July, 2021 Bardo Buzz (03-07)

The Joy of Sacrifice

Secrets of the Sufi Way by E.J. Gold

THE SACRIFICE OF SANITY
Life of Essence

Now one goes through the door of the Corridor of Madness. What is madness? It is the undeveloped essence forcefully exploded into the active role of controlling the organism, which up to then had been under the command of the psyche.

It appears as if a three-year-old has suddenly been put in charge. Sometimes it seems as if one has forgotten everything, even how to think and act.

Essence is very simple. It consists of only a very few habits and no more. The essence, unlike the psyche, does not find life difficult or complex. There are few needs, if any. Desires, aims, achieving, social life, artistic striving, politics, explanations, conversation -- all the ordinary aspects of the psyche -- have fallen away.

One's action and speech is taken from the environment and not from within. Feeling and sensing are taken from within, not from the environment. In short, one learns to think with one's feelings.

One always speaks about oneself in third person as an object. The self is the psyche and the "I" is the essence. One practices by giving the teachings to one's food before ingestion, by treating food as a living being with full consciousness and awareness, who needs and deserves to receive the Method before final assimilation.

One approaches each task from the point of view of the needs and consciousness of the outer world environment. One gives running commentary and instruction to the body as if to a computer and machine not directly connected to one's control center, but able to hear and to obey verbal or thought commands.

One behaves as if one is the commander of a ship, and addresses the body and mind as if they were the crew. One assumes an unattached viewpoint in which one is able to issue directions and instructions for the actions of the body and mind.

One may say; "Now it is going over to the stove. Now it is turning on the gas... Now it is reaching for a pan...." But one never says; "Now I am going over to the stove."

There are barriers to the Corridor of Madness, just as the Corridor of Madness is a barrier to the work itself. One may encounter money, attitudes, fears, endurance, impossible teachers, personal interests, the ridicule of others, or fears, as barriers which remain insurmountable if one is the least unsure of one's aim in taking the dangerous journey through the Corridor.

Should one resist madness when in the Corridor, one is sure to be overcome by the visions of darkness. There are no side doors or exits except the one exit at the end of the tunnel.

As one first enters the corridor, one may see some of the things ahead, and may not want to continue. In this case one must immediately and without hesitation leave the work. This is the last time it is safe to leave the work, and if one continues but does not endure to the end, one will never attain sleep comfortably or soundly.

The madness will not abate even for an instant until the end of the corridor has been reached. This warning is always given before one enters. One can never say that one was not told of the dangers before the journey.

to be continued...

COMMUNITY C0NNECTIONS

In 2002, E.J. and Dr. Claudio Naranjo got together in Nevada City, California and had a free-wheeling discussion of education, its institutions and possibilities for transforming individuals and society. There were over 150 people in attendance. The insightful talk (cdt264) is available on cd or as an mp3 download.

https://www.talkofthemonth.com/talkcds/warriors.html

KARMA REDUCTION

from Prosperity Path
June 24, 2012
by E.J. Gold
-- excerpt by T. Jones

"What happens is when you get enlightened, because you're enlightened, you're now what's called vulnerable. So you now have a much larger capacity for karma. So now, here's a big secret of that. At that point of vulnerability, you can't reduce your karma, you have to spend your karma.

"The way you can spend your karma is with the Bodhisattva Vow. You now have to actually apply what you know and impart your state to another. So you're kind of passing this off to somebody. So, what you do is they propagate and disseminate, and thereby, spread the good word, and so forth. So spend my karma points on the welfare of all beings everywhere, but not all beings everywhere because that never works. It's just you never know, you can't tell, 'Are you getting out there at all?'

"So, what you do is you choose something that you can tie to a measurable phenomenon that will actually enable you to tell that the invisible stuff is happening because it's being driven by that; it's not driven this way, it's driven that way. So a karmically-driven phenomenon would indicate that your karma is being converted into something for the benefit of all beings everywhere. Now let's find what that thing is that it's being converted to, because you're going to convert your karma.

"You will do that at some point, do a conversion play. It's kind of like converting the bread and the wine to the body and blood. It's sort of like a transformative process.

"You're converting karma into something. You don't yet know what it is you're converting karma into. You don't have to worry about converting karma because you're going to carry the karma to the conversion device, put it in one end and it's going to come out the other end. Then you're going to spend that thing, that stuff, on behalf of all beings everywhere.

"You're going to have to get rid of it, put it out there, or in other words, propagate it and disseminate it. But you get it out there in propagation format, which means -- share with those who share with those who share with those. So it goes out actually in a progressive style rather than a linear style. One person tells 2 people, each of those tells 2 and each of those tells 2 and each of those tells 2. If you keep doing that, not very long, millions of people will be telling millions of people. That's what happens."

POINTS TO PONDER

Barbara Haynes

I have been re-reading Visions in the Stone and HBM. There are some quotes that struck me again in the re-reading and I want to share them with you.

From Visions In The Stone:

". . . I'd asked him outside if he'd ever thought about the idea that we were already in the Bardo, and that we weren't really awaiting death, but rebirth into the Real World . . . that basically this world was all a Bardo dream."

"˜What makes you think that?' he'd asked.

"˜It's all so plastic,' I responded. "˜Things are too pat; everything fits too well to be the Real World. This universe is just too damn accommodating to be real.'

"˜Too accommodating,' he nodded. "˜That's what I think, too. And most of the monks I know agree with that view. We probably are in the Bardo right now. The instruction books are intended for the dead, you know. And that's us, isn't it?'

"˜I really don't know,' I replied. "˜That's what I was hoping to find out from you. But if this is the Bardo, what's the Real world like? If the only world we know is just a Bardo dream, then what can we expect from the Real World?'

"˜It won't be like this,' he thought he answered."

From The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus:

"If we refuse work, we refuse help. Work is help."

"BECOME ALL ONE"

Marvette Kort

It dawned upon me recently, just after completing my daily American Book of the Dead (ABD) reading, that embracing, not just tolerating, the negative manifestations of others is essential. Success in navigating the Bardo is really built on -- "Neither attracted nor repelled" -- one of the "four lines".

"Guide No. 10," E.J. Gold, pen and ink wash available as a print on Arches Rives BFK 100% rag paper in a signed and numbered edition.

So there may come the day that you too will no longer be able to avoid the hard truth of that which most repulses you is at the center of your work on self.

The ABD tells us that only after you can totally accept that which repels you, can one diffuse this horrific vision allowing it to dissolve and recede into the undifferentiated living void from which it came. When encountering the cleansing radiations, we are repeatedly reminded that one's aim is to merge, become "all one".

"I am one; there is no other. I am the voidness of the void ..." Clear Light Prayer excerpt.

As long as I, my being, is ruled by the human primate habit of reacting with attraction or repulsion during my lifetime, I will also be dominated by this same human primate habit when the organic body is gone. I am doomed to maintaining a separate identity in the Bardo and that a separate fixed identity is unable to be liberated from the wheel of karma.

So I am grateful for that one day of recognition. I clearly see the benchmark that I must accomplish during this lifetime in addition to the way I have to measure my progress. However, recognition and acceptance is only the first step. It's a lot of discipline, remembering and inner work to free oneself from the domination of the machine's judgmental disgust with what falls outside the boundaries of "my acceptable". One must make efforts voluntarily as you walk the path starting from wherever you are.

The book Practical Work on Self (PWOS) by E.J. Gold, contains The Pond Exercise. Focusing on this exercise gives one tools for putting into action daily efforts for replacing one's reaction of repulsion with the habit of "neither attracted nor repelled".

The shift may happen in a single moment just as the initial undeniable point of recognition; however, this scale only tips over after accumulated concerted daily efforts.

To give strength to one's efforts, one can hold in one's attention: "There's only one Being, no matter what it looks like now, that's the Truth." -- E.J. Gold, June 21, 2021

Photomontage by Christiane Wolters

TO DIE BEFORE YOU DIE

Michele Marie

To die before you die is realizing that you are not what you possess or achieved and that your Being is much more than your having or your doing.

To die before you die is letting go of those illusions before you physically die and realize that there is no death, as you are more than your physical body and you are more than those limited perceptions and beliefs you identify yourself with, in your human biological machine. You let go of all of your attachments to your body and to the identity you have created for yourself in this life.

When our program completely runs our life unconsciously, we are not conscious that we can be different or that we can be more than that image we are identified with. We become completely entrapped in that reality like there is nothing else.

When we can stop and release the need to hold on to our pain and identification with the human biological machine, allowing ourself to be free from it, free from worldly concerns, we than become free to become who we really are.

Death is when we see ourselves as we truly are. We understand that we are much more than our body, our emotions, our thoughts, our mind.

An exercise helpful in letting go of attachments is, for example, practicing the "Not That" meditation with a focus on different aspects of our life, our possessions, our personality, our environment.

Each moment could be the last. So it's important to be present in all of life and to live as if we could die in this moment, with our heart, actions, and relationships at peace and pure. We are honoring life and we are living with gratitude and humility.

When we die to our self, we come alive in the Absolute.

"Higher entities will not tolerate a negative state. Using postures along with negative emotions, you can burn negative emotions away within yourself permanently. If we can change our whole posturing, the old life will die away. The real meaning of "die before you die" is to choose conscious postures, gestures and expressions, to assume a place in the Work, to leave ordinary life behind, to live a Work life".
-- E.J. Gold

Reference Materials on To die before you die:

1- "Not That" meditation
ToTM030 -- 1985 Conflict Management
ToTM030, Conflict Management -- Talk of The Month
Audio CDT119 Conflict Management
Top 20 Archive Talks (talkofthemonth.com)

2- Vision in the Stone quote, chapter 27, To Die before you die https://www.gatewaysbooksandtapes.com/books/bk024. html

3- ICW April 2009 Die before you Die Preparation to death and dying, letting go of the mind and the beta brain waves, non-beta state -- YouTube

LET THE CARES OF THE WORLD SLIP AWAY

Jewel McInroy

"As you enter into the realm of Extreme Mindfulness, the Attention to Detail and Level of Detail will assail your senses.
Use the Work Mantra: 'Let the cares of the world slip away.'
How does it work? How can you free yourself from the overwhelming burden of being alive in an organic world, with all its demands and miseries? You only have so many Attention-Points. They don't change number. Each point contains a thought-form. Those thought-forms can be replaced by other more constructive thought-forms, but you can't leave it to choice or chance." E.J. Gold

The above quote brought to mind the importance and necessity of practices. E.J. said many years ago, "If you do what you always do, you'll get what you always get". We are the only ones who can implement the necessary changes within. Changing our thought forms is one way.

NEW GATEWAYS AUTHOR

--Iven Lourie, Editor, Gateways Books

Gateways Books and Tapes has a recent new author on its pages: OM C. Parkin, a widely-acknowledged Advaita teacher from Germany. Note that OM will be holding a retreat in the U.S. in October, 2021, at Omega Institute in New York state. Here is his author page at Gateways where you will find links to three available books and to the Omega Institute retreat information:
https://www.gatewaysbooksandtapes.com/authors/om-c-parkin.html

OM C. Parkin -- from "Author's Foreword" to The Digital Age: A Critical View from a Wisdom Perspective
"What we are currently experiencing is much more than an industrial revolution. It is something that will transcend not only human beings, but life itself." A new, artificial life would emerge, "a life that is more robust and spreads beyond our biosphere, colonizing and making the Milky Way and eventually the entire universe intelligent." These words come from JÃ¼rgen Schmidhuber, the scientific director of the Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence IDSIA near Lugano (Switzerland) and they convey the full extent of the euphoria of so-called transhumanists in the face of the revolution of the digital age, which will finally provide the technical means to liberate people from their shabby, decayed condition, the conditio humana. The "I" always knew that it deserves something else than this limited condition, and so it thinks its big chance has finally come: The completion of its project immortality. In the view of the starry-eyed rationalist who begins to study the writings of Perennial Philosophy, there is indeed a great deal of agreement here. After all, have the great wisdom teachings of humanity from East and West, at their core, not always pursued only one goal: To make the knowledge of eternal life accessible to the student on the path? Do digitalists who believe that true, unlimited life is found online, and transhumanists who believe in enlightenment by technical means, not pursue the same goal?
This little book describes a tragic misunderstanding and its consequences. This misunderstanding has its roots in the limited state of consciousness of the founding fathers of the digital revolution and it continues in many of its enthusiastic supporters. "They are all subject to a serious internal/external level confusion." This book presents a dialogue with students (some working in the computer industry themselves or are professionally dealing with digital media), which emerges from this statement.

SUCCESSFUL VOYAGING

Nishit Gajjar

"Straightline hotwire associative thought-processing can only serve to hinder us as we respond by well-planned spasmodic reflex to the various traps and traumatic shocks of the labyrinth, but we worry needlessly; it will soon become apparent that there just isn't any way of outguessing the twists and turns that lie ahead of us; fact is, often we'll be mighty hard-pressed to find any discernible difference between the normal significance of an object in the primate sector and its usefulness and function in the macrodimensions, which nine times out of ten will be entirely unrelated, and utterly unfathomable even under extreme pressure to crack its inscrutable silence....

"Remembering what we did three or four games ago, perhaps even in a different game, or three or four lifetimes ago, is another important aspect of successful voyaging. No amount of luck will be very useful if we do not remember what we did. Without remembering, we are condemned to repeat our mistakes forever; but this is not the sort of remembering for which we can depend upon the mind or any other function which rightly belongs with--and performs its own one-way swan-song in syncopated duet with--the human biological machine. For this kind of remembering, we must develop something which survives the death of the machine, something which is called, in our technical language, understanding, a semi-intuitional recall, a sixth sense which comes from unprocessed knowledge, that tells us that something is wrong, even if we don't exactly know what."
- E.J. Gold.