|
|
APPENDIX C
Tear-Out Pocket Guide to the Thought Exercises and Principles
Week 1, WORLD AS A MIRROR OF SELF
The ancients saw a portion of the self in every element of the universe. Carrying forward the concept of the Union of Humanity and the Cosmos to its extreme, it stands to reason, that we are all one and the same. Each man is a part of every other in a most intimate non-abstract way. See every man, woman, child (and as far as possible everything else in the cosmos) as a reflection of some aspect of our selves. The student of this mental exercise will find that as those innermost conflicts are slowly resolved, the need for the reflection of those inner disturbances cease to manifest themselves and both a greater inner as well as outer peace is achieved. A sense of distance and detachment towards others gives way to a sense of understanding and greater inner peace. After several months, understanding gives way to compassion. After a year, compassion gives way to bonding. After some years, bonding gives way to a sense of oneness, which is the first step towards a realization that an awareness of the true Union of mankind and the cosmos may in fact be a realizable goal.
Week 2, A SPLIT PERSONALITY MODEL OF REALITY
In documented cases of MSP in people, each personality has the absolute ardent belief that it is an entirely separate entity from the rest of the personalities that dwell in the same mind. The first step in the treatment is to make the patient aware of the disorder and to recognize these personalities in an attempt to harmonize them into a unified, balanced, healthy entity. The individuality that we perceive is no more real than the individual entities occupying the same physical body of a person with MSP. We can regard society as an MSP patient on a massive scale. The first step in the recognition of the global entity or the “real” personality, is to accept, as in the case of the MSP patient, that we must develop a greater awareness of all of the other personalities as being one with us in inhabiting this single living body - mother earth. We must understand each personality as representing a different, or several different, aspects of our very selves in the deepest most intimate way. The next step is to understand exactly what each of these personalities represents within ourselves. Union is the realization of the truly connected one-ness with each of these personalities and the ultimate balance and inner contentment that results. See everything not as it appears on the surface, but for what it represents symbolically as in a dream. See in every woman, the representation of the universal mother. In every household pet, the entire animal kingdom. And in every act of another, the potential which lies within each of us, either positive or negative.
Week 3, ADDICTION AND THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY
In this exercise the reader is required to begin to see his attachment to his desires, his sensory pleasures, his ego, even his intellect as narcotic addictions. The drug addict’s sense of the ‘real world’ is blunted due to the chemical effect of the drug. He believes that he is happy in his artificially induced world. He believes that he is doing no harm either to others or himself while he is in his little world. Similarly, we too argue that we enjoy our addiction to the sensory stimulation that the world provides as well as the mental stimulation we receive at the thought of a job well done. However, logic tells us now, that we are not responsible for the effects of the outside world that we see. Our world, just as that of the drug addict, is also artificial - a creation of a cosmic explosion as algorithmic and predictable as a complex, and equally artificial video game. Our pride is falsely based on our need for mental stimulation. Without it, just like the addict, we would go into withdrawal and depression. However, just like the addict, we will find, that once we go beyond the lure of the addiction to ego ( the need to believe that we are responsible for the effects that we appear to cause) and sensory stimulation, the cloud of delusion is lifted and the true nature of reality can be seen more clearly and real life becomes vivid and true.
Week 4, THE COLOURS OF A PAINTING AND “LIFE”
As in any harmonious object, such as a great painting , story or play, there must be a balance, for example, of pathos and humor. As such, any such play or painting must be taken in its entirety in order to behold and appreciate its beauty and harmony. An attempt to eradicate the scenes of high drama and pathos from a great play would be analogous to removing all of the “dark colors” from a great painting in order to try to ‘beautify it’. Of course, this would be ludicrous, and would ruin the painting or play entirely. The distinction between misery and pleasure, good and evil, and other such duality’s is yet another form of artificial psychological ‘patterning’ which we have created by ‘habit’ as a result of the external influences of physiology, heredity, parenting and so forth. Indeed it is just such duality, which serves as the catalyst for further reactions in the cosmic formula. A key goal of both meditative techniques as well as introspective techniques is to break the patterning which creates the illusion of such duality and prevents us from seeing (and living) the beauty of the whole.
All actions, whether perceived and labeled as good or bad, honorable or dishonorable, blend together to form the rich canvas of life experience on which humanity is constantly painting.
Week 5, KARMA AS REFLECTED ENERGY
A slightly different way of looking at the deterministic formula of the Big Bang is to describe it in terms of Karma or Active Energy. All thoughts and desires generated by the mind are a result of this Karma, and each such thought or desire is the cause of additional future events or more Karma. We can deal with the effects of this Active energy in any one of three ways. The first most common way is to reflect it back into society as soon as it reaches us. For example, someone hits you and you simply hit him back. In this way, actions, or energies, once initiated remain in play forever, always creating some form of cause and effect. The second way, is to absorb the energy and store it for future use ( someone hits you and you bide your time until you can get him back later in some clever way). Both of these approaches sow the seeds of further action and reaction by reflecting actions back into the play of life either mentally or physically and hence perpetuate the explosion of algorithmic determinism which we are now trying to better understand. The third way, is to allow the energy to transparently pass through us without altering us in any way and without reflecting any portion of that energy back into society. As Jesus Christ admonished, “turn the other cheek”. Now something unexpected and almost magical happens. Because we are no longer encumbered by the weight of useless emotions and memories, and as such, because massive amounts of energy are no longer wasted on focusing on future and past events, all of our energy can be concentrated on absorbing the present moment. Life comes vivid and full of detail, which was previously missed in our confusion of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Life is Lived !
Week 6, NATURE AS A METAPHOR FOR SPIRITUAL UNION
Human spiritual evolution can be thought of in terms of a rain cloud. From a mass of cloud, droplets of rain condense and drift downward to earth. Each droplet either in the form of water or snow, is unique in its own way. Each will experience a unique set of events as it finds its way to the ground, into streams and rivers, in time perhaps even merging into the ocean . The cloud divides continuously into these droplets for several hours, even days. As the first such droplets evolve and merge into the flow of life, still fresh new droplets are being formed to begin their own life cycles. The one is becoming the many. In time, each droplet merges with others to form puddles and oceans, and from these puddles and oceans eventually dissolves into the air to return to its source, the clouds, only to repeat the endless cycle of condensation and precipitation causing the one to become the many, once again. As each droplet returns to merge with its source, can we say where in the cloud that specific droplet resides before it returns to the earth ? Is it the same droplet which is now descending as the one which rose and merged into the cloud earlier or is it a different one ? Even the question itself has no meaning. The cloud is fundamentally one and as each droplet merges with the cloud, it too becomes one. As the cloud precipitates new droplets, it cannot be said that the earlier droplet is returning to the earth, but just that the one is continuing to spring forth as the many. Similarly, we can think of ourselves as droplets of the cloud and one day, we will again be the one cloud from which we emerged – not a portion of the cloud, but the cloud itself. Just as it is impossible to isolate the droplet as it merges again with its source and becomes its source, so too do we become indivisible with our source – we become the source.
Week 7, THE INDIVIDUALITY OF A BLADE OF GRASS
‘What is individuality?’. As an individual I may believe that I have a soul or some form of perpetual personal energy which one might loosely define as “soul”. As an individual, I would tend to have the opinion that this soul is independent from the soul of others. It is the true “me”. In such a paradigm every living thing has a soul. Every man, animal, tree, plant, and amoebae. So next, let us consider the question, ‘what of the individual soul of a blade of grass ?’. Or rather the soul of the vast lawn or forest of which it is a part ? The question has no correct answer because the question itself is flawed. Even as each blood cell in our bodies is an individual living entity, and these cells and others like them make up this body of which we think of as being inhabited by a soul, so too do we ourselves make up parts of the greater elements of nature just as the blade of grass makes up a part of the lawn which makes up a part of the forest and so on. Where an individual soul begins and ends cannot be answered because our soul is no more individual than that of the soul of a blade of grass. Every element in nature from galaxies to atoms, has a soul only to the extent to which we individually and as a society give it an importance. But in reality, being a part of the single entity of nature or the eternal cosmos, there is only a single soul namely that of nature or what has here been called the Cosmic Script, Cosmic Field, or Greater Self.
Week 8, DREAM PARADIGM OF REALITY
It can be said that a dream is a reflection of one’s psychological state of mind. Similarly, it could be said that physical reality is a reflection of our inner psyche. A physical experience of being attacked on the street, for example, could be reflective of an inner fear of society. By relating or psychoanalyzing the physical events in our daily lives to reflect a possible deeper inner disturbance, we can begin to understand the true nature of the deeper layers of our inner psyche and gradually develop a deep sense of peace and contentment by addressing head-on the fears & disturbances, that dwell at such deep levels within our consciousness that they never are able to surface in our dream states but rather, become manifest in our physical existence itself. Each individual creates the external circumstances that he requires to experience in order to fulfill his understanding of himself. When a man’s life seems filled with repeated negative events, it is because on the deeper level of the “Greater Self” (of which he is not consciously aware) he feels the need for such experiences in order to explore a portion of his psyche, which those experiences influence. As experiences are collected and their purpose served, neither positive nor negative experiences become necessary for the continued exploration of one’s inner reality or true self. Self-realization is achieved and one no longer is influenced by external events, but rather is perpetually calm in the face of any apparent “adversity”. At such a stage, he continues to act, and to create circumstances not for his own self development, but rather, as part of his duty to provide external stimuli to serve others in their quest for understanding.
Week 9, HOLOGRAPHIC MODEL OF REALITY
By physically taking the minutest portion of a common hologram, we can recreate the entire hologram. So in life, by studying any fraction of the events of the cosmos, all of existence can be clearly recreated and observed. Any event in one’s life, from the state of the stars at the time of his birth, to the state of his palm print, to the way in which he chooses a set of playing cards, contains his entire life script, just as each tiniest fragment of a hologram contains all of the information of the entire hologram. Life can analogously be modeled as a four dimensional hologram, with the fourth dimension being that of time. We are only just beginning to understand how such microcosmic events can be studied and interpreted to reflect the entire macrocosm. Similarly, a hologram of a group of people standing together, gives the obvious impression of separate people in a single image. Yet we find that in each separate person in the image, we also find all of the information required to reproduce the entire hologram - including all of the other “separate” individuals pictured in the hologram. Anagorically, in nature, all of humanity can be thought of as being present in each individual. Separateness and individuality can be seen as an illusionary extrapolation of one’s self. The four dimensional hologram of life is merely a play in which each person has a pre-defined role.
THE TEN PRINCIPLES
· Thou Shalt Not Covet the Fruits of Thine Own Efforts
· Thou Shalt Not Judge Thy Fellow Man
· Thou Shalt Not Believe in the Illusion of Duality
· Thou Shalt Respect the Earth and All of Its Elements
· Thou Shalt Act One’s Lines in the Drama of Life With the Greatest of Vigor and Enthusiasm
· Thou Shalt See Thine World as a Reflection of Thine Own Self
· Thou Shalt be Quiet for at Least Ten Minutes Each Day
· Thou Shalt Seek Only The Eternal Self Within
· Thou Shalt Rebuke the Sixth Sense Like the Plague
· Thou Shalt Unify the First Nine Principles into a Single Unified Principle of Life