Taos Meditation: Frank Waters on Ramana

Here I stand, sniffing the early morning breeze and spying out the vast landscape like an old coyote, as if to assure myself I am in the center flow of its invisible, magnetic currents. To the sun, and to the two oppositely polarized peaks, El Cuchillo and the Sacred Mountain, I offer my morning prayers. Then, letting the bright warming rays of the sun engulf me, I give myself up to a thoughtless silence.

One, I suppose, could call it meditation. I don’t, for I’m not sure how one is supposed to meditate. Once, I attended an hour’s talk on meditation given by a noted esotericist from England. He carefully explained the best hours of the day to observe it; how to choose a corner of the room; what kind of a religious painting or photograph to hang on the wall with a burning candle beneath it; the choice of the proper incense to burn; the posture to assume. By then his hour was up. I left the hall, thinking of a question that Dr. Evans-Wentz once had asked Sri Ramana Maharshi, the famous sage of India.

“Is it helpful to sit on a tiger’s skin?” he asked. “Should one sit in the lotus position, or may the legs be kept straight? What posture is best?”

“All of this is unnecessary,” the Maharshi answered. “Let the mind assume the right posture. That is all.”

It is enough for me, as a prelude to a busy day, to attain for a moment at sunrise a measure of unbroken silence, of profound stillness within.

~Frank Waters from ‘Mountain Dialogues’

The Art of Lucid Dreaming

There is an art to living that many point to. This summary is the result of months of query into the second dreaming that follows an initial waking, and to my mind, this is an important conclusion of sorts. Or rather a new beginning. The key elements are the following:

1. Surrender
After understanding that all is consciousness, surrender happens. Such surrender is the same as letting go the ego. But there are years and years of conditioning here, and the ego will still come and go, like a wayward thought arising in the mind. Simply not believing it is the active side of surrender.

2. Attention
Things happen in the manifest world in which we dream that invite our attention. Without, there are influences and signs (even synchronicities). Within, there are insights and intuitions (even clairvoyances). All of these are simply the foretellings of consciousness, ripples around the waves. Pay them attention. Or not.

3. Guidance
We appear to do within the dream. Like a canoe streaming in the rapids, we can attend to the insight and signs, guide our movement (this is where thought becomes our tool and not some mighty poor internal substitute for attention), and facilitate the journey. Or we can ignore them and suffer a rough ride. One way or the other, we are heading downstream the dream.

Surrender. Attention. Guidance. These are the three primary practices of lucid dreaming. Use them well when you find yourself outside the monastery, ashram, or cave.

An Unbelievable Blow-Out

The clock is running down, the batteries are dying, the car is running out of gas. I am surrendering to That which is. (No lie, just after writing that sentence, my cell phone sounded its low-battery warning.)

After all, ego is the big lie, and surrender is the only lie detector.

All my life I felt as if there was something better that I should be doing. But despite all my thinking, I couldn’t figure it out. So life happened.

But whenever I began to lose sight of that something better, whenever I was on the verge of going with the status quo, something rebelled within me (and without).

Ultimately, it was OK with delaying something better until the time was right, until certain responsibilities had played themselves through.

The time did come, but something better really didn’t. Instead something completely different did.

Surrender.

It’s unexplainable to those who may not understand, but let me quickly do so anyways. An energetic organization of consciousness; after evolving through processes of sense, memory, and instinct; and thereby becoming sensitive to the various forms and patterns of energy all around it; developed an ability to think; that is create a virtual reality within its mind. And in so doing, it created a separate sense of itself within that virtual reality. And at some point, it began to see that virtual reality as truth (belief), and that virtual self as itself (ego).

In turn, of course, there arose a continuous conflict between the actual reality and the virtual reality, or Consciousness and the Belief/Ego construct. This conflict can be called suffering. Suffering is like friction, in time may wear away the ego, and blow out! This is called an act of grace.

(Or, through the active grace of Self-Inquiry, asking Who Am I?, the same blow-out can occur.)

Then things begin to slow until surrender occurs. Stop.

The virtual reality and all its beliefs, and its sense of self, the ego, are seen through, and disappear. Reality returns. And action happens through intent or influence, desire or synchronicity.

It’s unbelievable.

The Whole Enchilada

The world of spirituality is full of sayings that sound neat, and make you feel good, but mean much more than one is sometimes able or willing to understand. They are hand grenades that are treated like apples.

One of these is an oft-repeated maxim by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Sounds good and tastes right to any seeker. Yes, we are indeed spirit, one with the universe, eternal and full of light. Amen.

But for a moment, let’s think of the implication here. Really grasp the implication here. Understand completely, without any Disney-like coloring, the implication here.

We are not human beings!

We are spirit experiencing a dreamlike illusion called the human experience. The complete thing, the whole enchilada, is not real or true. Including many of the so-called spiritual beliefs and practices we play with. Especially those.

Society, culture, politics, religion, economics: all not real. And the you, you think you are. Not real. In fact, that’s the most unreal thing in your particular life.

And the only thing that needs to be addressed in any true spiritual practice.

That’s the thing, that thing called ego, that all the great and true spiritual traditions speak to. Lose the ego, see through the illusion of the ego.

In other words, know that you are not a human being. It’s all a dream, illusion, Maya. It’s the curtain behind which resides the truth: you are, and have always been, Spirit.

You’ve just been having a bad dream.

Robert Adams on the Last Words of Ramana Maharshi

I was awakened about 5 o’clock. It was Ramana again. He came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly; I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast, and everybody sat around just watching Ramana as he went through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees. I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love.

Then people started to come over to him, asking him questions. His replies were very succinct. They weren’t like you read in a book. Apparently, what you read in a book is his reply to three or four people. They condense it all into one question and answer. But people usually asked a question or made a statement. If he agreed, he would nod or say, ‘Yes. That’s it’. If he didn’t, he would offer an explanation in maybe one or two sentences.

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Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ramdas. While I was there, I was informed that he [Bhagavan] had left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. The crowds had already started to come, thousands and thousands of people. So, I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. I stayed there for five days. When I came down, the crowds had dispersed. Ramana had already been interred.


I enquired of the devotee who saw him last, ‘What were the last words he spoke?’


The devotee said, ‘While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching. Ramana remarked to his devotee, ‘Has anyone fed the peacock yet?’ Those were the last words he spoke.

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What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. ‘Who am I?’ has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you he has something new to teach you, be careful, because there’s nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the ‘Who am I’ philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself. Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.

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A devotee went to Ramana and said, ‘I’ve been with you for twenty-five years, doing “Who am I?” and nothing has happened yet,’ so Ramana said, ‘Try it another twenty-five and see what happens’.

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Self-enquiry is the ego trying to find itself as the Self, so the effort is brought on through your karma so that you may become Self-realised. It is a privilege to have been able to find in this life the method of self-enquiry. Therefore, it’s been predestined that you should make the effort to find yourself.

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(Thank Me this Thanksgiving [ed. note])


~Robert Adams, from a beautiful blog posting by David Godman on his blog, Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi

The Primitive Square Roots of Unity

Despite traditions to the contrary, there simply cannot be true jnana without true bhakti, there cannot be the ultimate understanding without the ultimate surrender. Certain personalities will try to avoid one or the other under the guise of some higher wisdom, but always at the cost of wholeness.

There is a tradition that jnana is the higher path because the bhakta relies on a belief in someone or something to be devoted to, whereas the jnani knows there are neither. But true bhakti knows no object; and the true jnani knows nothing.

Jnana and bhakti, knowledge and devotion, understanding and surrender, inseeing and outpouring, mind and heart, cannot be divided or opposed; because they are the same.

~David Carse from 'Perfect Brilliant Stillness'

Reality Dancing

The other day I was thinking of the potentiality of Pure Awareness, and the spiritual practices that allow one to tap into it, when I suddenly realized that particular thought was completely backwards.

I cannot emphasize enough the word, realized.

It was as if the thought of ‘me thinking’ was turned around, seen through, disappeared, terminated with extreme prejudice, and the realization of the Self was here and now.

Now this wasn’t the first time such realization has happened, but when it happens as it did suddenly and unexpectedly from the perspective of the Dream, it brings a rush of understanding.

And I understood in truth, there is nothing I, in the Dream, can really do.

Adyashanti describes the Dream’s experience of Emptiness in two ways. The first is the emptiness of emptiness, a cool emptiness. But the second is a deeper experience of Emptiness as if your being is dancing.

I felt as if my being was being danced, and everything was vividly alive.

But this happened while driving, so thought reappeared relatively quickly, so as to avoid any appearance of an accident.

But that realization was no accident; it was intent itself. And it really didn’t happen the other day; it’s happening now.

First Obama, Then Nobama, Then There Is

Actually it's: First there is Obama, then there is Nobama, then there is (you can sing it to Donovan if you prefer).

Before understanding the true nature of my thoughts, I believed in the life and death nature of politics. When John Kerry lost in 2004, I was devastated. I had always followed politics like a sports fan his home team. But I realized then that I had to detach myself from such passionate involvement. And I don’t think it’s just coincidence that my spiritual journey started to move into overdrive the very next year.

The Heart Sutra says that all form is emptiness. I say politics is the heart of American emptiness. It involves raw belief, almost belief for belief’s sake. In this country, the divisions between the parties run deep. There is very little understanding of the other. One is completely right; the other is completely wrong. Both sides think this way of course. Talk about duality!

During the primaries, my friend and I were discussing our preference for Hilary Clinton. She went on to criticize Obama in very harsh terms, and I warned her to be careful. If he ends up winning the nomination, you’ll be voting for him, I said. And you’ll be vigorous in doing so. She said she doubted it. But she’s been pretty vigorous in her support for him the past few weeks. I’m not saying I told you so; I’m just saying. The dream is like that.

Beliefs are just thoughts we invest with our identity, which, of course, are just more thoughts (illusions which result from our once and continuing conditioning). In politics, these beliefs become more than just individual identity. They become a collective identity in support of that even greater collective identity: nationalism (and often religion as well).

It’s an exponential growth of belief. That’s why things can get so ugly in a political campaign. It’s a life and death battle of identity (and its cousins, power and empowerment). Bring whatever thoughts you need to win the war. Just make them up out of thin air if need be. After all, that’s the nature of thought anyways.

But significantly the Heart Sutra also says that all emptiness is form as well. And that’s why I’m voting for Obama tomorrow.

The Quantum Decider

This is only a translation from the Nothingness.

This life dwells in Quantum Spirit as a dream rests within sleep. Awake and there is no dream. Emptiness!

But “before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

So who’s the Decider? A sixth sense, an intuition, consciousness, awareness, Quantum Spirit: since all is one, One knows it all.

Thought only gets in the way.

Using all five senses in awareness is one-half. (Plus no thought.) The sixth sense is the other half.

Equals One.

As such, clairvoyance, astrology, all ESP and insight too: these too abide in the One of Quantum Spirit.

Reincarnation too.

After Awakening, Then What

Miguel Ruiz calls it the Dream of the Second Attention. You write your new story with love.

Eckhart Tolle calls it Awakened Doing. Consciousness flows through you and into this world in three modalities: Acceptance, Enjoyment, Enthusiasm.

Adyashanti speaks of a New Way of Being, resting in awareness, experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary, more like love than anything else, for no reason or purpose, knowing the story isn’t true.

Robert Adams says that the universe is a manifestation of your mind. And in that realization you become Self, which includes everything you need. The trees do not lack for leaves.

Jesus simply said to consider the lilies of the field. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today is enough for today.

Buddha held up a golden lotus flower silently before his listeners.

So I’m blogging.

Nature is Good

In the essence of duality, we live in our dream (a binary program developed over the years, decades, centuries, etc.).

And while it is true that a tree is a tree because we dream it to be so, it is still, in its essence, raw quantum spirit.

Whereas buildings and such are quantum spirit manipulated to play an integral role in our dream, to such an extent that for the time being such constructions are, in fact, hard dreams, and will be so until they begin their inevitable decay.

When you become steeped in pure nature, the hardware of the dream is left behind, and the possibility of reunion with quantum spirit is greatly increased.

And that is a good thing.