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August 2003
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August 1st 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Spice of Life

It is necessary to go to the root of the problem of insecurity in order to really understand it. And in the very understanding of the problem it disintegrates. The sense of security and the feeling of a need for it arises out of a misunderstanding of the basis of what we call life.

The fact of the matter is that we do not really see that "change" is an integral aspect of life. What we want is to stop the movie of life at a particular "still", depending upon what that still means to us in terms of what we then consider as happiness.

When we fail to see change as life itself, just as the flow is really the river, we become like Ouroboros, the misguided snake, who tries to eat his own tail.

The only way to make sense out of change is to join it. You cannot avoid it! There is no other way. Either plunge into life and welcome change as the spice of life or resist and set yourself against yourself.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 2nd 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Receptive to the Unknown

Thought, words, logic and reasoning are obviously necessary to lead a normal life but they do not constitute "living" by themselves. They are all based on memory of the known and are products of the split-mind (the mind divided by the intrusion of a "me").

To live, whenever possible, without thought, without words, is to be receptive to the unknown with the whole mind. Both are necessary, but conditioning over a long period has brought man to the point where to recede into the whole mind is considered being lazy; a waste of one's time!

Men and women of genius, who have been the achievers in the world, have openly admitted that their most revolutionary ideas and inventions have "occurred" only when conscious thinking had ceased and the mind was therefore receptive to the unknown.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 3rd 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Ultimate Reality

Although it may not be given to many to be prophets, it is certainly given to quite a few of us to see the What-Is with clarity of the mind and be enlightened sages.

It should not be too difficult, given the necessary sincerity and determination, for an average person to understand life in a sense larger than the view of a split-mind "me".

We all experience (at least occasionally) the ultimate Reality. This is possible, of course, only when the seeking is not based on the unreality of the known, pursued through the illusory "me" as a separate entity.

Reality is not a discovery which will merely confirm what is already known; it is the vast unknown from which has arisen the little that is known to us.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 4th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Cosmic Dance

The entire manifested creation presents a cosmic dance by the divine dancer, and the dance cannot be differentiated from the dancer. The dance is executed to the tune of time or duration, and takes place on the stage of space....

The natural order is the dancer presenting the dance drama of phenomenal manifestation and its functioning. It is Consciousness which has spontaneously causelessly, been stirred out of its state of rest into one of movement, by the cosmic thought "I Am".

The dance exhibits various epochs and seasons and portrays moods of every conceivable nature, like love and hate, compassion and anger, etc. It is set against the background music of the elements, on a stage illuminated by the sun and the moon and the stars, with the dramatis personae provided by all the sentient beings in the entire universe.

The infinite Consciousness, though not different from its aspect as the dancer (natural order) and the dance itself, is the silent but alert witness of this cosmic dance drama happening 'within' itself.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 5th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Life is Just a Dance

When there is apperception of the totality of What-Is, the meaning of life becomes very clear: life is just a dance, the purpose and meaning of which is only to dance, and when the dance is over, you are precisely where you were -- on the floor.

When you dance, there is no expectation of anything to achieve. Before you started to dance, you were still and then there was movement when the dance began, and when the dance ended, there was again stillness. You were born and the movement began; when you are dead, the movement will have ceased and "you" will be back in that state of rest which existed before you were born.

It is the sense of "me" expecting, thinking, desiring, hoping, fearing, which deprives life of its meaning and gives death the significance which it really does not have. To the whole mind, death is the unknown potential from which has arisen the birth and the life. To the whole mind death is just another moment in life, complete in itself and unknown until it arrives.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 6th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Freedom From Pairs

The "freed" sage is no longer interested in manipulating the opposites so as to choose one from the other. He is content to accept both as the very basis of life. He fully understands that what-is, is not good against evil, not life against death. There is a center of attention, an awareness that witnesses and transcends both.

This freedom from pairs is the kingdom of Heaven spoken of in the Bible, even though most of the exegetists seem to have forgotten it. Heaven is not the state of all positive virtues and rewards to the exclusion of all negative items, but the state of transcendence of both positives and negatives. According to the Gospel of St. Thomas:

They said to Him: Shall we then, being children, enter the Kingdom? Jesus said: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one then you shall enter the Kingdom.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 7th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Experiencing Unity

In the beginning a certain amount of patience is necessary to sit quietly (without any specific purpose) and let the "me" get into the background along with the thought process based on it. But when it happens, the inner experience of unity with one's surroundinss comes floating in.

One must be clearly aware of the fact that the inner experience of unity is on quite a different level from the purely sentimental feeling of the poet for nature, which is entirely superficial. The true oneness includes the realization that it absorbs the bad and the creepy along with the good and the benign.

The subjective experience of unity is not a "feeling" which bursts out into song, nor is it an unusual state of mind like a trance (hypnotic or otherwise). It is an intensely deep experience defying verbal expression, indeed it is quite impervious both to description and logic.

As a Chinese Master put it, "When you want to see into it, see into it directly. When you begin to think about it, you have missed it altogether." And when you have thus seen it, there is no need to tell the countryside about it from the housetop. It is enough to 'know' that you are all that you see and all that you do not see.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 8th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- My Pilgrimage

Give me my scallop shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body's balmer, No other balm will there be given; Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer, Travelleth towards the land of heaven; Over the silver mountains, Where spring the nectar fountains: There will I kiss The bowl of bliss.

And drink mine everlasting fill Upon every milken hill. My soul will be a-dry before; But, after, it will thirst no more.

Sir Walter Raleigh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 9th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Hidden Treasure

The evolution of matter from the beginning leads to the evolution of consciousness in man; it is the universe itself which becomes conscious in man ... It is the inner movement of the Spirit, immanent in nature, which brings about the evolution of matter and life into consciousness, and that same Spirit at work in human consciousness, latent in every man, is always at work leading to divine life.

Bede Griffiths

The treasure of the Kingdom of God has been hidden by time and multiplicity and the soul's own works, or briefly by its creaturely nature. But in the measure that the soul can separate itself from this multiplicity, to that extent it reveals within itself the Kingdom of God. Here the soul and the Godhead are one ... The whole scattered world of lower things is gathered up to oneness when the soul climbs up to that life in which there are no opposites.

Meister Eckhart

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 10th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A Depth Within

There is a root or depth in thee, from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of a tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund, or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost said the infinity of thy soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it, or give it any rest, but the infinity of God.

William Law

This is why the soul receives, In the highest, most secret part of its being, the impress of its Eternal Image, and the uninterrupted effulgence of the divine light, and 'is' the eternal dwelling-place of God: wherein He abides as in a perpetual habitation, and yet which He perpetually visits with the new coming and new radiance and new splendour of His eternal birth.

Jan Van Ruysbroeck

Within this earthen vessel are bowers and groves, and within it is the Creator: Within this vessel are the seven oceans and the unnumbered stars. The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within; And within this vessel the Eternal soundeth, and the spring wells up.

Kabir

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 11th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Truth Within

Don't read (these pearls of truth) with the mind only. Watch out for any "feeling- response" as you read and a sense of recognition from deep within. I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten. Living knowledge, ancient and yet ever new, is then activated and released from within every cell of your body.

I speak from inner experience, and if at times I speak forcefully, it is to cut through heavy layers of mental resistance and to reach that place within you where you already know, just as I know, and where the truth is recognized when it is heard. There is then a feeling of exaltation and heightened aliveness, as something within you says: "Yes. I know this is true."

Eckhart Tolle

Not by any travelling is the world's end reached. Verily I declare to you that within this fathom-long body with its perceptions and its mind lies the world, its arising and its ceasing and the Way that leads to its cessation.

The Buddha

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 12th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Gold in Clay Pots

We possess this precious treasure (the divine Light ...) in frail human vessels of earth, that the grandeur and exceeding greatness of the power may be shown to be of God (Consciousness) and not from ourselves.

St Paul

When gold, heavily coated with earth, is not recognized as gold, it is ignorance, precisely as it is ignorance when Consciousness is not recognized as such in its multiplicity. Either way, whether Consciousness is recognized as such or not, Consciousness will remain Consciousness. Gold is gold whether it is recognized as such or not. The only apparent or notional difference is that when ignorance is dispelled, it is regarded that gold "becomes" gold and Consciousness "becomes" Consciousness!

The truth is simple: All things exist in Consciousness, all things flow from Consciousness, all things are Consciousness, because Consciousness is all there is.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 13th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Self That I Am

"I" am the inner light. Because of Me all the senses in all the sentient beings can experience their objects. Because of Me objects acquire their apparent substantiality. Because of Me the sun has heat, the moon its cool light, the mountain its heaviness, and the water its liquidity. Because of Me manifestation appears, is perceived and is cognized.

This one Sell the inner light of Consciousness, behg itself the functioning of experiencing, is the only experience, and is therefore known as the Self with "a thousand hands and a thousand eyes".

And as this Self or infinite Consciousness, I am man, I am woman, I am young, I am old. I am the fragrance in flowers. I am the radiance in the light. I am the experiencing in all that is experienced. I am the very essence, the suchness in all things in the manifested universe. It is I that exist in all that exists, like sweetness in sugar, in the same way that butter exists in milk.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 14th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Go With the Flow

To put it simply, the essence of understanding is the acceptance -- not the reluctant acceptance of frustration but the acceptance of utter conviction -- of the fact that life, or living, is not a stagnant pool of water but a flowing river.

It would be unhealthy to keep stagnant water for any length of time but you cannot keep running water in a bucket. If you would have running water, you must let it flow. The flow is the very nature of the river, and change is the very nature of life -- and it must be accepted.

Peace of mind, which is what most of humanity wants, consists not in grasping life in order to keep it secure for us, but in "letting go". It is rather ironic that the ultimate understanding comes not by holding on to the concepts of God but by relieving ourselves and letting go of all concepts concerning God.

The ultimate understanding can come neither by straining to hang on to the material pleasures of the world nor by making efforts to seek and grasp the infinite absolute. It comes by accepting the finite and relative world of living, with all its limitations and its interrelated opposites, as the objective expression of our own subjective Self.

Ramesh Balsekar

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 15th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- An Important Lesson

We had been told that the bus for Tak-Tak (in north-west India) would leave at eight. Nothing happened until nine, when a young Kashmiri driver got into his seat at the front, yawning, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and smiling around at everyone, satisfied, evidently, that he had caused the most discomfort possible.

Once he'd got in the Kashmiri just sat there, stretching and picking his teeth and talking desultorily to a few friends. He had the biggest wristwatch that I have ever seen, a huge painted lollipop of a watch, and he took it offat least eight or nine times to show it around.

Slowly, you learn the first, and perhaps most important, lesson that riding on a Ladakhi bus has to teach you - to give in, to surrender.

There is no point in being impatient, gritting your teeth, praying that the bus will go, cursing the driver operatically, wishing you were back in England or America or even South India (where the buses do, occasionally, go on time), exchanging bitter conspiratorial asides with fellow-Europeans - you just have to give in, to accept everything without hope or reserve. There is nothing else you can do without going crazy. And once you have given in, you begin to enjoy it all.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 16th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- When Names Fall Short

Each image seems to exist in an eternal present, lit by that clear afternoon light of Ladakh, so like the light of certain dreams.... What will be left of me when this light has peeled away all my skins? What words will this light leave me? And yet, even as I think and write those questions, they seem irrelevant. I have no choice but to be alive to this landscape and to this light, I have no choice: I must let this light do to my spirit and my words what it has to.

To take this river, these rocks, this light, these mountains changing in the light, 'for granted', and to revel in them -- I am learning that slowly here. I am learning not to fling names at things. Even when I write or think simply rock, river, light, mountain, I begin to see through the word to the thing, to be alone with the thing, the rock, this light on my hands, without fear or need to speak.

Things exist in the unnameable. Sometimes I am free, or freed by this landscape, to see them as they are and not wish to name them. Sometimes, as the rocks glow in the late sun, or the river flashes suddenly between boulders, or two birds hide in a burst of light above me, I understand that all names fall short of the shining of things. And that understanding, while it lasts, is peace.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 17th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Find a Teacher

It is good the river will not stop roaring and lunging through its dark gorges, whatever happens to the village, or the monastery. The things that ignore us save us in the end. Their presence awakens silence in us; they refresh our courage with the purity of their detachment.

And yet I have learnt from these days here that I need more than this good silence and solitude; I need more than this rock, this light, these birds: I need to be taught how to work with what I have begun to know here; I need to find a man or woman who has learnt the language whose first, simplest, words I am stammering.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

As a college professor, especially one who teaches spirituality, I am painfully aware of our students' lack of education in what Suzuki calls 'the art of living.' Many have learned survival skills, but these skills will not protect them from the psychosomatic illnesses of stress and the vacuum of meaninglessness so many of them suffer from because of the separation of spirituality from their inner and daily lives. I have struggled for years developing teaching methodologies to help students contact their own inner teacher, their own soul-self.

Maria Jaoudi

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 18th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Courage to be Happy

There is no tragedy in Ladakhi literature, no concept of tragedy, in fact. There is a Ladakhi saying, "The greatest courage is the courage to be happy." It takes a great courage when you are suffering to see beyond your suffering to the clear relations between things, to the laws that cause and govern your suffering; it takes great courage to be ruthless with one's griefs.'

Nawang was smiling as he talked, but his eyes were sad. Then he said, 'It is especially hard now, I find, to have the courage to be happy. So many of the facts seem to be against it. And yet without this strong inner happiness, how will one work? How will one survive at all the years that are coming?'

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

Soren Kierkegaard

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 19th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A Question of 'Uncovering'

When the Buddha was dying he said, "I am not a God. I am only a man who has learnt how to cross the Sea of Being and shown you the way. Go and work out your salvation with diligence." Everyone and everything is Buddha, contains the Buddha principle....

What did the Rimpoche (spiritual teacher) say to me last year? He said, "It is not a question of becoming, it is a question of 'uncovering' what you really are, of letting yourself be yourself, of letting everything that is not yourself fall away."

"To be freed from a false perception of the Self is the end of Buddhism; to realise that there is Nothing and No one is also to understand that one is in everything and in everyone, that there is no death, no fear, no pain, no separation."

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 20th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Most Effective Way

The Way of the great spiritual Master is the Way of Acceptance, the way of working with all the energies and powers of living, refusing and denying none of them, but using all of them, transforming all of them into wisdom. That is why he is shown (in some old paintings) surrounded by people, flowers and other living things.

His is a mind, we say, that makes the world flower; his is a mind that has denied nothing and transformed everything within him and within the world into harmony and spiritual power. This is the way of Enlightenment. It is the hardest way.

It is the hardest way because it is the most dangerous. Because it has so many temptations -- to hedonism, to the relish of worldly power. It is also the most 'effective' way. The individual who can travel it successfully, we believe, can attain Enlightenment in one lifetime.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 21st 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Living Diamonds (In the Tibetan tradition) we call a saintly man a Rimpoche, which means a diamond.... We call such a man a diamond when he has transformed every evil in himself into wisdom, every dark energy into an energy of light, every movement of hatred or impatience into a blessing.... We call a man a diamond also when he has gone beyond himself, beyond his old identity and personality. He becomes not just a man, but a woman and a child as well, a Mother and a boy and an old woman and an old man, a Prince and a Yogi, a King and a beggar and a girl. A man who no longer wants to be anything becomes everything; a man who is free of desire and self-consciousness enters with love into all things and all people, and all things and all people come to him without fear.... We call a man a diamond when his heart is a mind and his mind is a heart, when there is no sepraration between the two, when both are illumined. Men such as these have given me faith -- not in any God, but in myself, in the powers I have hidden within myself, that we all have hidden within ourselves and must uncover and realise.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 22nd 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The One Who Helps Best

If a man who is still full of anger and desire and greed tries to "help" another, what will his help be worth? It will be dirty, it will be coloured, it will be a burden as much as a help.

If you are serious about wanting to be of help to others you should be serious too about achieving perfection of heart and mind. Only when the heart is clear can it feel without greed or possessiveness; only when the mind is clear of all false perceptions, can it guide action.

If you really love others and truly see the extent and range and depth of their suffering, and feel it in your heart, then you will want to give them strength and want to bring them peace. If you do not have strength and peace yourself how can you give it to them? If you do not have light, how can you bring light to others? If you are not free of suffering, how can you free others?'

The man who really helps is the man who is in the world but not of it, who loves the world but is not attached to it, who lives in the world but is not stained by it. A lotus arises from mud, doesn't it? But it is not made of mud and it has no mud on its bud or petals. A lotus arises from water, but it rises above the water. If it flowered under the water, no one could see it and get pleasure from it.

Andrew Harvey -- A Journey in Ladakh

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 23rd 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A State of Being

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.

Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 24th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Love Never Excludes Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more dearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.

Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 25th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A Reality Within Yourself

Do not turn away from the body, for within that symbol of impermanence, limitation, and death that you perceive as the illusory creation of your mind is concealed the splendor of your essential and immortal reality. Do not turn your attention elsewhere in your search for the Truth, for it is nowhere else to be found but within your body.

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested. Then, when your consciousness comes back to the manifested world, you reassume the form identity that you temporarily relinquished. You have a name, a past, a life situation, a future.

But in one essential respect, you are not the same person you were before: You will have glimpsed a reality within yourself that is not "of this world," although it isn't separate from it, just as it isn't separate from you.

Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 26th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- True Salvation

True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.

In theistic language, it is to "know God" -- not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.

True salvation is a state of freedom -- from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need....

You think that you can't get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You "get" there by realizing that you are there already. You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.

Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 27th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Space and Time

What you perceive externally as space and time are ultimately illusory, but they contain a core of truth. They are the two essential attributes of God, infinity and eternity, perceived as if they had an external existence outside you.

Within you, both space and time have an inner equivalent that reveals their true nature, as well as your own. Whereas space is the still, infinitely deep realm of no-mind, the inner equivalent of time is presence, awareness of the eternal Now. Remember that there is no distinction between them.

When space and time are realized within as the Unmanifested -- no-mind and presence -- external space and time continue to exist for you, but they become much less important. The world, too, continues to exist for you, but it will not bind you anymore.

Hence, the ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world. Just as you would not be conscious of space if there were no objects in space, the world is needed for the Unmanifested to be realized.

You may have heard the Buddhist saying: "If there were no illusion, there would be no enlightenment." It is through the world and ultimately through you that the Unmanifested knows itself. You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!

Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 28th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Vast in Depth

Go out on a clear night and look up at the sky. The thousands of stars you can see with the naked eye are no more than an infinitesimal fraction of what is there. One thousand million galaxies can already be detected with the most powerful telescopes, each galaxy an "island universe" containing thousands of millions of stars.

Yet what is even more awe-inspiring is the infinity of space itself, the depth and stillness that allows all of that magnificence to be. Nothing could be more awe-inspiring and majestic than the inconceivable vastness and stillness of space, and yet what is it? Emptiness, vast emptiness.

What appears to us as space in our universe perceived through the mind and the senses is the Unmanifested itself, externalized. It is the "body" of God. And the greatest miracle is this: That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be, is not just out there in space -- it is also within you.

When you are utterly and totally present, you encounter it as the still inner space of no-mind. Within you, it is vast in depth, not in extension. Spacial extension is ultimately a misperception of infinite depth -- an attribute of the one transcendental reality Eckhart Tolle

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 29th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Full of God

The world of biology is full of miracles, but nothing I have seen is as miraculous as the metamorphosis of the monarch caterpillar. Her brain is a speck of neural tissue a few millimeters long, about a million times smaller than a human brain. With this almost microscopic clump of nerve cells she knows how to manage her new legs and wings, to walk and to fly, to find her way by some unknown means of navigation over thousands of miles from Massachusetts to Mexico.

How are her behavior patterns programmed first into the genes of the caterpillar and then translated into the neural pathways of the butterfly? These are mysteries that biologists are far from understanding. The monarch is living proof that nature's imagination is richer than our own.

Freeman Dyson

Apprehend God in all things, For God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God! If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature -- even a caterpillar -- I would never have to prepare a sermon, so full of God is every creature.

Meister Eckhart

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Richard David Bach

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 30th 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Who is Dreaming Who?

Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, my alight upon you.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the hardest I've ever learned about anything -- that she is her own, and what she gives me is of her choosing, and the more precious because of it. Sometimes a butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but if you close your hand, one way or the other, it -- and its choice to be there -- are gone.

Barbara Hambly

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.

Chang Tao-ling

--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner

August 31st 2003

From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Tears Made Holy

Sometimes even music can't substitute for tears.

Paul Simon

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes had no tears.

John Vance Cheney

A woman in great distress over the death of her son came to the Master for comfort.

He listened to her patiently while she poured out her tale of woe.

Then he said softly, "I can not wipe away your tears, my dear. I can only teach you how to make them holy."

Anthony de Mello