Science of Maya (Grant)

But the unreal, the irrational, the surreal, is of a different order of being. It does not exist in the sense that our bodies exist, for existence (by definition) implies a 'being outside,' an extension or exteriorization of consciousness in terms of space and time, of subject objectifying itself. True being has no existence, although it never ceases to be. Being is thus capable of existing (outside) but such existence is not essential to its being. This is why non-being has usually and mistakenly been assumed to be the only reality, in that it never changes, never becomes, never manifests, never exists outside its Self. Magic is the science of Maya, of creating the illusion of existence; of objectivication.

-- from Outside the Circles of Time (Kenneth Grant)

Unconscious brain makes best decisions

Cognitive science researchers at the University of Rochester (NY) have conducted tests suggesting that the best decisions are made when the conscious part of the brain is least involved with the process. The evidence demonstrates that the way the brain gathers and correlates data is designed to enable efficient decision making with minimal expenditure of time and energy.

http://tinyurl.com/9ofp2l

Identifying images by watching the brain

In the latest development in the field of neuroimaging, researchers have watched the brain of someone watching an image, and were actually able to perform reasonable reconstructions of the image. Researchers had already demonstrated that they are able to recognize which image a person was looking at when given a limited collection of pictures. Separately, it has been determined that the visual cortex contains a rough map of the eye's retina, implying a degree of spatial organization. The authors of the new paper cite previous results where researchers have identified small images (3x3 pixels) with over 50 percent accuracy simply by following the activity of the visual cortex. The new work significantly ups the ante by moving to 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images, which are big enough to represent alphabetic characters.

http://tinyurl.com/5pd5ye

As It Is So Be It (DeGrimston)

A man cannot change his way of life by changing his clothes nor by speaking with a different voice. To change basically, permanently and meaningfully he must reach down into himself and pluck himself out by the roots. A man cannot lose his fear by telling himself that he is not afraid and believing it. He must know his fear; see it, feel it, and accept it. Then, if he does that which he is afraid to do, says that which he is afraid to say, thinks that which he is afraid to think, sees that which he is afraid to see and knows that which he is afraid to know, he has no fear, for by making known what was unknown or only half known, he discovers his basic invulnerability.

-- Robert DeGrimston (Process Church of Final Judgement), "As It Is"

Complete text at

http://www.feastofhateandfear.com/archives/asitis.html

Voudoo science (Bertiaux)

It is not enough to say that the symbol is a sign which suggests something mystical. The symbol must be a machine or engine for the generation of magical power in its own way, not in any way which depends on the mere mind of the practitioner. Voudoo must be a science of success which works for every mind, and not because of mental attitude alone . . . Voudoo is not psychological, it is metaphysical and physical.

-- Michael Bertiaux (qtd. in Kenneth Grant's Hecate's Fountain)

Wider use of brain-enhancing drugs suggested

A group of researchers have suggested that increased use of brain-boosting stimulant chemicals may benefit people in many fields of endeavor. Research on the brain's function is accelerating and a new era of designed cognitive enhancement is upon us, the experts assert.

They cited a survey indicating that a large number of university students already utilize prescription brain-enhancing stimulants for both academic and non-academic purposes.

The scientists suggested that doctors and responsible individuals in other fields evaluate the costs and benefits of encouranging wider use of such drugs. Others warn that the negative side effects of many such drugs outweigh their benefits, however.

http://tinyurl.com/5ztca5

Internet searching stimulates brain

A study conducted by UCLA to be published shortly in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry suggests that internet searching can stimulate brain activity at a greater rate than ordinary reading.

Elderly volunteers were scanned with MRIs while half the study group used the Internet and the other half performed ordinary reading tasks. The MRI scan indicated that both text reading and Internet searching stimulated the regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and vision. But the Internet search activated more neural regions, including regions controlling complex reasoning and decision making. This increased brain activity, probably due to the many rapid choices such searches involve, suggests that subjects had a richer sensory experience and heightened attention.

http://tinyurl.com/5mvnvn

Beyond light & dark (Grant)

The aim of the initiate is to penetrate to the other side of the Tree of Life so that he passes between light (LUX) and dark (NOX). How then do things appear? They do not. When all objectivity is dissolved in the Night of Time, the Night of Pan, and even the Nox of Kali, the subjective universe does not remain, for the one is a function of the other and they cannot exist apart. Entry into the Mauve Zone, behind the Veil of Daath, strips the magician of his subjective self. What remains is not any thing, but rather the source of every thing, which must necessarily be no-thing. At this stage Magick is left far behind and Mysticism begins, and the experiences that occur to the Mystics are unintelligable to those who have not passed beyond the veil. Some do return from the Mauve Zone and they sometimes endeavor to point out a way. For this supreme Experience, or Experiment, all veritable religions are a preparation.

-- from Hecate's Fountain (Kenneth Grant)

How the brain decides

In making a decision, our brains operate like a bookie's computer, weighing the actions of others in the same way that we learn from our mistakes in order to calculate the odds, according to a recent study. Neuroscientists observing brain activity in a group of volunteers say the results challenge conventional theories about how and where decisions are formed in the brain.

Earlier research on the neural mechanisms of decision-making found that the brain processes two separate streams of data: one is based on our own experience and our record of success or failure in similar circumstances, based on trial and error; the other flows from the fact that we are social animals, and that we are influenced by what others do and say. Most scientists had assumed that the neural underpinning of this second kind of learning was more complex than the first, but the new study suggests that in both functions, the brain uses the same basic computational mechanism.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzBxwVV2vFhZL3nZcZ-oDYPVJ9FQ

Creative (dis)order

To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder.

-- from Principia Discordia (Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley) orig. pub. 1965

Body's decline starts with brain

How fast you can throw a ball or run or swerve a steering wheel depends on how speedily brain cells fire off commands to muscles. Fast firing depends on good insulation for your brain's wiring. Now new research by neurologists at UCLA suggests that in middle age, even healthy people begin to lose some of that insulation in a motor-control part of the brain, at the same rate that their speed subtly slows. The research points to another reason to stay physically and mentally active: An active, exercised brain may detect fraying insulation quicker and signal for repair cells to get to work.

http://tinyurl.com/5kqobt

The life of sorcery

The magical life demands the abandonment of comfort, conventionality, security and safety -- for competition, combat, extremes, and adversity are needed to produce higher resolutions for personal evolution. An air of desperation is required in a life lived close to the edge. One must be living by one's wits. In a stagnant environment the body-mind creates its own adversity -- disease and fantasy. Only in extremes can the spirit discover itself. A fluid environment is required as a vessel for magical consciousness. Only a fluid environment can conform to beliefs about it and be subject to the subtle magical forces.

-- Carroll, Liber Null

Thin line between love & hate

Love and hate are intimately linked within the human brain, according to a study that has discovered the biological basis for the two most intense emotions. Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love, even though love and hate appear to be polar opposites. But one major difference between the two seems to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex (associated with reasoning) become deactivated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate. "This may seem surprising ... But whereas in romantic love, the lover is often less critical and judgemental regarding the loved person, it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgement in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise exact revenge," a professor involved in the study said.

http://tinyurl.com/6oe43a

Om-ing at Beth Israel Hospital

A foundation run by fashion designer Donna Karan (founder of the DKNY clothing label) has donated $850K for a one-year experiment combining Eastern and Western healing methods at Beth Israel Medical Center. The Karan-Beth Israel project combines yoga and meditation with modern scientific procedures such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy to enhance the healing of people with various types of cancer.

http://tinyurl.com/6pofj4

Cosmo-omnivorousness

In this world everything is on the menu, including us.

Treat Depression with Magnetic Stimulation

The government has approved a new transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) device, similar to the "thinking cap" mentioned in our story of October 7, but this version may be used to treat depression and related maladies. Like the "thinking cap" stimulator, this device transmits magnetic pulses through the skull to trigger neurons to fire more effectively. The great benefit of such devices is that they require no surgery and are safer than other treatment methods.

(Click on image to enlarge)

http://tinyurl.com/5mhee5

Yoga that is Not

A high school in the state of New York has won approval to offer students a voluntary yoga program — as long as it's not called yoga.

http://tinyurl.com/3l8bxa

Laws Within (Hesse)

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised.

-- from Demian (Herman Hesse)

Put on Your Thinking Cap

Using the cutting-edge technology of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), this "thinking cap" currently in the experimental stage uses a small but potent magnetic coil to beam energy directly into the brain through the skull. Researchers claim that such technology may be able to improve memory, creativity, and overall thinking ability.

(Click on image to enlarge and read text)

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/10/thinking_cap_tu.php

True Sanity (Laing)

True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality, the emergence of the “inner” archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.

-- R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

Holy War on Limitations

All devotees of the Living God are called to Holy War, which is a creative and benign struggle with the limitations of self and the common conditions of the human world. In time, the Truth may even seem to win – not as a result of brutal worldly power, but because Truth has no equal and no opponent.

-- Da Free John, The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace

Dancing lessons from God

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.

-- Bokonon (Lionel Boyd Johnson)

Noogenesis (Chardin)

Right at its base, the living world is constituted by consciousness clothed in flesh and bone. From the biosphere to the species is nothing but an immense ramification of psychism seeking for itself through different forms.

-- Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Success and Failure

One need never fear failure as long as one is willing to alter one's definition of success to suit the circumstances. The question is, are you confident enough to do this?

The Act of Will (Assagioli)

"Only the development of his inner powers can offset the dangers inherent in man's losing control of the tremendous natural forces at his disposal and becoming the victim of his own achievements."

-- Roberto Assagioli, The Act of Will

Changing work into worship

You have to learn how to create paradise here and now. There is no other. Meditation is the technology. Changing work into worship is the secret.

-- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, From Bondage to Freedom (1985)

Plenitude of Action (Teilhard)

May the time come when men, having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movements of this world in the single, all-embracing work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to any one of the their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work – however elementary it may be – is received and put to good use by a Center of the universe. When that comes to pass, there will be little to separate life in the cloister from the life of the world. And only then will the action of the children of heaven have attained the intended plenitude of its humanity.

-- Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

Heraclitus: Fragment One

All things exist, only by and through the Word;
yet men have no comprehension of it!

They experience the words and deeds that I have set out,
yet still do they not understand.

Truly, mankind is as unconscious of what they do when 'awake'
as when they are asleep.

-- Heraclitus

Goethe on Wonder

The highest to which man can attain, is wonder: and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limit.

-- Goethe

Olympics for the Brain at U.N.

The fourth annual "Brain Health, Smile, Peace Olympiad," to be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on August 12, will provide a forum for mental competition in contrast to the concurrent Beijing Olympics which began today. The Olympiad is a three-day event culminating at the United Nations with more than 500 children and adults participating in various events. More info at: http://ibreaus.org.

Survivor

The bad news is you don't have any control. The good news is, you can't make any mistakes.

-- Tender Branson

Rant

The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.

-- Buster "Rant" Casey

The Gita on Devotion

Neither by study of the scriptures nor excessive austeries and sacrifices is it possible to see me as I am; only by tireless devotion may I be seen and known, and may one become united with me.

Bhagavad Gita 11:53-54

Brain Fitness Program for MacIntosh

The "Brain Fitness Program Classic" is a software package for personal computers developed in consultation with neuroscientists. It uses techniques designed to improve the user's cognitive functions in areas such as retention and the production of beneficial neurochemicals. The software package includes various exercises adapted to different cognitive functions and user skill levels. Its creators claim that results have been clinically tested.

Such "brain fitness" style software has become increasingly popular in recent years as popular awareness of neuroscience and the possibility of increasing one's own brain function (neuroplasticity) has increased. As a result, similar software has been developed for other user platforms, including video game systems.

http://www.macworld.com/article/134485/2008/07/brainfitness.html

(Photo: the original MacIntosh design team)

The Gita on Equilibrium

That hero, whose deepest essence stands unperturbed by transient circumstances -- accepting both suffering and pleasure with mental equilibrium -- alone is qualified for the immortality of real illumination.

Bhagavad Gita 2:15

Wii Yoga: Video Game & Yoga

An independent video game creator is developing a yoga program / video game that makes use of Nintendo's popular new "Wii Balance Board" (see photo), an accessory that attaches to its Wii game console and inputs the users weight and position into compatible games.  The publisher of the upcoming yoga game indicates that the concept will introduce young people to the techniques and philosophy of yoga in a fun, dynamic video environment.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=192290

Meditation and yoga may deactivate stress genes

Researchers say they've taken a significant advance in the understanding of how relaxation techniques such as meditation, prayer and yoga improve health: by changing patterns of gene activity that affect how the body responds to stress.  They found that when the relaxation response is activated (by means of meditation), stress genes can at least temporarily reduce their activity.  The recent study is the first comprehensive investigation into the effect of mental states upon gene function.

Original article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070200973.html

The One Alone

You cannot know God by making yourself nothing.
Many a wise man claims that in order to know God one
must denude oneself of the signs of one's existence, efface
one's identity, finally rid oneself of one's self. This is error.
How could a thing that does not exist get rid of its
existence?

If you think that to know God depends on you ridding
yourself of yourself, then you are guilty of attributing partners
to God, the greatest error; because you are claiming
that there is another existence besides That, the all-existent;
that there is a you and a That.

Therefore, do not think anymore that you need to become
nothing, that you need to annihilate yourself in God. If you
thought so, then you would be God's veil, while a veil over God
is other than God. How could you be a veil that hides God?
What hides God is God's being the One Alone.

-- Ibn Arabi (13th cent. Sufi Master)

Authorship of Action

The authorship of action does not in reality belong to the ‘I’.  It is a mistake to understand that ‘I’ do this, ‘I’ experience this and ‘I’ know this.  All this is basically untrue.  The ‘I’ in its essential nature, is uncreated; it belongs to the field of the Absolute; whereas action, its fruits and the relationship between the doer and his action, belong to the relative field, to the field of the three gunas.  Therefore all action is performed by the three gunas born of Nature.  The attribution of authorship to the ‘I’ is only due to ignorance of the real nature of the ‘I’ and of action.

-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhagavad Gita

Gaining transcendent awareness

The first step is to bring the mind to the Transcendent. Through transcendent meditation, the attention is brought from gross experience to subtler fields of experience until the subtlest experience is transcended and the state of transcendental consciousness is gained. The march of the mind in this direction is so simple as to be automatic; as it enters into experience of a subtler nature, the mind feels increased charm because it is proceeding towards absolute bliss. Once the mind reaches transcendent consciousness, it no longer remains a conscious mind; it gains the status of absolute Being.

-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On The Bhagavad Gita

Rejection and Acceptance

To reject the unreal is ordinary wisdom, but to be open to accepting what is truly real requires more than ordinary wisdom.

-- Anon.

Shams-i Tabriz I

One can postpone the obligatory ritual prayer but one cannot postpone the company of the dervish.

-- Shams-i Tabriz (1184-1248), Persian Sufi mystic and master of Rumi

Philokalia I

The limit or the acme of faith is purely immersion of one's mind in God.

-- Diadochus of Photiki (5th cent.), On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination

Renunciation of the Saints

To be a saint means to renounce not only everything earthly but also everything divine.

-- Nikos Kazantzakis, from God's Pauper: St. Francis of Assisi

Death of 'I' as material for work

"If a man were deprived of his illusions and all that prevents him from seeing reality -- if he were deprived of his interests, his cares, his expectations and hopes -- all his strivings would collapse, everything would become empty and there would remain an empty being, an empty body, only physiologically alive. This would be the death of 'I,' the death of everything it consisted of, the destruction of everything false collected through ignorance or inexperience. All this will remain in him merely as material, but subject to selection. Then a man will be able to choose for himself and not have imposed on him what others like."

-- Gurdjieff, from Views from the Real World

Use of an ego

It doesn't take an ego to do most anything does it?

Universal nature (Aurelius)

All things come to their fulfillment as the one universal nature directs; for there is no rival nature, whether containing her from without, or itself contained within her, or even existing apart and detached from her.

-- Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations 6:9

Finite and Infinite Games (II)

Art is not art except as it leads to an engendering creativity in its beholders. Whoever takes possession of the objects of art has not taken possession of the art. Since art is never possession, and always possibility, nothing possessed can have the status of art.

Poets do not "fit" into society, not because a place is denied them, but because they do not take their "places" seriously. They openly see society's roles as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing costumes, its rules conventional, its crises arranged, its conflicts performed, and its metaphysics ideological.

-- James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Eschewing false hope

"If we can learn to understand that even though we may feel quite content just now at this moment, around the corner not too far away some form of suffering is inevitable, and that we have our choice between suffering and pain, then perhaps we can find in ourselves the serious 'wish to work.' The false hope of some future attainable state in which we will feel no pain can destroy the inner necessity for work, unless we realize once and for all with the whole of our Being that this is an imaginary idea."

-- E.J. Gold, from The Hidden Work

Gurdjieff on Ceremony

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

-- Gurdjieff

Aurobindo on Involution

Since this Consciousness is creatrix of the world, it must be not only state of knowledge, but power of knowledge, and not only a will to light and vision but a will to power and works. And since mind too is created out of it, mind must be a development by limitation out of this primal faculty and this supreme consciousness and must therefore be capable of resolving itself back into it through a reverse development by expansion.

-- Sri Aurobindo, from The Life Divine

Finite and Infinite Games (I)

Genuine travel has no destination. Travelers do not go somewhere, but constantly discover that they are somewhere else.

-- from James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Rinzai extreme

Followers of the Way once and for all sit down and cut off the heads of both the Sambhogakaya Buddha and of the Nirmanakaya Buddha. Those satisfied with merely completing the ten stages of the Bodhisattva are like serfs. Those content with universal and profound awakening are but carrying chains. Awakening and nirvana are like tethering posts for donkeys. Why? Because, followers of the Way, you fail to see the emptiness of the three great world ages; this is the obstacle that blocks you.

-- Rinzai

Stuff that makes you go "hmm..."

"And because there is always only Atman, the Atman project never occurred."

-- Ken Wilber, from The Atman Project (last line on the last page.)

Brain science explains meditation benefits

Neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin recently asked volunteers to practice "compassion meditation" while reclining inside MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines. Results showed that the brains of more experienced meditators exhibited greater activity in areas known to be related to empathy and emotions than the brains of the less experienced meditators. The tentative conclusion seems to be that meditation does have "real" effects that can be objectively measured in the brain, and that experience and practice in meditation does make a difference.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23829470/

Bodhidharma

Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and empty of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist. The ignorant keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And adepts keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn't exist. But the truly wise neither create nor negate the mind. This is what's meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist.

-- Bodhidharma (5th cent.)

Dogen on traceless realization

To study the buddha path is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be realized by all that exists. When realized by all that exists, one's body and mind and the bodies and minds of "others" drop away from thought. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.

-- Dogen, Shobogenzo

Spies for Higher Consciousness

"During a war every person that is somewhat awake is considered a spy because of his seriousness and alertness."

-- Gurdjieff

Roadquest

A journey of a thousand miles ends with a single step.

Meher Baba

"The so many deaths during the one whole life, from the beginning of evolution of consciousness to the end of involution of consciousness, are like so many sleeps during one lifetime."

-- Meher Baba, from God Speaks

Life: a definition

What we know as a "life" is the analytical realization in the seriality of time of our eternal reality.

-- Wei Wu Wei, Why Lazarus Laughed

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi cremated in India

The body of recently deceased Maharishi (great sage) Mahesh Yogi was cremated on a traditional pyre in the holy Indian city of Allahabad on Monday. The guru was the founder of the Transcendental Meditation ("TM") movement and a well-known popularizer of yoga and meditation techniques in the Western world.

Thousands of followers accompanied the body of their guru from his ashram to the burning site. In attendance was filmmaker David Lynch (a longtime TM practitioner and advocate) and one-time Presidential candidate John Hagelin of Maharishi's Natural Law Party.

Seek teachings

As a bee seeks nectar

from all kinds of flowers,
seek teachings everywhere.
Like a deer that finds
a quiet place to graze,
seek seclusion to digest
all you have gathered.
Like a madman,
beyond all limits,
go wherever you please
and live like a lion
completely free of all fear.

-- a Dzogchen tantra, from The Crystal and the Way of Light by Namkhai Norbu

Continuous awakening

There is really no point at which this "work" begins or ends. It is a continuous awakening to divinity in each moment, walking in forests, being with others, organizing programs, planting seeds, driving, skiing, drinking tea and resting.

-- Rowena Pattee, in Shape Shifters: Shaman Women in Contemporary Society by Michele Jamal

Recognizing transit state

The sure way to recognize the transit state is to never assume that you are not in it at this moment.

-- E.J. Gold, The American Book of the Dead

U.G. on Death

Once a very old gentleman, ninety-five years old, who was considered to be a great spiritual man and who taught the great scriptures all the time to his followers, came to see me. He heard that I was there in that town. He came to me and asked me two questions. He asked me, "What is the meaning of life? I have written hundreds of books telling people all about the meaning and purpose of life, quoting all the scriptures and interpreting them. I haven't understood the meaning of life. You are the one who can give an answer to me." I told him, "Look, you are ninety-five years old and you haven't understood the meaning of life. When are you going to understand the meaning of life? There may not be any meaning to life at all." The next question he asked me was, "I have lived ninety-five years and I am going to die one of these days. I want to know what will happen after my death." I said, "You may not live long to know anything about death. You have to die now. Are you ready to die?" As long as you are asking the question, "What is death?" or "What is there after death?" you are already dead. These are all dead questions. A living man would never ask those questions.

-- U.G. Krishnamurti (7.9.18 - 3.22.07)

Death and Rebirth (Osho)

Have you observed that if you look inside, time exists not? If you look outside there is time, but if you look inside there is no time. Have you not felt it sometimes, sitting silently with closed eyes -- that inside you have not aged at all? Inside you remain the same as when you were a child, or as when you were young. Inside nothing has changed: the face is wrinkled by age, the hairs have gone gray, death is approaching -- this is all from the outside. If you look in the mirror then of course there are signs that much time has passed, that very little is left, that sooner or later you will be gone. But look within: there has never been any time there.

You are born, but not yet really born. A rebirth is needed; you have to be twice-born. The first birth is only the physical birth, the second birth is the real birth: the spiritual birth. You have to come to know yourself, who you are. You have to ask this question: Who am I? And while life is there, why not enquire into life itself? Why bother about death? When it comes, you can face it and you can know it. Don't miss this opportunity of knowing life while life surrounds you.

One birth has been given to you by your parents, the other birth is waiting. It has to be given to you by yourself. You have to father and mother yourself. Then your whole energy is turning in -- it becomes an inner circle.

Barrier to inner awakening

The greatest barrier to inner awakening is having an opinion about oneself.

If one could die completely to all attachments right now, then awakening would immediately be attained.

-- Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, Elements of Sufism

Work ideas vs. sleep ideas

All ideas of the work begin with the idea of sleep and the possibility of waking. All other ideas may be clever or elaborate but they are all ideas of sleeping people produced for other sleeping people.

-- Ouspensky, from Conscience: The Search for Truth

Terms and Reality

It should be clear that if terms represent reality, the reality is independent of the terms. Since terminology usually goes along with a way of thinking, people who first get a glimpse of reality through a particular thought system and terminology often get into this confusion. They think a different system with a different terminology is representing a different reality. One of the reasons for reading widely is that it helps to distinguish between the terms and what the terms refer to.

-- Sri Madhava Ashish, qtd. in In Search of the Unitive Vision by Seymour Ginsburg