Friday, November 8, 2019

The Silence of Meher baba



    On 10th July, 1925, Baba ceased speaking. He told his disciples that he would be silent for one year, but the year stretched to the rest of his earth time with us — forty-four years.
 


I am the Ocean of Silence, but I am never silent.

    I am eternally speaking in what you say to one another; and the voice that you hear deep within your souls is my voice inspiring and guiding you.

    God has been everlasting working in silence, unobserved, unheard except by those who experience that infinite Silence.

    If my silence does not speak to you, of what use would it be if I spoke in the language of your minds? When my speaking will be heard universally, God will make me speak. But that speaking will not be speeches of words, but the Word of words which will irresistibly impart to those who are ready the ‘I am God’ (Anal Haq or Aham Brahma-Asmi) state.

    Listening to music makes me happy, for it reminds me again that the universe and all its forms came out of my Original Song — which was the Voice of Silence.

    When God makes me sing this Song again, those who love me will be lost in the Song and will see me as the real Self in everyone.

    I am eternally talking in your talk and I am bored with the talk, for it is all idle when it is not lived. I will speak when I feel like saying the Word which was spoken in the Beginningless Beginning — for that is the only Word worth speaking. Words are the prose of the world, and the world is my burden; my language is the poetry of my creative Word, and when I speak that Word it will touch the hearts of all men and its divine touch will make them feel the oneness of all. Then separateness will dissolve and hatred and jealousy and greed will melt away. Diversity will still be — for your life in illusion requires its experience, but behind and beneath and through all the diversity will be the feeling and knowledge of oneness; and the so-called sinner will feel that he one day will be a saint, and the saint will know that God is in the sinner as much as in himself.

    Ages and ages ago I performed the grand miracle of bringing the whole of this illusory creation out of myself. I will perform another such miracle when I break my silence. It will be the first and the last in my present incarnation. I will not raise the dead, but make those who live for the world dead to it. I will not give sight to the blind, but make those who see the world as reality blind to it so that they shall see me as I am.

    My whole mission is to utter this Word of Truth which will pierce the mind of man and go straight to his heart. That will be my moment of fulfilment — and the opening of the flood-gate of Grace will be the opening up of new ways to eternity.

    With the dawn of the realization of the unity of all life, hatred and dissension will cease. To love will be natural and so it will be easy for men to understand one another, and they will enjoy a brotherhood in the realization of the oneness of God.

    When I break my Silence, which must be soon, all who have known me, or who know me in their hearts in some degree will see me: some a glimpse, some a little more and some still more. It will be as when an electric power-house is switched on: whatever bulbs are connected to it will be lit: small bulbs will give a dim light, big bulbs a bright light; but from bulbs that are fused there will not be any light.

    I have come not to teach but to awaken. From the beginning of man-time I have laid down principles and given precepts for men’s well-being, but they have made a mockery of my teaching. Instead of practising the compassion I taught, men have waged wars in my name; instead of living the humility, purity and truth of my words they have given way to hatred, greed and violence.

    Because men in the past have been deaf to the principles and precepts given them, this time I am silent. You have asked for, and been given, enough words — it is now time to live them. To get nearer to God you have to get further and further from ‘I,’ ‘my,’ ‘Me’ and ‘mine.’ You do not have to renounce anything but your own self. It is just as simple and as impossible as that. But it is possible by my Grace. And I have come to release that Grace.

    I am the divine Beloved who loves you more than you can ever love yourself. When I release the flood of Truth — which is what I have come to do — men’s daily lives will be the living precepts, and the words I have not spoken will come to life in them.

    The time of Grace is so near that the only thing that can count now is love.




 

Balthazar - The Madman

by Kahlil Gibran First Illustration from The madman, his parables and poems


And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
Thus I became a madman.

– Khalil Gibran

by Kahlil Gibran Second Illustration

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.

In an upside down world true sanity appears as strange and dangerous.

Things are so backwards that it seems impossible to be happy, that it is seen as dangerous to love, that it is seen as madness to be honest and authentic.
In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to be radically authentic to ones self – even if it is the opposite of society

A person needs to discover their own innate insanity.
Madness, a divine madness that knows nothing of the conditioned and calculating head.  That mind which is borrowed from and implanted by society.

 The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds it’s urgings is the madman.

The madman is dangerous – not that he will physically hurt you, but he will shatter your illusions. He is unpredictable, wild, and untamed.
You will feel uneasy around him because he does not prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced. You cannot bribe her with money or status. You cannot control her through fear or desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it. For he knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force itself.

He sees animals and small children in their natural madness and knows his madness to be alike there’s, but more – more mature, more balanced, more conscious. And also sly, for he can conceal his madness if necessary. Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic kosmos within.

The madman is a drunkard, and a hopeless lover
She owns nothing, wants nothing, lacks nothing.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.


The mind is insane. Society is insane. And the mind is societies conditioning in you.

“Normal” is to be profoundly inwardly sick. Beneath nearly everyone’s smiley mask is a mountain of pain, fear, sorrow, anger, anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity. Everyone you see is a dormant walking volcano that only doesn’t erupt because they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

And psychologists beleive themselves to be the caretakers of the inmates, when they are actually the most serious cases!

It is the mind which is truly insane – the mind acting without the lead of the heart and soul.

So you take up the title of a “madman” to console the sane ones. So that they wont be too upset and bothered by you.
When you are in an insane asylum, what else can you do but tell the inmates not to worry?   That “I am insane, don’t be upset by me. Don’t take me seriously.”

You have to be sly. Even though you know that it is really they who are mad and you who are sane.  That is the only way to get out of the madhouse without being stoned…
or crucified.

The freedom of madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never do anything great, anything new, anything real.
If you want to be truly alive and truly free you must be mad.

It is the mad ones who find the treasure.
It is only the mad ones who are daring enough to break free.
It is the mad ones who have all the fun.

You must be utterly mad
Mad to dance, laugh, and cry
Mad to live and mad to die

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth, for the heart, for love.
Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying true to life and to oneself.
Mad enough to go to the depths of Hell and find therein Heaven.
Mad enough to go into insanity if need be to discover true sanity.

Be totally MAD!
Let people feel that you are dangerous, crazy, and weird. Let them fear you and admire you even as they fear you.
You madness will protect you from being chained and also from the chains of being understood.
Let them be afraid to get too close – lest their excuses and illusions are destroyed by your fire.
Lest the fire spreads to them and they catch your madness also.

Revel in your madness
Run naked through the streets shouting wildy
Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Go crazy, and not just a little. Go all the way.
Be The Madman 





 

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Sailor Bob Adamson - Questions for contemplation




Questions for contemplation 

    Did you come to learn or get something here? Something new? Something you don’t have or are not yet? It can be very subtle!
    If it is sat-chit-ananda as Hinduism calls it – existence (being), consciousness (knowing), bliss (loving to be or stillness) then:

    Can you deny your being? (Try not to be!);
    Are you unaware (unconscious)?;
    Would you rather be dead?
    Doesn’t it mean that YOU ARE THAT (sat-chit-ananda) already?

    If is true what they say in the great mantra (Mahavakya) – I Am That – wouldn’t it be essential to look what the word ‘THAT’ represents?

    What is THAT in our language?
    What is not THAT?

    What is the word after all?

    What is the word “I” or “ME”?
    Where you born with any words?
    How were they acquired?

    If Buddhism points to it as ‘non-conceptual, ever fresh presence awareness and nothing else (just this) – are you not aware of this presence right now?

    What else do you expect if they say ‘just this, nothing else’?

    In Christianity we have Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, what does it mean?

    Isn’t ‘Omnipotence’ the TOTAL power? Is there any room for Higher Power, power of thought or entity doing something?
    Is it any other power running the universe or your body?
    Are you doing (do you have power to do) digestion or replacing cells in the body?
    Are you doing seeing or thinking (how?)?
    Isn’t ‘Omnipresence’ the TOTAL presence? Can ‘you’ be separated or excluded?
    Isn’t ‘Omniscience’ the TOTAL knowing?

    Is belief ever the actual? (example: Thought of lust is a sin, Earth is flat, Santa Claus is real…) Is that true when investigated?
    When we seek to become whole and complete – we want liberation – who is that for? Who is the “we”? Is there a personal self?
    Is the Person ever a reality? Where did that word ‘Person’ come from? Doesn’t it mean THE MASK in Latin? The Mask of a conceptual image?
    Isn’t the conceptual image based in believed past? Isn’t it dead? Where is the freshness and newness in it?
    Relating to the false image, what are you going to liberate yourself from?

    What realisation and for who?

    Do you still believe you can find the answer in the mind?

    Do you think you can get peace of mind?
    What is the nature of mind? How does it vibrate into interrelated opposites? Can it work in any other way?
    What is there when vibration ceases for a moment or is not attended to?
    If there was an answer in thought, how long would that be valid for? And why hasn’t anybody found it there yet?

    Is the word – the actual? Can the word water – make you wet; or word fire – burn?

    Is it any different with the rest of the words in the manifestation? Are they the real things?
    Isn’t it dream-like illusion sustained by the energy of belief (attention)?

    Is there anything permanent or static in the manifestation? Anything solid?

    Do you have the same body you were born with?
    Where is that original cell, sperm and ovum dividing into a foetus – right now?
    Did it start then or much earlier, when your parents where eating food and breathing prana which enabled these cells to form?

    What is the body anyway? What is it made of?

    Is any of the elements (air, matter (earth), fire (temperature), water, space separate from the totality?
    Can you separate yourself from (remove) water (body is mostly water!), air, heat or space?
    Can you function if you stop replenishing them from the environment?

    Isn’t the body just a vibrating pattern of energy? When you break it to elements or further to subatomic particles or waves or energy – isn’t it as they say the no-thing? Isn’t it the same with every form in this manifestation made of phenomena?
    What is phenomena, how does the dictionary explains it? Isn’t it that, which appears to be?
    So are you this body?

    Don’t you call it my body just like my coat or my car?
    Could the body be a kind of coat or car?
    Doesn’t language suggest it when you say you are an owner of the body or coat or car?
    Who is that owner?

    Are you this mind?

    Don’t you say my mind just the same way?
    Can you show me your mind?
    Is it anything else other than thought?
    What is thought? Isn’t it a subtle sound or vibration of energy?

    How did it all start after the baby was born?

    What can you remember without words, before reasoning and storing memory was possible?
    How did you learn you are a person, who told you and what did they say you were?
    What did you add to it, what are you relating to as “me” right now?
    Isn’t it all relating to the past events? How else would you know what you like or dislike?
    Isn’t this reference point a dualism?
    Can there be a duality in non-duality?

    If ego is a problem, can you get rid of it? Who would be trying to remove it if not ego itself?
    Is there such a thing as an ego?
    In relating to past image of what is good or bad; and wanting to keep the good and push away the bad – aren’t we in conflict with what is right now? Isn’t it RESISTANCE?

    Doesn’t conflict make you anxious, depressed, uneasy?
    Isn’t un-easiness a dis-ease?
    Isn’t all the psychological suffering a conflict or dis-ease?
    What if you don’t relate it to a reference point (me)? Where does it go?

    How about Nature? Does it relate anything to anything? Doesn’t it also vibrate in opposites, day/night, summer/winter – without any conflict? Does silence fight the sound?

25 Are you anything other than Nature?

    How to do the investigation? Look: Are you seeing right now?

    Did you decide to start it in the morning? Or was it there, already available as the rest of functioning?
    Isn’t it the same seeing with you right now? Content is different, but has the seeing capacity change?
    Isn’t it the same with hearing?
    Does my eye tell me “I see”? Does it say “Look at this, look at that”?
    Isn’t the thought “I see” merely a translation of the mind creating a subject-object split in plain singular seeing?
    Can that thought “I see” actually see? Close your eyes and check!
    If eye is only an instrument and thought only translation – WHAT IS SEEING?
    Same way – does the thought “I hear” – actually hear?
    Is the thought “I’m aware” – your awareness? I choose – the choice maker?
    Can you choose thoughts? Would you ever have unhappy thoughts if you could choose them?

    How many thoughts can a CORPSE have? How much can it see or hear?
    How much information can you get out of the computer if the power is not ON?
    How long are you searching? Could it be that you are seeking in the wrong place?
    Do you think you can find it in future? Become something? Is becoming – being? If it is to be found in time, can you trust it? If it has a beginning, wouldn’t it be just passing phenomena, experience? Is that what you want? Pleasure? Bliss?
    Isn’t TIME the mind? Is there a past or future or time if you don’t think about it?
    Who are you if you don’t think about it? Who are you without your past? Would the conceptual answer ever satisfy you? For how long?
    What is wrong with right now if you don’t think about it?

 
 

Anita Moorjani - Enveloped in oneness




At the end stage of cancer, Anita Moorjani's organs had completely shut down. She weighed 80 pounds, lost all ability to move and eventually fell into a coma. She had tumors the size of lemons throughout her lymphatic system, from the base of her skull to below her abdomen. Her brain was filled with fluid, as were her lungs. Her skin developed lesions that were weeping with toxins. The doctors were sure she wouldn't make it through the night.
This is what she experienced - in her own words:

"In the near-death state, I was more acutely aware of all that was going on than I've ever been in a normal physical state. I wasn't using my five biological senses, yet I was keenly taking everything in, much more than if I'd been using my physical organs. It was as though another, completely different type of perception kicked in, and more than just perceive, I seemed to also encompass everything that was happening, as though I was slowly merging with it all.
I knew when people came in to see me, who they were and what they were doing, although my physical eyes were closed. The sharpness of my perception was more intense than if I'd been using my physical senses. I seemed to just know and understand everything - not only what was going on around me, but also what everyone was feeling, as though I were able to see and feel through each person.
I was extremely aware of every detail, but I couldn't physically feel anything - except a release and a level of freedom I'd never known before. I felt no emotional attachment to my lifeless body as it lay there on the hospital bed. It didn't feel as though it were mine. I felt free, liberated and magnificent. Every pain, ache, sadness, and sorrow was gone.
I began to feel weightless and to become aware that I was able to be anywhere at any time... and this didn't seem unusual. It felt normal, as though this were the real way to perceive things.
I started to notice how I was continuing to expand to fill every space, until there was no separation between me and everything else. I encompassed - no, became - everything and everyone.
I was fully aware of every word of the conversation that was taking place between my family and the doctors, although it was physically some distance away, outside my room. I saw the frightened expression on my husband's face and could feel his fear. It was as though, in that instant, I became him.
Simultaneously I became aware that my brother was thousands of miles away on an airplane, coming to see me. I saw him and his worried look.
Each time my emotions took over the situation and I felt myself being drawn into the drama of the physical realm, I discovered myself starting to expand again, and I felt a release from all attachment.
I continued to be fully aware of every detail of every procedure that was being administered to me, while to the outside world I appeared to be in a coma.
I felt a sense of freedom and liberation that I'd never experienced in my physical life before. I can only describe this as the combination of joy mixed with a generous sprinkling of jubilation and happiness. A superb and glorious unconditional love surrounded me, wrapping me tight as I continued to let go.
I didn't feel as though I'd physically gone somewhere else - it was more as though I'd awakened. Perhaps I'd finally been roused from a bad dream. My consciousness was finally realizing its true magnificence and in doing so, it was expanding beyond my body and this physical world, until it encompassed not only this existence, but continued to expand into another realm that was beyond time and space, and at the same time included it. Love, joy, ecstasy and awe poured into me, through me, and engulfed me. I was swallowed up and enveloped in more love than I ever knew existed. I felt more free and alive than I ever had. As I described, I suddenly knew things that weren't physically possible, such as the conversations between medical staff and my family that were taking place far away from my hospital bed.
The overwhelming sensations were in a realm of their own, and words don't exist to describe them. The feeling of complete, pure, unconditional love was unlike anything I'd known before.
To my amazement, I became aware of the presence of my father, who'd died ten years earlier. There were no words, but I clearly understood. And then I recognized the essence of my best friend, Soni, who'd died three years prior. I felt what I can only describe as excitement as their presence enveloped me like a warm embrace, and I was comforted. I was also aware of other beings around me. I didn't recognize them, but I knew they loved me very much. It was tremendously comforting for me to reconnect with Soni's essence. I felt nothing but unconditional love, both from her and for her. And then, just as I experienced that, it was as though my essence merged with Soni's and I became her. I understood that she was here, there, and everywhere. She was able to be in all places at all times for all her loved ones.
Although I was no longer using my five physical senses, I had unlimited perception, as if a new sense had become available, one that was more heightened than any of our usual faculties. I had 360-degree peripheral vision with total awareness of my surroundings. And as amazing as it all sounds, it still felt almost normal. Being in a body now felt confining. Time felt different in that realm, too, and I felt all moments at once.
My awareness in that expanded realm was indescribable, despite my best efforts to explain it. The clarity was amazing. And then I was overwhelmed by the realization that God isn't a being, but a state of being... and I was now that state of being!
In that state of clarity, I also realized that I'm not who I'd always thought I was: Here I am without my body, race, culture, religion, or beliefs... yet I continue to exist. I certainly don't feel reduced or smaller in any way. On the contrary, I haven't ever been this huge, this powerful, or this all-encompassing.
I felt eternal, as if I'd always existed and always would without beginning or end.
I was transformed in unimagenable clarity as I realized that this magnificent essence was really me. It was the truth of my being. The understanding was so clear: I was looking into a new paradigm of self, becoming the crystalline light of my own awareness. Nothing interfered with the flow, glory, and amazing beauty of what was taking place.
I realized that the entire universe is alive and infused with consciousness, encompassing all of life and nature. We're all facets of that Unity - we're all One.
Even though I hadn't always been close to my father while I was growing up, all I could feel emanating from him now was glorious, unconditional, pure love. The cultural pressures he'd put on me during life had all dropped away, because they were all only part of physical existence. None of that matters after death; those values didn't carry through into the afterlife. It truly felt amazing, as though I'd finally come home! Our communication wasn't verbal, but a complete melding of mutual comprehension. It wasn't just that I understood my father - it was as though I became him.
Not to mention that the state of unconditional love was just so blissful, I couldn't bear the thought of returning. I wanted to stay where I was forever and ever. The unconditional love and acceptance was incredible, and I wanted to cross the threshold in order to continue to experience it for eternity.
It was though I was enveloped in the oneness, the pure essence of every living being, without their pains, dramas, and egos. I understood that at the core, our essence is made of pure love. We are pure love - every single one of us.
As though to confirm my realization, I became aware of both my father and Soni communicating to me: Now that you know the truth of who you really are, go back and live your life fearlessly!"

After her NDE Anitas condition improved so rapidly that she could be released from the hospital within weeks... without a trace of cancer in her body.