Stillness & Your Core of Goodness
The Buddhafield Krishnamurti, Vanda Scaravelli & the Huxleys What Makes a Good Teacher Confirmation of Essential Core of Goodness Yoga Symposium.5.9
Hogue ( crotalus, 5/20/98 1:46:50 PM)Let me give you Hogue on the emerging Aquarian Age "Buddhafield," a heartening concept based on the "core of goodness" concept.
The Aquarian age supports spiritual loners, not obedient sheep. As misfits, what spiritual rebels have in common is their differences. Anarchy is their unifying bond. They will never be soldiers of any Christ - Hitlerian or holy.
The authentic gurus of the paradoxical Aquarian Age will not be Messiahs in the Picean role of savior, they will simply be the way-showers for those who are rebellious enough to seek their own truth. The "Messiah" of tomorrow is not a man, nor even a son of man, but a spiritual force field generated by many human beings who share one thing in common - their individual search for themselves. Every seeker will be buoyed by the presence of the other's unique urge for spiritual transformation. Aloneness breeds togetherness. With their people, the Aquarian masters will dissolve themselves into a new phenomenon in the evolution of enlightenment, the mass presence of the greater Messiah called the Buddhafield.
Unlike ashrams and monasteries of the past, this field is less a place, more like a wellspring of shared consciousness, where energies of many seekers pool together into a matrix of silent communion - a launching ground for a Buddhatomic chain reaction. Gurdjieff felt that each seeker is capable of influencing 100 others to each "turn on" 100 more seekers to an alternative, life-affirming state of awareness.
The mystic Osho believed that humankind's greatest chance for salvation was the creation of a collective and contagious awareness he called a
Noah's Ark of Consciousness
"Only amateurs in the field of spirituality can claim that they are the center of the world, that they are the only begotten son of God, that they are the saviors of the whole world, that they are the messengers of God. They don't even understand a simple law, that everyone saves himself, everyone has to be a savior unto himself. That is the only possibility.
"But it is more than enough to be a center to yourself. Then your peace becomes infections; then your silence starts spreading around, catching other people's hearts. Then your love starts overflowing and reaching unknown strangers, and giving their heart a new dance, a new song. But this happens naturally; you are not the doer of it."
Seems to me Erich and his work comprise an example of a flux point in the emerging Buddhafield. It's up to us to find another 100 people susceptible to the word. That's why SuZ and I decided we could find the time to bring this place (Symposium and web site) to life; you can't beat the web when you're trolling for those who'd rather know, than believe; who seek to go within and know stillness; who want to be delivered from ego and habit and who find yoga more than a means to these ends.
Hogue's claim to fame is research and opinion on Nostradamus. In his study of Nostradamus he has become very familiar with other prophets and he has been able to correlate their prophecies in a profoundly spiritual work called The Millennium Book Of Prophecy: 777 Visions and Predictions from Nostradamus, Cayce, Gurdjieff, Tamo-san, Madame Blavatsky, Old & New Testament Prophets and 89 Others ISBN: 0062514989 (he get the prize for the longest title). This version is out of print but you may be able to find it in the twin cities at one of the large stores or perhaps in a new age bookstore. A paperback version without illustrations (a pity) is also available under ISBN 0-06-2514989.
Yoga Symposium.5.15
Bob Cox ( crotalus, 6/30/98 2:04:53 PM)Read Erich on the "Buddhafield" (re: 5.9) in The Interview.
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K on being Religious and Finding Stillness ( crotalus, 10/20/98 10:14:25 AM)The scene is the home of a Geneva aristocrat that looked after Krishnamurti when he was in town. Laura Huxley and her husband Aldous shared lunch with them one day in 1961. Excerpt is from Laura's book, This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley, pp. 83-86.
At the Signora S.'s we had a delicious luncheon--the regime was completely vegetarian. Anyone can successfully prepare the good classic American dinner in fifteen minutes--salad, steak, frozen peas, and ice cream; it is nutritious, unimaginative, and satisfying. But a completely vegetarian dinner is very often a failure--understandably so--for to achieve variety and nutrition without meat, fish, eggs, and milk products requires imagination and knowledge, patience, and above all a really Epicurean perception of Nature's gifts.
At Signora S.'s the food was natural, alive, and varied. Aldous and I praised it and were told that the order and combination of the courses had been made according to the famous Dr. Bircher-Benner of a nearby clinic in Zurich. From recipes for food, we went on to speak of my "Recipes for Living and Loving." I had been very active in psychotherapy that year and had almost finished my book. Aldous spoke about the origin of the word "recipes"--it is the imperative of the Latin word recipere, to receive--and told our hosts how my recipes had succeeded with some people for whom the orthodox methods had failed. Krishnamurti asked a few questions and listened intently. We spoke about vitamins and imagination, solitary confinement, LSD, alcoholism, and the congress on extrasensory perception that Aldous had recently attended in the South of France.
After lunch Signora S. tactfully suggested that I might want to speak alone with Krishnamurti. She and Aldous went into the living room. A large French window opened onto the terrace, where Krishnamurti and I were left alone. The French window was closed, but, as I realized later, Aldous could see us silhouetted against the sweeping view of the Alps. An hour or two later, when we left our hosts, Aldous could not wait to ask, "What in the world happened between you and Krishnaji? You two were gesticulating with such animation and excitement--it almost looked as though you were having a fight. What happened?"
The silent pantomime Aldous had seen through the French window must have been descriptive of our conversation--an extraordinary conversation against an extraordinary panorama. Krishnamurti and I had stood, walked, and sat on the terrace of the Swiss chalet, enveloped by high peaked mountains and pine woods of all gradations of green, light exhilarating green, and the deeper green of the vast mountain pastures. Brightness again, in luminous sky and in shining flowers, in sensuous undulating valleys, in Krishnamurti. Brightness everywhere.
The first thing I asked Krishnamurti, continuing our table conversation about psychotherapy, was how he dealt with the problem of alcoholism. He said nonchalantly that it had happened quite often that people, after one or two interviews with him, stopped drinking. When I asked how this came about, he said he did not know. He dismissed the subject and asked me whether LSD, mescaline, and the psychedelic substances in general were really of any benefit or just gave a temporary illusion. I told him of the medical research done in Canada in the field of alcoholism--of unexpected and successful results reported by Canadian doctors with a number of hopeless alcoholics who stopped drinking after only one or two administrations of LSD, and without further therapy. Krishnamurti seemed surprised.
He was silent for a few moments. There was something that he was going to say; also I had the feeling that his inner intensity was too powerful for the medium of words. I had no idea what was coming, but I knew something was about to happen. Silently he was holding my eyes with his dark burning look. Then with an extremely tense voice, he exploded, "You know, I think that those people who go about helping other people .. ." He stopped--then, with an even more piercing gaze, he spat out the next words like bullets of contempt: "those people ... they are a curse!"
After the conversation at the table I had no doubt that "those people" included me. The accusation and the fire with which he flung it at me were for an instant paralyzing. Then, almost without thinking, I asked, "What about you? What do you think you are doing? You go about helping other people."
As though he had never thought of himself as belonging to that cursed category, Krishnamurti was taken aback for a moment, totally surprised and perplexed. Then, with disarming simplicity and directness, he said, "But I don't do it on purpose!"
It was the most extraordinary of statements. Aldous was enormously impressed by it, and also very touched and amused. Of course he understood it. But I must have looked bewildered, for Krishnamurti, in a softer, calmer way, said, "It just happens, do you see?" Alas, I did not see very well. Krishnamurti continued, "I am not a healer, or a psychologist, or therapist, or any of those things." The words "healer," "psychologist," "therapist" burst from him like projectiles ejected by compressed power. "I am only a religious man. Alcoholics or neurotics or addicts--it doesn't matter what the trouble is--they get better quite often--but that is not important; that is not the point--it is only a consequence."
"What is wrong with such a consequence?" I asked. "I only give people techniques or recipes or tools to help them to do what they need to do--what is wrong in using the transformation of energy to change those miserable feelings into constructive behavior?" That had been what we had discussed at lunch. I knew that Krishnamurti was violently opposed to dogmas, rites, gurus, and Ascended Masters--to all the gadgetry of those organized powers whose aim is to impress the masses with keeping the godhead and its graces as their supreme and private monopoly. But I had no idea that he also objected to psycho-physical exercises, such as my recipes. Unaware of this fact, I had innocently exposed myself and my work. Now I realized that he had restrained himself during lunch, tactfully waiting until we were alone. He did not restrain himself now; vehemently, with unspeakable intensity, he spoke.
"No! No! Techniques--transformation--no--rubbish! One must destroy--destroy ... everything!" Fleetingly a thought crossed my mind: how easily such a man can be misunderstood, misinterpreted! I wanted to understand--I knew that he wanted me to understand, but how to ask--that was the question. "But what do you do?" I repeated. And he repeated: "Nothing--I am only a religious man." It had the sound of a final statement, a baffling one to me. Six words, I thought, but hundreds of different meanings, according to each person's conditioning. Perhaps he was simply restating what Christ had said:
But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.
But I was not thinking about Christ--I wanted to know what Krishnamurti meant by "a religious man."
"What is a religious man?"
Krishnamurti changed his tone and rhythm. He spoke now calmly, with incisiveness. "I will tell you what a religious man is. First of all, a religious man is a man who is alone--not lonely, you understand, but alone--with no theories or dogmas, no opinion, no background. He is alone and loves it--free of conditioning and alone--and enjoying it. Second, a religious man must be both man and woman--I don't mean sexually--but he must know the dual nature of everything; a religious man must feel and be both masculine and feminine. Third," and now his manner intensified again, "to be a religious man, one must destroy everything--destroy the past, destroy one's convictions, interpretations, deceptions--destroy all self-hypnosis--destroy until there is no center; you understand, no center. " He stopped.
"No center?"
After a silence Krishnamurti said quietly, "Then you are a religious person. Then stillness comes. Completely still."
Still were the immense mountains around us. Infinitely still.
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I see in Krishnaji.... ( SuZie Coyote, 10/20/98 4:23:53 PM)...a little of the dogmatic, despite his protestations. It was a bit dissembling of him to say "I am only a religious man." He taught thousands of people, consciously and as a way to sustain himself economically. I think Huxley was right with her response that helping is what K was doing (to which he replied with a suspiciously guru twist - "I don't do it on purpose." Huh? How can you address large groups with spiritual issues not "on purpose?"
People who go about helping others are bad? Maybe if they are claiming their help comes by divine right (i.e., they are one or another priesthood - whether it be religious or "professional.") Of course, it is always problematic when helping others, because we are all so often so full of ourselves we risk doing harm. Yet, good teachers are extremely valuable, if one only listens, ENGAGES THE MIND to evaluate the teaching, and makes critical judgments. I have run into teachers who weren't very good; who in fact were harmful. But I learned something along the way, even from them. The purpose of a teachers (guru) is to dispel darkness - illusions - , either purposely or quite by accident. They are not good at running our lives for us. One of these days, we'll figure that out.
Jesus healed people all the time. He purposely went about teaching, helping others (if the stories are to be believed at all). He wasn't seeking a religion to wrap around himself, best I can tell from the text (though one did grow up anyway). I don't think the blind guy, whom Jesus reportedly gifted with sight, would say that Jesus was bad for helping out, nor all the others he healed or "cast out demons."
The theory behind military boot camp is to destroy the personal ego and subsume it into the group, destroy old patterns of behavior, old loyalties and mind-sets. I know this because I went through boot camp. After everything is destroyed, one is then filled-up with what the military deems appropriate. In fact, on the first day of boot camp, I was told, "We are going to tear you apart and rebuild you - physically, mentally, and emotionally."
"Destroy, destroy, destroy" leaves a person empty and vulnerable, in a spiritual vacuum. That's how people end up in cults. (The military is a very large cult.) It's taken me 15 years to get their conditioning out of my head (and it's still not completely gone, probably never will be.)
Krishnaji's a good teacher - a great one, in my book. But he's just that - a teacher.
Could the "Signora S" have been Vanda Scaravelli, maybe?
SuZ
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Bob Cox ( crotalus, 10/20/98 4:57:32 PM)That's my guess but I can't prove it by what I find in either Vanda's or Laura's book. But this sounds like her:
Aldous wrote me, "Signora S. looks after Krishnamurti with enormous devotion--but does it without being a holy woman which is not easy in the circumstances. She is really a very remarkable woman." I knew exactly what Aldous meant by holy woman. He had had to develop ways to evade the eager solicitude of holy women, for though it sometimes amused and touched him, it also usually embarrassed him. It arose naturally enough from his being famous and pale and handsome, from us having written cynical novels as well as The Perennial Philosophy and from his having been, years before a vegetarian. Aldous had gone on a vegetarian diet to improve his digestion, but most people interpreted his action as evidence of spirituality. I think that what especially disturbed Aldous about holy women (and men, too, who had the same approach) was that they tended to make their idol into a symbol and in so doing diminish his humanness.
At Estes Park Erich replied (during a public session) to my question about how Joel Kramer found K to be upon meeting him, with a thoughtful, "Well, he found him to be isolated."
As one can see in his lectures late in life he could be quite a pain but seemed to be consistent in his view of gurus and would have been most offended to be thought of as one. Kramer appears to suffer the same problem - the apparent ego and personality of people with strongly held and vigorously prosecuted views often conflicts with their agenda.
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Yogamama ( Yogamama, 10/20/98 5:59:33 PM)I've been thinking on the issue of teachers (people who help other people on their journeys?) so the post was very pertinent. Great teachers come along and we are fortunate to have them I think. For the most part I would venture to geuse that they just don't develop all on their own. In the intro to moving into stillness, Erich spoke of his yoga journey and it is peppered with great names; Krishnamurti, Desikachar, Dona Holleman, Vanda Scaravelli, Iyengar, Kramar.....
Thankfully for us, he is very well educated by great teachers. This seems to point me towards the importance of teachers. Listen inward and take advantage of all the good teachers you can find, Don't you think?
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Erich Schiffmann ( schiffmann, 10/20/98 11:23:23 PM)That's exactly what I think. Good teachers are godsends. My approach has always been to learn from whomever I find appealing. The result is not teacher-dependence but the courage to listen within and dare to do as one's own deepest feelings prompt one to do. If the teachings are effective, then the learner is learning to be guided from within. There's not only nothing wrong with this, it's beautiful!
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thomas -- jumping in after a period of absence . . . ( tbrinakathomas, 10/23/98 9:46:13 AM)Teachers need not necessarily be great or recognized or famous . . .
Sometimes my most valued teachers are the clients who come to me for me to teach them, or the causal encounter with someone who has crossed my path and to whom I am challenged deep within by my "small, still voice" to see differently, not as a pain in the ass for thwarting me, but as a gift giving me another opportunity to extend love and forgiveness, mostly to myself ...
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Gena Berglund ( earthworm, 10/23/98 11:18:03 AM)Great discussion. Just though I'd throw in my two cents.
My own concept of "teacher" is warped by the 18 years I spent in school. As I allow more recent experience to instruct me I see that teachers simply help us to uncover the core of truth already within.
The extraordinary "presence" of a "great" teacher, time and space are not barriers, can bring light into the darkness. Everything else is a footnote. The kind of knowledge we associate with "schooling" can really be imparted in many ways and I feel is not at the core of this discussion. I agree that teachers can be those people other than so labelled. My children have taught me much, quite unintentionally. I wonder if most great teaching isn't quite unintentional. (Sounds a little like K.) Sometimes I wonder if the word "teacher" is just worn out or purely too misunderstood. Do we reclaim the word for the truth of what it is or dump it and find another word?
These posts constitute an important discussion and relate to how the student teacher relationship develops. Dependence, authority, criticism, judgement, distancing, and blame fatally impair many teacher/student relationships. Many of us choose teachers from a lower chakre, (basic, sacral or solar plexus) which brings our past relationship issues to bear. If the issues need to be sorted out, then this is an opportunity for those persons. I find however, that these student/teacher relationships are laden with confusion and are often difficult to sort out. As a result they are often short lived. No blame intended here, just the way it works. This is one of the major reasons I have stayed away from teaching yoga so far. As a teacher I want to be very clear about what I am bringing into the relationship. On the other hand, perfection is not possible and someday I will dive in . . .
I find I teach best when it is not "little me" doing the teaching. When I am concious of being the Ocean that is also a wave the teaching is clear. i do not control it. My work facilitating art with young children reflects this approach. When i am out of the way, then they can do art from their hearts. Now that is fun.
Gena
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Adi Da and Teaching ( SuZie Coyote, 10/30/98 3:53:50 PM)Hi Gena...interesting article. I've read some of "Da Free John's" stuff (he's changed his name from Da Free John, to Adi Da, to.....) and became very interested (even bought a book) until I ran across an article about his excesses. Apparently he was known to hit women and call it "puja." I can't find the article now. He’s as “guru-ed up” as can be, insisting his disciples worship him and claiming divinity, etc. I have one of his books, and he talks a good story. There ARE things to learn. But, he’s bought himself a hefty chunk of a pacific island (with donated funds) and stays isolated from his followers, who are encouraged to send large amounts money and wait years (maybe longer) to be considered enlightened enough to actuall meet him. I don’t for an instant buy that “crazy wisdom” crap.
I tell my children that everyone is a mixed bag. No one is all good and no one is all bad and we all have feet of clay. For example, my stepfather (their grandfather) was an abusive alcoholic. But I can remember once he had two bucks in his pocket once, with no idea where he'd get any more and he spent it on ice cream for us. Some of our biggest lessons, of course, come from absolute creeps, who ever consider passing themselves off as gurus.
The lesson is always the same – learn from whatever sources are available, but trust none of them implicitly.
I’ve taught most of my life – everything from complex technical concepts, to human behavior, public speaking, massage therapy, and now yoga. For me the challenge is remembering that I don’t really know all that much. When students start looking to me for answers, it is difficult not to assume the mantle of infallibility. I then become pedagogic and generally insufferable. The other big pitfall comes from the necessity of making some of it up as I go along and then feeling safe and secure in the assurance that what I’ve made up is accurate.
Namaste
SuZ
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Wow ( tympanachus cupido, 3/4/99 5:31:03 PM)Just had a confirming experience of someone's essential core of goodness. I was just a few minutes ago well into the profound altered state of hot tub yoga at the gym when I noticed a woman swimming gracefully before me in the pool. I felt "strangely" connected to her and when I closed my eyes I realized she was pregnant and that the unborn lad was somehow signaling me how delighted he was to be "swimming" with Mom. On the next pass she confirmed her state by laboriously extracting her 7+ month distended belly from the pool. When she was up, I boldly enquired if she knew she was carrying a boy. In response to her confirmation of gender I explained the lad had told me how deeply he enjoyed the time in the water with her. She said, "Bless you. I believe you. Thank you for telling me." She then waddled over, knelt and kissed me on the forehead before swaying off to the showers. Tapped into the mother matrix, I was, for a moment. Sometimes the polarity of divinity, the femaleness of it is completely undeniable.
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Bob Cox ( tympanachus cupido, 3/4/99 5:46:04 PM)I take it on faith and on testimony from Stan Grof about the transpersonal experiences that occur before birth...and on the need to sometimes relive or abreact them in the process of coming to know ourselves, our gestation and even our conception. The experience described in 91 was the first direct evidence I've had and it cautions me about the damage one might do to a yet unformed mind by not honoring the communication in a empathetic and loving way. The experience has not altered my perspective about a woman's right to fully control her body and the products of her body. It does, however, bring into stark relief the responsibilities.
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Fluidity ( Shakti Das, 3/4/99 6:04:23 PM)Yes!
Water can be a therapeutic medium can't it.
I lived for many years at a natural Hot Springs where the body/mind therapy called Watsu (body work in water) was developed and i witnessed many many experiences of total life changing experiences.
The warm water and safe environment provided by skilled and loving hands is a powerful medium for rigidities, blockages, and tensions to let go allowing us to experience the greater whole or core of existence.
For many they really need and thrive this water element to catalyze flow. All sorts of deep communication is possible when we let go of our preconceptions/prejudices.
It is interesting that rebirthing uses a circular breathing technique in water very much the same as Holotrophic breathing (Grof), and vivation therapy (which is a bit of a synthesis of the two). It seems that the mind stilled enough for you to become aware of the presence of this other being in the pool and you were receptive enough at that time to simply open and listen. Thanks for sharing that -- isn't it awesome that this type of communication is possible all the time if we entretain the possibility?
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Erich Schiffmann ( schiffmann, 3/4/99 11:48:44 PM)And that's what Creation is, isn't it? ...the always-new Movement of ongoing newness... fertility expressed... which is constantly in communication with itself (!).
I think that once one gets their foot in the door on this insight -- once you have a very real experience of the sort you did, Bob -- you never quite believe with such fervor or conviction what you used to believe... which makes your mind more malleable, more likely to experience again something beyond one's current level of understanding.
I really liked your story.
The words here belong to the writers - please provide attribution if quoted on other web sites or in other media. These excerpts have been selected and edited for clarity by the editor. --R. Cox
