Quotes of wisdom 2005
(Kam’s collected notes)

With language occurred the first corruption, the first lies & the first fairy tales. So children continue to believe such things are true until life proves them to be false. You can make children believe anything, even that you are magical & wise, but your pose is doomed because life will instruct them by experience that you have deceived them & are not wise; eventually they will not listen to you or consult you. Later, having failed as grown-ups to find wisdom in themselves, they will pretend to their own children that they are wise, with the same tragic results.

Self-knowledge is the process of becoming de-hypnotized.

Impressions in memory are the cause of most of the pain & misery in your life & everyone else’s. But the memory also contains facts. With impression-memory man argues. With factual memory he gets things done.

Man enters the world of imagination & opinions – the world of the false.

You have to see yourself exactly as you are – not as you imagine you are.

As you continue watching yourself you will observe that you are a habitual liar. Even recounting a simple happening you will observe yourself lie or exaggerate for no reason.

The truth is that once you discover something is false you lose interest in it.

You do not live up to the standards of behaviour & thought you profess & expect from others.

Life is a stream sweeping you along & the facts are like immoveable rocks in the middle of the stream. Face each fact as it presents itself & rest. The stream will carry you around & beyond. Struggle away from the fact by not facing it & you fight against the stream of life & suffer. It is the law. There is no other way.

People imagine happiness is associated with possessions, whether money, houses, cars, television sets, pretty girls or handsome men. They never cease imagining this even though in their own experience the happiness of possession inevitably wilts & droops. So the false is tolerated & believed because the fact is not faced & is therefore powerless to bring the new.

When your thinking is unreal, so are you. When you are angry, you are anger.

It takes tremendous power to remain the observer under provocation. But anger being false, cannot exist in the spotlight of intelligent observation.

Man reacts or responds to the world according to how deeply an idea or impulse penetrates him. I am going to give you a model of man in which there are seven levels of reaction or response, as follows:

1. Physical reaction
2. Thought
3. Attitude
4. Feelings/emotions/desire
5. Knowledge/responsive man/personal love
6. Sensation/feeling/impersonal love/beauty/joy
7. Being

There is a natural sequence from the first to the seventh so an impulse from the world travels from the physical towards the level of being until it stops in any one of the levels.

If nothing is desired & nothing is not desired there is a state of equilibrium.

Reaction is the desire to cling to the past or resist the new.

You react & suffer according to the strength of your desire.

When you think, you are thinking.

The strength of a relationship cannot be known until after it is broken. Then the original desire reappears, modified by experience.

Desire itself can only be eliminated by desiring, & that always results one way or another in pain for the desirer.

There is no desire without thought. The more desires we have the more we think. Most people think all the time, even when there is no apparent working of desire in them. This is thinking caused by the ego’s desire to exist.

The ego’s desire to exist is our desire to know. It is our most insatiable & powerful longing, stronger even than the body’s desire for survival.

Any thought at all will satisfy the ego, for it is concerned only with experiencing.

The law is: divide & die.

Your being unites; your mind divides.
Division is death to your being & life to your mind.
Only by division does the individual robot grow.
Union is death to your mind & life to your being.
Union is immortality.

To divide yourself from your being is living death.

Your being knows only two states. One is the state of neutrality or rest; the other is beauty. Neither beauty nor neutrality requires judgment.

Being either likes or loves (& in the absence of thought that is beauty); or being is neutral & life is spent in innocent indifference to most of the things around you.

To consciously reach your being you have to resist the mind’s constant demand for activity, & endure the restlessness, loneliness & discontent.
 
The eternal law of magnetism is that opposites attract & like repels like.

Yet in the world of man, or the world of man’s mind, like attracts like & opposites repel.

In the mind-world no-one knows all the facts so there is little hope of complete agreement.

Where are your opinions taking you? Nowhere. Except towards useless conflict. There is nowhere else to go.

The fact of human love is that a man or woman desires to live with the loved one so that he or she can absorb the other entirely, possess them by knowing everything about them. This desire contains its own destruction. The period of fulfilment, of knowing each other, does not usually last very long; because there is not much to know & not much worth knowing in men & women unless they love God or the truth. Truth & God are depthless & timeless & those who love them develop the same qualities.

The understanding of love comes from the knowledge that you are nothing. The greatest purity is nothing or nothingness – no thinking, no desiring, no imagining. You are then one with the moment & the great moment of life so nothing is not right. Every moment is perfect & everything that happens is eternally just.

The movement each day is for your opinions to grow stronger & more numerous. This is especially true of youth as the robot thinkers gradually sew them up in a cocoon of imagined rights & wrongs & good & bad which all proclaim yet ignore when it suits them - & are insulted if told so.

You have to resist the terrible, crushing, at times almost unbearable pressure of the robot world about you that will do anything – expose you to hate, vilification, tears, ridicule, taunts of insanity, even psychological crucifixion – to make you conform to its way of thinking, get back into line & join the dead who bury the dead.

The first desire is for self-preservation.

In the same way, all the senses are a defence system-for self-preservation.

Beyond the desire for preservation of the self, the organism or the species, is the desire for power.

The desire for power, for power’s sake, is the beginning of mechanical man, the robot.

Fear exists only in imagination.

You fear death because you know in your own experience that it will take away all your power, position, prestige, possessions – everything you imagine you are. Fear is not a fact. It is an assumption. Fear is your constant companion & merciless whip. The most pressing, ever-present fear is the fear of what people will say. You are afraid when you think you will lose your life, power or possessions. But you are not afraid in the moments of losing them.

If your desire for power, position, possessions & permanence disappear your body would not die. All that dies is your fear.

You cannot change while you desire. Your strongest desires dictate what you do.

Your desire for power is partly fulfilled when someone praises you, honours you, obeys you, serves you, works for you, quotes you, borrows from you or listens to you.

In a man’s youth the motive, applauded by all, is the desire to meet the challenge, to pursue fame & fortune. When he gets responsibilities he pursues exactly the same things, only now the motive is called duty. From time to time there’s an exciting challenge & he forgets his excuses or motives, pursuing success or power with zest; but always the tendency inside him is to pull back. A sort of weariness begins to show through, & this has to be quickly covered up. In middle age the motive becomes security, or something like it. In old age, when the pursuit is old & has lost its vigour (but not its virulence), there are more frequent moments when man asks himself, ‘what was it all about? What did I gain? But by then it is too late, for soon anything gained will be taken in death.

Desire-power is easily identified: you will always imagine that you stand to gain something by using it. The greater the desire-power, the greater the effort or sacrifice.

Will is the power that overcomes desire. Will-power is equilibrium, the absence of desire or reaction. Anything that is equalised is in balance, at rest.

Desire is the stamp of the herd, the unconscious mass.

Everyone has desire-power. But will-power is buried under it. Until you have started to realise the pain & futility of living as desire, will-power remains hidden & involuntary.

You cannot change your desires; they change themselves under the following circumstances –

1. When they are fulfilled
2. No longer appear to offer satisfaction
3. Some alternative means of fulfilment has appeared
4. When you realise the desire is false
5. It causes so much pain that a desire to avoid it replaces the original desire

The basic driving desire for power can never be fulfilled. But it can cease to exist when you experience most of what power stands for, & see with an indescribable realisation that it is nothing, that what you have always been chasing is just a road to nowhere.

     Barry Long

The endocrine glands – sometimes called the ductless glands because they have no ducts but secrete their hormones directly into the blood stream – are closely related, supplementing & depending upon each other. Their minute secretions are responsible for the differences between a moron & a genius, a giant & a dwarf, a vital & a sickly individual. The following glands form what is known as the endocrine system:

The pituitary gland, which considered the master gland, controls the inner mobility & agility of our system. It is responsible for proper body growth, proper development of our other glands & organs, & our sexual development. It also maintains the efficiency of the various structures & prevents excessive accumulation of fat.

The pineal gland, which acts within the body as a kind of balance wheel, harmoniser & organiser, controls the development of the other glands & keeps them within their proper range of activity. The pineal gland is believed by the yogis to be the connecting link between microcosm & macrocosm & is therefore considered of great spiritual value.

The thyroid gland is responsible for our system’s inner activity, preventing the retention of water, sluggishness in the tissues, & densification of the bones. It is the degree of the thyroid activity that determines whether a person is alert or dull, quick or slow, animated or depressed, mentally keen or apathetic.

The parathyroid glands determine the stability within our body-in other words the maintenance of its metabolic equilibrium-by controlling the distribution & activity of calcium & phosphorus in our system. The parathyroids keep a balance between these elements, & thus provide the body with a sense of tranquillity & peace.

The thymus gland is active during childhood but shrinks in size & importance by the age of puberty. During the early years of our life this gland prevents premature mineralisation & hardening of the bones, so that growth & development may take place normally.

The adrenal glands promote inner energy. A man’s drive to action, the keenness of his perception, the level of his activity, vigor & courage are all influenced by the secretions of this glands.

The gonads or sex glands make our personality radiant & magnetic, give us the ability to attract others & to inspire affection. Sparkling eyes, luminosity, self-reliance & self-assurance are invariably an indication that these glands are in good functioning order.

By Indra Devi from renew your life through yoga

In the animal world, of which man is a part, he is the only creature who maintains over periods of time a complete tension of the body
 
   Hans Selye, MD

Relational ‘knots’ or polarisations occur when two parties are locked in opposing positions, where no movement occurs no matter how much they discuss it. An example of an intimate knot that takes many forms is: “If you really loved me, you’d change to meet more of my needs” versus “If you really loved me, you’d accept the way I am.”

   Diana Alstad

Four kinds of atoms in the Vaiseshika system, each possessing certain characteristic properties such as number, quality individuality, mass, gravity, fluidity, velocity, & certain potentials of sense stimuli. The four types correspond to the grosser matter of material phenomena: earth, water, fire, & air. (The fifth element, ether or space, is considered to be non-atomic in structure, serving only as a receptacle of sound). Spherical in shape, atoms have a characteristically vibratory or rotary motion.
Atoms have an inherent impulse to unite to form molecules & as long as they are not subject to the influence of corpuscles of heat, atoms of the same elementary substance unite to form homogeneous binary molecules. 
Under the impulse of their basic tendency to unite into larger aggregates, binary molecules then combine to form ternary (3) & quaternary (4) molecules. In this way the variety of substances belonging to the same element class results from the molecular combination & configuration of atoms of that element.
On the other hand, polybhautic compounds are formed by the union of atoms of hetrogeneous substances belonging to the various classes of bhutas or gross matter.

The atomic theory of the Jaina system offers an interesting hypothesis about the formation of chemical combinations. According to this theory (AD. 40), mere contact between two atoms or molecules is not sufficient to produce a compound. Such composition is, rather, based on an interlinking which must precede the compound’s formation. This interlinking can only take place between two particles of opposing character, though no linking is possible if the opposing qualities are feeble or defective.
On the other hand, particles of homogeneous quality can only unite to form molecules if the strength & intensity of one particle is at least twice as great as the other’s. This linking forms the basis of all qualitative transformations in atoms.

The physical characteristics of the five subtle elements & their isomeric modes were classified as follows:

Earth-substance: heavy, tough, hard, inert, dense, opaque; exciting the sense of smell. Square.

Water-substance: liquid, viscous, cold, soft, slippery, fluid; exciting the sense of taste. Circle.

Fire-substance: hot, penetrative, subtle, light, dry, clear; rarefied & luminous. Triangle.

Air-substance: light, cold, dry, transparent, rarefied; impingent. Crescent half-circle.

Ether-substance: imponderable or light, rarefied, elastic; capable of sound (vibrations) dot.
 
Each of the substance, it was believed, is a fivefold ultra-compound, & in this sense is penta-bhautic, or a combination of the five original subtle elements, each of which can be found in a lesser or greater proportion in a particular substance. Thus ether is the vehicle of air, heat, light & water. Air, the combination of water vapour, light & heat & even five particles of earth, held in an indeterminate state. The colour & sensible qualities of a substance result from its structure, the arrangement of its atoms & its physio-chemical properties resulting from the relative preponderance of a specific substance in its composition.

According to Laksmi Tantra:
The place of earth element is considered to be up to the waist;
The place of the fire element is up to the heart;
The place of the ether element is up to the ears;
The place of ahamkara is up to the fontanelle;
The place of mahat is up to the brows;
The place of the Absolute is in the space above the head.

The earth element of the body is dissolved by that of water, water by fire, fire by air, air by ether. Ether, finally, is absorbed into the subtle principles until the source of all is reached. By the dissolution of the five gross elements, together with the subtle principles & all the organs of the senses & intelligence-stuff (mahat), into Prakriti, a gradual process of involution takes place. After having thus recreated his own body, the sadhaka acquires the capacity for proper ritual worship.

From the Tantric way by Ajit Mookerjee & Madhu Khanna

After studying scores of couples, Dr. Dorothy Tennov-psychologist, concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years.

In this world, a look can hurt & a word can crush. Intimate lovers can become enemies, & marriage a battlefield. What happened to the ‘in love’ experience? Alas, it was but an illusion by which we were tricked into signing our names on the dotted line, for better & worse. No wonder so many have come to curse marriage & the partner whom they once loved.

They fall out of love, & at that point either they withdraw, separate, divorce, & set off in search of a new in-love experience, or they begin the hard work of learning to love each other without the euphoria of the in-love obsession.

Dr. Peck writes the ‘falling-in-love’ is a genetically determined instinctual component of mating behaviour. In other words, the temporary collapse of ego boundaries that constitutes falling-in-love is a stereotypic response of human beings to a configuration of internal sexual drives & external sexual stimuli, which serves to increase the probability of sexual pairing & bonding so as to enhance the survival of the species.

Presently 40 % of first marriages in this country end in divorce.
60 % of second marriages & 75 % of third marriages end in the same way.’

In fact, true love cannot begin until the ‘in-love’ experience has run its course.

5 Love languages:

1. Words of affirmation
2. Quality time
3. Receiving gifts
4. Acts of service
5. Physical touch

Requests give direction to love, but demands stop the flow of love.

When an action doesn’t come naturally to you, it is a greater expression of love.

 Our choice to love was made in the midst of negative feelings towards each other.

From The love languages by Gary Chapman

Be patient....long patience is high penance,
Nothing is higher than nirvana.

Let us live happily,
Hating none though others hate,
Let us live without hate among those who hate.

Let us live happily,
Free from impurity, among the impure,
Let us live purely among the impure.

Let us live happily,
Ungrieving among others who grieve,
Let us live without grief among those who grieve.

No fire like passion, no sickness like hate,
No grief like self-concern, & no joy like peace.

No disease like greed, no sorrow like desire,
He who knows this is fit for nirvana.

The Buddha

To enable this (kevala kumbaka) to take place, physically the practitioner’s skin must breathe easily & the practitioner must have sufficient alkaline reserves to tolerate increased amounts of co2.
   Simon-Borg Oliver & Bianca Machliss

The outer dissolution: The senses & the elements

The outer dissolution is when the senses & elements dissolve. How exactly will we experience this when we die? The first thing we may be aware of is how our senses cease to function. If people around our bed are talking, there will come a point where we can hear the sound of their voices but we cannot make out the words. The means that ear consciousness has ceased to function. We look at an object in front of us, & we can only see its outline, not its details. This means that eye consciousness has failed. And the same happens with our faculties of smell, taste & touch. When the senses are no longer fully experienced, it marks the first phase of the dissolution process.

The next four phases follow the dissolution of the elements:

Earth

Our body begins to lose all its strength. We are drained of any energy. We cannot get up, stay upright or hold anything. We can no longer support our head. We feel as though we are falling, sinking underground or being crushed by a great weight. Some traditional texts say that it is as if a huge mountain were being pressed down upon us, & we were being squashed by it. We feel heavy & uncomfortable in any position. We may ask to be pulled up, to have our pillows made higher or for our bed-covers to be taken off. Our complexion fades & a pallor sets in. our cheeks sink, & the dark stains appear on our teeth. It becomes harder to open & close our eyes. As the aggregate of form is dissolving, we become weak & frail. Our mind is agitated & delirious, but then sinks into drowsiness. These are the signs that the earth element is withdrawing into the water element. This means that the wind related to the earth element is becoming less capable of providing a base for consciousness, & the ability of the water element is more manifest. So the ‘secret sign’ that appears in the mind is a vision of a shimmering mirage.

Water

We begin to lose control of our bodily fluids. Our nose begins to run & we dribble. There can be discharge from our eyes, & maybe we become incontinent. We cannot move our tongue. Our eyes start to feel dry in their sockets. Our lips are drawn & bloodless, & our mouth & throat sticky & clogged. The nostrils cave in & we become very thirsty. We tremble & twitch. The smell of death begins to hang over us. As the aggregate of feeling is dissolving, bodily sensations dwindle, alternating between pain & pleasure. Heat & cold. Our mind becomes hazy, frustrated, irritable & nervous. Some sources say that we feel as if we were drowning in an ocean or being swept away by a huge river. The water element is dissolving into fire, which is taking over in its ability to support consciousness. So the ‘secret sign’ is a vision of a haze with swirling wisps of smoke.

Fire

Our mouth & nose dry up completely. All the warmth of our body begins to seep away, usually from the feet & hands towards the heart. Perhaps a steamy heat rises from the crown of our head. Our breath is cold as it passes through our mouth & nose. No longer can we eat & drink or digest anything. The aggregate of perception is dissolving & our mind swings alternately between clarity & confusion. We cannot remember the names of our family or friends or even recognise who they are. It becomes more & more difficult to perceive anything outside of us as sound & sight are confused. Kalu Rinpoche writes: “For the individual dying, the inner experience is of a roaring blaze or perhaps the whole world being consumed in a holocaust of fire.” The fire element is dissolving into air & becoming less able to function as a base for consciousness, while the ability of the air element to do so is becoming more apparent. So the secret sign is of shimmering red sparks dancing above an open fire, like fireflies.

Air

It becomes harder & harder to breath. The air seems to be escaping through our throat. We begin to rasp & pant. Our in-breaths become short & laboured, & our out-breaths become longer. Our eyes roll upward & we are totally immobile. As the aggregate of intellect is dissolving, the mind becomes bewildered, unaware of the outside world. Everything becomes a blur. Our lasting feeling of contact with our physical environment is slipping away. We begin to hallucinate & have visions: If there has been a lot of negativity in our lives, we may see terrifying forms. Haunting & dreadful moments of our lives are replayed & we may even try to cry out in terror. If we have led lives of kindness & compassion, we may experience blissful, heavenly visions, & ‘meet’ loving friends or enlightened beings. For those who have led good lives, there is peace in death instead of fear. Kalu Rinpoche writes: “The internal experience for the dying individual is of a great wind sweeping away the whole world, including the dying person, an incredible maelstrom of wind, consuming the entire universe. What is happening is that the air element is dissolving into consciousness. The winds have all united in the ‘life-supporting wind’ in the heart. So the secret sign is described as a vision of a flaming torch or lamp, with a red glow. Our in-breaths continue to be more shallow, & our out--breaths longer. At this point blood gathers & enters the ‘channel of life’ in the centre of the heart. Three drops of blood collect, one after the other, causing three, long final out-breaths. Then, suddenly, our breath ceases. Just a slight warmth remains at our heart. All vital signs are gone, & this is where in a modern clinical situation we would be certified as ‘dead’. But Tibetan masters talk of an internal process that still continues. The time between the end of the breathing & the cessation of the ‘inner respiration’ is said to be approximately “the length of time it take to eat a meal,” roughly twenty minutes. But nothing is certain, & this whole process may take place very quickly.

The inner dissolution

In the inner dissolution, where gross & subtle thought states & emotions dissolve, four increasingly subtle levels of consciousness are to be encountered. Here the process of death mirrors in reverse the process of conception. When our parents’ sperm & ovum unite, our consciousness, impelled by its karma, is drawn in. During the development of the foetus, our father’s essence, a nucleus that is described as ‘white & blissful,’ rests in the chakra at the crown of our head at the top of the central channel. The mother’s essence, a nucleus that is ‘red & hot,’ rests in the chakra said to be located four finger widths below the navel. It is from these two essences that the next phases of the dissolution evolve. With the disappearance of the wind that holds it there, the white essence inherited from our father descends the central channel towards the heart. As an outer sign, there is an experience of ‘whiteness,’ like ‘a pure sky struck by moonlight.’ As an inner sign, our awareness becomes extremely clear & all thought states resulting from anger, thirty-three of them in all, come to an end. this phase is known as ‘appearance.’ Then the mother’s essence begins to rise through the central channel, with the disappearance of the wind that keeps it in place. The outer sign is an appearance of ‘redness,’ like a sun shinning in a pure sky. As an inner sign, there arises great bliss, as all the thought states resulting from desire, forty in all, cease to function. This stage is known as ‘increase.’

When the red & white essences meet at the heart, consciousness is enclosed between them. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, an outstanding master who lives in Nepal, says: “The experience is like the meeting of the sky & earth.” As an outer sign, we experience a ‘blackness,’ like an empty sky shrouded in utter darkness. The inner sign is an experience of a state of mind free from thoughts. The seven thought states resulting from ignorance & delusion are brought to an end. This is known as ‘full attainment.’ 

Then, as we become slightly conscious again, the Ground Luminosity dawns, like an immaculate sky, free from clouds, fog or mist. It is sometimes called “the mind of clear light of death.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: “This consciousness is the most subtle mind. We call it Buddha nature, the real source of all consciousness. The continuum of this mind lasts even through Buddhahood.”

The death of ‘the poisons’

What then is happening when we die? It is as if we are returning to our original state; everything dissolves, as body & mind are unravelled. The three ‘poisons’-anger, desire, & ignorance- all die, which means that all negative emotions, the root of samsara, actually cease, & then there is a gap. And where does this process take place? To the primordial ground of the nature of mind, in all its purity & natural simplicity. Now everything that obscured it is removed, & our true nature is revealed.  A similar unfolding can happen when we practice meditation & have the experiences of bliss, clarity & absence of thoughts, which indicate, in turn, that desire, anger & ignorance have momentarily dissolved.

   The Tibetan book of living & dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

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