's zeal to shed his blood
For the well-beloved fatherland.
It is the ineffable, silent call of the heart to another heart.
It is the God-drunk poet's heartaches
For every creature's groans.

Love is to enjoy the family rose of petal-beings,
And thence to move to spacious fields -
Passing by portals of social, national, international sympathy,
On to the limitless Cosmic Home –
To gaze with looks of wonderment,
And to serve all that lives, still or moving.
This is to know what love is.
He knows who lives it.

Love is evolution's ameliorative call
To the far-strayed sons
To return to Perfection's home.
It is the call of the beauty – robed ones
To worship the great Beauty.
It is the call of God
Through silent intelligences
And starburst of feelings.

Love is the Heaven
Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms, creatures – you and I
Are rushing by the straight path of action right,
Or winding laboriously on error's path,
All to reach haven there at last.

~ From: Songs of the Soul,
by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Jeff Foster - A Life you Love

art Martin Stranka

If you want a life you love,
love the life you have.

See the destination
as a present reality.
Receive the moment as a gift.

Rich or poor,
in sickness and in health,
bow to what is given,
embrace what is coming.

And you will be wealthier
than all the creatures
on this sacred Earth.

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pic Rarindra Prakarsa

Hafiz - I have come into this world to see this:

I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of anger because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound and it is the Beloved's.

I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way to an even greater being of soul, a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play with Him.

I have come into this world to hear this: every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in the Divine's womb and began spinning from His wish, every song by wing and fin and hoof, every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child, every song of stream and rock, every song of tool and lyre and flute, every song of gold and emerald and fire, every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity to know itself as God: for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching - only imbibing the glorious Sun will complete us.

I have come into this world to experience this: men so true to love they would rather die before speaking an unkind word, men so true their lives are His covenant - the promise of hope.

I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.

 

Thanks to Love Is A Place

 

Roy Melvyn - Interview

Interviewer: My guest today is Roy Melvyn, an internationally recognized author of more than 25 books on Eastern philosophy and spirituality. His latest book is Behind the Mind: The Short Discourses of Wu Hsin.
Roy is joining us via satellite from Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Hi, Roy; welcome to the show.
RM: Thanks for having me.
I: One of the things I observe about your spiritual ideas is that you don’t use words like trinity, karma, atma, etc. Is that intentional or is there another reason for this?
RM: I try to frame my ideas avoiding all the buzzwords used in religious philosophy. So I don’t refer to Holy Spirit or karma or atma etc. My apologies to the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Christians, and all the others.
I prefer to speak about what-is in a manner similar to what has been used for thousands of years. I feel that this approach makes it more widely accessible.
I: What do you see as a place for religion in one’s life?
RM: As I see it, religion works well for those willing to bind themselves to a belief system. Beliefs are not facts. In my experience, the fewer beliefs we hold, the more clarity we gain.
I: Yet, millions read and quote scripture every day.
RM: Yes, but citing scripture in support of a belief system is like drinking water from a lake on a map. There’s no life and living in it. It’s the concession that one cannot call on direct experience in support of one’s viewpoint. Rather, it is a falling back onto “so and so said” or “such and such says”. These are used as the support of the unsubstantiated belief system.
I: So, we have to see through our beliefs in order to have a clear picture of reality?
RM: Yes, there can be no chick unless the eggshell is broken.
I: You have been reported to say that you accept the idea of karma but not of personal karma. Can you explain?
RM: Actions have consequences. That’s perfectly logical. Karma refers to consequences of previous actions.
However, personal karma would require a person, and I can’t find one.
There is a psychosomatic system that is receiving sensations and thoughts and reacts to these………. and there is a narrative built around them with an actor entity at its center. But there’s nothing solid that supports this notion of the actor.
I see the functioning within this world; an animal hunts, a fish swims. There is this functioning, but no one, no entity per se, doing it.
As such, there’s no one to ascribe karma to.
I: That’s quite a controversial point of view. Would the same apply to the idea of past lives?
RM: If there’s no entity, whose past lives are we talking about?
I: Yet, many people claim to be quite clear about their past lives. How would you respond?
RM: I would ask a single question: “How do you know that these past lives are yours?”
Even if there were some cosmic pool of past lives, simply because these impressions come to you doesn’t mean that they are yours any more than a bird’s song coming to you makes it yours.
Granted, it’s a very attractive system of beliefs, but there’s nothing verifiable in it.
I: I take it, then, you would also dismiss any idea of the personal search?
RM: The details about one’s efforts and experiences toward awakening is nothing more than an embellishment of the narrative.
Searches are a rejection of what-is in pursuit of some idealized what-I-would-prefer. Most are seeking the power and control that this idealized outcome would seemingly grant them.
I’m not denigrating seeking. It is a natural response to life that arises in humans and is one of many things that distinguishes us from goats.
Often, when it is seen through, it stops and is replaced with acceptance.
I: If I’ve followed you, the idea of being a person is just that, an idea. Is that a fair summation?
RM: The notion of a centralized self does not correspond to anything found in the brain, which lacks a central command center. It’s even been shown that when we make a decision the actual activity happens seconds before we are aware of it. The mind claims to have made a decision only after it’s been made, in an act of post hoc rationalization.
There are complex interactions between a body and the rest of the world, arising and falling away for no one in particular.
It can be said that the self is like the sum total of the waves on the surface of the ocean: there is no identity, no “thing” that endures because each wave, like each experience, is short-lived. But there is a continuity.
This continuity is a timeless, empty Knowingness.
To frame it another way, the body requires more rest than the mind. The body sleeps for eight hours a day. The mind sleeps for six hours a day. That which knows these, that which teaches a fish to swim, never sleeps. That is the Knowingness.
I: Is that the same as what you refer to as the Conscious Life Energy?
RM: Yes, as you can’t have cloth without thread, there can be no appearances in the absence of consciousness and there can be no life in the absence of an energy that enlivens what are essentially inert forms. An individual is one such appearance.
Only when an observation post is established outside of the structure of the individual can this be seen clearly.
Failing to do this while hoping for clarity is like trying to draw water from a three meter well with a pail tied to a two meter rope.
I: That being the case, how is transcendence achieved?
RM: Prior the appearance of a world, everything exists en potentia. When this potentiality actualizes, as it must, it results in a world of objects. The consciousness objectifies itself as its instrument, a body in a world. When the brain in the body is sufficiently developed, self consciousness arises and the so-called problems begin.
As such, returning to the state prior to the arising of the self consciousness is desired. However, this means transcending basic brain process. Understanding that the so-called entity is itself a creation of the brain, who is to do this?
What occurs is a spontaneous seeing of the true state of affairs, that all there is, is the functioning and the observation of said functioning. That’s it; the seeing is the transcendence.
I: Would I be right to assume, then, that you also don’t subscribe to the notion of free will?
RM: Free will is as real as the person it applies to. The idea of volition only serves to support the idea of the person.
I: Within this context, what are your views on death, the fear of death, and reincarnation?
RM: Death is believed to be the end of continuity. The prospect of death is so traumatic because we cannot bear the idea of there being no body to identify with. When the body-identification is dropped, the only response to the prospect of death can be “Who cares?”
Regarding reincarnation, one is again obliged to ask “What reincarnates?” Clearly, it is not the person. At best, it could be argued that it is an energy pattern, a modality of viewpoint and behavior.
I: Would you at least concede the existence of heaven and hell?
RM: I could, but even if I did, they would be empty, solitary places. As an exterior destination, who or what is it that goes there?
It is easier to postulate that each of us carries conceptual heaven and hell inside us and we oscillate between the two moment by moment.
I: OK, let’s shift gears. You talk about the brain quite a bit as one key to all this. Can you explain?
RM: The world as one knows it is a deconstruction, then reconstruction by the brain, of data provided by the senses. The brain provides what could be called a “best fit” for the data.
The brain creates and then we receive what the brain creates, taking it for reality.
As such, the world one knows can only be a personal world. If one had different senses, such as echo-location or heat sensing, or if one could see a broader color spectrum or could vary the speed of perceived time, the world would appear vastly different.
I: So, the ego interacts with the brain’s representations and responds?
RM: Ego or self-consciousness should be seen as an advanced tool that evolved to help the brain regulate the body in humans.
At about the age of two years, the frontal lobes of the infant brain are sufficiently developed so that the self-consciousness which has been latent can arise.
I: You state that the world we see is, at best, an approximation. Could you expand on this?
RM: The human retina transmits to the brain approximately 10 million bits of information per second, roughly the capacity of an ethernet connection. It has been calculated that our other senses record an additional one million bits of information per second. That gives our senses a total bandwidth of 11 million bits per second. Yet of this massive flow of information, no more than about 40 bits per second actually reaches us.
In other words, we are conscious of only a minute slice of all the information coming into the brain for processing.
The brain attempts to bring relevance and coherence to this mass of data. It does so by creating the frame of reference “this brain in this body in this world” with “me” as its focal point.
One normally says that we see through the eyes. However, the data from the eyes is processed by the brain and filtered by the mind. In this regard, seeing through the mind is closer to the way the process works.
I: My takeaway from this is that the world is what the brain says it is. In that case, my world and your world may have points of commonality, but they are hardly the same world.
RM: Yes, there is my world, your world, and the world, reality.
The brain is a multitude of separate processing subsystems that come together to create a unified experience.
All of our experience is to some extent a simulation of reality, because we don’t have any direct contact with reality. All sensations are processed and transduced into electrical impulses, that then propagate across the neural nets of our brains, which become the basis of the representations of the external world.
The mind is constantly reconstructing these representations and often there’s a whole bunch of tricks that are going on. There’s filling in missing information, or creating experiences which are not exactly matched to reality. In that sense we are simulating an external world.
Perception, therefore, is a story; that we integrate information into meaningful models of the world, that includes previous experiences which we use to bring to bear upon our perception.
The world appears to happen to us: that is all we can know about it. The entire world appears in you and not you in it.
I: Let’s return to inner work: do you see a place for yoga practice in all this?
RM: Yoga literally means yoking or union. The need for union presupposes separation. Therefore, investigation into the validity of the seeming separation is the highest form of yoga.
Yoga as originally devised by Patanjali was a series of processes for losing one’s self. In the West, it has become a means of self improvement. Not that there is anything wrong with physical disciplines; they have their place. However, the yoga of gaining is a far cry from the yoga of losing.
I: Roy, why don’t you ever speak about love?
RM: Love is one of those “hot” words that I avoid. It carries with it so many charged, yet misguided images, that I chose to leave it alone.
For most people, at its root, love means fulfilling one’s wants. That is why marital love often turns to marital hatred when the wants fulfillment ceases.
I: But what about love of God?
RM: If God is everywhere, then God is in your neighbor as much as in yourself. Yet, hating your neighbor or envying him or seeking advantage over him is an everyday occurrence. Where’s the love of God in that?
I: To wrap up, Roy, what do you see to be the solution to the world’s problems?
RM: You saved the big one for last, didn’t you?
The world’s problems are always framed by the reference point. A man in China will see the world’s problems to be markedly different from that of an American, or a tribesman in Papua New Guinea.
When the view shifts from the personal to the universal, all the problems are not solved, but dissolved. It is understood that everything is as it is intended to be.
Perfection is discerned in the instant that one releases all notions of what it’s supposed to look like.
There is never a problem in the outside world. All problems are in the mind.
The mind is like the moon, it only shines by reflected light. When the attention remains fixed on the light source, the mind and its machinations becomes immaterial.
I: Without problems, therefore, happiness should be easy, shouldn’t it?
RM: In a sense, yes.
However, it has been ingrained into us that happiness is found in situations, people and objects. That’s why we’re out chasing them.
But even a cursory examination reveals that any happiness from these sources is fleeting. That new car is only a source of happiness until you discover that first ding on its body.
The true happiness is inherently within; it is not subject to conditions.
I: Fascinating. Thank you Roy Melvyn. 

His new book is Beyond the Mind: The Short Discourses of Wu Hsin.

 The text is reblogged from http://oceanandwave.tumblr.com/  

Roy Melvyn site: http://www.roymelvyn.com/