For those of us who are trying to reach new people, there is good news: we don’t have to hang on to symbolic language as if it had power by itself. Some years ago I read The Book and was so enamored of the expression ‘heaven invading earth’ and ‘Throne Room glory’. These expressions blessed me immensely then but it wasn’t the words or the symbology: it’s what I needed at that time. Since then I’ve learned so much more…

ON MYSTICISM
(Dr Robin Starbuck)
We mustn’t tarry, fret or fear
When our heart’s desire
they cannot hear.
It wasn’t meant for them –
not now. Just listen, for
God will show you how:
“What if I told Mary,
Joe and Sue
things that weren’t
Intended for you?”
So what? Who cares?
We’ve our own way
A mystery generated
On our eternal Day.

The pursuit of truth will require a change in our life. It may help to take notice of the example of Jesus, remembering that he spent 30 years in preparation before he began is public ministry. It helps to drop all assumptions; in other words, don’t assume that Jesus was on some divine fast-track. Jesus spent countless hours in silent prayer before he went public. Does it take 30 years? No. What we are seeking can happen in an instant.

There is no singular path to truth; but, the introspection necessary will assuredly require the prayerful courage to step out of our religious doctrinal box. You are not looking to affirm your beliefs, you are looking to discover, to experience and realize the truth for yourself. In the past, you simply believed. Now the question becomes “Who am I”? Jesus knew who he was… it’s long past time that we discover that same reality for ourselves.
~Frank Johnson

IN OBEISANCE OF the famous scriptural dictum:
“Put on the whole armour of God,
that ye may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. (Eph 6:11)”
we don’t scurry to make a visit
to the nearest hardware store!
No, we’ve surmised that Paul
[mystically speaking, of course]
would have us go into our spiritual closet and shut the door tightly,
leaving all mental anguish and distress to return to its native nothingness
from whence it came.
The “devil” is that native nothingness
without a leg – or reality – to stand on.

If you investigate the writings of the mystics (those who were aware in Christ), you discover a seeming paradox. When we first enter upon the spiritual path (found within us), we enter into darkness. Why? Because our spiritual eyes are not yet awakened; we haven’t been properly prepared to accept or see the brightness of the Light of Christ. Living from the natural mind, as we do even as believers, is equivalent to our being unconscious, unaware (or what Paul calls asleep). It takes commitment and time through prayer and meditation, to become accustomed to the Light. (Note: Sadly, none of this is taught in our churches. Christ is a real experience, not merely a belief of the mind.)
~Frank Johnson

MYSTICISM VS. RELIGION
………….
When we speak of mysticism we speak of experiential knowledge of God, not just a left brain mental belief system. A mystical experience is a grasp of the whole by the whole. That’s what makes it so transformative. God is another name for the heart or center of everything and it’s sole source of connectedness. When you say you love God, you are saying you love everything. Immature religion, fundamentalism, is an excuse for not loving a whole bunch of things and reveals you have not had an authentic God experience. An authentic God experience produces two things at its core: quiet confidence as opposed to argumentative confidence, and joyous gratitude. That’s why mystics can love their enemies. They don’t make the distinctions that low-level religion makes. Low-level religion is mostly just tribal belief systems which hold the group together. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad place as we all need a tribal container to hold us in place long enough to discover the real questions and struggle with them. It’s this struggle that leads us out. Unless we realize bondage we don’t have a desire for freedom. Organized religion never answers the real questions the soul is asking. In fact organized religion wants to silence the questions unless they are on its list of acceptable questions, to which It holds the infallible answer that needs no further questioning.
~Stan Tyra

PURE KNOWING

In the world
I am the seen
In the seen
I am the seer
In the seer
I am the seeing
In the seeing
I am pure Knowing

As pure Knowing
I become the seeing
in the seeing
I become
the seer
as the seer
I see the seen
as the seen
I appear
as the world

~Rupert Spira

Dan Shaffer:
FrankJohnson’s (my favorite mystic)
Response to those who think my writings are “new age”.
Too good not to share!

Frank Johnson:
“I’ve experienced the “New Age” response far too many times. This is apparently the ‘go-to’ response that pastors will tell people when they don’t know what else to say. How quickly we seem to forget that Jesus was so radical in his day (in his spirituality), that he was called every name in the book, and then some. How do you tactfully explain to people, with an Old Testament mindset of blood sacrifice, etc., that most everything they have believed was wrong? The Christian church is no different. Instead of showing people how to awaken within to the Christ of their being, we hand them a bible and tell them to study. The mind then assumes an understanding, while within, there is no inner awakening or realization of the truth of our being. All we have done is to become an Old Testament church with a new vocabulary.”

* * * Keep Quiet * * *

When I speak about quietness –
when I tell you to keep quiet –
it is not easy for everyone to follow.

Most people here are from different
backgrounds, practices, sadhanas;
and therefore feel they need to do something,
to put something into practice.

When I say, “Keep quiet.” it is not a practice.
There is nothing to be done and nothing to be undone.
This cannot be followed.
There is nothing to think about,
no need to make any kind of effort.
This is an indication of the quietness I am speaking about.
Truth always exists. Existence alone is.
It is called satyam.

We speak about enlightenment,
but first we have created bondage.
Bondage does not exist.

How can you remove that which does not exist?

First, teachers impose a concept of bondage
and then various practices are prescribed.

There may be millions of books in the world,
thousands more are published every day.
Nowhere does it say, “Be quiet”.
When you simply say “Keep quiet,”
what is the rest of the book to be about?

There is no ignorance at all;
there is only existence – there is only satyam.
If you simply keep quiet you will know that only this exists.

Before the sun rises early in the morning
it does not first try to remove the darkness of the night.
The sun does not say, “Let me brush away the darkness
and only then, in the daytime, I will rise.”

For the sun there is no night,
there is no darkness to be removed.
The sun does not even know that such a thing as night exists. What practice is needed to remove darkness,
where is this darkness?

All practices imply the reality of darkness, of ignorance,
when in fact they do not exist.
The river in the sand is a mirage;
it does not exist, it never existed.
If you go closer and closer the sand not even is wet;
it is only a belief that makes us run after a mirage, nothing else.

There is only satyam; there is only Truth.
What need is there of practice?
It is only practice which is concealing the truth.

~ Sri Papaji

* * *

How to stop thinking?

Papaji: By Being!
When you think that you are an object, a person, a body, or
some other idea, but by Being there is nothing!
Just Being.
And Being is already there.
You are always Being.
To become something you must meditate and perform some mantra, ritual, practice.
Just to Be is simple.

Without Being you can’t do any practice.
So don’t think of anything else.
Just Be!
It is so easy to Be.

Question: But when I try to just be, so much thinking happens.
I am sure everyone has this problem.

Papaji: Thinking happens when you want to become something.
Then you must think.
But to not become something what is there to do?
Stay as you are!

Be as you are in whatever circumstances,
just always Be, It doesn’t need any practice.
Whatever you get by practice you will lose,
but Being will never be lost because you will not get it by any experience or practice.
It simply is, Simply Be.

Don’t stir your mind in Being,
don’t think and don’t make effort.

I will tell you how to be Being itself.
No effort, no thinking.

Avoid thinking and avoid not thinking.
What is between these two?

~ Sri Papaji

* * * Try it for one week & See what happens * * *

Just sit still at home in Silence
and stop the mind from thinking.
That’s the easiest way, the best way, the simplest way.

For one week, I would like you to experiment.
I don’t want you to read any book.
Don’t look at any spiritual literature.
Just sit by yourself as much as you can.
And watch your mind, watch your mind.

Do whatever you have to do to slow down the mind,
and then you’re going to be amazed.

You will laugh at yourself.
For when the mind becomes quiescent,
Reality will rush in.
And you will see it so simple, it’s so simple.

~Robert Adams

————–

When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace, bliss consciousness, pure awareness.
That’s what the silence is.
It’s not being quiet.
It’s beyond that.

It’s not just quieting your mind, like I say all the time.

It’s understanding that there’s no mind to quiet.

When you realize there’s no mind,
you automatically become silent.

When you still think you’ve got a mind,
you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can’t.

How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort?
You can’t do that.
It’s not the effort that makes you quiet your mind.

It’s the intelligent understanding that
you have no mind to begin with.

Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself.

~ Robert Adams

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). The manner in which western religion teaches the Bible, says to me that we have mistaken cerebral knowledge for mystical knowing. Our western mindset defines the word mystery as something that can’t be fully understood but that’s not the biblical meaning of mystery. Biblical mystery is not something you cannot understand, but it is something that is endlessly understandable. It is multilayered and pregnant with meaning and never admits to closure or resolution. Paul refers to it as the “hidden wisdom of God that we teach in our mysteries…things beyond the mind of humanity that God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:6-9). It’s “knowing spiritual things spiritually” (1 Cor. 2:13). In other words, it could not be communicated to people who didn’t have at least some level of inner experience. It is that necessity of personal experience that gives life and wisdom to all things divine. The death burial and resurrection of Jesus is a doctrine that all Christians would intellectually assent to, but is obvious by their life that it’s an intellectual belief system and not living faith. We move from one to the other only through encounter, surrender, trust, and the inner experience of presence and power. Biblical mystery does not recognize this self-made autonomous “getting it right” agenda that you see in western fundamentalism.
~Stan Tyra