Hello, all ye seekers

Hi folks,

Sorry it has been so long. Don’t ask me what I’ve been doing. I think life got in the way.

My good friend came to join Carol and me in Rome this past weekend (we were over hear for a boond-- , er, conference) and we had a nice time seeing some of the sights, drinking some wine, eating some good food. Then after he left (terrible when you have to work for a living — oh wait, he doesn’t really have to), he stumbled upon some web-site with Thomas Merton quotes, and caused me to waste a perfectly good evening in Rome looking into some as well.

Anyway, the web + Google being what it is (our collective consciousness), I stumbled on a different site that had an interesting quote. “O people of the world unite, and pave the way to peace sublime, Divided you yourself invite Disastrous wars, unrest and crime.” 7-3-1952, Gopi Krishna. Then I made the mistake of following Alice down that rabbit hole, and found an interesting interview between this Gopi Krishna and Claes Nobel (of the Swiss Nobel prize family). I encourage you to read the whole interview, and not to be turned off by his examples that were relevant to the time of the interview, related to the Cold War. Without trying to prejudice your read (which I do encourage), here are a few random selections.

For you workaholics ...

Now I will give you one more instance to show how the mind works. Please try to frame a picture of New York, London, or Zurich, and see the cars, trucks and buses whirling around and around. See the people rushing across roads, burning enormous quantities of energy.

Why this haste? Is the earth turning upside down? Is some other species threatening mankind from a distant planet? Is there a plague? What is happening? Why is everybody running and rushing and working, without giving any time to allow the mind to be in repose and in peace, in tune with itself? What is happening in all the cities, especially in the industrial countries, and now in the developing countries also? Speed, speed, and work and work. For what?

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For you Hummer-drivers ...

Why should we, all of a sudden, take it into our heads that everyone of us is permitted to spend as much energy as would suffice for perhaps a hundred other people? The fact is, Mr. Nobel, that we are not planning; we are not doing anything by plan that keeps in view our evolution, the resources of the earth, the needs that we have and the economy of nature. We are doing everything haphazardly. Nations are doing it out of rivalry and competition. There is nothing like a planned economy anywhere on earth.

During the last hundred years we have consumed so much energy and so much of the resources of the planet that, if frugally employed, could have lasted perhaps a thousand years. If we were to continue the same extravagance and extend it to the developing countries, to all the four billion people, there will be nothing left in the next fifty years. So all this is just haphazard thinking and wrong planning, without any idea about survival.

We have to live a frugal life, just as nature is frugal, parsimonious. A frugal life is good for our health, both inner and outer. Any new source of energy, even if discovered or developed, would not solve our problems. It would just add to them.

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For you enlightened souls ...

I had an incredible experience in my 34th year. And from that experience started a process of transformation in my body which continues to this day. This transformation led me to a state of consciousness which I had never experienced before. It is a strange experience. In the normal human being, one's personality is a small flame of consciousness or awareness. And seen from that small flame, the world appears to be a gigantic expanse of stars, planets, oceans, mountains, deserts and plains. But when this transformation of consciousness occurs, the whole picture is reversed. It is now the consciousness which becomes an ocean. It is now the consciousness which surpasses these suns, planets, mountains, oceans, plains and deserts. It is now consciousness that becomes the fundamental reality of the universe. And all that we see now, with our sensory equipment, is like an image projected on it.

Consciousness now appears to be the basic reality, to be the universe in fact. And what we see, the material manifestations of the universe, are but projections of this very consciousness. We can say they are like shadows, phantoms, like a mirage floating on it.

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For you creative geniuses ...

Now, it is not that the genius does not make any effort. The effort is made, but his brain is so constituted that it has easier access to this reservoir of eternal knowledge than others do. Similarly, we have the psychics, prophets, clairvoyants, prodigies, great artists and the great musicians. They all receive new ideas, new flashes, new music, and new art from this intelligent source, which is behind the human mind. We are making a grave mistake in supposing that consciousness or the mind is the product of our brain. That is what is at the root of the present disaster. Consciousness or mind is an energy by itself. It is an independently existing universe. It is a self-sustaining ocean from which a drop filters into our mind. Our mind, our neurons, our nervous system, is but a computer. They are just the parts of a computer worked by this energy. The moment we come to realize this fact we can begin to make experiments to prove it. That is what I mean when I say that we must have experimental centers where we can do research on the evolutionary mechanism that is implanted in every human being. In the ancient India scriptures, this mechanism is often referred to as Kundalini.

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OK, let’s call that enough highlights. I do encourage you to read the entire interview, and then if you would like, comment back with any observations or insights of your own. Here’s the link:

http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/gopi3interview.htm

Oops, made the mistake of reading some other interviews off the same main web-site, which I also found fascinating (and I will admit ring true to some of my own intuitions). Here is an extract from the second interview, which can be found here:

http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/gopi3goal3.htm

Gotta love something that slaps the face of modern science and religion with the same glove:

The reason is because the ideas expressed by me are new and original, which therefore need time to take root in the common mind, and, secondly, because they strongly militate against some of the current conceptions or misconceptions of both orthodox science and religion.

How can the erudite, on either side, readily swallow the utterances of one who proclaims loud that matter is a mirage, Darwin was wrong, Freud mistaken, consciousness is All, that humanity is on her way to this awareness in the beatific state, that the great illuminate were not and could not be the favorites of the Almighty and that mystical experience does not represent an encounter with God but only a vision of the divinity in man?

And here are a couple of extracts from the third interview, which can be found here:

http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/gopinterview.htm

This goes into more detail about his views on consciousness, enlightenment, and how it might relate to the experience of the sages:

We know what all people perceive of this world. I can understand what you perceive of it, you can understand what I perceive of it. That is, this perception is uniform. Everyone has the same perception. But this other perception is different. In this other perception you do not see the world as a solid, real, objective creation. The real objective creation is consciousness. You see consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is living; you see a mountain as if it is living; you see the sky as if it is living; you see the Earth as if it is living; you see life or consciousness everywhere. And this life or consciousness is not something which is really dead or which is something you can understand. It is unfathomable. It is wonder and everytime you see it, you perceive it. The wonder grows deeper. I am never tired of sitting in quiet and reflecting on myself. I am never tired of looking at the sky. The sky, to me, does not appear as it appeared before my 34th year; it is so fascinating. It is such a beautiful vision that I would like to look at it for days and months on end. In other words, in the air a fountain of happiness, a new kingdom, I should say, is opened. This is probably what Christ meant when he said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." This is the Nirvana of Buddha; and this is the state of Vada mentioned by the Suffi mystics. In fact, in this inactive state what we perceive is consciousness in its most magic form, in its glorious form, and not consciousness as a point looking through the eyes or hearing through the ears, but a consciousness which has its own channels and which knows that it is the master and not the slave of the material forces which knows it is the creator. It is infinite: it is deathless. In this state one feels himself to be a king, he feels himself to be the master of what he sees. It is not the ego. I should say it is not the ego; it is the very condition of this consciousness. That is the reason why it is said that no mystic would change his state even for a kingdom. It is somehing so unique, so glorious, so elevating that I have no words to describe this state.

This ties nicely into our Western, generally Christian worldview:

The life to be lived is just as you see in the sermon on the Mountain - a life of humility, a life of love, a life of purity, a life in which you wish for others what you wish for yourself, a life in wich you are pure, you are not sophisticated, you are not overly clever, you are not smart, you do not use your cleverness or smartness to take what belongs to others, a life of extreme purity and a life of simplicity, that you do not waste the resources of the Earth.

Until next time (hopefully not so long), keep (or in my case restart) seeking.

S-