We’re heading out to meet and retreat with Amma!

We’re also joining KRI and 3HO in New Mexico.

Wow, what blessings!

First stop: Sante Fe and meetings with KRI, thanks to Updesh, my teacher from Yoga Village.  Next Stop: Amma in Albuquerque!  We will follow her to Dallas, too.

If you’d like to meet us there, please email me ASAP!

Much Love and Many Blessings,

Ram Gian

CEO

RamGian@GottaGettaGuru.com

Buddha identified “Four Noble Truths.”

Three followed from the realization of the first: Dukkha.

Dukka is a name given to a condition of existence. Often, this condition is translated as: Suffering exists.  However, this is insufficient.  If we think of our individual experience of consciousness as a Wheel (or the tire of an automobile), we immediately realize this wheel is imperfectly formed.  It is out of balance.  So, when this wheel is in use, we feel a wobble.  The ride becomes unpleasant.  We suffer, and as long as life keeps rolling along, it’s there.

Every satisfied desire brings a new one to the fore.

Every banished sin returns to us once more!

Yuck.

What causes this wobble, this, the source of our suffering?

Buddha says: Cravings, desires, attachment to a particular outcome cause it (Noble Truth #2).  For example, the desire to be good, to defeat evil, to achieve a particular, perfect result, especially a permanent one in this imperfect, impermanent world.

However, hope exists.  Buddha also says a cessation of the suffering caused by this wobble is possible (#3).

How may we end suffering?

Be still.  The wobble only exists when you are one with the wheel in motion.

Detach from the cycle, stand back, watch it from a little distance and you will be free.

And how do we do that?

Answer (#4): The Noble Eightfold Path

*

Put Down Your Weapons

There is a war waging inside you.

You are trying to be good.

You want the good in you to defeat the evil in you and in the world.

But, it never will . . . Good and Evil are opposite sides of the coin of creation. Like light and darkness, engaged forever in a battle, each, ironically, owing its existing to the one it would vanquish.  Both are built into the creation, and necessarily so or there would be only the stillness of non-being, of unity, unanimity, and Oneness.

Realize that, like quicksand, the harder you fight to be good, the deeper you sink, for the world is a duality war machine! Good vs. Evil!  Light vs. Darkness!

Ask yourself: Why do I fight?

Is the answer: to achieve Nirvana, enlightenment?

A lofty goal!

Is it: to make myself good or even perfect?

Wrong!

Purge your body from all sin and all unseemly desire and it still will not bring you to enlightenment!  Nor will your mind, even if you rebuke yourself a thousand times a day for your sins.  Focus on your body/mind all you want; you will still never be perfect!

What’s worse: Your body cannot deliver enlightenment.  Nor can your mind. So, stop tilting at windmills!

Enlightenment is not a thing to be achieved or delivered, not by battle royal or war internal.  It is a thing to be accessed!

Like the water at the bottom of a deep well, the rubble created by the body/mind constantly at war must be removed if you want access to this drink!  And if you do want this drink, you must take responsibility for your own digging.  Only you can clear your rubble!

If each of us does the same, we will never have to worry about Evil in the world again.

This is the only way to win: one at a time!

Stand back, detached from the workings of the duality war machine and watch.  Free yourself to shift your attention to your highest consciousness, to the real you.  Realize all that exists is impermanent and so unreal.  Anything you can see, hear or touch is ultimately unreal!  Only the higher Self is real, only it is unborn and never passes away, only it is permanent.

Be awake to the Self, experienced in moments of stillness and satisfaction when the mind has paused and the body is satisfied.  Feel the peace that prevails.

This is the only, the true you, and it is all that really exists.

This Self is One with the One and so One with ALL.  It is infinite and immortal.

This, true you, is Buddha.

*

The Eightfold Path

1)    Right View

2)    Right  Intention

3)    Right  Speech

4)    Right  Action

5)    Right Livlihood

6)    Right Effort

7)    Right Mindfulness

8)    Right Concentration

Volumes have been written in ages past and present on this Path.  It is one each must travel alone, yet one may go with a Guru.  If Buddha speaks to you and you hope to have him as your Guru, our Fall 2010 Practicum will take you step by step down this path.  We stress the Three Jewels of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma or the teachings, and Sangha or a like-minded spiritual community), and provide all the necessary materials and support to help you embark.

The villager froze, for the approaching traveler glowed with a luminescence he’d never beheld before, except in the heavens at night.

“Are you a celestial being,” the villager asked.

“No,” replied the traveler, pausing for a moment to smile on the man.

“A wizard then or a magician?”

“No,” the traveler said firmly.

“Are you  a . . . man?”

“No,” the traveler replied.

“What then?”

“I am awake,” replied the traveler.

*

May All Beings Be Happy

The word Buddha means one who has achieved perfect enlightenment, one who is awake in the highest sense of the word.  Buddha suffered, tried various austerities, and nearly died while attempting to achieve enlightenment and freedom from the never-ending cycle of cause and effect, of karma.  Finally, he realized God-consciousness could never be achieved by him as “a man,” for all his approaches had failed because he practiced his various methods while still attached to his personal identity and with the frame of reference of a separate individual.  To merge with the One, he found, requires a non-otherness, otherwise the realization of God remains inaccessible.

Once he had achieved this exalted state, Buddha wished for all the same freedom from suffering he had achieved, and he spent the rest of his life promoting a way to achieve this freedom.

Buddha said: ‘if you see me, you see the teachings.’

And what are these teachings?

They are often referred to as The Middle Way, a way of being, a state of oneness achieved through balance, detachment and mindfulness of our true identity: one with the One.  Thus, to have Buddha as your Guru could prove beneficial to anyone of any faith.

Here is an example of applying the principle of detachment:

What Use Did You Make of the Pain?

“Someone hurt me,” she said.  “I mean really hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “What use did you make of it?”

“What?”  She said.

“The pain,” I replied.  “Did you put it to good use?”

“What are you talking about?  I wanted to—kill him!  To tear the flesh from his bones! “

“Oh,” I said.  “So, the pain made use of you.”

*

Pain is a fact of life.  We all inflict it.  We all receive it.  It is a condition of the phenomenological world, a necessary capacity for bodily preservation, psychological, and yes, even spiritual development.

It is difficult, in the heat of the moment, to have the presence of mind to ignore pain.  Yet, we must.  And we must learn to avoid falling victim to the impulses that spring from it: revenge, hatred, jealousy, retribution.  In short, we must make use of pain or it will make use of us.  Thus, the question should not be:

“Why do bad things happen to good people . . .”

But:

“What use do good people make of pain when bad things happen to them?”

This is a state of being.

How is this accomplished?

How does one achieve steady, mindful composure that transcends even the most profound torments?

Look to the Buddha and to all the great Gurus, but first, know thyself:

Pain is “felt” in the brain, and only the brain, according to science.  In other words, we think, when we stub our toe, our toe “hurts.”  However, this is a trick of the mind.  The brain merely tells our consciousness the body it inhabits has sustained an injury, in this specific instance, an injury to a far off extremity and we “feel” the pain there.   The knowing consciousness above it all is present, watching this exchange of messages, but this higher mind feels nothing. The lower mind (in a different physical part of the brain, an older, more primitive part) registers that it does, that “we” do,  in as much as it registers the event as “OUCH.”

This, too, is true in cases of lesser traumas, experiences merely uncomfortable, whether physical or psychological.  The mind and body want to react, and they want an immediate remedy.  They want to get comfortable again and they conspire to insist that we withdraw from whatever it is we are doing that is causing the upset, regardless of whether or not “we,” the higher consciousness that some would argue is a spiritually directed part, want to do so.

In the case of real physical danger, the registration of pain in the body/mind is, of course, a valuable fiction for the higher self to be aware of, as it is a useful self-preservation mechanism.  However, in the case of discomfort, especially self-imposed discomfort (e.g., a meditation or yoga posture) the “tête-à-tête” between the body/mind and the “we” that wants to keep going, keep running, keep fasting, keep chanting or praying, hold the yoga pose, or tame the tiger of our volatile and dangerous temper, etc., etc., can be a wonderful spiritual training tool.

If the higher mind can remain in the debate long enough to win it, we gain an opportunity for self-mastery.

Here the world’s great scriptures agree.

“Turn the other cheek . . .” said Christ.  Then, from the cross, he said: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  This is perhaps the greatest use of pain in recorded history!  It caused a change of heart (to borrow from Fulton Sheen’s “The Life of Christ.”) too salutary to regret.

‘Grab the reigns and control the horses (senses) that race out of control . . .’ Said Krishna to Arjuna, as Yogananda explains in his two volume treatise: “God Talks With Arjuna — The Bhagavad Gita: Royal Science of God-realization.”

And, in the Dhammapada:

They insulted me; they hurt me;

they defeated me; they cheated me.

In those who do not harbor such thoughts,

hate will cease.

For hate is never conquered by hate.

Hate is conquered by love.

This is an eternal law.

(source: http://www.san.beck.org/Dhammapada.html)

And where is it conquered, this hate, which is arguably a by-product of pain?

Answer, again: In the well-trained mind.

We do not know the author of the Dhammapada, not in the usual sense of the word (e.g., the one who wrote these words down).  However, as the Gospels are believed by many to be an ostensibly accurate record of the teachings of the “Son of God” or that causal spiritual force OM or the Word incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, here Buddhists and students and followers of the Buddha believe these are the words of “The Enlightened One” himself.

The verses that precede the two excerpted above are actually the start of what is known as the Twin Verses of the Dhammapada.

Here they are:

What we are is the result of what we have thought,

is built by our thoughts,  is made up of our thoughts.

If one speaks or acts with an impure thought, suffering follows one,

like the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the ox.

What we are is the result of what we have thought,

is built by our thoughts, is made up of our thoughts.

If one speaks or acts with a pure thought,

happiness follows one, like a shadow that never leaves.

Thus again: If the higher mind can remain in the debate, we gain an opportunity for self-mastery.

As an example of training oneself to ignore discomfort and embrace sacrifice, abstaining from meat on Friday’s was once a tradition of Catholic families like my own.  During Lent, the season that precedes the aforementioned and perhaps greatest example of intentionally enduring suffering so as to make good use of the pain (the Crucifixion), the rigors are more intense.  We actually have to give something up for forty days, in order to suffer along with Christ (in a way of course that simple pales by comparison), for a higher purpose.  Oh, how we wrestle with our minds during this time if we truly follow this spiritual exercise!  And: Oh what control we suddenly find we may have if we but try!

In Hinduism, especially in physical Yoga (the act of “yoking” yourself to God), we train the body/mind to transcend the messages of fiction (e.g., I can’t or This hurts) that flow in a steady stream from the lower mind, and, at the direction of the soul, the whisperer Krishna, telling, into the ear of our inner consciousness, that our “needs” and passions are really just the “wants and desires” of our earth-bound body/mind,  just an illusion of the body/mind that must be pierced through practice to achieve enlightenment, we achieve an actual experience of transcendence or God-consciousness.

And, in Bhuddism, the process is seemingly simple, yet actually Herculean: still the mind through meditation.

Sound easy?

Try it some time!

In any event, whether you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Gita or the Enlightened One, soon you will have to jon the battle, for, in virtually all spiritual practices (as in all of life), opportunities to “make use of pain” exist.  Happily, all guarantee the same result: The practice of self-mastery brings us closer to God.

So, whether the restaurant gets your order wrong, someone “really” hurts you, or you suffer terribly on the very cross of Christ for those you love, remember: You may not be able to control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it.  You can lash out and demand retribution or forgive, with the utmost poise and control!

Summing up: Remember to make good use of your pain!

If you want to learn more about making Buddha your Guru for this endeavor, please visit Buddha on our Teaching Site at www.GottaGettaGuru.com/teachings.html and “Select” Buddha and then click on the Cirriculum page.

May all beings live in peace!

PM is easy and ecumenical: it works with any spiritual passage or text or inspirational poetry.  You start by personally choosing and then reading a passage repeatedly, and then committing it to memory through an exercise of sustained, deep attention.  In this way, you repeatedly deliver the passage to your higher consciousness, where it becomes and essential part of you.  Through this practice, and the application of its content in your daily life, you endeavor to become the embodiment of the passage.

PM is a universal practice, available to everyone, regardless of religion.  To learn more about it, and Easwaran’s eight-point program, please purchase his book at: www.gottagettaguru.com/store/BooksMusicandMovies/PassageMeditation

Remember, we offer discount prices and, 11% (eleven percent) of the net proceeds of every purchase from out store is donated to organizations and programs that help feed hungry children.  Thank you!

A Christian Saint’s Passage:

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;

Where there is hatred,

Let me sow love;

Where the is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

Note: the author/creator of this method, Eknath Easwaran, makes an emphatic point in his book, Passage Meditation, about the use of the word “Lord” in this prayer.  He translates the word from St. Francis’ prayer and explains that he (Easwaran) means by the use of the word, not an Old Man/God in a physical heaven, but the “very ground of existence, the most profound thing we can conceive of . . .”

Basic Instructions, according to Easwaran, are: Read the passage over and over, one word at a time, taking time to really feel and understand each word.  Sit in solitude and consider the words, the vibration they create within you.  Commit the passage to memory and repeat it daily, as part of your spiritual practice, then ACT on it, in the phenomenological world, the world of people, places and things, the world of duality (hatred and love; doubt and faith), in order to transcend that world and go within, where Jesus tells us we find the Kingdom of God.

Another passage:

Let Nothing Upset You

Let nothing upset you;

Let nothing frighten you.

Everything is changing;

God alone is changeless.

Patience attains the goal.

Who has God lacks nothing.

God alone fills every need.

St. Teresa of Avila

If you are interested in Guided Experience in these or any other Spiritual practices, please sign up for the GottaGettaGuru.com “Spiritual Commitment Curriculum” here. You will have an opportunity to choose from a variety of traditions, all of which are based on the teachings of the world’s great Guru’s or Lights.

To purchase a constant reminder of Christ as the Risen Jesus of Nazareth, click here.  You can pose your plush Jesus, and take Him with you everywhere you go!

Coming soon: St. Francis of Assisi plush Guru!  (Add to your Wish List!)

Coming soon: St. Theresa of Avila plush Guru!  (Add to your Wish List!)

Radiant is the World Soul

Radiant is the world soul,

Full of splendor and beauty,

Full of life,

Of souls hidden,

Of treasures of the holy spirit,

Of fountains of strength,

Of greatness and beauty.

Proudly I ascend

Toward the heights of the world soul

That gives life to the universe.

How majestic the vision.

Come, enjoy,

Come, find peace,

Embrace delight,

Taste and see that God is good.

Why spend your substance on what does not nourish

And your labor on what cannot satisfy?

Listen to me, and you will enjoy what is good,

And find delight in what is truly precious.

Abraham Isaac Kook

Meditation for a Sacred Marriage

Sacred Wife

(Sacred Husband)

God within

Calls me to you

Sacred Love

Sacred Home

One True Abode

We dwell together

Forever

One

Ram Gian Singh

More . . .

Chanting the Names of the Lord (Hindu)

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Notes: Hare is pronounced “ha-rey” and is a name for God that means “thief” for it is God who steals our hearts.  Rama, another name for God, means God as the source of all joy.  Krishna is the aspect or incarnation of God that draws us to a closer relationship with the One.

Mantra as Meditation – based on Passage Meditations by Eknath Easwaran

Barukh attah Adoni  (Blessed art Thou, O Lord) – Hebrew

Ribono shel olam  (Hasidic mystic tradition: Lord of the Universe) – Hebrew

Om mani padme hum – (alludes to the “jewel in the lotus flower of the heart) – Buddhist

Ma – Om (AMMA’s recommended meditation: inhale and say “Ma” mentally – exhale and say Om . . .)

Regular mediation is part of Yoga, yoking yourself to God.  Practice, Practice, Practice!

Jerusalem – about 1975 years ago

You saw Jesus three times, the first, from a distance.  He was teaching, addressing a multitude of your fellow Jews, hundreds of whom had crowded around him.  This throng had pressed so close that Jesus had to physically retreat to a little fishing boat in order to put some distance between himself and the crush of his followers.

You saw Jesus that day and you kept right on walking.

Remember?

You thought: ‘Oh, another Messiah.  Maybe this one will deliver us from the Romans!’ Then you blushed: ‘Yeah, right.’

You kicked a stone in your path.  It tumbled, raised a little cloud of dust, and so did your heels.  You kept on walking.

The next time you saw him, you did not recognize him at first. You saw a man or what was left of a man.  The bones of his back and hips and legs were laid bare by a scourging.  Administered by a Roman guard with a whip that had many leather straps in which were embedded metal balls and pieces of sharp bone, the torturous punishment tore his skin off, ripped into his muscles and sinews and shredded him, stroke by stoke, as you watched.

Clearly, he was bleeding to death.

“Another one” you muttered.  The Romans had maimed then crucified 30,000 Jewish men in this manner during the last few years alone, and you had personally witnessed this punishment, and the one that followed on the cross, too many times.  These things you thought to yourself as you looked down and saw a small, round stone in the dust at your feet.  It reminded you of that day by the sea and a chill rose up your spine as you realized it was him, the “Messiah” you’d seen teaching from a fisherman’s boat.

You looked up and realized they’d crowned him with thorns.

You turned away.

Yes, you turned away and you remembered the ridiculous tales you’d heard of him since that day, the tales of the “miracles” he was purported to have performed, healing the lepers, feeding thousands from a few loaves or bread and a bushel or two of fish, and even raising the dead! You recalled the fact that he claimed to forgive sins, too, which only God himself could do.  And then there were the claims by many of his followers, your fellow Jews, that this man was in fact was the chosen one, the promised Messiah of your people.

You’d had heard these claims, but you’d never bothered to check into them yourself.   Why should you have?  You knew the Jewish prophets had promised both that the Messiah and the “end of the world” was coming “soon” over a thousand years ago now!  And, perhaps most importantly, the Rabbi’s and Pharisees and leaders of your faith had warned this man Jesus was an impostor . . .

Wouldn’t they know the Son of God if He came?

The Roman guard struck him again and he nearly collapsed from the pain.

“Some Messiah,” you said, glancing contemptuously at him.  He turned to you.  Your eyes met his.  It was as if could see into you. You were afraid.

You were ashamed.

They dragged him off.

For some reason, you followed in his bloody footsteps.

Maybe you went because so many others were going.

Maybe you hoped they’d let him go.

Whatever the reason, you followed and watched as they whipped him onward, he staggering under the weight of his cross, towards a hill called Golgotha, “the place of a skull.”  The authorities had reserved this place for the most hellish of public tortures, pain and humiliation, a cruelty that always ended the same way: in death.

The uprights of the well-used crosses stood like tree trunks bare of branches, rooted deeply in the earth.  The Romans retrieved his cross bar from a passerby, for he was too weak to bring it all the way up himself.  They laid it on the rocky soil.  Then theyy laid him down and drove the first nail directly through one of his wrists, crushing the large nerves.  The pain of this cruelty was so unfathomable, a new word, rooted in the act itself, had been coined to describe it: ex-cruci-ating, from the cruci-fixion.

He cried out.

They did it again, to the other hand, piercing him now twice.

When they lifted him up, you thought of Moses and how he had been told by God to fashion and affix a metal serpent to a pole and lift it high for all to see, the serpent forming a cross against the pole, a cross . . . like this one.  And God had said to Moses that his cross would save all who looked upon it in faith from the plague that they then suffered.

Could it be? Thought you.  Could this somehow relate to that?

They nailed his feet now, too, to the upright, parting the bones, crushing the tendons.

Excruciating.

After a while, you heard him pray to God to forgive them.

Never, in the thousands of crucifixions here had that ever happened before.

You stood and watched, and marveled at him for six hours as he was thus hung.

Yes, death thus came slowly on the Roman cross. When it finally did come, it usually came by suffocation. The executed were nailed through the wrists, not the hands, so the flesh would hold, for the weight of their entire bodies hanging down was so strong, it pulled their shoulders from their joints.  Then, without the help of their disjointed arms, the crucified would push up from their nailed feet in order to breathe, for the weight and position of their bodies collapsed all the air from their lungs, and each time they needed to inhale, they had to relieve this pressure.

You watched as he tried at first in vain to push himself up again, to take another breath.  You watched him struggle and gasp and die a little more.

It was true, some lasted days on the cross, if they’d not been scourged ‘til their flesh hung like ribbons, but a few minutes more of this was all he’d have hanging there this day after what they’d done to him.

You heard him cry out, quoting the ancient Jewish Psalmist, who, and this now seemed astounding to you, wrote centuries before crucifixion was even invented:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

My bones are out of joint . . . They pierced my hands and feet . . .

And you thought: How could this be?  You looked at him.  Was this not that prophecy fulfilled?

“Who are you?” You shouted up at him.

Then, you saw him slump, and say, with his last breath: It is finished.

“Finished!  What is finished?” You shouted up at him. “What!?!”

The whole earth shook. You were knocked off balance and staggered. You stumbled, and fell to your knees.  Many did.  You turned to see the face of one who could see the Temple as he shouted a report: the veil had been rent asunder. And, inexplicably, it began to grow dark.  Then, the Roman Centurion himself shouted: “Truly, this man was the son of God.”

At this, another soldier leapt up and thrust a spear into his side.  A woman shrieked.  Blood poured from his already still heart.

And now everyone looked to the heavens, for it was as if the sun itself had refused to shine down on this murder.

Panic ensued, but the guards had unfinished business.

Wooooosh! A Roman swung a metal rod and struck the knee of one of the two thieves crucified with him, shattering the man’s leg.

Wooooosh! With this second blow, to the top leg of the two nailed to the upright, shattered the bone at the shin.

Wooooosh!  Wooooosh! The second thief, too.

Having been denied the legs with which to push up and gasp a frantic inhale, both men suffocated quickly. It took only minutes, and death was certain.  A Roman guard could take no chances, for, if the condemned somehow survived, the guards themselves were put to death.

No.  There was no question about it.

Dead.

He was dead.

All three were dead.

It was finished.  And, it was if the sun itself had now gone out, day was night.  You departed quickly, deeply troubled, your soul sinking.

You passed many women, all of them weeping.  One of them, you heard someone say, was his grieving mother . . . Mary.

She, you beheld through tears.

*

A week later, YOU are a Christian.

What?

What has happened?

You have given up your place and status in the Jewish community; you have in fact abandoned your father and mother, your temple and your faith.  You have abandoned your whole family and culture and your most cherished religious customs. You no longer offer burnt offerings for the forgiveness of your sins, you no longer pray to God as a single creator, you no longer worship or keep holy the Sabbath on Saturday.

These were the hallmarks of your whole life!

These were the things that made you and your family Jews, one hundred generations of your family!  Yet, you have left them all behind?

Because of this, you are an outcast and are actually, physically hunted by the same people who put Jesus to death!  Yet, you are ready to be scourged yourself, prepared to suffer the very same death by crucifixion, that excruciating death, because you now believe in Jesus as Christ, as the Messiah of your people and ONE with God the Father.

Are you crazy?

What exactly has happened during the course of these few intervening days to cause this change in you?

What on earth could have happened to cause such a change, given the risks, the costs?

How, having seen all this, personally witnessed his death and humiliation, could you call a man put to death with common thieves, the Son of God?

How could you suddenly, irrevocable believe that this dead, humiliated Jesus was the Messiah of your people?

How?  Why?

You saw him alive?

You say you saw him whole and healthy and full of light and spoke with him and ate meals with him and physically touched him, and he taught you and forgave you and preached love and forgiveness to you after they had scourged him, hobbled him, crushed his nerves, pierced his heart and entombed his lifeless, shredded, bloodless body?

No way!

You saw Him overcome His own Death, and you knew He could be none other than the Messiah of your people, the Son of God?

Wow.

Wow!

You say not only you, but hundreds of Jews sat with him as he preached and now thousands of Jews believe as you do now, just weeks after the crucifixion?

Would you do so if you knew it was a lie?

No.

No.

I say: either you and they are crazy and everyone present suffered a mass hallucination each time they saw him or this did happen.

This did happen.

*

What do you think?

If this had happened to you, could you be but a Christian?  Wouldn’t you reject your religion, your position in society and even your family and follow Christ?

Well, according to the Gospels and backed up by more evidence than you can even imagine, it did happen to many, many Jews, including the very Apostles who ran away and hid when Jesus was seized, who denie him, watched him whipped and crucified, executed and buried.  In fact, it is well documented that within a few short weeks of Christ’s crucifixion, 10,000 Christians were certain he was the Messiah of the Jews and had abandoned their faith, the faith that denied him.

Now, one may die for what one believes to be true, but no one dies for a lie he knows to be a lie, and most of the apostles and hundreds of others in the days and weeks and years and even centuries that followed did die for this truth: those who were there say they saw raised from the dead.

They had the audacity to say, under the pain of death, He was who He said He was . . .

How do we know?

Today, we have historical (as well as Biblical) sources, written testimonies of what happened, of what we have described here, and they are among the most reliable in all antiquity.  Some of these have come to be known as the Gospels, not because they were carefully selected by some conspiratorial group of deluded believers.  Nor because of Constantine’s desire to use the teachings for political purposes.  But, because they were the most well documented and thoroughly verified histories of the actual events taken down with a few short years of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, taken down by eye-witnesses.

Now, having said this, and having helped to bring you to a better experience of what it meant to be a Jew who became a Christian, we have to make a big time leap forward now and ask: wouldn’t it be natural for those Jews of that day to believe that their Jesus was the only form and incarnation of the Christ, literally?  After all, he said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the light.  No man cometh unto the Father but through me.’

And, what world did they live in, what frame of reference did they have to think he could possible mean these words in any way other than: I, Christ as Jesus the Carpenter (as opposed to as the Spirit and Christ-consciousness eternal that inhabited the body of that carpenter) am the way?

They had none, no other way to understand Him or the “universe of that time” – the world was still thought to be flat, the universe pretty much that flat world and the sun and the visible stars.  And we know from the Gospels the ideas and teachings Jesus presented often confused them, they often got them wrong, and much to His great frustration!

Do we also underestimate Him?

Have you ever heard this?

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the promised Messiah of the Jewish people whose birth, life and death had been foretold in scores of sacred Jewish prophecies.  He said He was the One who could forgive sins and remove the penalty (or karma) associated with offenses against God by taking the punishment, the pain, and the suffering wrought by sin and due the sinner, unto Himself.  This, claimed Jesus, He would do by dying, by delivering Himself as an exculpatory sacrifice, on the cross.

Yes, He asserted that He alone would redeem all mankind.  And, because Jesus Christ assuredly made these claims, we are confronted with the fact that either Jesus was a liar or He was and is who He said He was and is.  And what did He say?  He said: “I am the (definite article) Way, the (again definite) Truth and the (yes, again, definite article as in He and only He) Light.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

So, believe it: Jesus is “the” only way to God.

Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior or spend eternity in Hell.

Have you heard this?

Wow!

Maybe you actually believe it?

It’s awfully black and white and narrow, no?

Most importantly, it is the greatest underestimation of Jesus imaginable!  It means, for those who believe this that Jesus was and is only capable of showing himself once to the world in one form, that of a Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth!

A suit of clothes.

What happens to the Jesus as eternal Christ-consciousness, the very Word of God, eternal, omniscient and omni-present, One with the Father Jesus if you so confine Him?

Would that Jesus be so confined?

No!  That Jesus, that Christ is certainly not going to be put and kept in the little box those who make these claims hope to confine Him to, oh no!

God forbid!

He, eternal Christ-consciousness, The Way, the Word, is not just that body, that physical Jesus, that incarnation as that Sacred Carpenter.

Consider this:

Human beings have existed as homo sapiens, sub species sapiens (modern humans) for just about 200,000 years on earth.  Jesus came to this earth as the man from Nazareth about one hundred and ninety-eight thousand years into “our” history.  In other words, after 99% of it had already passed!  Now, we have to ask: Did He NEVER manifest His eternal presence before that, never, to anyone, anywhere else on planet during the 198,000 prior years of human history here on earth?

If he did come before or has come since, then isn’t it conceivable He didn’t come as the Jewish carpenter those other times, He came in another form, which of course is His right and within His power as the Word of God and which, of course, would make sense. After all, if a Jewish carpenter showed up in India 5,000 before there was a crucifixion to teach the people there and then about God, who would have listened?

No, Jesus is:

a) Probably compassionate enough to have wanted to help us at least once or twice more in our 200,000-year history and . . .

b) Probably smart enough to know that, in order to do so, He’s have to come or reveal Himself as someone the people he came to help could relate to . . . don’t you think?

Maybe?

Just maybe?

Would you rather have Him confined to a single place and time?

If so, you underestimate Christ-consciousness, Christ-spirit, and God.

Consider this: Today, nearly seven BILLION people live on planet earth and scientists estimate that at least (10) galaxies exist in the universe for each and every single one of us!  Science also suggests there may be as many as 10 “planet earths” in each of those galaxies, ten planets that might support human life or at least intelligent, sentient beings.

This means one hundred (100) planets (10 galaxies X 10 terrestrial planets per galaxy) with seven billion people each may exist in the universe now, for each of us alive today on earth. And that means it is likely that for EACH of us, there may be as many as one hundred planets with 7 billion people each in the universe right now!

Do the math: That means there could be up to 700,000,000,000 (700 billion) people “out there” in the universe, for each one us, and the next logical question follows: has God consigned all of them to eternal ignorance of Christ?

With all due respect to the people who make the above (italicized) assertion, we ask:

If you believe people can only know Christ the way you know Christ, haven’t you underestimated the eternal Christ, not the carpenter, but the all pervasive Word, the eternal Spirit of omnipresent Christ-consciousness, the One who can create and recreate for Himself any body at will, with any appearance He desires when it serve His purpose?

He did so, according to the Bible!

The Apostles themselves did not recognize the physical form of Jesus at times after the resurrection, according to the Gospels, while other times He was in the physical form of the crucified Christ, wounds and all?  Thus: Jesus thus took on more than one physical form and body according to the Gospels!

Did He not also, according to the Gospels, come and go transforming into physical form from spirit right in the midst of them inside a locked room according to the Gospels and Acts, and then de-materializing back inot spirit and disappear, transcending time and space?

If you believe the Gospels, if you believe the Bible, you must also believe this, too!

Thus: Christ is not His suit of clothes!

He cannot be confined to the Jewish Lamb, not by man!

And, so we have to ask:

Did the Word of God, the ever-living, omniscient and omnipresent Jesus as Spirit, never appear anywhere else, as anyone else, to anyone else, ever?

Did HE never, in any other form (spirit or otherwise), visit anywhere or anyone else in His galaxy of 700 Billion worlds, to “love” them, to “guide” them and to “save” them, ever?

Christian saints will tell you they have seen him, and He appears to them as one of their own people!  Other spiritual saints have seen Him, too, in a form and by a name they relate to!

If you deny Christ this power, you underestimate him!

If you believe in Jesus as the Word, and not just the man, then you cannot rationally deny Him this power. And, unless you claim to speak for God, you cannot deny the possibility that Christ did and does come and go as He pleases.  And if it is likely that this same Word, Jesus, that came to the Jews 2,000 years ago or so, may have ‘come’ in some way or other to someone or others, somewhere or other, maybe even here, maybe even last week or yesterday, Christians must stop underestimating Him and condemning others to Hell for not acknowledging their one brief glimpse of Him incarnate as a Jewish carpenter.

Christ was not the physical body of the Jesus. God-consciousness, the Word immortal and immutable, God the Spirit, used that body, took it on and shed it and picked it up again like a suit of clothes!  That is the story of the resurrection!

Christ was and is eternal Spirit.

“He” is the incarnation of the omnipotent, and causal, God-consciousness who once put on the body of Jesus, of the one we crucified.  That physical body was but the Temple of the Son of God.  God was untouched by that carnage.

Further, Christ, the true knowable Word, came to the Jews of those days in the form they expected and could recognize and even then, with all the prophecies fulfilled, only some of them recognized Him!

A word of CAUTION

Do not make the same mistake some made 1975 years ago made.

Do not fail to recognize Him in places you do not expect Him or in garb or positions foreign to you!

Do not underestimate Jesus as Christ-consciousness eternal and unfathomable.

Do not confuse God with the temple, or the Spirit with its suit of clothes and say to others: If you do not worship the suit of clothes, you do not worship the spirit!

Judge not (for the ways of God are a mystery to man) lest ye shall be judged!

And thus acknowledge this:

Any discussion of the HISTORY of Christ as the Word must be inclusive of ALL Christ traditions if we are to give Jesus as Christ-consciousness and eternal Spirit, His due.

It is here we begin.

Visit GottaGettaGuru.com/teachings to learn more about Jesus.

Science is helping bring mankind closer to a better understanding of God. Quantum Physics in particular has sparked many deep, interesting, spiritual discussions among famous and renowned figures from the Dali Lama to Steven Hawkings.  Here, we will look closely at the implications of a particular scientific experiment, one in Quantum Physics from which scientists have concluded that something called “the Observer Effect” exists.

What’s new about this particular look at the facts of the “Observer Effect” is the logical, philosophical conclusions we will draw from it, for we will expand on it.  We call the conclusion we draw from the expansion the “Observer/Observed co-dependency.”

Chief among the conclusions we draw is this:

Science has proven God Exists.

Did I say: science?  Yes, science.

Let’s have a look.

Definitions

Quantum: the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess (according to quantum theory), from: wordnetweb.princeton.edu

Physics: a: the science of matter and energy and their interactions; “his favorite subject was physics”; b: the physical properties, phenomena, and laws of something; “he studied the physics of radiation,” from: wordnetweb.princeton.edu

Quantum Physics: the branch of physics based on quantum theory, from: wordnetweb.princeton.edu, or the branch of the science of matter and energy concerned with the physical properties, phenomena, and laws of the smallest discrete quantity of a thing or ‘system.’

Note: A system, here means: a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole.

So, now that we are familiar with the terms, we will be examining what science finds when it looks at the tiny, tiny (quantum) stuff of creation, the absolutely most basic building blocks of the phenomenological world (our world, the place where all existential things happen), not as we perceive them with our senses, but as they actually are way down there at the teeny, tiny level.

We’ll start with an examination of the scientific conclusion arrived at by our best scientific minds after a recent quantum physics experiment.  Here’s the “digest” version of what the most up to date reports from the world’s smartest quantum physicists and the Ph.D.’s from our most renowned Universities and Think Tanks assert about our world at the ‘building block’ level:

Until observed, no phenomenon exists.

Huh?

Did you get that?

This literally means: nothing can be what it is to us in this world, unless and until it is observed.

This is NOT some silly word game, nor is it a statement about the subjectivity of a particular point of view.  Remember, this is a statement made according to quantum physics, we’re talking actually now, not metaphorically, not metaphysically, but scientifically. It means that according to science, by observing, the observer somehow ‘causes’ the particular outcome observed. Or, if you prefer: Observation actually causes a particular thing to be what it is.

Wow!

Cool, huh?

A little hard to get the mind around, but really, really cool once you do!

The experiment that led to this conclusion was called the most beautiful in physics, according to a poll of Physics World readers in 2002.  It is known commonly as ‘the double slit experiment.’  Scientists shot what they supposed to be a single photon (a charged ‘particle’ of light) at a solid plate into which two slits had been cut straight through.  On the other side of the solid plate with the two slits cut in it, the scientists placed a photographic film to receive the photon.  By so doing, they intended to observe the exit of what they thought was that one, single photon.  By checking the film to see where it hit, they would determine WHICH of the two slits it passed through to get to the other side, and confirm its behavior as that of a particle.

The problem: each time they sent one photon flying at the two slits it went through BOTH slits at the same time!

How could that be?

Yeah.  Exactly.

Their conclusion: Either the single photon was NOT a particle, which means it suddenly and inexplicably transformed from something that behaved like a particle according to their observations before the experiment and then, with the new system of observation (the double slit experiment) either a) changed into something that behaved like two separate particles (Why?  Because it ‘knew’ two slits were coming?), or b) suddenly and inexplicably became something new, something that behaved like a wave of energy Why?  Because it ‘knew’ it was about to hit a plate with TWO slits and ‘wanted’ to go through both?

Weeeeeeeeee!

That sounds really far out, no?  It would mean the photon was ‘intelligent’.

Hold that thought.

At the very least, you can see the photon wasn’t what the scientists thought it was when they started, when they first observed it in a system that led them to conclude it was “just” a particle.  It had stopped behaving that way, the way it had prior to the imposition of the double slit experiment quantum observation system. Which brings us to the startling conclusion stated at the outset: Scientists who ascribe to the ‘Observer effect’ posit that the only intellectually rational solution is to abandon the idea of a photon as being a particular thing and having a particular location in space-time until it is observed.  Further, what it is is conditioned by the system of observation or the observer. When observed by a particular observer, it “becomes” what it is (in that snapshot) and then and only then does it become what it is.  Until then, it is potentially something else, anything in fact.  In fact, until then it is also in any number of places.

Scientists call this potential state of being anything, anywhere “superposition.”

Hmmm.

A thing does not exist as that thing until it is observed.

In fact, nothing is anything anywhere until it is observed, rather it is potentially anything, anywhere.

Okay?

Good.  Remember, this is science, not science fiction, not metaphysics.

Now, let’s back up a bit.

Quantum Physics uses the term ‘system’ to describe a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole.  Quantum particles that make up the atoms that make up the cells of one particular system: we humans.  Another bunch of stuff we might call a cat or a papaya.  In any event, all ‘stuff’ is made up of quantum stuff, really tiny parts. And, now that we know what we know from the above cited experiment (according to quantum theory), namely that all that stuff when combined is merely a system made up of quantum stuff like photons, for it is NOT only photons that conform to the Observer effect, but all matter at the quantum level.  Thus, we can say the individual parts of all systems, even of we humans, exist in ‘superposition’ until observed.

Further, someone, some other system must be watching to see a thing as a thing in a particular place and time, and by observing it makes it so.  Again: Think of superposition as the state when and where a thing exits in each of all particular places and times, all at the same time, until observed and the system of observation as the observed.

Once observed, it, the thing, you for instance, becomes one thing in one place at one time.

Thus (again):

Until observed, no phenomenon exists.

Now, we’ve come full circle.  We are back to the where we started, hopefully with a better understanding of how we got here.

Who cares?

You should, for the implications of all this are profound.  Here’s a big conclusion that we may draw from the scientific facts:

All phenomena can only be said to exist as the result of “Consciousness,” for ultimately, only consciousness can observe and thus only consciousness can cause a particular outcome.

This means it can be said, according to science, that because of consciousness, things become tangible, they become the existential things we ‘say’ they are.  Even if the system of observation is a man-made machine or apparatus, it is consciousness itself that actually makes the machine and interprets/observes phenomenon.  So, scientifically speaking, consciousness has a power, and it is the power of agency in the ‘real’ world: it ‘makes’ things happen, it makes al “objects” real in a phenomenological sense.

So, we may move on and conclude:

Consciousness is the essential aspect of the phenomenological/existential universe and the necessary pre-condition of every ‘thing’ that exists.

Think about that for a minute!

No consciousness = no observer.  No observer = no tangible things.

Now, the next big conclusion we arrive at is: the Observer/Observed co-dependency, for the above would have to apply to all phenomena.

Thus:

Any ‘observing’ Consciousness itself (as a particular thing) must also be observed by some other Consciousness in order to exist.

In other words: no phenomenon can exist until observed, and since consciousness itself is a phenomenon, it can’t exist without an observer, which is to say another consciousness.

Thus our conclusion here that there exists an Observer/Observed co-dependency.

Here, we have simply taken the initial conclusion and re-applied it to the component parts of itself: A single consciousness could not exist in anything but a non-manifested (a superposition/potential) state, and unless and until another consciousness came along (or was created out of an original Consciousness) to observe it, the One would remain in superposition, all potential, but no phenomenon.

Okay?

Worth a moment of reflection, no?

*

Here’s something to ponder that’s closer to home:

If you were ever ignored as a child, treated literally like you were invisible and didn’t even exist, now you know why it was so painful: if you really were totally unobserved, you could say you didn’t exist in that space-time!

Ever ignore your child?

Your parent?

Your spouse?

Ouch.

When you really ignore, you consign the other to non-being.  Perhaps this is why solitary confinement is so painful that it causes madness and often literally becomes actual, physical death in a matter of weeks for the consciousness that has been so confined.

So, the next time your child needs you to pay attention: run to her (or him)!

Now, what does this mean in relation to what happens when we ignore God?

Yeah, exactly!

Let’s review.

We have asserted:

Any ‘observing’ Consciousness itself would, as a particular thing, have to be observed by some other Consciousness in order to exist.

Taken one step further, when we apply this, the Observer/Observed co-dependency theory to God, we have:

God (if there is such a thing) cannot exist in the physical/manifested world, without an ‘other’ — another consciousness/observer.

Thus: ignore God and God no longer exists in the world of things, the phenomenological world.

Notes: Here, we mean to say: If this were a pervasive condition, if NO sentient being or intelligence or consciousness anywhere observes God as God, and no separate (even if still essential) aspect of God observes God as God, then all creation would collapse under the Observer/Observed co-dependency, and revert back into an un-manifested, non physical, non phenomenological state.  This is, as we will see, the pre-Big Bang state of One Consciousness.

For now, however, here’s what we have to conclude:

If you don’t believe in God, if you don’t remember God in your daily life, then don’t expect to find God there, unless someone else “has your back,” for nothing can exist in any state but superposition (as anything but potential, nothing can exist as an existential phenomenon) unless and until observed, not even God.

Conversely:

God is watching you or you don’t exist.

Again, this is so because, in that moment when it is just you and God, EACH of you must play your respective roles according to the rules of the Observer/Observed co-dependency.

So:

God cannot be God in the world of things without an Observer, and we cannot be individually what we are in a particular space-time, without God.

Yes, God must be ‘God the Observed’ with some observer doing the ‘work’ of manifesting the particular outcome “GOD” by observing or God cannot exist in the world of things.

A simple way to look at this would be to say: if there is no one (or observer) for God to be God for, then God cannot be God.  It makes the point but is not the point, because we are speaking actually here, not just logically.  The implications of what may seem a simple (double slit) experiment are: God cannot exist in a phenomenological sense, according to physics, without an observer.  Nothing can.  God can exist in a non-phenomenological sense, however, and did, before the Big Bang, in a non-phenomenological state of superposition (the state of being anything anywhere and everything everywhere all at the same time, until observed).

Meditate on the Observer/Observed co-dependency as it relates to God and you may ‘realize’ it is up to us to bring God into active (as opposed to potential, though still omnipotent, omni-present and omniscient) existence here on earth.

Deep inside, we know it to be true, don’t we?

We are to ‘observe’ God, God’s laws and ways and by so doing, we bring God actively into life.  If we do not, where is God actively found in the world of happening, of action, of phenomena of things?

Nowhere you say?

Correct!

So, it’s up to you.  Deeds, not creeds!

Likewise, to recap: we have to be observed by God to even exist as who and what and where we are.  So, the “fact” of you is literally up to God to sustain.  Metaphorically speaking, you do not want God to turn his back on you or ignore you!

Now, you may argue all this is sophistry because we have yet to prove that, according to science, “God” as such, even exists.  So, let’s do so.

Let’s back up to:

Consciousness (as Observer) is the essential aspect of the phenomenological universe and the necessary pre-condition of every ‘thing’ that exists.

No consciousness=no Observer.

No Observer=no unique, particular phenomenon at a particular time and in a particular place in space.  So, if  a form of consciousness did not exist before the Big Bang, the Big Bang could not have happened, at least whatever it was that manifested as a particular thing and then exploded as the Big Bang could not have existed: it needed an observer.

Why?

The ‘stuff’ of the Bing Bang couldn’t even have been what it was without an observer, according to science. So, since the Big Bang is scientific fact, it’s pre-Bang component parts are also a fact and Consciousness is thus a pre-condition of those pre-Bang parts.  Thus, according to quantum physics, which is to say according to science:

The BIG BANG can’t have happened without an Observer.

So, to science, it looks rather like Consciousness necessarily antedates THE BIG BANG or the ‘creation’ of the universe of ‘things’ and the subsequent evolution of individual consciousness (us).

Let’s name this pre-Big Bang Consciousness, the particular (Supreme) Consciousness that observed it all at the very beginning and by so doing made everything and everyone in the known universe possible by being (at least) the first Observer:

“God.”

And now let’s consider that the necessary first Observed, which came out from this Supreme Consciousness (that until then was “alone” and in a state of super position) to create the dynamic of differentiation (the manifestation of unique, individuated things and beings as those things and beings) by fulfilling the co-dependency, could have come from nowhere else but this inert “God-consciousness” for nothing else yet existed before the Big Bang and everything was in superposition.  This means we know the essential nature of the stuff of creation.  It is this “God-Consciousness” which antedates the world of things.  And Science now posits this Big Bang stuff is, at it’s quantum level, nothing more that a “sea” of vibration.  This we will explore in a subsequent article: M-Theory: Om, Ganesha and The Word.

Sat Nam