The Seer

---

Back in the 13th Century, the Dominican friar and mystic, Meister Eckhart, once observed, “It is because the eye has no color that we see color.”

Of course, he was referring to the conea of the eye, that normally transparent windscreen through which Consciousness looks out at the manifest world. That seeing is also conditioned by our ’self-consciousness’, but that’s another story.

You may remember that my corneas were badly injured some years ago by a working-bee accident and that because they became ‘colored’ instead of transparent, I could no longer see colors etc.

Since then, I’ve had several corneal transplants that have restored some useful eyesight from time to time, but these transplants have a limited life and that’s why they have to be ‘redone’.

Last August, my previous graft, which had lasted ten years, turned up its toes and I had to go back to no eyesight again though the seeing continued on uninterrupted.

My ophthalmic surgeon here in Perth made it plain that after so many other transplants and some arising complications, the likelihood of another successful graft was very slim, but that he would give it a go nevertheless.

So, when suitable donated tissue suddenly became available a week ago, I had the operation at RPH. Although my eyelids are still stitched together, the initial indicatiions are that the procedure went well and there is no doubt that I will once again have some useful sight, but how much and for how long is not something anyone can predict.

Of course, our satsang community here has been aware of my situation as have been a numberof my correspondents around the world, and I’ve received so many expressions of love, support and good wishes for the operation etc. that all this positive energy has been extraordinarily uplifting. For all these and those unexpressed but felt, Pearl and I are most profoundly grateful.

Because so many have held this situation in Consciousness, there has been from the outset a ‘peace that passes understanding’ about whether eyesight is to be in the picture for Pete from now on or not. Naturally, I have my preferences, but overall, I know that it is good if it happens and good if it doesn’t. Eyesight matters, of course, but not absolutely.

The only thing that matters absolutely is seeing which has nothing to do with fleshy corneas, but with disidentifying from the egoic self (little me) and seeing What we really are.

When the “I” that I am has no color (no discrimination), then all the colors are seen and what is seen, is recognised as the true Self that is all. What unabated joy there is in this seeing that cannot be touched by bodily frailty or imperfection.

It is this joy that has no opposite or cause that Pearl and I trust you will experience at this festive time when we celebrate the birth of awakening Consciousness in our midst.

Your ever well-wisher,

Pete S.

---

When another recognizes you (Who or What you really are), that recognition draws the dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you.

That is the love that redeems the world.

I have been speaking of this with specific reference to the relationship with your child, but it equally applies, of course, to all relationships.

It has been said “God is love” but that is not absolutely correct. God is the One Life in and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object.

So love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form.

Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.

Eckhart Tolle — A New Earth

---

Recently I saw an interview on television with Jane Goodall who in 1960 began studying chimpanzees in East Africa. Her mentor, the archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey, was interested in whether chimpanzees and humans exhibit similar kinds of behaviour. If they do, this would support archaeological evidence indicating we share a common ancestor.

During the interview Goodall spoke about an occasion when she was walking through the bush with one of the chimpanzees she was studying and getting to know. After a while they stopped and she offered the chimpanzee a piece of fruit. Looking her in the eyes he took the fruit, dropped it, then squeezed her hand - then got up and carried on down the path. Goodall was so astonished she just sat there for a while, taking in what had happened.

It seemed obvious that although he had refused the food, he wanted her to know he was grateful. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was just how a human being might have responded.

She then described another scene. Some evenings the chimpanzees would gather by a waterfall. They didn’t go there for any practical reason – they weren’t going there to drink or eat or sleep. It seemed they were simply going to look. As they looked they swayed from foot to foot, as if they were dancing.

Jane imagined that for them the water cascading down was a mysterious, awe-inspiring thing for “it was always flowing in, always flowing out, and always there”. In the face of this magical vision, what did they do?

They danced!

Her picture of the waterfall is a perfect description of the present moment – things are always flowing in to this timeless awareness, always flowing out of it, and always present in it. Though what is in the emptiness is always changing, yet there’s always something in it. How amazing.

What is your (human!) response to the miracle of this moment, the miracle of sounds, colours, sensations and all the rest, given in this timeless emptiness?

I love to dance!

Richard Lang

For information about Jane Goodall:
click Here

---

If ever you’re fortunate enough to stand in a great cathedral like Chartres in Paris, or some other elsewhere, and gaze up at the gorgeous stained-glass windows depicting so many stories of saints and sinners, the great symbolism behind it all that the architect, artisans and mystics intended is simply this – through all the myriad figures and representations of nature, the one Light shines through and enlightens them all. Without that Light, they could not be seen nor could their translucent colours enthral us.

One Light shines through the many windows and the many differently shaped pieces of glass in each window section. It is the one Light making many appearances – the so-called saints and sinners stand out in every imaginable shade and hue.

These magnificent windows are trying to tell us – it’s all God! Not God and them or God and us – there is only God, the Light that is the substance of all. The same Light shines in and through everything that comes into being – there is nothing else!

The Christ-Light is What we really are – the Light of the world, as the Master always was, is now and ever shall be – beyond birth and death, beyond time and space. Let us then stand in awe and with the eyes of God, gaze the gaze of eternity – seeing God everywhere and in everything.

---

The great Sufi poet and teacher, Jalaludin, Rumi was born on Sept. 30, 1207 in Balkh in modern Afganistan; he died on Dec. 17, 1273 in Konya, Turkey, where he is commonly known as, Mevlana. UNESCO designated 2007, the 800th anniversary of his birth, the international year of
Rumi.

A brilliant mystic, theologian, and one of Persia’s greatest poets, he was also a Sufi Master who gave spiritual instruction to several hundered disciples. A great number of these were transcribed and survive today amidst his vast body of works. A collection of Rumi’s poetry is available from Gurukula. Here are just couple of his observations:

Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it’s a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame’s core.

The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty!. Try to be more like the ground.

The universe and the light of the stars come through me.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Like a thief (Divine) insight stole silently in and sat amongst the devotees eager to give them advice. They were unwilling to listen, so insight kissed their feet and went on its way.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?

If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.

Sufi teaching and counselling is available in Sydney, Australia, from Sheikha Fleur Bonnin, who is originally from Persia (Iran).

---

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

Then Mrs Claus told Santa that her mother was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress.

Then when he finally secured a big bag of toys on the sleigh, one of the tie ropes slipped and the toy bag fell to the ground scattering the toys.

So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a mug of hot apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink.

In his frustration, he accidentally dropped his favorite drinking mug, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said, very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.


The Christmas Season is more than the matter of a few days. Christmas is the Heart’s Season and the Heart is forever. Christmas is Love’s Season and Love is without end. Christmas is the season that belongs to children and there is no time when we are not children.

What is meant by the Christmas Story of “the coming of the Christ”? The Christ is the Truth. The Truth is the Christ. Truth ‘comes’ as a dawning. The Christ is our discovery of the Truth we are. The yearned-for Messiah is none other than the here and now awareness
awakened to the meaning of these words. Doesn’t the Christ say, “I Am (is) the truth”? We declare without doubt or hesitation that we are the Presence of the living Comforter come to “set all things straight.” We take this Identity unto the Self and live it. We gird up the loins and live it.

Somewhere along the line comes the truthful (Christ-full) discovery that we are not a finite body containing life, awareness, within it, but that we are awareness, Life, Love, containing all bodies within “us”. For me that awakening is the Christmas of the Christ-I-am — a pure and pristine Light out of a new day, immaculately conceived, untouched by the world — a holy Child born in a manger. But a child beset quickly by the intellectual Herod I fancied myself to be.

The child we are survives, however. The child of Light “grows strong” and dares, with simple honesty and actions that coincide, to challenge the fiction for the fraud it is. This is your Season. This season commemorates your Self-discovery. This Christmas is YOU.

The pealing bells, the carols, the holly leaves, the laughter, red noses, plum pudding, tinsel and happy tears are yours. These things, every one, are ours. They are us. They point to our true Identity. This holy season is the merriment that Love is and it commemorates the discovery of What we really are.

The discovery may seem to do with time, but the Discovered and the Discoverer are eternal, quite beyond the clock, above the measure of months, more than can be circumscribed by strings of twinkling lights or the jingle of bells. Love is the measure of this Season. Love tells its story. Unbound, honest, simple, gentle and childlike LOVE is the gift we open and the gift we are.

By William Samuel