“無為” “A glance”

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A little bird was flying south for the winter.
It was so cold that the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field.

While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped a load of hot, steaming dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of shit, it began to realize how warm it was.

The dung was actually thawing it out! It lay there all warm and happy and soon began to sing of joy.

A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung.

The cat promptly dug the bird out, killed it and ate it.

Management Lesson: Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy. Not everyone who pulls you out of shit is your friend.

And when you’re warm and happy in your pile of shit, keep your mouth shut!

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“Multiple Universes”

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What if you had an identical twin? What if you had 10 identical twins? A million twins? what if all of these “others” were more than just twins in the sibling sense? What if these others were literally “you,” yet living independently in their own world or universe?Astonishing as it may seem, this may actually be the case. There may be millions, billions, and in fact, an infinite number of “alternate” universes stacked like so much Tupperware within our own universe. In each of these other universes lives another you leading a full and very real life, just like your own life.Some of these other universes are very close to our own, and are almost identical, except for minor differences. Others are further removed and the differences increase as the distance from our own increases.The concept is not a new one. In fact, the idea that other invisible worlds exist in proximity to our own are nearly as old as human beings. “Other worlds” is one of the oldest and most frequently used ideas in speculative literature and legend.

Examples might be “Fairyland” and the “astral plane.”While spiritualists, shamans and mystics have been happily dealing with the subject of alternate universes for centuries, modern science, notably the field of physics, has embraced the idea of alternate worlds in recent years.In the field of quantum mechanics, alternate universe theory is generally referred to as the “Many Worlds Interpretation,” and it holds up mathematically.The theory was first proposed 40 years ago in 1957 by the brilliant physicist Hugh Everett III. He came up with the Many Worlds scenario to deal with some of the more perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics.Everett suggested that whenever numerous viable possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds or universes, one universe for each different possibility.For example, if you get up this morning and can’t decide if you want to have coffee or tea for breakfast, the Many Worlds Interpretation says that for each choice that is made, an entire universe is created to accommodate each choice.In one universe you choose coffee. In another universe you choose tea. In a third universe, you decide to have neither. In still another, you go with orange juice.

Each universe is as real and valid as the other. It’s just that each goes its separate way from the point of decision.According to the astounding Many Worlds Interpretation, every single choice that is made by every single human being at every instant of time creates an entire universe which goes on forever into infinity.Obviously, this means that millions and billions and trillions of universes are being created on an ongoing basis!In each universe created, everything is identical, except for that one different choice; from that point on, they develop independently, and no communication is possible between them, so the people living in those worlds have no idea that this is going on.According to the Many Worlds Interpretation, there are not only an infinite number of universes, but an infinite number of versions of each person—including you!Your alternate selves have all split off at some time in the past from the path you are now following. There may be versions of you that split off one or five years ago, or perhaps five minutes after you were born.

In some universes, you may have died at birth.But in a very real sense, those people are still “you.” What if you could travel to one of these alternate universes and meet yourself and have a conversation with yourself? What would you say? What would it feel like? It’s intriguing to think about.Polls have been taken among theorists who study such things, and have revealed that most of them believe that the Many Worlds Interpretation represents an accurate description of reality. (Interestingly, the polls also show that many of them would rather not discuss the subject!)Political researcher L. David Raub conducted a poll of 72 of the “leading cosmologists and other quantum field theorists” about the Many Worlds Interpretation and found the following:

1) 58% think it is true.
2) 18% do not think it is true.
3) 13% think it could be true but are not convinced.
4) 11% had no opinion.

Among the the “Yes” thinkers is the famous Stephen Hawking, author of the best selling A Brief History of Time. Also in agreement are Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and the great and brilliant Richard Feynman.One of the most interesting fall-outs of the Many World’s Interpretation is the possibility that it provides a platform for the existence of free will, one of the issues that has tormented theologians and philosophers for centuries. In a universe in which you get to have all your choices and eat them too, so to speak, the totality an infinite potential of free will becomes obvious.From religion and folklore to the rigorous disciplines of science and mathematics, the case for a universe that is actually many universes is better than good, and, in fact, may prove to be reality.

Article Copyright© Ken Korczak

“Shields of a Galactic Tribe”

The Paradox Of Our Age

We have bigger houses but smaller families;

more conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees but less sense;

more knowledge but less judgment;

more experts, but more problems;

more medicines but less healthiness.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,

but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.

We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,

but have less real communication;

We have become long on quantity,

but short on quality.

These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;

Tall mean but short characters;

Steep profits but shallow relationships.

It’s a time when there is much in the window

But nothing in the room.

“The One Eye Bandit”

A Question

I remember you saying once that the growth of man is dialectical; and you have also explained about thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Would you please give more clarity in this reference on the growth towards enlightenment?

An Answer

Every growth, growth as such, is dialectical.

It needs thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; synthesis again in its turn becomes thesis, and creates antithesis and synthesis – which again, in its turn, becomes thesis.

That’s the way the whole existence works. That’s why you find duality everywhere. The duality is thesis and antithesis. One can remain caught between the two, divided, split; there will be no growth. One can make a bridge between the two, and create a new phenomenon: that is synthesis. One can remain at the synthesis; then growth stops there, unless this synthesis again functions as a thesis to produce antithesis, and so on.

For example, you have love and hate. Love is the thesis, hate is the antithesis; and most people die caught in the struggle, conflict, between the two. They are never able to see that there is a subtle connection between love and hate; that they are not two energies but one energy having two polarities. They are just like the negative and positive in electricity – but it is electricity all the same.

Hate is also a kind of love standing upside down. It happens that you can forget your friend, but you cannot forget your enemy. The enemy haunts you more than the friend. You think more of destroying the enemy than helping the friend. The reason is that love is a thesis – simple. Hate is an antithesis – it has become more complicated. It has become negation, and negativity has an attraction – for many reasons.

One is afraid of negativity because you cannot hate someone without creating a wound within yourself. Nobody pretends hate. It is always authentic, because why should one pretend hate? – it hurts.

People pretend love; they may not be really in love, but the very idea that they are in love is soothing. So love can remain superficial; but hate always goes deep – it cannot remain superficial. That’s why one becomes more concerned about the enemy than about friends.

The man who is working for enlightenment has to find a bridge between the dualities, because without finding the bridge he cannot transcend them, he cannot go above them. And the bridge is there — it has only to be discovered. One has to see how love becomes hate, how hate becomes love -that they are capable of transforming into each other. Naturally, they cannot be different energies; just different situations, states, of the same energy.

As you become aware that love and hate are the same energy, then you are not to be concerned with love and hate, because those are only two poles; you have to be more concerned with the energy of which they are the poles: what is that energy?

Watching it, you start a new force within yourself which is synthesis. You come to a point when you know love and hate are one. This is a great synthesis – the dualism is finished. But with the finishing of dualism your life comes to a static point. You have grown above love and hate, and there will be a kind of compassion – that will be the synthesis. You don’t hate, you don’t love, but you have a certain compassion for both friends and enemies. But compassion again becomes a simple thing.

That’s why the synthesis always turns into a thesis – another beginning. And compassion must have some duality which you can become aware of only when you have achieved compassion.

What is the antithesis of compassion? It is indifference, “upekchha”. That’s the word Buddha has used. It carries more meaning than “indifference.” It is a kind of no interest, neither this way nor that way… as if the person does not exist at all for you. Compassion will bring you to indifference.

And all these stages you can find in the growth of different people at the point where they got stuck. For example, the Jaina monks are stuck with indifference. That becomes renunciation, not being bothered with the world.

The Hindu has also become stuck with that, thinking that the world is only a dream; it doesn’t matter, you need not be concerned about it. They have grown a little; but at the point of indifference they will start shrinking, they are stuck again. They have to find something between compassion and indifference – the bridge.

There is a bridge, there is always a bridge in every duality, unless you come to a point which has no duality.

That point is the point of enlightenment. It has no antithesis, so you cannot even call it thesis; and it is not a synthesis. It has dropped all three – the whole triangle. It is something beyond the triangle of evolution. And the beauty is, because it is not part of a triangle, you are not stuck. And from that point growth changes its nature completely: it is no longer dialectical.

Before enlightenment, growth is dialectical: always divided, always finding something which joins it and then again another division and another division. But a point comes – for example between compassion and indifference, the synthesis is equilibrium. The Buddhist word for it is “samata”.

You are equally balanced, you are neither indifferent nor compassionate, neither leaning to this side nor to that side. Samata can become a point from where the change, the radical change happens in the process of evolution.

Below samata everything is dialectical. You cannot love without hating; they will both go together. One will be conscious, the other will be unconscious; but they are one thing. That’s why you can turn them easily: a small incident, and love becomes hate.

The person you were going to die for, you can kill him! Lovers have killed the same person for whom they would have sacrificed themselves. It is the same energy, but it has turned completely upside down.

Samata, equilibrium, has been immensely praised by Gautam Buddha. It simply means absence of any preference – neither this nor that. You are simply so much in the middle, so absolutely in the middle, that you are almost out of the duality – samata – because you have withdrawn your energy from both sides, you are not throwing your energy on any duality.

The whole energy becomes concentrated. In that concentration of your total energy is the possibility of explosion. The small point exactly in the middle cannot contain that much energy, which was spread all over a line divided into many sections, over the whole spectrum. It is almost like an atomic explosion. But it is the atomic explosion in consciousness.

The atom is not material, but a living entity. A living explosion of your energies becomes almost like a lotus flower. The shape of the explosion seen by the enlightened person is very similar to the shape of the lotus flower. It is because of this that the lotus flower has become symbolic of enlightenment.

From this point things are totally different. There is growth – growth never stops – but we cannot call it growth because that may create confusion. Before, it was dualistic; now it is non-dualistic. Before, there was constant conflict; now there is no conflict – it simply goes on growing.

Hence there is absolute silence and great blissful-ness, because for the first time you are free of the torture of being caught in two opposing polarities. There is no tension, everything is relaxed, everything is at ease. Rather than calling it growth, it is a let-go.

Now the flow of your life becomes a relaxed phenomenon. There is no end to evolution. Enlightenment is the end of dualistic growth, but the beginning of a non-dual evolution…a peaceful, silent movement of energy which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and goes on losing its separateness from universal energy. It always remains individual, even though it is spread all over the universe.

That feeling cannot be expressed by “I” because “I” is just another way of saying “ego.” Before enlightenment there was ego; ego can exist only in conflict. This state can be spoken of only as “am”-ness, without any “I.” It is a very strange feeling: you are not, and yet you are. You are not your old self; you are no longer a self, but you have not lost the feeling of am-ness.

So the question of what happens to individuals when they dissolve into the universal…. They still remain individuals, but with no assertion of “I” in them…just a silent song of am-ness or isness.

It is as if we put hundreds of candles in this room; all their light will become one. You cannot differentiate in the light — which part belongs to which candle – it has become a universal phenomenon. But still, each candle has its own flame, it has a certain individuality. The individuality has not disappeared, but it is very quiet and very silent and very nonassertive. It is almost as if it is nothing, but it -is still there.

And that is one of the greatest mysteries: to feel yourself at one with the whole existence and yet know your inner flame.. part of the whole, and yet not just a part — you are also a whole.

The “Upanishads” have a statement: “From the perfect comes the perfect. Yet the perfect left behind still remains as perfect as before” – nothing is taken away from it. The perfect dissolves into the perfect, but it is not that two perfections become a bigger perfection; it is the same perfection. The emphasis is that it is not a question of quantity, it is a question only of quality.

For example, one hundred candles burning in this room will not make the light heavier; it will be lighter.

The change will be qualitative but it will not be quantitative. Each candle will be spread all over the room, and there is going to be no conflict in one hundred candles spreading all over the same space because these are not material bodies.

Just as light… consciousness is even more a quality. Light perhaps has some quantity in it. I think the scientists say that when there is sunlight over five square miles, the light has a little weight, but very small. (Asks…) I don’t know what will be the equivalent of five tolas…

(Somebady answers…) Sixty grams.

Sixty grams. But on five square miles, if we can collect that light, concentrate that light, it moves the weighing scale to sixty grams. So although it seems just non-quantitative, it has a little quantity in it.

But consciousness has no quantity – five miles or five thousand miles or five million miles, it makes no difference. Awareness has no weight. So infinite awarenesses can exist in the same space without coming into any conflict. And the universe is infinite, so the growth never stops.

But we should remember that it is not the old growth; it is absolutely a new phenomenon. It is as if the first growth was something similar to sexual reproduction: two energies, male and female, negative and positive, thesis and antitheses, creating the birth of a child — the synthesis. But the second part, after enlightenment, is nonsexual. Your consciousness just goes on expanding; it does not give birth to any child.

That’s why I have always condemned Jesus’ idea of the only begotten son of God. If God is the ultimate consciousness or equivalent to it, there is no possibility of any birth of a child. And if you accept the birth of a child then the Christian trinity is not right; there has to be a woman as an antithesis to the man.

They have avoided the woman just to discredit her, just not to put her on such a high pedestal as to be part of God; otherwise she becomes divine. But they have forgotten that the child is possible only through duality.

If God is alone, or the ultimate consciousness is alone – which is a far better and more evolved terminology….

Jainism uses, for the ultimate state of consciousness, “kaivalya”. It means aloneness. The word “God” is very primitive and childish – but pure aloneness… and it goes on growing. Its bliss, its joy, its ecstasy, goes on growing, knows no limit.

But before it can happen you have to pass through a process of dialectics, because where we are, we are under the law of dialectics. To get free from dialectics is one of the major projects of spiritual evolution.

But it is very easily possible if one works through meditation, because that is the only way to find out the golden mean, the middle point which is transcendence. Buddha even called his whole way “the middle way,” because it is always to find exactly the middle point.

The moment you have found the middle point between love and hate, you are beyond both: you have entered into a new area, unexplored.

But don’t stop until you find something which has no duality to it.

Go on and on, searching after each duality for the one point which has no polarity to it; because that is the point between the two growths – prior to enlightenment and after enlightenment.

So in one way enlightenment is an end, a goal.

In another way it is a beginning, a tremendous beginning.

“Cosmic Grapes”

無為

Conclusion is the place where one gets tired of thinking.

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The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the

cheese.

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Mind is, simply, a collection of memories of the past,
and, – out of those memories -
imagination about the future.

Mind knows only two tenses : Future and Past.
The Present is nonexistential to the mind…
The existential is not existential to the mind!

Hence, the whole effort is, how to get out of the mind…
how to get out of the nonexistential and, stand in the middle,
where, existence is…

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Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

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A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

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“The Good Soldier Svejk”

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“The Good Soldier Švejk” : (Schweik or, Schwejk in many translations, and pronounced [‘ʃvɛjk] or “shvake” in plain English transcription), is the shortened title of the world-famous novel written by Czech humorist Jaroslav Hašek in 1921-22. The original Czech title of the work is Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války, literally “The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War”.

“Queen of Cups”

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Feminine wisdom, Emotional, Intuitive, Psychic and security. Loving and Tender, Mature and Compassionate.

“Fractal Tears”

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Or,

“Man falling from bicycle”

When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane and going the wrong way.