Depression, Being in the Here and Now, and Spirituality

Rakendra

I am starting a new thread because I do not want to hi jack the thread: Can I receive TRT 5 yrs after prostatectomy?  Started by Whitehat.

 

There are many posters on this board who have found that changing their lives to thinking much less about the future and trying to live more in the present has been very helpful in increasing the quality of their lives.  In this regard, I will share my experiences in totally changing my life by learning how to live totally in the moment without judgement and from a love space.  My wisdom comes from years of study with spiritual teachers including Osho, Jesus, Buddha, other spiritual masters, and books by Ken Keyes, and Eckhart Tolle, and especially and most importantly, A Course in Miracles. However, for this exercise, I wlll use the advice of Jesus because that is the Prophet that all are familiar with. Now, my program probably has not been seen by any reader before, but before you disagree, ask yourself, “Can you think of a better way to live?”

     Living totally in the moment non-judgmentally is the final key to bliss, and this is a mind problem, as are all the negative emotions of depression, fear, hate, judgmentalism, envy, and on and on.  It is possible to eliminate all of these thoughts, but I cannot detail the process in just a few sentences, but I will give you a taste of what needs to be done, which is simply to understand what must be done to make the changes happen, which is not an overnight process.

 Jesus taught:  Love thy enemy as thyself.  Lets understand love first.  Love to be love has two necessary components: 1) It must be unconditional.  In other words, you love without qualification.  No one has to qualify for love.  2)  It must be equal for all.  This means that you love the most undeserving with the same quality that you love your Mother or your children.  Now, before you stop reading, go further and see how this may be possible for you.  Most think of love as verb, an action.  Now as a verb, you can either love or not love.  There is a choice.  I love that one, but I do not love the other one.  As long as there is a choice, equal love for all is impossible because the human mind will always be deciding who is worthy of love and how much.  But lets look at love not as a verb that requires action, but rather as a noun which is a fact that is constant and unchanging.  ‘I am love.”  Once you understand that you are love and this cannot change ever, you no longer have the ability to decide who to love.  I am love, therefore, I love all my brothers and sisters equally.  Spiritual love does not create suffering;  special or conditional love will always create suffering.  When special love loses the object of its love, there is always huge suffering.  Spiritual or real love recognizes the loss, mourns the loss and goes on loving all the other Brothers and Sisters in the Family of Man.

  OK, but how do you know that you are Love?  The only thing Human can positively know about “God” is that it is a higher spiritual consciousness than that which any man can possess or understand.  You cannot understand or chose a higher spiritual decision or consciousness than those that you know about.  The highest spirituality Man knows about is Love.  Jesus often talked of love as the highest quality of Man, and of the Loving Father.  So, God, or the Creator, must be a higher form of love, and we call that pure love.  God created Man, but God is pure love, so the only thing that is possible for him to create in offspring is also pure love.  A  horse cannot birth a chicken.  So, if you believe in any concept of a Higher being, you have to accept that you are Pure Love, or the very same nature as the Father.  That is the way you were born and is your essence.  And if that is your true essence, then you have NO choice about who you love or who you do not love, and Jesus, your teacher is the example to follow.  This one thought can start the transformation of your life.

But Jesus also said, “You are born a sinner.”  So, if you are born a sinner and also pure love, how does that work?  Sin comes from the same Greek word,and in the time of Jesus, sin meant to miss the mark, or in our vernacular, to make a mistake. It is similar to the Muslim concept: “Islam teaches that sin is an avoidable act that harms the perpetrator's own soul. This means that there is no innate or inherited nature that prompts a person to disobey God. That is to say, it is a person's free choice whether to sin or not; and one's disposition to sin is only as much as, if not less than, their inclination to do good.”  You certainly were given free choice, so how can you be doomed from birth with the “Sinner” tag?

     So, what Jesus was talking about is that you are born to sin, that is, to make mistakes.  Why?  When you make mistakes, you suffer, and when you suffer, you will not make the same mistake again, and next time you will see a higher choice and make that, i.e. spiritual growth.  This concept is found in all religions that I know of, including Buddhism. If sin has the popular meaning taught by churches that sin means to transgress against the laws of God, then that is against all that Jesus taught.  There is NO instance of Jesus ever judging anyone.  Calling someone a sinner in this vein is very judgmental and separating.  You are a sinner, I am not, therefore  you are not as worthy.  However, you make mistakes, I make mistakes, we are Brothers and equal.  If you doubt this, go look in a mirror and say, “I am a Sinner!” three times.  Then see how that feels.  Then do the same, but say, “I make mistakes!!”  See which makes your heart feel the best.  Thinking you are a "Sinner" in the church sense takes your power away with the idea that you need to be dependant on some outside source for Salvation.  It blocks spiritual progress, (which may be the intent to keep you dependant on the church and not responsible for everything that happens in your life.  Free yourself from the false teaching of "Sin")

Now, getting back to our main objective of being able to create a better quality of life by disciplining and learning more effective thought processes, we now have a new concept that may have a huge jump in our spirituality as well.   There is much more to this, of course.  However, here is a taste.  If you want this to continue, I am happy to do so, but often new thought may not be welcome. 

Love,  Rakendra

 

A Course in Miracles can be read on line at coursein miracles.com  Here is the introduction:

 

Introduction to A Course In Miracles

This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary.

Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.

It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.

The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.

It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence,

which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear,

but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

 

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

 

 

hopeful and optimistic

Dear Swami Rakendra

Your  post is "WONDERFUL", and so are you....Thanks for the post....I'm on the same page as you.

Keep on enjoying the moments of life.

Samsungtech1

Tranquility

Rakendra,

Your post was awesome.  Thank you.  I look forward to reading "miracles"

 

Thank you,

 

Mike

Rakendra

Samsungtech1 said:

Tranquility

Rakendra,

Your post was awesome.  Thank you.  I look forward to reading "miracles"

 

Thank you,

 

Mike

Another Taste

Thank you.  However, I am aware that this is not for everybody, but that is fine as well.  Remember, the purpose here is to reprogram the mind to think in ways that produce bliss and love, and this will take a lot of work over a period of time.  Learning to BE love is our goal and to train the mind how to stay in that place.  But how is it possible not to judge but to love the drug dealers, the pimps, the murderers, the politicians, and the low lifes?  They are just crap and worthless, right?  Well, either comparing or judging will create suffering for the originator (you) but not for the unworthy.  So, what to do?  Comparing is easy to quit - just stop, but judgmentalism can be a tough one.  Going back to Jesus, one of his strongest points was: Do Not Judge.

    Imagine the room you are now in has ten thousand layers, stretching from the floor to the ceiling.  Each of these layers represents a choice, a conscious decision.  The layers nearest the floor are the most damaging and most unconscious decisions, the ones that harm others. Those decisions at the very top are the highest, but we cannot imagine what they would be because no one can see a higher decision than what exists in their own bracket.  However, we can see the lowest decisions, but our consciousness is evolved enough so that these low decisions  are really not available to us.  These decisions are outside of our available bracket.  These lowest decisions  are where the drug dealers, the pimps, the murderers, the politicians, and the low lifes chose their decisions from.  Everyone is choosing from a specific bracket of decisions that are available to them, both high and low.  The bottom bracket decisions are the ONLY decisions that the bottom feeders can choose because they are the only decisions they can see.  They do not have the choice to see any decisions but the lowest ones, because the bracket they are in does not include high choices.  Murderers in prison think that the decisions they made at the time was the correct one.  Low lifes cannot make high decisions because they are outside of low life bracket.  Of course, some who are in a higher bracket deliberately make lower choices.  You can always go down or up.  Look how cocaine, crack, speed, alcoholism, sex addiction can bring high people down.

   Look at it this way.  A black kid in Harlem with no father and a coke head mother has no chance to see or learn high choices. His family will be the street gang, and that bracket will contain his choices.  On the other hand look at a child of a Kennedy or a Busch, and the choices that they will have and will be able to see.  Now, how can you judge the black kid?  He is just operating in his bracket, the same as you, and the same as Bush and Kennedy.

   Another way to look at it this:  one man eats meat, the other is a vegetarian.  To the vegetarian, eating meat is a low spiritual choice.  He does not choose to support the killing and torture of his fellow animals, and does not choose to cut up their dead bodies and carry the corpse around in his stomach.   Eating animals is a low choice that exists outside of his bracket, and one that is impossible for him to make.  However, in the consciousness of the meat eater, he does not even see or consider this.  It is a higher choice outside of his bracket.  Someday, he may change as his consciousness grows.  So, the point here is this: how can you judge anyone for any behavior when we all are operating  from our particular bracket?  Do you judge the meat eater for his consciousness?

Understand that that everyone is doing what he is here to learn and what he is here to do.  Your judging of the Other is totally out of place and totally YOUR problem that will cause you suffering, and hopefully, teach you that judging sucks.  Love all your brothers, no matter which bracket either they or you are existing in at this moment.

   Another idea.   Understanding “God” for me has been impossible until I had an awakening.  I am love, created by love, by the Father, the Creator.  But the ONLY clue I have about the Father is that it is pure love, but I have no idea in what form that love exists.  So, I see God not as a being, but as a state of being.  In other words, I have totally dropped the idea of a personification of God.  I understand the concept of being love, not choosing it, but being it.  So, the Creator is love, as I see it, but not a being.  When I see God only as a state of being and that state is the same state I am creating for my consciousness, it gives me opportunity in each moment to feel as if I am connecting with the Source directly.

   Now, about the Course.  This will NOT be an easy course, but it is guaranteed to be successful.  My recommendation would be to first skim it, only looking at the points that catch your interest. Then check out the lessons, but do not expect to understand them at this time.  They are outside of your bracket!!!LOL!!

   Where this is taking you is to the idea that there are two worlds.  The world of man and the world of God.  Man’s world, the world Man creates, is duality, floods, airplane crashes, death,wars, hatred, and violence.  The world of God is Oneness and Love and Eternity.   Only the world of God is real and can exist.  The world of Man is NOT real, and, in fact, cannot exist. 

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal can exist.

Herein lies the peace of God.

Love, Swami Rakendra

 

 

moonlitnight

Brilliantly put

Thank you S. Rakendra for your deep insight and healing words.

VascodaGama

Love

Some guys are born with a particular gift and in you it seems to be the ability in describing things with a simplistic tone clear enough for us all to understand it.
It could come from your life experiences or from your believes but you just “shoot” it so orderly and “unstained” making us to fall in love with your posts.

I have wondered why you would salute everyone in this forum with the ending greeting of “Love, Rakendra”. I know what’s behind it now.

Please continue with your fantastic posts.

VG

Rakendra

Ken Keyes

Thank you.  My heart sings. 

Once again, this is about reprogramming our mind.  In our lives, we all have tried to do our own mind programming which is  always done on a hit or miss basis, which turns into a slow learning process accompanied often with pain, and for many, in the end, simply turns out to not wanting to take further chances to avoid more pain and, instead, to protect what we have.  It would be far better if we could just go to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have them do the reprogramming for us.  Of course, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are not in that business, so who is?

       Well, it is all the great spiritual teachers of the past who are saying, ”Come listen.  I am the mind guy who can reprogram you.”  But there are problems here as well.  First, when the student finds out that it is not about getting a new Cadillac and requires a lot of inner work, it is often game over.  And secondly, after the death of the Master, Humans come by and adapt the religious teachings of the Master into the business of Religion and political control, and the original teaching is lost.  It is about your personal tripand it is up to YOU to find YOUR own distinct path which is unlike any other.  Spiritual teachers do not give you YOUR answers.  You have to find those for yourself.  The teacher is merely a sign post pointing the way.  There are many paths to the top of the mountain;  you have to chose which one is right for you.

   My life was a total mess.  I had severe Manic Depression and a huge inferiority complex, but also came from a very wealthy family that was totally dysfunctional.  My mother was Manic and Schizophrenic, and a total alcoholic who, in her whole life, was never able to cope and was continually involved in divorce and scandal.   I had deep resentment about not being loved.  Now I see that my mother was perfect, because she did for me the ONLY thing she was capable of: she gave me money, and I would not have survived without that.  You cannot ask for more from anyone than what is possible to give.  I was miserable and spent my day seeing how miserable I could make everyone else, and I was very good at it.  And, this “no love gift” of my dysfunctional   family  that the Unverse gave to me worked.  It prompted a need to change.  One day I read, “Handbook to Higher Consciousness” by Ken Keyes.  I immediately saw another way and went to study with Ken in St. Mary Kentucky, and later, when he moved to Coos Bay, Oregon.  Ken’s system was called, “Living Love” - http://livinglovesystem.info/.

     The first step was to memorize the Twelve Pathways of Living Love.  For those who want to start now, this is a good place.  So, here is Ken Keyes:

 

Method 1. 
Memorize the Twelve Pathways and use them to guide you through your daily life situations.  (link to the Twelve Pathways) When you learn to use them, you will find that the Twelve Pathways furnish you with the complete solution to every emotional problem in your life. But to benefit maximally from them, you must intuitively use them on the deepest levels of awareness. Once you have them memorized, say them before getting up in the morning and before going to sleep at night. This may increase your probability of realizing the Fourth Center of Consciousness in a year or two instead of many years or even decades.

 

    Whenever you feel worried, angry, jealous, fearful, anxious, or any other uncomfortable emotional feeling, life is giving you a message. It is always telling you that you are not following the Twelve Pathways. Your next step is to find the ones that you are not using and let them show you what to do to feel beautiful again.

    Stop churning over the usual questions that you ask yourself (which have not helped you find solutions). If these usual ways of talking to yourself were effective,you would be happy, peaceful, serene, and loving-here and now. Instead of using your past way of talking to yourself, just keep going over the Twelve Pathways. Remember that their purpose is to keep you centered, tuned in, conscious, and loving. They are not designed to help you manipulate the people and things around you to make them fit your inside addictions. The Twelve Pathways will help you reprogram your mind so that ALL of your addictions become preferences-and then you can live peacefully. The more you are uptight, the more important it is for you to stop worrying about the outside condition that you feel "makes you upset." Instead, concentrate on the inner addictions or expectations with which you hassle yourself.

    The Twelve Pathways will show you what it means to be truly alive. You will look back to your present state of consciousness and realize that you have been far more dead than alive. Everything you need will come to you in a seemingly miraculous fashion as you live with these Pathways. The peace, love, and effectiveness that you have always wanted will be yours.

The Twelve Pathways

     FREEING MYSELF

1. I am freeing myself from security, sensation, and power addictions that make me try to forcefully control situations in my life, and thus destroy my serenity and keep me from loving myself and others.

2. I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.

3. I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute-to-minute experience offers me to become aware of the addictions I must reprogram to be liberated from my robot-like emotional patterns.

 BEING HERE NOW

4. I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now unless I am telling my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future.

5. I take full responsibility here and now for everything I experience, for it is my own programming that creates my actions and also influences the reactions of people around me.

6. I accept myself completely here and now and consciously experience everything I feel, think, say, and do (including my emotion-backed addictions) as a necessary part of my growth into higher consciousness.

 INTERACTING WITH OTHERS

7. I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings, since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.

8. I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments that are offering them messages they need for their growth.

9. I act freely when I am tuned in, centered, and loving, but if possible I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.

 DISCOVERING MY CONSCIOUS-AWARENESS

10. I am continually calming the restless scanning of my rational mind in order to perceive the finer energies that enable me to unitively merge with everything around me.

11. I am constantly aware of which of the Seven Centers of Consciousness I am using, and I feel my energy, perceptiveness, love and inner peace growing as I open all of the Centers of Consciousness.

12. I am perceiving everyone, including myself, as an awakening being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher consciousness planes of unconditional love and oneness.

                             -------------­------

Now, this MAY be your starting place.  As the Course teaches, this is a course everyone must take, whether you do it with choice or without choice, you are always going to be enrolled in the course.   It is far less painful for you if you accept your responsibility to YOURSELF and  get on with it.  You have my blessing, and good luck!!!  Love, Swami Rakendra

       

 

 

 

 

Rakendra

Next Lesson

First, the Living Love website will close down on Oct. 8.  There is much good info there, so if you have interest, download for the future.

    Now, back to understanding the spiritual brackets by looking at three stages.  C is in the bottom 10%, B is at 40%, and A is at 60%.   C cannot see the choices of B, nor can B see those of A.  However, A is not better than B, and B is not better than C just because they are in a higher bracket.  All three are equal, because each one is where they need to be to experience the lessons they need to move up the scale, just as you are where you need to be for your lessons as well.  Suppose that you think this is all just BS and you do not choose to play.  You do not have that option.  The Universe will continue to give you the lessons that you need to grow, regardless of what you choose.  As the Course teaches:  Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.  It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. 

In other words, the lessons are already laid out for you in your life plan, and you have no choice in that.  However, you can choose what lessons you want to learn or ignore in any one moment.  The lessons will come regardless.  It is up to you how you handle them.  However, there are only two outcomes from lessons: either you start to change and start moving up, or you suffer. And, if you do not get the lesson the first time, no problem, it will surely be repeated.

   Sixty years ago, there was not much help to teach you, and Higher Consciousness was hard to understand and come by.  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became the spiritual teacher of the Beatles, and the Beatles literally changed the consciousness of the world thru their music and new found spirituality taught by the Maharishi.  And now there are many books and teachers available to all.  It has never been easier to be Enlightened than it is today.  But, make no mistake – this is a lifetime process, because no matter how far you go, there is always higher.

        Now, lets look at my version of Buddhism.  Yoga means the stilling of the changing states of the mind.  The Lord Buddha taught this thru Meditation and denying the temptations of the world.  The message was that all suffering was created thru the mind.  Of course, that explanation is too simplistic, and there is much more.  So, briefly, lets look at the mind and some of the teachings of Lord Buddha.

There is Wrong Thought, Wrong Speak, and Wrong Action, and each creates its own degree of suffering.  The opposite is Right Thought, Right Speak, and Right Action.  The “Wrong” is all negative and that negativity will come back to you.  “Right” is all positive, coming from Love, and will create Oneness with all.  The degree of suffering is different for each of the three actions.  Wrong Thought causes the least suffering in severity and time span.  Someone bumps you hard in the Mall, and does not apologize.  You think ”Ugly prick!”   Well, you have just earned yourself some suffering.  Probably for the rest of that day, you will feel unease and separate, and your mind will churn back to the incident.  But, it probably will be forgotten in a day or two, and the suffering will stop.  That is Wrong Thought.

  Same scene, but now, after he bumps you, you turn and say, “What is the matter with you? Rude Prick.”  Now you have earned yourself a higher level of suffering in Wrong Speech.  Now your mind will really churn, and you will think of this over and over, for a few weeks maybe, and for sure, your day is ruined. You WILL pay a price. Thus a more severe suffering because a more serious transgression is created. Now, you will tell your friends, and your mind will involve itself in all kinds of mental gymnastics, you will miss the here and now because your mind will stay in that negative moment of the past, and you will miss the beauty of the present moment entirely and end up losing the whole day.  Your life will be dominated by your past negative action.  And this suffering will last much longer because the memory does not fade so easily, and you will make lots of unpleasant judgments as well.

     Wrong Action:  You do all of the above, but also grab his shoulder,” OK, ****, You need to have a lesson!!”  Well, you just joined the Major Leagues. First of all, this can go anywhere now, and might end up with serious consequences.  But as for suffering, you now have created a negative MEMORY, and that can haunt you and make you suffer for the rest of your life.  It is permanent suffering for no matter how long you live, your mind may at times go back to this incident.  This suffering is by far the most severe of the three, and I will guarantee that the above is a fact.  So, maybe you think it may not work that way, so how do I know?

   This lesson is a difficult concept, and will be our next lesson.  I know you will suffer, because your world is illusion.  In fact, the Other is in reality You and your are harming yourself.  The Course teaches,”I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or myself.”  And Lesson 3 : I do not understand anything I see in any place or anywhere.”  You do not understand because your world is not real.  You see the Other who bumped you as separate from yourself, where in fact, you and the other are One, not separate at all.  So you think you have negative action to the Other.  In fact there is no other, and when you harm the other with negative thought or negative action, in reality, you are harming yourself just as if you put your pen thru your hand.  That is how I know you will suffer, not because you do harm to the other(who in Reality does not exist) but because you are harming yourself, because the Other only  exists in your delusional mind.  

I will leave you here for our next lesson.

Love, Swami Rakendra

 Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal can exist.

Herein lies the peace of God.

 

 

moonlitnight

Use of the word "God"

I would just like to add that, from use of the word "God", one doesn't have to infer the Christian God. God means different entities to different people. I have no religious inclinations, yet the God/love/Universal Spirit is as relevant to me as breath itself. Energy medicine is built on the understanding that there is a huge power out there that can heal. The science of epigenetics is recognizing this. Our thoughts and recognition of the higher power can affect our genetic expression—switching oncogenes on and off, for example. This is very exciting as it is literally bridging the gap between science and religion. Thank you again SR.

Rakendra

moonlitnight said:

Use of the word "God"

I would just like to add that, from use of the word "God", one doesn't have to infer the Christian God. God means different entities to different people. I have no religious inclinations, yet the God/love/Universal Spirit is as relevant to me as breath itself. Energy medicine is built on the understanding that there is a huge power out there that can heal. The science of epigenetics is recognizing this. Our thoughts and recognition of the higher power can affect our genetic expression—switching oncogenes on and off, for example. This is very exciting as it is literally bridging the gap between science and religion. Thank you again SR.

Thank you for your input.  We will pause here and consider some of the ideas of Osho on this matter.  Here are excerpts from some of his teachings.

           “I am not a religious person in your sense. I have a totally different definition of being religious. To me the religious person is one who is totally alive, intensely alive, aflame with love, aware of tremendous beauty all around; has the courage to rejoice each moment of life and death together. Only a man who is so capable of rejoicing in life and death – his song continues. It does not matter whether life is happening or death is happening, his song is not disturbed, his dance does not waver?”

Only such an adventurous soul, only such a pilgrim of existence is religious. But in the name of religion man has been given poor substitutes, false, phony, meaningless, just toys to play with. Worshipping statues, chanting man-made mantras, paying tributes to those who have been cowards and escapists and who were not able to live life because they were so afraid of death, and calling them saints, religion has distracted man from true and authentic religiousness.

 

 

Judgment is moral, and morality has nothing to do with religion. That misunderstanding has to be dropped. People always confuse morality with religion. Morality has nothing to do with religion; a moral man is not necessarily a religiousman. An atheist can be moral, perfectly moral. You can find the moral man in Soviet Russia – there is no need for the moral man to be religious. A religiousman is a new dimension.

The religious man can drop his morality because now he has his own eyes; he need not have any other guides. His eyes are enough. It is as if you were blind and you used to have a stick with which to walk around, to grope your way, to find your way with the stick…then one day your eyes open. Will you still carry the stick? You will throw it away. Now it is meaningless, now you don’t need to grope. Now the walking stick is no longer a help, it will be a burden.

See the distinction. It is of immense import. The religious man is one who is not concerned with doing good, but whatsoever happens through him is good because he has surrendered himself to God; and all is good through God, through surrender to him. He cannot do wrong. It is not possible. It is impossible to do wrong when you are alert. It is as impossible as to walk through the wall or to try to walk through the wall when your eyes are open. You will find the door! It is as simple as that.

But a blind man sometimes tries to get out through the wall. He cannot; there is no possibility. But a blind man is a blind man; he cannot see where the wall is and where the door is. The religious man is one whose eyes are open and he sees where the door is. Then there is no need to carry any idea that one should always go through the door – one simply goes through the door. When you know, that very knowing becomes your virtue.

Socrates says, “Knowledge is virtue” – a very pregnant statement. To know, is to be right; to know, is to do right. Through knowing, right comes on its own like a shadow. Virtue is a by-product of right knowing. It need not be practiced. If you practice it, it is false. The practiced morality is a false morality, it creates only hypocrites. Morality is that which is not practiced at all, it happens simply because you know – your eyes are open, you can feel, you are sensitive, so the wrong cannot happen anymore. The religious person is neither moral nor immoral, he is simply religious. Religion is a higher standpoint than morality. Morality is an effort to pretend to be religious.

A religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. To be religious is to be so vast you cannot confine it in such small prisons – churches, sects, creeds, dogmas.

A religious man has no catechism.

Christians in India asked me again and again, “Why don’t you make a small book containing your religious vision, just as we have the Christian catechism?”

I said, “You can, because you are not religious. I cannot, because I am religious.My experience is so vast that no words are capable of containing it.”

Religion has not ever existed up to now. Only once in a while has there been areligious person. And whenever there has been a religious person, soon the pseudo-religious people, politicians with religious masks, gathered around. It is not Jesus who created Christianity. It is not Buddha who created Buddhism. It is not Mahavira who created Jainism.

 

The ordinary religious man leaves the world; the really religious man leaves ambition, leaves hoping, leaves imagination. Knowing through experience that every hope comes to a point where it becomes hopelessness, and every dream comes to a point where it becomes a nightmare, and every desire comes to a point where nothing but discontent is left by it in you – knowing this through experience, one becomes seasoned, mature. A growth happens in consciousness. Out of this growth one drops ambition, or the ambition drops by itself out of this growth. Then a person becomes religious.

One lives the moment, and lives it so totally because there is no hope and no desire in the future. One brings his whole being to the moment and then the whole life is transformed. It is fun, it is a feast, it is a celebration. Then you can dance and you can laugh and you can sing, and to me this is how a religious consciousness should be: a dancing consciousness, more like children, less like dead corpses. Your churches, your temples, your mosques are just like graveyards – too serious.

A religious man is one who sees that he is ordinary. A religious man is one who sees that he is exactly the same as others and he does not pretend to be special, because the very idea that “I am special” is foolish, the very idea that “I am the chosen one” is egoistic. And a religious man cannot claim that. A religious man has no claim. He simply accepts and he realizes that he is a part of this cosmos as you are a part of this cosmos. He never puts himself above you. This is his superiority, that he never puts himself above you. This is his “aboveness,” that he never thinks that he is extraordinary or special in some way. He never carries the attitude of “holier than thou.” He knows that you are also gods and goddesses. Maybe you don’t recognize it – that’s the only difference.

You may not see who you are, but I am seeing who you are. The day I recognized who I am, I recognized everybody’s innermost core. A religious person cannot think he is special. And a religious person cannot think that you are condemned, that you are sinners. A religious person starts laughing. He laughs at you because you are a saint and thinking yourself a sinner. He laughs at you because you are God and thinking yourself somebody else. The whole thing seems to be absurd – what a drama. Everybody is having a mask and has completely forgotten his own original face. Your original face is God’s face.

 Love, Swami Rakendra

Rakendra

Rakendra said:

Thank you for your input.  We will pause here and consider some of the ideas of Osho on this matter.  Here are excerpts from some of his teachings.

           “I am not a religious person in your sense. I have a totally different definition of being religious. To me the religious person is one who is totally alive, intensely alive, aflame with love, aware of tremendous beauty all around; has the courage to rejoice each moment of life and death together. Only a man who is so capable of rejoicing in life and death – his song continues. It does not matter whether life is happening or death is happening, his song is not disturbed, his dance does not waver?”

Only such an adventurous soul, only such a pilgrim of existence is religious. But in the name of religion man has been given poor substitutes, false, phony, meaningless, just toys to play with. Worshipping statues, chanting man-made mantras, paying tributes to those who have been cowards and escapists and who were not able to live life because they were so afraid of death, and calling them saints, religion has distracted man from true and authentic religiousness.

 

 

Judgment is moral, and morality has nothing to do with religion. That misunderstanding has to be dropped. People always confuse morality with religion. Morality has nothing to do with religion; a moral man is not necessarily a religiousman. An atheist can be moral, perfectly moral. You can find the moral man in Soviet Russia – there is no need for the moral man to be religious. A religiousman is a new dimension.

The religious man can drop his morality because now he has his own eyes; he need not have any other guides. His eyes are enough. It is as if you were blind and you used to have a stick with which to walk around, to grope your way, to find your way with the stick…then one day your eyes open. Will you still carry the stick? You will throw it away. Now it is meaningless, now you don’t need to grope. Now the walking stick is no longer a help, it will be a burden.

See the distinction. It is of immense import. The religious man is one who is not concerned with doing good, but whatsoever happens through him is good because he has surrendered himself to God; and all is good through God, through surrender to him. He cannot do wrong. It is not possible. It is impossible to do wrong when you are alert. It is as impossible as to walk through the wall or to try to walk through the wall when your eyes are open. You will find the door! It is as simple as that.

But a blind man sometimes tries to get out through the wall. He cannot; there is no possibility. But a blind man is a blind man; he cannot see where the wall is and where the door is. The religious man is one whose eyes are open and he sees where the door is. Then there is no need to carry any idea that one should always go through the door – one simply goes through the door. When you know, that very knowing becomes your virtue.

Socrates says, “Knowledge is virtue” – a very pregnant statement. To know, is to be right; to know, is to do right. Through knowing, right comes on its own like a shadow. Virtue is a by-product of right knowing. It need not be practiced. If you practice it, it is false. The practiced morality is a false morality, it creates only hypocrites. Morality is that which is not practiced at all, it happens simply because you know – your eyes are open, you can feel, you are sensitive, so the wrong cannot happen anymore. The religious person is neither moral nor immoral, he is simply religious. Religion is a higher standpoint than morality. Morality is an effort to pretend to be religious.

A religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. To be religious is to be so vast you cannot confine it in such small prisons – churches, sects, creeds, dogmas.

A religious man has no catechism.

Christians in India asked me again and again, “Why don’t you make a small book containing your religious vision, just as we have the Christian catechism?”

I said, “You can, because you are not religious. I cannot, because I am religious.My experience is so vast that no words are capable of containing it.”

Religion has not ever existed up to now. Only once in a while has there been areligious person. And whenever there has been a religious person, soon the pseudo-religious people, politicians with religious masks, gathered around. It is not Jesus who created Christianity. It is not Buddha who created Buddhism. It is not Mahavira who created Jainism.

 

The ordinary religious man leaves the world; the really religious man leaves ambition, leaves hoping, leaves imagination. Knowing through experience that every hope comes to a point where it becomes hopelessness, and every dream comes to a point where it becomes a nightmare, and every desire comes to a point where nothing but discontent is left by it in you – knowing this through experience, one becomes seasoned, mature. A growth happens in consciousness. Out of this growth one drops ambition, or the ambition drops by itself out of this growth. Then a person becomes religious.

One lives the moment, and lives it so totally because there is no hope and no desire in the future. One brings his whole being to the moment and then the whole life is transformed. It is fun, it is a feast, it is a celebration. Then you can dance and you can laugh and you can sing, and to me this is how a religious consciousness should be: a dancing consciousness, more like children, less like dead corpses. Your churches, your temples, your mosques are just like graveyards – too serious.

A religious man is one who sees that he is ordinary. A religious man is one who sees that he is exactly the same as others and he does not pretend to be special, because the very idea that “I am special” is foolish, the very idea that “I am the chosen one” is egoistic. And a religious man cannot claim that. A religious man has no claim. He simply accepts and he realizes that he is a part of this cosmos as you are a part of this cosmos. He never puts himself above you. This is his superiority, that he never puts himself above you. This is his “aboveness,” that he never thinks that he is extraordinary or special in some way. He never carries the attitude of “holier than thou.” He knows that you are also gods and goddesses. Maybe you don’t recognize it – that’s the only difference.

You may not see who you are, but I am seeing who you are. The day I recognized who I am, I recognized everybody’s innermost core. A religious person cannot think he is special. And a religious person cannot think that you are condemned, that you are sinners. A religious person starts laughing. He laughs at you because you are a saint and thinking yourself a sinner. He laughs at you because you are God and thinking yourself somebody else. The whole thing seems to be absurd – what a drama. Everybody is having a mask and has completely forgotten his own original face. Your original face is God’s face.

 Love, Swami Rakendra

About Love

I found this teaching and would like to share, although I have no idea if anyone is reading!!!!

 

Love Yourself... Love is the nourishment for the soul. Just as food is to the body, so love is to the soul. Without food the body is weak, without love the soul is weak. And no state, no church and no vested interest has ever wanted people to have strong souls, because a person with spiritual energy is bound to be rebellious. Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings to soar high. Love gives you insight into things, so that nobody can deceive you, exploit you, oppress you. And the priests and the politicians survive only on your blood – they survive only on exploitation. They are parasites, all the priests and all the politicians. To make you spiritually weak they have found a sure method, one hundred percent guaranteed, and that is to teach you not to love yourself – because if a man cannot love himself he cannot love anybody else either. The teaching is very tricky. They say: Love others – because they know if you cannot love yourself you cannot love at all. But they go on saying: Love others, love humanity, love God, love nature, love your wife, your husband, your children and your parents, but don’t love yourself, because to love oneself is selfish according to them. They condemn self-love as they condemn nothing else – and they have made their teaching look very logical. They say: If you love yourself you will become an egoist, if you love yourself you will become narcissistic. It is not true. A man who loves himself finds that there is no ego in him. It is in loving others without loving yourself, in trying to love others that the ego arises. Love knows nothing of duty. Duty is a burden, a formality. Love is a joy, a sharing; love is informal. The lover never feels that he has done enough; the lover always feels that more was possible. The lover never feels, ‘I have obliged the other.’ On the contrary, he feels, ‘Because my love has been received, I am obliged. The other has obliged me by receiving my gift, by not rejecting it.’ The man of duty thinks, ‘I am higher, spiritual, extraordinary. Look how I serve people!’ A man who loves himself respects himself, and a man who loves himself and respects himself respects others too, because he knows, ‘Just as I am, so are others. Just as I enjoy love, respect, dignity, so do others.’ He becomes aware that we are not different; as far as the fundamentals are concerned, we are one. We are under the same law: Es dhammo sanantano The man who loves himself enjoys the love so much, becomes so blissful, that the love starts overflowing, it starts reaching others. It has to reach! If you live love, you have to share it. You cannot go on loving yourself forever because one thing will become absolutely clear to you: that if loving one person, yourself, is so tremendously ecstatic and beautiful, how much more ecstasy is waiting for you if you start sharing your love with many many people! Slowly the ripples start reaching farther and farther. You love other people; then you start loving animals, birds, trees, rocks. You can fill the whole universe with your love. A single person is enough to fill the whole universe with love, just as a single pebble can fill the whole lake with ripples – a small pebble. Man has to become godly. Unless man becomes godly there is going to be no fulfillment, no contentment. But how can you become godly? Your priests say that you are a sinner. Your priests say that you are doomed, that you are bound to go to hell. And they make you very much afraid of loving yourself. That’s why people are such great fault-finders. They find fault with themselves – how can they avoid finding the same faults in others? In fact, they will find them and they will magnify them, they will make them as big as possible. That seems to be the only saving device; somehow, to save face, you have to do it. That’s why there is so much criticism and such a lack of love. I say this is one of the most profound sutras of Buddha, and only an awakened person can give you such an insight. A person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means being with yourself. If you hate yourself – as you do, as you have been told to do, and you have been following it religiously – if you hate yourself, how can you be with yourself? Meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness and celebrating yourself. That’s what meditation is all about. Meditation is not a relationship. The other is not needed at all; one is enough unto oneself. One is bathed in one’s own glory, bathed in one’s own light. One is simply joyous because one is alive, because one is. The greatest miracle in the world is that you are and that I am. To be is the greatest miracle, and meditation opens the doors of this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate; otherwise you are always escaping from yourself, avoiding yourself. Who wants to look at an ugly face and who wants to penetrate an ugly being? Who wants to go deep into one’s own mud, into one’s own darkness? Who wants to enter the hell that they think they are? You want to keep this whole thing covered up with beautiful flowers and you want always to escape from yourself. Hence people are seeking company continuously. They can’t be with themselves; they want to be with others. People are seeking any type of company; if they can avoid the company of themselves anything will do. They will sit in a movie house for three hours seeing something utterly stupid. They will read a detective novel for hours, wasting their time. They will read the same newspaper again and again just to keep themselves engaged. They will play cards and chess just to kill time...as if they have too much time! Love begins with you yourself, then it can go on spreading. It goes on spreading of its own accord; you need not do anything to spread it. “Love yourself..." says Buddha. And then immediately he adds: "... and watch." That is meditation, that is Buddha’s name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don’t love yourself and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide. Many Buddhists feel like committing suicide because they don’t pay attention to the first part of the sutra, they immediately jump to the second: watch yourself. In fact, I have never come across a single commentary on The Dhammapada, these sutras of the Buddha, which has paid any attention to the first part: Love yourself. Socrates says: Know thyself, Buddha says: Love thyself. And Buddha is far truer, because unless you love yourself you will never know yourself – knowing comes only later on, love prepares the ground. Love is the possibility of knowing oneself. Love is the right way to know oneself. “Love yourself and watch...today, tomorrow, always.” Create loving energy around yourself. Love your body and love your mind. Love your whole mechanism, your whole organism. By love is meant: accept it as it is, don’t try to repress. We repress only when we hate something, we repress only when we are against something. Don’t repress, because if you repress how are you going to watch? We cannot look the enemy eye to eye; we can look only in the eyes of our beloved. If you are not a lover of yourself you will not be able to look into your own eyes, into your own face, into your own reality. Watching is meditation, Buddha’s name for meditation. Watch is Buddha’s watchword. He says: Be aware, be alert, don’t be unconscious. Don’t behave in a sleepy way. Don’t go on functioning like a machine, like a robot. That’s how people are functioning. Watch – just watch. Buddha does not say what has to be watched – everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine – watch everything, “today, tomorrow, always.” A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your body is awake but you are asleep. Then you will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness isconsciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature. As you become more watchful you start having wings – then the whole sky is yours. Man is a meeting of the earth and the sky, of body and soul.   Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 5, Talk #5