Prabhaker

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  1. There are two types of religions in the world: prayer oriented religions and meditation oriented religions. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism – these are prayer oriented religions. Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism – these are meditation oriented religions. For a prayer oriented religion the concept of a personal God is needed – to relate to. For meditation oriented religions God is a useless hypothesis; it can be discarded easily into the dustbin. It is not needed. You have an imaginary conception of a person there, somewhere. You talk. You confess your sins, you ask his forgiveness. You pray. Good, good for the heart. It helps a little bit. You feel more unburdened, you feel light. Maybe there is a God, maybe not – that’s not the point. But believing there is a God, you can unburden yourself, you can surrender yourself, it becomes easier for you. The hypothesis is helpful. People who are reason oriented, head oriented, they become – if they are interested in religion – they become theologians. They write theories about God, they talk about God. Then the second layer of your being: love, heart. If a man is religious love becomes prayer, prayer becomes love. They remain better than ordinary worldly people, but still not absolutely other worldly, they remain in the middle. Good as far as it goes, but not enough.
  2. God is non-existential, but it is a good consolation. It used to fill people's interior, although it is a lie. But even a lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of old age and death, and beyond – the unknown darkness.Lies can console you.
  3. This idea does not exist in the religions that have arisen out of Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism. The philosopher Keith Augustine has written "the vast majority of Stevenson's cases come from countries where a religious belief in reincarnation is strong, and rarely elsewhere, seems to indicate that cultural conditioning (rather than reincarnation) generates claims of spontaneous past-life memories. The philosopher C. T. K. Chari of Madras Christian College in Chennai, a specialist in parapsychology, argued that Stevenson was naive and that the case studies were undermined by his lack of local knowledge. Chari wrote that many of the cases had come from societies, such as that of India, where people believed in reincarnation, and that the stories were simply cultural artifacts. @Deep You will be surprised: all vegetarian religions believe in reincarnation, and all non-vegetarian religions believe in only one life. This can not be a coincidence. Pythagoras vegetarianism first brought to the West. And Pythagoras discovered the Western mind - the idea of reincarnation. If a person is an absolute vegetarian, he can easily recall past lives. Pythagoras visited India, deeply meditated realized past lives. Nature in its wisdom never allows you to remember your past lives – unless you come to a point where it can be allowed, when you become so meditative that nothing disturbs you, then the gates open and all your past lives are before you. It is an automatic mechanism, though sometimes the mechanism doesn’t work. Through accidents some children are born who can remember. But their lives are destroyed. You don’t remember because it would be difficult for you to manage. Even in this life you are making such a mess – many lives remembered, you would simply go mad.
  4. If you are not ready to experiment , how will you know what I am talking about? Meditation, as such, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness in a relaxed state. Neither alertness is a technique nor is awareness in a relaxed state a technique. But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. I know if you have not lived meditatively, it becomes very difficult to die meditatively. Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties.
  5. I play 'rise of nations' and 'age of mythology' on my computer.
  6. Focusing is an effort. Meditation is rest, absolute rest, a full stop to all activity – physical, mental, emotional. When you are in such a deep rest that nothing stirs in you, when all action as such ceases – as if you are fast asleep yet awake – you come to know who you are. Suddenly the window opens. It cannot be opened by effort because effort creates tension – and tension is the cause of our whole misery. Hence this is something very fundamental to be understood that meditation is not effort. It is not concentration, just the contrary, it is relaxation. When you are utterly relaxed, for the first time you start feeling your reality; you come face to face with your being. When you are engaged in activity you are so occupied that you cannot see yourself. Activity creates much smoke around you, it raises much dust around you; hence all activity has to be dropped, at least for a few hours per day. The key word is rest, relaxation. Never go against rest and relaxation. Arrange your life in such a way, drop all futile activity because ninety per cent is futile; it is just for killing time and remaining occupied. Do only the essential and devote your energies more and more to the inner journey. Then that miracle happens when you can remain at rest and in action together, simultaneously. Don't resist process of dying, gather courage to accept every thing happening inside the body and mind, in total acceptance and relaxation meditation happens, you cannot do it.
  7. Can you describe what do you mean by term 'meditation' ?
  8. After each meditation, when you are celebrating, have compassion. Just feel that your energy should go and help people in whatsoever ways they need it. Just release it! You will be unburdened, you will feel very relaxed, you will feel very calm and quiet, and the vibrations that you have released will help many. End your meditations always with compassion. And compassion is unconditional. You cannot have compassion only for those who are friendly towards you, only for those who are related to you. Compassion is all-inclusive...intrinsically all-inclusive. So if you cannot feel compassion for your neighbor, then forget all about meditation, because it has nothing to do with somebody in particular. It has something to do with your inner state. Be compassion! unconditionally, undirected, unaddressed. Then you become a healing force into this world of misery. Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. One of the fundamentals of compassion is to make everybody dignified, everybody aware that what has happened to you can happen to him; that he is not a hopeless case, that he is not unworthy. Compassion is not addressed to anybody. It is not a relationship; it is simply your very being. You enjoy being compassionate to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to human beings, to everybody – unconditionally, not asking for anything in return.
  9. Personality removal is very difficult and arduous but not impossible. With spiritual growth your personality changes, if it is not changing, how can there be any spiritual growth when you are the same person ? It is not only about the duration, intensity of your efforts, your total commitment is important. Real challenge is to adjust in society with changing personality.
  10. Deeper teachings cannot be given unless there is love between the two – the disciple and the guru. The disciple and guru must become deep lovers. Only then can the higher, the beyond, be expressed. A guru is not a teacher in the first place. A guru shares his being with you, not his philosophy. He is not a philosopher propounding a system of philosophy. The guru must himself be enlightened, he must himself have attained, because one cannot communicate that which one has not realized. The very presence of the guru is a communion. And to one living in contact with him, something is communicated — though not through words.
  11. @Vikram ss One man went to see the madhouse. In one room a man was beating his head, crying. Great tears were flowing down his cheeks and he was holding a small picture very lovingly on his chest. The visitor asked the superintendent 'What has happened to this man?' And the superinterdent said 'You see the picture that he is holding? He holds it day and night. That is the woman he wanted, he had loved, but could not get. Hence, he went mad. He cries and sings songs to her, and goes on thinking of her. That is his whole life. The whole world has disappeared, only the woman... He talks, he talks from his side and the woman's side, and the dialogue continues.' Then they went to another room, and another man was beating his head and throwing himself against the wall. And the visitor asked 'What has happened to this man?' And the superintendent said 'This is the man who got that woman. Since he got that woman he has gone mad.'
  12. It will be easier if we understand few about the interval between the giving up of one body and the taking of another. First, the fact is that the experiences of that interval are like dreams. Whenever one experiences something, at that moment the experience is that of a real happening. But when one recalls it in memory, it becomes like a dream; it is dreamlike because there is no use of the senses. Your feeling and your conviction that a happening is real come through your senses and your body. After the giving up of one body and before the taking of another we do not have senses. The body itself is not there, so whatever you might experience in that state is like a dream, as if you are seeing a dream. When we see dreams, we do not doubt their reality. This is very interesting. After some time we come to doubt its reality, but we never doubt it while in the dream. The dream seems real. That which is real sometimes causes us to doubt whether what is seen is real or not, but in a dream such a doubt is never created. Why? Because a dream will not tolerate the slightest doubt; otherwise it will immediately break. Just similar to this condition is the interval between two bodies. Whatever happens during that period seems absolutely real – so real that we can never know such a reality with our eyes and senses. The heavenly damsels they encounter are so real to them – real such as no woman seen through our senses can ever be. That is also why there is no end to the miseries of spirits. Their miseries befall them so realistically, such as they never do in real life. So what we call heaven and hell are just deep dream lives. The intensity of the fire burning in hell can never be found in real life, though it is a very inconsistent fire. In scriptures, there are descriptions of the fires of hell, into which you are thrown without being burned. But one is never aware of this inconsistency – that if you were thrown into an intense fire you would not be able to withstand the heat; yet you are not in any way being burned. This inconsistency, that ”I am being burned in the fire,” that the fire is terrible, that the burning is unbearable and yet ”I am not burned at all,” is realized only after one is out of this dreamlike experience. In the interval between two births, there are two types of souls. One type is of evil souls. For them it is difficult to find a womb for another birth. The other type consists of good souls. For such souls also it is difficult to find suitable wombs for taking another birth. Between these two are the majority of souls in which there is no fundamental difference, but only a difference of character, personality and mental make-up. They are born immediately. During that interval, there is no clear awareness of the duration of time. Because of this, Christianity has said that there is hell forever. This is said on the basis of the memory of those who have seen a very long dream. It was such a long dream that when they returned they had no memory of any relationship between this body and the previous one. That is why they said that hell is eternal and it is very difficult to get out of it. Good souls see happy dreams and evil souls see unhappy dreams. Only because of their dreams are they feeling unhappy and miserable. Heaven and hell are also memories of a dream period. Descriptions can be given. It is only on such descriptions that concepts of heaven and hell have been evolved by all religions. The descriptions are different not because the places are different, but because the mental states of the individuals recalling the experiences are different. Therefore, when Christianity describes heaven, it will be different from what Hinduism will describe, because descriptions depend on different states of consciousness. Actually, every person will bring back a different story. It is more or less like when we all sleep in the same room and then get up and describe our dreams. We have slept in the same room; we are at the same place, but our dreams will be different. Everything depends upon the person. from Osho book - Dimensions beyond the known (pg 62-63) google it , you can download it in pdf format. other books are Bardo Thodol Book by Karma Lingpa Tibetan Book Of The Dead by ROBERT THURMAN
  13. Sallekhana OR Santhara OR Prayopavesa is not in Hinduism, it is in Jainism. Jainism is the most ascetic religion in the world. Jaina monks torture themselves so much that one wonders if they are insane. The idea of committing santhara, suicide, by not eating or drinking, is nothing but a very long process of self-torture. Your life here should be the days of meditation, love, compassion, friendliness, playfulness, laughter; and if you can do that, you will be rewarded by a conscious death. You cannot manage to die consciously without a long, meditative, conscious life. Only a conscious life is rewarded with conscious death — it is a reward, but only to the conscious man.
  14. The ability to concentrate is not something to feel blessed about. It is a frozen state of mind, a very narrow state of mind. Useful, of course, useful — for others. Useful in scientific inquiry, useful in business, useful in the market, useful in politics — but absolutely useless for yourself. If you become too attuned with concentration you will become very, very tense. Concentration is a tense state of mind; you will never be relaxed. Concentration is like a torch, focused, and consciousness is like a lamp, unfocused. If you become conscious, any moment you want to concentrate on a particular problem, you can. It is not a problem. But if you become too focused with concentration the vice versa is not true: you cannot relax. A relaxed mind can always concentrate. easily, there is no trouble about it. But a focused mind becomes obsessed. narrow. It is not easy for it to relax and leave the tension. It remains tense. Meditation will allow you to concentrate whenever the need arises, but if there is no need you will remain relaxed, flowing in all directions like water. It is not concentration, because in concentration you focus on one thing and you forget everything else. When you are concentrating you will not listen to the humming of the bees or to the singing of the birds; you will only see what you are concentrating upon. Concentration is narrowing down your consciousness to a point. It is good in archery: you have a target and you have to see only the target and you have to forget everything else. Meditation means no-mind – not even concentration is allowed. Mind itself is not allowed to be! That is why meditation cannot be grasped by mind. Up to concentration mind has a reach, an approach. Mind can understand concentration, but mind cannot understand meditation. Really, mind is not allowed at all. In concentration, mind is allowed to be at one point. In meditation, even that point is taken away.
  15. Every religion is based on a lie device. All methods are lies; they just create a situation, they are not causal. For example, beyond the boundary of a room is the unbound, open sky. You have never seen it. I can talk with you about the sky, about the freshness, about the sea, about all that is beyond this room, but you have not seen it. You do not know about it. You just laugh; you think I am making it up. You say, "It is all fantastic. You are a dreamer." I cannot convince you to go outside because everything that I can talk about is meaningless to you. Then I say, "The house is on fire!" This is meaningful to you; this is something that you can understand. Now I do not have to give you any explanations. I just run; you follow me. The house is not on fire, but the moment you are outside you don't have to ask me why I lied. The meaning is there; the sky is there. Now you thank me. Any lie will do. The lie was just a device; it was just a device to bring you outside. It did not cause the outside to be there. All the great ones-Buddha, Christ, Mahavira-have, out of compassion, created great lies just to push you out of the house. If you can be pushed out of your mind through any device, that is all that is needed. New devices can be created. Old devices become flat, an old lie becomes flat, and new ones are needed. You have been told so many times that the house is on fire when it is not, that the lie has become useless. Now someone has to create a new device. New age spiritual teachers doing same thing, there language is different. 'Being one with god' and 'enlightenment' is same thing.
  16. The ego is an accumulated phenomenon, a by-product of living with others. If a child lives totally alone, he will never come to grow an ego. But that is not going to help. He will remain like an animal. That doesn't mean that he will come to know the real self, no. The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you. One reaches to knowledge only through suffering. You cannot throw anything just by logical argument. You can throw something only when it has become so painful that it cannot be carried any further. This is the mechanism of life: you have to be egoists, you have to fight your way, you have to fight with so many millions of desires around you, you have to struggle, you have to survive. Ego is a survival measure. If a child is born without the ego, he will die. He cannot survive, it is impossible, because if he feels hunger he will not feel: I am hungry. He will feel there is hunger, but not related to him. The moment hunger is felt, the child feels: I am hungry, he starts crying and making efforts to be fed. The child grows through the growth of his ego. Ego is part of natural growth. But that doesn’t mean that you have to remain with it forever. It is a natural growth, and then there is a second step when it has to be dropped. That too is natural. But the second step can be taken only when the first has come to its crescendo, its climax, when the first has reached its peak.
  17. There were hundreds of so called spiritual teachers in Buddha's era too, who knows them now, they don't have guts to speak the truth as it is. Society can tolerate a spiritual teacher who speaks according to traditions of society. No society, no establishment can accept an authentic master.
  18. In this century they might not be killed, because men has developed more subtle techniques to deal with them, it doesn't mean they can adjust in society.
  19. If you drop your personality completely, it becomes very difficult to adjust in society. A Jesus is crucified, a Socrates is poisoned, a Mansoor is chopped, Buddha, Mahavira are stoned. They were the most loving, most compassionate human beings possible.
  20. It is very difficult to demolish the personality, because we become greatly attached to it. We even feel that our personality is our very nature, we think it is what we really are. Even if you manage to make just a few holes in it, you will feel a small fresh breeze coming from your true nature. It is not necessary to demolish it completely , you would find yourself against the society. It is enough for you to become capable of taking off and putting on this mask as you want. When you are meditating , you no longer remain a personality, you become only a soul. In this way outer world becomes a drama for you and you start acting in it. An intelligent person will inevitably live in the society as actor acting, and in no other way. His relationship with society is only that of being an actor in a play. New forms of collectivities will have to come into being, where people are not only living together, but where people are in deep communion. Right now everybody is forced to be according to the ideas of others. That causes misery and great anguish, and takes all joy and gladness from life. Everybody should be himself and contribute to life according to his way, by creating music, or by creating paintings, or by writing poetry, or by producing better fruit, better crops, making better roads. Everyone should be allowed to have his own potential fulfilled. A model society will give dignity to every individual. A model society will create as much intelligence as possible, and will allow people to grow intelligently, to search and seek for their truth, because that is how one becomes more intelligent.
  21. 1. Start with the daytime. With the first ray of consciousness as you wake up in the morning, start the experiment. After a thousand attempts, perhaps one may succeed but even if one attempt is successful you will realize that the thousands of attempts were worthwhile. If even for a moment, you came to experience that he who walks is not you but he who is unmoving is you; he who is full of desires is not you, but that he who is forever desireless is you; that that which is perishable is not you, but the fountain of eternal nectar is you. Start with the daytime, and gradually you will succeed in carrying it through into your sleep. Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples to practice awareness during the daytime, and then he would tell them that just before going to bed they must remember: ”This is a dream.” You are still awake. There is no dream yet, but you have to keep repeating to yourself: ”Everything I see is a dream.” Touch the bed and intensify the feeling: ”Whatever I touch is a dream.” Touch one hand with the other, and experience: ”All that I touch is a dream.” You go to sleep sinking deep into this feeling. There will be a constant stream of feeling moving inside. After a few days you will find that in the middle of a dream you will suddenly become aware that it is a dream. As soon as you remember that it is a dream, the dream breaks, because the dream works only in the absence of consciousness. Then you will be filled with bliss such as you have never known before. 2.Shankara’s Vedanta propounds the concept that the universe is an illusion. This philosophy is an experiment of the same kind. The seeker has to remember constantly that whatever is happening is a dream. While getting up in the morning, walking on the road, in the midst of the marketplace, he has to remember: ”Everything is a dream.” Why? Because this is the method. It is a process. If you experiment constantly for eight hours, this remembrance will penetrate so deeply that you will remember it even in the middle of the dream; you will remember that it is a dream. At present you are unable to remember. Actually, you are doing it even now – but in the reverse order. All your waking hours you feel and understand that whatever you see is real. And that is why dreams seem real at night, because the feeling is very strong. What can be more false than dreams? How many times on waking up have you realized their falsity, their uselessness? Yet every night you make the same mistake. Why? There must be a very deep reason behind this folly. The reason is: in your waking state you take everything to be true. If you take everything you see to be real, then how can the dreams you see at night appear to be illusory? You take them to be real. The maya experiment is just the opposite. Whatever you see during the day, you remember that this is unreal. You forget again and again, but once again you pull yourself together. You remind yourself that everything you see is nothing but a huge drama in which you are only a spectator. You are not the actor, not the doer, but only a witness. If you nurture this feeling, it becomes a constant flow within. Finally the dream disappears in the night, and this is a great attainment. If the dream is shattered, you are ready to take the third step. If the dream is shattered, you can take the third step of retaining consciousness in deep sleep. But right now this is difficult for you. It is not possible to do it all at once; you must proceed step by step. 3. While walking along the road, stop! Become the observer: realize that it is the body walking and you are merely an observer. While eating, stop! Become the observer. The body eats. You are merely observing. While attending to the customers in your shop, stop! Become the observer. Do not get so engrossed as to forget the observer. Take hold of yourself time and again. It will require a continuous effort. You will find, by and by, that the effort becomes easier day by day; now and again you will get flashes of 'pure consciousness'. When 'pure consciousness' comes easily in the daytime you can gradually utilize it in your dreams. Then when you are about to fall asleep let the last thought in your mind be: ”I am the observer”. As sleep overcomes you let this thought reverberate in your mind: ”I am the witness, I am the witness...” And thus you fall asleep. You will not be able to catch the moment when sleep comes and the repetition stops. If you cultivate the feeling till you fall asleep the feeling will continue into sleep, for it is only the body that sleeps. As you cultivate this feeling more and more, one night you will suddenly become conscious of the observer in your sleep. And as soon as you become aware of the observer a rare thing happens – dreams vanish. Dreams occur only because of your unconsciousness. Now nothing and nobody can make you unaware, unconscious. He who awakens even for a moment in his sleep, his unawareness is gone forever. The day you awaken in your sleep you become a yogi. You cannot become a yogi by performing asanas. These are merely exercises. They are good and useful to keep the body healthy, but if you take them to be the true yoga then you are deluded. Yoga means: the art of awakening in sleep. Thus he who awakens is a yogi.
  22. I agree, psychedelics can not lead you to the enlightenment, but they can give you the glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being. Now you can start a journey in safer ways.
  23. What's harm in experimenting / gambling on path of enlightenment ?
  24. May be you are correct, but he was banned from entering several countries, which claim themselves as champions of freedom and human rights.
  25. Unless you are not ready to die, how can you know what is beyond death ? Enlightenment is a death, a psychological death.