Ancient wisdom for transitional times

These are my notes for the talk Heather Mendel and I gave at the Central Coast Book and Author Festival yesterday. We each chose three talking points drawn from our own tradition. My points are are in bold below, followed by aphorisms I used to expand them.

Revising your view of the world

• Consciousness is our very existence; it is our Being. - Mark Dyczkowski
   
    Maya - illusion - to count or measure

Behold the universe in the glory of God and all that lives and moves on earth. Leave the transient; find joy in the Eternal. - Isa Upanishad

Observe constantly that all things take place by change. - Marcus Aurelius

Cosmic Consciousness is the Highest Common in the Cosmos, the Unity that pervades the diversity of the Universe. -GB

Freeing the mind from the fetters of materialism is like untangling a scarf from thorn bush. - GB
   
We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light. - Hafiz
Those who seek security from matter alone can never have any real sense of security. GB

Where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. -Tagore


Conscious evolution: taking charge of your attention/free will

•  Prioritizing: "Attention is the key." - Ganesh Baba

What we pay attention to grows. - GB

Man now has a mandate to turn a new leaf in life: auto-evolution, the only alternative to auto-extinction.  - GB

Unlike Darwinian evolution this far, the next phase of evolution is conscious. It is up to us whether we continue to evolve or not. - GB

We must lose no time in realizing the gravity of our present predicament as a specific species geared to free will. - GB

Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. - Anandamayi Ma

Nowhere to go but the heart - Rumi

Practice: conscious action

•  Acting from a new perspective
•  Walking with feet in two worlds

The hand of human destiny oscillates between unity and diversity, spirit and nature, pure consciousness and action in the world of form. - GB

The words "yoga" and "religion" have the same meaning: the reunion of spirit and matter.   - GB

Posture:
When your back is straight, you look forward instead of down. Both your physical and mental perspective shifts. - GB

Straight back, open heart.  - GB
   
Breath:
The breath connects the world of space and time to the world beyond space and time. - GB

One person breathing slowly and deeply in a stressful situation where others are taking shallow unconscious breaths changes the atmosphere. - GB

Breathe in abundance/gratitude; breathe out surrender.  - EN

Being present/service:
Have no ambition, above all pretend nothing, but be at each instant the utmost that you can be. - GB

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. -Tagore

The fight for the survival of the fittest must now be changed to the fight for the survival of the weakest.  - GB

Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations.— Paramahansa Yogananda

Take more time, cover less ground. -Thomas Merton

Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success. - Swami Sivananda

High on Wisdom

Here's the text of the Times of India review of The Crazy Wisdom of Ganesh Baba. I think it's the best review I've seen. Thanks, Manu Dev!

 High on wisdom

Manu Dev

Aug 1, 2011, 04.04pm IST

The Crazy Wisdom of Ganesh Baba
By Eve Baumohl Neuhaus
Pages: 160
Price: Rs 295
Wit and wisdom, posture and possibilities, drugs and discourse on the hippie trail — the book on the multi-faceted Shri Mahant Swami Ganeshanand Saraswati Giri, aka Ganesh Baba, has enough to keep the serious seeker as well as those just curious, engrossed. Written by Eve Baumohl Neuhaus, one of Baba's many students, this unusually candid book throws light on the life and times of Baba, who "considered himself the true guru of the psychedelic generation."

If the title, The Crazy Wisdom of Ganesh Baba is a teaser, then the blurb "psychedelic sadhana, Kriya yoga, kundalini and the cosmic energy in man" points to the many topics that the mystic shares his insight on. Copious notes of the teacher himself are reproduced to illustrate his profound thoughts, which were more often than not inspired by chillum sessions.

Eve's book traces Baba's early days from his initiation by Lahiri Mahasaya to his discipleship with Swami Sivananda and also the period when he ran the Anandamayi Ma ashram. The author also covers the mystic treading the path of Naga Babas, whose affinity to cannabis and other entheogens are well documented. Baba's dos and don'ts for joint sessions are also touched upon, which include the importance of keeping your back straight and controlled, deep breathing while focusing your attention.
Absolute honesty is the trademark of this book. The author pays glowing tributes to her beloved teacher, who is shown to predict that "the psychedelics, rather than the beefy-alcoholics are due to inherit the earth". Then she explains her surprise when she got to know about "his drunken rampages in New York City". Eve writes that even though Baba advocated vegetarianism, he had fish once in a while. She rationalises his behaviour with her arguments that teachers sometimes do have "crazy wisdom" to impart.

Baba's lessons on Crea (for creative) Yoga are given in alliterative 4 P's: posture, pranayama, pinealisation and pronov-mentation or posture (conscious posture and exercise), prana (conscious breathing and eating), practice (conscious action) and presence (constant awareness of consciousness).
The various diagrams and charts for "The Cycle of Synthesis" that depicts the evolution of matter to consciousness and back help the reader appreciate Baba's scientific bent of mind. The book has its origins in Eve's work with Baba in updating his manuscript for a book titled Crea Sadhana.
Ehud Sperling of Inner Traditions, which published Eve's book, gives an account of his days with the "outrageous" yogi in the preface. The picture of the 90-year-old Baba enjoying joints and dancing into the night with naked Brazilian Samba dancers at a New York City party thrown in his honour adds to the esoteric aura of this maverick mystic.

Along with the fun and laughter of Ganesh Baba, the book captures his insistence on what he considers one of the basics of sadhana — keeping the back straight. As Eve says: "If, in the end, you learnt nothing from Ganesh Baba except to keep your back straight, he would be satisfied." That's one thing the reader can implement as a first step and reap benefits, if not the entheogen part.

Nowhere to go but the heart

Healing

Nowhere to go but the heart.  - Sufi saying

 Every day I'm better. Every day I feel fully myself for a little longer. I'm sleeping less—though  I still took two short naps and one long one yesterday, felt depleted much of the day regardless, and then slept soundly through the night. On the other hand, friends were here from 9 in the morning till 1:30 in the afternoon, helping in the house, bringing delightful food, and sharing their healing energy with me.

My hand is close to completely mobile now. The areas around the scabs are tender, so I avoid using those parts of my hand - the finger easy, the palm not so easy - but I haven't been in real pain since the third day following the surgery, a gift I attribute entirely to Dr. Woods's extraordinary craftsmanship. 

At the heart of the matter is caring: channeling the light of consciousness through the heart.

I'm very fortunate. My heart is overflowing with gratitude for the extraordinary care I received through this experience: from the folks at MedStop who recognized the danger and sent me right to the ER; to the ER staff who called Dr. Woods so quickly; to the nurses and hospital staff who managed the regimen of IV antibiotics pumped into the wound and my veins over the days following; to Dr. Holland who recognized the C. diff so quickly, and the ER staff the second time around who re-hydrated me and set me on the course to overcoming it; to Tom's round-the-clock compassion, to Josephine who showed up at my house the day after I came home bearing baskets of probiotics, burdock root, sauerkraut and yogurt, washed my hair, and fed both Tom and me and healing meal; and to the long list of friends who've sent loving thoughts, reiki, prayers and other forms of distance healing, to others who've visited, cleaned the house and brought meals. No wonder I'm healing as quickly as I am.

Nonetheless, this is a dualistic world, one in which heaven and hell co-exist. The loving care of all these individuals is balanced by the descent I experienced during the first few days of the ordeal.

The first instance of the opposite of caring came in the form of that sunny Californian optimism that makes San Luis Obispo the second happiest place in the world. We all assumed the dog bite would be fine; the dog's owner didn't even give me her name. A quick apology was enough.

Then two images from the depth of the experience:

On the Fourth of July, the Monday after the dog bit me, I woke nauseous from the huge doses of painkillers I was taking. Using my left hand because my right was engaged in being drained, I buzzed the nurse, something I had to do every time a trip to the toilet was necessary— and many were—with liters of antibiotics rushing through me day and night. After the third buzz she came, pert and breezily apologetic, and unplugged the pumps from the wall so I could get up and lumber across the room to the toilet. I mentioned to her I felt sick and she promised to order an an anti-emetic. I crawled back into bed, positioned my hand so it would drain onto the absorbent pad instead of the sheets and none of the tubes were kinked, and went back to sleep.  

Perhaps a couple hours passed when I woke to an orderly dropping off my lunch. I used the up button to raise the back of the bed so I could sit up to eat and as I rose, I discovered I was very nauseous indeed. I buzzed the nurse and waited, sitting very still and breathing slow and deep. About ten minutes passed. I was about to buzz again when I knew it was too late. I grabbed the lid that was keeping my lunch warm and vomited into it.

Then I sat there, holding the lid with my left hand, my lunch waiting, the absorbent pad doing double duty, for about forty minutes.

"Surrender is the rare and necessary gift of cooperation with God," Ganesh Baba says. How fortunate I was at that moment to have done the work, breathing in abundance, breathing out surrender, for months in advance of finding myself in a position where there was nothing to do but surrender.

I examined my breakfast curiously and checked out what had and hadn't been digested. I waited. I breathed.

And eventually, the nurse came, profusely apologetic this time.  But, too often, apology is cheap currency. 

Nonetheless, the dog, her owner and the nurse, despite their lack of caring attention, are only messengers. My karma is my karma; their karma is theirs.

The second incident came later the same night.  I woke up soaking wet: bed, blankets, hospital gown. Apparently my hand had moved off the absorbent pad while I was sleeping and all those antibiotics had rushed through my hand and into the bed. I buzzed and the night nurse was on it. The nights are better than the days for getting service of Hotel French. Less squeaky wheels.

When I was washing up, I realized that it was the left IV that was leaking, not the right. It would have to be removed and reinserted, but first my hospital gown, which I'd been wearing since I came to the ER Saturday morning, would need to be changed. Unfortunately, it was not the IV kind of gown that snaps at the shoulders. 

So, at 1:30 in the morning, I stood naked in the middle of the hospital room as my wet gown was cut off me. It took another hour and a half to find a good vein and get a new IV hooked up. Finally reconnected to tubes in both hand, pumps plugged into the wall, I fell asleep.

When she entered the seventh gate,
From her body the royal robe was removed.

Inanna asked:What is this?

She was told:
Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect,
They may not be questioned.

Naked and bowed low, Inanna entered the throne room.

Ereshkigal rose from her throne.
Inanna started from her throne.

The Anunna, the judges of the underworld, surrounded her.
They passed judgment against her.

Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.

She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.

Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.

"Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer" by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. Harper & Rowe, Publishers.

  

We can choose what we care about. I delight in seeing this whole experience mythologically. I could choose to be angry. Then, I would probably still be fighting some infection instead of drawing a picture of a heart on my healing hand.

repost: trying to understand the universe in terms of consciousness

while listening to Ganesh Baba on my iPod...

Some notes and thoughts, October 12, 2008
Some editing and additions, December 4, 2010

We must become more familiar with the essence and structure of consciousness, because it is out of consciousness we come and to consciousness we return. Ganesh Baba, “The Rochester Raps,” recorded by Ira Landgarten, 1981.

The cosmos is created out of consciousness vibrating at different frequencies, visible to our limited senses as a fractal world created from rainbows and scales:

from The Crazy Wisdom of Ganesh Baba

The eight broad categories, matter, energy, space, time, life, mind, intelligence and consciousness, all operate within the human psyche, but the physical body operates only in the first three dimensions: matter, energy and space. The fourth dimension, time, we can barely conceive; it is like a baby moving around in the womb trying to understand the outside world. GB

Intelligence = Divine Wisdom, Sophia, Buddhi

The subtle world creates the material world. As Swami Armitananda once said, "It is obvious that mind controls matter every time you lift your arm," and science has long shown that the material world disassembles as our understanding of it becomes subtler and subtler.

We misunderstand the subtler worlds when the mind claims greater wisdom than it has, and it sees exactly the opposite of what is. The infinite fractal world of scales and rainbows is reduced to limited patterns conditioned by experience. Consciousness appears to flip and become its opposite: Mercury, in flight between worlds.

The möbius twist.

Thoughts, inhabitants of the world beyond space and time, take on a life of their own whenever they get the chance. Potential archetypes, progenitors of the world in which we live, arise with every word we say, with every intention, with every mood, with every thought we have (conceive: give birth to, create), whether conscious or unconscious. Some thoughts, conceived in the unconscious, take on the dark aspect of things not understood; and others, born in the light of consciousness, bring wisdom and understanding.

We fear what we don't understand - and we project our fear outward onto others and into the future.

 
Jung knew. The darkness is coming into the light now, willy-nilly. GB




How relevant this is now - during the darkest days of the year, as we near the Winter Solstice. In fact, these are the darkest days of darkest times in my lifetime, in most of our lives, if not in the life of our civilization, and possibly our planet.

The quality of each individual's consciousness, whether receptive or resistant, high or low, subtle or dense, with which we receive and respond to the darkness determines our experience. Our experience, in turn, creates the lens through which we focus our consciousness.

The focusing mechanism of the lens of experience is attention. We can choose what we pay attention to, what we shed the light of consciousness on.

Life, says GB, is 49% fate and 51% free will. 

The only way to transcend the current level of consciousness, whether individual or collective, is through the synthesis of light and dark.

These are times of highest synthesis, of enormous potential —

of the possibility of coming together without baggage,

of receiving and giving without judgment,

of being present, instead of just in time.

Ganesh Baba says the darkness will rise in all four fields of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. There is no stopping it.

It will manifest differently in each of our lives, though some groups will share their experiences.

But only when we recognize the light in disguise in what appears to be darkness, we will be through the twist.

Meditation comes

For several days I've been working on a project that took all my attention for most of every day. There was a day a few days ago when I sat down to meditate at 8:11, but meditation wouldn't come.

Meditation isn't something you do; meditation comes. Christian Pilastre

My head was full of facts (nice facts about chocolate, but facts nonetheless) and my body full of adrenalin. I was late starting, so I skipped the stretching and wiggling part of my routine and the rapid exhale cleansing breaths and went straight into long, slow deep breaths. Over and over my mind was drawn back to the same mental pathways I had been using all day. Once on those comfortable tracks, other thoughts of similar vibration flooded in.

Recognizing and accepting that my head needed extra time to empty, I patiently returned to breathing consciously and refocusing on the third eye and listening to the OM again again. It was well after the 11 minutes passed before I was able to move beyond the day's issues. I missed the pleasure of knowing and feeling that I was part of a worldwide phenomenon. There was a time when I'd have been hard on myself for missing the opportunity, but over the years I've learned not to judge myself - or others - so harshly. We're all evolving at our own pace.

Most of us are like seeds that grow a long time in darkness before pushing our heads up into the sun. Ganesh Baba

I probably sat for 20 minutes before I unwound sufficiently to be relaxed and receptive, which is the key to real meditation.

Then the vision of a world built on love returned. At first I saw people and animals interacting in a landscape of lovely soft hills, like the ones in South Wales. Around each person, each animal, and each feature of their surroundings was a swirling cloud of changing colors. The colors moved in and out of the center of whatever they are massed around, concentrating at the center, dissipating at the edges. As they shifted, they interacted with and affected the colors of nearby swirls.

Then my perspective rose, and I could see that the colors were also interacting on at a higher level of organization. Similar patterns on a larger scale emerged. Some areas were darker and some lighter, some larger and some smaller, but the fluid dynamic remained constant. Colors flowed into other colors intensifying and then fading, a shifting flux of twisting spherical swirls.

At the center of each swirl, no matter what its size, the color was so dense it looked black. I tried to let my relaxed attention focus on one of the points of darkness, but as I drew near, my field of vision was flooded with light.

Spiritual practice streamlines the turbulence of mind. Then the Sun of Suns, Absolute Consciousness, clearly reflects on the mirror of mind.  Ganesh Baba

I bathed in the inner sunshine for a time and then came back to the world slowly, with a smile.

The Cosmos is differentiating, diversifying and preparing itself, always, for the coming of life, the coming of consciousness. Ganesh Baba

Getting there from here

When I sit for 11 minutes at 9:11 every evening, I go through my crea routine (from page 61), set the stage quickly with a thought - tonight it was "getting there from here"- and then slide easily into taking ten or so of the longest, slowest, deepest breaths I can take - it's like getting into a pool and swimming. When I get to the end of an in- or out-breath, I usually pause and listen. Pranov, the OM, rushes in between breaths.

As I breath consciously and rest in the OM, I focus my attention on the area just in front of my forehead above my eyes and at the forefront of my brain, the third eye. Baba's name for the energy center there is the gyral center, which is very fitting, since, with sufficient attention and appropriate action, the spinning of the gyral center will take you into other dimensions.

The answer to how do we get from here, this collision-course existence, to there, a world built on love, comes slowly, over days of meditation.

We get there by doing what we're doing: millions of us are sitting together for 11 minutes a day envisioning the new reality, creating it consciously in the light of the highest good; and we get there by living as if a world based on love was already our collective reality. Instead of physical gifts, gives gifts of attention. Pay attention to where your attention is going. Notice the vibration.

When Ganesh Baba noticed that one of us was being insensitive to the general vibration, the ambiance, he would say, "Don't screw up the pitch!"

Don't screw up the pitch.

Love and Money

For several nights now I've been taking part in the New Reality Transmission, a worldwide event in which thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe millions of people are meditating on a world built on love for eleven minutes, at 11:11 (EST), for eleven days, beginning, of course, on 11/11. This is the first of several blogs reflecting on my experience.

Each evening I settle into a quiet place where I can sit comfortably with my back straight - or, as Ganesh Baba would say, my antenna aligned. As I get settled I wiggle a little to loosen up, and exhale rapidly a number of times to clear my lungs, sometimes using my arms like chicken wings to help pump out the air. Then, relaxing more and more deeply, I take about ten of the longest, slowest breaths I am capable of taking, the out-breath roughly twice as long as the in-breath.

I use mantras with my breath practice. Ever since I learned it from Baba, a simple OM on the in-breath, OM on the out-breath, has been the core of my practice. Sometimes I sing the word to myself as I breath, going up and down the scale, or to some melody, but more often I just listen to my inner sound.

The syllable OM represents the primal vibration, the sound of the Big Bang behind space and time. Our ears cannot possibly hear it - but our bodies do sing, some more loudly, some very softly. The body's song is not respected in today's world; we call it "tinnitus." I've always thought of the rushing sound in my head as my personal OM and I find listening to it immensely peaceful. I revert to OMing in one form or another between periods of trying a series of other mantras that have come to me from here and there over the years.

Currently, I am using abundance on the in-breath, surrender on the out-breath. I don't use the word, I feel the idea; it's vibrational.

Eventually, I begin the slow, rhythmic breathing that I try to maintain through rest of the meditation, and I think about a new world built on love, a world where the currency is love instead of money.

Each evening the thoughts that come to me when I set that particular stage are becoming clearer. I've been taking a few notes after each meditation. Over the next few days, I'll try to find the time to put some of those understandings here too.

What Matters

It doesn't matter how far from perfection you are ; it matters that you are headed in the right direction now.

I attribute this comforting quotation to Ganesh Baba, but, to be honest, I don't know who said it. Baba's soft, comforting side was one I knew well, but it's not the side he shows in his writing and it emerges only rarely in the recordings I've listened to. What he does say about perfection is almost always about the importance of striving for it.

The statement arrived in my consciousness one morning some months ago as I stretched my leg and back in the mahamudra. Baba was watching from his picture on the altar.


Deeply engaged in the practice, I was attending to my body's subtle and not-so-subtle responses as I inched closer and closer to closing the circuit when the thought came.

Yogic and tantric lineages use the term mahamudra -"high" "gesture"- for practices they consider most central to their teaching. I've been practicing the Kriya mahamudra for more than thirty years, sometimes more, sometimes less. Over the years it's improved, but my 60-year-old body, while built very well for carrying babies both inside and out, was never perfectly aligned; and my mind, which leans toward being in charge and being right, is not inclined to focus on weakness.

For many years, I always felt not-good-enough about the physical aspect of my practice - however much time or effort I put in seemed not-enough. Only relatively recently have I begun to able to override the constant vague feeling of guilt by giving my full attention to the practice itself, a big step.

When the new thought arrived, my last underlying feelings of inadequacy faded away.

We are all imperfect; there's no more point in dwelling on our weaknesses than there is in dwelling on our strengths. It's ego both ways.

Baba tells us that conscious evolution is about using humanity's specific gift of free will to strive for an ideal state in body, mind and spirit. Accepting what is as it is, the feminine side of the practice, is as much part of the ideal as inching forward, the masculine side, is.

"It doesn't matter how far from perfection you are; it matters that you are facing the right direction now."

Eve Neuhaus

KCHO interview

The Baba book is up on Amazon

Check it out: The Crazy Wisdom of Ganesh Baba: Psychedelic Sadhana

one more step

(photo by Michele Cruzel)

I just sent off the "final" copy of the manuscript I've been working on for the last thirty years.

Well, not exactly. Not constantly. Actually, it sat under my altar for more years than it did on my desk, but for the last few, it's been my main work. It feels pretty strange not to have it hanging over me, but the immense sense of relief I was expecting hasn't shown up yet, maybe because I know how much more work there will be between now and the printing.

All the same, it's gone.

Yesterday I realized that I'd forgotten the last piece, a list of aphorisms. In the typewritten 1960's manuscript I've mostly been working from, they're "tenets to live by." Most of them sound like they come directly from Baba's teacher, Tripura, who wrote the original Bengali text that Baba translated and modernized. There's very little of Baba's voice there — although he's made some of sayings much longer in tiny scrunched-up longhand much of which I didn't have the patience to decipher. So much of the work on this book was doing that - I used a magnifying glass mostly, but occasionally I scanned parts and blew them up using Photoshop. Some of it was real detective work, making careful comparisons to letters in other words. Luckily, Baba had beautiful handwriting; I could depend on it being pretty consistent.

Anyhow, when I realized that I'd never typed up the tenets to live by, I did, and then I listened to Ira Landgarten's Rochester Raps tapes, watched the video of Baba and Timothy Leary, and watched every one of Deniz's Youtube videos. I pulled out my whole collection of written materials, both by and about Baba, and looked through them more of less randomly. Finally I wrote to a bunch of Baba-friends and asked what they remembered.

Here is the result. (The first few pages of it, at least. There are lots of gems!)

Ganeshian Aphorisms

Once a psychedelic, always a psychedelic.

The next revolution will be a spiritual one.

It is our first job, perhaps the only important one, to maintain our body-mind machine – this space capsule – in its optimal operating order – O3.

Have no ambition, above all pretend nothing, but be at each instant the utmost that you can be.

Be an erect animal, not a bent-backed animal.

Don't screw up the pitch.

Keep your back straight, breathe deeply, relax, and all will follow.

There's a reason your head is above your heart. Keep it there.

As for your place in the universal manifestation, the Supreme above will fix it for you.

Take your feelings to the court of reason.

Transcending ‘time’ is real transcendence.

Sit up straight and breathe, dammit.

Sense enjoyment, though immediately pleasurable, is ultimately painful. Striving for spiritualization, though immediately irksome, is ultimately satisfying.

Carry your column as a column.

Guru can teach you how to swim but you have to swim to get across; no Gods or Gurus can do that for you.

Even an atomic holocaust can be a festival of life. Death is not the terminal of life; it’s the grand exit.

The soul is not confined to a capsule. It is ever-existent into infinity.

To individual evolution, I invite the aspirants of the world.

Simple living and high thinking should be the ideal of the spiritual striver.

Just as brass and copper ware have to be regularly rubbed to keep them clean and bright, so has the mind to be rubbed with Sadhana to keep it fresh and clear.

Just as in a dream, the objects appear real and prove imaginary on waking up, so shall this world appear dreamlike when we awake to the full blaze of spiritual enlightenment. After death also, the world will fizzle out like a dream.

We are responsible for the results of our own actions.

Butter is incipient in the milk, but cannot be had without churning. Similarly, the Self is incipient in our being, but cannot be realized without striving or Sadhana.

Go on doing your due duties in the world, while remaining devoted to the Divine within.

Do not try to impose your feelings on others by demolishing theirs. Who indeed knows what is the inner experience of another?

Synthetic evolution

Ganesh Baba once wrote,

"‘Survival of the weakest’ is the basic trend of evolution in the human phase. It requires a unique synthesis of production and distribution in the four phases of our being, namely, physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. Synthetic evolution, survival, survival in all phases, is total survival, and not a partial process, as in the biological Darwinian phase. Now we are passing the Jungian, and preparing for the advanced analogue of the Buddha phase.”

He's saying that in order to survive, humanity must grow out of "survival of the strongest" into the "survival of the weakest", a shift to the heart.

The shift must happen in all four phases of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual, in the way they interact, a unique coming together of nature and spirit.

Darwinian evolution is only a small arc in the great cycle of creation/evolution. Synthetic evolution goes beyond the Darwinian phase, through the Jungian, or psychological phase, and into a new spiritual phase.

Each age has its avatar or figure who embodies the age. Baba speaks of the avatar (or avatars) of the next age as being more like the Buddha than like the Christ, avatar of the passing age, more receptive than active.

And, indeed, the presence that is growing in so many of us now is more receptive than active.

The Tolle teachings are transmitting the wisdom of the new consciousness to anyone receptive.

And Ganesh Baba's teachings prepare the receptacle: posture, prana, practice, presence.

trying to understand the universe in terms of consciousness

while listening to Ganesh Baba on my iPod...

Some notes and thoughts

“We must become more familiar with the essence and structure of consciousness, because it is out of consciousness we come and to consciousness we return.” Ganesh Baba, “The Rochester Raps,” recorded by Ira Landgarten, 1981.

The cosmos is created out of consciousness vibrating at different frequencies, visible to our limited senses as a fractal world created from rainbows and scales:




"The eight broad categories all operate within the human psyche, but the physical body operates only in the first three dimensions: matter, energy and space. The fourth dimension, time, we can barely conceive; it is like a baby moving around in the womb trying to understand the outside world."

Errors in understanding the subtle worlds come when the mind claims greater wisdom than it has, and sees exactly the opposite of what is. Because as soon as the individual mind, the ego, enters into consciousness, consciousness flips and becomes its opposite: Mercury, in flight between worlds.

The möbius twist.

Thoughts take on a life of their own whenever they get the chance. Potential archetypes arise with every word we say, with every intention, with every mood, with every thought we have (conceive, give birth to, create), whether conscious or unconscious. Some are conceived in the unconscious and take on the dark aspect of things not understood, and others are born in the light of consciousness and bring wisdom and understanding.

We fear what we don't understand and project our fear outward onto others and into the future.

"Jung knew. The darkness is coming into the light now, willy-nilly."

The quality of the consciousness, receptive or resistant, high or low, subtle or dense, with which each of us receives and responds to the darkness coming to light now will determine our experience. Yet the only way to get to the next level is through synthesis.

These are times of highest synthesis, of enormous potential —

of the possibility of coming together without baggage,

of receiving and giving without judgment,

of being present, instead of just in time.

Baba says the darkness will rise in all four fields of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. There is no stopping it.

It will manifest differently in each of our lives, though some groups will share their experiences.

But once we recognize the light in disguise in what appears to be darkness, we will be through the twist.

Practice

For several months I've been deeply involved in Tolle's teachings and suggested practices. This, in the midst of writing a book called Crea Sadhana (crea: "creative action", sadhana "spiritual practice") based on my teacher's unpublished manuscript with the same title. The manuscript is mostly a manual for my teacher's "crea-tive" version of Lahiri's kriya yoga.

All fall I practiced crea as prescribed in the manuscript, seriously, up to three hours a day.

I came home from my winter trip to India, however, more excited about the teachings of trika yoga, a practice of Kashmiri Shaivism, which is a synthesis of Hinduism and Buddhism described in the tenth century text, the Tantra Loka. A friend in Benares, Mark Dyczkowski, had just begun teaching trika yoga (the day we arrived at his house!). Our first evening there, he led a meditation based on being aware that you are aware. For me, it was an extraordinary meditation, one of those experiences that touches you so deeply that afterwards, your soul longs to return to that place.

Mark's lectures on trika yoga and the Tantra Loka are online. I was back home listening to those lectures an hour or so a day when I saw Greg's original recommendation to tune in to Oprah and Tolle.

As it happened, I had a credit with audible.com, so instead of joining Oprah's online group, I downloaded Tolle's reading of A New Earth and began listening to it between Mark's talks. I was thrilled when I realized that Tolle and Mark are passing on the same message. I listened to A New Earth quickly and then slowly, and then slowly again, and then I listened to it with my husband more than once, and now, on Sunday evenings, a group of friends comes over and we listen to short sections of it and have a discussion. I've listened to the talks Tolle gave at a retreat in Denmark ("The Art of Presence") many times, and I reread The Power of Now, which I liked when I first read it several years ago but was not moved by it the way listening to A New Earth moves me.

I continued to work through Mark's lectures slowly, often listening to one lecture 4 or 5 times before moving on. I listened when I walked the dog or walked to the store for groceries, I listened while I folded laundry or worked in the garden. Sometimes Mark, sometimes Tolle. Mark is a scholar and practitioner rather than a spiritual teacher - his talks are largely interpretations of the text, and considerably more detailed than Tolle's broad-brushed synthesis — yet the message is identical, and in the end, very similar to Jung's, I think, though the language is different.

I started doing the practices Tolle prescribes, which, as opposed to most of the crea exercises, are done during one's daily life. For example, Tolle suggests trying to do everything you do as if it is not the means to an end. Every small action is given full attention - and it becomes beautiful. Quality trumps quantity.

Soon I was so engaged in the practice of being present that I lost interest in my regular practice. Crea yoga began to seem old-fashioned. Its step-by-step process aimed at an end I never reached paled in the face of the glory of the present moment. For several weeks I set the manuscript aside and gardened and cleaned instead. I wanted to be out of my head, to leave thinking and writing behind for a while. I stopped listening to talks and threw myself into the present as fully as I could.

I knew that eventually I had to go back to my crea practice (I have a contract for this book, after all), but the moment kept calling me to the garden. Time passed, several weeks, I think. My relationships with my family, pets and neighbors blossomed, and friends commented that there was a new light behind my eyes. My eating habits changed. I lost weight. My house and garden glowed, as anything getting that much attention will. Tolle's system is very forgiving - I stopped scolding myself for not doing this or that, trying instead to do my best at whatever was in front of me. His teaching trains you to be receptive, open-hearted, and non-judgmental. When you give up resistance, life flows along easily.

Periodically I would try crea again, but it wasn't the same. The exercises I had been doing for so many years were lifeless in comparison to the simple joy of going through life in this new awakened state.

One day, working in the garden, I had a marvelous aha! It struck me that time really is an illusion. In the philosophy of the yoga I practiced all these years, time is considered to be an illusion, and long before I met my teacher, I was convinced of the artificiality of time systems, but it wasn't until I stood there at that moment, trimming that rose bush, that I really got it. My perspective changed dramatically. I'm free, I thought! I'm no longer tied to yesterday or tomorrow! The realization instantly released me from the need to worry about my in-laws coming the next week and from all my regrets and resentments. And, marvelously, the moment I stopped believing in time, I had all the time in the world.

This euphoria lasted a few days. A couple of friends were experiencing a similar shift at the same time; it wasn't until the three of us got together that we saw the downside of our new perspective. We discovered we'd all missed a few appointments! So that's what happens when you leave time behind.

It occurred to me that the concentrative practices of crea would probably correct the imbalance, but it was another couple weeks before circumstance and my conscience got together and woke me up early enough in the morning and inspired enough to return to my crea practice. The intervening weeks went to family, a short vacation, and four days of stultifying heat.

As I began stretching that morning, the synthesis I'd sought was suddenly obvious.

Tolle's practice of presence is a being practice. Crea yoga is a doing practice. (Kriya is Sanskrit for "action.") It seems painfully obvious now, but it hadn't occurred to me until then that I could practice presence while practicing crea. The relaxed, alert awareness I practiced in the garden is the ideal background for crea.

Crea is a masculine practice, a step-by-step linear progression to a goal, the eventual re-merging of the self with the Self. It trains the attention to one-pointedness by blocking sense perceptions. Little by little it uncovers the spark of divinity within.

Being present opens the awareness as much as possible, welcoming sensation, recognizing the Now as the Source. It is a feminine practice.

Now, my crea practice is at a whole new level. I do each exercise as if it was not a means to an end. I gave each move, each breath, each visualization, each mantra, my full attention. I recognize and easily dismiss all thoughts of what I should be doing and let the process take over. Quality over quantity. Oh my.

The shift in consciousness that Tolle is talking about is happening now. Conscious awareness is growing whether you buy into his ideas or not. It's another manifestation, a huge one, of the rise of the feminine.

The trick is to move into the new consciousness without forgetting the schedule.