I just received this comment on one of my previous posts:

I thought you did an excellent job of encapsulating the book. However, as you may have noticed, it is no longer available on amazon.com, as it is Out of Print. The good news is that I am offering History of Mysticism (with some additional text in the Chapter on Gnosticism) as a FREE Ebook in PDF format on my website at: www.swami-abhayananda.com. Check it out. And, if possible, please publicise its availability.
Best wishes,
Swami Abhayananda (Stan Trout)

As before, I can highly recommend this book. It is among the clearest and most inspiring books on the history of mysticism I have read, and I am looking forward to reading the new sections on Gnosticism.

And what an honor to receive a comment from the author!

If you would like a copy of the free ebook, send an email with “History of Mysticism” in the subject line to abhayanand [at] aol [dot] com

Nothing special here…

Whenever I listen to music, read a book, watch a movie, or similar, I notice the difference between a resistance within and to experience.

When there is a resistance within experience, it usually makes it interesting to me. I am attracted to the experience, and there is some friction there. It feels meaty, substantial, challenging, nurturing.

This is how it is for me with music such as Jaga Jazzist, Meredith Monk, Bulgarian folks songs, and even - for instance - lounge music. Anything that is a little outside of the familiar for me (Meredith Monk), outside of my expectations (Bulgarian folk songs) or shoulds (metal!), or outside of my familiar identity (lounge).

When there is not much resistance within experience, which I experience with Mozart and some writings and movies, there is either not much interest there, or it becomes more of a - sometimes welcomed - relaxation and a vacation.

And when there is resistance to experience, it is quite different. This is when it becomes uncomfortable, and there is a sense of separation and of a separate I disliking an experience.

I just started looking at Buddhism for Dummies, and it seems to be an excellent book, written in a way that honors and is faithful to the traditions, yet in a very simple and ordinary language, and always very practical.

If anyone asks me for a good book about Buddhism, I am going to recommend this one. And I am going to read it myself as I have benefited a great deal from the brief sections I have read so far.

When the tagline says “a reference for the rest of us”, I read that as “a reference for all of us”.

Tim Freke used the book analogy in the longer video below.

Characters in a book don’t exist as separate entities, but only in the mind of the author. And in the same way, we only exist in the mind of the author of this story, in the Divine Mind, in God. This human self does not have any separate I associated with it, but happens within the Divine Mind, as all the other characters and all the different settings and the big stage of the universe itself.

If we look, we find that what we really are is this Divine Mind, this awakeness that this human self and anything else happens within and as.

This reminds me of what came up for me when I read Sophie’s World a while back. The book is a walk-through of western philosophy, woven into a more ordinary narrative story following a young woman and her philosophy teacher.

For the first third or so of the story, they appear like ordinary and real people, to themselves and the reader.

Then odd things start happening, they encounter fairy tale characters, the weather changes to fit their conversations, a dog speaks in human language. Gradually, it dawns on them that they are characters in a story and don’t have any separate existence.

At this point, I thought the story would end with the book/Divine Mind analogy mentioned above, illustrating the view of the mystics - and opening the minds of the readers to some radical reversals of who and what we take ourselves to be - at least as just a thought experiment.

Unfortunately, or not, the actual ending of the book went in a different, more conventional/fantasy, direction. A little anticlimactic considering the promise it had about 80% into the story.

But I did get to write my own ending in my own mind, illustrating the book/Divine Mind analogy, so in that sense I got double benefit.

I am sure a book like that must have been written. If it hasn’t, it is out there waiting for the right person to make it come alive.

(more…)

I am spending a good deal of time buying book treasures from used book stores, mostly on Buddhist and art subjects. I also belong to a Buddhist group and discover, to my horror, that they are selling these books to the public at give-away prices. I had intended only some books to be sold on, and the rest to be kept. Some of the books are rare finds, and may not even be appreciated by those buying them. Even as I try to explain the situation to the people selling them, more are sold.

This dream had a nightmarish quality… spending all that time identifying and buying book treasures, and then having them all sold off to the general public for next to nothing…!

The dream parallels two things in my life:

First, the giving away of my insights and skills freely, without asking for anything in return (including having volunteered a large number of hours for NWEI, and giving away a large number of Breema sessions for free).

The other, more specific to this retreat, a surrendering of conceptualized insights… seeing them for what they are, only thoughts. Only images and sounds created by the mind, arising and dissolving from and into nothingness.

Surrendering is inherent in the process of just seeing thoughts as thoughts, arising from and dissolving into nothingness.

There are many stories of obsessiveness, apparent disasters and waking up, mirroring (one version of) the awakening process.

Moby Dick is about one man’s obsessiveness with the white whale (God) which eventually drags him and his ship under (the death of a sense of separate I along with any other belief and identity), leaving only the ocean, the nondual awakening.

The Truman Show is about a man gradually intuiting that his life is a fabrication, the apparent disasters that happens when he attempts to break out (loss of identities and beliefs), and his final breaking out.

The Matrix trilogy is about a man first waking out of the conventional dream, and then through a great deal of struggle finding an awakening that goes beyond and embraces all polarities… Neo and Agent Smith (good and evil, persona and shadow), the machine world and Zion (mind and matter, also in its version of empty luminosity and form), the Matrix and the real world (deluded and awake).

The richest stories have many layers of meaning and can be interpreted in a wide range of ways… which is also why there is often a shared fascination with them.

Moby Dick is one of those stories, and the story can be filtered in many different ways, yielding many different meanings and insights.

• Later, more mature worldcentric
  From a later wordcentric view, we hold both the whales and the animals inside of our circle of care, concern and compassion. We see the struggle between animals and humans as an inevitable outcome of both trying to survive, a story they are both caught up in without much (apparent) choice, almost as a Greek tragedy.
• Early, less mature worldcentric
  From an early worldcentric view where our circle of care beings to include all of Earth, we may easily side with and have mainly compassion for the whale. The whale is innocent and only tries to protect itself, the humans evil (or at least blind) killing other species without respect and concern for their life and well-being. (Animal rights perspective.)
• Humans vs nature
  Humans try to put themselves above nature and to subdue nature. Since nature always has the last word (it is, after all, the larger holon), this is only successful to a limited degree, and it may have dire consequences for humans. We are part of a larger living system, so when we reduce the health and well-being of the larger system, it impacts us as well. Climate change is one of many examples of this.
• Beliefs perspective
  Captain Ahab is caught up in blind beliefs, making it appear to himself that he needs revenge and to settle the score with Moby Dick. It not only creates a split between the two and a great deal of drama and suffering for both, but it also brings the whole ship down.
  
• Awakening
  Then there is the awakening perspective. Moby Dick is God (”if God wanted to be a fish, he would be a whale”, “that is no whale, it is a white god”), and Ahab is single-mindedly pursuing God, relentlessly, at any cost, obsessively (which often goes before an awakening). Captain Ahab and the ship is the small self, or more precisely the appearance of a separate self placed on this human self, and that is what is drawn under in the struggle with God. What is left is just the ocean, nondual awakening.

  This is of course an experiential truth, not a literal one. The experience is of a disaster, of dying, of a calamity as U. G. Krishnamurti liked to call it with his flair for the dramatic. It is really just the belief in a separate self that dies, but since that is taken as an “I” the experience is of I dying. The human self goes on just fine, although now without being taken as an I.

  I initially heard about Moby Dick as an analogy to awakening from a friend of mine at the Zen center a while ago, and know that it has been used by others as well. It is an interpretation that comes relatively easily to mind when we are aware of the characteristics of the awakening process.

  Then there are the reflections of a nondual awakening in the text itself (which doesn’t mean the author needed to have awakened, only intuited it), such as… Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. (Ahab)

I am reading (or rather taking in) a book called The Black Madonna Within by Tatayo Mato.

It is a description, in words and drawings, of an amazing inner transformation of a woman who grew up in war-ravaged Eastern Europe and had a very strong inner connection to what Jung called the Self, the organizing principle that leads us towards greater wholeness, and healing, as a human being. The book is an account of a series of dreams and active imaginations over several decades, and the images are powerful for anyone on a similar journey. At least they are for me.

It is an example of the process of exploring and awakening to who we are, as an evolving individual human being. It is a tremendously rich, fertile, deep, embracing and rewarding journey. It brings deep healing, a deep sense of our shared humanity and how it shows up in this particular life, a deep sense of connection with all of humanity, a deep recognition of what I see in you as familiar here too…

It leads right up to the edge of a sense of a separate self, but not (in itself) beyond. There is still that core belief there of being a separate self, and that journey - of discovering what we ultimately are - is one that other traditions can help us with. Maybe especially Buddhism and Adveita, and the mystics of any tradition who realized selflessness… those in whom the Ground of emptiness noticed itself, and lived itself out through these human lives.

I received this via email, and since it seems to be an open invitation thought I would post it here. Seems like a great chance for those interested in supporting the publishing of this book, and the Big Mind process in general.

Dear Sangha and Supporters,

As you may already know, we’re offering a limited hardcover edition of my forthcoming book, Big Mind / Big Heart: Finding Your Way. These specially printed and bound books will be signed and numbered, and will only be available to those who order them before publication.

We are wishing to publish it ourselves, as the new Big Mind Publishing company. In this way, we will maintain full control of the editorial content and appearance of the book. My experience in having my work issued by other publishing companies has been that I have had to compromise my intent and style to please the publishers. In order to avoid this we are planning to raise enough capital for the printing, advertising and promotion, and other costs.

Our goal is to sell at least 300 copies to finance this project. As of right now we have sold just about 100 copies. So that we don’t have to go to an outside publisher, I would like to encourage you, if you haven’t already ordered one or more copies, to order now; or if you have already ordered a copy, to think about ordering additional copies as gifts.

The original deadline for ordering was the end of March, but since we haven’t yet raised enough to go to press, we are pushing the deadline forward to April 15th. We are only printing as many of these hardcover books as are pre-ordered. Afterwards it will not be possible to buy the book in hardcover; it will only be available in paperback. You can order by clicking the following link: Big Mind / Big Heart: Finding Your Way Special Edition

I am including here some short excerpts which will give you a taste of the book.

With thanks for your continued support,

Love,
Genpo Roshi

Strictly scholarly works on mysticism are of course necessary and useful, but it is still a relief to come upon a history of mysticism written by someone where Spirit has awakened to itself. It gives it a freshness, immediacy and clarity that is often lost in the more dry and exclusively scholarly works.

History of Mysticism: The Unchanging Testament by Swami Abhayananda (Stan Trout), is one of these books.

In going through the history of mysticism, from prehistoric to more recent times, he touches upon some of the highlights from many traditions, showing how they all describe the same realization of Spirit as emptiness and form.

(Brahman and Maya, Purusha and Prakrti, Shiva and Shakti, Sat and Asat, Vishnu and Lakshmi, Theos and Logos, Tathata and Samsara, Tao and Teh, the unspeakable Tao and the speakable Tao, El and Elat, Baal and Asherah, Yahweh and Chokmah, Haqq and Khalq, yang and yin, masculine and feminine, and so on.)

This lens gives the book a clear focus and message: there is one theme with minor variations from culture, tradition and personal flavor. It takes some of the many flavors of ice cream and shows that it is all ice cream. (If there is a minor drawback with the book, it is that it becomes somewhat predictable after a while, and that some of the interesting variations are downplayed.)

Still, highly recommended for its clarity, for its excellent overview of the history of mysticism, for its clear theme, and for its ability to inspire.

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

- From chapter five of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol.

Only six? Why, I’ve believed far more than six impossible things before breakfast. And so have we all. We’ve all had plenty of practice.

In reality, any belief is an attachment to something impossible. We attach to a thought, make an impossibility appear as true and real, and then act and react as if it is.

It is every bit as astonishing as anything Alice encountered.

Say there is a fictional character, and you want to make the stories about him or her more engrossing for yourself. What do you do?

Pretending a fictional character is real

One way is to pretend the person really exists, to take the stories seriously and as reality. That way, you can allow yourself to go into it more fully, to put more energy, attention and interest into it than you otherwise would.

And that is exactly what many Sherlock Holmes scholars and fans do. They play what some refer to as The Game: studying Sherlock Holmes as if he was a real flesh-and-blood person, Dr. Watson his biographer, Conan Doyle his literary agent, and the stories themselves histocial documents.

Playing the game to bring out the richness of the stories

In this program on Sherlock Holmes from To the Best of Our Knowledge, Leslie Clinger - author of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, talks about The Game, or Holmesian Speculation.

Listen about 25 minutes into the program:

It’s a game. And it’s a game we play to enhance our appreciation of the story. When we treat them as real, we can justify spending a great deal more effort in researching the background of the stories and in working up explanations for the stories in a way that brings out their richness.

Lila

And so it is with our lives as well, according to many mystics and spiritual traditions.

This human self that there is so close an identification with, that seem as an I, that is taken so seriously, that appear so real, so solid, so true. This human self has no I in it anywhere. There is no I in the seeing of it, in the awake space it arises within and as. There is no I in the seen, in this human self and all its aspects: its sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, behaviors.

There is no I anywhere in the seeing or the seen. There is only the Ground of empty awakeness the seeing and the seen arises within and as, with no I anywhere. There is doing, yet no doer anywhere. There is choosing, yet no chooser anywhere. This human self just happens, absent of any I. It lives its own life, as anything else in the world of phenomena lives its own life.

This self, as an I, as a separate entity, as a chooser, as a doer, is fictional.

And what makes it a more interesting and engrossing character? To pretend it is real. To take it as I. To have a close identification with it. To live as if it is separate from anything else. To see myself as it, and subject to birth and death, joy and suffering, health and happiness, gain and loss, and all the other ingredients of the human drama.

There is no drama without identification with this human self. And the drama is what makes it engrossing. It is what makes it interesting, at least for a while.

A new flavor of the game: seeking awakening

And then there is a weariness of this drama. A growing readiness to move on. For Ground to awaken to its own nature as awake space, as seeing and seen, absent of I.

There is a new flavor of the game, not much different from all the other flavors, and this one is called spiritual seeking and practice.

This and the other ones are all games where human self is taken as an I, and the new flavor is to try to have this I awaken. Which of course is impossible. This human self can never awaken, and there is no I anywhere anyway - only a temporary and mistaken identification as an I and this human self, but it makes for another interesting chapter of the drama.

A new game: this human self functioning in the context of realized selflessness

And then there is a significantly new game: Ground awakens to - or rather remembers - its own nature, and now the game becomes to allow this human self to live from this awakening, to mature, evolve, interact, experience, explore within this new context of realized selflessness.

It is a whole new section of the story, yet one that is no less juicy. And one that has no end, at least as long as there is a functional connection to human self.

I recently came across LibraryThing, an online service that allows you to enter books from your library, tag them, find similar lists from others, put a list up on your blog, and so on.

I found that it was very easy and surprisingly quick to enter books, and it is quite interesting to look at similar and overlapping book lists out there. It can also be helpful if I sometime in the future would want to replace lost books.

There are of course lots of similar and other interesting internet services out there, including three that allows for money-free exchange of books: BookMooch, What’s On My Bookshelf and SwapSimple.

I am reading Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante, and find it a facinating story of the underbelly of New York in the 1800s and early 1900s.

It puts our contemporary western society into perspective, and is a reminder that what we see today in countries with unrest, corruption and barely functioning legal system is what was here not too long ago (and still is, to some extent, especially in the US).

It is also a reminder that Spiral Dynamics red (red in tooth and claw, power, late egocentric, here seen in gangs and organized and unorganized crime) eats Green (egalitarian, nonviolence, worldcentric, seen among sustainability folks, hippies, and political greens) for lunch, as Michael Dowd likes to point out.

Green is typically not the right tool to deal with red, and orange is barely so. As the story of New York shows, it took strong blue (law and order) to tame red. And then it can move on.

• A. H. Almaas
  The Void, Essence. The beauty of acknowledging and working with the seamlessness of human, soul and nondual levels, and of following one’s own process while being aware of parallels in many traditions.

• Ken Wilber
  Integral Spirituality. The beauty of genius and integration.

• Adyashanti
  True Meditation and more . The beauty of clarity and simplicity.

• Joel Morwood
  Talks. The beauty of clarity and finding parallels in many mystical traditions.

• The Work
  of Byron Katie, over phone and on my own. Unraveling beliefs, undoing the knots.

• Big Mind process
  Exploring the ways the mind works at personal and transpersonal levels, and seeing that there is no I anywhere in all of this.

• Breema
  Instructor training. Deepening and exploring being/soul level connection.

• Diksha
  Catalyst for awakening. (Amazingly effective, in my limited experience.)

• Process Work
  Facilitating myself and others, and taking classes/workshops at the PW Center in Portland. Unfolding the process behind, and finding the gifts in, symptoms (anything coming up as a disturbance or anything interest goes to).

I went to Powell’s bookstore in Portland today and asked for An Interrupted Life, the journals and letters of Etty Hillesum. The person behind the desk looked it up, and asked if it was about the holocaust. As I said yes, I noticed compassion and sadness come up for me, and how the atmosphere changed. I also noticed how much I like that experience of compassion and intimacy.

And I saw clearly how it all comes from a story.

Without the story, there is just clarity. Jesus and Hitler is the same. There is ruthless equality.

With a story comes compassion and sadness. People shouldn’t do those things to each other. It is so sad that such a beautiful young woman, with so many talents, had to die so young and in such a way. And so on.

It is a beautiful story in a way. And as I said, I noticed a great deal of attachment and comfort in the compassion it gave birth to. Yet, it is only a story. Only another delusion. Another veil.

Who wants to hear that? How can it be expressed?

At the same time, I see that conventional compassion has a content, a particular feeling associated with it. And transcendent compassion does not. Transcendent compassion, Big Heart, just acts. There is suffering and the desire of I in the form of you to be relieved from suffering, and it acts. It is the left hand helping the right. No hesitation. No dependence on any particular feeling. It is the ruthless equality of Big Mind appearing as love in action.

I just finished Theories of the Chakras by Hiroshi Motoyama, and it seems clear that the relationships between the Indian nadis, the Chinese meridians, the chakras, and our holarchy of being still offers many opportunities for exploration and clarification. I also see how Dr. Motoyama only includes the health aspect of the Chinese system, and largely leave out the spiritual - including Chinese yoga, and practices such as five element acupuncture. I am sure that is just from a lack of sources, yet it is also leaves a big hole in an otherwise very interesting and useful book.

I am reading Theories of the Chakras by Hiroshi Motoyama, and find it both interesting and clear (Ken Wilber seems to have used it as one of the main sources for his chapter of subtle energies in the upcoming book Kosmic Karma).

Our Being - from nondual through to physical matter - is a seamless whole, whether we see it as our human self or the whole world of phenomena (both possible). At the same time, we are free to add an overlay of abstraction to it and differentiate out various aspects.

One of the functions of chakras, as Motoyama describes it, is to transform/channel energy between the various layers of our being.

During my initial awakening, there was a tremendous amount of energy puring in - including to the physical/body level. There was a tremendous capacity for activity and engagement in the world, including very little need for sleep. It was pretty clear that the energy came from the awakening (F7-F9 and nondual), and Motoyama identifies one of the possible mechanisms for how this energy gets channeled and transformed through the system - including to the physical body.

In Wilber’s framework, we can maybe say that the energy got channeled from F8 (subtle) and down through to F1 (physical body). There was little to resist it, as everything - all those levels - were brought more into awareness.

Reading

Luminous Night’s Journey - A. H. Almaas

Spacecruiser Inquiry - A. H. Almaas

Anatomy of Miracles - Subagh Singh Khalsa (Sat Nam Rasayan)

The Healing Art of Sat Nam Rasayan - Guru Dev Singh

Classical Five Element Acupuncture Vol. III - J.R. Worsley

Listening to

Aerial - Kate Bush

Ancestral Voices - Carlos Nakai, William Eaton

Voices from the Distant Steppe - Shu De

Orphan’s Lament - Huun Huur Tu

Egypt - Yossou N’Dour

Glassworks - Philip Glass

Unfolding - Axiom of Choice

Niyaz

Portals of Grace - Azam Ali

Himalaya - Eric Valli

Blue Idol - Altan

Morimur - Bach (Hilliard Ensamble)

Die Kunst der Fuge - Bach (Keller Quartet)

Byron Katie - dialogues

Joel Morwood - talks (Center for Sacred Sciences)

Practices

Byron Katie inquiries, daily in periods

Atma Vichara - inquiry into what appears most as “I” and seeing that too as empty of any I, just appearing within space as everything else

Breema - Self-Breema and bodywork, daily

Facilitating Big Mind - couple of times a week

Kundalini yoga - weekly classes, simple exercises a few times a day (breath of fire and more)

Sitting practice - shikantaze, now and then

Deeksha - monthly hands-on deekshas, and inviting in at any time

Sat Nam Rasayan - weekly classes, sometimes during the day

Being with whatever is - going into experiences, especially uncomfortable ones

Water (80+ ounces a day), diet, some strength, walks, biking

Offering to the divine - any perceived problems, my human self, my whole being, my relationships, the house and material goods, community, earth, universe

Intention - to have resolved/cleared whatever prevents… (awakening, living a fuller live)

Over the last week or so, the name Wei Wu Wei has shown up “everywhere” for me. He has not been on my radar until now, so it is definetely noticeable and I take it as a nudge to explore his writings some.

He certainly have a way with pithy statements:

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent Of everything you do Is for yourself - And there isn’t one.

We do not possess an “ego.” We are possessed by the idea of one.

Experiencing life from “ego” is akin to sitting center stage at Carnegie Hall, eyes closed, listening to the performance through the headset of a pocket radio.

True humility is the absence of anyone to be proud.