“Shravanam means exposing myself to the scriptural teaching handled by a competent guide. Because it is unlike the study of another objective literature. If we study the scriptures by ourselves, we end up in information – experience dichotomy. Eternally we would be trapped in search of either information or experience. Therefore if you should not be trapped in this, this teaching should be handled by someone who knows expertly how to handle and remove the orientation of information experience and gives self-knowledge removing self ignorance.
Therefore Shravanam is exposing myself to the systematic teaching or handling of the scriptures done by an expert guide and for a length of time – because orientation breaking takes time. The study has to be systematic because it is a gradual build-up from beginning to end. It should not be a stray study of unconnected topics. It should be systematic in the sense that between one topic and another, there should be a gradual build-up with a connection. It is like building a house where a number of bricks are arranged in an orderly manner well cemented. Only then it becomes a house that can be occupied. But the same number of bricks dumped in one place cannot become a house and we cannot live in that house. And the bricks will be more of an obstacle than a useful thing. Similarly gathering stray ideas by reading books here and there, without building up gradually and without connecting the topics, then our brain will be full of piled up ideas like the piled up bricks and they will be cluttered in the brain. It will not be of any use and will create more problems than benefits. Similarly Vedāntik study will be beneficial only when there is a systematic study.
The study should be continuous. Even in the case of laying bricks, before the cement hardens we should lay the bricks and then some more cement on it and then more bricks before the cement hardens. The whole process should be continuous without gaps and for a length of time.
This Shravanam has to continue for a length of time during which time no questions are allowed. We have to get the comprehensive teaching from all angles in all aspects in its totality. And this process is called Shravanam. Even if you are not able to accept a part of the teaching or have a doubt regarding a particular aspect of teaching, you are allowed to keep aside those questions and doubts and listen with an open mind. You are free to disagree with the teacher. Be patient. Shravanam requires a lot of patience. Never be judgemental or critical.” – Swami Paramarthananda, Introduction to Vedānta (Tattvabodha)
“Moksha is freedom from bondage or dependence. This bondage is caused by the first three Purushārtha namely Dharma Artha Kāmaha. Any thing or being in the creation can cause bondage. What type of bondage is this ? Bondage is of two types :
– When an object is present – The presence of objects causes a bondage called Bhāraha. The stress or strain of handling the object or person. Handling the object or person or relationship itself especially if it is a human relationship, that itself becomes a very big Bhāraha. In fact when many people face problems, it is the stress and strain caused by human relationship.
– When an object is not present – This creates another problem called emptiness or loneliness.
So I am not sure whether I want them or I don’t want them. When I don’t have them I crave to have them and once I have them, I crave for freedom. Either way, I am in a soup. This is called Ubhayataha Pāshā Rajjuhu. And by Moksha we mean, I am free from this problem caused by the world. This means the presence of objects will not cause strain in me if I am a free person and the absence will not create emptiness in me. The presence of people will not create the strain of relating and the absence of people will not create loneliness without companion. So if I can have Dharma Artha Kāma when they are there and I can be happy even if the Dharma Artha Kāma are not there, either way I am fine – this is called Freedom. With objects or people I am fine, even without objects or people I am fine. And this Freedom is the result of self-knowledge. This inner freedom expresses in the form of threefold virtues which are very useful for human life.” – Swami Paramarthananda, Introduction to Vedānta (Tattvabodha)
“I love everything that I do and accept all experiences in life because they are Īshvara Prasādaha which will lead to Samattvam. Samattva Bhāvanā is the result of Īshvara Arpana Prasāda Bhāvanā. These two put together will lead to very fast spiritual growth. This is called Chitta Shuddhihi.
Chitta Shuddhihi can be put in the simplest context as – I can understand that all my problems in life are not caused by the world, but are caused by my wrong handling of the world because of my ignorance. So the ignorant I handles the world wrongly, and hence I suffer. If I become the wise I, I know how to handle the world which is Nandanavanam – Sampūrnam Jagadeva Nanadanavanam. So ignorant-I is the problem and wise-I is the solution – this diagnosis is the result of Karma Yoga which is otherwise called Chitta Shuddhihi.” – Swami Paramarthananda, Introduction to Vedānta (Tattvabodha)
“Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream.
Happiness means you’re having a good dream.
Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.”
-Jed McKenna
Even though Western Advaita seekers do not follow a certain methodology to prepare themselves, those who find themselves unable to realize Truth, will readily admit something like „I don’t think that I am advanced enough“. So they do acknowledge that a certain maturity is needed in order to be able to recognize ones true nature.[1] Yet, no-one seems to know what this maturity may consist of, let alone a definite way to obtain it.
What is a mere notion in Westerners, is taken for granted in traditional Advaita Vedanta: of course the seeker needs to be prepared for knowledge to dawn! As preparation is taken to be indispensable, Advaita Vedanta provides a whole lot of clues and tools to further it.
This is in stark contrast to Western Advaitins who kind of wait for the right moment to miraculously arrive one day. Not that they are idle – no, they will try meditation, affirmation, chanting, reading inspiring books, psychotherapy, mental coaching, to name but a few methods. Many of those can be useful, the problem is not so much with the method as such but with the lack of methodology. Most Westerners are seeking on their own. They visit the Satsangs of their preferred Satsang teacher or teachers, read their books as well as a lot of others and follow the various recommendations of other seekers. They do not commit to one teacher and most Satsang teachers do not encourage them to commit.
It is beautiful that there are Advaita seekers, Traditional as well as Western, who do wake up to what they really are. But as most of them know: this is not the end. For Westerners, though, the only way to proceed from here is “wait and see”. While this may work out sometimes, traditional Advaita Vedanta provides an answer, which is more definite and more practical. Someone who has truly recognized his nature and still states: “No, there must be more, I have not arrived” often lacks, as Swami Paramarthanandaji put it, a solid foundation described in Chatushtaya Sampatti.
Traditionally the nine virtues of Chatushtaya Sampatti should already be part of the seekers make up before he even introduces himself to a Guru. Yet, even amongst traditional seekers this is merely an ideal and in most cases the work on developing those qualities will last till the search is complete.
Osho, You said yesterday that surrender happens when there is no ego, but we are with egos. How can we move towards surrender?
“THE EGO is you. You cannot move towards surrender; in fact you are the barrier, so whatsoever you do will be wrong. You cannot do anything about it. You simply, without doing anything, have to be aware. This is an inner mechanism: whatsoever you do is done by the ego, and whenever you don’t do anything and remain just a witness, the non ego part of you starts functioning. The witness is the non-ego within you and the doer is the ego. The ego cannot exist without doing anything. Even if you do something to surrender, it will strengthen the ego and your surrender will become again a very subtle egoistic standpoint. You will say, ‘I have surrendered.’ You will claim surrender, and if somebody says that it is not true, you will feel angry, hurt. The ego is now there trying to surrender. The ego can do anything; the only thing that the ego cannot do is non doing, witnessing.
So just sit silently, watch the doer, and don’t try in any way to manipulate it. The moment you start manipulating, the ego has come back. Nothing can be done about it; one has just to be a witness to the misery that ego creates, of the false pleasures and gratifications that ego promises. Doings in this world and doings in the other world; the spiritual world, the Divine, the material, whatsoever the realm, the doer will re main the ego. You are not supposed to do anything and if you start doing something you will miss the whole point. Just be there, watch, understand, and don’t do. Don’t ask, ‘How to drop the ego?’ Who will drop it? Who will drop whom? When you don’t do anything, suddenly the witnessing part is separate from the doer; a gap arises. The doer goes on doing and the seer goes on seeing. Suddenly, you are filled with a new light, a new benediction: you are not the ego, you have never been the ego; how foolish that you ever believed in it.
There are people who are trying to fulfill their egos; they are wrong. There are people who are trying to drop their egos; they are wrong. Because when the witness arises you simply see the whole game. There is nothing to be fulfilled and nothing to be dropped. The ego is not of any substance. It is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. It is just an idea, an air bubble — just hot air within you and nothing else. You need not drop it, because in the very dropping or in asking how to drop it, you believe in it, you are still clinging to it.
It happened that a Zen Master awoke one morning and he told his disciple, ‘I had a dream in the night. Will you please interpret it for me?’ Read more
“I don’t remember what Ra said about the Generator, but all of a sudden I knew that I had been living a lie my whole life. What had started out simply as a thought that bothered me in my reading – was now a sensation in my whole body. And I knew it with every drop of my being – it was true. I didn’t really know who I was.” Mary-Ann Winiger
PRS guitars today appeal to a growing number of musicians, from Carlos Santana to Al Di Meola, from Zach Myers to Mark Tremonti. This book examines every part of PRS history, with an in-depth story, beautiful photographs, and detailed collector’s info. Paul Reed Smith set up his first PRS factory in 1985 in Maryland and has devised guitars from the regular Custom and McCarty models, through the outrageously decorated Dragon specials and the controversial Singlecut, and on to recent achievements such as the Mira, Dave Grissom DGT, JA-15, and the S2 models. Dozens of guitars are pictured inside along with players, ads, catalogs, and rare memorabilia. A detailed reference section helps musicians and collectors identify and date PRS instruments, making this revised and updated edition of The PRS Electric Guitar Book a must for all guitar fans, by Author Dave Burrluck
“Zen is unique because no other religion exists on anecdotes. They are not holy scripture; they are simply incidents that have happened. It is up to you… if you understand them, they can open your yes and your heart. These small anecdotes in their very smallness, just like dewdrops, contain the whole secret of the ocean. If you can understand the dewdrop, there is no need to understand the ocean-you have understood it.
A naive young man who had lived a sheltered life finally decided he could not take any more. He arranged an appointment with his doctor and poured out the whole story.
“It is this girl I have been going with,” he said. “I suspected she was fast, but I never dreamed she was a sex maniac. Every night now for weeks and weeks on end, I keep trying to break off the romance, but I haven’t got the will power. What can I do? My health just can’t stand the pace. ”
“I see, “said the doctor grimly. “Tell me just what happens; you can trust me.”
“Well, every night I take her driving in my car. We park in some secluded street. Then she asks me to put my arms around her. And then, every night, she reaches over and holds my hand.”
“And then?”
“What do you mean ‘and then’?” gasped the youth. “Is there more?”
Once a beginner asked a Zen master, “Master, what is the first principle?”
Without hesitation the master replied, “If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle. “
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE cannot be said.
The most important thing cannot be said, and that which can be said will not be the first principle. The moment truth is uttered it becomes a lie; the very utterance is a falsification. So all the scriptures of all the religions contain the second principle, not the first principle. They contain lies, not the truth, because the truth cannot be contained by any word whatsoever. The truth can only be experienced. The truth can be lived, but there is no way to say it.
The word is a far, faraway echo of the real experience. It is so far away from the real that it is worse than the unreal because it can give you a false confidence. It can give you a false promise. You can believe it, and that is the problem. If you start believing in some dogma, you will go on missing the truth. Truth I has to be known by experience. No belief can help you on the way; all beliefs are barriers. All religions are against religion-it has to be so by the very nature of things. All churches are against God. Churches exist because they fulfill a certain need. The need is that people do not want to make any efforts; they want easy shortcuts. Belief is an easy shortcut.
The way to truth is hard; it is an uphill task. One has to go through total death-one has to destroy oneself utterly; only then is one newborn. The resurrection comes only after the crucifixion.
To avoid the crucifixion we have created beliefs. Beliefs are cheap. You can believe and yet remain the same. You can go on believing, and it doesn’t require any basic change in your life pattern. It does not require any change in your consciousness, and unless your consciousness changes, the belief is just a toy. You can play with it, you can deceive yourself with it, but it is not going to nourish you.
A wealthy horse-owner died and left a large fortune to a university. A provision in the will, however, was that the school must confer the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon his favorite horse. Since the university was anxious to receive the money-it was a really big sum-the Dean set a date for the animal to receive a degree of DD.
This unusual occasion was attended by the press, and one of the reporters asked the Dean, “What is your reaction to this strange arrangement?”
“Well,” replied the Dean, “in my experience I have awarded many degrees. However, I must admit that this is the first time I have awarded a degree to a whole horse.”
All others were donkeys, not whole horses.”-Osho, Zen: Its History and Teachings and Impact on Humanity
“at least one of them embarrassingly public, Putin has acted like a person afflicted with kleptomania. In June 2005, while hosting a group of American businessmen in St. Petersburg, Putin pocketed the 124-diamond Super Bowl ring of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. He had asked to see it, tried it on, allegedly said, “I could kill someone with this,” then stuck it in his pocket and left the room abruptly. After a flurry of articles in the U.S. press, Kraft announced a few days later that the ring had been a gift -preventing an uncomfortable situation from spiraling out of control.
In September 2005, Putin was a special guest at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At one point his hosts brought out a conversation piece that another Russian guest must have given the museum: a glass replica of a Kalashnikov automatic weapon filled with vodka. This gaudy souvenir costs about $300 in Moscow. Putin nodded to one of his bodyguards, who took the glass Kalashnikov and carried it out of the room, leaving the hosts speechless.
Putin’s extraordinary relationship to material wealth was evident when he was a college student, if not earlier. When he accepted the car his parents won in a lottery, though the prize could have been used to greatly improve the family’s living conditions, or when he spent almost all the money he made over the summer to buy himself an outrageously expensive coat-and bought a cake for his mother-he was acting in ways highly unusual and borderline unacceptable for a young man of his generation and social group. Ostentatious displays of wealth could easily have derailed his plans for a KGB career, and he knew this. The story told by the former West German radical-of Putin demanding gifts while in Dresden-completes the picture. For a man who had staked most of his social capital on conforming to the norm, this was particularly remarkable behavior: it seems he really could not help himself.
The correct term is probably not the popularly known kleptomania, which refers to a pathological desire to possess things for which one has little use, but the more exotic pleonexia, the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others. If Putin suffers this irrepressible urge, this helps explain his apparent split personality: he compensates for his compulsion by creating the identity of an honest and incorruptible civil servant.” -Masha Gessen, The man without a face; The unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin
Spiritual bypassing—the use of spiritual practices/beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs—is so pervasive that it goes largely unnoticed. In the tradition of the landmark book ‘Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism’ by Chögyam Trungpa, Spiritual Bypassing casts a lucidly critical eye on our deeply entrenched misuse of spirituality, furthering the body of psychological/spiritual insight into how we use (and abuse) spirituality.
While other authors have touched on the subject, this is the first book fully devoted to explaining and working through spiritual bypassing, providing an in-depth look at the unresolved or ignored psychological/emotional issues that are often masked or marginalized through what we do with spirituality. “Spiritual bypassing is not something to eradicate, but to outgrow. Let us treat it as such, recognizing that real spirituality is not an escape but an arrival.”
A must-read for anyone seeking increased self-awareness and a deeper, more spiritually sound life, a life of full-blooded integrity and compassion, a life in which the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal are all honored and lived to the fullest, a life in which we cultivate intimacy with all that we are.
“Uncompromising and truth telling, this book is an antidote to spiritual obesity. What emerges is the call to psychological clarity as essential to the mature spiritual life. Here is soul fuel for those who would enter the road less traveled- the deeply examined life as part of spiritual practice.” – Jean Houston, PhD, author of A Mythic Life
“In Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters offers a wake-up call – more of a shout – to those of us who have unwittingly fallen prey to all manner of promising and seductive antidotes to our pain and suffering in the form of detached spiritual teachings and New Age magical thinking. The book is a sobering and powerful reminder that our present embodiment, in all its flawed, messy humanness, cannot be conveniently sidestepped, and so invites us inward to a face-to-face encounter and embrace with the raw truth of who we really are. Masters’ unique and at times disarming prose style blends a poetic sensibility with a surprising stark clarity that points us to “What-Really-Matters.” – Eliezer Sobel, author of The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics and Other Consciousness-Raising Experiments
“Which was the right one? I tried to figure it out but had no success. It worried me. The different Gods – Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Mohammedan – seemed all very particular in the way in which they expected me to keep on good terms with them. I couldn’t please one without offending the others. One kind soul solved my problem by taking me on my first trip to the planetarium. I contemplated the insignificant flyspeck called Earth, the millions of suns and solar systems, and concluded that whoever was in charge of all this would not throw a fit if I ate ham, or meat on Friday, or did not fast in the daytime during Ramadan. I felt much better after this and was, for a while, keenly interested in astronomy.” ― Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer – Seeker of Visions
Je kunt veel van IS zeggen, maar duidelijk zijn ze wel. Hun voorman Aboe Mohammed al-Adnani had twee weken geleden heel duidelijk gewaarschuwd dat de heilige maand ramadan ‘een ramp’ zou worden voor ongelovigen, sjiieten en afvalligen. Een week later waren er de aanslagen in Tunesië, Frankrijk en Koeweit. Het is duidelijk dat IS echt oorlog wil op álle fronten, uiteraard in de verwachting dat dan ook van álle kanten de strijders zullen toestromen, en dat men daarbij geen boodschap heeft aan de traditionele betekenis van de ramadan als maand van vasten en bezinning. Niet van moord en doodslag. Maar IS weet dat zij in deze de Profeet aan zijn zijde heeft. En dat moslims dat ook weten.
Bloederige koranverzen
In het oude Arabië waren de heilige maanden, behorende bij een bepaalde god (en zijn heiligdom) bedoeld om pelgrims de gelegenheid te geven om deze god te kunnen bezoeken, zonder dat men gelijk allerlei beveiliging moest regelen. Alle (stammen)strijd kwam dan (met een beetje geluk, en onder de dreiging van goddelijke wraak) tijdelijk tot stilstand. Maar nadat Mohammed en zijn strijders uit Mekka vertrokken waren, hielden die zich daar niet aan, zo blijkt uit het volgende vers:
Zij zullen u ondervragen over de gewijde maand, het strijden daarin. Zeg: Strijden, daarin is iets ernstigs maar afwenden van de weg Gods en ongeloof aan Hem en [afwenden] van het Gewijde Bedehuis en het uitdrijven daaruit van de lieden die erbij horen is ernstiger bij God. (soera 2:217)
Met andere woorden: God beschouwde hun verdrijving uit Mekka als zo’n vreselijk onrecht dat zij het recht hadden om de heilige maand te negeren. En het zijn juist dit soort goddelijke opdrachten waar IS graag gebruik van maakt. Ook voor andere misdaden als het onthoofden van ongelovigen (en dus ook sjiieten, en al helemaal afvalligen) citeren zij de ‘juiste’ verzen, en wijzen ze op de bijbehorende verhalen over het meedogenloze optreden van Mohammed. Wat hen betreft is de ware islam niets anders dan het imiteren van de Profeet en zijn gezellen. Zolang zij dat doen, zal God hen zegenen en zullen ze in staat zijn iedereen te verslaan.
De traditie afpellen Was Mohammed een wrede heerser, een ‘verschrikkelijke man’ zoals ex-moslim Ehsan Jami ooit zei (en waarvoor hij klappen kreeg)? Naar de huidige maatstaven: ongetwijfeld. De traditie laat daar geen twijfel over bestaan dat hij tegenstanders uit de weg liet ruimen, en het is ook nauwelijks voorstelbaar dat hij zich als leider van een Arabische stammencoalitie staande had kunnen houden als hij niet (op z’n tijd) meedogenloos was geweest. De vraag is welke les we hieruit moeten trekken. Voor velen ligt die les voor de hand: het waren andere tijden. Maar voor veel moslims is dat toch een stuk lastiger. Want als het gaat om de vraag wat het is om een ‘goede moslim’ te zijn, wat juist en onjuist is, spelen verhalen over de Profeet vaak een grote rol. Mohammed was eigenlijk gewoon een ‘doorgeefluik’, een sterfelijke mens die Gods openbaring ontving. Maar in de beleving van zeer veel moslims was Mohammed degene die de islam op perfecte wijze voorleefde. En de verhalen over wat hij deed of zei, spelen hierbij een grote rol. Dus wanneer Aboe Bakr al-Bagdadi, de leider van IS, zegt dat zijn bloedige kalifaat gebaseerd is op de leefwijze van de Profeet en zijn gezellen, is dat voor veel moslims helemaal geen absurde (voor velen zelfs een aantrekkelijke) denkwijze.
Wat kunnen moslims daartegenin brengen? Er bestaat het officiële theologische antwoord, waarbij dergelijke agressieve verzen worden gerespecteerd maar met zó veel voorwaarden en uitzonderingen worden omgeven, dat er van een flukse toepassing in de praktijk (zoals IS die voorstaat) geen sprake kan zijn. Maar dat soort redeneringen zijn voor de fijnproevers. Gewone moslims stellen tegenover het beeld van de wrede heerser simpelweg een ander beeld, dat van Mohammed de man van de vrede. Iemand die vredelievend, tolerant, et cetera was. Ook daarover bestaan voldoende verhalen. Maar daarmee is de eerste, de wrede Mohammed, niet van tafel. Er wordt gewoon een andere naast gezet. De strijd om de geest van de islam, om de vraag wat nu de kern van de islam is (een geloof van oorlog of van vrede), draait zo uiteindelijk om de vraag wie de Profeet nu ‘eigenlijk’ was. De talloze verhalen gaan alle kanten op; die bieden geen antwoord. Wat nodig is, is een kritischer houding tegenover álle verhalen over de Moh. Een kritische benadering van de traditie. Zodat er een andere visie op de Profeet ontstaat; een visie die de mogelijkheid biedt om afstand te nemen van die verhalen én van de manier waarop Aboe Bakr al-Baghdadi ze gebruikt.
Mijn boek ‘Mohammed en het ontstaan van de islam’ is bedoeld om een dergelijke visie aan te reiken. Of in ieder geval een eerste stap in die richting te zetten.
Ongezond islamdebat Maar mijn boek is vooral bedoeld voor niet-moslims. Zij weten immers niets van Mohammed. En dat terwijl zijn leven een zeer fascinerend verhaal is. Mohammed was geen geweldloze bleekneus zoals Jezus, maar profeet én meedogenloos leider in één. Iemand die boven kwam drijven in een zeer gewelddadige tijd. Ongelovigen kunnen nu op een ‘ongelovige’ manier kennismaken met de stichter van de islam. Ik ben geen moslim; ik ben überhaupt niet gelovig. ‘Mijn’ Mohammed is dus niet onfeilbaar en leefde de islam niet voor. Mohammed was een gewone sterveling, die er heilig van overtuigd was dat het Einde der Tijden nabij was, en dat hij openbaringen van God ontving, bedoeld om de Arabieren (op het nippertje) te redden van de Hel. Of zijn openbaringen/ingevingen ‘echt’ van God kwamen, daar doe ik geen uitspraak over. Dat is een zaak van geloof. Dat is de keuze die de gelovige maakt. Daar kan een agnost natuurlijk niet in meegaan, maar hij moet zeker niet zo dom zijn daar minachtend over te doen.
Maar waaróm moet niet-moslims iets over hem weten? Heel eenvoudig: om erger te voorkomen. Het ‘islamdebat’ is de afgelopen jaren alleen maar harder en agressiever geworden. Toenemende terreur en de wassende stroom vluchtelingen hebben van ‘de islam’ een nog grotere boeman gemaakt dan voorheen. Menige ongelovige Nederlander wil er niks van weten en lijkt te denken dat als ‘wij Nederlanders’ maar hard en agressief genoeg zijn, ‘die moslims’ vanzelf hun biezen zullen pakken. Een gevaarlijk misverstand. Moslims are here to stay, en die agressieve toon zal gemakkelijk kunnen ontaarden in massaal geweld. Er is geen enkele reden om te geloven dat de geschiedenis zich in dat opzicht niet (voor de zoveelste keer) kan herhalen. Om dat te voorkomen, zal er enige overeenstemming moeten komen over de vrijheid die moslims hebben binnen de dominante Nederlandse cultuur. Wat is onaanvaardbaar, en wat moet de rest van Nederland voortaan tolereren? Dat soort vragen worden nu al regelmatig gesteld. Denk aan de discussie enige jaren geleden over rituele slacht. Denk aan de verontwaardiging over de manier waarop binnen de moslimgemeenschap omgegaan wordt met (en gesproken wordt over) homo’s en de rechten van vrouwen. Dergelijke discussies zijn géén zaak van moslims alleen. De seculiere westerse samenleving heeft haar eigen opvattingen over wat mag en niet mag, en dwingt religieuze groepen wel vaker tot een pijnlijke aanpassing van de eigen opvattingen. Ongelovigen moeten dus deelnemen aan dat debat – maar dan wel op intelligente wijze. Niet op basis van agressieve generaliseringen over ‘de islam’. Ze moeten openingen bieden, maar ook in staat zijn om moslims die zich al te gemakkelijk beroepen op de traditie of het voorbeeld van de Profeet, van repliek dienen. Dan is het wel verstandig als je iets over Mohammed weet. Verstandig, want als die dialoog er niet komt, ligt het geweld op de loer.
Huiswerk Niet-moslims moeten dus aan de bak. De tijd van ongeïnformeerd lekker maar wat roepen over de islam is voorbij. Er moet een einde komen aan een ‘islamdebat’ dat gedomineerd wordt door platte oneliners en stoere taal over ‘de islam’ (die ‘achterlijke cultuur’). Ze zullen hun huiswerk moeten maken, zich moeten verdiepen in de islam. Er is geen alternatief. Wie denkt dat ‘wij Nederlanders’ niets hoeven te weten van de islam, en moslims wel even het land uit kunnen pesten, zaait alleen maar de haat die onvermijdelijk een keer tot uitbarsting komt. Ook daarom heb ik dit boek geschreven. Omdat ik, net als Mohammed, bang ben voor de toekomst. Read more
the Russian Supreme Soviet passed a resolution establishing a white, blue, and red flag as the new flag of Russia, replacing the Soviet-era red flag with its hammer and sickle. A group of city council members, led by Vitaly Skoybeda—the one who had slugged the hard-liner three days earlier—set off to replace the flag in Leningrad. “The flag was on a corner of Nevsky Prospekt, over the Party headquarters,” Yelena Zelinskaya, the samizdat publisher, recalled in an interview years later. “It was the most noticeable place in the city. They started taking it down, a group of people including journalists and city council members. An orchestra showed up for some reason; it was the brass band of the military school. And a television crew was there filming. They lowered the red flag carefully. As the orchestra played, they raised the tricolor. The man who took down the flag was standing right there among us, on Nevsky. So there we were, a group of people, standing in the street, with an orchestra playing, and this man with a red flag in his hands, and we were suddenly totally lost as to what to do. Here we had a flag that for eighty years had been the symbol of the state; we had all hated it but we had also all feared it. And then one of our staff members says, ‘I know what to do: we are going to give it back to them.’ The district Party headquarters was across the street. And he grabbed the flag and ran across the Nevsky, without looking left or right. Cars stop. The orchestra is playing a march, and he is running across the very wide Nevsky, and just when the orchestra is playing the last note, he tosses the flag as hard as he can against the Party headquarters doors. There is a pause. And then the door opens slowly just a crack; a hand reaches out and quickly yanks the flag inside. The door closes. This was the highlight of my entire life. I saw the Russian flag raised over Nevsky.” -Masha Gessen, The man without a face; The unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin Read more
Notice: This book is gladly provided free as a service to sincere seekers.
If you find it of value, please thank the author by purchasing a copy
for your library and to pass on to friends. Thank you. Buy from Amazon.com
“I am going to tell you a story about clowns, but it won’t be a funny story. For us Indians everything has a deeper meaning; whatever we do is somehow connected with our religion. I’m working up to this part. To us a clown is somebody sacred, funny, powerful, ridiculous, holy, shameful, visionary. He is all this and then some more. Fooling around, a clown is really performing a spiritual ceremony. He has a power. It comes from the thunder-beings, not the animals or the earth. In our Indian belief a clown has more power than the atom bomb. This power could blow off the dome of the Capitol.
I have told you that I once worked as a rodeo clown. This was almost like doing spiritual work. Being a clown, for me, came close to being a medicine man. It was in the same nature. A clown in our language is called heyoka. He is an upside-down, backward-forward, yes-and-no man, a contrary-wise. Everybody can be made into a clown, from one day to another, whether he likes it or not. It is very simple to become a heyoka. All you have to do is dream about the lightning, the thunderbirds. You do this, and when you wake up in the morning you are a heyoka. There is nothing you can do about it.
Being a clown brings you honor, but also shame. It gives you a power, but you have to pay for it. A heyoka does strange things. He says “yes” when he means “no:’ He rides his horse backward. He wears his moccasins or boots the wrong way. When he’s coming, he’s really going. When it’s real hot, during a heat wave, a heyoka will shiver with cold, put his mittens on and cover himself with blankets. He’ll build a big fire and complain that he is freezing to death. In the wintertime, during a blizzard, when the temperature drops down to 40 degrees below, the heyoka will be in a sticky sweat. It’s too hot for him. He’s putting on a bathing suit and says he’s going for a swim to cool off.
My grandma told me about one clown who used to wander around naked for hours in subzero weather, wearing only his breechcloth, complaining all the time about the heat. They called him Heyoka Osni-the cold fool. Another clown was called the straighten-outener. He was always running around with a hammer trying to flatten round and curvy things, makin~ them straight, things like soup dishes, eggs, balls, rrogs or cartwheels. My grandma had one of those round glass chimneys which fits over a kerosense lamp. Well, he straightened it out for her. It’s not easy to be a heyoka. It is even harder to have one in the family.”- John (Fire) Lame Deer – Seeker of Visions
This is the personal account of a two-year journey during which I experienced the falling away of everything I can call a self. It was a journey through an unknown passageway that led to a life so new and different that, despite forty years of varied contemplative experiences, I never suspected its existence. Because it was beyond my expectations, the experience of no-self remained incomprehensible in terms of any frame of reference known to me, and though I searched the libraries and bookstores I did not find there an explanation or an account of a similar journey which, at the time, would have been clarifying and most helpful. Owing then to the deficiency of recorded accounts, I have written these pages trusting that they may be of use to those who share the destiny of making this journey beyond the self.
Though my contemplative experiences began at an early age, it was not until I was fifteen that I discovered how these experiences fit like the inset of a child’s puzzle into the larger framework of the Christian contemplative tradition. This finding was followed by ten years of relative seclusion in order to pursue the Christian goal of union with God, and once I had the certitude of this goal’s realization, I entered the more ordinary stream of life where I remain to this day.
Within the traditional framework, the Christian notion of loss-of-self is generally regarded as a transformation of the ego or lower self into the true or higher self as it approaches union with God. In this union, however, self retains its individual uniqueness and never loses its ontological sense of personal selfhood. Thus being lost to myself meant, at the same time, being found in God as the sharer of a divine life. From here on, the deepest sense of being and life is equally the sense of God’s being and life. Thus there is no longer any sense of “my” life, but rather “our” life–God and self. In this abiding state God, the “still-point” at the center of being, is ever accessible to the contemplative gaze – a point from which the life of the self arises and into which it sometimes disappears. But this latter experience of loss-of-self is only transient, it does not constitute a permanent state, nor did it occur to me that it could ever do so in this life.
Prior to this present journey, I had given little thought to the self, its perimeters or definitions. I took for granted the self was the totality of being, body and soul, mind and feelings; a being centered in God, its power-axis and still-point. Thus, because self at its deepest center is a run-on with the divine, I never found any true self apart from God, for to find the One is to find the other.
Because this was the limit of my expectations, I was all the more surprised and bewildered when many years later I came upon a permanent state in which there was no self, no higher self, true self, or anything that could be called a self. Clearly, I had fallen outside my own., as well as the traditional frame of reference, when I came upon a path that seemed to begin where the writers on the contemplative life had left off. But with the clear certitude of the self disappearance, there automatically arose the question of what had fallen away; what was the self? What, exactly, had it been? Then too, there was the all-important question: what remained in its absence? This journey was the gradual revelation of the answers to these questions, answers that had to be derived solely from personal experience since no outside explanation was forthcoming. Read more
Reading through the latest version of the LYD Student Manual I found a few things that had typos, or words missing, or I simply wondered about what is being said, an overview/rundown:
Page 1: “If you could observe the planets and their movements for a few hundred years, you would see that each planet moves at a different speed, yet synchronized the others.”
– They do? Each planet synchronized the others?
Page 8: “It was abandoned about 300 years ago” & Page 9: “The well dried up about two hundred years ago. That is why the house was given up.”
– So about 300 years ago it was already abandoned and about 100 years later the well dried up.
Page 19: “Through living your lives according to your Strategy and Authority, the Personality and the Design live express correct roles.”
– ‘live and express’?
Page 20: “Your Undefined Center become deeply conditioned by being in their auras to the point that, by age seven, your conditioning is eastablished.”
– ‘established’
Page 45: “People with Undefined Throats need find a place inside themselves where they are comfortable being quiet.”
– ‘need to find’?
Page 48: “When we resolve this internal conflict and attain a state of self-love and acceptance, and then we can give and receive love.”
– one and too much? ‘self-love and acceptance, then we‘
Page 55: “Motors, the Heart, Solar Plexus, Sacral, and Root Centers, have more energy and more intensity than the other Centers – The Spleed, G Center, Throat, Ajna and Head Centers.”
– ‘Spleen’
Page 63: “Someone with an Undefined Sacral runs around on the borrowed energy of someone else, such as a child, friend, lover or co-worker, in their aura. It could be a child, friend, lover or co-worker.”
– ‘the child, friend, lover or co-worker’ mentioned twice Read more
Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13
“BEING CRITICAL OF BUDDHISM ISN’T EASY. Buddhism is the most likable of the major religions, and Buddhists are the perennial good guys of modern spirituality. Beautiful traditions, lovely architecture, inspiring statuary, ancient history, the Dalai Lama; what’s not to like?
Everything about Buddhism is just so—nice. No fatwahs or jihads, no inquisitions or crusades, no terrorists or pederasts, just nice people being nice. In fact, Buddhism means niceness. Nice-ism.
At least, it should.
Buddha means Awakened One, so Buddhism can be taken to mean Awake-ism. Awakism. It would therefore be natural to think that if you were looking to wake up, then Buddhism, i.e., Awakism, would be the place to look.
THE LIGHT IS BETTER OVER HERE
Such thinking, however, would reveal a dangerous lack of respect for the opposition. Maya, goddess of delusion, has been doing her job with supreme mastery since the first spark of self-awareness flickered in some monkey’s brainbox, and the idea that the neophyte truthseeker can just sign up with the Buddhists, read some books, embrace some new concepts and slam her to the mat would be a bit on the naive side, (as billions of sincere but unsuccessful seekers over the last twenty-five centuries might grudgingly attest).
On the other hand, why not? How’d this get so turned around? It’s just truth. Shouldn’t truth be, like, the simplest thing? Shouldn’t someone who wants to find something as ubiquitous and unchanging as truth be able to do so? How can anyone manage to not find truth? And here’s this venerable organization supposedly dedicated to just that very thing, even named for it, and it’s a total flop.
“The Line Companion is an extensive commentary on the Gates and Lines as listed in the Complete Rave I’ching. In this commentary, Ra describes each Gate and Line in much more depth and detail. All quotes from the Complete Rave I’Ching are color coated for easy reference. Appendex includes 16 pages of relevant information (Hexagram Line structure, outer planet transits, Sun/Earth Line Fixations…).”
“An edited transcription of each of the 384 Lines of the Rave I’Ching. This is an essential resource for any student of Human Design. If you own a copy of the Rave I’Ching, this volume will help to explain every Line and its variations with both insight and humour.”
To read this book every day over the course of a year as the Sun transited the Gates was very insightful and entertaining
From a Spiritual Master Unlike Any, A Spiritual Masterpiece Like No Other
AUTHOR, TEACHER AND SPIRITUAL MASTER Jed McKenna tells it like it’s never been told before. A true American original, Jed succeeds where countless others have failed by reducing this highest of attainments — Spiritual Enlightenment — to the simplest of terms.
Effectively demystifying the mystical, Jed astonishes the reader not by adding to the world’s collected spiritual wisdom, but by taking the spirituality out of spiritual enlightenment. Never before has this elusive topic been treated in so engaging and accessible a manner.
A masterpiece of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment — and how the rule can be broken.
Says Jed:
The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath. If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because “the light is better over here”.
Mankind has spent ages looking in the light for a coin that awaits us not in light and not in dark, but beyond all opposites. That is the message of this book: Spiritual Enlightenment, pure and simple.
“I am involved with in a long term project which is called ‘The Global Incarnation Index’ and it has to do with our incarnating crosses that we come in on. The 27th hexagram is part of a cross that is called the cross of The Unexpected and the 27.4 is one of the great classic lines of the unexpected. Many years ago, Martin Grassinger mode some charts for me of the discovery of Pluto, Uranus and Neptune. In all those cases, the Nodes were in 27.4 and 28.4. When the comet ‘Shoemaker Levy’ banged into Jupiter, the Nodes were in 27.4/28.4.” -Ra Uru Hu, The Rave I-Ching Line Companion 2002
“Years ago in Germany, Ra was doing some research on the time of discovery of various planets. For example, when exactly did Hershel discover Uranus in 1781? The discovery of Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus – each of those three discoveries happened while the Sun was in the Cross of the Unexpected. Furthermore, when Schumacher-Levy, this incredible comet, smacked Jupiter; it happened on the Cross of the Unexpected. So there is something very unique in the way in which this cross works, because you can see it at the macrocosmic level.” -Ra Uru Hu, The Global Incarnation Index 2001
Uranus March 13, 1781
Neptune September 23, 1846 0h 15min
Pluto February 18, 1930
Shoemaker Levy 1st impact at 20:13 UTC on July 16, 1994
Lao Tzu was going for a morning walk. A neighbour who used to go with him, knew him – knew that he was a very silent man and did not like talking.
Once the neighbour mentioned that the morning was beautiful – it was a beautiful morning. Lao Tzu looked very puzzled. He looked at him as if he had said something mad. The man became restless.
He said, ’What is the matter? Why are you looking at me in such a way? Have I done anything wrong?’
And Lao Tzu said, ’I am also looking at the morning, so what is the point of saying that it is beautiful?
Do you think I am dead, I am dull or asleep? The morning is beautiful, but what is the point of saying it? I am also here, as much as you are.’
Since then the neighbour stopped talking. He used to follow him, walk with him, and after years of going for a morning walk with Lao Tzu he also became alert about what meditation is.
Then a visitor came to the neighbour and he also wanted to come for a walk. And the visitor said that day, ’It is a beautiful sunrise.’ That day the neighbour understood. He looked puzzled as once Lao Tzu had looked puzzled at him, and he said, ’Why should you mention it? I am also here.’
And Lao Tzu said, ’Now do you understand?’ – Osho, Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol. 1
A Rule is to Break, A Child’s Guide to Anarchy follows the escapades of Wild Child, the little girl who is free to do as she pleases. John Seven and Jana Christy present a children’s book like no other where the principles of anarchism are outlined in an easy, fun and lively fashion. Wild Child learns important lessons about herself and how to express herself freely. In a world with too many rules, Wild Child is free to be herself and learn as she pleases.
Only once in the history of human consciousness, says Osho, has a thing like Zen come into being. In Zen: Its History and Teachings, the noted mystic explains that Zen has no rituals, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures — only short, evocative parables and teachings that make it ideal for the modern seeker. Using his characteristic humorous, encouraging style, Osho guides readers through the origins and development of this seminal spiritual tradition that is neither religion nor dogma nor creed. He provides a context for those who have not been born into the Zen tradition, introducing them to its timeless approach to existence. The book argues that the only preparation for fully experiencing Zen’s power is meditative awareness, and Osho presents simple techniques to achieve this awareness. Stunning color photographs throughout offer further inspiration and illumination.
Publisher: Osho International. Format: Paperback | 144 pages. Dimensions: 140mm x 190mm x 12mm | 342g. ISBN 10: 0981834167. ISBN 13: 9780981834160. Illustrations note: Color photos throughout
“Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today. What happens when we’ve gained everything to be had from fine-tuning the old lines of business that we’ve inherited? Unlikely as it sounds, the answer threatens to be far worse than the crisis of 2008. Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.
In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle. Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles. This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.
Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental capabilities to a higher level. Other animals are instinctively driven to build things like dams or honeycombs, but we are the only ones that can invent new things and better ways of making them. Humans don’t decide what to build by making choices from some cosmic catalog of options given in advance; instead, by creating new technologies, we rewrite the plan of the world. These are the kind of elementary truths we teach to second graders, but they are easy to forget in a world where so much of what we do is repeat what has been done before.
Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything I’ve learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX. But while I have noticed many patterns, and I relate them here, this book offers no formula for success. The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative. Indeed, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
This book stems from a course about startups that I taught at Stanford in 2012. College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world. My primary goal in teaching the class was to help my students see beyond the tracks laid down by academic specialties to the broader future that is theirs to create. One of those students, Blake Masters, took detailed class notes, which circulated far beyond the campus, and in Zero to One I have worked with him to revise the notes for a wider audience. There’s no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley.” -Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“I am suggesting that, as we have grown in wholeness, many of us have lost touch with our own true sexual essence as well as our partner’s, so we aren’t getting what we really want in a relationship. Instead of enjoying the uniqueness of each person’s sexual essence, we often settle for a fair, relatively healthy, yet mediocre sense of equality.
For instance, we may think we want to share “old-style” Masculine and Feminine responsibilities equally with our intimate partner. So, we agree to a fair, 50/50 split right down the middle but we really don’t enjoy cooking half the time or changing the oil in the car half the time. It just doesn’t feel authentic to our core. It doesn’t feel like our true gift. Our sexual essence ends up feeling squelched. It’s not completely fulfilling, but at least it’s fair.
We also end up unfulfilled when we disregard the sexual essence of our intimate partner. For example, we want our partners to be receptive and listen to us as if they were our therapists, but we also want them to ravish us as if they were gods or goddesses of love. Our partners may become so used to “giving us space” and listening to our problems, however, that they no longer feel free to spontaneously ravish us with the wild force of their love. Read more
“The judge will attack your experience of space from different directions:”So you are feeling emptiness in your head You numskull, that means you are stupid! … If you start losing your sense of boundaries, you are asking for trouble…. Quit spacing out and get to work! What do you mean, you don’t feel guilty about what happened? Don’t bother trying to sense yourself; there’s nothing there-and that’s your problem!” Until you begin to recognize spaciousness for what it is-the authentic presence of your beingness without any content-your judge will easily distract you from experiences of open emptiness. All it has to do is call up the image of something missing and you will fill up the space with searching and worrying!
Spaciousness has its own particular power in relation to the judge. It is what is in between and around words, objects, and ideas. The more you are aware of space as an experiential quality, the more you are focused on the open field in which everything arises. This is the opposite of content, of the narrow, focused engagement with the judge.The judge’s message is seductive compared to other content, but compared to empty space, it is no more powerful than a TV commercial and considerably less pleasant than a nice piece of music.When you are feeling spacious, the judge is not right in your face, even if it is present, so it can’t exert its usual degree of pressure. In fact, spacious means space to choose, space to ignore, or space to go around. Feeling spacious brings elements ofour experience back into proper proportion, and the judge’s significance rapidly diminishes. Read more
The Human Design System: A Complete Guide in 15 Lectures. Jovian Archive Media Inc. and the IHDS International Human Design School in association with Jovian Archive T.V. are pleased to announce an historical educational program.
After twenty-one years of teaching Human Design, Ra Uru Hu presented the opportunity to lay out a guide to the full spectrum of the knowledge. Adding to the historical nature of this program, Jovian Archive T.V. streamed Ra’s teachings. Filmed in 15 one-hour segments, the Complete Guide to the Human Design System is a grand overview from Cosmology to Correctness. All videos can be streamed directly from your Jovian Archive account immediately upon purchase. The Digital Book is a transcript of the 15 lectures, including the original illustrations. This Video Series was originally taught across 5 weeks in the Fall of 2008, and each week of the program featured a specific theme examined in the three consecutive classes of that week:
1. Cosmology: Juxtaposition and the New Order
2. Evolution: Homo Sapien, Homo Sapien in Transitus and Rave
3. Conditioning: The Godhead, the Program and the ‘Not-Self’
4. Mechanics: Strategy, Inner Authority and Decision making
5. Awareness: Correctness, Orientation and the Perfection of Being
Includes the following products:
The Dream Rave (Videos)
The Program: The Transits (Videos)
The Perfection of Being (Videos)
Orientation (Videos)
Nutrition (Videos)
The Sub-structure: The Color (Videos)
The Sub-structure: The Base (Videos)
The Sub-structure: The Tone (Videos)
The Beginning before the Start (Videos)
The Global Orchestration Directories (Videos)
The Program and the Godhead (Videos)
The Seven Centered Being (Videos)
The Nine Centered Being (Videos)
The Rave (Videos)
The Not Self (Videos)
“The way of the Buddha is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has no belief system, no dogma, no scripture. It does not believe in God, it does not believe in the soul, it does not believe in any paradise. It is a tremendous unbelief-and yet it is a religion. It is unique. Nothing has ever happened like it before in the history of human consciousness, and nothing afterward.
Buddha remains utterly unique, incomparable. He says that God is nothing but a search for security, a search for safety, a search for shelter. You believe in God, not because God is there; you believe in God because you feel helpless without that belief. Even if there is no God, you will invent one. The temptation comes from your weakness. It is a projection.
Humans feel limited, helpless, almost victims of circumstance-not knowing from where they come, not knowing where they are going, not knowing why they are here. If there is no God it is difficult for ordinary people to have any meaning in life. The ordinary mind will go berserk without God. God is a prop-it helps you, it consoles you, it comforts you. It says, “Don’t be worried-the Almighty God knows everything about why you are here. He is the Creator, He knows why He has created the world. You may not know but the Father knows, and you can trust in Him.” It is a great consolation.
The very idea of God gives you a sense of relief-that you are not alone; that somebody is looking after the affairs; that this cosmos is not just chaos, it is truly a cosmos; that there is a system behind it; that there is logic behind it; it is not an illogical jumble of things; it is not anarchy, Somebody rules the cosmos; the sovereign King is there looking after each small detail-not even a leaf moves without His moving it. Everything is planned, You are part of a great destiny. Maybe the meaning is not known to you, but the meaning is there because God is there.
God brings a tremendous relief, One can believe that life is not accidental; there is a certain undercurrent of significance, meaning, destiny, God brings a sense of destiny.
Buddha says there is no God-it simply shows that we do not know why we are here, It shows our helplessness. It shows that there is no meaning available to us. By creating the idea of God we can believe in meaning, and we can live this futile life with the idea that somebody is looking after it.
Just think: you are in an airplane and somebody says, “There is no pilot.” Suddenly there will be a panic, No pilot?! No pilot means you are doomed. Then somebody says, “The pilot is there, but invisible. We may not be able to see the pilot, but he is there; otherwise, how is this beautiful mechanism functioning? Just think of it: everything is going so beautifully, there must be a pilot! Maybe we are not capable of seeing him, maybe we are not yet prayerful enough to see him, maybe our eyes are closed, but the pilot is there. Otherwise, how is it possible? This airplane has taken off, it is flying perfectly well, the engines are humming. Everything is a proof that there is a pilot.”
If somebody proves it, you relax again into your chair. You close your eyes, you start dreaming again, you can fall asleep. The pilot is there; you need not worry.
Buddha says: The pilot exists not; it is a human creation. Humankind has created God in its own image. It is a human invention. God is not a discovery, it is an invention. And God is not the truth, it is the greatest lie there is.
That’s why I say Buddhism is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term. A Godless religion-can you imagine? When for the first time Western scholars became aware of Buddhism, they were shocked. They could not comprehend that a religion can exist and be without God. They had known only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All these three religions are in a way very immature compared with Buddhism.
Buddhism is religion come of age. Buddhism is the religion of a mature mind. Buddhism is not childish at all, and it doesn’t support any childish desires in you. It is merciless. Let me repeat it: There has never been a man more compassionate than Buddha, but his religion is merciless.
In fact, in that mercilessness he is showing his compassion. He will not allow you to cling to any lie. Howsoever consoling, a lie is a lie. Those who have given you the lie are not friends to you, they are enemies-because under the impact of the lie you will live a life full of lies. The truth has to be brought to you, howsoever hard, howsoever shattering, howsoever shocking. Even if you are annihilated by the impact of the truth, it is good.
Buddha says: The truth is that human religions are human inventions. You are in a dark night surrounded by alien forces. You need someone to hang on to, someone to cling to. And everything that you can see is changing-your father will die one day and you will be left alone, your mother will die one day and you will be left alone, and you will be an orphan. From childhood you have been accustomed to having a father to protect you, a mother to love you. Now that childish desire will again assert itself: you will need a father figure. If you cannot find it in the sky, then you will find it in some politician.
Stalin became the father of Soviet Russia; they had dropped the idea of God. Mao became the father of China; they had dropped the idea of God. But people are such that they cannot live without a father figure. People are childish! There are very few rare people who grow to be mature.” – Osho, Buddha; his life and teachings and impact on humanity
America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . accepts the lesson with calmness . . . is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house . . . perceives that it waits a little while in the door . . . that it was fittest for its days . . . that its action has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches . . . and that he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes. . . . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their Curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness— the terrible significance of their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man . . . nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest . . . namely from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets.—As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of full-sized men or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. Read more
Ik ben zelf meer dan bijzonder blij met het boek, omdat er voor publicatie ongelofelijk veel vrije interpretatie van Human Design was en is.
Die soms opmerkelijk interpretatie komt mijn inziens enerzijds door de soms moeilijke vertaalslag van Engels naar Nederlands voor die Nederlanders die met Human Design in aanraking kwamen en al dan niet zo goed het Engels beheersen. Anderzijds omdat we nu eenmaal allemaal best intensief geconditioneerd zijn en zowel de leercurve aan het begin nogal flink is, en we vaak heel slecht zelf door hebben wat een wartaal er soms uit onze mind/mond komt. Daarnaast zijn we vaak letterlijk blind voor zaken die we als heel normaal beschouwen en zelfs als belangrijk onderdeel van onze identiteit of geloofsstructuur zien. En, Human Design is echt een andere manier van kijken naar jezelf en het leven, echt radicaal anders.
Dit boek heeft, naar mijn niet zo heel bescheiden mening, Human Design in het Nederlands op een heel hoog plan getild, en kan men nu heel eenvoudig naar het boek verwijzen in plaats van persoonlijke discussie’s te moeten hoeven aangaan wat vaak alleen een ego/mind tijdsverspilling is.
Maar wel degelijk ook een aantal op- en aanmerkingen, omdat sommige dingen die gezegd worden zelfs komplete kul zijn. Overigens, gaat dit over de 1e druk, er is intussen een 3e druk verschenen welke ik niet gelezen heb, dus wellicht zijn er enkele dingen gewijzigd. Here goes: Read more
“Miss Morrow stood on her podium. “The End of the World is the myth of the twentieth century. It is present in every piece of art created. Take a note!” she commanded. “Black pens.” She waited until the shuffle subsided.
“We have no optimism.” In fact, Miss Morrow did not really like much ofher century’s art, or its thinking. Still, they had to study it. “Even the Eastern religions with their ideas ofreincarnation provide only fatalism. We in Western society fear that we are facing an explosive, utter annihilation of the world, brought about by nuclear war perhaps, or the destruction of the environment.” She paused for the students to catch up to her. “Or the destruction of the environment.
Because we in the West do not believe in rebirth, this end of the world we anticipate will be final.”
“No human being is free from fears. Fear is a part of our human process. To understand fear through Human Design, to understand the gates of fear in your chart will give you incredible insight into your life. It will give you a deep relief that there is nothing wrong with you. Fear is to be recognized and understood.
By entering into things correctly through living out the strategy of your type, fears can cease to be something that are perceived as problematic or debilitating. They can then be seen for what they are, mechanics of the human way and a by product of awareness and its potentials.”- Ra Uru Hu
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Download 700 free eBooks to your Kindle, iPad/iPhone, computer, smart phone or ereader. Collection includes great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including works by Asimov, Jane Austen, Philip K. Dick, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Neil Gaiman, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf & James Joyce.
The way of the Buddha is known as via negativa -the path of negation. This attitude, this approach has to be understood.
Buddha’s approach is unique. All other religions of the world are positive religions, they have a positive goal -call it God, liberation, salvation, self-realization- but there is a goal to be achieved. And positive effort is needed on the part of the seeker. Unless you make hard effort you will not reach the goal.
Buddha’s approach is totally different, diametrically opposite. He says you are already that which you want to become, the goal is within you; it is your own nature. You are not to achieve it. It is not in the future, it is not somewhere else. It is you right now, this very moment. But there are a few obstacles and those obstacles have to be removed.
It is not that you have to attain godhood, godhood is your nature-but there are a few obstacles to be removed. Once those obstacles are removed, you are that which you have always been seeking. Even when you were not aware of who you are, you were that. You cannot be otherwise. Obstacles have to be eliminated, dropped. Nothing else has to be added to you.
The positive religion tries to add something to you: virtue, righteousness, meditation, prayer. The positive religion says you are lacking something; you have to be in search of that which you are lacking. You have to accumulate something.
Buddha’s negative approach says you are not lacking anything. In fact, you are possessing too many things which are not needed. You have to drop something.
It is like this: You go trekking into the Himalayas. The higher you start reaching, the more you will feel the weight of the things you are carrying with you. Your luggage will become more and more heavy. The higher the altitude, the heavier your luggage will become. You will have to drop things. If you want to reach to the highest peak, you will have to drop all.
Once you have dropped all, once you don’t possess anything, once you have become a zero, a nothingness, a nobody, you have reached the peak. Something has to be eliminated, not added to you. Something has to be dropped, not accumulated.
When Buddha attained, somebody asked him, “What have you attained?” He laughed. He said, “I have not attained anything, because whatsoever I have attained was always with me. On the contrary, I have lost many things. I have lost my ego. I have lost my thoughts, my mind. I have lost all that I used to feel I possessed. I have lost my body-I used to think I was the body. I have lost all that.
Now I exist as pure nothingness. This is my achievement.” – Osho, Buddha; his life and teachings and impact on humanity
This book is your guide to configuring, managing and maintaining a copy of Invision Power Board 2 on your own website to power an online discussion forum. Written for people who want to get their forums up and running as quickly as possible, this book will show you to execute the full power of Invision Power Board. If you are either already running a community forum based on Invision Power Board, or are planning on establishing one, then this is the book for you. This book will guide you through installing, configuring, managing and maintaining an Invision Power Board discussion forum on your own website. The book begins with the initial installation and configuration of IPB on your system. You will then go on a tour of IPB and its features, for both users and administrators. This will grow your understanding and familiarise you with the power and possibilities of IPB. IPB’s Administration Control Panel is where you can control every aspect of your board. From users, forums and word filters to skins, templates and maintenance, everything can be done through the web-based control panel. The book devotes significant sections to covering these, getting you up to speed on the options available to you, and offering advice to help you make the right choices with your board administration. To make your forums stand out from the rest, we cover skins and templates to take your first steps in customising your forum.
By (author) David Mytton
Publisher: Packt Publishing Limited
Format: Paperback|192 pages
Dimensions: 156mmx234mmx10mm|278g
Publication date: 30 June 2005
Publication City/Country: Birmingham
ISBN 10: 1904811388
ISBN 13: 9781904811381
Illustrations note: black & white illustrations
Manuel Introductif au Design Humain (French Edition) – Kindle edition by Fabrice Mars
Vous vous demander ce qu’est le Design Humain (Human Design) et comment l’aborder? Ce livre est fait pour vous. Vous y trouverez les bases pratiques de ce savoir pour vous aider à l’aborder de façon simple. Ce livre couvre les différents types énergétiques et leurs stratégies, les autorités intérieures ainsi que les profils. Sans être un ouvrage exhaustif, ce livre apporte des éléments simples et basiques pour commencer à regarder le Design Humain de plus près.
Voici donc un manuel qui se focalise sur les bases élémentaires du Human Design. Souhaitez-vous en savoir un peu plus sur votre propre unicité, sur ce qui vous rend véritablement unique? En avez-vous assez de la pression du mental au quotidien, de toutes ses décisions à prendre et qui rend la vie parfois bien compliquée?
Le savoir du Human Design est incroyablement vaste et pourtant ce sont ses bases qui font la différence au quotidien, pas besoin de tout connaître, bien au contraire. Comprenez votre stratégie et votre autorité intérieure et vous aurez enfin les clefs de votre propre expérience, ayez conscience de votre profil et vous serez enfin à l’aise avec votre propre costume dans la vie.
Tous ces éléments sont abordés dans ce livre qui constitue une excellente porte d’entrée pour améliorer votre conscience au travers de cet incroyable outil qu’est le Design Humain. L’auteur de ce livre est analyste professionnel diplômé et enseigne ce savoir tout en s’efforçant de retranscrire avec fidélité la fréquence originelle de la transmission afin de la rendre accessible à un plus grand nombre.
“The Human Design System shows how the four types actually make up a structured ‘genetic hierarchy’, which highlights the way different human beings are designed to interact with each other. In this hierarchy, we are all interdependent, just like the cells that make up our bodies. Below is a symbolic matrix of the way in which the four types interlock with each other. The two energy types, manifestors and generators form the creative foundation, with projectors at the top of the hierarchy being the natural guides, although they are also dependent on the two energy types below. In the centre are the reflectors. These people are designed to be the hub of their communities, playing a vital role in bringing a sense of justice and balance to the hierarchy as a whole.” -Richard Rudd, Opening Doors with Gene Keys
A comprehensive collection of many of the Reggae King’s greatest songs. Includes lyrics and guitar chords.
Presents the complete lyrics and chords to all 124 Bob Marley songs as featured on the albums “African Herbsman”, “Catch A Fire”, “Burnin'”, “Natty Dread”, “Rastaman Vibration”, “Exodus”, “Kaya”, “Survival”, “Uprising” and “Confrontation” plus extra songs featured on the compilation albums “Legend”, “Songs of Freedom” and “One Love”.
Paperback: 272 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0711988507
Dimensions: 170 x 246 x 18 mm 540grams
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