Meandermoirs
John (right) with Gururaj circa 1981
50 meanderings and memoirs of John Jaish Lamb
from contemplations and his relationship with Gururaj Ananda
by John Lamb (AKA Jaish)
©Subeam 2011
Introduction
I started meditating at age 13. Shortly afterwards, I had my first experience of glimpsing the whole self, the occasion brought on by an accident, as you will read in my blogs.
My first trials with meditation were simply to imagine a flap on top of my head opening up to release all thought and to sit still in silence or ‘nothing’. This is something I’d heard about on a radio programme and it immediately appealed to me. Scattered success here, but it felt right.
A year or so later, I started to read about Zen, which included bringing a mantra sound into the equation. Ah, progress! Something to focus on was a good ingredient, it seemed, when trying to get beyond the mind.
On and off the meditations went, trying various methods I located through public libraries, sometimes having a year or more without any meditation practice at all. Three years of commuting in and out of London, from age 24 to age 27 was a useful period, because when people on a train noticed you had your eyes shut they thought you were asleep and subsequently didn’t bother you, even in such crowded conditions. It’s one way to fit meditation into a hectic schedule, but meditation is much better with your feet planted on the ground, not in a vehicle, and in quieter conditions than a crowded train.
Before I reached 30 years of age, meditation had become a vogue in the western world, having been popularized by pop’ musicians and the flower power era. I eventually tried the quickly expanding TM method, which did not match up, for me, to my previous experiences. At age 32 I was introduced to Gururaj’s methods – a balanced programme of meditation and stilling practices including a personally prescribed mantra and package of techniques, and plenty of useful advice too. This has been the basis of my meditation practices ever since, with more advanced methodology being taken up after age 50.
In 1980 I was asked to become co-coordinator of the British Meditation Society. Consequently I spent various periods of time at close quarters with Gururaj, who befriended me, right up to the time of his demise in 1988.
During the period I was writing several books relating to Gururaj’s teachings, I decided to jot down recollections and the results of various contemplations, plus a few reminders for eventual publication, for aspirants of realisation via meditation and contemplation, as taught in Gururaj’s work.
‘Realisation’ of the whole self - or call it pure consciousness or whatever you will - is the central plank of Gururaj’s teachings, although his meditation methods have gained much more popularity than the quest for realisation. Gururaj’s statement regarding realization, during a Satsang in America in his final years, is well known. “I am blue, blue with you for not going a little bit faster for self realization”, he said. Some of the content of these blogs is relevant to this statement.
As a solution to this he suggested, “Spend just 6 months in my company…. ”
Of course, we first thought that practicality precluded the possibility of Gururaj being alongside any one of us for such a period of time. However, I have discovered for myself that you can be alongside him, whoever you are, in his presence, for as long as you like, by studying his words and by practicing Gurushakti.
If you are to benefit to the greatest extent from Gururaj’s work, I appeal to you to immerse yourself in his teachings. They’re all recorded. This is an opportunity not given you in many, many, lifetimes. The truth enables you realize your Self, if you’re prepared to accept and deal with it. Moreover, truth is hard to come by, as I have discovered to my cost. There are plenty of quasi-truths out there. Beware!
Should you take up my suggestion you could set out with a purpose, rather than just read, read, read, which can become mundane. Everyone sees things from a slightly different angle, so why not share yours with others? You can invent any purpose you like. Creating a synopsis of the teachings for, say, your own children is a worthwhile task. I have found such a process to be self elucidating. You learn much from teaching others.
My jottings are in random order.
JJL
Gururaj on Jaish:
“My son Jaish here is my Lord of Victory. He has tasted the nectar that everyone is seeking. He would not be here if he had drunk the whole cup; he would disappear before your very eyes. But he has touched the mountain peak, reaching out before him with his fingertips. Therefore, he can tell you about the route and what the peak is like while, at the same time, he strives to become the mountain itself. He has come to the point of self-accountability where perspective changes, from which there is no turning back in evolution. It’s not easy. There are many stumbles. You have to decide that’s what you want, when you’re ready.”
Alfreton, U.K., 1987
1 A Statement:
I teach what I most need to learn. I acknowledge this truth.
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2 A Contemplation:
Contemplate. Contemplate. The deepest of meditations is contemplation. Reasoning comes from uninterrupted flow. You can get to know a lot about your Self using contemplation.
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3 A Contemplation:
Is there a journey? Is there a path? There is no journey, no path.
We imagine ourselves to be on a path because the limited mind has to operate with some kind of image.
The path focuses on me and the goal – a journey from being myself to being my Self. But my Self is with me every millisecond; Self never ending. ‘I’ has no beginning, no end.
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4 A Contemplation:
There’s nothing to talk about and so much to say. There’s nothing to say and so much to talk about.
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5 A Contemplation:
Life on Earth is a very long bedtime story.
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6 A Dilly-dallying (someone else did the word-twist):
Peace be still and know that I am
Peace be still and know that I
Peace be still and know that
Peace be still and know
Peace, be still
Peace; be
Peace
Seek within the stillness within. All is there.
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7 A Recurring thought:
Whist I am becoming the conqueror, I reflect on my position of littleness.
Solution: Stand up straight, man! Let go of these life-garments.
Affirmation: I move away from these illusory, misdirecting outlines.
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8 A Contemplation:
All these eons are here and now. Eons are but specs of dust on the statue of whole life.
Distances are the same as material containments. They’re insignificant. ‘Within’ is distance-less and in a direction the senses cannot fathom.
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9 A Contemplation:
What we experience on Earth is not life. Life is so much energy it would burst apart this little container.
Forget the unreal.
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10 A Contemplation:
The I knows no bounds. It knows not me and you. Yet we are all merged in its wholeness.
You and I are bound. We create for ourselves but we only create limits. And we limit the limits. But no-thing umbrellas our every move, our every breath.
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11 A Contemplation:
Modern scientists, fortuitously, have discovered the multi dimensions and at the peak, some proclaim, is what must be a boundary-less infinity.
(Boundary-less) infinity = no-thing = pure consciousness
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12 A Contemplation:
We talk of realms but do they exist?
One is one – the only actual existence. Realms are of minds.
Do minds exist? No. Minds are dreams, reflecting relativity. Relativity is not actual.
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13 A Recollection:
A true story:
One morning Charles, Peter and I were talking to Guruji in his room. The atmosphere was light, chatty not philosophically predominant. We were all standing. Guruji walked over to me and hugged me really tightly for what seemed ages – nearly a half a minute I suppose. That’s quite a big hug.
He said, slowly, “You can do it, you can do it.”
As he looked me deeply in the eyes, he then held my wrists as if to pull me downward. “I am giving you a boon”, he said. “There’s something about me you need to understand.”
Seven days later, at home, I had an experience that I can never adequately describe, but I’ll try. This happened in a few seconds, at the cusp between sleeping and waking.
It was as if I was in Guruji’s body. It was not me being him but me experiencing, with my limitations, what it was like to try to live in such an unfolded state as the Master experiences continuously.
We had often joked with him when he said he smoked in order to ground himself. But here I was experiencing that it is almost impossible to cope with embodiment when you’re enlightened.
This is not to be confused with merging into pure consciousness. It was not that. This was a blissful experience. Bliss is of the mind.
When I say this was ‘powerful’, the statement completely understates what I felt. The nearest I can get is to say that a completely overwhelming tidal wave of love engulfed me. I felt love rushing through me in an indescribable quantity. It was fantastic but at the same time impossible to deal with. I couldn’t hold it in. I wanted to hold it, to be it, but it was all just too much, too blissful. I had understood something about Guruji he could never have explained in words.
I came into the full waking state crying my heart out. This beautiful energy was pouring through me in such a torrent I’d have to express it somehow. I still couldn’t hold it in. I just had to express it. My beloved, wondrous wife Suzanne held me close while I half explained. We made love – the only way to express, to get me back to normality, to hold me down to earth, so to speak. I now understood the Master and I never doubted him afterwards, which I had done continually beforehand.
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14 A Recollection:
A true story:
Ted Partridge, the author of Jewels of Silence, was a good friend. We’d been on a few small filming and photography expeditions together. One day he explained to me what had happened to him, when we visited his home, The Tram, on the seafront at West Wittering. He’d become a healer, by telephone!
Ted had for many years received stuff ‘in his head’ - hence the production of his book. Ted recognized that his own higher mind was the source of what came into his domain. He never tried to put any of his ideas on to anybody and he wrote the book after much persuasion.
The healing by telephone: he’d started using healing cones, in his consciousness, when people called him to talk about their illnesses. It was something that just occurred one day. A person would call by ‘phone, and soon after the conversation started, Ted would ‘see’ (although not exactly ‘see’) Gururaj handing him different coloured cones and directing Ted where to place them on the body of the ‘patient’, who he couldn’t see, and who mostly he’d never met and never would meet. Some remarkable healings came about.
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15 A Recollection:
A true story:
One day, out of the blue, Guruji told me he had never wanted to teach. I was shocked when he said this because I had previously thought Masters wanted to save the world and the people, and all that.
He explained that if he had wanted to help people, it would have been ego oriented thinking and therefore impure. He had just found himself doing the teaching because it was his only way of establishing an income at a time when he needed it. And this, he said, was perfect. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, he said, is always better than involving your mind in presuming you are needed by others. This applies to teaching philosophical and spiritual matters as well as everything else.
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16 A Recollection:
A true story: (to be given more detail – as at Nov. ’09)
In an Indian restaurant in Alfreton one evening, Guruji and I were talking as friends. He told me, on this occasion, he had lived in the body of Swami Vivekananda. He didn’t want to publicise this fact because it would draw attention to him and create conflict. He said that Vivekananda’s teachings were something to behold, very pure indeed, but they had been too ‘straight from the hip’ for the public of today, so he was here now to make the teachings a bit more palatable. He also said he wasn’t going to live much longer and he would be gone ‘like a thief in the night’.
I was very upset on the evening of the day Guruji died but I got over it extremely quickly. A week later, Charles and Tuku and I got together and we were having a lot of fun reminiscing on all sorts of things. I don’t think any of us chelas looked back with a lot of sadness. We went forward celebrating the teachings and the life that had brought them to us. He was a truly amazing man.
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17 A Contemplation:
Who am I? This question morphs into a different approach as truth is uncovered. “I am I” is not really felt in the three-dimensional realm. Subtle energy unfoldment, in the embodied individual, brings about new angles of perception.
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18 A Recollection:
A true story:
As many others have, I have glimpsed pure consciousness during this lifetime. For me, it’s thrice since birth, so far.
The first occasion was when I fell off my bicycle, hitting my head on the ground. I don’t think I was out for more than a few seconds but in coming round, as you do from a knockout, there was a hanging on between the passed-out stage and the re-waking.
This is where you can experience glimpses of the total state – at the cusp between sleeping and waking states – if you can hold on long enough. This need only be a second or two, but it seldom happens. However, it does happen sometimes and, in explaining this, I might help others to identify what they have already experienced.
My thoughts at the time were akin to déjà vu. But it was different to déjà vu. “I know that”, I thought. Yes, thaaaaat! I am living that all the time as well as being ‘me’. It’s there all the time. I know it so well.” This seemed most peculiar. Yet, although strange, it was not spectacular. It can be described as very ordinary, always there, but not normally available to my consciousness.
Thoughts about the incident faded over a few days. It didn’t ever bother me but I always remembered how it felt.
It wasn’t until I awoke one morning later in life, after a residential session with Guruji, that exactly the same experience happened again. This time it was at the cusp between the normal sleeping and waking states. I was in quite a blissful state, just returning from a week in His presence. You try to hold on to the brief experience but it’s absolutely impossible for the human mind to do so.
I explained it all to Guruji, including the incident in my teens, the next time I saw him. He asked me lots of questions about the ‘state’ I had glimpsed and then he confirmed that it was the impersonal pure consciousness that we all really are.
The same thing happened a year later but never again from then to the present day. [Ed, 2020 - it happened again thrice in year 2018 in deep meditation]
These experiences put me in a position of being able to talk about the Real Self, and to explain the difference between bliss and the impersonal oneness, while still climbing the ladder of unfoldment. I am not one of these personages who is getting ready to ‘merge’, as I have had confirmed by the experience resulting from my ‘boon’ and from the awareness of my samskaric patterning that my soul searching has revealed.
I have no desire to be anywhere other than where I am now, but to move forward becoming less attached.
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19 A Contemplation:
The mind tends to project that pure consciousness is ‘attractive’. This is how the mind wants it to be – a sort of ‘divine arms that will hold us in comfort’.
However, that doesn’t really help. When you think about it, how can no-thing be attractive? It’s an essence that has no qualities.
In fact, the Real Self is a bit alien to the mind, when glimpsed, because it’s not something that satisfies the mind at all.
As we unfold, what once seemed attractive to the mind changes. The experience of pure consciousness will be like a natural magnet when we’re ready to merge with it because we’ll be beyond the desire to satisfy the mind. Everything is good and perfect as it happens.
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20 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
99.99% of the species that have inhabited this planet are extinct, as will be all the species it ever produces and the planet itself must become extinct. This is nature. Why perpetuate your ego energy fighting it, perhaps mistakenly thinking you are growing yourself by do-gooding?
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21 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
Don’t cop out by thinking, “I am a meditator, therefore I have something that non-meditators don’t have.” Some people don’t need to meditate in order to progress. Great strides are taken, in terms of unfoldment, often by those who never meditate.
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22 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
Meditation is a superb tool, often abused unknowingly because it’s very useful as a calming device. We are all escapists and you can hide in meditation if you use it like some sort of soft drug, which pacifies the mind, appearing to provide comfort. The comforting aspect is OK as a side benefit. However, the purpose of meditation is opening yourself up to truth, to accept truth. It’s best to recognize this fact so you don’t fool yourself.
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23 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
If you use cannabis or some other drug regularly, cut down on mantra meditation. Drugs scatter your energies, scatter your mind. You would become too spaced out doing mantra as well. Drugs are another cul-de-sac which you go up and eventually come out of again having got nowhere in your progress, except perhaps a step backwards. Cut them out of your life as quickly as you can. Your brain never fully recovers but you can stop making it worse. Meditation calms you more, while benefiting your health rather than damaging it.
Tratak will help you if you’re scattered. Do it every day. The one-pointedness Tratak brings about can help you focus an anything including giving up drugs. Come out into the open and live life!
“Drug taking leads to fragmentation – meditation leads to integration.” (Gururaj, UK78-58)
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24 A Recollection:
Something I’ve remembered every day since I heard it:
When Sujay asked Guruji if he would boil down his teachings into one simple statement, he replied, “Seek balance.”
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25 A Recollection
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
Continuing to love Jesus is a great thing to do. A self realised master has a pure vibration. But don’t get caught up in any stories, Guruji reminded me, the miracles were added on by story tellers over the years. There was no immaculate conception, no resurrection or water converted into wine or feeding thousands with a few loaves & fish. Jesus’ father was Nicodemus, a roman soldier, who loved Jesus and who freed him from the tomb where he was placed while in a coma after the crucifixion. Jesus moved to India where he died in his 70’s. Guruji could experience the living Jesus
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26 A Recollection:
Gururaj stated: There are just two steps to Self realisation – acceptance and surrender. Surrender needs little or no effort because it is a natural consequence of true acceptance, which requires effort continuously.
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27 A Recollection:
We use Gururaj as a channel. This is symbolic. I am the channel (each of us can say). I have to realize this. I do the walking. I become the self-guru.
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28 Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
A person can be 100% convinced that Gururaj, or perhaps another entity, is talking to them from ‘inside’. All words heard inside you, or visions of apparitions you think are real, are you and your mind activity. “There is no such thing as channeling” (quote, Gururaj). I have brushed against this subject, but not pressed the point too hard, in one of my books.
Extraneous comment:
I find it sad, but necessary, to put on record that at least 5 or 6 senior chelas in Gururaj’s groups in the 1970’s and 1980’s carried on as if (in my view) the above statement did not apply to them. Although I do not keep in touch these days (2009), I think several of them are still involved in leadership of meditation teaching groups.
I have mentioned this because of the paramount importance to lead yourself, when seeking help or training from others, once you have the information you want. It’s easy to be led off the track you’re trying to follow by seemingly kind people. I’m sure they mean absolutely no harm whatsoever, but, if you’re going to accept Gururaj’s teaching, I strongly advise accepting it in its entirety and not some, perhaps cozier, alternative (because your teacher hears voices or for any other reason).
Substantial religions have started, in history, because someone, genuinely convinced they had unique access to ‘spiritual’ knowledge, convinced others that this was so. Gururaj wanted people who follow his teaching to avoid such traps, which dilute truth. Eventually such dilution can send millions of people towards quasi-truth, which keeps the world in ignorance.
[Examples: I’ve witnessed, several times, two chelas speak to each other and to groups of people to the effect that what they were about to say or do came on good authority, direct from Gururaj, who had passed away years previously. I have heard of many other similar accounts concerning people I have not met, including phone calls to people from time to time saying they had messages for them from ‘entities in other spheres’. I am not prepared to divulge names I knew of and I will never change this stance because it’s not necessary to do so.]
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29 A Recollection:
Gururaj stated, “When you truly face yourself, you will not like what you see.” It’s true.
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30 A Recollection / Reminder:
Gururaj stated, time and time again, “Be brave!”
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31 A Contemplation:
99.99999% of the time, my actuality eludes me, despite its closeness – closer than my eyelids are to my eyes. It’s because my ego would die without outlines, without filled-in shapes.
It’s all made up, the shapes and the ego, forever teetering at the brink of non-existence.
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32 A Contemplation:
Living in the moment is the opposite of filling in the moment.
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33 Contemplation:
Awareness is accentuated when we stop trying to arrive somewhere.
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34 A Recollection:
It is not at all well understood that by preserving the idea of ‘myself’ we tie ourselves to life after life of incompleteness, frustration, suffering. This should be emphasized.
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35 A Contemplation:
Be confident in your ‘I’. “I am IT” should be heralded from every peak, in every school and home, from every lectern and pulpit. Move on from the stories that have come from peoples’ minds - and are believed by people who don’t experience.
Associated comment: Vivekanda said if ever there were to be a true religion it would need to be the religion of fearlessness.
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36 A Contemplation:
Multi-dimensional existence is everything and it is no-thing. Limited (lower dimensional) existence is non-existence. Lifetimes are a dream.
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37 A Contemplation:
90% (I estimate) of karmic debt stems from unnecessary guilt. Everyday deeds and thoughts, even if they are not positive ones, don’t produce karma. The mind does it.
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38 A Contemplation:
Each and every problem is solvable by uncovering the truth in it.
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39 A Contemplation:
Precision is something the planets know nothing of. Wondrously, they dance a faultless dance. Mankind’s dance falters because of the thoughts that something is known.
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40 A Contemplation:
In true meditation the mind is given up altogether.
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41 A Recollection:
When I got down to the depths of facing myself, I came across a strange story, an entanglement (I recognized) and a pitiful clinging on. Not much has changed since then except I can now turn my visor in the right direction, so as to shift a little dirt when I am able, rather than just look at it. I can also see clearly that we have to shine our own light, build our own path.
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42 A Contemplation:
Self-accountability is self evident.
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43 A Contemplation:
Being judgmental is the most difficult mind trait to overcome.
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44 A Contemplation:
The human mind needs to move beyond thinking that infinity is an infinite amount of stuff. This is what makes acceptable the idea that someone else must have created something. Infinity has no bounds so it cannot be a thing.
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45 A Contemplation:
In stillness we find nil-ness; no production or giving birth. Only mind manifests itself – in conjured up relative-ness, not actuality. Isness has no business.
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46 A Comment:
The planet goes through cycles, from hot to cold, from barren to productive. Mankind has no significant influence on these cycles despite what the would-be controllers would have you believe. This is taught in universities right now and is agreed with by thousands of scientists. It’s amazing how people can be frightened when a little scaremongering is used. Governments are at it all the time. Let’s get real.
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47 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
‘Messages’, as they are called, are influenced by the purveyor’s samskaric patterning. Don’t thicken your own samskaras. Rather work by yourself to dilute them.
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48 A cogitation:
Only 500 years ago, people thought that someone or something pulled the sun up every morning and pushed it down at night. When it was discovered that the Earth moved beneath the stars, rather than the previously opposite held conviction, some time still elapsed before the populace could accept that we live on a sphere. It takes time for minds to adjust. It took 200 years for one predominant religion to accept this one.
The same time to adjust is needed today. Multi dimensions, rather than just three, are now a scientific attestation. We have not quite reached the conclusion that the declared boundary-less infinity has to be identified by experience.
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49 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
If you ask a ‘spiritual’ (I prefer the word wholeness) aspirant, “Are you interested in truth or your ego, they say “the truth”. But we find that nearly everyone is keen to preserve the ‘me’ illusion. A small minority change tracks after some instruction. Perhaps we can do a little to help more folk see the benefits of truth.
“What is truth”, many ask. The truth is you are not here in the three-dimensional sense, there’s no individual journey. Your duty to yourself is to give up the dream. What students often fail to grasp is that truth, when accepted, brings about untold self power.
Why is this not fully understood? Truth is difficult to deal with at first encounter because the personal ego is not perceived as ego. It’s viewed as the intelligence centre that protects the individual from harm. In truth, the ego is actually the inflictor of harm.
Teach this vitally important point. Teach truth. Offering diluted ‘stories’ will get us nowhere except more controlled by power freaks.
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50 A Recollection:
From my personal conversations with Gururaj -
Gururaj continually emphasised that we should not ‘examine the dirt’ (after discoveries during facing oneself), but we should quickly move on from past experiences. He acknowledged that the majority of those who came to him struggled with hanging on to ‘dirt’ far too long – because it requires effort for months or years.
The problem stems from the ‘why me?’ attitude.
“Thinking about the why”, he said, “is basically non-acceptance of the whole self. And thinking about the ‘me’ is co-habiting with the ego to help it dominate.”
“Forgetting the ‘why me’ in life is the key to solving it all”, he added.
We have forced ourselves to undergo each of our past experiences, no matter what they have been. That’s nature’s precision and there’s no getting away from it. You can’t move away from past experiences while you’re still questioning or examining them.
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Epilogue:
What is the point of going beyond the mind? Each individual decides when to do it, not why they should do it. This occurs through natural enquiry, at exactly the correct moment. Everyone will do it, absolutely everyone, so why not start now? When you do, whole life starts to reveal itself. Then all the discontentment starts to fade away
P.S. If you can eliminate from life the need to gossip or be judgmental there may initially be a huge void (for an awful lot of folk) but questions about the purpose of life may begin to emerge. Good. Gossip is one of the vilest weapons on Earth. Judgment of others adds heaps of *samskaric patterning and karmic burden. Thought is energy and therefore thought is deed. Thought must be respected as such, so we can see exactly where we go wrong. The only truly worthwhile mind activity is unconditioning in order to progress with personal growth.
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“Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense”
-Buddha
*Wake up to, and diminish your Samskaric patterning by reading about Gururaj’s teachings, in the following publications:
Answers to Your Life – Mind Bathing Series - over 800 index entries in this quick to find information CD including the 320 unabridged UK talks of Gururaj – pinpoint with accuracy any subject you choose
Discover Your Subtle Self - Mind Bathing Series (paperback) - exploit your hidden dimensions -
attract the circumstances you desire - diminish stress, fear and discontent – what dimensions actually are – how the mind really works (for and against you) – what are you, why are you here? - the mechanics of reincarnation – prove self-responsibility of your evolution (and how this brings you much more happiness) – exactly what happens after death – how to uncondition – automatically change your health, wealth, longevity and success rate in trying to reach the ideal life
Guarantee to Make the Law of Attraction Work - Mind Bathing Series (digital book) – what all the other Law of Attraction books seem to omit – the ways to alter those two barriers to success (samskaras and karmas), which are ‘not addressed by 99% of aspirants’ who want to use this natural law
Gems of the Heart - Mind Bathing Series (digital book) – absolute GEMS (extracts & sayings) from Gururaj’s whole library of UK talks – warm & uplifting experience to read – brings you to terms with your wonderful inner reality
The Path of Unfoldment – (paperback) – the basic principles of Gururaj’s teachings
From Darkness to Light – (paperback) – edited transcripts of many extemporaneous talks by Gururaj