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Mon 7 May, 2007 11:28 am
The Secret Of The Masters
It was Aleister Crowley who made a profound observation that I have always remembered from the time I first read it. He pointed out that there is one - and only one thing - in common in the lives of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Mohammed, Moses and other great spiritual teachers. Apart from this, their lives and teachings were totally different. So too were the people they preached to and the message they taught. However, there is one unique experience that they all shared in exactly the same way.
Think for a moment what it might be. It's not an easy question......
I won't keep you in suspense. Crowley points out that all of these founders of world faiths, without exception, retreated into a wilderness prior to receiving and delivering their great revelation to the world. Jesus was baptised by John and promptly disappeared into the desert for forty days and forty nights. The Buddha escaped from the samsaric slumber of the royal palace in which he was born, and went to meditate under a bodhi tree for many years before enlightenment came. Alone, Moses disappeared to the top of Mount Sinai and received the ten commandments, and more, from the burning bush of God. The Prophet Mohammed spent much time in a lonely cave at night in the hills outside Mecca before he received the Koran from the Angel Gabriel.
Silence. Retreat. A Wilderness experience. Communing deeply within. This is the X factor. It can truly be said that prior to this inner retreat, there was actually nothing spiritually distinctive about these people at all. Virgin birth apart, the life of Jesus prior to this isolation is hardly even discussed in the Gospels. The Buddha was one of many Indian princes. You couldn't have picked Mohammed out in a crowd. And Moses, though an accomplished magician at the time, and leader of a nation of homeless and hungries, still had his best days very much ahead of him.
When they returned from the place of silence and solitude, they came with FIRE! The flames of that fire spread with unquenchable force. It set light to the world. The truth they revealed differed very markedly, according to their own times, as well as the history and traditions of the people they taught. But it was new. It was powerful. It came from a place where most of us never go. It was divine revelation.
Perhaps none of us will start a major world faith or would even wish to. Yet, the power these spiritual masters tapped is available to us all. In fact, they are the first to say this. This power can transform our personal and spiritual development. It is the power to break the boundaries of our own limitations and ego consciousness.
Now, from this dramatic comparison of the lives of the Spiritual Masters, we have a strong hint of how to get there ourselves. It is through silence, withdrawal and inner stillness. It is only by BEING, i.e. willing to spend time with ourselves, to conduct our own retreats. This is how we can truly break through the barriers and blocks that prevent us from realising who we really are and what our life destiny is.
If you need any more persuading, consider the following from some of the greatest minds that have ever been:
"All of Man's problems stem from his inability to sit quietly with himself"
Pascal
"You can't teach anybody anything, only make them realise the answers are already inside them"
Galileo
"When you go into the space of nothingness, everything becomes known"
Buddha
"You can never learn anything that you did not already know"
Aristotle
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you."
Jesus Christ
An old story relates that the Gods debated as to where to hide their wealth of wisdom and spiritual power. They finally settled on hiding it deep within Man himself. They knew he would look for it everywhere across the planet except there!
Thus, if you wish to make progress in anything - spiritual, material, or even financial - the place to start is to go within. This is where the Inner Genius lies, the Higher Self, the Power of God. Spend time with yourself in contemplation. Wait upon that inner voice. Do not bring your preconceptions with you. Allow what comes to be virgin-born.
How different this teaching is to that of the world; even of the spiritual authorities. The Church will tell you that spiritual growth comes through regular attendance, good works, holy communion and other outward forms. The business world will tell you to attend more seminars, read up on presentation techniques, and jump onto the latest trend.
However, the wise person knows that inner victory must always precede outer. There are no shortcuts. This way of silence is tougher. It takes time and patience. It is out of sorts with the ways of the world, which is precisely its power. You may not even know how to begin or what to expect. Just begin. Schedule regular time for it. All questions will be answered in time. By You!
It is the way the Masters have walked. It is the way they recommend. Practise it yourself. Begin today.
by Asoka Selvarajah, Ph.D
Copyright © 2002
Spiritual Awakening Network is a registered trademark
Spiritual Awakening Network/All rights reserved
Do you think they did drugs? i hear jesus was bathed in cannibus oil when he was baptised? , but i cant say that is a fact, read it in a blog.
and moses's "burning bush?" lol! j/k, well maybe not...
At least from a Buddhist perspective, the drug experience is quite different from that of enlightenment. One is bounded, and the other is infinite. Drugs induce, while meditation blossoms. Intoxication increases attachment, while the enlightenment experience shatters it. Some hallucinogenic substances can on occasion mimic the transcendental experience, but at best that is only a hit-or-miss substitution for the real thing.
BTW, many years ago I did acid, DMT, and a host of other pscho-active drugs, but found them to be a dead-end. They were certainly interesting experiences, but nothing at all like a moment Awake.
my friend says acid makes him feel like he can see the patterns of the universe, something about fractals or someshit i dont know.
sounds interesting.
Quote:It is the way the Masters have walked. It is the way they recommend. Practise it yourself. Begin today.
Gel-Not that I'm a master at anything- but I find that I need it (silence, exposure to nature-no drugs involved
) at least in some small dose every single day.
I feel nervous and overwhelmed when I'm bombarded with noise and too much stimulus without relief. A daily solitary walk somewhere I find beautiful is more calming than any sort of therapy I can imagine.
I think your theory, if practiced by people in general would go a long way in helping people achieve peace and happiness individually and maybe that would translate into more societal peace and a spirit of unity.
I read an interesting interview with a guy named Richard Louv on his theory that today's children are sufferering from "Nature Deficit Disorder". I think that theory makes a lot of sense.
Years ago, I would go to a yoga center in Massachussetts, when I was feeling really stressed out. The minute that you walked into the place, a sense of peace would overtake you.
At the center, we would meditate, learn yoga postures and do breathing exercises. When I returned home, I was usually a couple of feet off the ground for a number of days.
I attempted to continue with the practices at home, but I was never willing or able to persevere with it. One of these days, I just may take myself up north, and go there again.
i have a theory: maybe when they retreat into the wilderness they get out of other humans "psychic radius?"
they would be alone withut interference from any other people and their energy fields LOL i sound like a conspiracy theorist!
but im sure you can deduce my point, they would be without social and psychic interference so ones thoughts would manifest themselves truly.
but then again maybe they just got high
j/k
OGIONIK wrote:
and moses's "burning bush?" lol! j/k, well maybe not...
Not a mystic, I take it...
"When my Beloved appears, With what eye do I see Him? With His eye, not with mine, For none sees Him except Himself."
ibn al-Arabi
Uncertain knowledge ......... If you use drugs to meditate it is what you have learned that you find. What you seek is the center where all that you sense coalesces into all that you are.
T.E. Laurence said in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, that God is to be found only on remote mountain tops, or in the most desolate deserts (paraphrased, but close to the actual quotation).
Why is this?
When we are in the marketplace, surrounded by multiple stimuli all competing for our attention, we tend to lose focus. We are constantly comparing things and putting values on them. We are distracted by our self interests. We are guided in our judgments by ideation that often has little to do with actual circumstances. Rather than think through the interactions, we adopt short-cuts to thinking ... stereo-types, emotionally held biasis, etc. Surrounded by others busily occupied, it is easy to be caught up in pursuit of things that strengthen the ego, and blind us to the underlying reality. Time, space, change and comparison are difficult to avoid.
When one goes alone into the wilderness, there are fewer distractions. Faced with endless sky and empty horizons, it is easier to find a truer perspective of our place in the universe. Alone, our egos are not constantly "competing" with the multiplicities of life in the social arena. Alone, our needs are reduced to light and simple meals, water, and perhaps some minimal shelter from the elements. Once those needs are supplied, all that is left for the seeker is meditation. It isn't the grandeur nor the desolation that fixes the mind's attention after an initial period, but the sameness. The seeker ceases to note the environment, and their attention turns increasingly inward until it is fixed and focused on a single point. If all the conditions are right, the odds of having the transcendental experience goes way up. You have to be silent and pay close attention to hear "god.
Coming down from the mountain, the Awakened communicates the experience in terms that his culture might understand. Disciples gather to hear the Master's message, and they also interpret what they think the meaning of the experience was. The disciples compete for leadership after the death of the Master, and their interpretations of the message compete to become the doctrine and dogma that will be passed along to the lay followers of the newly hatched religion. Lay followers further complicate the message by ornamenting the doctrines/dogma with cherished cultural traditions, myths, symbols and superstitions. When, perhaps a hundred years later, another individual has the transcendental experience it is either modified to fit within the older teachings, or it is depicted as a blasphemy to be stamped out.
Priests deal with the religious needs of lay people. They know the "correct" doctrine/dogma, the proper rituals for births, deaths and marriages. They encourage the congregation to follow the teachings, and care for the temple or church. The monastery tries to mimic the wild and desolate places, to reduce distractions that feed the ego, and to assist the individual's search for union similar to that experienced by the Great Teacher of the religion. Sometime it works, but often it doesn't.
From a Buddhist perspective it is less important for the individual to achieve the transcendental experience than it is to live in such a way as to reduce or mitigate the sufferings naturally attendant upon living in the world of perception and multiplicity. Sincere and constant practice is by itself useful to the goal of limiting suffering of both the individual practitioner and the world at large. Laymen who live the Middle Path are less susceptible to suffering, and they cause less suffering to others. Acceptance of limitations and the effects of change also reduces suffering. The seeker who strives mightily, is also one who is obscuring Ultimate Reality by building an ego wall against the very thing being sought.
Each should do their best to live without causing suffering, and that may be best discovered in the Pali and Sanskrit sutras of the Buddha's Teaching, the Dharma. When the "time" is right, when "waiting is filled", the individual may suddenly find that the Perceptual World vanishes to be replaced by the underlying Ultimate Reality; indivisible, infinite and the precursor to time, space and change.
I once sat on a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a cheeseburger with onion rings and a lime ricky.
OGIONIK wrote:Do you think they did drugs? ...
Maybe they used that little spider that causes the hours long erection to get "high".
Jeeze Dys, when I tried the same thing all I got was a peyote milkshake er, I guess that was how it started ... I think
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