Learning to flow in meditation to fearlessness and relaxing into the feeling that everything is unfolding perfectly.

I wanted to share something meditation as a process of entering into fearlessness, to present what meditation might be in relationship to our feeling side. Sometimes meditation is looking at from the view of calming the mind by letting go ...of thinking. When we meditate there is sometimes an LA freeway of thoughts running through our internal highways. This kind of mind cannot be forced into mental silence. This kind of intention only drives the thoughts into the unconscious where they manifest in turbulent dreams. It is wiser to feel the emotional tone of the thoughts and notice that they are processing a lot of fear. When we accept that we are afraid and anxious, then the mind starts to calm down. When we can look at our fear, own our fear, embrace our fear, and become friends with our fear, then we relax even more. In a paradoxical way, we are no longer afraid of our fear, we are no longer trying to become fearless. If we try to become fearless, then we are in resistance and actually get more stuck in the pattern of fear, and our thoughts race faster and faster in an effort to lash out at something that seems responsible for the fear. It is really perfect that this kind of meditation awareness can possibly arise when everyone might be dressing up as their favorite fear and wandering the streets on one side and everyone is campaigning against what they fear might happen politically.

When thoughts are felt and we acknowledge the fear tone about them, then the intellectual details of our fears become secondary to what is being felt. We do not analyze in meditation, we do not add thoughts to thoughts. Simply feeling the fear and noticing how fear was trying to escape itself and is no longer doing so is already a deep relaxation. We notice that analysis and debate are driven by subtle fears. The thoughts slow down naturally as we notice this. Ideally, if we have not already done so, our breathing reflects this process and also calms down into deep and full inhales and soft and slow exhales with gentle transitions of one turning into the other, rather than holding our breath anywhere.

If we are sensitive enough, we will notice certain thoughts are more core to the movement of fear than others. Most thoughts are reactive and merely embellish the fear, but some thoughts are very core to the fear, like a whirling vortex, like a tornado, and having a kind of empty center to itself. The energy of the tornado is fueled by a subtle sense of self clinging, of feeling a need to protect oneself as a body and mind, as a self identity, with all its system of attachments, possessions, resistances, and opinions about what is right and what is wrong. This subtle self clinging is behind a kind of constructed "me", our personality, and which holds the energy of anger, fear, and sadness. Again the secret is acceptance that this is what we have made ourselves to be and what we sometimes keep reinforcing through our seeking, latching on to things, and resisting other things, especially on the level of thoughts and emotions, anchoring in the sensation of being hurt and feeling pain, and not wanting to repeat a karma rerun and yet doing this very often both internally and externally as the tornado keeps spinning in circles.

The paradox is that we can release the whole energy of this tornado by surrendering into the fear happening, by releasing our resistance to what is feared. The object of the fear, the mental pictures of past atrocities and future apocalypses, are, as the Buddha said, "empty of a solid self", they will probably not ever really happen and if they did they would pass away very quickly anyway. It is the fear that makes what it resists feel solid and real, just as it makes the constructed self identity feel solid and real. It is, in some sense, this fear tornado that makes our world. When the fear is met inside and we surrender to our Golgotha, we die very quickly, and we notice a level inside us that cannot die. It is silent, eternal, peaceful, empty, clear, wise, compassionate, and creative without needing to manifest anything to show that it is creative. It may feel like a leap to go from the depths of fear into fearlessness so easily, but when a tornado stops whirling, a fever does calm down, and the landscape feels both quiet and cleansed.

I do find the metaphor of a tornado to be a good one, because inside the eye of the tornado is a quiet empty space, nothing solid, nothing that seems real, and yet this empty space is more real than the tornado itself, which is just a frenzied activity which disappears completely in one moment of not doing. In a strange way, one does meet a "new heaven and a new Earth" after our tornado apocalypse, or, as one poet said, "both a new world and the old world made explicit" or as the Upanishads said, "the ancient yet evernew". The "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" comes to an end, and the silent Earth remains. The Buddha conquered all the forces of Mara by simply touching this Earth.

Anthem to Meditation 24/40

Thus I had heard, Guatama Buddha was fasting upon one grain of rice a day for six months. He was pushing himself too hard. With great concentration and dedication to his meditative discipline, he became skin and bones. His skull almost protruded from his skin. When doing walking meditation, when trying to cross a tiny stream, he tripped and fell into the water and almost drowned. He struggled hard with his weakened body and finally carried himself to the back to solid ground. Looking at his reflection in the water, he saw that he discipline only carried him closer to physical death. "If I cannot easily cross this tiny stream," he thought to himself, "How can I cross the great of sorrow? How can I help liberate all sentient beings from their all sorrow?" At that moment, relaxed all effort, and in the silence of a receptive mind, the truth of the middle way dawned within his understanding. He saw that renouncing and struggling against all pleasure was not the way. He saw that indulging and trying to have the most pleasure possible was also not the way. He saw that becoming caring to himself and others, being sensitive to what is truly needed and truly nourishes, giving to himself and to others what is needed, no more and no less than what is needed, it was possible to grow beyond the grip of sorrow and attain supreme perfect enlightenment. He further reflected, "I have struggled with all the meditative tools that all my teachers have given me to work with, fighting experience of sorrow every moment, waging war against sorrow, storming its castle, scaling its walls, hammering through each and every barrier it placed in my path, all this effort has only exhausted me and sorrow still reigns upon this world, people are born in pain, experience loss of love, cry in grief when they lose those they love, one by one are killed by death, cry in agony when tortured and hurt, feel pain when harsh words are spoken to them, feel pain when they are deprived food, when they have limbs cut off, when disease befalls them, when wars destroy their villages, when monarchs make them slaves, when wild animals gnaw at their bodies, when robbers plunder their wealth, when earthquakes, floods, and fires wipe out their crops, and when meteors crash and annihilate vast regions of their lands. I realize that I do not even know what this thing called sorrow even is. I have been too busy fighting and resisting sorrow to ever feel what it truly is. What is this thing called sorrow? How does it arise, how does it abide, how does it change, and what makes it finally dissolve? What are the causes and conditions that makes sorrow thrive? What are the causes and conditions that allow sorrow to dissolve? Is sorrow necesary to human life, animal life, and cosmic life? Do all beings experience sorrow? Is it possible to cut the root of sorrow so deeply and so completely that it never arises ever again? Does sorrow serve any useful purpose? Can any positive purpose that sorrow has be replaced by something that does not have strain, agony, or hardship within itself? How can I understand what sorrow is? How can I penetrate its mystery and power to touch its essence?"

As Buddha silently contemplated his question, Tara disguised as the cowgirl Sujata magically appeared carrying rice boiled in sweet milk, a healing remedy, to bring the tired, ill, and worn out Buddha back to life. The Buddha was on the verge of dying, yet whenever anyone is on a sincere quest to find the truth of life, then life itself will bring what is needed, guard against the foolishness of our quest, bring us back on track, and heal us when needed. Tara, one with this wish of life, came to the Buddha, healed him, talked with him, and encouraged him. Fortified by this contact, the Buddha resolved, "I will not stop my meditation upon sorrow until I have attained supreme perfect enlightenment." With this confidence, born of Tara, he sat down in a perfect lotus, formed the mudra of perfect peace, turned his two physical eyes inward to his 3rd eye, and simply watched the movement of sorrow, without clinging or resisting anything, but reflecting everything perfectly, nonreactively, and impartially, like a mirror, curious as a child, as patient as a mature adult, and as sincere as a seeker of truth who knows that he or she does not know, and humble enough to learn.

He simply watched the movement of sorrow, saw the 12 nidanas in action, feeding each other, reinforcing each other. He saw his sense organs contact sense objects, activate samskaras in his subconscious mind, trigger an internal reaction, inspire craving, resistence, and delusion, breeding unconscious activity, giving rise to an isolated sense of self, forming a destiny of struggle, exhausting himself, feeling sickness, old age, death, and rebirth. His memory opened up. He saw lifetime after lifetime of cause and effect, linking all events within his lifestream, propelling him to an unknown future where even more sorrow was guaranteed. Little bursts of joy and hope kept alive his seeking, craving, grasping, possessing, and defending what he had found. Yet these gains were always transitory, were always taken away from him. He found he could not keep the people that he truly loved in his life. Although he would attract them back, lifetime after lifetime, each temporary loss was painful and every temporary meeting, no matter how joyful, had a subtle lining of sorrow because of the unconscious knowing that this joy would end. He saw memories of burying and cremating thousands upon thousands of loved ones, groaning and crying at their passing, and then seeking new loves to replace the old moves, feeling a deep aloneness within himself, wandering in worlds of sorrow, never finding more than temporary solace in the arms of a silently and slowly decaying lover, seeing body after body undergoing decay, death, cremation, wandering through the bardo, seeking rebirth into yet another body that is karmaically destined also to die.

Not so well known to some traditions, Tara came to him, made love to him five times. First through earth element love, grounding him in the simple essence of a humble earth life that could accept and live with transitoriness, accepting the Earthy humble woman who would be a devoted friend, taking refuge in each other, and being with each other. Then as a water element lover, playful, flowing, dancing, gently moving to tidal rhythms, ebbing and flowing with the moon, feeling harmony, flowing together. Then appearing as a fire element lover, passionate, intense, exciting, and electric, each surrendering to powerful intensity and letting each other be fully and totally overwhelmed, riding the energy wave into the unknown, so fully in present time and passion to not care where life was taking them, then exploding into the air element, expanding into joy, moaning, sounding, crying, moving this way and that, throbbing. Then as space element lovers, resting simply in snuggle space, feeling borderless warmth, being motionless, and simply being. In this fivefold element love dance, Tara initiated him, completed him, and lead him into the childhood sorrow of having lost his mother in her birthing of him. He deeply and fully cried, ended the cravings that emerged from his heart, sunk into the Earth, was held, and ended all separation from life. He no longer gave rise to any sense of separate self and all its dilemas of seeking. Tara kissed him and left him on his final day, blessed him as a spiritual teacher of humans, animals, hungry ghosts, asuras, and angels. He moved deeply into the depths of silence and emptiness within him, fell into the luminous levels of bliss, moved beyond all the worlds of form and formlessness, and found a deep and abiding sense of inner peace, beyond change and changelessness. When morning dawned in the 41st day, the planet Venus arose as the morning star, pulling him back out in the ordinary world of humans and animals, forests, oceans, and trees. Touching the morning star with his three eyes fully opened, he realized that he had attained supreme perfect enlightenment, and would soon contemplate how to serve, heal, and teach the human world, how to guide all sentient beings beyond sorrow. His body radiated a blessing energy into the world and was already inspiring people to move beyond their sorrows, a silent teaching vibrating within the sound of "ah", inviting people to let go, let go, truly let go, completely let go, letting go without strain or struggle, fall into their wounds, allowing life to fully heal all wounds, and then to awaken and rejoice in the wonder of being alive.

In deep meditation for 24 hours per day for 40 days, not wasting energy and so not needing to sleep for that time, not lost in thoughts and thought conflicts that would drain energy, having done karma mudra early in his life with Yasodhara, Jnana Mudra with White Tara, transmuting emotions through visionary elemental lovemaking, fear into wisdom (tram), sadness into compassion (hreeh), anger into creativity (ahh), jealousy into surrender (hung), and arrogance into enlightenment (ohm), and then eventually reaching mahamudra with the formless universe (ohm-ah-hung), Buddha awakens and abides in intuitive wisdom (ah), ever resting in the unborn, the unchanging, and the undying, maturing to show the 32 marks of perfect male and female hormonal balance, and eventually ending aging and death in his body (and then sacrificing his physical body to burn away a portion of the planetary karma and recreating another body, a light body, from the universal prana, and then guiding the healing of this planet from Mount of the Holy Vulture). The Buddha then starts his role as world teacher.

Questioning Eternal Hell

My spiritual life went through three basic phases. They were a seeker, a Christian, and then a Buddhist. There were some subphases involved in each of these. I started out within Evangelical Christianity and transitioned to contemplative Christianity, almost joining the Pecos Benedictine Monastary at one point. During my contemplative time, I was devoting myself to contemplative prayer. I was using the writings of Underhill, Brother Lawrence, and the unknown author of THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING. I would eventually transition into Zen meditation and Buddhist meditation, mainly because its wordlessness spoke deeply to me. It felt like a deeper truth was found in silence, without any partisan mental interpretation. It is like the communication two between a man and woman in love, expressing how they feel passionately and nonverbally, through touch and tenderness. Words eventually do get in the way and even the most lofty words seem more hollow than the tender caresses of someone who is communicating loving affection.

The exercise that was contained in THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING was to write a beautiful devotional poem prayer towards the Divine, and then condense in stage by stage into less and less words, until you had only one word. The word could simply be "God" or "Truth" or "Life" or anything that symbolized the highest living reality that there was. It would be preferable that the word be only one syllable. You then repeated the single word, over and over, making each repetition as if done for the first time. Each repetition was meant to call forth the mood and feeling of the larger prayer, just as the syllable "Ah" is meant to contain the entire Heart Sutra in Buddhism. From the vantage point of THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING each repetition is to pierce the Cloud of Unknowing that is between a person and the Divine, until the barrier is lifted and oneness is felt.

I found that by such focused repetition that I went into deep concentration and experienced many intermediate spaces. Many of them moved way beyond the world and were relatively free from sorrow. They were not Nirvana, but were abodes where sorrow did not exist but still could be shaken and allow us to fall back into sorrow. I pressed on further, as the book instructed, and continued to focus, calling forth as much love and devotion as I could. After a few months of this kind of prayer, I entered a space that was flooded with Divine Love. It felt very warm and luminous. The feeling of love present in this space was hard to describe, or rather hard to do justice in words. All the words of the devotion poem seemed hollow in the light of what was experienced. The feeling of devotion in the poem prayer was as different from what was experienced as a romance novel is to an actual deep passionate romance or as different as a menu is to the actual meal. In that space, I feel with clarity that this Divine Love only wished for our good, our happiness, and nothing more. It could not even wish for us to be pricked by a pin and could not, by any stretch of imagination, wish for the ultimate cruelty of eternal damnation. In this experience of Divine Love, I jettisoned clearly and completely any belief that eternal damnation could be true. It was seen as clearly and completely false. In fact, it looked like the exact opposite of unconditional Divine Love. What could be more of an opposite of a love that automatically and completely forgives everyone for everything that they have ever done? The dogma of eternal hell is that some god tortures you every day forever and ever with no hope of ever escaping this judgment, no chance to repent and be free, no chance to atonement for the torture with any kind of remedial task, and no chance to even have the pain even lessen some, and that each moment is as painful as being burned alive without the relief of even being able to die and ceasing to exist. Even further, the teaching is that every day you know that the judgment of god is just and that you deserve this horrible and cruel eternal fate. As such it is even worse than Prometheus, who knew he did good, and, even though tormented for aeons, he saw his eventual vindication and release from sorrow with his ability to see into the future.

It has been over 30 years since that initial experience of Universal Unconditional Divine Love and the original clarity of that experience is still with me and still evolving me. What I see now that Christianity is a little insane because it tries to hold a contradiction between "God is Love" and "God throws people into Hell forever, tormenting them every day." It is a confusion between love and violence that inspires the abusive treatment of children in the name of punishing them and disciplining them for their own good or torturing Native Americans until they accept Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior and then burning them to death before they can change their mind (thereby saving them from eternal damnation, strangely logical deduction about what to do with nonbelievers given the initial insane belief, any torture to convert someone is justified and better than leaving them as nonbelievers in the hands of an angry, primitive, unforgiving, violent, and righteous god, the insane logical deduction being further proof of how much of a contradiction there is between unconditional divine love and highly conditional eternal damnation).

I further do not believe that the dogma of eternal hell was part of the original teaching of Jesus, do not believe that the dogma of eternal hell is even really very biblical, and I further do not believe that the idea is conducive to human sanity. I later came to understand that the idea is even demonic and that Christianity has a demon infecting its thinking and will always have a demon infecting its thinking until it releases all allegiance to this idea. The dogma of eternal damnation reduces Christianity down to an evil brainwashing cult more extreme than any other evil cult in the history of religion. It is behind every war lead in the name of Christ, even justifying Christians killing Christians. It is the reason why Christianity as a whole had the bloodiest track record of any religion in known history. It has justified the torture of countless pagan and even heretical Christians relative whatever the prevailing dogmas were. Every other rotten dogma that Christians have ever believed has been fueled and supported by this one dogma.

For instance, Christians have been intolerant of all "nonbelievers" whether they believe in god, many gods, or no gods. They are all lumped together and given the same judgment. Why? Because Christians believe that god did the same thing and threw all nonbelievers into eternal hell forever and further that THEY DESERVED IT. If they believe that nonbelievers SHOULD BE TORTURED FOREVER rejecting Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior, then it justifies treating all nonbelievers very badly, mocking and poking fun at their beliefs, attributing the worse motives to their behaviors (they have to be so bad in truth that they deserve to be tortured forever every single day but having their burned alive without the respite of death). Think about what this means since human judges may give only three consecutive life sentences to a serial sociopathic psychopathic killer or just kill them as punishment for what they have done. They do not torture these killers and even then not forever and ever. There is a sense of just proportion to human justice, that the punishment must fit the crime. But infinite torture for a finite amount of crimes can NEVER be proportionate. Further, the argument that it is "god's mysterious will" does not work, because there is NO CHANGE IN OUTCOME from the torture. It might be strangely justified if it lead to a person having a change of heart, like a person who is more loving to everyone after seeing the cruelties of war. But the people tortured in hell never have a chance to ever change their heart and leave to a better place. A mysterious will operating at a higher wisdom than ours only makes sense if it leads to something good, but eternal hell does not lead to anything good at all. It is not like a criminal who is sentenced, pays his or her dues, has remorse for what he or she did, and learns to be a good citizen. In other words, the dogma of eternal damnation leaves no chance of ever explaining how Divine Love could do this to anyone.

What makes an evil religious cult is a strong distinction between the "in group" and the "out group", with a hostility towards the outgroup (all those who do not belong to the group). In the psychological and sociological studies of extreme cults (many of them believing in eternal damnation for nonbelievers and many of them justifying intense treatment of nonbelievers through this dogma, both as a motivator to convert them so that they can avoid the cruel fate and as a fear tactic to scare them into joining), the strong distinction and the hostility towards the out group is key in their formation. The dogma of eternal damnation, by its very definition, is the most extreme distinction you can make between in group (believer) and out group (nonbeliever) with one going to eternal blissful heaven while the other goes into eternal endless torment. It also has the god behind the dogma modelling extreme hatred of the outgroup (torturing them forever for rejecting his son). The punishment of eternal damnation is given in "righteous wrath".

From a hypnotherapy view, the power of ideas, when believed, leads to emotional states. There is no good state that can come from believing this idea. It makes the in group (believers) intolerant. The very idea is the most intolerant idea possible. Nonbelievers are not tolerated at all. They are not merely left alone. They are not even merely wiped out and killed. They are tortured forever because of how bad they are. Because of this, any ideological inter-religious dialogue cannot truly be based on "mutual respect". You cannot really respect someone if you feel that they are so bad that they should be tortured forever, while you are destined by the mere fact of believing the right teaching to go to eternal blissful heaven.

If we consider Christianity barbaric for having justified slavery, treated women as inferiors to men, and stoning homosexuals for merely having an alternative sexual orientation, then all of these criticisms pale in comparison to torturing people forever merely because they disbelieve.

I am mentioning all this because the constant bombardment of the dogma of eternal hell, from it the preachers who preached it, all the churches that have believed it and still believe it, from all the forums that have discussed it, and from all the books that presuppose it, has desensitized people to how cruel, evil, and barbaric the idea really is. The dogma of eternal damnation, more than any idea, is the exact opposite of Unconditional Universal Divine Love (which I feel is at the very heart of everything that Jesus taught).

I would go further to ask why Christians have not been bothered by this dogma. Why has this contradiction not been fully seen? Why has this contradiction not been jettisoned completely from a religion that supposed to believe in love, forgiveness, nonjudgment, and grace? How different is this dogma to Jesus teaching people to turn the other cheek, bless those who curse them, pray for those who persecute them, resist not evil, forgive people again and again, and love your enemies. Jesus uses the metaphor of the rain which pours on everyone equally and the sun which shines on everyone equally. Then he wants us to be merciful as his god is merciful. In other words, we are meant to forgive underconditionally because that is what god aka love does. There is no need for atonement for sins. Imagine that someone wrong me and comes to ask me for forgiveness and I say, "Wait, before I accept your forgiveness, I must vent all the wrath that you deserve on to my cat, have it squirm in pain, die nailed to a board, and then resurrected from the grave." You then see me severely torture the cat with what I feel you deserve. You would wonder how sane I was. The funny thing is that even what Jesus gets from god in the atonement story is less than what a single nonbeliever gets in hell. No matter how horrible was the wrath that the scape goat of god got, he could at least die and become free from the pain. The poor nonbeliever gets to be tormented with extreme agony forever with each day really being more than he or she could bear. It is curious that fire is used as a symbol for the extreme torture, because the sheer pain of being burned alive is so painful that many burn victims die because the pain is too much for them (but at least they can die).

I could come from a few other sides about the dogma of eternal hell, but my hope that it is not necessary, that calling this false and vicious idea for what it really is will be enough. But just to summarize the main points:

1. that the idea is a logical and psychological contradition to Unconditional Love
2. that it confuses love and violence and therefore justifies all kinds of cruelty that plays out in history and which has not stopped.
3. that it defines a radical difference between the saved in group and the not saved out group, the latter which is believed to be deserving of eternal punishment, and therefore promotes intolerance and hatred of the out group, and even has justified torturing them, killing them, and making them slaves.
4. that it has inspired a lot of cruel events that can look very demonic in modern times, with events so cruel that you might barf your dinner and have bad dreams if you heard them described in detail.
5. that if this teaching is a foundational tenet of some versions of Christianity and that if it is, for instance, one of the five fundamentals of Christian fundamentalism, then it may be considered sufficient proof that those versions of Christianity are false or at least in need of severe revision (unless they want to solve the contradiction by jettisoning belief in Unconditional Divine Love which I think would even be a worse mistake).
6. that it is a demon inspired dogma or a demonic meme (a mental virus which infects the mind and harms it, causing it to go insane and even become more intolerant and hateful), and that as long as a Christian tradition, or any tradition at all, believes the meme it will continue to have a demon lurking in it and causing all kinds of problems and suffering for people (some Christians who do believe it are less affected by simply not taking the belief seriously or not really believing it).
7. that it does not allow the cultic Christians who believe it to engage in mutually respectful dialogue with other religions and possibly learn from them (or at least forms a barrier of intolerance of heretics that is hard to overcome).
8. that it makes the cultic Christians fear based, guilt based, punitive, dogmatic, and intolerant.

In answer to one of the questions raised earlier about why this contradiction between Unconditional Divine Love and Eternal Damnation has not been clearly seen and felt so that mature and sane Christians jettison it (like C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald and many universalists eventually did), it is because the meme had already taken root and build buffers around itself. It is for the same reason that many Whites in the South could be very loving to other Whites and not feel the need to love the Black slaves enough to set them free, treat them as equals, care for them, and not beat them. A kind of cognitive disodence happens to protect the meme. The study of memetic buffers is an interesting one in its own right. But the first step in releasing the idea is to "call a spade, a spade" to name the ugly meme for what it really is so that it can be released. It does indirectly link to the immortalist theme, because feeling that Divine Love pervades the universe is behind physical immortality, that heaven can replace hell here on Earth. The belief that "death is necessary and inevitable, that there is nothing you can do to stop it, and that you are a fool for trying" is another meme (and another theme for another day). Releasing these kinds of memetic infections does increase our health, happiness, and longevity.

The Need for Life Extension

I wanted to share some thoughts that I did glean from some of the immortalist literature that I had read. It seems that this theme has been explored a lot by science fiction authors. It is interesting sometimes to read about an immortal character and what they learn from having lived on this planet for a very long time. It seems that actual immortals like Saint Germain, Padmasambhava, Shantarakshita, Babaji and others seem to drop out of the usual flow of conventional history. They usually keep their longevity a secret, since this makes their life easier. A number of scientists would like to verify the immortalist claims of such beings. But the word "claim" may not be the right word. They will sometimes honestly assert the truth of their longevity when asked, since for them it is nothing they have to prove to themselves. It can be verified by their memory of their long lifespan. Some of them had the fortune of being in social environments where the attainment was more acceptable, like in Northern India, the Himalayas, and Tibet. While others like Saint Germain would need to periodically move from place to place, start over again socially, and then move again, so that people would not notice that they were not aging and dying. Some anonymity is needed or useful for their lives. I have found this to be generally true.

The psychological profile of the immortals does seem to show something consistent. Some of it is common sense. Immortals would be independent thinkers, willing to question the nature of the truth of human life, and willing to live by what they theorize or discover. People who conform to the social consensus reality will not be immortalists, since all social consensus realities of the Earth are mortalist. They believe that physical immortality is not possible, is not desirable, is not natural, and/or is so difficult that it is not worth trying to attain. When I have shared the idea of physical immortality, I am met with the same basic thoughts against the idea. They come from atheists and theists alike. They are almost always the same. Occasionally there is some new wrinkle in the arguments, like whether or not telemere ripping during mitosis represents an absolute biological clock toward inevitable death that we can do very little about.

[FYI: I do not feel that the telemere clock is absolute and suspect that telemerase can repair the rips and that astragalus can help generate telemerase. If telemere ripping represented an absolute biological clock, then immortal single celled creates like amoebas should have died out. Single celled creatures have reproduced by mitosis and faithfully replicate their DNA from generation to generation over millions of years without telemere ripping stopping them. Since both the "children" of the mitosis are the "parent", the original cell that emerged from the life soup of the ancient world is still alive in all the subsequent mitosis produced cells. They do eventually die under certain circumstances, like extreme heat or by an antibiotic, but they have no built in terminus for their lives. Apparently this is also true for the Redwood Tree and the Creosote Plant. It seems, too, that reproduction and zygote formation "resets" the telemere clock in the human species, and therefore points to the possibility of healing telemere rips. I would take that actual immortals have walked the planet to be a kind of proof that this is possible too.]

As mentioned in an earlier article, the average lifespan of human beings has been increasing over the last 3,000 years. It has gone from the biblical generation of 40 years to the current lifespan expectation of 80 years. It seems to be pushing to 90 years. I did find it interesting that George Burns and Bob Hope both lived past 100 years, since I do feel that a sense of humor is an important immortalist factor. The numbers I am quoting are loose numbers. I would like for some more standardization to happen with immortalist studies. For instance, the Okinawa Diet was based on study of one of the longest lived cultures on the planet. They determined this by seeing what percentage of the total population lived past 100 and found 7 percent. While I liked this index for a measuring the longevity of a culture, there is some question about whether to count death by accidents, war, and plagues. It has been only in recent times, too, that census data on the people of a culture has been standardized and reliable enough to make comprehensive studies. This automatically filters out studies of more ancient cultures that might have some wisdom to share in this regard. The other problem with such studies is that, while documenting how people age and die, there has not been a prevailing belief that diet has been as critical a factor that I feel it is. The result is that people are not documented in such a manner that their longevity and their diet can be correlated. This is further compounded by the complexity of the diet process. Many people who are learning about the importance of right diet are changing their diet in stages. Sometimes going forward and sometimes going back, sometimes eating "good" food according to some standard, but too much food, sometimes mixing "good" food together with poor food combining, or eating good food that collectively is too acidic, even though individually is okay if they are balanced by more alkaline food. There is another problem, too, since to me "right breathing" alkalizes our blood stream and can reduce the effects of a slightly acidic diet and make it work, while another person who underbreaths may be undermining the effects of a healthier alkaline diet, since underbreathing does increase acidity. I also feel that eating animal flesh has karmaic consequences and does reduce lifespan. It takes some time to get all this right.

What is interesting is that in many traditional agricultural societies and early city states that the time a person entered into adulthood was around 12 to 14 years old. This is when the initiation took place. When the lifespan was only 40 years, this made sense, they had 75 percent of their life ahead of them. 25 percent was in childhood and teenagehood, 50 percent in adulthood, and 25 percent in old age. With a 80 year lifespan, this makes the first 25 percent being 20 years, the middle 20 to 60, and then 60 to 80 as the last 25 percent. With the lifespan pushing to 90 years and a 100 years, it seems that the age of becoming a functional adult is still 25 percent of this number. It does seem that somewhere between 20 and 25 we become functional adults. Unlike the early agricultural societies that had their initiations into adulthood at 12 to 14, we have more to learn to step into our societies as adults. We are expected to do some "intellectual specialization" to learn a mentally learned skilled through education and training, and then take a role in society. This is complicated by some specializations becoming obsolete as technology advances. New specializations are required and old ones are not needed anymore. This means that we need to keep learning and growing more than we had before. The Buddhist idea that everything is in constant change really shows up in the very rapid changes our society is undergoing. Curiously, there is a feeling that things have not changed much, even though the change has been enormous. Even people who want to go back to the "good old days" are picking time points to go back to that are not far in the past. It would be good to study ancient history to get a sense of where the human species has been and where it is going. Paradoxically, history is getting to be a bigger thing to study. We are making history as we go along and more records are appearing over time. We record more records than cultures some 1,000 years ago. We are replicating and sending data to each other at a very high speed thanks to the internet. If you get what it meant that a Buddhist monk would spend a whole year carefully copying a book by hand so that another Lamasary would have the information, and we now can clone over 500 books on a DVD in about 30 minutes to give to a friend using a computer, we have done the work of 500 monk years in that short a time. From books being rare and wonderful wonders of information in the ancient world, we are now flooded with so much text that we could not even read it all in an 80 lifespan, and not even in a lifespan of 500 years.

My sense is that the human lifespan needs to increase for a certain kind of growth and maturity to happen. The learning process required to become a functional and effective adult is going to increase for a certain mutational shift to happen. We are already involved in this process. We have already extended life further, doubled it, and need to do it again. It is how knowledge leads to more knowledge.

One way of understanding this is to imagine what it would have been like if Einstein lived for 300 years, that he kept pushing the knowledge envelope, that he kept going more deeply into general relativity. For instance, he apparently wrote down in his journal that we used the full capacity of our brain that it would turn into light [again, I am sorry that I do not have a documentary reference for this, but if someone has it maybe they can post a reference in the comment field]. Did he have a "light episode"? Did he, for a moment, feel his brain shift into light, or his whole body? Jesus transfigured his body into a light body when "praying" on a mountain and was witnessed by some of his disciples. I suspect that Einstein had a similar moment. This has happened to me also about three times. They happen as a kind of evolutionary fast forward, as a kind of glimpse about what is possible. I feel it will happen to more people as time flows onward.

With a longer lifespan, there is more time to learn more things that make life worth living, like picking up a musical instrument and learning how to play some songs. Musical intelligence I feel helps the brain to evolve further. Ideally we should all pick up an instrument and learn how to play it, for our growth, even if we do not become a concert pianist or a rock star. Learning more than one language helps a lot, because then we can see how one language is like a reality tunnel that shapes our perceptions and that we have stereo tunnels with two languages being mastered, and even more richness of perception when we can master scientific language, emotional language, musical language, artistic language, poetic language, and mathematical language.

What is curious is that the intentional to conquer aging and death shifts a lot of things for a sentient being. It opens up our thinking to living differently and more fully. Life becomes less about merely struggling to survive, reproducing some children, getting a small amount of happiness through certain activities, and then dying, but become more about a certain kind of learning, evolution, and growth that seems to have no terminal point, and which also has its own joy that is deeper and more rewarding than simply craving pleasurable sensations.

Padmasambhava was a kind of "renaissance" person, he learned many things on many frontiers. His education was well rounded even in "worldly arts" before he took to diving deep into meditation, attaining physical immortality, and then morphing his physical body into a light body. He still can be invoked through his mantra "Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum", since he promised to instantly appear to anyone who sincerely calls him through this mantra (in practice, it takes some time to feel him be present, since our telepathic sensitivity needs to activate and there are some obscuring karmas to overcome to feel his energy, but it is not too long, odds are something will be felt if one did 111,111 repetitions within 3 months).

It seems that in the early stages of an immortalist life, there is an interest in healing and growth, processing emotions, learning about ideal diet, mastering breathing, mastering Hatha Yoga and Chi Kung, and mastering meditation. For me, it seems that energy healing, breathwork, vegan diet, process oriented hypnosis, using sound (overtone chanting, crystal bowls, Tibetan singing bowls, gongs, Theremin, Djembe, and Hang Drum), and mastering herbs are important right now. I hope to devote some time to learning about "alchemy" in terms of monoatomic elements and calcinated mercury as it used for healing and for longevity. Like learning about the internet and computers in general, as it seems to link us all together and assist each other in such quests.

It may be time when immortalists can start coming "out of the closet" and living more out in the open now, though I do find it better to keep a little quiet about this still. I personally do not like the idea of being experimented on to determine my lifespan. I think it was interesting that Jesus did a transfiguration of his body into a light body to show his process. To me, this kind of proving feels more natural to me. In other words, if we focus on the immortalist life style we will have things like "light episodes" happen to us and other markers that we are succeeding in this goal.

There is a kind of patience and humility to this process. Unlike some religious traditions where they might settle for an internal experience of some higher state, the level of realization of something internal has to outpicture in the mind and body for an immortal. Krishnamurti, who has starting to believe that aging and death might not be necessary near the end of his life (and he lived around 90 years) and who was starting to do things like experiment with a raw diet and fresh vegetable juices, felt his brain had ceased to atrophy and was confident enough in this to offer his brain to science to study after he died. Unfortunately, brain science is still in its infancy and they could not verify much from checking his brain out. It looked healthy and intact. Maybe as science progresses more it will be able to study such brains and get more data from the studies. I think I know what Krishnamurti felt, though, that motivated him to assert that his brain had shifted and was not not subject to a kind of entropy any more. When I was studying his teachings and practicing awareness, I did feel my brain reach a kind of emptiness, clarity, and stillness where something deep and wonderful opened up. It did seem like we get worn out by "thinking, thinking, thinking" and when the brain ends thought of a certain kind and comes to a silent curious awareness that an aging, wear and tear, and entropy ends. I do find, too, when I am working with people that afflicted emotional states are usually accompanied by a large mass of thoughts that are running through the mind often and repetitively. I find I have to listen in a certain way to extract the information I need and to not get worn down with them. When the brain is alive, vibrant, and silent inside, it is a very different state and it feels like regeneration is happening rather than the brain get further worn down. I remember one line in a song by the Eagles that goes, "Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive your crazy."

I feel that the growth that humanity is capable of now needs the support of a longer lifespan, even with the advent of methods of accelerated learning. I would like for children to get this kind of vision of human life, to feel more is possible than merely being a worker-droid in an industrialized society, who has an intellectual training to be one cog in the social machinery and who might get obsolete when this niche is superceded by technological advance. I feel we can hold the vision of becoming prosperous enough to have some level of freedom from this kind of survival necessity and become free to pursue a kind of creative path. It does require some skill and there is more than one way of achieving this vision. Saint Germain lived as a prosperous aristocrat, while Babaji lives the life of a Hindu Sannyasin, eating simple meals (or at least used to, odds are pranayama has replaced food entirely, but if we adopted his path we would need to eat for a while), and staying in nature. I get the feeling we will be doing something different, having a kind of simple life in a high tech world. Appreciating nearby nature and not buying into extreme consumerism and the debt economy. I feel it is possible to avoid getting into debt and this simplifies life a lot. If we reject debt paths, then we will find other paths that are useful to move forward on. A lot of friends I know got locked down on a mortgage and many are getting out of the high mortgage payments and high interest (the interest can end up being more than the money borrowed by even 2x or 3x) by cashing out as best they can, selling their house short, and sometimes coming out with a small amount of money or a small remaining debt. The consumer world has created many paths with differing amounts of money being achieved by different people in different ways, with often very little proportion of hours to money gained when one compare the work of one person to another. Money itself is a strange phenomenon. It is necessary for the exchange of goods, has taxes looming in the background, and is nebulous at times how it represents wealth. Money itself can inflate and deflate in value, in terms of what it can buy at different points in history. One dollar could buy a good meal one time, but now it seems about 10 bucks is needed for the same meal. But wages were less per a hour before than now, the amount of work time a meal costs is more complex to figure out, especially since some people are living on a minimum wage while others are earning over one million bucks per a year and are even finding ways of not paying taxes on it. There is something excessive and unbalanced in all this. I consider a person prosperous if he or she manages to stay out of debt, can pay all their bills, and has a little extra to put into savings at the end of the month. I think the key is to find better and better options over time. I call the path, "enlightenment on a budget". For instance, I think eating healthy is better than medical insurance, because the latter only kicks in when you have an illness (unless a loophole makes the illness an exception and few are completely certain their insurance will cover the crisis when it happens), whereas the former might prevent the illness. Strangely enough, a lot of medical insurance has a deductible so you end going into debt anyway. Since some of them only cover serious debilitating illnesses, sometimes the coverage does not do any real good, since if you are so impaired that you cannot work, then the seemingly generous money you get to pay your hospital bill, minus down time, minus the deductible, minus all the money that you will not make from not being handicapped, you are out anyway. For whereas if you do yoga, eat healthy, live safely, and burn away accident producing karma, then you have a chance to keep your life evolving. Insurance does not help accidents to not happen and no insurance covers all severe accidents (aka death recovery medical clause) and money is usually not enough anyway. I concluded that they were really not worth it, but then some elements need to change in the lifestyle to do "preventative medicine". In short, I would rather put my money into things that further my healing process, than to plan to cover for possible bad events with incomplete coverage at best. Again, there is more than one path here, and part of being "in the world but not of it" is to navigate the options we have wisely.

Every Exhale is a Letting Go

Buddha became enlightened with an exhale (nir=out +vana=wind = nirvana). Jesus tore the veil of separation with an exhale (pneuma fyi john 19:30) and entered into unity consciousness. Every exhale is a microsurrender into the Divine and causes a micro-wave of relaxation that can be seen/felt. The only thing that prevents it from being total surrender are resistant thoughts that we are attached to and still identify with. What would happen if we concentrated so deeply on the natural mantra of breathing that all resistant thoughts were let go moment to moment with each exhale until we reached "no thought samadhi" (complete absorption without distraction in the object of attention aka breathing)?

Amritayana Kundalini Pranayama I

In my study of the Immortalist spiritual traditions, there are several themes that recur. One is that the practitioners were vegetarian or vegan, used herbs, did fasting and cleansing rituals, had good hygiene, and did some gentle physical exercise that helped energy to flow through their bodies. They all meditated everyday. Some meditated for 8.5 hours a per a day (Kriya Yoga), some for 2.5 hours per a day (Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga), and some for at least 1 hour per a day. They used mantras and mudras to help move the energy up the central spinal channel. They all practiced some kind of pranayama or conscious breathing. They had a spiritual philosophy of life, lived in harmony with nature, and trusted life to take care of them, and therefore lived without fear or anxiety.

In this writing, I would like to offer a version of the pranayama and call it "Amritayana Kundalini Pranayama". The combination of elements that form this yoga or practice is relatively unique, but all the elements have come from various immortalist traditions. I am emphasizing the internal elements necessary to make it effective and efficient. The goal is to empty the subconscious mind or alaya vijnana of all the samskaras (thought impressions or potential conditioned reactions that can be triggered by sensory experience). The physical body is an expression of the samskaras which are stored in the subconscious mind and when we transform our subconscious mind by emptying samskaras or physical bodies vibrate to a higher energy frequency and experiences light shifts, eventually becoming an immortal light body beyond aging and death.

Unlike some of the older traditions, I do not recommend padmasana or the lotus posture. There are several reasons for this. We are used to sitting in chairs and when we go into the lotus pose we do not do it correctly and this puts stress on the spine. I have tested a number of people during bodywork sessions, some of them leaders of various kinds of meditation groups and some of them just students of various meditation traditions. Whether they are the leaders or the followers, all of them, without exception, could not do the lotus posture correctly. It is not about discipline or will power, but that our bodies are usually unable to sustain a loose and erect spine well while sitting. The sitting in the Lotus posture is actually doing some harm. If a person feels called to do Padmasana, then I would recommend that one study and learn how to Hatha Yoga very well, and systematically stretch with great sensitivity, awareness, and breathing until the body is able to do this well. I would also recommend regular chiropractic adjustments with a chiropractor who preps the body before making the adjustments and also getting some massages and/or subtle bodywork. There is a lot that can be learned about how to exist in a human body, fully inhabiting our life on Earth, and how to be a loose erect spined biped who is able to flow with life. One of the primary causes of aging, to me, is that gravitational stress on the body from poor posture, poor function, and poor movement, with Tai Chi and Chi Kung teaching people how to correctly move and flow with life all the time. When we learn how to flow with life, use gravity like a sail boat uses the wind to glide across the ocean, stay dynamically centered and balanced while in motion, breathing in coordination with the extention and retraction of our arms and legs, then we will not experience gravity as an enemy but as a friend. When the body is free from this kind of stress, then its starts to gain the regenerative capacity to live a long and healthy life. Eventually, I think it would be good to be able to master Padmasana, but until we do, it is more of a growth goal than something usable now for our breath mastery.

What I feel is better to do is Shivasana aka corpse pose. This is lying down on the ground with spine loose and erect. There are several checks needed to do this asana correctly. It is deceptively simple, but it is not about merely dumping the body on the ground and having it go limp. Once lying down and checking the looseness and erectness of the spine, you want to bring up your knees and flatten the lower back to the ground, taking some deep and full breaths, letting all tension relax via the subtle stretching of the lower back, letting each exhale be a letting go. Once the lower back relaxes, then to gentle slide the legs back down to the ground, extending them, with toes gently pointed outward, away from the center line. The neck is then checked to see if it is holding any unnecessary tension, then the jaw, then the shoulders, and then to see if any vertebra in the spinal column are tight. The arms are to the side, with palms facing up, and the thumb and index finger tips touching each other. This hand mudra forms a valuable energy circuit that helps regulate the flow of internal energy. There are many hand mudras that are helpful, but this one is very usable in the long term. The palms up position encourages the shoulder/heart area to gently open up a little more, helping to release tension in the pectoralis muscles.

There are asanas which play off of Shivasana, which help deepen the pose, which help to release unnecessary tension from this pose. Many of the leg stretches are helpful. Almost all the lying down poses of Hatha Yoga can help to deepen Shivasana. Some of them should be done during each meditation session. It is also possible to use some massage tools to relax the muscles as well as various pressure point tools. Dzogchen Buddhist masters are seen in some murals pressing various meridian body points with their thumbs (and intoning "ah" while doing so) often with the assistance of an asana (pose) which helps an area to open up. There is a book called ACU-YOGA BY Michael Reed Gach (paperback, Japan Publications, Fifth Printing 1986, ISBN 0-87040-489-X) that is helpful and understanding Hatha Yoga from a meridian and energy flow awareness of the body. I could teach many classes on various still and moving asanas to help the kundalini pranayama to activate and move through the channels and circuits of the energy body. Right now, I can only give an outline of the practice and give some idea of the depth of relaxation necessary to be fully accomplished in Shivasana.

The inner aspect of Shivasana is that it is about deeply and fully letting go of all effort and tension. It is the mudra of surrender. You surrender so deeply that you become a corpse. You die to all your problems and issues. A dead person literally does not have any problems. The opposite of this conscious dying surrender mudra is "self clinging" which in the deep analysis of sorrow that the Buddha did is the source of all sorrow and all pain. The Sufis have a saying, "Die before you die," to summarize this yoga. They talk about "fana" (extinction/dying) and "baka" (resurrection/rebirth). There is more than one level of dying. Immortalist practice is paradoxical in that totally surrendering and dying to everything allows us to regenerate everything and live an immortal life.

One of the teachings of Kriya Yoga is that breathing is a mantra. Every breath has a sound. It is aspirated in the movement of the inhale and the exhale. This means that every breath, especially the exhale, is a form of chanting a mantra. Every exhale is a micro-surrender into the Divine or Quantum Field. Every inhale is a receiving of Grace or Quantum Aliveness from the Divine.

Notice your inhale and exhale, imagine that you are aspirating the sound "ha" on the exhale, like a soft whisper of the sound into the ear of a friend. Notice how this shapes the breathing. See if you can source the sound from the belly relaxing back into the spine, rather than sourcing the sound from the jaw. I recommend aspirating the sound with mouth breathing, rather than nose breathing. It is easier to get the feel of the breathing this way. Most of us underbreathe and need more air volume. When we only breathe through the nose, we usually keep our underbreathing intact. One Rebirthing saying is "Mouth breathing is energizing, nose breathing is balancing." If we start with nose breathing, then we have nothing to balance. If we start with mouth breathing, we will rapidly energize our bodies. It should quickly tingle with energy if we are doing it right. Then we can switch to nose breathing if we want to balance the energy flows.

Rebirthing breathing has these characteristics:

(1) In and out through the mouth or through the nose, but never a combination of the two (never in through the nose and out through the mouth or visa versa).

(2) Inhale and exhale connected into one smooth circle of breathing with no pauses between the inhale and exhale. This makes the breathing slightly faster.

(3) Inhale expanding the belly and exhale relaxing/softening the belly.

(4) The exhale is never forced or forceful. If we are pushing on the exhale, then it usually means we are moving into fear breath and need to make an adjustment. Fear breath is pushing something away.

I would also add these elements to Rebirthing breathing:

(1) Visualize receiving the energy of love, wisdom, and creativity from the atmosphere that surrounds us, imagine and feel that we are never alone, but are always in this energy.

(2) Visualize surrendering into this energy with each exhale, imagine that you are sinking deeper into gravity, the embrace of the Earth, and are allowing yourself to feel safe and held by life.

(3) Notice how the intention to receive on the inhale deepens the inhale, making it fuller, eventually expanding (without strain) the belly and rib cage into full lung breathing.

(4) Notice how the intention to surrender on the exhale makes the exhale softer and smoother. This is very important, because every exhale is a literal letting go into the Divine when done rightly. When we are consciously exhaling, then we are consciously letting go. This is especially true when our minds are focused on each breath and are not wandering in thought land (and thereby staying in ego control). Every exhale is a dying to ego control. If we concentrate our focus and intention this way, each exhale will very rapidly move us into the Divine Domain.

(5) As the body relaxes, the repressed emotional experiences stored in the chronically tense muscle tissues will surface. You want to "not cling, not resist" whatever is flowing upwards. Ideally it will pass through the third eye viewing screen and be gently released. If we get hooked into the thought flow, we can get lost in an ego drama and play out a karma, rather than finish with a karma. Getting hooked in is when we react with clinging or resisting to something in the emerging experience. This is the inner yoga. If we stay focused on the breath, stay in the exhale, stay in the let go, then the thoughts will flow out the crown chakra and be released and we will be done with whatever it is. This the gentlest way of healing karma and releasing samskaras or healing everything. Our dying to what arises is our gesture of trusting Divine Grace to do all the release work and karma burning work for us. The thought flow is "digested" by each chakra and then passed upwards until it is blown out the crown and done.

Shivasana is also ideal because it literally requires no effort to be in this state and the idea is to surrender even any other subtle effort we are doing until we reach deep trustful not doing of anything, completely trusting the Divine to do everything for us. This means that we can easily sustain this breathing meditation for many hours. If we are in a deep healing process, it is good to have time to continue as long as possible. I have gone many times for as long as 14 hours straight, not feeling hungry during this time, and then often only eating a light soup, herbal tea, and salad afterwards (or just one of those items).

It is also possible to come to "suspended breath" which is where we stop completely and with our bodies so deeply oxygenated that we do not need by breathe for a long pause (without any strain). It is a Nirvakalpa Samadhi experience, where deep cellular regeneration can happen. Some yogis in the past tried to do this through breath retention (holding) for long counts (Earth Element Breathing). But I found that Rebirthing breathing does it more strainlessly and naturally by just having each breath be a full and efficient prana generator for the body. When it first happened, I found I was not merely not breathing, but felt no pressure, need, or urge to breathe. It lasted for about five minutes. There was a serene kind of eternal silence, but unlike a deep space I had reached in Zen meditation, it was more grounded in the physical body.

There is another experience called "breath release" where our ego does temporarily and completely die, and releases its control of the breath. To me, this is when we enter "nirvana" (nir=out, vana=wind aka out wind or exhale or surrender). This is also, I feel, when Jesus "breathes his last" (exhales, breath releases) and tears the veil of separateness apart to enter into unity consciousness, and says, "It is finished". Breath release completes something very deep and ends something relatively permanently (there are more egos stored in the subconscious mind and need to also be surrendered). When we do breath release, we shift from Water Element Breathing (Rebirthing) to Space Element Breathing (zero ego control breathing).

Staying in the Mudra of Shivanasa, without fidgetting, staying aligned, or re-aligning when we notice we are off, helps deepen the surrender into the Divine. Part of Zen practice is the unity of practice and enlightenment, when you take on the posture or body of an enlightened being, then you also take on the mind of an enlightened being. The Mudra of Shivasana allows us to take on the surrender of an enlightened being to the Divine.

One powerful way of working with all this is within Tanran Reiki energy healing, where the receiver is holding Shivasana mudra and a Reiki practitioner is "opening the flows" so that every cell can participate in the surrender process. The Reiki practitioner lays hands on any blocked area and runs energy through this area until it opens up. This can accelerate the pranayama process and make more efficient use of our time.

Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh

I wanted to write a more informal sharing about my favorite mantra: "Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh". I first encountered the chant to Amida Buddha when I was in college, over 30 years ago from today. There was a book called THE LIGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS which touched upon many religions and mainly looked at their devotional side. There were two pages about the Pure Land sect and about Amida Buddha. The mantra struck a chord in me. I was transitioning, at the time, out of Christianity. Part of why this was happening was because of an experience in contemplative prayer where I went very deep into the heart of life and felt unconditional love at its core. When I felt this conditional love, for me and for everyone, I knew without any doubt that this energy could not even prick someone with a pin or cause them even mild hurt, and therefore could not throw nonbelievers into eternal infinite daily torture in a hell realm. I also had an experience where Jesus appeared in a vision and told me to become a Buddhist. The experience happened in a charismatic Christianity church where everyone was speaking/chanting in the tongues of angels. It felt very sweet and I saw Jesus descend upon the minister and shine healing light upon him. The minister then said that he felt a healing presence. After Jesus had established that he was more real than just an internal vision, that he was felt by another, and by all who were present in a general way (the congregation saying a gentle "amen"), he came directly to me and said for me to become a Buddhist. I was puzzled by this and only found out later, about 5 years later, why he had done so. I was then in Florida and was walking to the beach, contemplating a Sufi "koan" about alleviating the sorrow of the Divine. My ordinary mind could not solve it and yet I was determined to solve it, and something reached deeper than my ordinary mind, into my depths. A memory surfaced of my past lifetime with Guatama Buddha, in the memory was him chanting the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit. The memory was so deep and so vivid, that I was temporarily thinking in Sanskrit, could hear and feel the intonations of the syllables, the duration of each syllable, and even the mudra that Buddha was in (third eye lock in padmasana). The memory had the solution to the Sufi koan and also the answer to why Jesus had gently commanded me to become a Buddhist. He saw with his own spiritual inner eye that I was one of the original monks following the Buddha and needed to complete my journey with the Buddha, all the way to enlightenment, and even beyond this. I saw that there was no competition between all the religions, that a higher being like Jesus wants what is best for everyone, and guided me back to my original teacher. In a general sense, all the religions teach the same truths. Sometimes they also teach different things, but the lessons are compatible with the same growth, our evolution into a higher being who is more compassionate, more creative, happier, and wiser than we are now. I also got that some versions of Christianity and some of its teachings had become narrow, rigid, and dogmatic, and were not part of this more universal vision. Some branches of Buddhism also have this kind of flavor as well, but are less intense about themselves. It seems that the dogma of eternal damnation for nonbelievers has a lot of ill effects on consciousness when it is believed. It is the exact opposite of unconditional love, and confuses love and violence together. I do not think that Jesus believed this idea, but talked of a Divine Presence that caused the sun to shine and the rain to fall on believer and nonbeliever alike, upon everyone equally, that this loving energy forgave instantly whatever anyone had done, and that we are meant to emulate this energy as part of entering into a living oneness with this energy ("Be you merciful as your heavenly parent is merciful."). Many Christian saints have, in their own way, saw through the dogma of eternal damnation and saw that it could not be true about unconditional divine love.

In any case, the chant to Amida Buddha in the book mentioned was "Namo Amida Buddha". This represented to me an unconditionally loving divine energy, completely gracious, completely forgiving, that was free from the dogma of eternal damnation. I found that when I chanted the mantra, in a kind of gregorian plainsong fashion, while walking around the college campus late at night before going to sleep, that I felt better. I did not chant with any conscious idea of getting inner peace. I just chanted like Shinran had said, in gratitude for the energy blessing me without anything required in return and healing me, day by day, in its own time and in its own way, as I was able to receive. I just noticed that I would always feel better after I had done so. My chanting was not "scientific". It did not have any special subtle chord structure to it, no particular meter, and no particular intonation. It was just a devotional act in plainsong. I found that the shortest sutra in the Patanjali yoga sutras is only two words long, "Devotion frees". There is simplicity to devotion that links to the mysteries of unconditional love. Chanting allowed me to open up to and link with the blessing energy of Amida Buddha. It did not matter about the number of repetitions. The recited of the mantra so many times is just an excuse to stay immersed in the energy. The power of the mantra is in the being behind it who empowers its use. The mantra itself does make some difference, because it is the link.

I found in another experience, when I was doing a fair amount of lucid dreaming, that a wolf in dreamtime had leaped for my throat. As the wolf was coming to me, I found that I spontaneously chanted one just repetition of "Namo Amida Buddha" and the wolf dissolved. Although I did not understand mantras as well as I do now, this was a significant event. When a mantra penetrates into the subconscious mind and starts to operate there, then a deeper healing happens. Until this is reached, the mantric reflex is superficial and only produces a certain level of change. When we spontaneously chant it in dream time, then a certain deep letting go into the energy of love has become second nature, has transformed us and will continue to transform us.

Somewhere after this, the mantra started to shift even the outer world. It did not merely make me feel good inside. I would often chant with homemade mala beads. I found that after many repetitions that the mala would get charged with energy. I would often give them to people in sorrow and depression. The mood of depression would at least temporarily lift when they wear the beads. I kept chanting and charging the beads in meditation, and would end up giving them away. At present I do not have any more malas, but may get another one. It seems that love wants to share itself with others and healing them. I am quite certain it generates good karma to do this too, but it seems natural to give away love charged mala beads as part of how Amida Buddha wants to convert Earth into a Pure Land, how the very matter of the Earth is meant to be infused with loving energy.

During one transition, I was feeling a bit down when I was living in Seattle and delivering pizzas for Dominos. I started to chant to Amida Buddha and I got three times the amount of tips that I usually got. My brother was also working there and started chanting some when I mentioned this. It was not that I really needed the money. I had enough coming in and have always been frugal with money. But the money was a symbol that Amida Buddha could reach into our Earthly lives and touch it in tangible ways, raise our life condition through synchronicities, and more. A person could rationalize that I may have been in a better mood when chanting the mantra and people felt inspired to tip me more than usual as a result. But I was in good moods often and never noticed a triple increase in tips. Regardless of how the event is analyzed, some shift happened in feeling first and then manifested as a higher life condition with actual material changes happening too. I also saw that Amida Buddha did not care if you started chanting from greed, as long as you opened up and let yourself get transformed. The motivation would naturally purify if you continued.

Another event happened where a friend got a negative entity inside his heart. It was due to karma, to something unresolved with his mother, to something to do with misusing drugs, and with lying to and manipulating females in order to have sex. Much as I would prefer otherwise, there are demonic like entities that can enter into human life when certain karmaic thresholds are crossed. This entity was so fierce that it lifted out of my friend and tried to attack me. I chanted to Amida Buddha and this powerful light appeared in the room. The entity left the heart of my friend and my friend felt a dark cloud lift from his heart. He did not notice the radiant light in the subtle world, but did notice the effect of the light gently causing the entity to leave. It reminded me of Saint Catherine of Genoa, a Christian contemplative mystic, who said that God does not throw anyone into hell ever, but that some beings will run away from love into hell. Although love does not condemn, it illuminates the situation in truth, sees things exactly as they are, and forgives them. In self judgment, we may run away from that loving light, rather than be healed by that light. Negative entities project their own fears on this light and run away (or they let themselves get purified by this light and become free).

During the next phase, Amida Buddha appeared in dreamtime. I saw Sukhavati, the homeworld of Amida Buddha, with its radiant trees with luminous microspheres of light, with beautiful pools of water surrounded by rainbow colored rocks, with meditators in spheres floating in the sky, meditators on giant lotus blossoms floating on the pools, and meditators on the ground peacefully meditating. The weather is not harsh at all, so there are no buildings and no roofs. This world is said to have arisen, karma free, from the meditation of Amida Buddha. It was, in short, visualized into existence. Some Buddhists are horrified at the literalism of Sukhavati, of how birds will chant dharma verses from Sutras, of how many teachings become symbolically materialized into the landscape. But what I learned from this is that Earth is also strangely literally too, but in another way. Knifes, swords, and weopons are symbols of anger and fear. Buildings and walls are symbols of a harsh world where sorrow still reigns. In some way, even this world arises from a contemplation, but it is still under karma, carried from the past, held in the subconscious mind, and projected into our present experience. Sukhavati is meant to be visualized with Amida Buddha to transform our minds and raise it beyond karma. When something is a pure creation of mind, then it does not come from the causation of the past and therefore ends the chain reaction of sorrow that emanates from the past.

During this phase, Amida Buddha taught a lot of things directly, one of them being to add "Om" to the beginning of the mantra. He said this because he wanted the mantra to be for nonbuddhists as well. He wanted the mantra to be universal. He did not want the people who used the mantra to have to abandon whatever sacred path that they were on, but only to "add this advantage" if they wanted it. I remember meeting up with someone who was an open minded Christian and who still had a conditioned aversion to "Eastern Religions". Many branches of Christianity still actively condemn all other religions and do instill a sense of subtle fear about learning anything from them. But I asked this Christian to tune into and feel Jesus and he did feel something warm inside him. I then asked him to chant to Amida Buddha just ten times and then tune into Jesus again. He found that the strength of the contact grew manyfold. Amida Buddha had gently burned away some obscuring karma and helped deepen the connection to his own path. It was a kind of signal boost.

Amida Buddha taught about "meeting people in agreement". He said to focus on what people agree with, to notice where people already agree, and to expand from there. In this world, people often focus on what is disagreed upon and conflict with each other. If you listen sometimes, a vast amount of communication is about disagreeing with others. There is a kind of tension energy that appears when we do so. These disagreements are still part of what is, part of what happens here. We do not have to disagree with disagreement. But we can focus on the harmony already created and expand upon this. When there is disagreement, there is something like a logical contradiction. All thoughts are interconnected. If a person agrees with us on one point, they actually agree with all the other points by a kind of logical consistency. This means that they are holding a contradiction inside when they are disagreeing with us. We can either reinforce the place of conflict or link to the place where we agree and indirectly challenge the disagreement from within them, from the place of agreement. The second way is more peaceful.

In another dreamtime communication, about a year and a half later, Amida Buddha instructed me to add "hreeh" to the end of the mantra, the fire syllable. This addition symbolized that behind the chant is an experience of tingling energy in the body, a sign of karma being literally burned away, and that the action of the mantra is beyond mental theories and religious beliefs. Since then the mantra has taken its "final" form, stabilized, with no additions. But later on a visualization was added to the mantra where the seed syllables are placed as such "om" in white in the head at the third eye, "ah" in silvery blue at the heart chakra in the center of the chest, and "hreeh" in fiery neon red at the sacrum. The Tumo yoga mixing of bindu exercise is done similarly from this base. When this visualization is done, it accelerates the healing action within the subconscious mind and also empowers the mantra to go deeper when it is merely chanted.

Over the years, the mantra has worked faster and faster. Before it would take about 1,000 repetitions to notice a change. Now only 100 repetitions and I am in bliss. I find I am lifted into a deep space where I can send energy telepathically to friends. Sometimes only one repetition is needed to shift me. I usually head my emails with this mantra to remind me to keep operating from a raised life condition and not to fall into a certain kind of conflict with others. I notice that people, even thinking the mantra clearly and intentionally just once will have their auras slightly brighten. I can see how even one repetition always has its scientific result, but that humans need to repeat the mantra so that "brightness builds on brightness" until we feel it. One repetition usually has too subtle an effect for us to notice. This is not the fault of the mantra. Humans have dulled their energetic and emotional sensitivity so as to not feel so much pain. Their sensory threshold dulled so that they can live in a world which bombards them with a lot of intense messages from the media, from all kinds of pamphlets, fliers, books, videos, door to door preachers, from church pulpits, and even political rallies. All this information has desensitized humans to a very large extent. This is why it is good to go out in nature and be renewed. If we hang out too long in nature, meditating serenely and deeply, however, we do find the ordinary human world to be harsh and intense. It takes us some time to adjust. If we stay in the loving energy we tuned into when in nature, then we can slowly sustain this raised sensitivity and not be overwhelmed by a world which is driven by addictive craving, condemning negativity, and obscuring delusion.

The Pure Land sect focuses on having faith and reliance on Amida Buddha to cause you to be reborn in the Pure Land of Sukhavati when you die. But the Amitayus sutras focus on the other aspect of Amida Buddha which will cause us to experience health and long life on Earth. I call it the double insurance plan or "Amida Life Insurance". I do get that Amida Buddha wishes for the Earth to be a Pure Land where aging, disease, death, poverty, earthquakes, tidal waves, and harsh storms all come to end. There is a vision of physical immortality behind Buddhism that is not so well known. Padmasambhava, once broken from the cycle of death and rebirth, now lives in a light body that is not subject to aging and death. There is a realism, too, about all this, that if we do not pull it off, then we can be reborn in Sukhavati and continue our inner work. And if Earth is too harsh and difficult for us, then we can also leave and go to Sukhavati. It is wiser to hang out here, work through the karmas that are presented to us here, and continue to grow. We can serve and help others at the same time. The Divine Grace or Blessing Energy of Amida Buddha is such that, even if we die, we can continue to heal. We do not have to fear death at all and it may not even happen. We might "gently lay down our bodies" if we want to go further in our growth beyond the Earth or transform it into a light body and take it with us. The latter is the most ideal, but it may take some time to master this. Life continues.