The Demise of Swami Paramanand

Early one morning as Gurujii and I were returning from our usual morning walk a typically scantily clad man came running up to us. He was very distraught and spoke a few rapid sentences in Hindi to Gurujii before bursting into tears. Gurujii turned to me and said, “His guru has died.”  ”Where?” I asked. Gurujii pointed at a small white temple halfway up the slight hill from the now dry Ganges river bed. This entire area of the Ganges riverbank is a jumble of temples and ashrams of all sizes which have been built over the past fifty years. The British built a successively higher and larger dike during their years of occupation attempting to thwart the mighty Ganges from flooding the nearby city of Allahabad during the rainy season. The dike or bandh was now fifty feet high and three hundred feet wide. The bandh began at the ancient fort with seventy-five foot high sandstone walls on the bank right at the intersection of the Ganges and Jumna. The bandh ran for about 3 miles into the small village of Daraganj which stood on a natural bluff overlooking the river.

The now three of us walked slowly up the hill. I asked Gurujii the name of the dead swami. “Paramanand”, he replied. I immediately thought of another Paramanand, my brother disciple and Gurujii’s only American initiate into the orange robed swami order. At Paramanand’s temple we went through the wrought iron gate to a small courtyard. Paramanand’s disciple and Gurujii removed their shoes and, stooping, entered the low ceiling temple. Gurujii soon came back to the doorway and motioned me over with his hand. “Do you want to see the dead body?” “Okay.” Slipping out of the unlaced tennis shoes that I slopped around in, I crawled through the doorway onto the black and white marble floor of the temple. The air had the sweet smell of temples everywhere, a humid mix of incense, flowers and the accumulated prayers of countless supplicants. Up against the front wall was the usual statuary, flowers and urns and alongside the altar, propped up in the corner in a slumped cross legged pose was Paramanand. Paramanand’s body was small and thin. His disciple explained that the first thing he had done in the early morning was to fold the body into the traditional meditation pose before rigor mortis set in. The distraught disciple was very relieved to have Gurujii to consult about the traditions to follow upon a swami’s death. At that time, in the mid 1980’s, Gurujii was one of the two longest lived inhabitants of the bandh area and he had lived in his ashram for over fifty years. Gurujii told Paramanand’s disciple to sprinkle eucalyptus oil on Paramanand’s robes so there would be no smell of decay. I never detected that this was done. Gurujii is sensitive to odors of any kind and keeps a small piece of camphor with him at all times in one of the small pockets of his orange robes.

By now several other of Paramanand’s devotees had arrived at the temple to pay brief homage on their way homeward from a morning bath in the Ganges. We all gathered outside and Gurujii gave orders to some people to go off to the city to summon Paramanand’s followers and to others he gave directions for the ceremony itself which was to be burial in the Ganges. Hindus traditionally burn the bodies of all who have reached puberty to quickly liberate the soul from its encasement in the flesh. I am certain also that in India the tradition of cremation developed for health and space considerations as there is abundant firewood. The Hindu tradition for children who have not yet reached puberty is that their bodies may be thrown directly into the Ganges as children are considered pure and undefiled by carnal desires. Snakebite victims, of which there are many in India, may be thrown directly into the river as its ever pure and sacred waters have reputedly miraculously revived some of these corpses. Although the corpses of swamis are frequently burned, burial in either earth or water, especially the Ganges, is another option. The bodies of the orange robed are considered pure and free from desires. The tangerine orange color of the robes symbolically represents the color of the inner fires of renunciation through which those initiated into the swami order have passed.

With Paramanand’s devotees going off in all directions throughout the city reporting his demise, Gurujii and I completed our walk up the hill and down the dike road the short distance to Gurujii’s small ashram enclave. Since the burial wasn’t scheduled until 2 PM I went about my usual and lengthy morning ritual of meditation, exercises and picking through the dhal removing small stones and then setting it to cook while I stood on my head for a half hour or longer. Just as I finished eating Gurujii came and got me announcing that the death ceremony was soon to take place. As this was several hours before the previously announced time I wondered if many of Paramanand’s followers would miss the ceremony. When Gurujii, myself and Swami Sevanand arrived at Paramanand’s small temple only a small crowd of perhaps 10 or so had gathered. I presumed a much larger crowd would be here for the ceremony.

Paramanand’s body was seated on a large high back wooden chair and tied to the chair at the feet, waist and chest with strips of orange cloth. Long bamboo poles were lashed to the chair legs for the bearers. We set off on the mile walk toward the confluence with Paramanand sitting almost five feet off the ground in the chair borne by four men. Gurujii soon ordered us all to stop as Paramanand’s head was bobbing around. The chair was brought back down to the ground and a strip of cloth was tied around Paramanand’s neck and then around the back of the chair. We set off again and as I walked along in the warm February sun slightly behind the bier I suddenly heard scuffling and shouting behind me. Looking back I saw a young boy carrying a large water bucket full of 5 and 10 paise coins. The boy would periodically take a handful of coins and scatter them on the ground behind the procession like grass seed. This created a long comet shaped throng of young boys and ambulatory beggars following behind us, much increasing the apparent number of mourners.

We reached the riverbank after about forty-five minutes and negotiated for a large flat bottomed boat to take us out to the exact meeting place of the muddy Ganges and the clear blue Jumna. This spot is called Tribeni and here it is said the unseen river Saraswati surges up from the bottom and these three together create or are absorbed by the mighty Ganges which passes onward to the west to Benares, Calcutta and finally the Bay of Bengal.

About ten of us got into the boat with Swami Paramanand’s chair placed amid ship facing forward, a silent tangerine robed captain. We were rowed the several hundred yards downstream and out to the deepest part of the confluence. At Gurujii’s direction we untied Paramanand’s body from the chair and balanced it on the wood plank boat seat and tied bricks into the hem of Paramanand’s robe. With two people holding the bricks in the hem and two others holding the body over the side of the boat and others balancing the boat upright leaning on the opposite gunwale, we all let loose at the same time. The body quickly sank out of sight but for a brief unforgettable moment a loose hem of his orange robes flickered in the sun shafts in the muddy water like a large goldfish. Then nothing.

We ordered the boatman to take us in closer to shore where the water was only knee deep and tied in to the many other boats. Everyone except Gurujii and me stripped down to skivvies and jumped overboard to bathe in the river. Gurujii didn’t bathe in the Ganges at all anymore. He was then eighty-three and hadn’t bathed in the river for some years as it was too cold for him. Sevanand yelled at me in Hindi and Gurujii translated, “He wants to know why you are not bathing in the river.” “Too cold”, I replied. I asked Gurujii about bathing right here at the confluence and he said it was the holiest spot and that Hindus believe that to bathe here was to be liberated from the necessity to be reborn. He pressed me a bit with an unspoken but clearly intelligible ‘this might be the only way you can get saved’. Remembering the terrible earache I had gotten some years before and the slight chill of the wan late afternoon sun, my mind scrambled for an out. I had a sudden insight and asked Gurujii, “How much water does it take to be saved?” He reflected for a moment before giving, what I later saw was the only possible answer. “One drop is sufficient.” So I leaned over the side and scooped a little water in my hand and poured it over my head letting it dribble down my face.

We rowed back to the riverbank and walked back to our respective ashrams and homes. The next time I was to take a boat out to the confluence was four years later when six of us took a clay pot filled with the still smoldering ashes of Swami Sevanand and sank it in the sacred Tribeni. I did bathe in the river that time.

Mary Smith’s library

On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

When we bought this place we’re in now it was filled with ‘stuff’ that the son of the little old lady was going to sort through. We told him we wanted the place immediately and so he asked for $1100 more as we would now get all the ‘stuff’ and could sell it at a garage sale or something. A big part of the ‘stuff’ was/is a collection of maybe 2000 metaphysically and Christian oriented books. I finally have time to go through the books and sort out which are candidates to sell on Amazon. Going through these thousands of books, one by one, I have come across a few items which I’m noting below.

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I have long believed:

“Everything I need to know

is revealed to me. Everything I need comes to me.

All is well in my life.” There is no new knowledge.

All is ancient and infinite. It is my joy and pleasure

To gather together wisdom and knowledge for the

benefit of those on the healing pathway.

I dedicate this offering to all of you who have taught

me what I know: to my many clients, to my friends

in the field, to my teachers, and to the Divine

infinite intelligence for channeling through

me that which others need to hear.

Louise Hay

Front piece to ‘Modern Day Miracles’

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Twelve Principles of Prosperity

1.   I think prosperous thoughts and I AM becoming ever more prosperous; thinking poor will make me poor.

2.   My thoughts of prosperity always preceded my demonstration and manifestation of prosperity.

3.   My prosperity makes everyone better off, and no one worse off.

4.   All prosperity starts within my mind. What I think about comes about. The original source of all prosperity is God; and God can do no more for me than he can do through me.

5.   My setting prosperity goals is a necessary prelude to getting prosperous. My first goal is to set goals that are definite, positive, specific, believable and attainable.

6.   “I’ll find a ‘need/want’ and fill it.” Bernard Baruch

7.   My enjoyment of prosperity increases my prosperity.

8.   I see, feel believe, and take action toward my evolving prosperity.

9.   I think big and I achieve big results. Money is created in four ways: 1) I work. 2) Others work (management) 3) Money works (investment) 4) Ideas work

10.       To increase my prosperity consciousness I will increase someone else’s. I teach what I most need to learn and it returns to me omni-directionally.

11.       My gift of giving is receiving. (I reap what I sow.) I sow generously, creatively, boldly, with an attitude of gratitude; my gift returns to me multiplied.

12.       I have to do my own prosperity doing: no one else can do it for me.

From Mark Victor Hansen, ‘How to Achieve Total Prosperity’, 1981. This book has a totally dorky picture of Hansen on the cover looking sort of Dick Cavett-ish. You may recall that Hansen went on to write, produce might be a better word, the ‘Chicken Soup’ series of books. As best explained from his ex-wife’s bio: Since its first release in 1993, the Chicken Soup for the Soul series has sold more than 112 million copies in the US and Canada alone, with more than 180 titles and 40 languages. The brand holds a place in The Guinness Book of World Records for having the most books on the New York Times bestseller list at one time, and in 2007, USA Today named Chicken Soup for the Soul one of the five most memorable and impactful books in the last quarter century. For more information, visit http://www.chickensoup.com/

Hey, this could happen to me if I get off my butt and leave behind my developmental disability notions from my infancy and childhood. After I become rich and famous you could say you knew me when I was a dork.

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The less effort, the faster

And more powerful

You will be.

                    Bruce Lee

To win one hundred

Victories

In one hundred

Battles

Is not the greatest skill

To subdue the enemy

Without fighting

Is the

highest skill

                    Sun Tzu

Softness triumphs over

hardness,

feebleness over strength.

What is more malleable

is always superior

over that

which is immoveable.

This is the principle

of controlling things

by going along

with them,

of mastery

through adaptation.

                    Lao Tzu

These are a few quotes I ‘randomly’ found in a little book, The Master of Life Manual, Dick and Trenna Sutphen, Valley of the Sun Publishing, 1980, Scottsdale. Again ‘randomly’, I noted Sun Publ.’s Phoenix address, Googled Sutphen, and found he lives in Sedona, emailed him and told him my intuition suggested we should meet up. I’m guessing he’s now 90 years old or so.

I haven’t yet gotten into this little book but I ask all to carefully contemplate that the overriding principles of the country thought of as our greatest rival for power in the world, China, are embodied in the quote from Sun Tzu and this from Lao Tzu. Just the simple example of a ‘trade war’ the US talks about is ridiculous, as the way to win a ‘trade war’ is to never talk about one, to not see one AND to carefully and QUIETLY outmaneuver your opponent. Put another way, to win a trade war is to lose it.

          Another example might be China and Russia’s quiet accumulation of gold while the US probably no longer has any. One way or another the US dollar has to have some backing beyond the ‘full faith’ and credit’ of the US, as the US no longer possesses faith and its credit is slipping away also. I also say, very privately, that our military is one ‘Victory’ [Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq*2, Afghanistan *2] away from defeat.

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From “The Sacred Pipe, Joseph Epes Brown

Fighting terrorism since 1492

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Why people Don’t Heal and How They Can – Caroline Myss

“For more than fifteen years, Caroline Myss has studied why some people heal, while others do not. In her previous book, The Anatomy of the Spirit, Dr. Myss illuminated the hidden inter-actions of belief and body, soul and cell. Now, in Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, she builds on her earlier teaching to reveal the cultural and individual contexts in which people become physically and spiritually ill.

         For many people illness can serve vital emotional and psychologically needs. It can become an effective way of getting the attention they might otherwise not receive; it can ensure that they remain in a particular lifestyle or behavior pattern and avoid facing the chaos of change. Yet, as Dr. Myss points out, illness can also guide us onto a path of insight and learning upon which we would otherwise never have set foot.” From the book jacket

“One of the main beliefs I want you to adopt in order to heal your life or illness is a belief in the importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees up the energy necessary for healing.” pg. xix

"The act of forgiveness is the act of returning to present time. And that's why when one has become a forgiving person, and has managed to let go of the past, what they've really done is they've shifted their relationship with time." from the Myss bio, Wikipedia

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Life Between Life

Scientific explorations into the void separating one incarnation from another

Joel Whitton, M.D., Ph.D., Joe Fisher

“Death and emptiness are the firm ground upon which life walks…” Alan Watts

You cannot see the seer of seeing;

You cannot hear the hearer of hearing;

You cannot think the thinker of thinking;

You cannot know the knower of knowing.

This is your self that is within all;

Everything else but this is perishable. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

The Pavamana Mantra is also from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28):

From untruth lead us to Truth.
From darkness lead us to Light.
From death lead us to Immortality.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

“But in one fundamental aspect the privileged few who have visited the afterlife receive the same unrelenting message:  We are thoroughly responsible for who we are and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are the ones who do the choosing.”

“From which side of my family do I inherit the most?”

“You have inherited most from yourself, not from your family! The family is only a river through which the soul flows” Edgar Cayce in a reading to a client

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. Hippocrates

my note: “But the victory over disease and the new day begins only when the ambition for it has been abandoned upon the altar. The disease which the experience of death cures is the rage to live…” James Hillman, A Blue Fire

“While at liberty to reject the judges’ planning advice, the soul is ill-advised to scorn their counsel. For rejection of the recommendations means that reincarnation will take place without a ratified plan-an open invitation to a life of unproductive and unnecessary trial and hardship. To be reborn without a plan is also a matter of choice. The trouble is, with no script to follow, the soul becomes a reed shaken by the wind-a victim of fate rather than a participant in destiny. No penalty is incurred for failing to heed the Three save that of a particularly remorseful self-confrontation at the end of the life that, most probably will have been wasted.” pg. 47

[Note: the author suggests that a the end of a life the soul confronts and is judged by Three wise men about their just completed life and suggestions are made for planning the next life]

This is the most interesting and erudite book in Mary’s collection so far. I just sold it and perused it as I was packing it. Whitton, the author, is, or was, a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist.  philarchive.org/archive/BARAD-2

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As A Man Thinketh

“Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; “

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophesy of what you shall at last unveil.” As A Man Thinketh, James Allen

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The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. 5

The Effects of Extreme Deprivation in Infancy on Psychic Structure in Adolescence, David Beres and Samuel Obers.

“Children who have been deprived of the most important factor essential for normal development─that is, continuous and satisfactory contact with a person who can offer the opportunity for satisfactory identification─suffer a distortion of psychic structure. …an immature ego along with a deficient superego development. Normally the ego functions increasingly in accord with the reality principle and less in accord with the pleasure principle. This development requires the ability to tolerate frustrations and postpone gratifications. Our cases … of character disorders, manifested as striking weakness of this function. Disturbances in learning … are to be expected…” pg. 231,

“The entire group may be … “psychopathic personality.” There is an adherence to the pleasure principle rather than an acceptance of the reality principle. There is an inability to tolerate frustration, a demand for immediate gratification of instinctual impulses [“Uhh, I’ll have 2 doubles, please” or “I always eat the whole half-gallon”]. Evidence of guilt appear to be absent. … Object relationships take the form of superficial and transient identifications.” pg. 218-9

“The most important single therapeutic factor we believe to be the opportunity for the development of a close stable relationship to an adult person, whether in a placement situation, a casework relationship or in psychotherapy. pg. 235

This is the relationship I developed with my guru from India. I still recall even Gurujii’s bafflement with us being thrust together in what was clearly a very unorthodox way. One day sitting at the ashram Gurujii said, “So, you are here [at my ashram] but I do not know WHY you are here. Perhaps God knows why you are here.”

I said, “Perhaps even God does not know why I am here.”

With a lot of hindsight I see now I was there in India to be healed of the still substantial “psychic maldevelopment” [pg. 231] I was still carrying. Furthermore, it was ONLY due to the physical practices I was taught or encouraged to NOT perform, that I got well, as my body is so strongly intertwined in my maldevelopment. In particular, doing the headstand for up to an hour at one time greatly developed my brain.

Actually, this book is not from Mary’s library, but my own. I got it when I began trying to get a handle on what the Hell happened to me. As with all things in this Reality into which we have been thrown, ultimately against our wills, there is a counter-point, or compensation. This compensation is the piquing or catalyzing of great creativity or non-conventional thinking, and, therefore, manifesting, BECAUSE to think IS to manifest. The major problem is, are the character distortions created in childhood too great to allow the genius to function?

Recall once again the precursors to creative genius:

1. Loss of one of both parents at an early age.

2. Being brought up in a multi-cultural milieu, especially multi-lingual.

3. Being given a great deal of autonomy at an early age.

I see now how frustratingly boring it must be to be a psychiatrist or psychotherapist and see all this the moment a patient walks in for their first session and how much blah-diddy-blah-diddy-blah-blah blah they would have to sit through even for the small percentage of clients who ever get where they are coming from, or, more properly, where they came from. It’s no wonder psychiatrists put most patients on drugs.

I listed this excellent and rarish book for sale on Amazon for $97.

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Forgiveness

Iyanla Vanzant

“Every feeling has its origin in thought, because each thought that we have creates energy.”  pg. 3

“The truth is that what you think determines what you feel-it’s a basic law of life.” pg. 4

“First you think, then you feel, and finally you hold the energy in your body.” pg. 6

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Power vs. Force

Dr. David Hawkins

The skillful are not obvious

They appear to be simple-minded

Those who know this know the patterns of the Absolute

To know the patterns is the Subtle Power

The Subtle Power moves all things and has no name

from the frontpiece

“…Unlimited information about any subject, past or present, is universally available. But the realization that everything is knowable about anything or anyone, at any point in time, creates a paradigm shock. This reaction arises, generally, from the realization of the non-locality, impersonality and universality of consciousness itself; and, specifically, from the realization of the observability of one’s own thoughts and motivations, their transparency across time. That one’s every thought and action leave an indelible trace forever in the universe can be an unsettling thought.”

“In my own case, the fear of nonexistence was formidable, and I drew back from it repeatedly as it approached. The purpose of the agonies, of the dark night of the soul, then became apparent-they are so intolerable that their exquisite pain spurs one on to the extreme effort required to surmount them. When vacillation between heaven and hell becomes unendurable, the desire for existence itself has to be surrendered. Only once this is done, may one finally move beyond allness or nothingness, beyond existence or nonexistence. This culmination of the inner work is the most difficult phase, the ultimate watershed, where one is starkly aware that the illusion of existence one here transcends is irrecoverable. There is no returning from this step, and this specter of irreversibility makes this last barrier appear the most formidable choice of all.

         But, in fact, in this final apocalypse of the self [“Hey honey, is my stuff in the dryer done yet?”], the dissolution of the sole remaining duality-that of existence and non-existence-identify itself dissolves in universal divinity, and no individual consciousness is left to choose. The last step, then, is taken by God alone.” final paragraphs

my note: "The wise who knows the Self as bodiless within the bodies, as unchanging among changing things, as great and omnipresent, does never grieve". "That self cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The Self chooses him (his body) as his own". But he who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not tranquil, and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the Self (even) by knowledge.

Katha Upanishad 1.2.22-24

I note that Hawkins lives here in Sedona also, along with Sutphen. I gather, without being able to yet get the details, that both were born in Dragon Year, 1928, and, hence, will be under a lot of astrological stress this Dog Year. See my piece in my Astrolos blog.  ballantynesinspiredmusings.blogspot.com/2018/02/astrological-ruminations-on-pluto.html

I’ve been driving around a lot of Sedona’s neighborhoods and they are old and crumby. It was the hip place to be 40 years ago when these guys moved here.

“I was more and more powerfully struck by the capacity to change things in the world by merely envisioning them; I saw how love changed the world each time it replaced un-love. The entire scheme of civilization could be profoundly altered by focusing this power of love at a very specific point. Whenever this happened, history bifurcated down new roads.” pg. 300

When I first moved to California in 1989 I ended up living with a woman who greatly valued my then spiritual state and powers. The FIRST Iraq situation was just heating up and Saddam Hussein was threatening to invade Kuwait, etc. My girlfriend told me one morning as I was about to go meditate, “Why don’t you create peace in the Middle East?” Soooo, I ‘made an inquiry’ into the mind of Saddam Hussein and saw he was completely obdurate, absolutely fixed on his position. I attempted to get into his brain but it was impossible.

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‘Resurrection’ Neville

“Man creates himself out of his imagination.”

“Too late have I loved thee, for behold thou wert within and it was without that I did seek thee.” St. Augustine as quoted

The greatest prayer – “Let us assume the feeling, ‘I am Christ,’ and our whole behavior will subtly and unconsciously change in accordance with that assumption.”  pg. 62

I’ve explained what happens when you go around declaring this publically.

“Imagining is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, and then you believe it to be true.”  pg. 58

“The perfect man … sees others as he desires them to be; he only hears what he wants to hear. He only sees the good in others. In him is no condemnation for he transforms the world with his seeing and hearing.” pg. 59

“Call your creation into being by feeling the reality of the state you would call. …Therefore, call the perfect one into being by living in the feeling, “I am Christ”

I suggest for more normal people, myself included, at least for now, the greatest prayer is: God thou hast created us against our wills. Free us!” Paramahansa Yogananda

A quick primer on how to pray effectively:

“Relax in a comfortable chair or a bed … Feel – I am sleepy, so sleepy … When this passive state is reached, imagine that you have realized your wish – not HOW it was realized – but simply the wish fulfilled. Imagine in picture form what you desire in life; then feel yourself as having already achieved it. Thoughts produce tiny little bubbles of speech movements which may be heard in the passive state of prayer as pronouncements from without.  … All that is necessary is to create a passive state and feel the wish fulfilled.”

         “All you can possible need or desire is already yours.” “As the end is accepted you become totally indifferent as to possible failure, for acceptance of the end wills the means to that end.”

At last I think I now understand the end of the Book of James: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

My commentary: we can’t know anything outside ourselves, so to manifest anything we have to create it inside ourselves then picture its creation in the world. To not fully incorporate God, or Christ, within us is the state of seeing through a glass darkly. But, once we have the internal creation, then we see face to face – we see our inner creation outside ourselves also.

SOOOOOO, I can feel my April Himalayan trip getting closer despite facing significant obstacles, such as $$$, etc.

For many people, certain people, this is a super important book.

A few hours later I was gobsmacked by the thought that the resistance I experienced when I declared ‘I am God’ came from within ME. It must have if this above is all correct. Not only that, the resistance Christ experienced must also have come from within him. All those soldiers spearing him while he was on the cross, Pontius Pilate must also have been manifested from the mind of Jesus. As I said it may be easier and less brain-racking to stick to other prayers.

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Sylvia Browne, ‘Astrology through a Psychic’s Eyes’

Even though Scorpios are guided by their genitals, they are actually directed toward business goals. It is true that the Scorpio has a criminal mind, but these individuals can turn it to their advantage and do well in business. You will find that some of the world’s greatest leaders have been of this sign. pg. 76

The Virgo, known as ‘The Virgin’, is promiscuous. Virgos are also known as “the whores of the zodiac.” Whenever I say that to Virgos, they say, “Yeah, that’s right.” pg.57

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Roy Eugene Davis, How to use the Technique of Creative Imagination

Set aside a period of time every day for practice in the creative silence and learn to work on the subjective level, so that you might see the results of your inner work projected in the world of three dimensions. Foreword

For I always experience in this life that which I feel to be possible. I can only experience without that which I feel to be true within myself on a feeling level. pg. 4

The common question is: “How long will it take to realize the dream, once it is established according to the practice?” This is determined by the individual’s own ability to accept it as true. When one gets and holds the feeling during daily activity that the dream is a reality, then it will be soon. The secret lies in the ability to make the feeling vivid in the quiet state. Do not project yourself into the future to experience the desired event, make then, now. Collapse time. Don’t go to another point in space to experience the event; bring there, here. Experience vividly here and now as though it were true. You will know that you have succeeded when you cease to yearn for the experience and instead, find yourself experiencing it. pg. 29

It is based on the principle that physical experience always follows psychological assumptions. … Real progress is not the result of evolution, but rather is the result of man’s ability to project himself into new situations psychologically, and then move into the situation physically. pg. 30-31

In this higher understanding we do not depend upon physical action to bring us a desired result. [but instead from altering your vision during the exercising of creative imagination] pg. 34

All that takes place to make your dream a reality is the result of your state of consciousness, or your new concept of self, gained in the silent practice of altering your vision during the exercising or creative imagination. Everything stems from self. pg. 34

It is not so much what we do that determines our lot in life, but what we expect. pg. 35

To summarize the technique:

1.   Physical relaxation in a quiet place.

2.   Vivid creation of a scene, in the imagination, one which would imply the dream fulfilled.

3.   Go deeper, into a state of sleep, to “set” the new state in consciousness. pg. 36

But it is possible to get rid of the pain associated with memory…

Revision is the method of releasing past painful experience so that the memory of it does not monitor present time situations. … pg. 55

In revising the experience, our main interest is not in wiping out the memory of the past, but in erasing the pain.

         Here is the technique: You assume an attitude similar to the one which is assumed for the practice of the technique of creative imagination – relaxed and in a quiet room. Bring before your inner vision the scene of the past painful experience which seems to give you the most trouble. Start just before the emotional part and run through it like a motion picture scene. Without feeling there is little or no reality. Run through it with feeling, as though you wished it had happened. Not as it did happen, but as though you wish it had happened. Then run back to the beginning and do it again. Do this with feeling, until you erase the pain. When you play it back as though you wish it had happened, you neutralize the energy pattern in the subconscious, or erase the picture which had been instilled therein. pg. 56

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The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, Gary Zukav

“The fourth translation of Wu Li is ‘I Clutch My Ideas.’ This is appropriate for a book on physics since the history of science in general often has been the story of scientists vigorously fighting an onslaught of new ideas. This is because it is difficult to relinquish the sense of security that comes from a long and rewarding acquaintance with a particular view of the world

         The value of a particular theory depends on its usefulness. In this sense the history of physical theories might be said to resemble the history of individual personality traits. Most of us respond to our environment with a collection of automatic responses that once brought desirable results, usually in childhood. Unfortunately, the environment that produced these response changes (we grow up) and the responses themselves do not adapt, they become counterproductive. Showing anger, becoming depressed, flattering, crying, and bullying behavior are response patterns appropriate to times often long past. These patterns change only when we are forced to realize that they are no longer productive. Even then change is often painful and slow. The same is true for scientific theories.

         Not one person, except Copernicus, wanted to accept the Copernician idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Goethe wrote about the Copernican revolution:”

         “Perhaps a greater demand has never been laid upon mankind; for by this admission that the earth is not at the center of the universe], how much else did not collapse in dust and shake: a second paradise, a world of innocence, poetry, and piety, the witness of the senses, the convictions of a poetic and religious faith; no wonder that men had no stomach for all this, that they ranged themselves in every way against this doctrine…”

         “Not one physicist, not even Planck himself, wanted to accept the implications of Planck’s discovery, for to do so threatened a scientific structure (Newtonian physics) over three hundred years old. Heisenberg wrote about the quantum revolution:”

“… When new groups of phenomenon compel changes in the pattern of thought … even the most eminent of physicists find immense difficulties. For the demand of change in the thought pattern may engender the feeling that the ground is to be pulled from under one’s feet… I believe that the difficulties at this point can hardly be overestimated. Once one has experienced the desperation with which clever and conciliatory men of science react to the demand for change in the thought pattern, one can only be amazed that such revolutions in science have actually been possible at all.”

“Scientific revolutions are forced upon us by the discovery of phenomena that are not comprehensible in terms of the old theories. Old theories die hard. Much more is at stake than the theories themselves. To give up our privileged position at the center of the universe, as Copernicus asked, was an enormous task. To accept that nature is fundamentally irrational (governed by chance), which is the essential statement of quantum mechanics, is a powerful blow to the intellect. Nevertheless, as new theories demonstrate superior utility, their adversaries, however reluctantly, have little choice but to accept them. In doing so they must grant a measure of recognition to the world views that accompany them…” pg. 192

“In this world view [the modern view of particles, etc.] there is no substance …

like a set of parallel mirrors, reflecting reflections, gives the illusion of an unending progression to nowhere. … The search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery that there isn’t any. …

         If there is an ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but subatomic particles are not “made of” energy, they ARE energy. This is what Einstein theorized in 1905. Subatomic interactions, therefore, are interactions of energy with energy. At the subatomic level there is no longer a clear distinction between what is and what happens, between the actor and the action. At the subatomic level the dancer and the dance are one.

         According to particle physics, the world is fundamentally dancing energy; energy that is everywhere and incessantly assuming first this form and then that….The world of particle physics is a world of sparkling energy forever dancing with itself in the form of particles as they twinkle in and out of existence, collide, transmute and disappear again.” pg. 194

Sorry for the longish excerpt.

M. Planck - A new truth does not triumph from convincing opponents and showing them the light but thanks to the fact that opponents are dying off and a new generation matures within the surroundings of the new truth. from BIM 5, my inspired musings newsletter

Science changes, funeral by funeral. Max Planck

Planck finally changed his view that his colleagues could be convinced about the new physics Planck had so elegantly proposed and finally believed that only by people dying would acceptance of quantum physics take hold.

         This discussion of ‘changing views’ is crucially important and one of the main reasons I stopped working altogether as I was ever the inventor and designer and constantly barraged with criticism, largely because new systems were different from the old systems. I also recognized that I had emotional handicaps from my childhood that prevented me from starting a company or working closely with others so that I could sell services or a product.

         I also found that my clients, mostly large conservative banks, did not REALLY want me to create innovative technical solutions UNLESS things stayed roughly the same organizationally. So, I saw that as a consultant my task was to deal with psychological barriers to change instead of proposing really innovative solutions to computer and network problems. Sooooo, my solution was to simply stop going to work as I had better uses for my time – such as hiking alone through the forests.

My iconoclastic thinking patterns have caused MANY problems. For example, y’all know, or SHOULD know, the multi-thousand year old noble 8 fold path of Buddhism:  right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right Samadhi or meditation. I took this photo of myself in Death Valley at the peak 100 year bloom in 2005 after researching the ‘Reclining Buddha’ pose.

The caption: I recently found out the many statues of the reclining Buddha represent Buddha at the time of his death. Buddha dined at a devotee’s house and upon leaving began feeling progressively sicker. Buddha asked his chief disciple Ananda to spread out a cloth upon which the Buddha lay for a bit before leaving this world in the reclining pose shown. Hearing this information for the first time at a Japanese Buddhist church sermon in Reno I ruminated for a bit and came up with a slight modification to the 2500 year old 8 fold path to enlightenment - in addition to the precepts of right living, right thinking, right meditation etc., I thought to add RIGHT EATING. This suggestion has so far been ignored, although not trivialized, by the hierarchy of the Japanese Buddhist church. All of Chinese thought is arranged around the number 8. Even the dosage for the Oriental medicine tea pills I take is 8 pills.

It’s a disruption to Buddhism to have some upstart like me come along and propose what seems to me to be totally reasonable modifications to the 2500 year old noble path. So far I’ve taken a lot of shit for my proposal – in the obliquely polite way of most Buddhists. Incidentally, the Buddhist minister from Reno founded his church with his American wife. One night she was working very late at the church writing a sermon and someone knocked at the door. She answered and opened the door to some stranger who murdered her. Her husband went back to Hokkaido, the northerly island of the Japan archipelago, and he video conferences services to the Reno church on Sundays. Clearly, you can better see Max Planck’s problem. Few can stand the aloneness necessary for real creation.

My proposed 9^th Buddhist precept is an example of the types of disruptions I used to cause professionally.

The hardest views I ever had to change were those about my childhood and my internal belief systems. This is why therapy, if done correctly, is so wrenching. I was only able to thoroughly inventory my character and thinking and emotional patterns learned from my childhood with the support of a lot of other people and I was 73 years old when I even began the process.

Incidentally, Einstein’s original 1905 paper on Relativity is easy to read. http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf

“Subatomic particles forever partake of this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation. In fact, subatomic particles ARE this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation … Hindu mythology is virtually a large-scale projection into the psychological realm of microscopic scientific discoveries. Hindu deities such as Shiva and Vishnu continually dance the creation and destruction of universes while the Buddhist image of the wheel of life symbolizes the unending process of birth, death, and rebirth which is part of the world of form, which is emptiness, which is form.” pg. 217

Note also the Chinese emphasis on this dance also – The ‘I Ching’, one of the foundations of Chinese thinking, is called the ‘Book of Changes’.

         Since everything is but an apparition

         Perfect in being what it is

         Having nothing to do with good or bad

         Acceptance or rejection

         One may well burst out in laughter

14^th Century Tibetan Buddhist Longchenpa

“Who are the dancers and who the dance?

What is ‘they’?

The things that dance, the dancers” pg. 314

Wu Li was Zukav’s first book. His next was ‘The Seat of the Soul’: "Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect.... In this most profound way, we are held responsible for every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention."

Finally there is one last major issue Zukav addresses: superluminal (faster than the speed of light) communications. There is no concise explanation but this quote from physicist David Bohm is good:

“Parts (of the universe) are seen to be in immediate connection, in which their dynamical relationships depend, in an irreducible way, on the state of the whole system and, indeed, on that of broader systems in which they are contained, extending ultimately and in principle to the entire universe). Thus, one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and independently existent parts.”

I may be wrong in some details but essentially modern physics can only explain certain parts of the universe if the whole universe communicates instantly, by our current definition, with all of its constituent parts simultaneously. This potentially unifying theory is related to, for example, Jung’s concept of synchronicity.

Note particularly how Zukav relates closely with the spiritualists such as Neville and Roy Davis above. Note Davis’s suggestion to collapse time. It’s as though you were to jump from the old physics of A>B to a new physics where the distinction between A and B disappears and their substitutes are in instantaneous communication with each other, and the rest of the universe.  Essentially, when you think of something it immediately appears. And thinking about it further on a long hike in the forest today,

the essence of this matter appears to be the time relationship between A and B. The gist of at least 200 of Mary’s books about abundance and prayer and healing has to do with collapsing the time between the creation of the intention, the prayer or the focus; and the manifestation, i.e., the ‘check in the mail', the healing, the reconciliation, the Enlightenment, etc.

I had a fascinating exercise in this compression, or even identity (thinking or intending on A and having it appear immediately) of time. My girlfriend had a major stroke and ended up in the hospital then a rehab, spending most of her time in bed. I kept encouraging her to keep praying for, envisioning, and intending on finding a place to live. One day my GF announces she wants to leave the rehab, ‘against medical advice’, and she’s in a querulous row with the staff encouraging her to stay. We leave. The rehab wouldn’t even let her use a wheelchair to leave. I drive 2 hours to Cottonwood, AZ and head to a mobile home park I had heard about but had never visited. We drove down the main street, I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign in the window of a place and called. The owner had just put the sign up 10 minutes before, was on an errand, but returned in a few minutes. The place had the handicap facilities we needed so she made a shocking full price offer to the seller which he accepted. We moved in days later. Her creative imagination obviously worked, she was better off out of the rehab not taking the prescription crap they were forcing her to take, plus we got the library.

Davis’s book is 116 pages, Zukav’s is 330. CHOOSE IT!

And finally, it’s extremely centering to be pondering these weighty matters and have a shrill voice come over the baby monitor, “I need my diaper changed.”

As it says on the masthead of the Zero Hedge website: On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

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Katherine Kuhlman - Allen Spraggett

Katherine Kuhlman was a noted evangelical healer in the 1950’s, ‘60’s and ‘70’s. The biographer discusses the method of the healing process as he sees it. My notes about it are:

1. I have reported before that in humans the mind does not directly control the body but a ‘mental’ image of the body that is the intermediary to the actual physical body.

2. Note the emphasis on emotional energy to create healing

3. Talk about the collective unconsciousness and archetypal symbols always refer to Western civilization. Conventional Tibetans, Indians and Chinese do not have a Christ archetype in their collective unconscious. Westerners never seem to consider this.

“Archetypes, or archetypal symbols, in Jung’s thought, are universal images that have existed in the collective unconscious of mankind from remotest times. … This area of archetypes … is referred to as psychoid, … or psychelike. …”

“…this archetypal or psychoid area is the substratum of, and the connecting link between consciousness on the one hand, and the physical world on the other. And the mind-body problem is even more difficult than supposed, because it’s not really a dichotomy-mind and body-but a trichotomy in which there is an inaccessible intermediary between the two.”

Working as a healer … “She is the focus who draws together the energy of the assembled crowd. She is also the focus, I think, for people who are not even physically present in the service because, in the collective unconscious, time and space change. Time is not sequential on that level of reality as it is here, and space relationships are different so that people who are aware of one another are somehow together in spite of separating distance. Katherine Kuhlman is the catalyst who triggers the liberation of the psychoid energies latent in the congregation.” pg. 159,160

“The hymns [at the healing service] repeat the archetypal themes of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit who heals. It is love that heals, but love channeled through the archetypal symbols. The effectiveness of a living symbol is its capacity to channel psychological or psychoid energy. The greater the emotional intensity which the symbol arouses, the greater the devotion and energy it channels. such spiritual symbols as God, Christ, and the Holy spirit attract devotion and thus are capable of channeling tremendous healing energy.” pg. 163

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The Hidden Teachings of Jesus Revealed – Roy Eugene Davis

“Man sins, or misses the mark, in his thinking and believing and creates his own limitation in his body or environment. This is because of the law of mental equivalent: inner mental pictures tend to reflect as outer circumstances. Every person projects in his environment what he secretly believes he is worthy of experiencing. Just as a person can create sickness and limitation, so he can, by releasing these concepts of sickness and limitation, experience health and unlimited expression. It does not matter how long we have been bound in negative mental picturing, when we break the pattern we can be released in a moment. This is the secret of instantaneous healing. pg. 22

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You Can Have it All, Arnold M. Patent

“Everything in the Universe is a form of energy. Mastery of money or anything else is mastery of energy.” pg. 9

“Our intuition, which is infinite intelligence talking to us between our thoughts, speaks softly.”

“The talents each of us have are literally God given, and they are given to be expressed. Failure to express them results in great discomfort in our physical bodies. The talents want out. Holding them in requires effort and is a major way we resist the natural order of the Universe. …

The Universe, in its infinite wisdom does not create talents without the corresponding need in others to experience the expression of these talents.”

pg. 21

“The Universe supports itself by encouraging each of us to fully and freely express our talents. If we want the support of the Universe, we must do what it created us to do – express our talents.” pg. 35

“Cause and Effect: This principle states that we cause everything that happens to us. … Another way of describing the law of cause and effect is to say everything that we have is what we want.” pg. 41

“The principle that we always receive what we want or believe is relentless. It is in constant operation whether we notice it or not. People who struggle for a living, doing things they dislike, perceive the world around them at variance from the ease and simplicity which is open to them.” pg. 53

“To master abundance requires us to deal with two basic issues. First, we must be willing to fully and freely express ourselves by using the talent or talents that the Universe has given us to express. Second, we must notice any beliefs which we have that are in opposition to the principle of abundance. If we are not experiencing total abundance we are literally pushing it away from ourselves.” pg. 54

“Since the Universe is perfect, anything that is less than perfect does not really exist.” pg. 55

“We have the capacity at any time to attract sufficient money into our lives to pay any debt we really want to pay. pg. 56

“Non-attachment: Allowing things to flow freely in our lives gives us the maximum benefit from each experience. …

Holding on to anything – people or material goods – blocks the free flow of energy around our experience with the person or object (car, house, clothing, or bank account) and reduces the pleasure we experience. It also inhibits the free movement of new things and new people into our lives.” pg. 59

Reading Patent is like getting hit over the head with a hammer. His truth bombs just come at you one after the other. Just off-hand, of all the books in Mary’s library this one covers all the bases and is the only one really necessary for the subject of intention, abundance, joy, etc. I definitely recommend everyone read this important book. Every time I go to excerpt something it feels like I could just continue and quote the entire book. Just randomly searching the Internet for Arnold’s birth data [1929 – probably Snake Year] I came across this:

We don’t create abundance. Abundance is always present. We create limitation.

Just this concept alone negates the message of a lot of the books in Mary’s library. Like all spiritual growth; it’s not growth we should be trying to achieve but a removal of the barriers to our spiritual understanding.

“Good and bad deeds are not the direct causes of the transformations of nature, but they act as breakers of obstacles to its evolutions - as a farmer breaks the obstacles to the course of water, which then flows down by its own nature. Patanjali

Commentary by Vivekananda: The water for irrigating the fields is already in the canal, only held back by gates. The farmer opens these gates and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So all progress and power are already in man. Perfection is man’s very nature; only it is barred off and so prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar away, in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those whom we call wicked become saints as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us toward perfection, and eventually it will bring everyone there. All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work, to take off the bar and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature.”

From Swami Vivekananda, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in the book Raja Yoga, Ramakhrishna – Vivekananda Center, NY, NY

Patent on the same subject: Our Relationship with Our Source

“Do you believe that God or an infinite intelligence is responsible for human life and everything else in the Universe? If the answer is yes, do you see it as an unconditionally loving and supportive energy? It is interesting that the way you view the energy, is exactly the way that you will experience life. If you can bring yourself to honestly and completely believe that it is totally loving, and supportive of everyone, under all circumstances, then you will experience a life of total joy. The degree that your belief is less than that, is the degree to which your life experience will be less than totally joyful.

         There are people who believe that it is better to focus on a concept other than God to explain the creation of the Universe. When this is an attempt to avoid the concept of God, because thoughts related are unpleasant, then the replacement will not work.

         As long as you harbor any thoughts that God is less than a totally loving and supportive entity, these thoughts will block you from achieving the peace of mind and joy that you wish to achieve.

         When we view God as less than a totally loving and supportive entity, we view people as less than totally loving and supportive. Those of us who can see the perfection and unconditional love of God can see the same quality in others and in the Universe.

         In our relationship with our Universe and with other people, we are truly experiencing the mirror image of our beliefs. It is a very simple but powerful concept. The best investment we can ever make is to learn to see everything and everyone around us as perfect. For then, we see ourselves that way, and we actually experience life that way.” pg. 138, To get the full Arnold I did not excerpt anything of this.

I was going to stop but I flipped to the end of the book and it’s just too good.

“We need do nothing to achieve a life that works perfectly. It is a gift from the Universe. In other words, we start out being whole and complete. Everything is always provided for us. The reason we are without anything is because we believe we cannot have it at that moment, or more accurately stated, we really do not want it.

         Remember, having, believing and wanting are synonymous. This is the law of cause and effect. If we do not have anything we think we want, it is only because we do not really want it. Abundance is the natural state of affairs in the Universe. It wants to flow through our lives. When we are not enjoying total abundance in each and every aspect of our lives, it is only because we are pushing it away. …

         Life is always the way we view it. It is a perceptual experience. Perceive it as perfect and it is perfect. Perceiving it as anything other than perfect is an illusion. The more we believe that the world of illusion is real, the more chaos and pain we create in our lives.” pg. 173

“The Universe, in its infinite wisdom, is an experience of simplicity at all times. It takes Infinite Intelligence to create true simplicity.” pg. 174

Were I able to meet up with Mary, I would remind her that the Bible does not say “Read without ceasing.” Almost EVERY book in her library was underlined in soft red and blue pencil, so she must have read almost every book. I did not. In the four weeks or so I have been dissembling the library I quickly looked through almost every book and sorted it. In addition to all the books Mary had maybe 500 cassette and VHS tapes. I just took these all to the thrift shop. I can’t even find a player for a cassette tape.

è tutto finito!

In India and Nepal it is difficult to get people to stop serving you seconds at meals. Saying “No more”, etc. does not work and it is an especial sin to just let someone pile food on your plate and then leave it. My Sherpa friends have adopted “tutto finito” as the most effective way to stop continuing, sorcerer’s apprentice type, food service so I use it around the house. 

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Well, never say never, or qualify what you mean by finito. After putting a wrap to all this Mary’s library stuff I found another 50 books on a tippy─top shelf near the ceiling. I went through them all, put about 12 for sale on Amazon─3 have already sold within 12 hours─and set aside 5 or so for more study, thinking NONE would displace the gobsmacking excerpts from Patent’s ‘You Can Have it All’ as the end of my commentary. I was wrong.

Healing Words, Larry Dossey, M.D.

“mental ‘efforts’ were able to influence past events”

“After practicing medicine for many years, he [Dossey] was stunned to discover scientific evidence of the healing power of prayer.”  front inside book jacket

“For several decades researchers have wondered whether reality, if it is tied to the actions of human observers, may to some extent be flexible, susceptible to being shaped by mental effort.”

“Schmidt’s studies suggest strongly that humans can mentally influence the behavior or output of random event generators.” … In a stunning series of experiments, physicist Schmidt found evidence that these influences may be displaced in time. His subjects tried to influence the output of an REG [random event generator] in the past─that is, they tried to affect random events that had already been prerecorded but not yet consciously observed. The outcome: “Apparently, present mental ‘efforts’ were able to influence past events about which ‘Nature had not made up her mind.’”

         Schmidt’s experiments appear to indicate that past subatomic events are malleable, capable of being influenced mentally, even though they have already occurred and have been recorded in some way, so long as they have not been consciously observed. pg.120-121

“We now realize that many diseases begin with disturbances at the subatomic level” … This perspective offers a possibility hitherto unimagined in medicine:

1. if we can affect the dynamic qualities of subatomic particles through our observations, as physicists maintain; 2. if these efforts can reach into the past and change unobserved events presumed already to have happened but about which “nature has not made up its mind,” … and 3. if the behavior of subatomic particles is associated with disease causation, which we know to be true; then 4. we may be able  to mentally shape our “medical past” in order to bring about health not illness.” pg. 122

My synopsis of the story of a woman with a large breast cancer she had had for 15 years and never treated. Doctor asks, “Why have you not seen a doctor to have this treated?” “Because if I did the doctor would cut it. This would let air touch the cancer, and make it ‘run wild’ and I would die.” The woman had surgery and soon died. The fifteen years she lived untreated is generally far longer than people live who are treated. “she seemed to be saying that as long as nothing formal was done, her fate was not fixed. As long as things remained shrouded with unknowns, she had a chance; but looking, observing, and doing would create a downhill fatal course.”

“As long as these events are left undisturbed and unobserved, perhaps the person has more of a chance to control them intentionally in a healthy way, delaying their progress or perhaps neutralizing them altogether. … Warnings about medical testing [because it is observing] by distinguished leaders in the profession have surfaced for more than a half-century. … Can a test actually serve as a “blocking agent” to the beneficial effects of consciousness on the past? Does “medical looking” in all its forms erase the malleability of critical physiological events thought already to have happened? This may help explain why people of many other nations who are “examined” far less than we, enjoy a higher level of health and longevity.

… “At this pre-test stage, if we were to take seriously the possibility that we may be able to reach back into the past and affect the unfolding of subatomic events that precede illness, an interesting scenario might unfold. The patient might take advantage of this window of opportunity and initiate her own prayers, images, and visualizations. She might marshal her friends to do the same─all in an attempt to affect the critical process in her body before a cancer might actually develop.” … Another option might be to do nothing─no exam, no tests, no looking and observing of any sort.” pg. 124-125

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Unobserved Processes

Carlos’s heart episode

Several years ago I noticed I had a once in 30 year astrological aspect that was due to return in about 2017. The first time I had the aspect I was 14 years old had a bad case of polio, described more fully at my blog post. http://ballantynesinspiredmusings.blogspot.com/2015/02/polio-first-word-then-plant-lastly.html

At 44 I had a feeling intuitively I was to become very sick and would have to go to the hospital. Not then knowing about the astrology of this, I decided that I would be better off being in my Guru’s care in India, so I cancelled out of work and went. Once there I remained sickly and bedridden for about 3 weeks EXCEPT my Guru would roust me from bed twice a day and force me to walk for several miles. My weight dropped precipitously to where people in India were suggesting to Gurujii that I was too thin. I estimate I got below 120 pounds at 5’ 11”.

         At 74, as I waited for my recurring aspect, nothing happened UNTIL I had a ‘heart attack’ while taking my afternoon long walk in the woods in Florida. The few people I talked to all suggest cardiologists for me. I did nothing. My heart remained ‘unobserved’, as it were. I did change my diet, cutting back on what little I had been eating. I continued to experience heart palpitations and arrhythmia but kept taking long 5 to 10 miles walks daily although I stayed near the side of roads so that if I keeled over someone would see me. After 2 months I presented at the VA medical center ER in order to ‘burn off’ what I felt might be hospital karma I was destined to experience. In other words, if I were destined to be in the hospital I could do it voluntarily. So I went and had a battery of comprehensive tests that showed nothing wrong. I continued to experience problems, my girlfriend demanded to move from Florida to Arizona as she hated the humidity and my heart problems disappeared completely about when I got to Arkansas, three days into our 6 day cross country drive.

         It’s not easy to not observe YOUR problems of this level of seeming seriousness.

“Great religions were first preached and long practiced in a world without chloroform.” C.S. Lewis

Sitting in the Sun not Observing your Cold

My girlfriend has related to me that when she or her brother or sister got a cold their Mother would make them stay home from school and go outside and just sit in the sun all day. Clearly this is an example of ‘not observing’ your illness. The mother was from a first generation immigrant rural farm family in upper Minnesota with a tradition of independence.

Science changes, funeral by funeral. Max Planck

Just yesterday [6 March 2018] I saw that the American Medical Association recommended that ALL hospitals offer a plant based diet option to all patients. This is clearly revolutionary. It was only 10 years ago that some few cardiologists began recommending a plant based diet for heart attack patients and this was considered extreme and well outside the main stream. One of the first advocates of plant based nutrition was Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in his book ‘Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease’, and he was then and even now considered a kook.

This is the food plan I have been following since about 2 hours after I returned home from my ‘heart attack’─the time it took me to get on my computer and do a Google search and read Esselstyn’s dietary suggestions in summary, and to order his 2008 book. I was performing an act of non-observation by changing and focusing instead on my food plan, AND, of course, by not going to a doctor. I’m suggesting that resistance to plant based nutrition by doctors is waning, one M.D.’s funeral at a time.

“According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled at the art.

         The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.

         “My elder brother cures sickness when it is extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.

         “As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”

         Among the tales of ancient China, none captures more beautifully than this the essence of The Art of War, the premiere classic of the science of strategy in conflict. A Ming dynasty critic write of this little tale of the physician: “what is essential for leaders, generals, and ministers in running countries and governing armies is no more than this.”

from the translators introduction to the Art of War, Sun Tzu, Shambala, London & Boston, 1998, page 1.

"The world is nothing but an objectified dream," says Paramahansa Yogananda, "and whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely instantly comes to pass.  ‘The Holographic Universe’, as quoted in BIM 54 http://ballantynesinspiredmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/bim-54-randomly-published.html

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‘Our Journey Back to Eden’, Carol Lovejoy

“Some years ago I had a vision. In this vision I could see California being sprayed for insect control. … I was told that this spray would cause disease and take our lives. … I told my group [of highly trained metaphysicians] about my vision. They all agreed that paranoia is one of the drawbacks of being intuitive.
…my vision kept coming to me. So I let go of all I had and bought a motor home. I took my two children out of school and traveled around the United States. We left with $1500 and the faith that a higher power would supply all our needs.
When we arrived in Missouri I met a woman who had a vacant house sitting on 160 acres of land. This wondrous woman let us live in that house for free … [and also] gave me money for food, clothing, gas and electricity.]
         That was when I started to work on myself to receive. “I am open to receive my good” was an affirmation I used daily. … If I did not let this woman supply me, I would have shut down my good and this wonderful woman’s supply of good. When you refuse to accept your good from others, it blocks the flow. It will not only block your flow, but will also block the giving person from the flow of good coming to them.
         Also, as a side note, I discovered that my intuition regarding the med-fly spraying was right on. Two years after my return to California, everyone in my group whom I considered pure and great metaphysicians contracted terminal diseases and all soon died.” pg. 96-97

My commentary: Stay flexible.

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‘Living Fearlessly’, Paramahansa Yogananda

“Self-realization is the knowing─in body, mind and soul─that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it come to us, that we are not merely near it at all times, but that God’s omnipresence it our omnipresence, that we are just as much a part of Him now as we will ever be. All we have to do is improve our knowing” preface

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‘Loose Ends’, James Hillman

Some Musings on Childhood, Abandonment, Betrayal and Independence

“Nothing can come without loneliness’. I have created a loneliness for myself that no one can imagine.” Pablo Picasso, as quoted in ‘Loose Ends’, James Hillman, Abandoning the Child

“If the child is repressed in the amnesia of “the second to the fifth year”, as Freud wrote, then it is the little child who shall return. … It is not merely that the childish returns in the left overs of childhood, but everything that emerges from unconsciousness comes back too young.”  Hillman, pg. 21

My notes: This is how the puer/puella is created.

“We sometimes refer to ourselves as “adult children” or “an adult child”, because we have a tendency to go through life with survival techniques we learned as children.  We’re essentially stuck in time.  Without some form of help, we unknowingly operate with old ineffective thoughts and judgments that can sabotage our decisions and relationships.” Arizona website of Adult Children of Alcoholics,  https://aca-arizona.org/am-i-an-aca/

“Abandonment as Jung pointed out and Neumann [Neumann, ‘The Origins and History of Consciousness’] elaborated is the precondition for the independence and invincibility of the child-becoming hero. “‘Child’ means something evolving towards independence. This it cannot do”, continued Jung, “without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is therefore a necessary condition, not just a concomitant symptom.” …

“The child is abandoned in order to reveal its independence.” Hillman, pg. 24

Pothos – yearning and longing

“Jung describes the phenomenology of wandering and longing as follows: “The heroes are usually wanderers … and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother” … The secret goal of wandering is the lost mother. … the puer aeternus: the eternally youthful component of each human psyche, man or woman, old or young, that is eternally wandering, eternally longing, and is ultimately attached to the archetypal mother.” pg. 51

“Ultimately then, our pothos refers to our angelic nature, and our longings and sea-borne wanderings are the effects in our personal lives of the transpersonal images that urge us, carry us, and force us to imitate mythical destinies.

pg. 61

Plato defines pothos as longings for that which cannot be obtained.

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Greenwich Village graffiti – early 1960’s: “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.”

Betrayal

“I know from experience that all coercion - be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion - ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.” Jung, quoted in Psychology and Alchemy (pp. 27-8), Hillman, pg 77

“Neither trust nor forgiveness could be realized without betrayal. Betrayal is the dark side of both. … A paradox of betrayal is the fidelity which both betrayed and betrayer keep, after the event, to its bitterness.” Hillman, pg. 79-80 It appears to me now to be a high state to be one betrayed as you would have passed through experience with love and trust.

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