posted December 02, 2007 11:28 AM              

- Carl Sandburg

posted December 02, 2007 12:39 PM              

Spirit sees nothing to criticize

- Rumi

posted December 02, 2007 02:06 PM            

The spindle (of the universe) turns on the knees of Necessity;
and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren,
who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note.
The eight together form one harmony;
and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band,
three in number, each sitting upon her throne:
these are the Fates, daughters of Necessity,
who are clothed in white robes and have chaplets upon their heads.

[~ Plato, 'The Spindle of Necessity" THE REPUBLIC]

Plato's intricate geometric vision of the cosmos, with Necessity and the Fates enthroned at the centre governing all, is echoed by Aeschylos in Prometheus Bound:

Chorus: Who guides the helm, then, of Necessity?
Prometheus: Fates triple-formed, Erinyes unforgetting.
Chorus: Is Zues, then, weaker in his might than these?
Prometheus: Not even He can escape the thing decreed.

And the philosopher Heraclitus, in the Cosmic Fragments,
declares with less than his usual ambiguity:

Sun will not overstep his measures;
if he does, the Erinyes,
the minions of Justice,
will find him out.

Greek thought, as Russell states, is full of fate. It can, of course, be argued that these sentiments are the expressions of an archaic culture or world view which died two thousand years ago, prolonged through the medieval epoch because of ignorance of the natural universe, and that we know better now. In one sense this is true, but one of the more important and disturbing insights of depth psychology is the revelation that the mythic and undifferentiated consciousness of our ancestors, which animated the natural world with images of gods and daimones, does not belong to chronological history alone. It also belongs to the psyche of modern man, and represents a stratum which, although layered over by increasing consciousness and the hyper-rationality of the last two centuries, is as potent as it was two millenia ago or even ten millenia ago. Perhaps it is even more potent because its only voice now is the neglected dream-world of childhood, and the incubae and succubae of the night which are better forgotten in the clear ligth of morning. We understand, from our much more sophisticated knowledge of the physical universe, that the sun is not a 'he', and that it is not the snake-tressed screaming Erinyes who prevent it from overstepping its measures. At least, the ego understands: which is to say, that is only one way of looking at it.

The language of myth is still, as ever, the secret speech of the inarticulate human soul; and if one has learned to listen to this speech with the heart, then it is not surprising that Aeschylos and Plato and Heraclitus are eternal voices and not merely relics of a bygone and primitive era. Perhaps it is now more than ever important to hear these poetic visions of the orderly nature of the universe, because we have grown so dangerously far from them. The mythic perception of a universe governed by immutable moral as well as physical law is alive and well in the unconscious, ans so too are the Erinyes, the 'minions of Justice'. Fate, in the writings of the Greeks, is portrayed in images which are psychologically relevant to us. Fate in the archaic imagination is, of course, that which writes the irrevocable law of the future: beginnings and endings which are the inevitable products of those beginnings. This implies an orderly pattern of growth, rather than a random caprice ro chance. It is only the limits of human consciousness which prevent us from perceiving the full implications of a beginning, so that we are unable to foresee the inescapable end. The second cnetury gnostic text, the Corpus Hermeticum, phrases this with beautiful succinctness:

And so these two, Fate and Necessity,
are bound to one another mutually,
to inseperable cohesion.
The former of them, Heimarmene,
gives birth to the beginning of things.
Necessity compels the end of all depending from these principles.
On these does Order follow,
that is their warp and woof,
and times perfection of all things.
For there is naught without the interblend of Order.

posted December 07, 2007 12:17 PM            

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

posted December 07, 2007 01:04 PM              

Most people do not pray; they only beg.
George Bernard Shaw

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
George Bernard Shaw

posted December 07, 2007 02:14 PM            

Being a bit nervous about whether he himself would be able to see the cloth, the emperor first sent two of his trusted men to see it. Of course, neither would admit that they could not see the cloth and so praised it. All the townspeople had also heard of the cloth and were interested to learn how stupid their neighbors were.

The emperor then allowed himself to be dressed in the clothes for a procession through town, never admitting that he was too unfit and stupid to see what he was wearing. He was afraid that the other people would think that he was stupid.

Of course, all the townspeople wildly praised the magnificent clothes of the emperor, afraid to admit that they could not see them, until a small child said:

"But he has nothing on!"

This was whispered from person to person until everyone in the crowd was shouting that the emperor had nothing on. The emperor heard it and felt that they were correct, but held his head high and finished the procession.

posted December 07, 2007 08:13 PM              

"It takes a long time to understand nothing."
— Edward Dahlberg

------------------
"Even a good thing isn’t as good as nothing."
— Zen saying

posted December 07, 2007 09:19 PM            

A guru should never desire to have many chelas just to run and support guru’s Ashram. A guru who has desire to obtain money from chelas to run his organization becomes a slave to money or a slave to his rich chela. One who has desires --- desire to make money, have chelas, build Ashram, to get fame --- cannot save himself let alone to save the chela.

A person who expects anything from you --- including money, respect, obedience --- cannot be your guru, but your chela only! A real saint does not need anything from anybody and does not want to become a guru. His only desire is the welfare of all,... A real guru does not want one to obey him, but obey the scriptures.... How many chelas do you know who have a guru and have realized the Self? One cannot see any difference among the people who have a guru and those who don’t.

Until one has the capability to save the chela, one should never be a guru, because if a guru cannot save his chela, guru incurs sin for sure. The guru who lets chela wash his feet, eat the leftover from the guru’s dinner plate, worship his/her picture is certainly leading towards his own as well as chela’s downfall. Such gurus neither help the chela nor let the chela go elsewhere to another guru. It’s like going to a shop, paying the money, but not getting the goods. If one becomes a guru, then he must help chela realize the Self, otherwise one has no right to be a guru.

[sanskrit verse]

This verse from Guru-Gita says that there are many gurus who take away the money from the chela, but very few who removes the darkness of ignorance from the chela....

At present it has become a profession to become a guru. These days guru and chela both are greedy and both get drowned like they are sitting in a boat made of stone. A chela goes to a guru who is famous so that he can boast when someone asks who your guru is...

In Vedantic philosophy Vivek is power of the intellect that distinguishes between the visible world and the invisible reality. I always advise people to go to a satsang and use the power of intellect and discrimination, vivek, instead of getting trapped by a human guru.

- Swami Ramsukh Das

posted December 07, 2007 09:51 PM            

"More to the core, an enlightened master does not encourage his disciples to abandon time-honored moral norms -- especially the dharma concerning sex restraint. Osho was basically a kind of pimp who used the base desires of average people, along with their beautiful hunger for real spirituality, to build a financial empire and a following of worshippers who would do whatever he asked.

"When I think back about that 'baby boomer generation' of sincere spiritual seekers -- all those intelligent, skilled young men and women of European descent like me -- it makes me so sad. What a harvest of potential saints that was! How much good might have arisen if all those young, idealistic westerners could have fallen in with a legitimate spiritual master -- say, a Vivekananda or a Ramakrishna. We will never know! I look at them today, and their condition, and they have missed the boat.

"Thousands of sincere western seekers were misled and harmed by the novel teachings of Osho. I have seen many of them in the aftermath. They always lack the satvic glow that comes from yogic sex restraint; they look like spent rakes aged well beyond their actual years. Even in their age -- when they might show some spiritual attainment -- many still crave sex, and all the ordinary base things. Despite Osho's "indulgence technique," they never got over sex addiction and lust.

"This was one of the Big Lies that Osho told: That by indulging your sex desire you would transcend it. The great sages of Yoga spoke the real and opposite truth: You get over sexual lust not by feeding it, but by restraining it until you encounter the higher thrill of meditative bliss. Meanwhile, it is only that renunciation -- the storing of the sexual energy -- that enables one to contact the transcendental bliss. This has been the message of the sages through all time, including Lord Buddha, who was frequently ripped off by "the Bhagwan." Osho's teachings, though sprinkled here and there with mystical truths, were dead wrong in the most basic ways, and ultimately spiritually destructive.

"The proof is in the pudding. Christ said that one can know a true Master by the "fruit" that emerges from him. Through his disciples Osho gave us moral and family breakdown, drug addiction, a disturbed childhood for many, and crime -- even terrorism. Osho set Yoga back in the west perhaps hundreds of years.

"The saddest thing is what happened to all those children of Osho followers. Osho wanted them to grow up not knowing who their Fathers were; raised by a mob, with no particular person as Parent. I can't think of anything much more ignorant, or more cruel. Krishnamurti was right:
Osho was a criminal."

posted December 07, 2007 09:58 PM            

My message to letter writers is to go ahead and write me. You can vent anger or thank me, but neither will have much effect on me as I have heard it all before, from both sides. I can only sigh and ask myself how Acharya Rajneesh, who started out as an anti-guru extraordinaire, ended up as he did with this current crop of disciples. Perhaps it shows that power does corrupt and that the means rarely justifies the ends.

In the end where is meditation in all of this? "Color Puncture," "Tantric Tarot Readings," encounter groups, and every phony crackpot scam in the book is being peddled by Osho disciples for large sums of money. But what about meditation? Then I think back to the day when the just turned 40 year old Acharya wisely instructed a friendly Japanese woman, who was starting a new Rajneesh meditation center in Tokyo, that "Meditation must not be made into a business." The corrupt means have gotten so far out of hand that the original intent of the ends, Acharya Rajneesh's original noble vision, has long been forgotten by many, but not by me.