Some Thoughts on Meditation, Kundalini, White Light

It is a wonderfully convenience that in many contemporary Yogic Systems that the Power of Spiritual Initiation can be passed as easily as by the touch of an authentic Guru – this is called Shaktipat. Otherwise, we can envision taking years of doing the kind of breath retention exercises that are usually the norm with the more aggressive Yogic Programs. But regarding breath retention exercises, one really needs most to exercise caution. You see, it is very easy to suspect that breath retention exercises are most calculated to have the most effect in direct proportion to the amount of brain damage they inflict – hold one’s breath for 4 minutes and one is almost guaranteed to have a very genuine Near Death Experience… perhaps nearer to death than one would wish to hope for. And so it is that Samadhi being passed by the Touch of a Master should definitely be given a chance. It is so much more inherently safe.

So, Shaktipat is a very good thing. But we are left considering the availability of Gurus. Many people have the perception that such Shaktipat Gurus are an extremely rare commodity, and then, even when they are found, may be either too expensive to retain, or may impose a much too forbidding a regiment of conditions – absolute celibacy or absolute obedience, that is, they may ask for more than we are prudently prepared to give. For instance, one of the best Shaktipat Gurus I had ever met was old Kirpal Singh of the Surat Shabd Organization, but he expected his initiates to commit to 6 months of sexual celibacy even before he would give the first Initiation (if I remember accurately), and that was way back during the height of the Sexual Revolution. Well, it would be difficult to give away Bags of Money on those conditions. I and many others waited for more accommodating Gurus while we celebrated the Age of Aquarius.

But are such contracts with these Gurus entirely necessary? While still believing that nothing is more Spiritually conducive than being protégé to an Authentic Guru, I must admit that for someone seeking their Spiritual Beginnings, completely registering under a Guru may not be entirely indispensable. One may make due without. And in this regard, I have found that Shaktipat may be more available than is generally supposed. Allow me to explain – Years ago I read in a translation of a passage from the Upanishads that “In the presence of a God or Saint, the Third Eye will open”. Well, on the very evening that I read that, I saw a poster advertising a lecture to be given by an itinerant Shaktipat-style Guru. One can guess what happened. I felt my Third Eye open in his presence. It was not an overwhelmingly dazzling feeling. Indeed, if I had not been prepared by my Reading to anticipate such a feeling, I suppose it would have been subtle enough to evade notice or slight enough to dismiss as a painless headache. But since I was watching for something of that nature, I felt it. Seeing this as a validation of this Guru’s credentials, I enlisted for his Initiations. And the Shaktipat given officially was not much stronger than what had been felt merely by being in his presence. What this should mean to the keen observer is that Shaktipat can be gleaned from the Spiritual Atmosphere without necessarily subscribing to all of the trimmings and ceremonies that the Gurus would have you suppose are essential and that must come directly from their hand.

But, one might still suspect that “Gods and Saints” are very rare entities. But this is not at all so. Since my Third Eye has become open and sensitive to such things, I find that any number of people are walking around with Chakras open and radiating enough Spiritual Energy in order to resonate with the Chakras of those within their vicinity. Ordinarily it passes without notice – a pressure sensation in the forehead, or in the case of an open Heart or Throat Chakra, a pressure sensation in those corresponding locations.

So, how can a person take advantage of these Atmospheric Shaktipats? Well, simply by being aware. If one is uninitiated but would like to be as one who is Initiated – with open Chakras and control over one’s Energies, Kundalini and Qi – then one need only visit venues and activities where one might suppose one could meet with some moderately spiritual people. In Sanskrit I think it is called Satsang – the beneficial effect of being in Spiritual Company. If one notices that slight feeling in the Chakras, then the Technique for Auto Initiation is to focus on that Sensation and to hold onto it. Ordinarily, such feelings are ignored and allowed to pass. But if caught by awareness and focused upon, they can be as effectively enduring as any Initiation given at a Weekend Retreat for the price equivalent to that of a down payment on a car.

Sometimes even reading a particularly cogent passage from a Spiritual Book, or in thinking of especially powerful Saints or Gurus from the past, will cause the third eye to open, that is, there will be that feeling of Pressure.

How does one maintain one’s Initiation? Well, simply go about your ordinary business, but remind yourself several times daily to keep some attention on what goes on in your forehead -- up slightly from between the brows. And if you ever feel a slight pressure sensation, then lock onto it immediately -- rub your finger into it; make a buzzy noise with your mouth and modulate its tone until it resonates into that Sensation Point. For the first day, try not to let it totally go away -- remind yourself to keep the sensation open. Rub it with your finger and use that buzz tone to vibrate it. If you can keep it there for just a solid day, and bring it back after a good night’s sleep, then you’ve got it. Then, meditate on it for about 10 or 15 minutes morning and night. After about a week you may begin to feel some heaviness in your head, or you may even have developed a headache. Great! Now you will want to bring the Energy down to the base of your spine where you can give it and yourself a bit of a respite. Do the following: get yourself a nice glass of cold water and drink it, and feel that the Sensation is attached to it and that it drops down, all the way to your lowest vertebrae -- your little triangular tailbone. Reach back there and rub that little tail bone and feel the Sensation there. And keep it there for a couple of weeks. Learn to keep the energy down. That is your Safety Practice. Before the Energy gets too strong to handle you must learn to be able to pull it down at will. So don't keep the Energy up always in your head, supposing that unless you do you might be missing something. You have your entire life to raise up the Energy. For a couple of weeks you need to work on the certainty of being able to lower the Energy. You must be able to control it.

After you’ve developed this ability to control your Energy, being able to drop it down at will, you become ready for a new and very powerful exercise. If you do not feel any sensation in your head -- in and around your brain, then my instructions here might be a bit incomprehensible, but if you do feel some sensation in your head, this is what you should do: If your Energy Sensation is up in your forehead, then use your will to guide it back along the top of your pallet to the back of the roof of your mouth to the Swivel Point at the top of your spine. That point is easy to locate -- you just swivel your head around, and, well, the swivel point is the swivel point. Put the energy sensation there. Point your tongue up to that point. Now, it will feel as though the energy sensation is about the size of a golf ball or a bit smaller… maybe a brussels sprout. What you will now try to do is focus the energy smaller and smaller, as though penetrating the layers of an onion. Smaller smaller smaller -- it will take awhile, but not more than a few minutes. The energy will seem as though it is stuck at a particular size, then suddenly shrink down a bit more. Still you want it to center on that Swivel Point. Eventually it will be about the size of a pea and you will feel it oscillating back and forth like a pendulum. This is really the Key to Kundalini. Once you find that Spot, you can move the Energy anywhere in the body -- up to the Crown Chakra, or down to the heart, or in fact anywhere. But you want to move it down to the heart. That oscillating sensation that you feel is the top of the Heart Chakra anyway, so all you would have to do is let the energy just sink down into the Heart. That should give you a bit of stability.

There is also a trick you could use, and I've only found one other person who can do it. It is to flex a muscle in your head in order to start a roaring noise. The muscle is back there at the top of the pallet close to that swivel point, and the roaring noise is great at collecting Energy. It think it may be a reflex like rolling ones tongue or wiggling one's ears and not everybody can do it. It really is a muscle and not a mental phenomena, because it gets fatigued and one can only hold the flex for 7 or 10 seconds.

Do you know any Mantras? Or you can try an easy Power Meditation -- simply count up from 1 to 24 for each of your spinal column bones, moving your concentration up the spine as you count. Your Kundalini Energy, your Chi, will follow up during the count. Now, such power meditations are a hundred times more impressive during a Dream than while awake, making them always an interesting experience when you can remember to do them while dreaming. Indeed, I once had a Dream in which a Dream Guru told me that even a moment’s Meditation in a Dream is worth thousands of hours of waking Meditation. And having experienced Dream Meditation myself, I don’t doubt the Dream Guru’s math even a little bit.

There is another trick that I developed because I could never really find out what the Buddhist One Finger exercise was (it was mentioned in a Buddhist Treatise by Huang Po), but in experimenting around I found that by twiddling the thumbs -- twirling the thumbs -- right thumb counterclockwise and left thumb clockwise, for just a minute or so, that when you stop, the subtle Kundalini Energy centers in the spine and rises up. I think that the Thumb Nadis are in the Central Channel and that by exercising the Central Nadi Channel at the thumbs, it is exercised everywhere else as well. But the energy only begins to rise after you STOP the exercise, so don't twirl your thumbs indefinitely while waiting for something to happen. Just a minute or two is fine, and then stop.

You should be able to get to the point where you can more or less summon the energy sensation. You are allowed to cheat and point your fingers into the Third Eye Chakra. In fact any pointed object can only help. I once studied Pyramid Power and discovered that there is nothing special about pyramids except that they come to a point. The pointier the better, the steeper the better. Cones work even better but apparently the Egyptians could not carve a curve. Perhaps the handiest and best pyramid available to you would be your very own ballpoint pen – a virtual little Magic Wand.

Oh, and recently I may have found an effective White Light Exercise, as I discovered in a dream:
White Light Exercise from a Dream

While my father was alive I did not get along very well with him, but as the years since his decease have gone by, my relationship with him in my Dreams has been improving. Last night we were sitting at the old dining room table. He was at his customary seat, but I was not at my old seat but, significantly, at the seat ordinarily assigned to the oldest brother – apparently I had been promoted. In the Dream my father tells me that he will show me an exercise for communicating with Spirits using this small device that was set up close to the window. All I could infer about this machine was that it emitted white light. So my father begins this exercise, and it is quite simple – he takes a deep breath and then hisses out the exhale, and then his entire cranium began to glow with White Light. So I began to hiss out my breath and my brain case took on the same glow of White Light. It was like our brains became florescent filaments for the White Light and I could see our brains glowing.

When I awoke, I had an open Crown Chakra. Then, throughout the day, I tried the Exercise a few times. It is easy to do, but there are a few details. It seems that the proper ‘hiss’ involves having the tip of the tongue positioned close to roof of the mouth at that spot that is the best compromise between the forward position which sounds very ‘sssssssssss’ and the position further back which is more purely ‘shshshshshshsh’. Coincidentally, that sound that you would be making is very close to what they call ‘White Noise’.

It really does seem to open the Crown Chakra. Now, the thing I have found about the White Light is that one can see it while in the Dream State, or even while in the hypnogogic state, but while awake it resolves into a feeling of a pressure sensation.

Not only is this White Light Exercise appropriate for waking applications, but more particularly it may be useful to try during Lucid Dreaming, since it would be in such a context that the White Light would sure to be visible.

Also, I might suggest the Gayatri Mantra. After having done the Gayatri Mantra for a year, I had a dream in which the space out in front of me rended open and the White Light came pouring out. Since the Gayatri Mantra is fairly an evocation of the Light, I naturally suppose it must have had something to do with it.

The Gayatri induced White Light Dream may be interesting in itself:

White Light Paramahansa Dream

I knew the dream was becoming spiritual when I looked down and noticed I was not wearing shoes. Here is a Hint! When you are not wearing shoes in a Dream, it means you are on Holy Ground. I levitated up and folded my legs into a lotus position and intoned an AUM. The air around me seemed to turn violet (pinkish purple) and the air rippled and shimmered in waves and then about 20 feet in front of me the very fabric of Space tore open and out poured the Pure White Light. It was like magnesium burning before a chromium mirror, bright and real.
The substance of the Light quickly took up a form – a Paramahansa Swan… not a living bird but a very ornate statuesque representation of one. It was large – more than a meter high and wide. And it was amazingly beautiful – in the brightest White Light but still one could discern the textures of the shapes and detail. But there was little time for amazement when the Swan shot across the distance and into my forehead. And then a new swan formed up to replace it, and it too shot into my forehead as well… and again and again and again, each time more quickly, but each time the ornate and elaborate Paramahansa Swan became simpler, more streamlined. As they formed up more rapidly, they became plainer and plainer. Finally they were coming at a rate of 8 or 10 per second, and the birds were mere ‘Vees’, like as in the way young children draw birds flying in the sky, as two joining lines tapering outward. And they were all flying into my forehead.

When I awoke, the sensations I had felt in the Dream persisted. My Agna Chakra was still pulsating with the feeling of this Spiritual Energy, no longer perceptible as Light but tangible as a pressure sensation. The sensation by proximity also energized my Crown Chakra as well as my throat and heart chakras.

Well, all of the above was about getting the Spiritual Energy and the White Light. That should be enough, but often it is asked “what good is it?” “What does it do?” Many people answer that it is conducive toward psychic and supernatural powers, or that such Energies bring Spiritual Enlightenment. It would be wonderful if this were absolutely certain, however, a great many people have experienced this Spiritual Energy and White Light who are not especially remarkable for any of these extraordinary traits. But still I believe there is some value to the Spiritual Energies. My Old Kundalini Guru would simply assert that it would make people smarter, but perhaps it would be better to express the distinction by saying that it increases the faculty of Discernment. And this brings us to a dream I had years ago:

The Faculty of True Discernment

The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. There was this woman who was sitting down and playing a guitar and she was... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But her guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then came along these men, crude fellows, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for being so remarkably unattractive. I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and I became irritated that the boisterous laughing itself was making it difficult to hear the beautiful music being played, and so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent here. So Shut the ____ up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment".


In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and she was barefoot. With a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, she was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong coarse bearded man – too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear himself to her, "I am on the hunt tonight and it is a great misfortune for the poor animals, because I am such a good shot that they surely don't stand a CHANCE".

Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot. SHHHOOOOPP, the arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush I could see the arrow’s feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.

What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearances in the First Dream, that is, if I had not recognized the Beauty behind the ugliness, I would not have been shown the Second. The injunction "The faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra if I were to properly understand the next dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, the Moon Light, the Anima Goddess. This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was the invasion of my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design, pure Volition can resonate well enough to evoke its own Results. But the dynamics here are beyond ordinary cause and effect. It happened because it was both destined to happen and willed to happen. So, what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Why, the Importance of It All, that is what. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a riddle with imbedded meaning makes us look at it harder and deeper. We can understand it as Mystery, but in the positive sense.

Allow me to conclude by saying that where normal physical light allows us to see normal physical reality, the Spiritual Light and Energies help us to both see and feel our Spiritual Reality – to see the Meaning of our Lives.

Angel of God Dream

The dream started as I walked through this one very old graveyard. It was not gloomy, but it was a beautiful sunny day... the green of the grass was beautiful, and the trees contrasted well against the blue sky. But suddenly the wonderful mode that had been established was interrupted when I saw that the tomb of Desiderius Erasmus had been desecrated by vandals -- the grave stone was painted with grifiti and claimed "Erasmus will not live beyond the grave".

Well, at that period in my life I thought that was silly and so I said "That's ridiculous! Everyone will live beyond the grave".

Then, what I had thought was a large Oak Tree on a nearby knoll transformed into a Fiery Angel of God -- not just a 'burning bush' but a huge Tree burning with a multicolored Flame that did not consume the leaves or branches. I knew I was in the presence of Holiness because, without thinking, my legs simply gave out of themselves and I slammed down onto my knees, though without the slightest pain. And without any emotion, tears sprung ... sprayed... from my eyes. It was all quite exceptional.

Then this Great Voice spoke -- "Not everyone will live beyond the Grave......but Erasmus will".

Now, ordinarily one would think that speech would be impossible before such an Angel of God, and I wondered whether my tongue would even work when I said, "What about me? Will I live beyond the Grave?"

Well, the Angel of God was in no hurry to answer. There was a pause, and I began to worry. The answer would be momentous, would it not?

Finally God’s response came. "Yes, you too will live beyond the Grave.... but remember one thing -- BIRTH IS BUT AN ILLUSION, AND CHRIST IS THE LIFE IN ALL THINGS".

What a powerful dream, but what about this relation with Erasmus? This was years ago before I ever imagined I would ever be a Catholic. But Erasmus had been both an Intellectual and a Catholic. He was quite a witty fellow and his most famous literary work, "In Praise of Folly" was a satirical attack upon Church corruption and theological nonsense. Protestant History looks back at Erasmus and claims him as the first partisan to raise a cry for the destruction of the Church, but that is a mistaken view. Erasmus never ceased being a Catholic. He killed no priests. He raped no nuns. What he dis was to quarrel with the idiot Bishops about the same way that I now quarrel with the Idiot Bishops. You see, I think that was the point of the Dream. 40 years ago this Angel of God, and this most important of Dreams had envisioned my future -- that I would be a Catholic, and, like Erasmus, I would be a proponent for corrections within the Church.

Of course, what the Angel told me in regards to what I should remember... that message was virtually a reconciliation between Eastern Thought and the Spiritual Christian Religion. "Birth is but an Illusion" tells us that we are not individual and separate lives, but that we are all part of one huge Life Force. and "Christ is the Life in All Things" tells us that this Life Force is innately Holy... that our Life unifies us with God... we have only to 'remember' it.

But keep it under your hat, about me and Erasmus. Not everybody needs to know.

The White Light Paramahansa Dream

This most important of Lucid Dreams occurred, surprisingly, while I had dreamt of having been a Commando/Terrorist who had hijacked a bus. We had just conducted a raid and my part was to lay down covering fire for the evacuation of the Main Team ( hmmmm… sort of a suicide mission, now that I think about it). So I hung back to fire upon the pursuers. But they did not come in my direction... the idiots thought our escape route was off in a whole other direction. I shot across them as they went by a few hundred yards away, missing them, and thought it was an opportune time for my own escape, in a third direction. So that was when I ran to a nearby road and I boarded a passenger bus and hijacked it. I acted very tough and took charge, or tried to take charge. But there was a young lady who began to talk back, and I realized I would have a problem. If she continued to call my bluff I would have to shoot her and I didn’t want to do that, and so I asked the bus driver to stop the bus... I was simply going to find another escape, if this particular one was going to be so unpleasant. I looked down and noticed I was not wearing shoes.

Well, here is a hint… in Dreams, when one finds oneself not wearing shoes, it is a sign that one is on Holy Ground. This stunned me into realizing that I was in a Dream… that I was Dreaming. Well, this realization of knowing that one is Dreaming while in a Dream typically intensifies the dream, making it much more vivid and powerful. Its called Lucid Dreaming. Well, in this enlarged state of Consciousness, my wish to get off the bus only increased and I asked the driver to pull over and I got out. I found myself in the industrial side of town, next to a large gravel pit by a rusty old railway yard. Inexplicably, it was indescribably beautiful.

In keeping with the sacredness of the moment I decided to Meditate. I intoned an AUM and arose up off the ground to hover a few meters off the ground in quiet serenity. And, true to the Guru’s words (that just seconds of Meditation in a Dream is worth thousands of hours of Waking Meditation), not even seconds transpired before the air began shimmering in waves and ripples and turned a wonderful shade of violet-pink. I was in a state of curious expectancy about it all when the space just some 10 meters in front of me simply tore open and out poured the Pure White Light, like magnesium burning before a chromium mirror, bright and seeming very real.

The substance of the Light quickly took up a form – a Paramahansa Swan… not a living bird but a very ornate statuesque representation of one. It was large – more than a meter high and wide. And it was amazingly beautiful – in the brightest White Light but still one could discern the textures of the shapes and detail. But there was little time for amazement before the Swan shot across the distance before me and penetrated into my forehead. And then a new one formed up to replace it, and it likewise shot over into my forehead as well… and again and again and again, each time more quickly, but each time the ornate and elaborate Paramahansa Swan became simpler, more streamlined. As they formed up more rapidly, they became plainer and plainer. Finally they were coming at a rate of 8 or 10 per second, and the birds were mere ‘Vees’, like as in the way young children draw birds flying in the sky, as two joined lines tapering outward. And they were all flying into my forehead, creating a pleasant throbbing.

When I awoke, the sensations acquired in the Dream persisted. My Agna Chakra was still pulsating with the feeling of this Spiritual Energy, no longer perceptible as Light but tangible as a pressure sensation. The sensation by proximity also energized my Crown Chakra as well as my throat and heart chakras.

What can account for this special Dream? Well, Life is an experiment with simply too many variables, but for that last year I had been making a special practice of intoning and reciting the Gayatri Mantra in the mornings and evenings. That is a Vedantic Mantra which invokes the Spiritual Light.

Buddha Boy Ram Bomjon: So He Wouldn’t Cut His Hair

The current Ram Bomjon Legend tells us that Young Ram once refused to cut his hair when asked to do so, so he could be in conformance with all of the Other Religious Students, and indeed with the Ancient Traditions which he now claims to be the Supreme Guardian of. What sense does such a regulation make? Well, I can suppose that no one student should be allowed to be stunningly beautiful while all the others students endeavor to be self-effacing. No one student should be allowed to feed his own vanity, preening himself while the others must feel silly for submitting to an Obedience that they find was only optional. Also, long pretty hair can hide fleas.

As it is now the Ram Bomjon Groups are universally in support of Young Ram’s insubordination. Their feeling is that his hair is SO beautiful, blah blah blah. Certainly the same rules do not apply to both Buddha and to mere mortals.

While I had still been believing in Young Ram even I myself was willing to see this episode as a privileged assertion coming from a Self-Aware Avatar. But now, we can see signs that this Young Ram was perhaps only a young conceited narcissist, which are really not that very rare, and which fits well with everything else we have subsequently learned about him. The most important thing here is his notion that a Six Year Meditation would give him some kind of Spiritual Perfection.

So far we have taken it as a matter of Faith that this Six Year Meditation REALLY WILL perfect our Young Ram. But what if this was simply another narcissistic assumption of a megalomaniacal young man? He THINKS he will be a great Saint if he CAN meditate for 6 years. He believes it because he may be self-delusional, but why should we believe it?

Even then, of the few things we know for certain about Young Ram, the one thing that is sure is that he has broken his Meditation. Oh, his original fame derives from the assertion of his followers that he was in a perpetual fast, not eating anything, ever. Well, now he is, and probably always has, as we remember that his followers would throw up a tent around him every evening in order to assure a few hours of privacy, which I guess they used for serving dinner. So, as far as we know there is no very significant difference between Young Ram and any other teenage boy who has taken up Meditation – starting seriously and then tapering off as he has grown bored with it. Oh, and most other young boys don’t have a support team of fellow conspirators.

Well, how should we treat this dereliction on his part? What are the rules here? If he breaks his 6 Year Meditation, does he have to start over again? Well, not entirely. I can suppose that many of the benefits of Long Meditation do not simply evaporate. But we had been lead to believe that the Six Years was somehow critically important… that it was necessary for him to go progressively deeper and deeper, or higher and higher, as the case may be. So it could really be a matter of Starting Over at some point if the Meditation is interrupted. After all, it was he who came out telling us that a Six Year Meditation was essential. So how should this correlate with his wondering around making meetings, moving in and moving out of increasingly comfortable Meditation Pads, giving speeches, running away from snakes, collecting swords?

He gets a lot of business done considering he is supposed to be in an unbroken six-year meditation. One would think he is hardly meditating at all, or that he is meditating about as much as any of us, that is, whenever it happens to be convenient.

The only difference between him and ourselves is that he has made huge claims for himself… and that he ignores traditions and decides not to cut his long flowing hair when everybody else does what is asked of them. The difference is that he is Narcissistic and we are not.

So why have we decided to reward him for this? Why do we credit what is probably just a very dysfunctional young man with an Elevated Spiritual Title?

So anyway, when the six years is over, then what? We will have a young man of 22 who quit school when he was 16, in pursuit of a Goal he assigned himself, with a Plan he could not keep up with. We will have a Stupid Disappointment.

Oh, except for the Hard Core Believers who will UNCONDITIONALLY accept him simply because they want so much to BELIEVE in anything… even if it is so patently absurd. The truly sorry thing about all this is that his anti-social and egotistical behavior may still make him a Huge Star in the Spiritual Community. Cynically speaking, at this point it is only a matter of how he handles his Public Relations. He’s already famous, and we can see he is already cashing in on it. One can hardly imagine how bad he would have to screw up now in order to shake off his Blind Faith Followers. As an example, we can see Sathya Sai Baba in India – a famously accused pedophile and phony, exposed as a hoax thousands of times, but still a Big Time Guru with perhaps millions of diehard followers.

It’d be nice if people held their Gurus to even the tiniest degree of Moral and Spiritual Standards. It is odd that people seem to expect a good deal more from themselves than they do from their Gurus. After all, wouldn’t we have all cut our hair?

Believing Everything: Are Religions Equal?

I have been criticized by some who have visited this Page for not believing in the absolute correctness of All Religions, even by those who have shown a decided partiality toward their own particular Religions. I suppose they hold themselves guiltless since they have never explicitly declared themselves on why they despise the other Religions while holding their own as a decided favorite. I am blamed because I have. While it is tacitly understood that we can DO anything we like with our preferences, there are some things we ought not talk about. Yes, while that may be the rule at cocktail parties and formal dinners, where the first concern is to be amiable and discreet, certainly being able to talk openly should have its place in a Discussion Forum.

Anyway, let’s try to clear up these ideas. It may have been Voltaire, or someone equally clever who had said “Philosophers find all Religions equally false, the People find all Religions equally true, and Magistrates find all Religions equally useful”. Well, the truth of such a brilliant generality really shouldn’t be stretched too far into any particular situation and still be expected to hold – Philosophers are more appalled at some religions than others; People find some religions more attractive than others, and magistrates find some religious systems to be almost entirely unworkable and obstructive to the Public Order and the General Good. But the clever generality mentioned above must seem so intuitively true, that it is the general assumption, from many who visit this Page, that since I take the Philosophical stance of criticizing some Religions, then I must equally find them all false. Again, while that makes a for a good generalization which I am willing to own up to, generally speaking, still, it does not apply to every particular. Allowing me to pick and chose, there are some Religious beliefs and doctrines that I am rather fond of.

There also seems to be the Moral Judgments implied by accusing me of being a hater of Religions. Now, I don’t see many intellectual arguments justifying these accusations, but I get a lot of moral judgments aimed against me, not amounting to much more than simple surly assertions of dislike, and this from ostensibly Religious and Spiritually minded people. Perhaps there should be a rule, that people who cannot think ought not to make judgments. Trusting one’s feelings should not be enough, because such feelings could be coming from anywhere. If one cannot assemble a reasonable argument, then one should simply assume that one’s feelings are coming out of a neurosis or some mental conditioning or brainwashing propaganda. Your hatred for me could be only the product of a series of 30 second advertisements you saw when you were a child. Is that how you wish to behave? Like an automaton.

But let me go on to tell you why no moral blame should attach to my criticisms upon Religion, and that is because I am only trying to help it. Religion needs to do three things – appease the Philosophers, be attractive to the People, and be useful to the Magistrate. Religion must fulfill the Spiritual needs of individuals while at the same time forming a framework and support for a viable and perpetual Civilization. After all, was that NOT what Jesus was all about, with his Messianic Mission – to Spiritualize the World by both convincing each individual of their Moral Duties while placing his own Moral Authority behind the Role of Absolute Political Leadership. His wish to be King of Kings speaks of a One World Civilization based on an underlying moral and religious principle.

Every Civilization so far has had a good deal of Religious underpinnings, but so far every Civilization has failed – declining and then falling. This needs to be assigned to the fault of whatever Religion or Moral System that was supposed to keep everything working as one well-oiled Machine. We can measure how good a Religion is, on at least this scale, by determining how supportive the Religion was for Civilization. For instance, Catholicism maintained a Civilization for over a thousand years (remember Christ’s Prophecy of a Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth – well, that referred to European Christendom) but this was when Catholicism still reviewed a broad range of Moral Issues, including the stemming of Greed and Exploitation. Now, Christianity does not do as well when it only looks at particularities of sexual conduct as the only possible field for sin, while Greed and Exploitation are applauded as Modern Virtues, and the World is handed over to Capitalist Barbarians with the Blessings of Bishops and Good Old Boy Reverends. Some other Civilizations had been rather like sparks in the pan – perhaps adequate to the job of forming a Civilization out of lightly populated Dark Ages, but never arriving at Institutions that could maintain Peace and Balance when populations would saturate. For instance, Islam was great at getting a few Horsemen Bandits to go out and ride and conquer, but was later plagued during its attempts to administer its conquered territories because the Religion continuously sprouted ever more waves of conquering bandit horsemen who would insist upon conquering the original conquerors. With Religions, it is necessary for all the details to work together. One can hardly be expected to show much admiration for obviously dysfunctional Religions.

Today we have a unique opportunity where every Religion is largely discredited, with the Philosophers, the People and with the Magistrates. With a Huge Time of Troubles soon to come, the World, to survive, will have to reorganize and re-civilize. The necessity of having a Religious Foundation will occur to others besides myself. I can’t be the only person alive today who has read a few history books.

Allow me a brief aside to explain one of the major reasons we are not told of the UFO Aliens. We had actually captured a few Space Aliens, and they learned our language, and wrote up a book about their Civilization and Religion. It is called the Yellow Book because when the Aliens had asked for a binder and some paper, and they had been given a yellow binder – the resulting book became what they referred to as the “Yellow Book”. Anyway, reading the Yellow Book is still quite a top secret affair. One can only suppose that it delineates a Civilization that has stabilized into a perpetual working balance. The Space Aliens had found the formula – that just right mix of Social and Moral Institutions that can perpetuate Civilization as though it is one Eternal Collective Living Organism. We can only suppose that those who had read this “Yellow Book” saw that it did not correlate well with Capitalism, Democracy (the Dictatorship of Winners over Losers), or probably with the Religions that our present set of Magistrates think they are honor-bound to protect.

But, anyway, as the Social Order crumbles around us, we should be looking for and thinking about a Religion and Moral Standard that might actually work for us in our lifetimes and continue to work for us even after the demographic situation changes. Or at least we should not insult and pass judgment on the people who do.

Angels and The Brown Scapular and Our Lady of Mount Carmel

One sometimes needs to wonder what exactly the purview of a Guardian Angel is. Most practically they should keep us from danger, but if our lives are already sufficiently sheltered, then they may extend their mandate toward guiding us morally or intellectually, in that way helping to guard us from foolishness. Or maybe, not to always be focused on preventing a negative, working only on Damage Control – on shielding what may already be a very flawed beings in an effort to keep them from getting any worse, perhaps our Angels may sometimes take on an entirely positive goal, to move us toward those moments of thoughtful epiphany where we might realize something important enough to better our character and to make us a better people for it. Or maybe they consider it important enough if they can only just make us happier for a moment.

Angels like to work in riddles. I have known instances where an Angel will simply come out and flat tell me something directly, but then it’s so hard to grasp the implications of what’s said that it might as well be a riddle. So the impression I get is that they do not just give out the answers. And that is why they to work in riddles, asking those puzzling questions, giving nothing directly, but only planting seeds, not giving Knowledge but arranging so that it will grow.

Not more than just a few years ago, an Angel came to me with something of a riddle – “Why is it that the only religious garb Our Lady has ever worn is that of a Carmelite Nun?” He was referring to Our Lady of Mount Carmel who has made repeated Apparitions wearing that particular habit. Ordinarily Our Lady appears in fashionable clothes suitable for each particular occasion – She obviously treats style as an important factor in Her considerations, and the Queen of Heaven doesn’t need to keep any vows of poverty. So it is a bit curious that She should ever dress in the plain clothes of a Nun. And, then, when she does, it is only as a Carmelite. And I was to figure out why.

First I did some research. I had been brought into the Catholic Church by the Carmelite Order. The clerics of my first Church were all Carmelites and my God Mother was in their Third Order. So I already knew something about the Carmelites, as though by osmosis. One particular Tradition of theirs is uniquely intriguing – that of the Brown Scapular. It presents a kind of loophole in the ordinary Christian Procedures of Salvation. I myself got a Brown Scapular before I was even officially all the way a Catholic. Perhaps I should say a word on the Brown Scapular, which really brings up the story of the Carmelites themselves since the two stories can hardly be separated. A thousand years ago, when Christendom rallied its Knights to protect the Holy Land from the first waves of the Barbarian Invasion from the East, as much protecting Islamic Civilization as Christian, many good men found themselves far away from home. A certain few Crusaders, who were from a Land where every Church was called an “Our Lady”, had been surprised to find a Marian Devotion already in place in the Holy Land when they arrived. It was a local Religious Order of Monks that called themselves the Carmelites, named after their main Monastery situated on the slopes of old Mount Carmel. The Crusaders had been shown a small Chapel in the Mount Carmel complex, which even back then had been more than a thousand years old, a Shrine to Our Lady that was said to have been Her room when She had come to Mount Carmel seeking refuge during one of the earliest Persecutions.

Some of the Crusaders were so impressed by this Marian Devotion, that they joined the Order and became Carmelites themselves. But later when they returned to Europe they ran into the problem of their local Bishops questioning their affiliation in what was not a recognized Catholic Brotherhood. So petitions were forwarded to the Pope asking for approval of the ‘new’ Order, but the paperwork dragged on slowly. The Leader of the Carmelite’s Petition Movement, Simon Stock, was imprisoned for safe-keeping, probably so he could not drum up any new support for the Carmelites before anybody could be certain it would actually be ratified. Apparently being incarcerated was very demoralizing for him and so Our Lady came to Him as an Apparition, for the first time in Her Carmelite Garb, and for his consolation presented him with The Brown Scapular saying “Those who die wearing the Brown Scapulars will not know Hell Fire”, and went on to say that on the First Saturday of each month she would personally fetch from Purgatory all those found wearing a Brown Scapular. I can only guess that Our Lady has always been a bit uncomfortable with the General Doctrines of Christian Salvation that posit the necessity for Murdering Her Son and then of having everyone agree, as a matter of Faith, that it was s good thing that He was killed. Forgiveness of Sin through complicity in the worst of all possible crimes seems incongruous as a Religious Doctrine. Religions should not have to lurk in ethical shadows and moral vacuums. So Our Lady presented a Brown Scapular that could save without being rooted in blood and misery. A Devotion could be enough.

Well, right after creating this first Brown Scapular, Our Lady transported Herself nearly a thousand miles away, appearing on the same evening to the Pope in Rome, telling him “If you will not be the Pope who gives approval to the Carmelite Order, Heaven can soon arrange a new Pope who shall”. Of course, then, the Pope immediately did the right thing and granted official recognition to the Carmelites. That is how the Order was accepted into the Catholic Church. But, really, our understanding of the History of the Carmelites Order should go back to its true beginnings – back to the times of the Prophet Elijah.

Now it’s a fact of History that the Messianic Mission of Christ had failed. Of course we can impute this failure to widespread moral decadence, but isn’t that always very much the case? If we should wish to be charitable, then we might notice that perhaps the historical timing had been all wrong. By the time of Christ there had been strong Empires on every point of the compass surrounding Jerusalem and the world must have had very little want for a King of Kings. But looking back less than a thousand years before the time of Christ we can notice a period when Civilizations all about were in decline and no new Empires had yet risen up to take their place, and this is when perhaps a serious Messianic Mission could have stood half a chance. It was about at the time of King David. Indeed, without any competing Empires to intimidate them, first King David and then King Solomon seemed to flourish, relatively speaking, despite themselves. David danced drunk and naked in the streets, killing men to steal their wives. The People must have been somewhat leery of that. Solomon who came next was a playboy who bankrupts his Kingdom to build a Temple for a Religion that obviously had no personal interest for him. It was as though it were his very plan to make his People either resentful of Religion or of himself. This Davidic dynasty, soft with decadence and corruption, did not continue long past Solomon as first a Tax Revolt disintegrated into Civil War and the nation was finally dismembered by the rising Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. It was like a wasted Life. The brief window of Messianic Opportunity had already closed. But why had there not been a Messiah when a Messiah might have been successful? Good question. It was a matter of being ill-prepared – there had not been any preparation in Righteousness and Purity. Such was the opinion of Elijah the Prophet who seemed to have been aware of the Lost Opportunity and who made it his Mission to see that if there ever should be a Next Time, that the proper preparations in Righteousness should be taken. Well, as we can see now from hindsight, it was already too late for any Successful Messianic Mission, but perhaps History still might be able to learn some lessons from what had happened.

Even the Bible gives us some hint of Elijah’s Mission. We are told of a drought, and that day after day for seven days Elijah had asked that a servant climb Mount Carmel and look for any cloud. None was seen until on the seventh day when there was a small cloud. Looking back, we find that this meant that there would pass Seven Generations until the Next Opportunity. So Elijah went to work and put together an Organization, a Brotherhood, that could stand up to Seven Generations of Work, building a Social and Religious Purity from which it could be possible to raise up a plausible Messiah.

Well, most importantly, the Family of the Messiah would have to be especially monitored and protected. So Elijah, resorting to magic, passed down to the Brotherhood he established a very special ‘dead’ shrub kept in his old Cave at Mount Carmel. It seemed that every time a new Baby was born in the line of the Messiah, the ‘dead’ shrub would momentarily come to life and bloom forth in leaf and flower. The Monks of the Order would then scurry forth and find among the new babies one with a special birthmark. Of course, after the first Generation, the Monks knew exactly where to look for the new baby – they already knew who the mother would be. And so the Generations were counted off.

It was always girls. The dead shrub did not bloom for boys. Maybe this was at first surprising, as the Hebrews were a Patriarchal Society. But this was not a matter of inheriting power or passing down property. Perhaps when we consider Virtue, it is more likely to descend from Mother to Daughter.

Anne, who would be Mary’s mother, was the Sixth Generation baby, and so when she reached maturity, and became pregnant, the Brotherhood seemed to hold its breath and wait for the Seventh Sign and the Birth of the Seventh and Final Generation of Purity. But it didn’t happen. Anne had baby after baby and the dead bush remained dead. It must have been puzzling.

But the Angels intervened. This is where our History becomes a bit peculiar. No materialist will like what comes next. I refer to the published notebooks kept on the accounts given by Anne Catherine Emmerich, Catholicism’s foremost seer and visionary, who looked back on Biblical Times and saw what had really happened and wasn’t afraid to tell about it in detail. I decided to trust her insofar as her views were almost always at variance to the traditions she could have been supposed to uphold had she simply been a mouthpiece for Church Propaganda. Anyway, the way she tells it, there had been the Holy Thing from the Old Arc of the Covenant, now lost, but before the Arc had been lost, by being hid too well (they forgot where they hid it!), the Holy Thing had been removed for safe keeping. This Holy Thing goes all the way back to Adam, having been given to Abraham by an Angel and then passed down, from father to son, until it finally rested with Joseph in Egypt, but with Moses raiding Joseph’s Tomb and taking it along on his Exodus, placing it among the other Sacred Objects in the Arc. This Holy Thing was said to be the Spiritual Core of Purity from Adam himself, grabbed out of him by an Angel just a moment before his First Sin and subsequent decline from Spiritual Being to mere man. Spiritual Being on a par with the Angels one moment, not much more than a monkey the next.

The Angel, coming to address the problem with Anne, asked that this Holy Thing be passed into her by her husband, who just so happened to be a Priest who could be well informed on the situation. The Brotherhood did not keep every Priest current of the Messianic Developments, but they did initiate those into the Mystery who where in the right positions to be useful, and Anne’s Husband the Priest was positioned to be very useful here. One wonders about the details of how such holy things can be passed back and forth into people, but as it worked out, the Holy Thing from Adam became Mary inside of Anne. Whatever the biological details were, as far as the Holy Thing was involved, Mary comes to us as the Pure daughter of the still Spiritual Adam from Paradise – the Child Adam would have had if he had never fallen from Grace.

Well, of course, nine months later the dead shrub in the Cave of Elijah burst forth in its greatest floral profusion yet. It’s sad but it has stayed dead ever since. One can go to the Holy Land even today and still see it, there in Elijah’s Cave. It is most likely the oldest and best preserved dead shrub in existence.

And Mary was the Seventh Generation. She was the Cloud of Elijah’s Prophecy come to end the Drought. And the Messiah would not come unbeknownst or in secret. The Gospels do us a bit of a disservice here, presenting the view that Jesus had to convince everybody of His Messianic Pretensions. But a great many people knew exactly who Jesus was. And they all knew who Little Mary was. Concerning Her nothing was left to chance and the Messianic Plans could at times become quite elaborate. Which leads us to our little love story.

Little Mary was to be mother to the Messiah, and so She needed a husband. Although She Herself was of the House of David, it was thought that Her husband should also be of the House of David, though from a more remote branch of the Family. The Priests, in league with the Brotherhood, arranged to find an acceptable husband.

In selecting a husband for little Mary they would again rely upon a legacy of Elijah’s magic. All of the eligible bachelors of the House of David were assembled and were asked to hand in their walking sticks. The one who would be destined to marry Mary – his walking stick would have to come alive and bloom, much the same as that ‘dead’ brush in Elijah’s Old Cave. None of them did. The Priest in charge of the ceremony was confused and inquired if every bachelor on the list had indeed showed up. Well, an old bachelor, Joseph David, who did not wish to be married anyway thought that those who preferred to remain single should be exempted, and so he had stayed home. Well, he was immediately summoned and was compelled to come quickly – free or in chains, it would be his choice. No sooner then when he entered the hall did his beat up old walking stick bloom with these huge White Lilies, which then as now symbolize Purity and Virginity (this would be the first premonition of the Virgin Birth). We had a winner! It was said that Our Lady, then a 14 year old girl, asked for one of those Lilies, pressed it and saved it as a souvenir that She kept close by Herself for the remainder Her life.

Well, most of the bachelors were there only because they had been asked to be, and few had entertained any great expectations for themselves, suspecting of their own unworthiness. But there were a few who considered themselves in serious contention, and they to various degrees emotionally invested themselves into the process. One young man in particular thought that he truly had it all – noble breeding, wealth, capacity, virtue (and there was no pretence about it – he was an outstanding Young Man) – and he was heartbroken when Mary went to a reluctant old man who didn’t seem very eager to have Her anyway. This young man was so disconsolate that he ended up by selling off his things and becoming a Member of that Order of Essenes at Mount Carmel. Disgusted with Life, he would go into Religious Retirement and leave the world and all of his disappointments behind. He would have been happy enough to grow old and die without ever another word being spoken of him, but such would not be the case as we shall see.

It was correct that he had plenty of capacity and virtue. At the Monastery on the Mountain he proved himself to be a skilled and dedicated worker and then an inspiring leader, and after 30 some years found himself the Superior of that Order. Well, by this time Christ had been born, had grown up, had His Ministry and had finally been Murdered. The once solid Following of Jesus split into violent factions, making Mary Herself a possible target. Paul would kill Stephen, who had been a rival of Peter’s and Peter would reward Paul with a lucrative Christian Franchise. With such dealings afoot, Mary could not be safe. So our ‘young man’, now an old man, the Superior of the Monastery at Mount Carmel with many men under his command, discerned what his role must be in all of this and sent a covert delegation to quickly rescue Mary from the intrigues and conspiracies of Jerusalem and its environs. Our history does not go into much detail on this. Did they offer Her a polite invitation which She graciously accepted, or did they crash Her doors and ride away with Her folded over their saddlebags? We only know that when She arrived at Mount Carmel She was ready to appreciate Her stay.

But what a contre-temps it must have been for our young man, now an old man, after a lifetime with a broken heart he was finally to be face to face with that Girl, now a well advanced Lady, whom he had fallen so much in love with decades before… a Lifetime before. It is said that She recognized him instantly and asked him whether it did not seem just like ‘yesterday’ that they had met for the first time. And so it was that the Old Man, once a Young Man, entirely forgot all the years of disconsolation, loneliness, and heartbreak, and was completely enraptured in a moment of unalloyed happiness… what we would call a perfect smile.

Which brings us back to the question the Angel had asked me, why Our Lady chooses to dress as a Carmelite. I thought the answer was that She was showing Her appreciation for the Protection which that Order had given Her during Her lifetime, as well as in gratitude for the Care the Order had taken of Her Family for the Seven Generations since the time of the Prophet Elijah. That seemed like a reasonable enough answer, but it was too easy…it lacked elegance. I felt no validation from my Angels, and my dreams were still being stirred up with hints which would stop if I had gotten the Answer. So I kept The Riddle on my mind and continued to think it over. And then after about a month had gone by the answer came so instantly to me that I am not at all certain whether I thought of it, or my Angel finally just gave up and simply put the answer into my head – that Our Lady wears the Habit of the Carmelites because the Carmelites pre-date and transcend the Catholic Church. I could say it is a Jewish Order, but that too is limiting after we consider that Elijah himself was not exactly Jewish, wandering in from the hills to live with the Hebrews, he wasn’t a member of any one of their 12 tribes. Her wearing that Carmelite Habit is expressive of Her first loyalties which go beyond any particular Religion while recognizing the confluence of Religious Traditions. We are reminded that the Blessed Virgin is Jewish Girl and Catholic Girl both at once, as well as carrying forward whatever Religion it was that Old Elijah had brought with him out of those Hills.

Well, the Answer is one thing, but after the Answer, what was the Lesson that I was supposed to have learned? What was the Angel’s Guiding Purpose? How had I been changed by it all? Well, certainly, so much thoughtfulness can never go entirely to waste. But what I came to feel might have been something akin to what the first Crusading Carmelites had felt, that Religion was supposed to be more Universal, and more Ancient than just their own particular Religious Tradition. And then that any True Religion needs to have some little bit of a Love Story behind it. The World may have forgotten that young man turned old man, who had brought Our Lady to Mount Carmel, but She still wears the dress he gave Her. And that’s Religion too.

Meditation, Yoga, and Enlightenment

Perhaps somebody should conduct a study to see whether it is first Meditation that attracts the most people to the Eastern Traditions, or Yoga. One can look around and be puzzled as to whether one sees more beginning Meditation Classes or more beginning Yoga Classes. But one thing we can hardly fail to notice, and that is that most Organizations offer them both – Meditation and Yoga.

It is relevant to speak of here of basic beginning forms of Meditation and Yoga. We need to keep in mind that the earliest traditions of these spiritual arts were by no means as elaborate as they would become after so many hundreds of years of development and elaboration. It is probable that Meditation and Yoga had very simple beginnings.

Here, we can consider the purely pragmatic value of Meditation, remembering that much of the Tradition for Meditation comes from out of the Monasteries, both East and West. Imagine yourself in the position of being the Administrator of a Monastery, with a limited food budget and a compound full of men of all ages, some of whom could be expected to be rather rambunctious. Back in an age where there are no books (and your vailable scrolls being the most precious of reference materials, not meant for casual reading to pass the time), and no televisions. One can only work the men so hard for so long without killing them. Sooner or later one must give them their own time and hope they do not tear the place down with the riotous behaviors typical to men in general. Just think of how much easier the Administrator’s job could be if he could convince even just a few of his charges to just sit down and shut up. This may have been the first important impetus behind the Traditions of Meditation – a means of making grown men behave themselves.

Of course this is not why we still Meditate today. If one lives alone, who would one be sitting down and shutting up for? Our restless energy can be channeled into any number of hobbies, not being restricted by the poverty and lack of resources of an overcrowded Monastery. Yes, a little quiet time for reflection can do us all some good, but Meditation is now considered to have gone far beyond the point of being merely a form of crowd control, where we are less in the way and a lot less trouble if we sit in the corner and keep quiet. Even so, still it remains the first Lesson in Meditation to sit down and simply be quiet.

Next, about the Yogas. We must realize that Monks were not told directly, in those very words, to just sit down and shut up for the sake of their being less trouble to Management. No, they were told that sitting down and shutting up would be immensely beneficial for them Spiritually – that it would Enlighten them if they were of the intellectual persuasion, or if they were merely sensualists that Meditation would put them in a state of Bliss, Ananda, as they call it.

This is where the Yogas enter in. Typically it starts with breathing exercises, particularly the Breath Retentions Exercises, which simulate Bliss as everybody knows who has ever held his or her breath long enough to pass out – that right before one loses consciousness one feels very light-headed, or, in the parlance of the street, very ‘high’. Is this a good thing? Well, remember, again, that these practices arose from the Monastic Traditions. While ordinary men would ordinarily go out and get drunk or wasted on drugs (for instance, men in the Military), the poverty of the Monasteries precludes all of that, but the men can make do by learning to hyperventilate themselves into a stupor after a hard days work. Again, from the point of view of the Monastery’s Administration, anything that keeps the men out of trouble at so little cost is a positive.

But of course Yuga, just as Meditation also, has come far from these earliest humble beginnings of breathing deep for a buzz.

The fortunate thing is that so many Traditions put so many collective years of practice into the Yogas that many substantial benefits were discovered. Focused attention on breathing lead into awareness of body energy flows and a heightened sense for the body’s well being. This lead progressively into the more elaborate systems of the Tantric and Kundalini Yogas.

This leads us back to Meditation. How? Well, one can only be so aware of the body while in the waking consciousness, but if one can go into the relaxed hypnogogic state of consciousness then as one physically dissociates, one ‘sees’ within the body more than just feeling it and what would ordinarily be felt as pressures or slight pains become sensations of Light. Visual Imagery becomes quite vivid. Furthermore, if one can sustain Meditation, much the same way as Dreams come after about an hour of Sleep, likewise, in Meditation these same REM cycles begin to occur, and what we call Dreams in sleep occur as Visions in Meditation. And anyone who has ever had a very intense Lucid Dream or Vivid Dream can not underestimate the intensity of a Vision experienced during a prolonged Meditation.

Of course it takes a great deal of practice before one can combine disciplined breathing patterns with holding specific postures while relaxing one’s self down to levels of deep consciousness so comparable to Sleep. But practice makes perfect.

And now we come to the notion of Enlightenment. I have spoken in other essays about how Dreams are each person’s gateway into the Higher Collective Consciousness. So it is with deep Meditation, as the same REM states are being accessed. The Collective Consciousness approaches each person as a moral-social entity, and communicates to each person for their moral-social betterment and Perfection.

There is a very common Modern Error, which has become almost Universal, which is to speak of the Dreams and Visions as coming from each individual’s Subconscious Mind – a sum of personal experiences, sensations and perceptions. Often we even hear that dreams are ‘random’. You see, Science is committed to the Materialistic View of the Universe. Materialism is the Religion of Atheists, and Science has picked up on their lingo. So while it may be entirely obvious to anybody who has had the actual Subjective Experiences, that Dreams and Visions are messages from an External and Objective Collective Consciousness, still our Modern Culture of Materialism has effectively won the Battle of Terminology and so we have even ‘Spiritual’ people speaking of ‘subconscious’ content.

Anyway, if we can get used to the Reality of being connected to the Collective Consciousness and Higher Unified Being through our Dreams and Visions, then we can appreciate how we are being lead toward Wisdom and Perfection. Often people assume that the Goal of Wisdom and Perfection consists mostly in terms of Meaning and Understanding, and this is true enough, but only in the sense that Meaning and Understanding should prompt the correct actions and responses from us as we act in the World or in our Dreams. For instance, it is most common for people to inquire as to what their Dreams ‘mean’, but the most important factor is really how they acted within their dream – whether they act appropriately or not. So it is that the “Naked In the Street Dream” (which we have all had) has an entirely different meaning depending upon whether or not the Dreamer was embarrassed or not.

The Collective Higher Mind is looking for the Correct Response. We are being monitored for Correct Behavior. And how can we determine whether we have behaved correctly in a Dream? Well, that’s easy. The Collective Higher Mind will repeat dreams and visions until they elicit the correct response. So it is that people have recurring Dreams, or Dreams with the same basic motif. What people should understand by this repetition is that they had not yet made the correct response, or that they still need more practice exercising the correct response. Once the correct actions are taken and then verified, then the Collective Higher Mind moves onto the next level of Perfection. And, yes, Dreams and Visions will come along with messages and guiding signs for those who have significant trouble in figuring out what they are doing wrong. Here we see Guides and Angels in our Dreams and Visions.

Indeed, it is one of the best arguments against the Notion of the Personal Subconscious Mind that people have such difficulty understanding their own Dreams and Visions, or that Dreams and Visions have such difficulty in communicating with individuals. Between the Collective Consciousness and the Individual there is some distance of disconnect – while generalizing for Humanity in general, the Collective Consciousness often speaks in terms that the individual may still be unfamiliar with. The same Archetypical Symbols appear everywhere in the World, even to individuals who have not had enough Cultural Education to recognize them. If everything was from personal content, then there would be little trouble in understanding what is effectively just our own regurgitated thoughts.

Now here we should appreciate the difference between supposing that dreams are random, meaningless and useless, and the viewpoint that Dreams and Visions come from the Collective Consciousness as a series of Lessons and Tests that progress us toward our Moral Perfection. In this regards, Meditation and Yoga are only useful in proportion as they allow more access to these mechanisms of the Collective Consciousness. And then we must see that Meditation and Yoga are not really geared for any entirely personal development, but, as with the Collective Consciousness, is directed more toward the Moral Perfection of the Collective – for the improvement of Society and the World as a whole. The Individual is helped only so that Society may be improved by one individual at a time. And here we should hope, if we are allowed a metaphor to express our wish, that the Tide will raise all boats at once.