EPISODE 96: A TAMASIC WEEK

Welcome.

Last Saturday night I got up for a pee and on the way back from the bathroom managed to bump my head into a wall, drawing blood and a raising a bruise that lasted a week. Immediately I started to grumble loudly enough to wake my partner who I then blamed for making it dark  because she likes to keep the bedroom very dark whereas I would prefer to sleep with the curtains open. Obviously she wasn't very impressed by my accusations but we managed to get back to sleep and in the morning after reflection I thought that it couldn't really have been that dark and quite possibly I'd had my eyes shut.

My head did hurt a bit on Sunday but hasn't been a problem since, nevertheless it feels like it was the beginning of an-off centre week. On Sunday afternoon I went to visit Rob to organize a bit of business. Before leaving the house I said to my partner, 'Today is an important day in my life.' Preoccupied with her own concerns she failed to answer me. 

The reason I'd been so portentous is that my business has been suffering through lack of suppliers; a situation worsened by my main supplier saying he will be taking a year off from January. A month ago Rob approached me offering to supply a regular (but not great) quantity of material at a price considerably below what I have been paying so by Sunday I was gagging to know what he would deliver.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment because neither the quality nor the quantity were what I wanted and if the price hadn't been so low I would have had to say no and end the relationship straight away. As it was I accepted the deal.

By Sunday afternoon I was feeling a bit poorly and my stomach was grumbling and rumbling and expressing its unhappiness about something. Also I felt tired. Then on Monday when I woke up I discovered that my shoulder was hurting and that the pain was spreading over the right hand side of my chest making breathing uncomfortable and coughing agonising.

On Monday afternoon I drove out in the countryside to discuss some personal problems a friend of mine was having. We went for a walk while she unburdened herself. When I got back to the car, it wouldn't start so we had an hour and a half wait in the cold for help to arrive.

I could not sleep at all Monday night and on Tuesday I couldn't do anything or focus my mind at all.

On Wednesday morning, I felt slightly better although everything continued to hurt. Then a friend called Uma visited. She hasn't seen me for a long time and seems very fond of me. Without warning she threw down her bag and embraced me heartily. From then on the pain doubled and I felt as if my body was in trauma. Throughout the day there was nothing I could do to get comfortable and when I went to bed in the evening my body was burning and sweating while I felt cold and shaky.

At some point on Thursday afternoon, I felt really low. Until I banged my head, I'd been on a bit of a high, having kept both my Chi Kung and meditation together for an unusually long time. Within a few days it seemed that all that had been lost and been replaced by self-pity and heaviness. It was then that I remembered what I had been reading in my Shaivism about the three gunas.

The gunas are the three basic moods, sattva, rajas and tamas. 

"Each individual's mood is always an embodiment of a different combination of the three gunas - each of which constitutes a fundementally different way of feeling ourselves and relating to the world."  (Wilberg).

Tamas (black) is felt as dullness or darkness of mood, and as physical inertia, heaviness or lethargy.

Rajas (red) is felt as agitation, desire, impulse, intent and passion, and is expressed as physical tension, agitation and activity in all its forms.

Satva (white) is felt as pureness, radiance, calm clarity, balance and buoyant lightness of being.

According to Wilberg, Western Psychology is bi-polar and has no time for Tamasic states, considering them abnormal or depressive. The response is to fight them mentally and/or with the aid of medication to 'keep ourselves going' (Rajas) or to 'be positive' (Satva). As a result, says Wilberg, we end up either in even deeper and dark Tamasic states or in truly unhealthy Rajasic states of 'stress', 'anxiety' or manic hyperactivity.

 "If we can not feel dull, heavy and fatigued (Tamas) how can we rest or enter into deep sleep - thus allowing us to process our experience in our dreams and to wake up feeling once again clear and bright (Sattva) and refreshed with renewed vitality and power of action (Rajas)?"

The Gunas have been mentioned in most of the indian philosophy books I have read yet until this day I hadn't ever paid the concepts any attention. They bored me. And yet I've been fascinated by mood. In his book, Tantric Mysticsm for Today's World, 231-239, Wilberg elucidates further on the gunas. I will finish with just a few extracts which are meaningful to me.

Tamas: ...Anatomically and medically it is associated with the bowels, abdomen and womb. Psychiatrically it is labelled as mild or severe depression. Sociologically it can find negative expression as the destructive potential of spiritual ignorance, generalised political apathy, the dullness of routinised work, lack of empathy and lifeless personal relationships. People search to compensate for Tamasic existence either through Rajas - hyperactivity and busyness, revelry in drugs and consumerism or mindless entertainment or through bland Sattvic states of spiritual harmony, peace and calm.

Each moment of each day we can identify the Guna or the combination of Gunas colouring our mood. None of the Gunas in themselves is a 'cause' of pain or pleasure, suffering or joy, limitation or liberation - these come about only through our relationship to the Gunas, and through their relationship with one another within us. It is important to be aware and affirm all our Gunic states as natural states of being. Only by being more aware of them can we both embrace and transcend them.

Oh Arjuna, Sattva attaches one to happiness, Rajas to action, and Tamas to ignorance. (Bhagavad Gita.)

So now it is 8 days since I banged my head. My shoulder  and chest are still painful but not as much as they were. The business material turned out to be perfectly satisfactory and actually made me some money. And I said to my partner, 'Would you like some relationship advice that might help in any future relationships you may have?' 'What's that?' she said. 'Well just maybe if he or she every says to you, this is an important day in my life, it'd be better if you responded.'
'Yep,' she said, 'I think you're right.'

EPISODE 95: LET THERE BE LIGHT

Welcome,

As my reader will know, I periodically become obsessed with Shaivism. This is one such phase. Last year it was with the help of the work of Peter Wilberg (and I may well turn to him again); for the moment I’m being entertained by K.C. Pandev’s book on Abhinavagupta and ‘Encyclopaedia of the Śaivism, Volume 1’ by Swami Parmeshwaranand.

Since first coming across Shaivism in 1977, my experience has been much the same. I read about it and as I read part of my being vibrates and I feel I’m on the edge of understanding something. That understanding never seems to deepen much and then drifts away and when months or years later another phase commences that understanding still hasn’t matured. And as Swami P points out, ‘It is quite relevant to say that real conviction regarding the truth does not arise or shine forth until it spontaneously manifests in one’s own real nature.’

This later forage into the agamas actually resulted from a desire to explain analogy to someone. I remembered then a particular analogy from shaivism, called bimbapratibimba, which I have, for many years, be meaning to explain to myself. In the process of googling bimbapratibimba, I came across Swami P’s writing and, as if often the case with Shaivism, became struck by the language as well as the concepts.

We live in a world of isolation separated from one another by the creation of walls of distinction of fanes and riches, of position and status, and we live on the island of the ego. But when by the grace of the guru we are able to see the light - the light which unifies all, which brings all into the embrace of the Divine, we realize oneness and the singleness of Light within.

In order to see the light we do not need to go any further. It is near, it is everywhere. But first we should realize the light, recognizing it to be the very essence of ME as I. Then it occurs to the aspirant that everything is made of light. It has emerged from it, and is made from it

To realize that everything that is known as idam, the object, is really Brahman, but differentiation, the variousness, the divisions, the nanatva, is unreal. The reality is one singleness but multifariousness is also real which shows itself by the dynamic pulsation of the Divine, dancing in the rhythmic play of delight. The Divine is nothing but the one harmonious uniflavouredness of the experience of joy.

Whatever shines is divine in essence. The objects that appear externally and that shine as pleasure or pain internally, when seen in their essence they are nothing but light. But this light is not a simple light that floods everything and then obliterates but it such a light that not only makes the body of all appear as one’s own body but it pulsates as the very life of everything. Everything that shines is composed of this light. Everything that manifests is simply this glory. It is an all pervasive light encompassing all, which unifies all with the Divine by demolishing the barriers of separation.

I would copy and paste a whole lot more but copyright won’t allow it, so you are spared. I have been complaining about having to handwrite a copy of what I’m reading before reprinting it here but it occurs to me now what an effort and a bother it must have been writing down these things in the first place back in the 8th century.

In Chapter Three of the Anthology, ‘The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience, there is a wonderful exposition of Abhinavagupta’s theories of light in a piece entitled, ‘Luminous Consciousness: Light in Tantric Mysticism’ by Paul Muller-Ortega. He says:

The light is one and its nature is freedom

The light is self-illuminating.

The light pulsates with power.

The light is self-concealing

Objective reality arises as the congealing of light

The light is triadic: fire, sun and moon

The Tantric Mystic inwardly enfolds his individual consciousness into the light and perceives it as nothing but the light

The Tantric Mystic outwardly melts the objective outer reality into the light and perceives that it too is nothing but the light.

Only the light is.

Bimba Pratibimba Nyaya: The Theory of an Object and Its Reflection, is an analogy much used by shaivites to explain…well, what it explains we may see. My reason for wanting to look at it is that I have never found it very satisfying emotionally or intellectually. Why this is, I don’t know. It tends to arise in relation to arguments with Vedanta which has similar model of Self but considers the objective universe to be unreal.

Shaivism believes the microcosm is the same as the macrocosm in a holographic universe and that by studying man one can see the Divine replicated, or, reflected. What man does in a limited way, consciousness does in an unlimited way. So while the ultimate reality of the world is perhaps secondary to one’s experience of it, our philosophic attitude to reality might affect how we interact with it, and how we relate to it.

‘A reflection appears in a mirror on a clear surface. The mirror and the object reflected are different from each other, although they do not appear to be so. Even if a large object is reflected in a small mirror, the mirror does not undergo any change; its size remains the same. Moreover, even if many objects are reflected in a mirror, they do not intermingle with one another. For example, even though fire and paper may be reflected simultaneously, the paper in the mirror does not burn. When a cow and a tiger and reflected in a mirror, the cow is not afraid of the tiger and the tiger does not attack the cow. Since only the forms of objects are seen in the mirror, they do not intermingle with one another. Moreover, for there to be a reflection, the reflecting surface must be clear. The clearer the surface it, the clearer the reflection will be.

There is another requirement. If something is to be reflected, there must be an object, and that object must have form. Formless space cannot be reflected.’ (Muktananda: Secret of the Siddhas.)

At this point I’m stopping. My brain can’t deal with it. Muktananda says ‘Bimba Pratibimba is one of the most beautiful principles of Shaivism. Clearly, I haven’t grasped it yet. Here is a more succint version of the whole analogy:

'As in the orb of a mirror, pictures such as those of a town or village shine which are inseperable from it and yet are distinct from one another and from it, so from the pure vision of the supreme Consciousnessthis universe though void of distinction, appears distict part from part and distinct from that vision.'

Is that clearer? No?  Then let us go back to the ever pellucid light.

‘Being self-luminous

You cause everything to shine

Delighting in your form

You fill the universe with delight

Rocking with your own bliss

You make the whole world dance with joy.’

(Shivastotravali: Abhinavagupta)

EPISODE 94: HOW NOT TO BE A GURU.

Welcome,
This week I have been tested by a 17 year old from Gorgan in Iran. World guru, I am not. The correspondence began when she made a comment on my page questioning my remark, 'love and peace, worth a try'. Before I replied, she removed the comment and replaced it with a 'I see you can't be bothered to reply' remark.'

ME: October 11, 2013 8:55pm 

And now your comment has gone! Not so patient!
yes it is difficult to love, very very difficult, especially the people who are damaging us or our loved ones. What we try and love is their beingness and their ultimate identity with us; we don't have to love their behaviours and personalities...
..certainly we can strive to change what our passion wants us to change but it is better to focus on what we want to create and not in hating what is presently there.
Does that make any sense to you?
I visited your country in 1976 and would love to do so again. The women of Iran seem to be remarkably well educated.
best wishes
John

ME: October 13, 20138:01pm

Have you accepted my apology for being slow to reply?

HER: October 15, 20137:05pm

 aw  yes of course ..u didnt need to apologize i was too fast to judge you :/

hm ....:P1976 is 37 yrs ago....mmm...it makes sense but not always is true ..i mean humans feelings are much more complicated we cant always control it and even i can say that we must not...could u love hitler? :p.......hm am i talking like a not experienced young girl?

ME: October 15, 2013 7:32pm

No, in this case you are talking like a human being who knows that people aren't as good at loving as they say they are. If you hear me talking about my government you would see my lack of love...And no, we can't always control our feelings but our job then is to feel them and not to avoid them by blaming someone else for them....You know on this site I have learned that Iranian women are much better educated and thoughtful than many british women.

37 years, you are right. Iran had a Shah. I was offered a job in Teheran but didn't accept it. I want to go back and see more of the country...You are going to University, yes?

HER: October 17th, 2013. 6.01pm
(Text missing but she was saying how hard she is working because going on to further education is really important. She asked me to wish her luck in the exams.)

ME: October 17th, 2013, 8.00pm
 Yes, I do wish you luck and I really hope it works out for you. If you get a chance, remember to take some deep breaths and give yourself a little time. When will you know the results?

 HER: October 19, 2013:10pm
 heheh and iv learned that iranian guys are really stupid and they are just leaving comments on stupid naked girls pics so oo ....maybe educated girls are not enough while they all should soon drown in a stupid life which everyone think is a real life of an educated couple but both man and woman are having problems in their relationship"S" ...

ME: October 20th, 2013, 8.00 am
 Men are the same the world over, I think. Much of their (our) behaviour is driven by sexual desire but they pretend it is not.It makes them foolish, deceitful and a little ashamed. Also men are scared of women so they invent rules to try and control them. Women have a tough job in the world.

HER: October 24, 2013 2:39pm 
(Again she complained how hard she was working and how no-one would want to listn to her 'stupid ideas'. )

ME: October 24th, 2013, 8.00pm
Do I know your name?
I looked up Gorgan on youtube and have watched some videos of the area.
Of course you must talk and think and express your stupid ideas; it is your world after all and your life you are living. Stupid ideas seem very popular in the world so I am sure we can make room for yours. Some of your stupid ideas might be better than our stupid ideas. It is a perfect world for stupid ideas because there are a lot of stupid people to believe the stupid ideas.
All you have to do is make your stupid ideas sound sensible. This is why we are educating you. We will tell you all the stupid ideas we can think of and then we will examine you to find out a) whether you can remember the ideas and b) whether you can make them sound sensible.
If you pass our exam we will welcome you into our stupid society and then you can do whatever you like with your stupid ideas.
Love, Peace and other stupid ideas,
John.

 HER: October 26th, 2013, 5.00pm

hehe that was nice ....whats goin to happen after that?....we express and even make people believe ....and after that?it will all end .....but the process never ends ..yes ?and it makes the world so stupid and the life too

ME: October 26th, 2013, 7.35pm

Well, there are some good ideas  in the world too (liberty, fraternity, equality, chocolate, sometimes not killing each other, clean water, having food at the market etc) and moments inside ourselves which we value and enjoy. We can put our energy into the good ideas and try to create something better.
Also, just maybe, we can feel some compassion for humankind. No other creature is burdened with having to work out what the right thing to do is.
And if i think of anything more helpful to say i'll let you know..

..oh yes, i worry about you worrying too much about your work and exams. It is a horrible pressure to always have in the back of your mind. I've never thought exams were a good idea. I remember being expelled from school once, just before the exams. I was so happy because i wasn't then allowed to do the exams. (And then i was unhappy because i had to do them a year later.)

Anyway, I better not start remembering things or we'll be here for years and years...

HER: October 27th, 2013, 6.30pm
hehhe  john ...i have a question ....... when u meet people or hear about them in the news or on internet what makes u say that someone is a great person ? what about an individual makes u think that he or she is havin a useful life?

ME: October 29th, 2013, 5.00 pm
You've got me thinking about this one.
I don't think I have met or believe in 'a great person.' I may have met people who are great at doing something in particular or in demonstrating some particular quality - but equally they will have stuff they are totally shit at or demonstrate qualities which we loathe.
How philosophical do you want me to be? Because i tend to question the idea that we are 'persons' in the way we are taught.

Also persons change a lot, from moment to moment, from  mood to mood, between thoughts, and they are molded by circumstances. Great today, hopeless tomorrow..

The second question is easier to answer. It doesn't matter to me if someone's life is useful. Useful is a lot to ask and hard to judge.

A lot of people have been asked just before they die what regrets they have. Three answers are most common...
1. i wish i had worked less hard
2. i wish i had been just a little bit nicer to my friends
3. I wish i'd chased my dreams just a little more.

HER:October 28, 20135:18pm 

hmmm ..im not actually having the life i want im like a small bird goin from one tree to another trying to find a home mmm  yeah and i believe that at the end the only thing that will control us is the condition we are brought up in ....mmm .....
mm when u ask" how philosophical u want me to be?" what exactly do u mean? can u convince yourself to be more like a philosopher in a situation and less in another?
can we ever be great enough? great enough and no more controlled by conditions?
how much chance your gonna have to be better than what youv ever been when your not taught to be a better person?
:/ maybe my questions sound silly to u ...but im facin hard days ....so im sorry 

ME:October 29, 2013, 9:07am

Hello nameless one,

Do not be sorry. I don't think your questions are silly. If they were silly, I wouldn't answer. It is more likely that my answers are silly because I don't know you and the circumstances of your life. All I can do is treat you like my own daughter, or grand-daughter, and be as honest as I can while nurturing the flower of humanity that I believe you to be.
When I was your age, I thought life was miserable and I wanted nothing to do with it. Twice I tried to commit suicide. It seemed to me that most people were stupid and spent their lives believing in idiotic things and pretending to be nice. Now I still think much the same.
So I ask myself, what is different now, and how have I managed to live 60 years with a certain amount of joy?
The main answer is perspective. The world doesn’t change much but your point of view can change. Looked at in one way, life looks a bowl of shit, looked at another way, it is an unfolding journey towards freedom.
Also, there is a word called ‘apophenia’. Apophenia is when you look at what seems a mess and then suddenly see the pattern in something that makes it clear. For example, you are looking at something that from the distance looks like a snake. You feel fear. Then you see that it is only a piece of rope and the fear goes. In the same way, you look at life and see a chaotic mess, then you look again and see the patterns.
I want to tell you that life will turn out good for you but obviously I don’t know whether this is true. Yes, we find ourselves in circumstances not of our choosing and with so much has already being decided (like our gender & bodies & the society we’re born into). The challenge then is to find out what power of change you have.
When I was 20, I read books which told me that there were ‘mystics’ in all traditions who told of an inner experience available to mankind; this experience has characteristics; when you have it, you feel oneness with everything, you feel free and joyful and you realize the ‘person’ you thought yourself to be is just a misperception.
At certain times I have had that experience and that has been what has saved me from permanent despair.
So, it has taken me 12 hours to come up with this answer. I don’t suppose it helps much but I want you to know that things (for you) can get better.
Write whenever you want, ask whatever questions you want, you are entitled to answers and help.
best wishes
John

HER: October 30th, 6.20pm,

mmm...well yes you r an experienced man but mmm...have you always been like mmm not so much connected with others? mmm i mean how exactly people around you were connected to u ?mmm

i know you r right but i guess as u said u dont know me so u try to talk in general and give some useful answers ..eveything seems so meaningless although we can actually find some patterns ...human builds everything makes rules and follow them makes religions and believes in them mm are they the the things that gives the population of mankind some patterns?imean beside their instincts ...actually they are even based on our instinct... the whole religious and war problems mmmmmmmm....whats the point ..? i mean we are deeply drowned in our emotions everyday we cant see how much useless they are ....we still are jealous about our friends or nag at small problems or ...mm then i think when u start to think more and care less about useless stuff your gonna get nearer to the great person u have in ur mind but the problem is  i cant find somethin useful to care about ...thats why i messaged u and noticed ur note about love and etc. ....



when u look at different problems and thoughts around u  you can find patterns yeah u can find reasons ...and u can find solutions but when u suddenly start to ruin the pattern with a problem then it seems meaningless  ....


like
u think about a guy whos from a middle-class family he is born and learns from his family and he starts to know the world better he  faces problems at school at knowing his opposite sex at studyin at findin jobs and....
these all make his personality then by knowing about all his life you can realize what kind of a man hes gonna be in his 60s but suddenly you imagine he dies when hes 22 ....then what ? all of these was useless ......mm..

ME: October 30th, 2013, 9.25pm

 “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

― Rumi

Once more, I cannot deny that your view of the world is one I can recognize and share. Everything you see is part of the picture and is real but the picture is infinitely large and can be seen from so many perspectives. Your perspective will change, from day to day, from mood to mood, from situation to situation, from role to role, from experience to experience. A question then can be, how much can you deliberately change your experience by changing your perspective, your thoughts, your feelings and your behaviours? To what extent can we escape the noose of our conditioning?

A lot depends on what we put our attention on.

Before becoming entirely fatalistic about the human condition, you need to be sure you have explored it and yourself thoroughly. If you were doing one of my courses, my aim would not to be to convince you of anything, or to lecture you about how things are, but to give you some ‘tools’ with which to explore your own consciousness.  These ‘tools’ are simple mental exercises which can gradually alter our perspective, our conditioning, our ability to create and our perception of self.

…I am not sure what you mean about my connection with other people. Maybe you could ask again?

-- It is true that generally people are happier if they feel life has meaning or a point. On the other hand, when we are happy we don’t really care whether it has a point or a meaning. Does being need a point? Does the beauty of a flower need meaning? Only the human mind seems to need meaning.

--I suppose with any death, young or old, the question is who dies? What dies? Are we more than our physical bodies?

…I’m also not sure what you meant by you can’t find anything useful to care about. Could you explain?

….

I would like to know more about you and your life but I respect your right not to tell me.