#3171 - Monday, May 19, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee

May 20, 2008

#3171 - Monday, May 19, 2008 - Editor: Gloria LeeNonduality Highlights - NDhighlights

Remove all becoming, you are Being.Becoming is effort, Being is not effort.You are always That so be like the breezethat is attached to neither the garbage nor the garden that it blows over. - Papaji

"The Truth Is"Sri H.W.L. PoonjaYudhishtara, 1995

Read a fascinating account of circumstances leading up to David Godman writing a book. Comments show that he is also actively answering questions on his blog.

http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008/05/half-lifetime-ago.html

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Half a lifetime ago

For no particular reason I feel like telling a story of some odd ‘coincidences’ that came into my life back in the 1980s.

In 1983 I was in London, staying in the house of a friend of mine, Christine Hodder. Her partner, Piers, knew a man in Hampstead who wanted someone to house sit for him while he went on holiday. Piers, who had been a devotee of Bhagavan for years, introduced me and gave me a recommendation. The man who owned the house was a retired professor of art, having taught for many years at a prestigious London art school. His main claim to fame in the academic world was discovering hidden Rosicrucian symbols in centuries-old paintings.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Integral Yoga Magazine interview on Papaji

Here, as promised yesterday, is the interview I gave to Integral Yoga Magazine on Papaji’s approach to self-enquiry. Unlike the interview on Ramana Maharshi’s teachings on this subject, which I posted yesterday, this interview is not built around material that I had already posted on my site.

Integral Yoga Magazine: What is the essence of Papaji’s teachings?

David Godman: Papaji insisted that he was not a teacher and that he had no teachings. This was a somewhat perverse and paradoxical position for him to make because he spent decades of his life teaching people and giving them experiences of the Self.

Papaji liked a Tamil phrase that Ramana Maharshi often uttered: ‘Summa iru’, which means ‘Be quiet’, or ‘Be still’. He said that taking the mind back to its source and making it abide there, without a single thought, was the way to make the Self reveal itself. If he had a teaching at all, it was telling people to ‘Be quiet’. Most people attempt to accomplish this in their spiritual practices; Papaji actually had the ability to make it happen for you while you were sitting in front of him.