How to Meditate

by Sam Fryman


(the cover painting is The Son of Man by Rene Magritte)






Copyright 2005 Sam Fryman, all rights reserved


CONTENTS
Introduction 3
Chapter 1 A Brief Review of Existing Meditation Techniques 9
Chapter 2 How Your Psychological Balancing Mechanism Works 19
Chapter 3 How to Really Live in the Now 31
Chapter 4 Awareness is the Key 45
Chapter 5 Inhibition the Power of No 61
Chapter 6 Hypnosis the Modern Psychological Disease 81
Chapter 7 Heaven and Hell Meditation and Kundalini 103
Chapter 8 Meditation and Authority seeking the guru inside 115













INTRODUCTION

Since the days of the Beatles and the Maharishi in the 1960s, meditation
has become a household word, and millions of Westerners have ever
since apparently been engaged on a journey to enlightenment which
previously had no precedent in Europe and the Americas in recorded
history.

Of course millions in India have meditated in one form or another for
generations, whereas the Western principally Christian and Arabic
Muslims worlds appear to have had only prayers as their form of
communication with God or the Divine or the higher dimensions of
consciousness.

In particular, in the West, the priest, the bishop, the cardinal and the Pope
have been the intermediaries between man and God, though as long ago
as the fifteenth century, in England, with the support of Cambridge
university intellectuals, Henry VIII decided he would appoint himself as
the direct contact between the English Christians and God, which title of
Head of the Church of England" the current British Queen, Elizabeth II,
still holds even today.

(we shall assume for the purpose of this book that God exists either as an
impersonal Nature God or a Personal Deity as the reader pleases,
though no belief in God as such is required to benefit from the
meditation technique described throughout).

But the modern, scientifically informed mind is no longer satisfied with
the rigmaroles offered by the mainstream Church, not that we are denying
the right of people to attend churches and get whatever comfort and sense
of community they are able thereby.

For since the 1960s in particular, with its quest for experiences rather
than mere words and promises whether by drug use, sexual exploration
or spiritual or meditation techniques the hunger and indeed demand is
now for direct contact with some kind of god or higher states of
consciousness.

But the whole premise of our book is that most of the efforts at
enlightenment to date by use of meditation techniques and drugs and
even sex, as per the Tantrik Sex practices, have been flawed in a
fundamental way.

That is, they have been pursuing sensation, and not understanding.

That is, most users of drugs and seekers after sexual delights are
unashamed and honest about just what it is they are looking for.

They are seeking a powerful sensation, they are seeking a glorious and
delectable feeling of floating in a velvet haze that entices and torments
and blows their mind.

We are not condemning drug users or those who seek out more than a
moderate amount of sex for desiring these things, though neither are we
saying they are wise or right.

For most of Western society enjoys sex and some form of drug, most
popular of which currently is obviously alcohol, so it would be
hypocritical to deny the right of anybody to a certain amount of sensual
gratification and pleasure.

But what we are saying, is that to obsess on these matters beyond a
certain measure can only be regarded as immature from the spiritual point
of view, as equally therefore can be meditation techniques whose main
goal and consequence is the pursuit and attainment of such states of gross
physical sensation.

The point we are making, is that enlightenment on any level must
include some kind of expansion of ones faculty of understanding, there
must be a mental expansion in ones perceptive, intuitive and creative
powers, or else all we have is just like any drug user or sex addict, a
compendium of experiences of having a quick buzz, no matter how
satisfying or intense.

We would however also wish to demystify the idea of a spiritual quest
altogether, as something reserved only for the high minded or ivory
tower class of beings, who consider themselves far above the ordinary
run of the mill pig at the trough kinds of people, whom they see the rest
of society as being by comparison.







Of course no uneducated or illiterate person is going to read a book such
as this, but it is not right to deny the mass of humanity a spiritual goal, as
is the current status quo, because all can advance according to such
spiritual luminaries as kundalini guru Gopi Krishna, apart from really
the lowest or subnormal classes of society, which means that at least
seventy-five percent of humans alive can advance spiritually, so that
nobody desiring to do so is incapable.

But then not everyone who meditates in some fashion thinks in terms of a
spiritual goal or getting enlightened anyway, many millions
perhaps the majority are just seeking some kind of yoga or meditation
techniques out as a means to gain an inner peace and harmony.

Again, we should point out that if this is the goal, then the pursuit of
exciting or thrilling experiences via meditation is obviously not the goal,
as the states of excitation and peace are clearly incompatible.

For we live in a very stressful, nerve jangling society, whose goal seems
to be to destroy our peace in every conceivable way.

The national governments of our world, are all becoming ever more
concerned with this term security, because really, we have before us a
world which has threatened our security in any number of ways, in terms
of our job security, the security of our close personal relationships, our
individual security in the face of crime and terrorist threats, the alarming
appearance of so many scary new diseases, and the background fears of
weapons of mass destruction whether of biological or nuclear kind.

Yet we feel mostly powerless to do anything about all these threats to our
personal security, so then we seek escape and solace in our various
pleasures including sex and drugs, and if we are still not happy after that,
we may finally turn to some kind of religion or spiritual practice to try to
take away our pain, or give some kind of meaning to our lives which they
otherwise now lack.

So this preamble has been felt necessary, because it is surely essential to
ask ourselves when we are considering embarking on some kind of
meditation or other spiritual practice exactly what it is we are trying to
achieve, and what our motivation really is.

So we see, the answer to the question implied by the title of our book has
begun already, because most of us are not in fact quite sure what it is we
are trying to do when we meditate anyway.
If we think we are seeking enlightenment what do we really mean by
that, what is it that we think enlightenment really is?

From the point of view of Gopi Krishna or J Krishnamurti, enlightenment
is a state of consciousness, a state of intuitive understanding, it is a state
of knowing and understanding.

Whereas if we are honest about it, what most of us are really seeking is
not a level of understanding which may in fact have a great burden of
knowledge and responsibility attached to it, but rather a state of pleasure
or worry-free ignorant bliss.

And this we see, is why drugs, alcohol and lots of sex are so popular,
because this use of powerful physical sensations blots out at least
temporarily the feelings of insecurity and thoughts of worry which are
continually to be found occupying our minds.

There may be war in our world, unresolved pain and conflict in the
relationships all around us in our personal lives, our career plans may be
going astray, our finances in some desperate condition, but if we have a
good session on the juice, or get lost in some sexual pursuits, we can at
least temporarily blot out this near constant torture of mental anxiety and
worry which our mind imposes on us whether we like it or not.

The last words of the previous paragraph have been emphasized as they
are the key to this situation, to what we would here describe as real
meditation.

We have identified that our uncontrolled and compulsive thinking is the
problem, so the answer is that we must learn how to discipline our
minds, whereas when we fail to do that, we have to run to a doctor for a
tranquilizer tablet to chemically subdue our wild and self-abusive minds,
or else we go and find a powerful non-prescription drug to do the same,
to give us that sense of blissful ignorance and freedom that our minds
currently lack.

For we must be aware above all that whenever we have got a problem,
whether it is we cannot get a date with a member of the opposite sex, or
we have a leaky roof, there are going to be a million exploiters out there
who are going to sell us solutions to our problem, so they thereby make a
living or get wealthy, regardless of whether these solutions are genuine
ones or frauds.

But in the spiritual field, the motives can be far more complex than
merely money, because the activities of the people who offer us cures to
our mental problems whether of a conventional medical or alternative
kind can make those people feel very important indeed, so that they get
to seem like some great guru whom every one bows down to and speaks of
in hallowed terms.

But as Master Kan said to Kwai Chang Caine in the famous Kung Fu
series when it was time for him to leave the temple forever, a really wise
or great man or woman should not seek out the worship and adulation
of others:

Remember always, be humble . . . like the dust. A wise man walks with
his head bowed.

We do not of course mean bowed literally, we do not wish anyone to
develop a crick in the neck - what is meant is that the wise man or woman
must always be ready to give respect to others, rather than seeking it only
for him or herself.

Of course, as the famous five thousand years old ancient book of Chinese
wisdom, the I Ching, says - there will always be high and low in society
in terms of natural endowment, and thus in that sense equality is
impossible.

We are not all born equal, all our human characteristics such as
intelligence, physical strength, height, weight and even beauty are
possessed by individuals on a kind of Gaussian or bell-shaped
distribution, meaning that most people are only averagely intelligent or
beautiful, and only a few are either very ugly and imbecilic, or on the
other hand, very beautiful or at genius level intelligence.

But the thing to do is to not obsess on comparing ourselves with others,
which will only screw our lives and minds up and theirs also, if we envy
them and hate them, or alternatively despise and look down on them if we
feel superior; but to simply learn to accept ourselves as we are, and learn
to make the most of whatever natural attributes we do possess.

For we all, barring perhaps those really unfortunate few percent, have an
equal chance to evolve, to expand the horizons of our mental worlds and
lives, so the basic outlook is surely an optimistic one for all of us.


Thus our goal here is to help every man and women deal with this most
important issue of gaining peace and happiness by gaining control over
our minds, which as we will see, cannot be learned by any simple
technique in five minutes, or merely the possession of a mantra to chant,
not that we are saying such techniques are always valueless, depending
upon the person and their circumstances in life.

But what we are offering here we might subtitle as the intelligent
persons guide to meditation, and when we say intelligent, we mean only
whoever has the patience and natural ability to listen and understand, so
this is wholly regardless of any preconceptions you may have about
yourself, or have perhaps had forced onto you by other teachers, gurus or
miscellaneous advisors and opinionated people in your life ever before.
Chapter one
A Brief Review of Existing Meditation Techniques

As we have said, the Maharishi was perhaps the first major populariser of
meditation amongst the millions though there had long been Western fans
of other earlier gurus and Eastern yoga type techniques since probably the
Victorian era in England.

For example, there was around the turn of the twentieth century a
Ramakrishna mission, conducted by Vivekananda, his closest disciple,
and Gopi Krishna for one has identified Ramakrishna as a genuine
enlightened case.

But not all the missions of those who would seek to offer us spirituality
are so honest and philanthropic as Vivekanandas.

We meet many people in all walks of life who aggressively seek to gain
power over us, and it is a sure sign that this tendency alone identifies
them as not high in true spiritual terms, which would imply they were
caring and sharing rather than desirous of dominating and enslaving
others.

Many of the techniques offered to us may for all we know also not be
safe.

The outcome of deliberate attempts to meditate such as using mantras,
concentrating on an object or idea, or other forcible means of stilling
the mind, can sooner or later be very disturbing or scary in their
outcomes.

J ust as for some so called psychedelic drug experiences can be
terrifying, and even result in a persons death.

Those who believe otherwise about drugs do not realise that what may be
relatively harmless for them may be extremely dangerous to someone
else.

(not that we are ultimately implying these drugs are safe for anybody, as
there could for example be genetic damage, which may only appear in
ones children or grandchildren, as Krishnamurti suggests).

We are not all the same, mentally or physically. Some of us are tough,
hardy and insensitive, and others are more finely tuned and fragile both
physically and mentally than a Stradivarius violin.

J ust as the same food ate by a Neanderthal, virtually savage man
hundreds of thousands of years ago might cause merely a burp and a
grunt in him, but would likely cause a modern man or woman to be sick
to the stomach and hospitalized for maybe a week.

In assessing all these matters, we have to realise that we are as humans
not all the same we are as different as the animals in the jungle or the
creatures in the sea or sky.

Some of us may be like snakes, slithering around, looking for a quiet and
sandy hole to hide away in, some of us dont like the sunlight too much,
and only come out at night, some of us are repulsed by the idea of eating
even an omelette due to its containing eggs, whereas others could wolf
down an egg and bacon breakfast without hesitation, but rather delight.

Some of us even found we could do such things in youth, which now
repulse us in older age.

We are not saying anyone is right or wrong, we are saying, we have
got to stop believing that just because some activity or meditation or food
or drug is suitable and safe for person X, it will necessarily be suitable
and safe for person Y.

In the privileged Western nations we can now eat and drink and do
pretty much whatever we like, and so superficially it may feel like we
have never had it so good, but then why are we all cracking up whilst
surrounded by all this extravagance we have got?

But we do not question this indulgent lifestyle hardly ever at all.

Instead we believe that we can live a decadent, over-stressful life, with
inadequate rest and sleep, burning the candle at both ends, having orgies
of sex, drugs and food, but then still imagine by somehow finding some
yoga technique or mantra, or relaxation method to do a few minutes a
day, we can retain our sanity, mental balance, happiness and health.

So before rushing off to a guru to get ourselves a mantra, perhaps we
should stop first to think what it is exactly we are doing with our lives,
more specifically, what we are doing to our bodies and minds.
The odds are that if you are the average person, even a young person, you
are now reading this book before you, only by stealing a few fleeting
minutes in your otherwise busy and non-stop day.

Because there are a hundred other things you have been persuaded that
you should be doing, you likely will feel guilty if you spend too much
time reading this book, when you should so you have been led to believe
really be mowing the lawn, or booking that exciting holiday abroad,
doing your never ending academic studies, chasing members of the
opposite sex, or formulating some new and clever plans to make that
business of yours prosper ever more and succeed.

So we would advise you most urgently, do not think merely in terms of
some panacea type meditation technique to save you, which at best
would be a sticking plaster solution to fix the gaping wound, rather it is
time to press the stop button now and rethink your whole life afresh.

We imagine we can just squeeze a few minutes of meditation in here
and there amidst our crazy, out-of-control non-stop life, and everything
will be alright.

But no, it cant be done that way, and only a liar who will take our money
regardless of the truth of the matter, will tell us that it can.

That is, when we say liar, we are not suggesting that such a person
actually is consciously lying, and doesnt actually believe in what they
recommend, though that cannot be denied as a possibility, as we know
there is pretty much nothing that people wont do nowadays to make
another pound, yen, rupee or buck.

But it is a lie against Nature nonetheless, because they are saying bleed
all day long, and here is a little syringe you can use five minutes a day to
pump the blood back in.

If we were all being bled only a little, a little syringe and a little time
might do the trick, but that is not how the body functions in terms of the
huge energy which we are encouraged to put out due to the demands of
the frantic modern Western, and now increasingly so, the modern
Eastern lifestyle also that is being thrust upon us.

We have to be so smart and with it dont we, they tell us, or we will
miss the boat, we will get left behind in the race of life.

Shall we put it differently?

We all want to be free, dont we?

But we think we can accomplish that miracle whilst daily signing up to
commitments and pursuits that make us ever more a slave.

For example, let us say that a friend calls us up on the telephone.

He or she says well, are you up for it? Are you coming?

They are inviting us to a parachute jumping session we have almost
agreed to this weekend.

That is, when our employer or college finally lets us out of the pen for the
weekend to get some recreation, and ceases to whip our mind and body to
exhaustion with a metaphorical cat-o-nine-tails, to get some relief from
being imprisoned all week we decide that the only sensible way to spend
our free time is to live life to the full, to do something exciting and
crazy, even jumping out of a plane, scaring the pants off ourselves, and
not too occasionally more or less risking death.

So we are suggesting rather hang on, our body and mind has been
active all week, going at full throttle, so isnt it time for some rest?

The truth is we cannot waste our powers of body and mind as if we were
racking up huge debts on a credit card, and get away with it. Nature will
come knocking at our door one day, and like Shylock in The Merchant
of Venice, will demand its pound of flesh.

For example, what of these people, so many so very young, who get what
is known as ME, or chronic fatigue symptom?

The doctors and the scientists are looking for some virus or allergy or
genetic deficiency as the cause, but maybe a lot of these people just
burned out?

They had a sensitive body and mind, and they took it out and made it
exercise hard everyday, as if they were training a race horse, and it might
have won a few races, but after too many years at being forced beyond its
natural limits and survival needs for the entertainment and gambling of
humans, it may soon be fit only for the knackers yard.

Recently in the UK, we had a half-marathon in which thousands of
amateur runners took part, and was televised and thereby popularized as
an entertaining and worthwhile event.

But four people dropped dead during it. The experts said it was rather
tragic because usually only one or two died during such runs!

No doubt a good number of the participants were conned into it, likely
under some kind of peer pressure or duress, as many were running for
charity, and therefore likely manipulated into doing an otherwise entirely
useless and dangerous activity as to their own personal survival, health
and evolutionary development you see which actually resulted in a
number of deaths.

Many people also get addicted to jogging or other forms of high energy
training, pushing themselves near or beyond their limits, because
apparently there is some sort of chemical effect such as endorphins the
bodys own version of morphine or whatever which happen when we
put ourselves into such pain for long enough.

That is, we can feel some relief by cutting ourselves or pushing our
bodies to their limits with athletic training, but we are also risking
damaging ourselves physically by such methods, which may be quiet and
stealthy damage that will not surface for many years in any discernible
form.

For example, we have all heard stories of top athletes e.g. ex-Olympic
champion runner Florence Joyner Griffiths who suddenly drop dead for
one reason or another, but seemed by all appearances to us to be in
perfect health or fit as a fiddle.

Whereas some versions of the ancient Indian largely preventative
Ayurvedic medicine, suggest only three sessions weekly of moderate
exercise lasting perhaps thirty minutes each time as suitable for most
adults.

Similarly, some kind of discontent must be driving those who climb
dangerous mountains, or go into equally dangerous caverns in the ground,
dicing with death in both cases.

We have got to stop thinking of all these activities as normal and start
asking, just why are people doing all these dangerous things that put their
limbs and lives at risk?
Are they trying to make a name for themselves?

In many cases, that certainly is the answer, but by no means all.

For there are many other ways of more safely making ones name, and
finding a place in life.

Is this about meditation?

It certainly is, because if we dont know what is going on in their minds
and ours, how do we know we will not end up like them?

Perhaps we will get sucked into the next bungee jumping group outing
from our office, lured in by the excitement that we will enjoy doing
something crazy to escape this mindless imprisonment we are in all
week, and we might end up having a heart attack or something when we
fall those several hundred feet in a few seconds, which if the elastic snaps
will anyway most certainly result in our death.

But well, you know, they will tell us thousands of people do bungee
jumps everyday.

Why doesnt the author stop whinging?

Its normal. Its safe. Its OK.

Yes, we agree, not many people have heart attacks or die, at least not
immediately after these exercises. But then what about a few days, weeks
or month later?

Is anybody keeping such statistics?

In this high pressure, no-time-to-stop-and-watch-the-sunset world we live
in, we very much dont think so.

So we are saying, this subject is about real meditation because it is about
freedom.

The bungee jumper is saying we want the freedom to do something crazy.

But if they dont know what is motivating them to do what in the authors
opinion no one in their right mind ever would, how can they call
themselves free?
Perhaps next they will be tempted to do fire walking and thereby lose a
few toes, or become an Arctic explorer and lose a few fingers too.

We had for example British legend Donald Campbell, who broke land
speed record after record in the 20
th
century, in his Bluebird series of
cars.

These Evil Knievel type pursuits fascinate children of all ages. The
British SAS has the slogan who dares wins.

But they dont point out to us an equally or even more likely truth:

who dares often DIES in the process

And of course, many of these daredevils eventually prove the truth of
that, as did the aforementioned Donald Campbell who finally killed
himself in 1967 in the process of breaking the water speed record at over
300mph on Coniston Water in the British Lake District.

So we have a society that functions on these kinds of ideas, of taking
risks, and subjecting ourselves to extremes of activity and risk as a
hobby, as a legitimate means of entertaining ourselves.

Thousands die yearly in motorcycle accidents, usually in collision with a
relatively invulnerable car or more or less wholly invulnerable truck, but
they keep showing Easy Rider on TV, so people keeping buying motor
bikes, and feeling the thrill of the sun and wind on their skin, and
imagining they are invulnerable, at least for a while.

Shall we summarize?

We are saying only, our purpose here in life is to enjoy what we can, to
have relationships with others, to have children, and to evolve.

How does risking death come into this, when there is absolutely no need?

But others will say - live on the edge, drive fast and dangerously, and
thus live short and gloriously, if so be it.

So all we are saying is do what you wish, but are you really free, or is
this desire to dice with death coming from a dark place in your mind?

Are you hiding a death wish? Are you in a sense worshipping death while
pretending to celebrate life?

So we are going into some detail here, not because we wish to conduct a
personal campaign about road safety, but because we are trying to show
that some immature concept of meditation, that involves merely reciting a
mantra or concentrating on a candle flame or image of a lotus in ones
mind, is not going to be enlightening if we already have a mind as most
of us one sees certainly do which is full of wild and unnatural desires,
like the death wishes of those who pursue dangerous sports.

For do we not see that there is surely here a kind of shaking a fist at
God in these dicing with death pursuits?

For example, astronomy is a nice, safe and enjoyable hobby, as we do not
know of one single person for example who has been hit by a meteor
whilst peering through a telescope, and being struck by lightning is also
unlikely, because the stars, moon and planets are not much visible on a
cloudy or stormy night.

But that would not be shaking a fist at God, one sees, but rather an
admiring of his handiwork.

As Marlon said to Truman in the Truman Show while sitting on a rock
together admiring the moonlit sky:

Yeah, thats the big guy. Quite a paint brush hes got . . .

But this quiet contemplation will not do for the sophisticated modern
man or woman, so again, we see that the issue is the troubled, rebellious
mind.

It is what is in our mind that is controlling our life, and that is what we
have to do something about.

We have mentioned that deliberate meditation techniques can also be
dangerous.

But there are many who learn these techniques without realising the risks,
and some have got into awful states thereby.

But how can that be, how can this mere meditating, have got them into
trouble, which seems to be just some innocent and ineffectual piece of
spiritual claptrap?

Those who know nothing of meditation think it is all nonsense, and that
merely doing something in ones mind cannot possibly have any serious
effects on either mind or body.

What little they know!

And what is more, we do not recommend they try it, in order to find out!

It may be in fact that some people are naturally resistant to these ideas of
meditation practices for very good reasons, because were they to
use these techniques, they might stir up all kinds of monsters in their
minds.

That is, let us be scientific about this.

We are saying, what many meditation techniques will do is to stir up
the unconscious mind, they will place the mind into a passive state
somewhat like a waking sleep in which it starts to output repressed
materials as if one heated up a cauldron of impure metal, and all the
scum and impurities started to rise to the surface.

If this stirring is done sufficiently this can be very disturbing to ones
mind.

It can if pursued long enough almost be like having nightmares whilst one
is awake, which one cannot necessarily switch off.

We are in summation merely saying unless one is drawn to meditation
of the types mentioned by an overpowering desire which the present
author cannot dissuade you from, it is best not to use what are from the
strict yoga point of view, deliberate or forcible means of stilling the mind.

Some people may practice these techniques all their lives without much
problem, but others could get into dire straits just after a few sessions of
these forms of meditation, perhaps even only one.

As we have said, it depends on who you are, what your genetic make-up
is, how sensitive or insensitive you are, and also the general level of
activity in your life and other lifestyle factors.
We are going to explain in more detail why in the next chapter.

We will however finish by saying that this does not mean anyone is
helpless without some kind of way to stabilize their mind and control
their thoughts.

For we are rather recommending a more natural way of achieving these
goals which we will explain in due course.



Chapter Two
How your psychological balancing mechanism works the
importance of sleep

Were we just the same as the other species of animals, which therefore
can legitimately be called lower, we would not be aware that the source
of all the thoughts appearing in our minds is a convoluted and
indescribably complex organ inside our skulls known to human beings as
the brain.

This piece of information which we are aware of and the other species are
not, is absolutely vital to understanding our thought processes.

That is, merely given the information that the brain is a biological organ
composed of cells just like the heart, liver or kidneys, we have a starting
point for understanding our minds.

That is, just like our muscles, other organs and nerves generally, we can
assume that the brain undergoes wear and tear.

We get tired and we cannot think so clearly any more, and though we can
somehow force ourselves to stay awake sometimes, eventually
involuntarily will come sleep.

This tells us that our body needs this sleep very badly all animals sleep
and so obviously repair of various kinds is taking place.

So the question is is it only our other bodily tissues and organs that
need sleep or does our brain need it also?

Fortunately we do not need to speculate on this subject, as modern
science has already done enough work for us.

What has been discovered, mainly using brain wave monitoring
techniques and observing and questioning the subject themselves in the
sleep experiments conducted, is that there are two kinds of sleep, both of
which we need to maintain our mental efficiency and psychological
balance.




The first kind is the well known REM or rapid-eye-movement sleep,
which is the dreaming sleep. We can observe others in this phase, as we
see their eye-balls swivelling about under their lids, which is a little
creepy the first time one observes it.

The second kind is a deep state of dreamless sleep, which must be the
nearest thing that we ever get to a state of living death, as obviously we
have some kind of awareness during the REM sleep, even though its
memory may disappear quickly, sometimes immediately on awakening.

The two sleep patterns alternate throughout the night, though the precise
ratio of dreaming to dreamless sleep will depend on any particular
individuals age, make-up and other lifestyle factors.

If we awaken a person in REM sleep - which we do not recommend you
do, as this is an important phase of sleep for them - we find that they have
been dreaming, and their eyes are swivelling in order to follow round the
scenes of their inner vision of dreams, which at the time they and we also
when dreaming may believe to be real.

But the researchers went on to find out that if we deliberately deprive
experimental subjects of this REM sleep by waking them up every time
they begin to enter this phase, after a time they becoming very irritable,
and after several days of this treatment they start experiencing mood
swings, and can become paranoid and even violent.

So this suggests that if we deny ourselves the REM and dreaming sleep
we will find the same happens to us. We will become moody and
paranoid and therefore unbalanced.

So this implies the REM sleep is some kind of a psychological balancing
mechanism, and therefore to miss adequate sleep regularly for any length
of time will inevitably affect our mental health and well being.

But not only can we miss out on the REM sleep by failing to get enough
sleep, it can also be interfered with by certain drugs, such as tranquilizers
and also alcohol.

The researchers however also discovered that when someone who has
been deprived of REM sleep for some days is finally allowed to have this
phase of dreaming sleep once again, they dream continuously, and
sometimes the dreams are far more powerful and frightening than
normal.
This phenomenon is known as the paying off the dream debt.

But as we have said that alcohol and certain drugs, such as some
tranquilizers and sleeping tablets can inhibit or completely prevent this
dreaming sleep, we see that such people will also acquire a large dream
debt, so that if they suddenly withdraw the drug use after a long period,
they will find that they get masses of scary or even terrifying dreams.

In fact, after long term or heavy sedative, hypnotic drug or alcohol use,
on stopping suddenly the person may even start to hallucinate and get all
sorts of other unpleasant symptoms whilst awake, such as in the delirium
tremens experienced by alcoholics, so therefore anyone with such a long
term drug use situation should come off these things slowly, just as all
doctors recommend.

Those who use alcohol will also notice that they dream more in the
morning hours of sleep when the alcohol is wearing off, and this may
cause them to have heavy eyes which have been swivelling about
continuously in REM sleep for perhaps an hour or two or more to clear
off this dream debt.

So what is this dreaming or REM sleep trying to do?

Why do we need it?

The answer basically appears to be undigested psychological material.

For example, if we have some awful experience, such as a car crash, or
being raped or beaten up, or caught up in a war, we may have nightmares
about it for a short or long time, or possibly even for the rest of our lives.

So it is our emotional and physical response to some traumatic
experience light or deep which seems to cause some sort of stress
imprint upon our brain and nervous system, which is required to be
ironed out or balanced or repaired, with this REM sleep output
occurring as a side effect.

Some gurus however such as Krishnamurti say they no longer dream,
because their system has become so balanced and purified that this REM
sleep is no longer required.



This would if true however seems to be an extremely rare achievement,
and we would suggest with confidence that those who claim not to dream,
simply do not remember the dreams they have, as in fact, most people do
not remember the vast majority of dreams they have had in the sleeping
phase, as this information is generally not helpful or necessary during our
waking state.

But we now however can make a simple model of how experience affects
the brain, and how the brain repairs itself.

We have some powerful experience or stress, which makes some mark
on the brain, like a small graze on our skin, but in a few hours it is healed
and gone, perhaps with some dreaming or other sensations as the side
effects as we heal.

If the cut is deeper however, that may take far longer to heal, maybe a
few days or even weeks or years.

But if we dont give our brains a chance by adequate sleep these inner
scars may not ever properly heal.

Then we find that we have a congested mental system in which many
thoughts pop into our minds unrequested, and interfering in our ability to
conduct our life and relationships in general.

In its extreme form, this may be the cause of something like Tourette's
Syndrome, the sufferers of which may express involuntary movements,
sounds and even rude speech.

We surely have to assume that any kind of compulsive-obsessive
disorder must have this kind of hard wiring into the brain, which is not
easily resolvable, due to some ingrained pattern of stress having created
or forced the troublesome behaviour trait.

For example, a person who feels threatened or has been molested or
whatever, may develop some kind of nervous habit to compensate,
which may in time become more or less compulsive.

So we see that the problem is not the nervous habit but the energy, the
case of explosives that sits beneath the habit and is causing it to
continue as a symptom of the underlying problem.

As body language analyzers will easily point out, most of us develop
some kind of nervous habit when placed under enough stress, such as
holding our chin, shaking our heads, or drumming our fingers on a table
top.

But we find we cannot think our way out of these behaviours, because we
cannot get at the hardwired circuitry in our minds.

In the innovative movie, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, J im
Carrey volunteers to have his thoughts erased by some sophisticated
technique which purports to track down his unwanted memories and erase
them one by one.

But as in reality, no such technique exists, and as even the savage attempt
by the psychiatric and medical communities of the not too distant past to
remove malignant behaviours by lobotomy (cutting pieces of the
brain out) or ECT (electro-convulsive or electro-shock therapy) has failed
to change the behaviour patterns of mentally ill or obsessive patients, we
are left with a serious problem on our hands and in our minds.

But in this problem let us observe something else which is how adults
often deal with their emotional traumas in comparison to children.

We see that more often that not, adults deal with their problems by
suppression or repression.

That is, say we have a relationship breakdown, or are disappointed and
rejected in love.

We tend to go through an awful series of emotions, mostly typically
blaming the other party for everything that has gone wrong, whether this
is justified or not.

But we do not necessarily simply allow the emotion to express itself and
have a good cry or allow rage or whatever.

We sing songs like I Will Survive, we show bravado, we pretend we
dont care about that person, or their rejection of us, we say it is their
loss, etc., we have all these strategies to paper over the immense
pressure of this overwhelming emotion and pain we feel.



But really the only solution from the point of view of normalizing the
brain is to (preferably in the privacy of our rooms) allow ourselves to feel
the agony, to allow the natural release in tears or anger of the pain we
really feel.

On the other hand, we typically see little children having some awful or
even not so awful disappointment of getting hurt in some way, and their
response is to bawl the house down.

But when they are finished hey presto, they are bright and fresh and
new it is like the tragedy never happened.

And there we see a key.

If we cannot be wise enough not to invest our emotions and hopes in
places and people it isnt safe, we have to allow ourselves to accept our
own suffering without running away into denial.

For then we can come out fresh and new just like the child as if it never
happened.

We do not recommend men bawl in front of their girlfriends or wives, or
that mothers do the same in front of their children, because a woman
needs to feel the security of having a man who seems to be in control of
himself and invulnerable even if he isnt and likewise a child would
be too distressed in seeing such pain and sorrow in its mother.

But this is all a last resort, and really should only be used for unavoidable
pains, like for example ones close relatives or friends dying.

So we see now that the sensible thing is to avoid traumas to begin with,
mainly by not having unreasonable expectations of the actions and
loyalties of others towards us.

In a sense, we are all alone, as no one else can ever fully share our inner
mental world, except perhaps our God, if such we believe in.

So really we have all got to build an armour of independence inside us,
like Supermans Fortress of Solitude in which we can be ourselves,
and at peace with ourselves in our own private inner world.



We would all like to be recognised, understood, but we discover like in
Stings Message in a Bottle that everyone else is seeking the same:

Ill send an SOS to the world
Ill send an SOS to the world
Hope that someone gets my SOS
Hope that someone gets my message in a bottle

Woke up this morning
Cant believe what I saw
One hundred billion bottles
Washed upon the shore

Seems Im not alone in being alone

Others are not so interested in recognising and understanding us as they
are desperate to have those things offered to themselves.

So the sensitive person feels the pain of seeing that others do not care
much about him or her, as these others are too busy trying to find others
to acknowledge and care about them.

But we do not run away from this reality. We must learn to live with it as
a fact.

We can expect loyalty only from those whom we are important to by
virtue of us giving to them in some way.

So we are saying, this too is real meditation.

This awareness of ones own pain, and that ultimately, except for a few
remarkable people and close relatives or friends, and frequently not even
them, nobody cares about us very much, unless they have something to
gain from us.

If we just discovered oil on our land like Jed Clampett in The Beverly
Hillbillies, we find a lot of people interested in us suddenly, who didnt
much care that we existed or didnt before.

And then we hate them and we think the greedy so and sos they
didnt care about us when we were poor, so why should they care about
us now?

Whereas of course, the truth is, that they didnt care about us before and
they still dont now. Its only the money they want, they dont even know
who we are.

But then, we can get very hard and selfish, and we retreat into an angry
little world, and we count our pennies and are ever on the guard for those
idle, good-for-nothings out there who are trying to cheat us so we
become a mean-spirited Mr Scrooge.

So we see when we realise that only we care about them, but they dont
care abut us, that we have only two choices.

Either we dont give to them at all, or we give without expecting anything
back.

So if we dont want to give, because we dont get anything back, that is
up to us. But we have to be aware of it.

This is meditation too.

It is being honest and aware of ourselves, our own feelings and motives,
accepting ourselves as we really are.

So then maybe we feel guilty, so then we give, not out of true desire to
help, but to rescue our bad feelings abut ourselves, to try to preserve in
our minds the idea that we are charitable and good people when we are
not.

But that is again repression, or denial.

If we hate, it is better we learn to live with our hate, be true to ourselves,
and then one day we may not hate, but only we see when we stop
pretending that we love, and not hate.

Because we are saying love cannot be switched on and off like a tap it
is not definable by positives.

Love is only there when hate is not.

So we have to stop hating to become loving people, and if we cant,
then we just live with the fact of being hateful and see how long we can
last that way.

We need to find the root of it, because it is no good saying ah, I will be a
kind person and then we give some money to a tramp, and he says
thanks granddad, you sucker! or some other insult, and we are furious
we gave, though didnt even get a thank you, but worse, rather an insult.

Have they no gratitude, we ask?

So they made us angry after we gave charity to them.

So perhaps we should ask why we gave?

Did we want them to like us, respect us for being a good citizen?

Or did we feel they really needed it, just as the good Samaritan gave half
his cloak regardless of the hate of the other person he was supposed by
tradition of the hatred between their two tribes to have expected and
received?

In the UK and other places we have had aggressive begging.

If we give a pound or dollar to such people, that is not enough for them,
they then demand five or ten. If we give them five or ten, they demand
still more.

So even giving charity becomes a problem for us, if our motives are not
clear.

So where is the answer to all this?

We will find out as we proceed.

But for now, we have found out that we need sleep, probably more than
the average person is getting, and we have discovered also that it can be
interfered with by drugs, including alcohol, if we have more than
moderate use of these things.

We have established a model of brain functioning, in which the mental
stresses of life are relieved via this adequate sleep, mainly in the form of
dreams, and that this is ultimately a process of healing or purifying the
brain.

We have also become aware that the key to the healing of our mental
states lies in not suppressing or repressing out true thoughts and feelings,
but rather learning to live with them, and thus ourselves, as we really are.

Chapter Three
How to Really Live in the Now

Many yoga teachers, psychologists and New Age popularisers have used
this phrase living in the now as some kind of a panacea for all our
mental ills.

But they dont tell us how.

For most of us easily fall into some dream state, or fantasy or thoughts
which have got nothing to do with the present, the now, whatsoever.

This is very tempting to do for most of us, because we are not happy in
the present, we are not happy with the so called now.

So why on earth would we want to live in it?

So therefore, most of us tend to have regular escapes into either
comforting memories of the past, or else fantasy imaginings of our future
hopes, which in most cases can never be.

In our minds, if male we can be a glamorous VIP like the one Steve
McQueen originally or Pierce Brosnan latterly portrayed in The Thomas
Crown Affair, or even a fearless, heroic womanising figure like Sean
Connerys incarnation of James Bond.

If female, we can dream of being the belle of the ball, the Queen Bee,
who has it all - career, family, riches, beauty, clothes, mansion and
prize man; or if we are less ambitious, we can just settle for being loved
and not too fat, somewhat like the goal of the fictional Bridget Jones.

So in this as Krishnamurti explains, is the escape from what is.

We dont think we are so handsome or pretty, so we either have surgery,
or we stop looking in the mirror, or we deny the greater attractiveness of
others, or any combination of the above.

Or maybe we say ah, beauty and looks are only skin deep, I have values
in me much better than that.

But we dont say to ourselves why and how did we decide beauty or
handsomeness was so important anyway?
And as it is impossible to define precisely, to say exactly who is
beautiful and who is not, and why, we thus see we are living with an idea
which has no real meaning.

We are tortured by an idea which is ungraspable, just a ghost or
apparition that we can never capture or pin down.

For as Krishnamurti also explains, we live by comparison.

We measure ourselves constantly against what others seem to be, what
others have got, and then we punish ourselves for not living up to them,
or else we try to deny the value of or punish those others who seem to be
and have what we are not and do not.

So what do we do with all these thoughts we have, all these escapes from
the now?

A million self-help books, therapists and gurus appear to solve our
problems, and as we have said, frequently take a lot of money off us for
on the whole failing to do so.

So here, we have a different solution we are going to solve them for
ourselves, instead of going to the shrink or the guru to tell us how
and what to think, we are going to take responsibility for the content and
management of our own minds.

And we are going to do that not with some hazy idea of living in the
now, which in practice doesnt happen, but by actually living in the now,
by learning to live with ourselves as we really are.

For suppose someone were to write a book, which boldly claimed as its
title How to Solve Every Problem Under the Sun.

How long would we expect such a book to be?

A few pages perhaps?

Surely at least a few thousand?

Obviously no such book could ever be written, which could solve every
problem we have ever had or might conceivably ever have in the future.
The real answer however is rather like the man who is given only three
wishes by the genie, and if he is wise, he makes as his last wish that he
should be given an unlimited number of further wishes.

The genie which gives us unlimited wishes is the state of genius.

It is a brain that can solve all problems that we need - that is the size of
the book, it is the book of intelligence, not of limited information.

And that intelligent mind only comes about when it is not trapped in
limiting ideas, and it is not tortured by forever flitting from memories of a
troubled past or escaping into the fantasy of an imaginary future which
does not exist.

So how do we live in the now?

How do we stop all these regrets and hopes like two opposite ends of a
seesaw, swinging us up and down all our lives?

As we have said, we learn to live with our thoughts and selves as we
really are, we learn to live with as Krishnamurti says what is.

So how do we do this?

Our mind is like an enormously long tape upon which all our memories
and experiences are laid, or like the data on the spiral groove of a record
or compact music disc.

On this long tape, not only are memories recorded and laid, but
emotional content is also added to them, like the pitch and volume of
sound.

Some parts of the tape are smooth and there are gentle experiences and
memories there which do not disturb us, but other parts are like the scenes
from some horror movie and are so shocking we would if we were able
like to cut those pieces of tape out.

But the parts which disturb us tend to be the ones that keep popping up,
and the more recent they were, the more they pop up.




So we have got as we have said a lot of techniques for ensuring that these
memories dont bother us too much, but then the trouble is, those
memories never purify in our system, the cut or scar in the brain never
heals, and so we never get out mind straight and clear.

The techniques used are many, but after a while, our minds get dulled,
especially as adults, so the thoughts from long ago do not disturb much,
only the recent ones, but the consequence of all this is that our minds stay
dull.

It is has if we were once a great athlete, with the quicksilver mind of the
young child, whose burning desire and powerful focus enables it to learn
to speak a language without any teacher in just a few short years; but now
we have taken so many bumps and bruises, we are not lean mean
runners any more, but the walking wounded, who struggle just to keep
an even keel amongst the never ending pressures and demands of our
lives.

Or again, we might once have floated like a butterfly, stung like a bee,
but now we are old punch-drunk boxers, still fighting to earn our bread,
but taking three punches for every one we give out, and often swinging
blindly as if in a fog and missing without any real coordination any more.

So we are down on the canvas. We are weak and tired, but is the next step
only being knocked out?

Where do we begin our fight back?

And the answer is, we begin and end our fight back in the now.

But we are going to make this living in the now real.

That is, we live with our feelings and our thoughts on a moment to
moment basis without running away.

But we know our mind wants to run away into fantasises of
empowerment and grandeur, in which all our problems are solved, and
we are happy all the time; or alternatively it runs into self-punishing
moods of despair, taking all our regrets and bad memories out of the
cupboard and brooding upon them and our bad luck.



So here come the great step, the step that stops those thousands of
therapists and self-help guides, with their one day at a time plans, and
affirmations (every day in every way I am getting better, etc. what a
lie!) invading our minds and lives and taking our hard earned money
away.

The step is not a step, but a realisation.

The realisation is that we cannot do anything about what we are, what we
think, except become aware of it.

For example, person X has entered our room and wont leave us alone.

He or she is driving us crazy when all we want is some peace.

So what do we do?

Do we take it - this verbal assault on us, telling us of things we dont
want to hear, demanding the attention from us which we dont want to
give?

Or do we send them away and feel cruel for not listening?

As we said, we do not have the book of answers here, we are not unlike
your therapist going to tell you what to do.

Because you see, the answer is not a verbal solution but a state of mind.

Let us keep simple.

This person enters, and proceeds to annoy us, and we first try to smile,
but then sigh.

We consider trying to reason with them, tell them we are busy, but we
know from past experience this just produces a wounded you dont care
about me response, so we keep listening to avoid the guilt.

But then a moment comes when we cant stand the torture any more and
we verbally lash out. We say you are driving me nuts! Cant you just
write it all in a diary or something?



And who knows, that might work, and when we have assessed all the
angles of the problem by becoming fully conscious of the game in our
minds we are usually playing, we may find some such answer we never
thought of before.

But if we just go into some awful conflicted state, as is typical, we never
find the new solution, we never rise above the same problem, it being one
of many that goes round and round ceaselessly in our lives, driving us to
despair, and sometimes drugs or drink, or perhaps even to an illicit sexual
partner or "lover" to get some peace, sympathy and relief.

So we have to face the reality in our minds, and live with it without
running away, see it as a whole.

That is, suppose we were in the dark, fumbling around with some kind of
package, unable to open it, as it is fastened or taped or bound with cord in
some complicated kind of way.

We blunder in the dark, not really seeing its shape and the details of its
packaging.

But if we switch on the light, if we have that clear light of consciousness
we can see the problem for what it is, and then we can solve or master it.

So that means becoming a lot more understanding of ourselves and all
those around us, not running off into a dulled anaesthetised oblivion by
for example reaching for the bottle, but rather being more sensitive to the
subtleties of the situation and problem than we have ever been before.

For instance, we may feel emotionally blackmailed and be unable to say
no. We see that is what is happening inside us, in the feelings in our body
and in our mind.

We become as fully aware of all that as possible, and then maybe we say
hey wait, I dont have to take this any more.

We perhaps remember, we are not giving answers say to the person
you are placing a burden on me that is unfair, please stop it.

Then they may howl and scream and hate us for not being the emotional
punch bag and convenience which they were accustomed to us being.

So we feel, become fully aware of the guilt, the pressure they try to put
on us, we take it just as a hardy sailor who gets a flogging takes his
punishment without flinching.

If it is a life partner, if we give them enough of this kind of response, they
may then even leave us.

So of course if we are scared of that happening, we dont dare treat then
like that, we dont dare ask them to be fair with us, as we see it.

So then we live with that. We realise we are slaves, we are taking abuse
for the convenience of having this person in our life, whatever benefit we
get from them.

So in that process we see that we are trapped by need.

So then we have a choice. We can either be the permanent slave of others,
due to our need for them, or we can choose to emotionally grow up.

That is, suppose we stand our ground and say we wont let ourselves be
abused any more.

(but lets be careful, we are not saying be intolerant or impatient).

Then that person may turn against us, and desert us, we may lose that
relationship.

But then you see, that could be their chance to grow too.

They could realise which note, they never will unless we do this that
they too are not so grown up, and should learn to stop sucking on and
taking advantage of others for their own emotionally immature needs.

But they might not, they might just run off and find some other mug to
exploit.

So let us say they do that, and in the now, we find ourselves now alone.

Then maybe we miss them. We feel pain. We put on some comforting
songs or a movie to make us feel better, but it still hurts.

Then they call us. They are in pain. We are in pain too. And maybe they
say lets get back together.
And then we have a choice. They may mean let us go back to what we
were before, let me abuse you again, give you the good and the bad.

But you say I want only the good.

And they say you are immature, you cant have the good without the
bad.

So what is the answer?

As we have said, we are not definitely giving any answer to any particular
problem because that is no good.

We might solve one of your problems, but what will you do when we are
not there, and you have so many new ones?

It is like the saying:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; but teach a man to fish,
and you feed him for all his life.

So we wish hear to teach how to fish, and not give you a fish that fills
today and leaves your belly empty again tomorrow when a new hunger
appears, as it always does.

So let us continue our little imaginary drama.

Let us say you decide I am not going back to that life before, I am going
to tell him or her so.

So you tell them you still care, but you are not going to be a doormat any
more, you ask them to grow up.

But of course, you can only do that if you are playing fair, if you are
going to be grown up too.

If you want them to listen to all your moans and worries, but wont listen
to theirs, then you merely ask them to be mature, while you remain
immature yourself.

By mature we mean self-contained, self-sufficient, emotionally
stable.

And maybe then in their pain and frustration at you not accepting them as
they used to be and still currently are, they say some angry, rude or
insulting words to you.

So then you get pain. When they hang up in frustration, you are alone, it
is all silence, there is a wall between you which wasnt there before.

So we can either have a society and family structure that lives on hugs
and emotional compliments and tributes to one another, telling us how
wonderful we are, or we can be a bit more stoic, and learn to stand up
without the crutch of someone patting us on the head, saying a kind word
about us, or rewarding us with a smile and a hug.

We can have a bit of austerity as the true yoga texts such as Patanjalis
Yoga Aphorisms recommend.

We feel great admiration dont we for a Spartacus who is willing to
suffer a lot of pain for what he believes in, maybe even die, or General
Maximus in the movie Gladiator who shows this same stoic heroism;
but we have the choice not only to be a feeble spectator of such beings,
such warriors, but to live like a warrior ourselves.

For we respect them, those heroes, but we do not respect ourselves.

We dont mean a warrior with a sword in his hand which is only the
superficial aspect of what a warrior is, because the real warrior is inside
the man or woman.

It is the determined spirit of freedom and justice, both for oneself and
others.

In the recent Spiderman movies we see Peter Parker is constantly
attacked and humiliated, and even as Spiderman he is tried to be
murdered and persecuted, even by those whom he would help.

So this is what being a hero is all about.

No matter how much they kick us while we are down, or try to kick us
back down when we are up, we still stand, we are still a man, or if a
woman, we are still being true to our self, we are still standing for our
dignity as a human being, our rights.

So we put it to you that a real meditator is not some kind of Houdini
escape artist who uses a mantra or magic spell to zip off into another
peaceful yet oblivious dimension, but someone who heroically faces all
their faults and weaknesses in a brave way.

What do we mean by brave?

Do we mean like Li Mu Bai or Shu Lien, the male and female master
warriors of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

Well, on the mental level, yes.

What we mean is someone who is capable of enduring pain for the sake
of what they believe to be right.

Because that is what we are going to get from real meditation, though we
are also going to get joy.

That is, early twentieth century Russian wise man, G I Gurdjieff, for
example upset some of his wealthy followers who sought him out as a
teacher by first giving them a spade and telling them to dig.

They wanted to hear words of wisdom, but instead he gave them a spade
and told them to dig, which they felt to be insulting, and only a labourers
work.

His purpose was to teach them to enjoy labour, which many of these
privileged visitors had never really done much of before.

For example anyone who has taken a summer job doing maybe fruit
picking or other kind of manual labour may recall it as one of the most
enjoyable times of their lives.

But in the modern society we are all asked to be intellectual and to tax
our brains to the limit in the pursuit of knowledge, or more typically
profit, but nobody stops to ask if this kind of work is really making
anybody happy.

For when we work with our hands, our minds can be free, which explains
why a good many saints did such work, even we might recall, Christ as a
carpenter.

In the complex intrigue and chicanery that constantly surrounds us in the
business, educational, political and even spiritual worlds, we have lost
this concept of honest work as a worthy goal.

For example many people in the UK have given up professional jobs to
develop property. They have discovered they would rather paint walls,
lay carpets and plaster walls than do some complex but too mentally
demanding job in law, accountancy or whatever.

As Gerry Rafferty sang in Baker Street:

This city desert
Makes you feel so cold
Its got so many people
But its got no soul

And its taken you so long
To find out that you were wrong
When you thought it held every thing.

Or as Elton J ohn sang:

Ive finally decided my future lies, beyond the yellow brick road.

These are sentiments felt by millions trapped in the hostile, overcrowded
urban environments, so very far away from green pastures, and roaring
oceans and seas, upon which the bright orange sunlight twinkles, but the
city dweller almost never sees.

So it is part of this dulling also of the average adult mind, that such
feelings dim. We live in the maze, and we accept it - this stealing of our
lives - as normal, as the only way to live.

So the meditator seeks freedom.

But how can you be free and in a cage?

The Maharishi said that the test of a true higher conscious state, would be
to see if a man still has this inner bliss whilst stood in the middle of
Manhattan with all the traffic blaring and raging around him, in this
atmosphere of almost deranged hyperactivity.

But many New Yorkers say they love the constant, ceaseless throb of
activity in the city that never sleeps.

But its addiction. Its work non-stop, its drugs and drink non-stop, its
shopping, partying and sex orgies that never end.

It sure aint peace.

Perhaps one of the strangest of all the Beatles songs was The Fool on the
Hill.

It depicted some kind of a scarecrow-like idiot, who grinned foolishly,
but then was he really a fool?

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round.

The strangeness of this number came partly as it was not remotely a love
song, it was not about a hero, it was not about any kind of figure such as
Eleanor Rigby whom people had any real interest in or could easily
relate to.

We are inclined to suspect it was a kind of nonsense song, as inspired
by the kind of nonsense poetry of Hilair Belloc and others, but the
teasing aspect here seems to be is the fool on the hill really stupid or is
he really wiser than any of us because he does nothing but live in
harmony with nature?

Fairy tales have frequently depicted some idle loafer or supposed
worthless person such as J ack of Jack and the Beanstalk who when
the circumstances were right, suddenly sprang into action and did
something very remarkable, such a solving a riddle, or something heroic
such as fighting a monster and typically ended up with the Princesss
hand in marriage and a chest of golden treasure, even though he had
originally rejected the normal life that others led and was considered
therefore just a fool.

But we ask who is the fool?




Is it we, trapped in the technological competitive society, who barely get
a chance to watch the sunset, our eyes hardly raised from our TV screens
and computer monitors, frantically typing out urgent messages and
making the world go round?

Or is it the fool on the hill, who free of worries and anxieties lives in the
now, doesnt seem to want or need the relationships we have, which never
really seem to work out anyway, and who walks in the golden gleam of
sunrise and sunset each day, simply observing it all like a silent sage?

But we must have responsibilities, we cannot ditch human relationships
as those who run off to some temple or monastery do, as traditionally has
been the sannyasi path in India, and thereby leave our friends and
families without our support.

That is, we cannot really drop out from society and expect to have any
meaningful kind of life.

For when alone, cut off from society, we become like parasites feeding on
ourselves.

We do not have personal experience of being in a monastery or temple,
but we would guess except in rare cases it is pretty well much as petty
and unsatisfying an existence as any life in the world.

The difference can only be, that all those who run off to a temple have
made a kind of pact with one another to say I am holy, you are holy,
so let us all feel superior to the scum of the world, and feel holy about
one another.

Of course we are not denying the validity of a real temple, with truly wise
or enlightened masters in it, as depicted in the Kung Fu TV series in the
1970s, but we would guess that finding a real life temple of that calibre is
very far from being easy, especially in the corrupting modern age, where
temples are opening their doors to all who would come, and often getting
money from such tourists.

But the point is that running away from society, or becoming a recluse,
is not generally the way to develop ourselves as human beings, because
as Krishnamurti explains:

We only discover ourselves in relationship.

Relationships should be an opportunity to grow. The other person is in a
sense always our training partner.

J ust like with a training partner in a sport, sometimes we laugh and have
fun together, but other times there is conflict, battle and rivalry.

So the only relationship between two people that can be always peaceful
and without conflict is one either between two wise saintly people, or
alternatively between two very repressed people who never challenge
each other and thus never grow.

As Sufi saint, Hazrat Inayat Khan, pointed out, some of whose words
were used on the Dutch rock group Focuss very good indeed Moving
Waves album - we are mirrors to one another.

If we do not see another person, and therefore our reflection in them, in
terms of how they respond to us, we do not see ourselves at all.

We just become a self-obsessed narcissist who doesnt evolve and grow.

So if the fool on the hill is really hiding out from human relationships,
then yes, the odds are he really is just a fool.

We think there is security in isolation, because it brings freedom from
conflict, but what we dont see is that the conflict is still locked inside
ourselves, is just laying dormant, but will emerge as soon as we go back
into relationships once again.

So we fail to grow.

Too nave or unrealistic parents have unwittingly brought too many of us
up to believe that life is just a bowl of cherries, they didnt prepare us to
expect that it was going to be tough, by helping us develop this wisdom
and stoicism, that is qualities which are fit for being a warrior in battle,
rather than a self-indulgent party goer and pleasure seeker.

But neither does that mean we should throw ourselves into tough battles,
unequal contests, which we are not ready for.

We have to keep picking fights we can win.



Using a martial arts analogy, first we learn the basic moves, perhaps
exchange a few slow and light slaps and block and parry one another, but
we work up to fast and powerful moves and blocks, so that the fight is
gradually more like the real thing.

But the real battle is within our minds.

If person X or Y says we are no good, bullies us, we can either crumble
like a soft biscuit, or we can learn to take the punishment, we can watch
our mind protest about them being unfair.

We may be able to defend ourselves verbally, which may or may not be
wise.

But what we have to do is be aware of our reaction to this attack on us,
and watch our minds play out all the scenes of revenge it typically will
plan.

We may say to ourselves who the hell does he or she think they are!

We may tell ourselves we are better than them in a thousand ways.

We may decide what they need is a good slap, or picking up by the scruff
of the neck and setting aright, for daring to talk to us like that.

But such people may have pursued a lifelong hobby of insulting people
and enjoying watching their resentful reactions in this way.

So we have to know that people do play such games, of putting other
people down to build themselves up, to intimidate others to gain power
over them, etc.

On our first meeting with others, this kind of thing often happens.

If it is our first day on a new job, others are sizing us up, and at least
some of them are going to try to take liberties to see what they can get
away with and what they cant.

But we are new, we cant turn nasty and offend everyone, and get
ourselves a bad reputation, so on such occasions, it is perhaps best to
think in terms of this potentially humiliating initiation ceremony as a way
for us to size them up, for us to discover who is who.

By observing very carefully on such occasions, we can gain information
about others whilst they are not on their guard because they feel
powerful, and established in their identity in this group we are joining
which may be difficult to assess in them later on, when their true selves
have gone underground again, acting all day long, as most people do in
the work place, as well as in many other arenas.

So to gain this information, we have to be there, we have to be in the
now.

We may feel anxious, scared, unsure what will face us, but we live with
those feelings too, dont deny them to ourselves, and we will still see
more clearly.

So in brief, the only true way to live in the now, is to know and follow all
the pursuits of our minds which would take us away from it.

As time goes by we will find we get better and better at playing this
inner game, and then our minds will grow clearer and quieter, and we
will see more and more clearly in them, the reflections of others and the
external world, and progressively see many more things that we have
never seen before.

Thus meditation of the kind we speak of here is not something we do with
closed eyes, without any awareness of the outer world, but something we
do with our eyes fully open, and fully aware also of what is going on in us
inside.


Chapter Four
Awareness is the Key

As we have said, our concept of meditation does not involve hiding out
from the world in some quiet little room with eyes closed, seeing and
thinking of nothing and no one, except for perhaps the monotonous
chanting of some mantra or more sophisticated kind of process or
variation on that theme of technique we might be engaged in.

Not that we are denying the value of being alone and quiet at times,
which surely must now and then be essential for our mental health and
well being.

Neither are we denying that forms of meditation with closed eyes and
some kind of contemplative or concentrative process can be of benefit to
some people at some times, though as we have also said such forms of
meditation may be dangerous to certain people in certain circumstances.

But what we are saying is that we are offering something here instead,
which in one sense could not even be regarded as a technique at all,
because in fact it is merely a natural process of our mind which in this
stressful and deeply unnatural Western society we have overlooked.

That is, ancient man used to live with his thoughts, feelings and pains, he
did not have the thousand escapes we now do which interfere with what
really is a natural process of awareness.

He had no prescription drugs to take away his pains and anxieties and
maybe put him to sleep, except in some civilisations or tribes who had
discovered various drugs naturally growing and made use of them, which
we would have to say that except for medical reasons was therefore the
start of the modern corrupting process of drug dependency and addiction
which we now see around us almost everywhere.

Equally he had no TV, radio, music recordings, books or magazines to
lose himself in and help him put undesired thoughts out of his mind.

He even had no church to go to, and not necessarily any idea of a god to
pray to.



So in a sense, we are saying, all these modern aspects of life, which most
of us regard as essential, have been very much mans downfall in terms of
the purity and clarity of his mind.

These machines and drugs, and rituals and beliefs have become the
avenues of escape from reality, from what is.

But wait - how can we say that?

Surely the machines, the technology and other trappings of modern life
are real too?

Of course they are, but they are not part of the version of Nature that
existed in mans infancy and early youth they are the products of his
intellect.

And as such, they have taken over his mind and his life.

For hundreds of thousands of years man has been a hunter, a nomad, a
farmer, or sometimes even a warrior with a club or spear.

But only in the last fifty-years has he become a couch potato, and the
increase in his waistline is showing this fact.

Thanks to this rise of the machines only a small proportion of society in
the developed Western world now does any significant physical labour to
earn its bread.

The heat and light and energy we need comes out of a wire or a pipe at
the flick of a switch.

The food we eat, we no longer have to forage and hunt for, we just go
along to a supermarket and it is sitting there already prepared for us on
the shelf.

If even the effort of having to push a shopping trolley is too tiresome for
us, we can just speak some words into a peace of plastic and somebody
brings it to our door.

So we are not going to debate the philosophical question of natural
versus unnatural, but we are going to point out that throughout perhaps a
million years of evolution, mans life what he habitually does with his
body and mind each day was never like this before.
And we wonder why we are having problems with our minds and
bodies???

Have we all gone insane???

Well, it would likely seem to an observer from another planet that the
truth is pretty much so.

For what would we think of a bull in a field that decided to charge at a
stranger with a red rag no more.

What would we think if it put its feet up all day long, sat on a settee and
spent its time checking out the TV guide?

And if the farmer said hey, you are a bull, you must charge and stamp
your hooves and be aggressive and snort it might just say go away, I
am living a more luxurious life now, the life of a stupid bull is no good to
me any more.

And then just like we, the bull grows fat and lazy and obsesses on trivia,
takes up bad habits like overeating, drugs and smoking and gets no
exercise, because when it wants to go someplace, it is only willing to
travel by car.

What a sad sorry specimen that once proud and glorious creature will
become!

But we are not bulls in a field you might say where is the comparison?

Well, we are animals arent we? We need exercise, dont we? We have a
body that if we pamper it, abuse it and overindulge it will make us as
impotent as a fat old castrated bull, wont it?

But surely our subject is the mind?

Well yes, but we are doing the very same to our minds also.

If we feed our minds on dross, they become dross, we dumb down.

Most TV does little to stimulate our brains or our natural feelings of
admiration, respect and even reverence for Nature as Albert Schweitzer
put it.

What it forever does do however is stimulate our emotions, our passions.

We are mentally drunk on emotion.

We have the scary movie, we have the weepy movie, we have the sexy
movie.

We spend our lives engaged in utterly convincing simulations of what
appear to our minds and bodies real events, but of course, do not actually
exist.

We watch the Battle of Waterloo with Napoleon and Wellington doing
their battle cries, or the Battle of Britain with Spitfires and
Messerschmitts doing battle in the skies.

We experience the agonies and ecstasies of all these great men and
women and great events of the past.

Sometimes we squirm at some scene, sometimes we are elated,
sometimes we cry.

All these powerful thoughts and emotions we have, about events depicted
upon a glass screen in front of a box of clever electronic equipment,
which are not real.

But our real lives lack freedom.

We are prisoners of stress, we have to drive ourselves unwillingly to the
office or factory, because if we dont do it, we dont get any money, we
lose our security and place in society.

Many people say they enjoy their jobs. But why?

We want to know before we believe them what they would do if their
lottery numbers came up.

There are many who enjoy their jobs of course, because of the respect
that it brings them, like for example being a TV presenter.

But what if society became enlightened - do we think a bunch of
enlightened men and women would spend their days as couch potatoes
watching TV?

So what would be the value of the TV presenter then, with no
worshipping audience to adore them and write them fan mail?

For does any genius spend his or her days watching TV?

No the genius is busy working on his next great thing his novel, his
painting, his album, his concerto or symphony.

He gets to be creative and do what he loves, and the rest of us get to
watch his efforts on TV, or more likely the efforts of those who are rather
more mediocre, but as we have said, simply know how to whip up our
emotions and excite us with thrilling car chases, onscreen rows or sex
scenes.

A book on sales technique claimed to tell us the great secret of selling
people do not want goods or services. What they want are feelings.

That is, suppose we want to sell someone a worthless wooden block for a
thousand dollars or pounds, or even a million.

If we can make them feel good about the deal, they will buy, they will
pay.

So we tell them, this is not just any block of wood, this is the block of
wood, the greatest there has ever been.

It is the one that Pharaoh Tutankhamen stepped upon several thousand
years BC. It is the one Beethoven rap-tapped out the rhythm of the
famous theme of his Fifth Symphony upon.

And if we believe those wild claims, we get the feeling of being part of
history, of something great, and so we hand over maybe our life savings
for some worthless block of wood.

Every con artist and manipulator uses our feelings against us.

The gangster in The Sting is lured by the emotions of pride, vengeance
and greed, into trying to destroy the enemy who has made a fool out of
him in a card game in which he has lost what to him was a trivial amount.

But because he is driven by vanity, hate and greed he ends up losing half
a million dollar, he gets stung as if by a bee, but he doesnt get to float
like a butterfly no more.
And neither do we, when others use our feelings, our emotions against
us.

This is partly why all these emotions greed, lust, anger, envy, hate, etc.
are all decried by all genuine spiritual scriptures and religious creeds.

A true religion does not wish to dominate or enslave us it wishes to set
us free in the true sense.

For how can any man or woman be free if they are emotionally
manipulable?

Politicians for example know how to use our emotions against us, to gain
cooperation for their sometimes dastardly deeds.

For example, if they want us to go to war, they paint us a picture of the
enemy as a beastly monster, their race as one of ruthless cold-blooded
killers, rapists and savages who have no respect for us, our culture or our
liberty to carry on our lives in peace.

So like in George Orwells 1984, they teach us to vent our savage
emotions on the enemy as in the two-minute hate, and then once they
have our feelings in their hands, they can get us to agree to whatever
military retribution they deem is necessary, and we will shout yes, kill
the beasts! in agreement with their usually evil plans.

So we have got to become aware.

Not just chant our little mantras in a quiet room and then think we are
holy and getting better every day in every way.

We have to watch the TV screen and feel what it is doing to us, feel what
they are doing to us with it.

For example we innocently start watching some drama or movie with an
innocent sounding name, and we might think it is some kind of safe
historical romantic drama, but within five minutes there has been a
murder or some shocking scene of rape or explicit sex.

Then we are traumatised, and hypnotised, we are thinking this is
awful, these things cant happen, where is the justice? That bad person
has got to get their comeuppance, the good guy has got to hunt them
down and punish or even kill them.
So we go through another sixty or ninety minutes of anxiety watching the
good guy threaten a lot of people into giving information to track down
the bad guy, and eventually near the end, we get what we have really
been waiting for, which is to see the hero giving it to the bad guy in no
uncertain terms.

At minimum he has to get the handcuffs on him and have him sent off
scowling and cursing to the pen.

Or we might get a better feeling of justice, vengeance and relief if there is
an exciting Dirty Harry style chase and shoot out, and the bad guy ends
up floating in a ditch or slumped on an iron fence post that sticks all the
way through his body, which we know nobody, no matter how evil, could
possibly survive.

So the TV dramas and movies so often feed on our feelings of fear, of
blood lust or vengeance, and somewhere along the way they will - in
those countries where they can get away with it - throw in a sex scene or
two, to make us feel good in that way also.

And what is it all for?

Its called entertainment, but in reality all they are doing is showing us
what hooks us so we watch the adverts in between, buy the products, and
pay them the licence fee.

J ust think of the thousands of hours watching total fantasy that most
adults now spend most of their spare time doing, that they could have
used to do something else, something real.

Christmas time shows us what the game is really about, because all the
TV stars and celebrities and presenters arent there any more.

They are busy partying and taking fabulous holidays abroad and
celebrating their success.

On the TV we are all fed repeats of shows or movies or other productions
made long before.

We watch their entertainments, they give us the privilege of having a
little glance into their glamorous lives, while they are on a yacht in the
Mediterranean or having wild extravagant parties and sex orgies at some
mansion with security gates and ten thousand acres of grounds.
So are we trying to use your feelings against you, just as they do, are we
trying to whip up envy?

Not at all.

But realising, becoming aware that we are far too often manipulated
mugs, is surely a necessary process in becoming free.

Would there be any life, if we turned our TV or hi-fi off?

For most of us there would be only emptiness and pain.

Psychologists and other commentators saw what was coming in the
technological age.

In centuries gone by men and women were kept busy just dealing with
the survival needs and everyday tasks of their lives.

Women in the past for example could spend hours cooking, cleaning and
washing clothes, whereas now those tasks are mostly automated in one
way or another by the machines.

And as the robot factory machines such as those incredible ones that
make cars without any human participation on the production line have
taken away the need for mens labour, they too have got too much time
on their hands.

So the future watchers saw that as the technological march of
progress went on, there was going to arise a great need to deal with
what they called unstructured time.

If we only work seven or eight hours a day or less for five days a week or
less, there are going to be an awful lot of hours in which people will
somehow have to be occupied.

So huge industries have evolved to tell us what to do with this
unstructured time.

We have DIY, we have hi-fi and TV, we have now almost the ultimate
time stucturer - the modern multimedia PC.


Like in The Matrix or some similar movie, one day we fear all that we
will have to do is stick some wire running from the PC into our brain, and
then maybe we will just spend our whole life sat in a chair, living a total
fantasy of our own imagining or someone elses, and when it is over and
we die, they will just take us off to the incinerator.

Because just what are we supposed to do with our lives anyway?

If we suddenly had to decide what to do for ourselves, how to live our
lives, we would be in a state of shock and maybe even terror, just like any
drug addict who suddenly has all their drugs taken away.

So as we said we are not giving answers, because the answer is for you to
decide. But what we are saying is that you cannot decide what will be a
meaningful life for you, when you are being hypnotised successfully by
everybody and everything else.

The movie actor, TV chat show presenter or sporting star maybe earns
millions of pounds or dollars a year, but we earn a tiny fraction of that.

Yet they enjoy their work, and most of us at least partly hate what we
have to do.

Does that seem fair?

They get paid huge amounts for doing what they love, and doesnt look
too hard, and we get paid not a lot for heavy responsibilities or drudgery
we often hate.

So its not fair, is it?

So why do we all worship them?

Because they are the people we would like to be, we live by proxy, we
live by following their lives and at least for a while pretending we are
them, just as in the movie or TV drama, we pretend we are the hero or
the heroine.

So where is the answer?

Shall we organise and march on Hollywood and burn the TV and film
studios down?

Surely, thats not the way, the path of blame.

Not that they are not to some degree to blame, but this is not about
attacking others, its about gaining freedom for ourselves.

We must start by blaming ourselves for being so stupid.

No one takes us by the scruff of the neck and makes us watch the movies
and the TV.

We just have to realise that we have been hypnotised.

We are all like in The Truman Show, but whereas Truman is trapped
inside the TV studio, and does not realise he is on TV, we are trapped
outside of it, watching it, and still not realising we are prisoners, but
thinking unaware that we are free.

For the only real freedom or imprisonment is in our minds.

So at times people point something out to us, or we hear something on
TV which shocks us, and we suddenly realise that although we formerly
confidently felt that we knew everything about everything that was worth
knowing, we now realise that we did not.

We feel a bit nave, though we will try our best not to let anybody else
know that we were so ignorant and ill informed.

For example, we are admiring a nice young man or woman in our office
or local gathering place, whom we would like as a friend or partner, and
we think they are so special, and ever so discriminating in their choice of
friends, and the faithful type.

But then we find out from some gossiper one day that they take lovers as
regularly as they visit the hairdresser, and that we were the very last one
to find this out (that is, if the gossip is true).

Then we experience a big fall and loss of faith in our own judgement, and
after that we look with great suspicion at every person we are attracted to
whom we see.

So the fact is that we are all to a greater or lesser degree unaware.

It is all relative. We know and understand something the person over the
way does not, and they know something also that we dont.

Because most people are acting, not being what they pretend to be, we are
always at risk of being taken in, deceived.

So what do we do?

We put it to you that there is only one kind of true therapy in life, and that
is reality therapy.

We have to face facts, and when we become good at that, when we stop
living in dreams and fantasies about others and about life in general, and
start living with what is real, we start becoming truly aware.

But let us look at what is awareness in simple terms.

For example, J Krishnamurti, who is the main inspiration for much of
what is written in this book, told a short story about the subject to make
the point crystal clear.

He said he was once travelling along a country road in a car full of
passengers who were all chatting away merrily, when suddenly the car
ran over a goat.

But they all carried on talking away as if it hadnt happened, and he asked
them Excuse me, did you not notice that our car just ran over a goat?

But not one had noticed, no one had been aware of it.

Or as the blind Master Po from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, asked the
boy Kwai Chang Caine:

You feel pity for me as I am blind, but do you not hear your own
heartbeat, do you not hear the grasshopper at your feet?

And the boy Caine asked in reply:

How is it, old man, that you hear these things?

And Master Po answered:

How is it, young man, that you do not?
So we have the question of how to be aware.

And the answer is that there is no how, there is only awareness of the fact
that we are not.

In the last sentence, perhaps you were not aware, but we have just
unveiled perhaps the greatest secret in this book, so here we must
repeat and explain.

For example, in some Zen Buddhist temples a monk with a big stick
would give a whack to those monks who fell asleep while they were
supposed to be meditating.

Is that really the way to go?

Is that how we learn awareness?

It is certainly how we learn fear, if we live in worry that the big stick is
on its way.

It is not the way to develop awareness, because fear diminishes our
awareness, all our senses and powers of observation contract.

We go into some scary situation, like a job interview, or an encounter
with some very bad criminal type person, and sometimes we hardly
remember what was said, or even what happened.

The fear overpowers our senses, and sometimes people in such states of
fear, for example those who are asked to speak in front of hundreds or
thousands of people unaccustomed, go into a state of paralytic shock
unable to say or do anything.

So we may try to beat ourselves into awareness, but it is not possible.

All we can do is be aware that we were unaware.

Let us be clearer still.

We are sitting in the car at the traffic lights on red, waiting for them to
change. All of a sudden someone beeps us from behind, because they are
now on green, so it is time to go.

We were in a dream, lost in thoughts. The person is complaining with the
beep of the horn that we were unaware.

So what can we do?

Nothing.

J ust be aware we were unaware.

We were lost in thoughts, worries, and we see that when this is the
background of our minds we will be caught unawares many times.

J Krishnamurti said to solve all our problems, we need a mind that has no
problems.

That is, a mind that is not forever lost in dreams, memories, analyses,
worries.

So here is the magic.

If we find that it is in such a state, we simply become aware of that. Then
we are in the now again.

Every time we notice we are unaware we simply return to the present
moment, the now again.

But we see this is not actually a technique.

This is the normal action of a sane mind.

But it is not happening in us now, because we have lost our minds, our
control over them.

It is like when our computer locks up in some kind of a system crash.

Our minds cycle over and over, churning up the same material going
round and round, and it may be minutes or even hours before we come
to.

Particularly after some traumatic or unpleasant experience e.g.
somebody insults us unexpectedly our minds can churn on and on for
hours with feelings of resentment, hate, fantasies of revenge and so on,
which mostly it would be extremely unwise for us to take.
So we have to learn to merely watch this. We are aware of it, and
eventually it dies down.

Only when all this struggle of the mind has died down, does some
solution come to us about how to deal with the situation, or even if it does
not, at least we then once more have a feeling of peace, of calm.

When we gradually regain our minds, by practicing this awareness
which we will recall implies no effort, but merely realising that we were
unaware, and therefore automatically being in a state of awareness - we
find in time that our mind starts to become quieter, we are always more
aware than we used to be.

Our attention can then get so fine, our concentration can then naturally
become so intense, that we find a great joy in being able to see and feel
things which we formerly did not, and we soon become aware in feeling
and seeing these new things that many times others do not we hear
the grasshopper.

But what we never do, when we realise we were unaware, when we catch
ourselves being unaware - lost in thought and dreams at any particular
moment - is get angry.

Because that ties us to the past, that puts new blocks on our mind, lays
down deep cuts on the track of our memories.

But if we do get angry we observe that also, for then the anger starts to
fade already, as soon as we become aware of it.

Do we understand?

The mind is trying to pull us toward emotional whirlpools to escape into,
and its never ending games of analysis, trying to solve intellectually,
linearly problems that it cannot.

That is, we cannot see clearly with an angry, anxious or fearful mind, or
one full or wild and confused thoughts.

We see clearly, just like the sky and mountains being reflected in the
calm waters of the lake, only when we have cooled down, when we are
relaxed but poised in our minds.

These savage emotions of anger, hate, vengeance, etc., dull our minds,
blind us to commonsense, to clear observation.

So we must if it happens just become aware of and see beyond it.

Be aware that our teeth are gritting, our eyes are narrowed, there is a snarl
upon our lips, we are like an animal ready for battle.

And then when we really see ourselves, it is gone, we are human again.

Once in such an excited state however of anger, passion or fear, it may
take hours for it to die down completely, but each time we see our state,
we regain control a little more, we are less likely to do something stupid
than before.

So in this process we see that our business in life has changed somewhat.

We are not so much judging and blaming others for all that happens any
more, but rather turning our attention on our own thought processes and
habits as being the real cause of our misery.

For we have become aware that we are unaware we keep running over
goats and not noticing, we are so caught up in thinking about other things.

We sit hypnotised by our TV or PC screens, lured in by some images that
draw us in like a magnet and take away all our free time.

Or even if we can turn the TV or PC off, which we dont realise how hard
it may be until we try, and feel the awful silence and emptiness that
happens to us when we are stimulated no more, then our minds start
developing escapes of their own, fantasies and dreams.

So let us first be aware of one simple fact. We are unhappy because we
are losing our minds.

They dont belong to us any more. They belong to the advertiser, the
politician, the seducer or the bully, who has planted fears or temptations
there with which to control us.

We imagine we are free?

What a joke!

All our lives are mapped out with dos and donts almost from the
cradle to the grave.

We are handed from one person to another who bullies us into doing what
they wish and tells us what we should think, and those who are by now
totally in paranoia of this realisation, may well think that the author is
trying to do the same to them also.

But no.

For we are saying only - retake possession of your own mind.

Make it your own, make it a holy place to which are admitted only
those whom you voluntarily allow in.

And this you can accomplish merely by being aware that you are
currently not your minds own true master, and this awareness alone will
set you free.











Chapter Five
Inhibition the power of No

We are all the products of our past, or every experience that ever
happened to us, and every response to that experience that we made.

Krishnamurti calls this shaping of us as human beings the conditioning
process.

We are in our early years trained principally by our parents just like any
other animal is trained by a trainer either well or badly and likewise
that training process continues with the teachers at school.

Those who enter the armed forces of any nation also go through a period
of strict disciplinary training, as do those who take up a martial art.

In most occupations in general, it is necessary for us to learn rules and
acquire habits, which when eventually fixed firmly in our minds enable
us to do the job without too much difficulty.

So habit is key to our lives, and habit come from our training, from being
conditioned.

In this process of learning habits, the essential thing is that we have to
make a persistent effort to establish the habit, for example to learn to play
a scale on a musical instrument or master some verbs of a foreign
language takes us a lot of hard effort over and over again, until it then
becomes easy as it has become automatic.

But once a habit has got to this automatic stage it then becomes hard to
change. It is in fact harder to change a habit than to create a new one,
once it is formed.

So our minds are full of habits, or little routines cycling over and over,
and it is the major part of the awareness process we have introduced in
the previous chapters to identify these habits in our minds, especially if
they are unhelpful ones.

Awareness alone may release us from the imprisonment of all habits
eventually, but in the short term it is easier to change a habit by force.

But in dealing with an ingrained habit, we must realise we are in the
position of King Canute, trying to force back a stubborn tide.
To defeat a bad habit, such as an addiction, we have to never give up.

For example, suppose we have a gambling addiction, and cannot get past
a betting shop without being lured in.

We have to keep fighting it day after day for as long as it takes.

All modern people under fifty or so in the West have been brought up in
what has been called the permissive society, that is, the society which
doesnt like to say no to any desire it may have.

But we must learn to say no both to others and ourselves, or we are
prisoners to our desires, we can never be free.

The point is this any addiction or habit can be changed. We just have to
desire to change it and never give up.

And in fact, this desire, this decision to give up, is the real problem.

Because many of our bad habits are actually some kind of self-destructive
act, only on the superficial level of our minds do we often want to give
them up.

So we have to realise that our addictions are because we are self-
destructive, and we gradually have to become aware of what is causing
this self-destructive tendency in ourselves.

But where there is a powerful peer pressure for example, to either do or
not do some kind of activity, we see many people defeating these
incurable addictions much more easily than it might have otherwise
seemed possible.

That is, the majority of the peoples most powerful psychological desire
is to belong to a group, which in modern terms amounts to being
fashionable.

Our lives are controlled by the desire to fit in.

We all like to think we are individuals, but actually most of us are
desperate not to be truly individual which would mark us out as
different, strange, odd, maybe even eccentric but only to
become fully paid up and accepted members of whatever group we
wish to belong to.
For example, a man or woman who desires to be a big business person or
lawyer, is generally going to have to dress in a high profile but
dignified way which befits the image of those who belong to those classes
of beings - with perhaps a pin-striped suit and well shined, expensive
looking shoes.

Similarly, someone who wishes to be a heavy metal rock musician is
likely going to have to get at least one rebellious looking tattoo or
piercing, adopt an unkempt or wild kind of hair style, and wear some
leather and studs.

Such rebellious dress, as worn by some classes of rock star and the teen
rebels who idolise them everywhere, are really just as much uniforms as
the business suits of the business executives.

One is the uniform of the so called conformist, the other is that of the
so called rebel who is not really the free person he or she thinks himself
to be, as such people are only doing the opposite of what the square
person does, which is just a different kind of conformism.

Really free individuals dont follow any fashions slavishly, but rather
seek their freedom mainly on the inside.

They are perhaps the fashion leaders rather than the followers, though a
truly free person does not desire to lead others into any kind of slavery,
including that of fashion.

But like say Picasso, Dali or Mahatma Gandhi they simply develop their
own style, their own individuality.

But if we look carefully, there is nobody who in matters of dress or style
is not imitating someone or something. We often just dont see where it is
coming from, because it is often a mix of other influences or ones that are
long forgotten, and the same is mostly true in music also.

For example in music, rock and New Age music legend Vangelis classic
album Heaven and Hell sounded like the most avant-garde album ever
made to those teenage listeners of the 1970s, but when many of them
matured, they realised that he was heavily influenced by others before
him, such as Carl Orff and his well known Carmina Burana, though of
course in fairness to Vangelis, this has been true of every composer or
artist who ever lived.

For example again, in dress, over decades the same styles are rotated over
and over again with only the barrier dictated by morals on what is
permissible.

For instance, those who believe that the kind of modern day revealing
fashions such as short skirts, etc. are unprecedented, do not realise that
these were the same kind of fashions that were in vogue at the time of the
decline of the Roman Empire, and no doubt many other societies and
empires of former ages deteriorated into the same kind of decadent
fashions, when the society become morally unrestrained and intent on
instant gratification as we are doing now.

It is all like in that jazz standard song, Anything Goes, by Cole Porter
which for its brilliant social commentary is worth quoting at length:

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, God knows
Anything goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose, anything goes.

The world has gone mad today
And good is bad today
And black is white today
And day is night today . . .

Our standards are changed piece by piece, just as under some excuse such
as the so called war on terrorism, our human rights can be taken away
likewise piece by piece so stealthily we hardly notice it.

And then we could easily end up under the excuse of our own
protection living in a society in which we are not allowed even to have
free speech, and express what we really feel in our minds and hearts.

Of course, the truth is that this situation has only been created by the
botch up of those in high places, who have failed to make friends and
peace with other nations on our behalf.

We might ask, what has this got to do with learning to control our bad
habits?
The answer is that the personal is the political.

What we are individually becomes what we are collectively, which in turn
becomes what we are as a world.

For example, there is a sect of religiously inclined people who live
together in certain parts of Britain called the Plymouth Brethren who
dont watch TV or vote in elections, or otherwise participate in the
artificiality of modern society, perhaps somewhat similar to the
Amish in the US, who were celebrated in Truman Show director Peter
Weirs movie, Witness, with Harrison Ford.

Do we think if the world was composed entirely of such people who
reject all the values of the current society, and devote themselves to living
a simple life according to the religious scriptures, we would be having
this kind of national and international chaos?

There would be no teen pregnancies, no drug addiction, no gangsters and
guns, no rape and murder, and likely no civil unrest and war between
nations.

So is this to suggest we should all take our TVs to the rubbish skip and
become like the Plymouth Brethren or Amish?

Well, there are far worse ideas being suggested by our current leaders, so
for those who are so inclined, why not?

They have peace, they have a stable life, they have schools in which
teachers are listened to with respect, and not spat at, assaulted and raped.

Many local people to these kinds of communities have tried desperately
to get their children into the Plymouth Brethrens schools, but of course,
understandably this is not permitted unless one signs up to the whole
package of this communitys way of life.

But of course we are made to mock or laugh at these seemingly
repressed peoples, who dont enjoy the same freedom as the rest of us
to do all these bad and generally self-destructive things.

We do not for example think the pop star Madonna is ever going to join
the Brethren, and therefore as she leads millions of women and girls by
her example of freedom, they are not going to do so either.

What we see in society is the desperate search for identity.

In rock band The Whos classic song

Who Are You?

is posed this question of identity, which if we look at The Whos output
generally, was a central theme of their songs, as clearly even their chosen
band name suggests.

When asked the social question what do you do? we are taken to
understand it is about our occupation.

Thus the fierce, competitive struggle for jobs, because we are treated as a
human being based on our job title, which defines what group we belong
to, and therefore what privileges and respect we are accorded by society.

On a recent UK chat show a TV presenter confessed that on his first day
in the office he was told by one of the other famous already established
presenters: We dont like you, we dont want you here. Why dont you
just disappear?

For he was seen as a threat to this bullys status, his identity, his job title.

As soon as someone says I am the manager, the director, the chairman,
the anchorman (or woman) we think high, whereas if someone says cook,
bus driver, clerk, assistant, we think low.

That is, as Krishnamurti points out, we directly associate function with
status, and in turn status with net worth as a human being.

And this association of status with function might be a fair system of
assessing others in terms of their type, but if and only if jobs were always
awarded on merit.

Due to ambition however that is, the desire to become what one is not
we find in practice that a lot of people hold jobs which they are unfit by
nature to do, and then the job titles do not necessarily mean what in
theory they should.

For example, let us take the case of the lawyer.

Lawyers are generally respected and esteemed, because like a doctor, we
feel they can have decisive power over our lives at times, and they are
generally very well paid, some of them enormously so.

But what is it that most of them are really doing?

Lets list briefly the main types personal injury or negligence lawyer,
property lawyer, criminal lawyer, family lawyer, commercial lawyer.

If we look at them one by one, we see that they are all there to force
people to behave and be fair as defined by the law when they wont or
dont.

So that is, the vast majority of lawyers only exist because we are
behaving badly, and unjustly to one another.

But the reality is even worse, because the law is often used as a weapon
by the more powerful against the less. We say we have a better lawyer
than the other person, meaning, a bigger stick to beat them with than
what they have to beat us.

So this may be the law, but it clearly is not justice.

But these lawyers who therefore bully the weak on behalf of the strong,
we respect.

We are not of course condemning those lawyers who truly act in the spirit
of justice and decency, though we fear they are not the majority, but we
respect them all it seems equally, just on the basis of their job title.

So how do we escape from the tyranny of being categorized and
condemned by the jobs we have, or perhaps do not even have, suppose
we are some place where work is hard to find, or we are a mother who
has decided not to work in order to devote all her time and attention to
her children?

We simply say no, we will not accept societys criterion of judging
people on what they do or dont do.

For example, Einstein was at first a clerk in the Swiss patent office, and
only became a professor in later life because of what he was as a human
being, because of his intrinsic worth.

That is not of course remotely to indicate that everyone will eventually
get a job title that matches their intrinsic worth, certainly not in the
current society.

Thus we may be deceived in this society by the confusion of job titles
with intrinsic worth, as the job titles do not necessarily mean what we
imagine they do.

Someone calling himself a priest may be a wicked greedy person abusing
his flock, whereas some lady who is a hairdresser may be almost a saint.

Likewise someone calling him or herself an accountant may be really
ninety-percent a crook, whereas someone who faithfully cleans the school
floor and windows may be of a noble, trustworthy and honourable
character.

Nature or God has its own royalty and hierarchy which may be
very different than what we see in the outer world.

So we must not be deceived by worldly status and position, and should in
general be more inclined to trust those who have little, rather than those
who have so much (but only if their "modesty" is out of choice).

Kundalini expert Gopi Krishna said that in ancient India, when a truly
civilised society existed, the rulers and leaders of society were allowed to
own no personal property.

They might live in a palace as a symbol of their status, but it did not
belong to them, it was not their playground to hold wild parties and orgies
in.

They were not busy inspecting their balance sheets and portfolios of share
and property ownership, but were rather busy in improving themselves
and the lot of their people.

Why do we not hear that regarding our current leaders?

Why do we not hear the king or queen or prime minister has
decided to give up partying for a while and cancel the holiday on the
yacht in order to go on a spiritual retreat to ponder if he or she is doing
the best for the people?

On this retreat, they talk to the wise, those who care about world peace
and social justice and harmony.

We are not saying that no leaders, kings, queens or even princes ever do
such things, but as peace, love and freedom are not seen at the heart of
our modern society and world, they are evidently not doing it half
enough, or else are not putting into practice the ideals which they may
nevertheless really hold and feel, some place buried deep inside
themselves.

Many politicians and rulers and people in fact those in all positions of
responsibility started our with high ideals, but they, just as we, get
compromised.

We find that the culture we have joined is not what we imagined or
expected.

We join the law thinking Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, who
bravely defends a black boy accused of raping a white girl in a deep
South racially prejudiced American town.

Or we think Perry Mason, or even Daniel Benzalis brilliant portrayal of
a modern justice seeking lawyer in the clever series, Murder One, in the
mid 1990s.

But the truth is more like LA Law, or any other of these gritty series
with their constant corruption, sexual intrigue, blackmail and greed.

It is these kind of corrupt, corrupting, ambitious, deceitful, ruthless and
sexually overactive people, who currently get to the top in our society.

Those who are honest, kind, and gentle note, we did not say weak -
rarely get above the bottom rung in anything, except the nobler
professions such as medicine and teaching.

Yet they are the real power of intelligence and strength who hold the
world together, while their superiors are doing their very best to smash it
apart with their stupid and visionless decisions and policies.

We fail to understand the difference between the person who has strength
and the bully.

The bully is the person who is forever willing to use what strength they
have got, often in a cunning and manipulative way, so we regard them as
dangerous, whereas the good person only uses force or power when
driven to an absolute extremity by circumstances.

As said in Sun Tzus Art of War, the best general wins the war without
ever fighting a battle.

If however, we were to upset a really strong person mentally or
physically or both they would be a far deadlier enemy, but to upset a
noble person who just appears kind, polite and honest isnt easy,
fortunately for those who are currently in power.

But the strong and honest should be warned that the bully type people
generally act in groups.

They pull strings of power, they are nothing on their own, but when they
get power in some group, for example in the workplace, they start to use
whatever influence they have gained to repress and bully others who in
themselves are far stronger human beings.

The insecurity of the inwardly weak, ambitious bullying types, drives
them to forever assert themselves, going round interfering in everything,
rather than letting the truly competent people, who are usually beneath
them in rank, to get on with their jobs.

But the Harrison Ford type lone hero who successfully fights against a
corrupt system, or evil group of people, for example in the movie Frantic,
in order to get his wife back from a criminal gang, is a very rare figure in
real life.

So the good have currently got to be very careful in exerting and
maintaining their rights for what they need in life.

For example, if we are bullied in our job, and no complaints to higher
superiors are of any use, as is typical also, we should get another one
somewhere else, because otherwise this bad culture where we work is
feeding off the energy and power of the good people.

When no good people will work for them any more, the bullies will have
to change their ways, because the good people are the only ones who see
that anything ever gets done properly, and thus, should be the ones in
authority, but mostly currently are not.
Thus if as a married woman you are being abused at work, the option is
there to not work until you find a job where you are not abused, as long
as your male partner is producing enough income, or you are able to
simplify your life and reduced your expenses so you dont have to work.

Of course we should fight injustice where we can, but sometimes all we
can do is refuse to cooperate, refuse to play the game.

For example, when all men begin to feel ashamed for using prostitutes -
though we would argue this can only be part and parcel of a society that
makes sure we all have a partner by a properly arranged social life - men
will stop using them.

Then the procurers of women will go out of business because there wont
be any demand.

But men will not feel shame, or will ignore it, whilst society is telling
them that they should be getting it every day or they are losers, and made
to feel humiliated if they arent sexually experienced, even by other
women they may know.

Likewise many women are lured into prostitution by amassing huge
debts, with all the easy credit available to them live now, pay later
that they get in the Western society.

Women must become aware that accepting credit and therefore debt,
could end up ruining their whole lives and forcing them into some kind of
prostitution, or even slavery in a job they are abused in and hate.

We have all got to learn to say no.

Teenage girls are taught by their magazines how to give oral sex to boys,
but they are not taught how to say no.

They want to be in the gang, have sexperiences to swap with their
girlfriends, and not feel like they are the only naive one who doesnt
know what its like.

But when they find out the boys are deriding them behind their backs or
just as likely these days openly calling them bike, whore, tart, they
might think twice about whether allowing their bodies to be used by boys
at such an early age was such a good idea.

They might consider, that they are getting sex experience alright, but
what they are not getting is love and respect.

But we see, we become aware, that society does not care if we are
respected or not, that is not what is on sale.

The best thing a wise person can do is to watch carefully all that happens
in society and in the lives of their friend and families around them and
thereby learn from the experiences and misfortunes of others.

When for example we see some celebrity who has been an addict, read
about if you can find a good honest account, which may not be easy
what happened to them in great detail, how it damaged their life and
relationships, and maybe long-term health.

The media likes to gloss over the real truth and just make a good story
out of it, and turn the disaster into a success as they say, put some
spin or gloss on it.

They just say, person X, the famous pop star or fashion model, has
successfully beaten addiction.

What was it like? they ask. Was it tough?

And the star says yeah, man, there were times when I was really low,
you wouldnt believe, etc., etc.

They make addiction sound cool, they make it sound like an experience
everyone ought to have, which earns respect, but those who have been
through it for real and arent famous dont agree.

They just got their lives wrecked, without the celebritys millions to start
over again after they get cured (if they ever really do).

We just dont see the full story in the potted highlights the media shows.

So the question is, do we have to personally try everything ourselves, to
know what its like?

Do we have to try cocaine to find out if its a good idea, or hallucinogenic
drugs; or if we dont try these things, we stay nave, we are mocked as
inexperienced?

Should we desperately run into as many sexual relationships as we can, to
get experienced in this way also?

Or should we be a despised goody two shoes and say no to all these
things.

Well, let us point something out.

Goody two shoes, whether male or female, is despised for one reason
you may not have considered.

For the rebels, the so called experienced, have lost more than they
have gained - like for example self-respect.

If a girl has sex outside of a stable relationship, thinking she is like some
glamorous pop or movie star always flitting from one man to another, or a
part played by an actress in a film she has seen, she may think she is
doing something wildly romantic and wonderful.

But what she doesnt see is that pain is on its way.

She doesnt see that if she was easy, the sort of guy she got was easy too,
and has the ambition to put more notches on his bedpost than the fastest
gun in the West had upon his gun.

She doesnt see that every man who believes in being faithful to one
person is never going to respect her as much as if she had stayed a virgin
till she met him.

If she is his first sexual partner, but she has had other lovers, he is
always going to feel uncomfortable that she has had someone before to
compare him with, and will fear she liked the other person better, no
matter how much she may try to reassure himotherwise.

And then, out of this twisted desire in his heart, he may feel compelled to
do the same, he may say to himself whats good for the goose is good for
the gander.

So when women play around, they cannot expect men to be faithful
either.

Does that entitle men to play around?

Not with virgins, it doesnt, we should definitely say.

Because any person who has a sexual partner other than the one they
intend to have as life partner, is putting a doubt and fear in the other
persons mind, which may sooner or later wreck the relationship.

To both women and men we would say if it is too late for you, if you
have had a misspent youth, the best policy would be to start saying
no starting now, until you establish a non-sexual relationship with
someone you want to commit to long-term.

And to women in particular, we would say, if you dont say no to a
man, you will never know if he is interested in you, or if he is just
interested in sex.

There is a well known modern book by two people working in the office
of the Sex in the City production, giving relationship advice for women,
called Hes Just Not that Into You.

May we briefly point out, that if you go to bed with a man on the first,
second, or even twentieth date, you will never know whether he is
interested in you, because you have already given him what he wanted
sexually, and therefore he has no need to commit.

The only way to find out if that man is really interested in you, it to make
him wait a year or two, and see if he wants to be with you as a friend,
before you start making a sex addict out of him, as so many modern girls
and women do.

In womens insecurity, they use sex as the bait, but sex is not enough to
keep any man, because there is so much more of it available elsewhere.

So can the lady reader now see how stupid is the advice she has been
getting on how to handle her relationships, from those who think the
behaviour of the Sex in the City characters is OK?

Let us advise Carrie Bradshaw here and now on how to get her Mr Big.

Go on dates with him, but tell him from the very first night out, that you
are not going to have sex with any man unless he is wiling to commit to
you.

If he doesnt accept that, you must simply walk away no more dates for
him, no matter how much he may beg and plead and lie, because he is
desperate to get you into bed.

Its called self-respect, something the Sex in the City characters dont
seem to know much about.

Because you have discovered not only is he Mr Big, he is Mr Lecherous
also, who can only think of you in one way as an object of sexual desire
and gratification.

But if you are a fun, friendly, interesting, and kind human being, he
should want to be with you just as a friend, just as he likes being with his
male friends whom he hopefully has no desire to molest.

Dont fall for all the romantic garbage, like the hearts and flowers and
expensive gifts. There is only one thing that is really romantic, and that is
finding someone who wants to be with you, wants to spend time with you.

And if this policy means that fifty men walk away from you on fifty first
dates, then you are either meeting the wrong kind of men perhaps you
should be looking in the church or library, instead of the bar or night club
or there is something wrong with you.

If you can be honest enough to suspect there is some truth in this, take a
good look at yourself, however hard it may be sometimes, and work on
being a kind, interesting, tolerant and considerate human being.

But if its sex that they wanted, then you are just well rid of unfaithful
rubbish, arent you?

And the tough fact is for either men or women, the more intelligent and
discriminating you are, the tougher finding a suitable partner is going to
be.

And that is especially why you have not got to throw yourself away, by
accepting and having sex with people who dont deserve you, and thereby
throwing your life away, which is incidentally a message both to women
and men.

Because the man or woman who is out there somewhere, and is really
worth the trouble, but maybe you didnt notice yet - he or she knows.

He or she knows if you are gallivanting around, flitting from partner to
partner, and the faithful type of man or woman wouldnt touch you with a
bargepole after theyve seen or sensed enough of that.

So you see, the men and women and boys and girls whose reputations are
already smeared, they are secretly regretting it, because they know their
chances of getting the person of their dreams are seriously damaged.

And thus, if you stayed pure, they resent or even hate you, because you
still have a value that they do not.

Mr or Miss Wonderful does not want them, but he or she wants you.

To those who due to this corrupted society have let themselves go, the
best they can do is put a space of a few years of reformed behaviour
behind them.

If we see a man or a woman who maybe made a mistake, but stays
unattached for a few years, we respect that.

We respect they are at least now being discriminating, choosy, and
therefore capable of loyalty to one special person whom for them we
all want to be.

So more generally, we see that our great mistake in life is on focussing on
wants (mostly implanted by culture for commercial reasons, or
malevolent people) rather than needs.

Look at the state of the average person who has lived a wild reckless life
doing all the drugs, sex and so on that they wanted, i.e. has given in to all
their desires.

They are mostly depleted wrecks of human beings - supposing they are
even still alive - as the expression goes, like a jaded rock star.

They didnt discover the power of no, in preserving their dignity, their
mental balance and their lives.

We need someone to love. We dont need fifty lovers, though we might
want them sometimes.



We dont need fifty ways to leave a lover but fifty Nos to turn down fifty
potential lovers, who would have just made our lives a misery, but we
were wise enough to stop them in their tracks, before they ever started
deceiving us and ruining our lives.

Because if we have fifty lovers, we wreck society for others also, not only
ourselves.

We make relationships into second-hand books, tossed around in grubby
piles, and sold and bought cheaply for a few dollars or pounds.

Nobody really respects those books. But a first edition, which is still in
mint condition, people will pay millions for.

Why should we regard human beings as any different?

So if we want quality in both ourselves and others, we have to learn to
say no, to all the things and people who would degrade us, drag us down.

If we are lost, fallen into habits and relationships far beneath what we
believe is our true status, we have got to change our habits.

Person X says to us are you coming down the club? (the dark, dirty,
smelly, noisy, badly-behaved club) and we say no, not tonight. Sorry.

And if they complain, harangue and pester us, we say sorry, I must let
you go there alone, there is nothing there for me any more.

And then we lose those friends, whom we may realise after a while
werent really such good friends at all, because they never let us be
ourselves - they made us be something else for them.

But then we find we are alone.

And then we have to live with the pain of being alone.

If you want to be a hero or heroine, you have to suffer, you have to learn
to take pain, not for its own sake, but because to become free from a state
of bondage, imprisonment, it will be unavoidable on the psychological
level.

It takes time to let bad habits die, to change a life, to look in places we
never looked before.
The people in those new, more respectable places may not accept us until
we have stayed away from the old places for quite a while.

They know us too, because a thousand little clues tell them where weve
been the way we dress or wear our hair.

Most people advertise on their sleeve who they are, or imagine
themselves to be via their clothes, their hair, their shoes, their
mannerisms, the way they walk.

But we put it to you that being aware of this game of posing, we are now
in a position to break free of this game, to pose no more.

We can dress nicely, with a little style, but we are not slavishly following
the rules and dress code of any particular group unless of course it is
wise to dress that way, to fit in the group we must but even then we do
it with awareness, we do not mistake the real person we are for the pose.

And if we still have some bad habit that is betraying us, we learn to fight
it every day till we win.

We succeed one day, we fail another, but above all we dont get upset.

Because anger and frustration pull us back into the same old pattern as we
shall shortly explain in the next chapter.

Then we find we win more days than we lose, and as time goes by our
bad habit disappears. It might take weeks, months or years to change the
habit, but we can do it as long as we dont give up.

One day we look back briefly at an old photograph, and we are amazed
when we say did I really do that? Was I really like that?

But in conclusion, we should say, that the answer is not to make
ourselves into something, build a picture of ourselves in our mind, but
rather to learn not to try to be anything.

We can do, but let us not glorify doing into being.

That is, we may play the piano or a sport.

That is what we do.

But if we then say I am a pianist, or I am a sportsman, we are building
an image, an identity. Then we are that thing only in someones mind or
even our own, at the expense of everything else we might be.

That is not to say, we should not say, if we are Chopin or some lesser
light, that we are not a pianist, or if asked what we do, not say that we
are; but that when we meet another human being or assess ourselves, the
questions what do you do? and what it is you are? are not at all
necessarily the same thing.

When we see this putting on airs and graces in others, building
themselves an identity as some powerful and mysterious person, we
should just quietly become aware of this flight into egotistical fantasy
they are performing.

Likewise, when we see it in ourselves, we can only be the same, be aware.

For example, as Marlon says to Truman in The Truman Show

Come on which one of us hasnt secretly wanted to be interviewed on
Seahaven Tonight? (or Larry King Live, or Oprah or whoever else is
currently the chat show king or queen)

So we see ourselves imagining being a famous person, interviewed by the
famous chat show host, and the audience looking at us with awe and
reverence that we likely dont deserve.

Theres nothing we can do about it, we just see that we are building
images in our minds. We dont say its good or bad, or right or wrong, we
just see what our mind is up to, building ideas about itself.

Because the reality is that ideas in ones mind dont do any harm, but if
we follow those up with actions, and actually do the things we dream,
this has consequences.

Have we really considered what it would be like to be a celebrity, not
being able to scratch our nose or someplace, without it being national
news?

Never having a private life again, and when we open the curtains in the
morning in our dressing gown absent-mindedly, there is someone camped
outside or watching from a building opposite taking pictures with a
telephoto lens?
So really, the wise build no images of themselves, especially not even of
being wise, because we are all wise some days, and very dumb on other
ones, so thus that would be to try to build an image about ourselves which
will soon or later be knocked down, as there will always be some person
or situation which will be like a pin bursting our bubble.

That is, being humble is not something we can do, going round thinking
I am such a modest person (in fact, I am so proud of being so humble).

Do we understand how the ego, the mind thinking up ideas about itself,
is lost in a game of chasing its own tail?

So being humble, which implies being impervious to insult you see, can
only come about when we dont keep creating ideas in our own minds
about being Ms or Mr Wonderful and taking them seriously.

The person who cannot laugh at themselves is familiar, and is obviously
the same person who is very vain, continually building these images of
themselves as someone special and a VIP.

We see its easy to laugh at others, but not so much fun to laugh at
ourselves.

But learn to do that we must, and especially in private, though of course,
that does not mean we should throw away our self-respect and dignity
and become a laughing stock to others, which we see would be allowing
them to build a negative image of us at our expense.

However, we can see that most of the mockery that is directed at us
comes from the usually right perception that we think we are something
wonderful, and are advertising that fact to others, we think we are special,
we think we are something they are not, and therefore they dont like us
for that.

Of course, they may simply hate us because we really are something they
are not, even though we havent advertised it, which would suggest that
perhaps we are keeping the wrong company, perhaps because we enjoy
slumming it, feeling safe only with those who we know ourselves to be
superior to.

So then the abuse we get is our own fault, isnt it?

Chapter Six
Hypnosis the Modern Psychological Disease

The concept of hypnosis is a most remarkable one, because it is
something which is extremely familiar to almost the entire population,
but about which ironically the vast majority know so little.

Most people will also be familiar with the well known saying a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing, and we would suggest that in the case of
hypnosis, a truer word was never said.

Thus we need to make this concept crystal clear, and in its generality it is
surprisingly simple.

By hypnosis is simply meant:

the power of one mind or will upon another

So when the evil hypnotist in the horror movie says you are under my
power, your will is my will, this is no fiction - he really does mean what
he says.

We may imagine we can safely go to a hypnotist who will help us with
anxiety problems or a smoking cure, but unless one feels one hundred
percent safe in his or her hands, we would suggest this is a risky step, and
we should not be fooled even supposing the hypnotist is also part of a
public health service into believing that is necessarily any guarantee that
we will not be abused.

For let us be very simple about all this.

We are dealing with the mind. And our experience of the mind, is that
quite frankly, it is not a terribly reliable instrument.

The computer can remember virtually flawlessly millions of pieces of
data, but we struggle to recall even a phone number someone gave us a
few seconds ago unless we have quickly written it down.

So when we say the mind is not really very reliable, what we mean is that
the memory is not terribly reliable.

The mind is not good at processing lots of data simultaneously. It works
best with one thing at a time.

What it is good at however is making sense of very complex matters in an
intuitive way, which is still, and we would suggest always will be, beyond
the capability of any computer ever possible to be built.

Those who play with ideas of artificial intelligence imagining they will
one day be able to successfully simulate the intelligence of the human
brain, fail to understand what human intelligence is really all about.

That is, it is certainly possible to build a robot which will successfully
navigate any maze, or even play the piano from sheet music much more
easily than any human ever could, but if we want it to produce for us an
original Van Gogh painting or piece of Chopin piano music, when the
artificial intelligence experts do not even know how Van Gogh or Chopin
produced their works, surely there is going to be some difficulty with that
vain hope?

That is, the human brain is creative, it produces works and discoveries
which are greater than the sum of the parts.

It is self-actuating, it writes its own programming; whatever is at the
root of our human intelligence cannot ever be stated in any number of
lines of code, because the brain asks the question why? and sees meaning
in reality, which no mere machine obviously can ever do.

We do however suspect that ultimately the intelligence of any particular
brain is normally limited, and it will only be by progressive enhancements
in the brain itself, which we believe are still happening via ongoing
evolutionary processes, that its intelligence will actually increase.

Amazingly however, as we shall also later suggest, these processes are
initiated inside the body itself, by a kind of immanent but ultimately
super-physical force and intelligence known to yoga as kundalini.

But let us stick to our current theme.

We have said that hypnosis is the action of one mind or will upon
another, and we will now explore the further implications of this point.

That is, as we have said, the brain and memory is not as reliable as the
computer in terms of storing data and facts, so we have to be wary of its
inputs and outputs to continue the computer analogy.

That is, if we allow ourselves to be put into a hypnotic trance, so that
we are somewhat dazed like in sleep, if the hypnotist then puts ideas into
our mind in such a dazed state, the first thing to observe is we likely wont
reliably remember what he or she put there.

For example, we have what is known as false memory syndrome, in
which it is suggested that psychologists could be implanting either
deliberately or unwittingly memories of events that did not happen, for
example in child abuse cases, so that some man (or even woman) may be
accused of having carried out some abusive act when in fact they did not.

The other point is that anybody who has witnessed a person in a hypnotic
trance answering questions, will be deeply suspicious of the source of the
answers, especially in the case of someone whom we have known well.

Because most people have not had this experience of watching someone
they know well personally under hypnosis, they tend to find what is said
more believable.

But is it real, or is it fabrication, for example all these past lives that are
supposed to be unearthed so easily in a hypnotic trance?

Is it what the subject believes the hypnotist wants to hear under the duress
of leading questions, is it a performance intended to please,
manufactured as easily as the fantasies we have in the dream state?

Or is it even spirit possession or some other kind of phenomenon of
which we are not currently aware?

For example, recently on British TV, Princess Dianas ex-lover, J ames
Hewitt, allowed himself to be questioned under hypnosis about his
relationship with Diana, and produced different answers whilst in this
state than the claims he had already made in his autobiography.

When he was returned to normal consciousness and confronted with a
video recording of his hypnotised behaviour and utterances, he still
insisted in sticking to the original story, and said he was unable to
explain his hypnotised responses.

Was the mostly likeable and diplomatic Mr Hewitt using this as an
opportunity to say what he was unable to in the normal state?

We cannot know for sure, as presumably only he, the now deceased
Diana and a few others, such as those in the British secret service and
perhaps some sectors of government, know the real truth.

But what we all do know, is that those who are hypnotised lose their
sense of time, and frequently think only a few seconds or minutes have
passed when they may have been in the trance state for an hour or more.

This tell us that their memory was not functioning normally whilst in this
state.

So we are suggesting that those who either allow stage hypnotists or
hypnotherapists to put them under are really taking a risk which is
hard to quantify.

Let us explain a little further.

There is the well known experiment of Pavlovs Dogs which tells us how
dangerous hypnosis can really be.

That is, the Russian scientist Pavlov began his experiment by ringing a
bell before giving food to a number of dogs kept in cages.

He discovered that after a time, he could ring the bell, but give no food to
the dogs, and the dogs would all salivate merely at the sound of the bell,
at any time of day or night.

This is as we have said, an example of a conditioning process, or if we
like, it is a hypnotic process.

The bell is an example of a trigger.

So the stage hypnotist can for example plant in our minds - given enough
time to work on us - the idea that when the instant we put a certain pair of
ordinary, cheap plastic joke shop glasses on, we will be able to see
through a brick wall, so that putting on the glasses becomes the trigger or
as they say in the trade, activates the post hypnotic suggestion even
when someone is no longer in the hypnotic trance.

Under such a suggestion, the subject will actually believe they can see
through the wall, and will if pressed start to describe what is on the other
side of it, which generally will be a totally fabricated load of nonsense,
though they themselves will be unable to see that it is.

This seriously suggests the ability of the mind to manufacture all kinds of
imaginary data, but here is the crunch yet believe it to be real in order
to justify some kind of fixed idea it has, even if wholly untrue such as
the hypnotists deliberate fantasy suggestion.

So this is really a quite frightening ability of the mind, is it not?

That is, we are discovering the mind can create its own illusory reality,
based on fixed ideas it has implanted in it.

So can we now imagine how a hypnotist could abuse his or her power in
all kinds of ways?

For all we know the hypnotist could get us to reveal various hidden
secrets that could be comprising for us, and rewarding to them such as
bank account numbers and passwords and we might never remember
we have given them this information.

Let us not however speculate too much on what else the professional
hypnotist could do if we let him or her, but the obvious conclusion here,
is that we should never let anyone hypnotise us for any reason whatsoever
in such a deliberate formalized way.

Some say as in the movie Conspiracy Theory that there have been a
number of people who have been hypnotised by government agencies at
one time or another to kill a certain person on a certain command, which
for example, might be given to them in some innocent looking item of
mail that they receive, and they might not even register that they have had
this "command" word or phase given to them.

Apparently dogs can be trained to attack (and therefore possibly kill) on a
verbal command, so this may not at all be as far-fetched as it might at
first hearing seem.

We might argue that we have a human awareness that a dog does not, but
then how can people go into the hypnotic trance and not remember what
transpired during it, possibly even for hours?

In the striking 1960s movie, The Boston Strangler, we saw Tony Curtis
giving a great performance as someone who seemed to carry out his
murders in some kind of hypnotic trance, and could only gradually be
made to realise that he had actually carried them out himself.

So when we are dealing with this formalized process of hypnosis, where
we voluntarily agree for someone to spend a good deal of time putting
us under, we are surely treading onto potentially very deadly ground,
and the sooner the general public wakes up to this fact the better.

One last example of a girl who was hypnotised by a stage hypnotist may
suffice to deter those who may still remain unconvinced.

The girl was whilst hypnotised and performing on stage for the public,
given the suggestion by the hypnotist that she was having a five thousand
volt shock.

She died the same night of a heart attack, and though we cannot definitely
say it was as a direct result of this event, her mother certainly believed it
to be the case, as this young lady had shown no signs whatsoever of heart
disease or bad health prior to this incident of stage hypnotism only a few
hours earlier.

But unfortunately, too many of the general public still cooperate with
these often humiliating and potentially dangerous displays of stage
hypnosis.

And in fact even more seriously, the public is not aware of the broader
practice of what in actuality is really hypnosis, which is going on in all
our everyday lives, virtually all the time.

For as we have said, the hypnotist gives suggestions, and our media and
urban environment is absolutely choc-a-bloc with them.

In our exploration of this concept, let us first distinguish two concepts
clearly ideas and facts.

A fact is something we know to be real, it is clearly perceptible with our
five senses, and preferably even measurable with scientific instruments.

For example, if someone said they saw a ghost, and some electrical or
barometric test equipment was able to register significant atmospheric
changes in the vicinity of what they believed they saw, there would be
more assurance that it wasnt merely all in the mind.

Or sometimes we can be walking in the woods, and at a distance, we
think we see a human figure, but as we get closer, we see it is only a tree
stump.

Especially when we are afraid, or our mind is affected by drugs including
alcohol, even the morning after when we are withdrawing, we are
liable to actually see things that arent there.

So evidently, we can amazingly create whole images in our brains,
believing they are what we see with our eyes, and believe at least
momentarily that they are real.

Some people may have also noticed that we can sometimes hear music in
certain kinds of monotonous sound, such as the constant drone of
engines, because somehow our brain is able to see or hear patterns in
things which arent there, due to its incredible ability to fill in the gaps,
just as we can begin to imagine we see things whilst staring into the
flames of a fire.

So clearly, we have to be very careful in assessing even the reality of
what we think we hear and see.

But on the other hand, if we do not believe in our own minds, our own
perceptions, then surely we are in big trouble also.

For we will then lose confidence in our ability to think clearly and act
with our own will, and it is this field of doubt which the common-or-
garden variety of hypnotist we encounter daily exploits.

Our senses are actually quite limiting.

We can see what is in our little room, or where the land is open, some
vista, but we can only see clearly what is very close to us, and our
knowledge of what is happening in the world is very much limited to
things that are physically very close to us, and everything else that
happens, which is therefore almost everything which happens in the
world, unless we see film or photographs, we have to take on trust.

The TV or radio news reporter who is always chosen we see as a very
trust-inspiring, honest looking person tells us of events happening all
round the world, or new discoveries in science, and we are inclined to
believe everything they tell us.

They sit with us in our living room each evening on our TV screen, and
we begin to think of them at least somewhat as if they were trusted
friends, which of course to almost all of us they can and never will be.

The essential point here is that we trust them.

We think that a nice person, such as national news presenters Trevor
MacDonald or Katie Derham in England, or legends like Larry King or
Walter Cronkite in America, could never lie to us.

And they probably would not do so deliberately.

But they have the same problem of only getting their information second-
hand too.

So when we realise what a little bubble of experience we are trapped in,
how limited our own powers of personally witnessing and verifying
anything really are, it can become a bit scary.

We can start to go on paranoid conspiracy theory trips, and start
questioning more or less obvious facts, such as whether the astronauts
ever landed on the moon.

I mean, we believe that to be a fact, because we believe in nuclear
missiles, and we think they are a lot harder to make than putting a man on
the moon, in a rather dangerous space suit and craft, as one or two failed
missions have proved, including the not too long ago Shuttle disasters.

It would be nice to imagine that nuclear weapons were only a conspiracy
theory too, and didnt exist, but we have this problem of all the people in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki not agreeing with us, and this other worrying
problem of that formula thought up by Einstein, e = mc, which suggests
that they can, and do exist.

We have to become aware of what is correlatable that is, what fits with
reasonable certainty with pre-existing information we know to be reliable
and what is questionable.

For example, most of us have practically no data about genetic
engineering with which to make decisions about the subject, and the
governments - for commercial reasons most likely - simply reassure us,
i.e. hypnotically suggest to us that this is all safe.

Whereas the Maharishi for example, tells us that genetically modifying
life forms on our planet is potentially more dangerous than dealing with
radioactive waste, because once unleashed these artificially created
genetic mutations may possibly never again be eradicated, whereas even
radioactive materials will in time decay and become harmless.

That is, once cross-fertilization occurs in the wild, it may be impossible to
ever track all the altered seeds down and eliminate them from the
genetic pool available to that class of animals or plants.

We may end up being in total fear about whatever we eat, if we are not
one hundred percent sure of its source.

In fact, for those who want to trust the Maharishis viewpoint on this,
he rather scarily assures us that anybody who eats a lot of this GM food
isnt going to be around for very long.

But we are not saying the Maharishi is right or wrong.

We are just saying, here we have two suggestions, two efforts at
hypnotism, at gaining control of our minds.

We dont have the facts, so we cant make a rational decision. We can
only decide in whom we will place our trust.

And as the Maharishi seems to be voting for peace and love and
tranquillity, whereas the politicians seem to want to take us to war, thrive
on conflict, and fail to solve most of our social problems, a lot of us are
rather more inclined to trust the Maharishi, not seeing how he could gain
from this situation if he is wrong.

On the other hand, he could just be deluded, couldnt he, as could David
Icke about some things, as could the present author himself?

So the point is, we can place our bets on what others say, but we must not
go putting things people say - the truth of which we are in no position to
assess - into either the true or false category of our minds.

The only logical place to put them is in the undecided category.

Yet we see that such blind acceptance of their suggestions as truths is
exactly what the manipulators - the politicians, the advertisers, and
others of ill or greedy intent - would have us do.
They want us to buy into their ideas hook, line and sinker, so we will
do what they will us to do.

So as we have said, those who want to control us use our feelings against
us, so the manipulators attempt to bypass our reason altogether, and
appeal to our emotions in one way or another.

In terms of controlling men, sex is usually the key. With boys it is thrills
and spills and toys.

Whatever excites us, or alternatively makes us afraid, can be used to
control us.

Thus women are controlled by other means, which appeal to their greatest
desires and fears.

As we have said, womens desire to see the maximum spreading of
womens rights for example has been used by the politicians to justify the
Iraq war, and the general attack on the Muslim world, as well as our fears
of the weapons of mass destruction.

But the politicians now have a problem, because before, we trusted them
to tell us the truth, and now most of us dont trust them any more.

So the issue here, is that we are given suggestions, we are told ideas as if
they were facts, thus bypassing our reason, our logical and legitimate
objections, just as we are told without any justification that GM food is
safe.

This is hypnosis

They say, we obey, even if that just means being as dumb and mute as
one of Pavlovs Dogs in response to their suggestions, demands and
commands.

Likewise, each day we turn on the TV we are presented with apart from
the genuine news items and film reports an almost total fantasy from
beginning to end.

The television set in every living room and bedroom of the Western
world, is surely the greatest instrument of hypnosis ever invented.

In the middle of some program you are watching, we suggest you try a
little experiment.

Try turning the TV off for a while.

You will feel an incredible relief, as whilst we leave it on, we are
unaware that we are being pounded by suggestion after suggestion all the
time we watch.

Each program that is shown is not merely the entertainment we may
naively imagine.

Almost everything we see has a message, and if we are sensitive to this, if
we are aware, we are almost astounded by the relentless efforts of those
communicating their thoughts and ideas to us to get us to see the world
and reality their way.

For example, the politicians speeches are always grand and high
sounding, but if we get to the reality of what they do, we find that their
actions are almost the exact opposite of what they say!

The UK government is currently saying how it is so concerned about our
safety and security, yet is doing politically everything in its power in
terms of foreign relations and jobs and trade to make us insecure.

For example, more rights are given to employers to hire and fire, and less
rights for employees to job security, compensation or social security
benefits.

Again, the British public has now been put in fear of its rights to an old
age pension, and the implication seems to be that for those who have
been too reckless or poor to invest in a private or company pension
scheme many of which have also collapsed without any hope of
compensation or redress we may either get no pension at all, or be
forced to work until we die.

Readers around the world may also be astonished to learn that there are
currently estimated to be over four hundred thousand homeless people in
England, a problem which hardly existed in this green and pleasant
land only twenty or thirty years ago.

Where is this security the government talks so many high ideals about?

They are either very great liars, perhaps so good they even believe their
own lies, or else they are as we believe in many cases effectively
blind, due to being hypnotised by the propaganda coming from their own
party machine and already conditioned, hypnotised state in life.

So this talk of security is all hypnosis.

They give us make believe. They try to make us believe in what they say,
when they do something else entirely different.

Abusive people in general behave in this way.

They continually deny all the bad things they do to us, they tell us it is
all in our mind, they seem utterly shameless in the carrying out of their
abusive plans.

They see lies as a totally legitimate means to get their own way.

Children from loveless, uncaring families learn these strategies from their
parents at an early age. They see their parents continually lying to and
cheating and abusing one another, and they think this is life, that is how
things are meant to be.

The point is, the liar feels powerful. The J R Ewing of Dallas always
dreams and schemes to get his own way, just as does the J oan Collins
Dynasty bitch, and both usually succeed.

When we see these devious characters in TV and movie dramas, such as
the corrupting pre-revolutionary aristocrat played by Glenn Close in the
historical period drama, Dangerous Liaisons, they make us feel angry and
outraged, but they also fascinate us.

Many actors and actresses love playing the baddy part, they say the
devil has all the best lines.

Goodies are mostly boring, unless they are really heroic warriors, such
as El Cid, or Kwai Chang Caine out of Kung Fu.

But you see, why would we want to bathe our lives in fantasy anyway,
especially of the typically formulaic and predictable TV kind?


But the sad truth is that we are satisfied over and over pretending in our
minds to be a brave hero, and imaging that we too at the end of the movie,
after gloriously disposing of or killing all our enemies, are going to win
the heart and body of the pretty girl.

Or as a woman, we can imagine the hero is doing all these daring deeds
just for us, and we can enjoy imagining we are the femme fatale or
belle of the ball, whom all men fall helplessly at the feet of and declare
to their undying love, like the Queen of Sheba or the Biblical Delilah,
who conquered Samson with her womanly wiles, when the King and his
whole army could not.

The true history of almost every Western nation is mostly the sordid tale
of a bunch of unscrupulous, violent, deceitful, manipulating bullies and
cowards all struggling ambitiously for supremacy, to be cock of the
dunghill.

Those in the ruling families throughout history have lived in constant fear
of assassination by their relatives or other ambitious upstarts, and we see
this intrigue carries on into the present, for example with all the
chicanery and scandal involving the British Royal family in the Princess
Diana era.

No person in their right mind would have wished to be part of such a
treacherous royal court, as it was clearly a threat even to their life, as in
the constant executions of rivals and courtiers in the time for example of
Henry VIII, who even had his own Lord Chancellor and lifelong friend,
Sir Thomas More, beheaded, as depicted in the brilliant, multiple Oscar
winning 1960s movie, A Man for All Seasons.

So as we see that so called history has been mostly the study of the
tyranny and treachery of those who would seek to rule society, all
cheating and murdering one another out of the seats of power or throne,
why on earth would we suddenly imagine that our modern rulers the
politicians and dictators would suddenly have become decent human
beings, simply because the second world war was over by the nineteen-
fifties and sixties of which the modern era is just the troubled child?

The brutality of which Sadam Hussein and others have been accused of
by the West has in fact been carried out or worse by most Western
nations at one time or another even during the last hundred years.

For example British national hero, Winston Churchill, who defeated
Hitler gave orders to have the Afghan Kurds, whom he regarded as a
savage tribe, gassed in 1919.

Likewise, in 1920, he created and ordered into Ireland, which was
rebelling against the savage British domination of its country and people
over centuries, the so called black and tans, who were a bunch of
murderous and savage criminals let out of prison, given a non-regular
black and tan army uniform, and allowed carte blanche to abuse
the Irish people in whatever way they pleased.

At the time, Herbert Asquith, leader of the Liberal Party opposition in the
house of commons at the time of the creation of the black and tans stated:

"There are things being done in Ireland which would disgrace the
blackest annals of the lowest despotism in Europe."

And even though all but six counties of Ireland were finally made
independent in 1922, we see that the troubles in Northern Ireland
rumble on, even nearly one hundred years later, and British soldiers are
still on the streets there, and thousands have died since the mid 1960s,
when the modern phase of the unrest began in earnest once more.

And of course, Churchill described the Irish freedom fighters in 1919
as terrorists.

So this again is how language is used to hypnotise us, to remodel our
view of reality.

As one of the bosses in the prison said to Paul Newmans Cool Hand
Luke:

Luke, boy youve gotta get your mind right.

(and be a good little, well behaved prisoner).

Likewise those around us in everyday life in our families, in the office
or workplace, or in our relationships with friends and members of the
opposite sex, are constantly attempting to revise for us our view of reality.




They want to take over our minds to control us, which you see listen
carefully means making us doubt our own ability to assess reality,
finding ways to make us doubt the evidence of our eyes and ears and
minds.

For example an unfaithful husband or wife may say when confronted
with allegations of infidelity: you are being ridiculous, it is all in your
mind.

They say that man/woman you saw me with is a work colleague, and
that kiss was just a peck on the cheek as is customary now, imported from
France. (even though it looked passionate and on the lips to us).

And of course if we are paranoid, as we have explained, our mind could
have manufactured an unreality we fear, out of some innocent events.

But the wicked and deceitful use this doubt in our minds against us, so
how can we be sure that we can believe in what we imagine we sense and
see?

The answer is, we have to realise that we do not see clearly when we are
under the sway of emotion, that is of desire or fear.

That is why we have said in another book, that women on average are
less suited to be in positions of high power than men on average, because
women are generally more emotional than men.

If we are in the grip of powerful emotions like desire, fear, love or hate,
we lose our objectivity.

We create monsters when we look at our fellow man and woman, just as
Profess Morbius in the movie Forbidden Planet created monsters out of
the power of his unconscious mind.

That does not of course mean that others may not be behaving
monstrously towards us in reality, as such bad behaviour is now so
common.

But the point is, whatever they are really like, and really up to, we can
only see it reflected clearly in the mirror of a calm, objective and
emotionally controlled mind.

Thus, we see that the powerful emotions or passions which the TV screen
dramas, the romantic novels and even the pornographic materials would
have us wallow in, are really not good for our clarity of mind, our
objectivity and our mental health.

We are being hypnotised by emotion, they pull our heartstrings to gain
possession of our minds, or maybe our strings in even less scrupulous
places.

For example again, an insecure man who has married or is partner to an
attractive woman or wife, can be driven crazy by her deliberate antics,
flirting with other men when they are in public, and so on.

But it is a dangerous game she is playing, as he may end up killing her
out of jealousy, like in Tom J ones powerful and somewhat scary song
Delilah, or even the real life execution of some of his errant wives by
Henry VIII.

Or again, a man may threaten or imply violence to dominate a woman,
which is also not a fair or civilised way to behave.

Even in the context of business we surely have to reassess how products
and services are sold, for this is perhaps the hugest area of hypnosis
currently dominating our lives.

For it seems everything nowadays has ultimately the motive of profit at
the back of it, as expressed in Pink Floyds classic 1970s rock song,
Money, or even the quirky and somewhat cold-blooded earlier song of the
same name, first sung by The Flying Lizards, with some very posh and
selfish sounding girl who sang it like she was born wearing an evening
dress, high heels and a string of pearls.
The best things in life are free
But you can give them to the birds and bees
I want money
That's what I want
That's what I want
etc.
Your love brings me such a thrill
But your love won't pay my bills
I want money
That's what I want
That's what I want
etc.
This song would have been very funny indeed, if the lady singing it didnt
sound so much like she really meant it, as did Madonna in her Material
Girl, which expresses a similar heartless, materialism obsessed sentiment:
They can beg and they can plead
But they can't see the light (that's right)
Cause the boy with the cold hard cash
Is always Mister Right
Cause we are
Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
We are deliberately here quoting these song lyrics at length, because
these are yet more instances of the constant hypnosis which is directed at
us all, virtually all day long, especially by the TV, radio and other mass
media.
The pop song just like the advertising jingle is again an example of
how our emotions are used against us. We are fed some warm juicy
sounds and hypnotic melodies to suck upon like a baby, while the
suggestions of the words are fed into our minds.
We can hear those song lyrics being played in our minds at any time of
day or night, long after our actual listening is over, so successful has this
process of indoctrination, of hypnosis, been.
Or similarly a business person seeking to win a client will take them to a
classy restaurant and wine and dine them, make them feel good.
Because when people feel good, they buy.
If the desired client is a man, and the seller a glamorous, sexy woman is
wining and dining him, by her making him look like a successful man
who will receive curious and envious looks in the public arena of the
restaurant, he will usually feel very good indeed.
And it will be nearly impossible for him to say no, unless of course he is
an equally manipulative scoundrel, and just using her for his advantage,
but we dont sincerely believe that many businessmen are really that
smart.


Or in terms of our relationships, if a man or woman wants to seduce us,
they may invite us to dinner at their place, and after a drink, when we are
feeling good we might then do something that we would not otherwise
have considered was a good idea.
So then we play now, regret later.
For example, many a man could be tricked into having an affair or even
getting pregnant a woman he would not otherwise ever have considered
marrying by this means.
This is not a guide for women seducing men however, and we warn any
woman who thinks that kind of technique of getting a man is a good idea,
that she is only sowing the seeds of misery for herself and her children if
she thinks that is OK.
But the broader issue is that as Krishnamurti points out, we conduct our
human and business relationships not by logic, but by persuasion, and we
would argue that this is the wrong basis.
We shouldnt buy from either a seductive woman or a pushy, bullying
man unless the price is right, and we really need what is on offer.
But the advert on TV or elsewhere is constantly suggesting to us, that if
only we would buy we would feel so much better.
If we buy that new conservatory, or that new sofa, or new dress, we will
feel so much better about our life, about ourselves.
So because most of us dont feel so great most of the time, anything that
promises to make us feel better surely has to be given a whirl?
But the price is frequently our freedom, the very lack of which and
dispossessing from us, has made us feel insecure and miserable in the
first place.
To own all these possessions we have to work like slaves, we have to put
up with being bullied and humiliated by our bosses and colleagues and
customers, and maybe we even have to neglect our children and other
relationships to earn the money to pay for all these luxuries.
But we are constantly hypnotised by images from the media, that we must
own these things or we are inferior, we are out of fashion.
For example, British TV constantly bombards us with obsessions
regarding redecorating, extending or trading up our homes.
We are constantly shown images of those who have beautiful homes,
whilst as we have earlier said, almost half a million British citizens dont
even have one, and if we look around and compare these little (or not so
little) palaces to what we actually live in, it is inclined to make us feel
ashamed.
Though as we have said, really we should be feeling more ashamed about
the existence of so many homeless in what is a relatively rich Western
country, when compared to the situation of those in the Third World.
And even in the past decade, in the UK, house prices have risen by as
much as three hundred percent, so it has been made hard even for
professional people to get on the first rung of the property ladder.
The TV and advertising industry makes us compare ourselves all the time
with others who have better things, therefore making us constantly
envious and insecure, and therefore always willing to buy.
And thus, we have made concrete and necessary the Flying Lizards
sentiment in the Money song, and Madonnas Material Girl.
The answer to all our human problems is always in the purse, wallet or
bank account they imply, since if we are unhappy, surely all we need is a
new car, holiday abroad or pair of fashionable shoes, and then we will be
cheered up once more?
Which we usually are, for a while.
Soon however, like any other addict, we need another fix of shopping
again, when the thrill of the last purchase has died down.
But we dont stop and become aware that the only real happiness is in our
human relationships which we neglect and above all in the freedom of
being in possession of our own unworried minds.
We dont stop to think, that by being forced to be workaholics to pay off
our debt, because we cant control our spending habits, we are depriving
ourselves of the most precious rest and sleep, which as we have earlier
explained, is essential to maintain our psychological balance, and
therefore happiness.
In the innovative J ohn Carpenter cult movie, They Live, as well as one
of the most ridiculous (in an amusing way) and long fight scenes in
cinema history, we are shown the idea of some special glasses, which
upon wearing, we can see things and people as they really are.
The advertising billboards for example which showed glossy pictures, we
see when we have the glasses on, only say in huge bold black-on-white
letters - CONSUME and BUY.
We all need to have those glasses on mentally, everyday of our lives.
But the glasses are as we have explained, the state of awareness, the
realisation that we are and have been hypnotised, bought into ideas,
purchases and even relationships without properly having considered
them calmly and objectively with our minds.
Yet we all get cheated, conned and deceived in all these transactions
between humans every day. And when we wake up briefly we may see
our image as a donkeys head in the mirror, and we say aw, I got cheated
again.
But now we have the option to do something, and break out of this
deception we are imprisoned in, which as we have explained, is not to
react angrily, but only to become aware.
Why not react angrily? you say.
Because as we have explained, emotions control us, they are used to
hypnotise us, worst of all, therefore, we are by our reactions, in fact
hypnotised by ourselves.
When we are caught up in emotion, we lose our objectivity, we make rash
and hasty decisions, and usually the wrong ones we later regret.
So now that we see that emotions are more often our enemy that robs us
of our freedom than our friend, that too is a new awareness in us, which
empowers us in the true sense.
For we thought emotions were the most wonderful things. Well of course
some classes of emotion are arguably the most wonderful things, and of
course the expression of these in certain situations.
For example, if we express or feel love for someone who loves us in
return that is a safe emotion to feel.
But if we express or feel love for a member of the opposite sex who
doesnt love us back, that may be dangerous for us, we may waste our
lives caring about someone whom we can never have a relationship with.
Thus as we are aware of that fact, we will not jump so quickly into new
relationships, wont be ready to so easily fall in love.
If we are sensible, we will make thorough enquiries and assessments to
see if that person is really so keen on us, or otherwise we are going to
likely get burned.
That is, of course, unless we are so big hearted we can love others
without wanting to possess them, or expect anything in return.
But we must honestly say, that those who pursue a hopeless love are
really just wasting their lives, and need to look much closer at themselves
about why they are so desiring of something that can never be.
But no dont end up on the therapists couch, God forbid. We are saying
only become aware.
We are saying, let us look at the rest of our life.
What is missing from us as a human being to think that happiness lies in
the presence and affection of another, who doesnt want us for whatever
reason, right or wrong?
Are we trying to unfairly punish that person, to compensate for an early
feeling of rejection by a parent, by inflicting on them an obsessive and
unwanted love?
If so, we must feel the pain, live through it, and come out the other side as
a more independent, more self-sufficient human being.
We all want someone to recognise us, to make us feel that we matter as
human beings.
But then everyone else is looking for the same.
So let us become aware of this unholy struggle for attention and affection
that is going on amongst people, who are really mostly still children,
emotionally speaking, and realise that it is the product of a world gone
wrong.
A world in which children rarely grown into independent adults
emotionally speaking.
We dont need to be smothered in love and kisses we need to learn to
stand on our own two feet, even if the whole world is against us as it
often seems to be just like Truman in The Truman Show - as he bravely
sailed away to freedom, with all the world against him and even trying to
drown him in their efforts to stop him escape and break free.
For we see, when we do truly try to be our own person but not in an
angry, rebellious way the world punishes us with such isolation, such
rejection as happened to most of the great men and women throughout
history, such as artistic geniuses like Van Gogh.
But then, if we can live through this typically long phase of rejection and
isolation, live through our self-hate and self-pity, we can come out the
other side as a whole and largely self-sufficient and independent human
being.
And then we see a miracle. The miracle we discover, is that when we no
longer need others so much, we find to our amazement, that rather others
seek out and need us.
We can walk into a room, and they see our happiness, our self-
sufficiency, and they are attracted to us without even knowing why.
For people are attracted to those who have within them happiness, peace
and love, just as so many millions and billions throughout history have
been attracted to great souls such as Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius and
Christ for the very same reason.
J ust as so many of societys accomplished and famous modern men and
women also have been attracted to modern sages such as Krishnamurti
and Gopi Krishna.
So in summary we are saying that by this process of awareness alone,
which is really an antidote to the modern disease of hypnosis which
surrounds us, we can progressively become the free and harmonious
human beings which at heart we all surely want to be.

Chapter Seven
Heaven and Hell Meditation and Kundalini

We have earlier made the bold assertion that meditation can be
dangerous, and here we are going to tell you exactly why.

In offering this information, we wish to point out that just as with
hypnosis, there are thousands of so called experts or even gurus who
will claim the exact opposite of what we are saying, mostly because they
have a vested interest in doing so, whereas we emphatically do not.

For our certainty that meditation can be dangerous is based on the
experiences of a substantial number of meditators of whom we are
personally aware, and even some who have never meditated in a formal
way but have had trouble with their bodies and brains nevertheless, as
well as the various writings or scriptures of spiritual writers and
explorers throughout thousands of years of experience and experiment in
these fields, of which modern science has been so far not in any position
to investigate and is even sadly mostly wholly unaware.

Right away we will point out the case of modern yoga author, Gopi
Krishna (1903-1984), who authored around fifteen books, including two
autobiographies, the shorter of which was called Kundalini, The
Evolutionary Energy in Man.

The point is, that Mr Krishna had firstly some amazing and blissful but
later awful and tormenting experiences over a period of several decades,
due to deliberate intense meditation practices, and those who would say
meditation is always a fun and safe activity, need to explain his case
before making such a glib claim.

They also need to look at the more recent transformation of David Icke,
who is a self-confessed kundalini awakened case, who said he went
through a period of confusion and delusion for at least a year after certain
dramatic experiences happened to him, somewhat similar to those
described by Gopi Krishna, though not quite as decisive and dramatic we
would guess.

We do not yet wish to explain kundalini at this point, as we desire to not
confuse the issue with the undeniable and incontestable consequences of
meditative processes which we will first describe.



For as we have said, we know personally of a number of people who
have got into serious difficulties with their bodies and minds following
meditation processes, which may or may not be due to this kundalini
phenomenon.

Almost certainly the largest class of regular meditators in the Western
world are those who have learned the Maharishis TM, or transcendental
meditation, which is estimated to be at least four million people
worldwide, most of them probably in America, Western Europe and
Canada.

Whilst we do not wish to give any secrets of the TM movement away
which we may or may not have learned, we think it is only fair to point
out that we are aware of a number of people who have used this
supposedly safe technique of meditation, but got into serious trouble
with it as a consequence.

Some people on the Internet for example even claim that the TM
movement is corrupt, though we do not have any significant experience
of this personally.

But what we are saying, is that meditation is not some irrelevant bit of
head in the clouds nonsense, but something which dramatically can
affect our body and minds in a physiological way.

Some who meditate at times go into tremors or even mild convulsions, it
can make different people vomit at other times, and can also cause certain
individuals to be very wound up and aggressive for short or long
periods following their meditation sessions.

Our best guess as to why we have had these negative effects reported to
us is that this kind of meditation functions as if we were purifying metal
in a cauldron, so that the scum and the slag starts to rise up, and causes
a lot of turbulence on the surface.

There is the saying fire purifies, and this appears to be how TM and other
similar meditation techniques work on the brain and nervous system.

In purifying the nervous system and brain, TM stirs up all kinds of
material long trapped in our past, and therefore somewhere in the
structures of the brain, just as when the blood stream purifies itself of
poisons, we may get spots or boils on our skin, via which the toxins will
be accumulated and eventually expelled.
So the issue here is therefore how fast the poisons come up from our past,
and output themselves as physical discomfort or powerful and sometimes
poisonous emotions.

If the dross comes up too quickly, we will cause problems both to
ourselves and others, and we suspect that the vast majority of problems
meditators have had with this kind of meditation is that they didnt follow
the rules.

That is, this kind of meditation should only be done for a short time the
Maharishis usual recipe was twenty minutes, twice daily for adults, and
for children an even shorter time depending on their age.

Our purpose here is not to either recommend or discourage anyone who
would do a meditation technique such as TM, but we are warning those
who carry out these techniques, that depending upon who they are, it
could be dangerous for them without their knowledge, and also outside of
the knowledge of the TM teacher who teaches them the technique.

We would suggest also that it is even more dangerous to use these kinds
of techniques from books, without any other guidance or supervision at
all, and by these kinds, we mean - any deliberate attempt to focus the
mind with closed eyes for any significant period of time.

There are of course many other schools of meditation, who have
different techniques, such as chanting mantras out loud, etc. but again, we
do not either disbar or recommend any of them to anyone who is
discerning enough to read this book.

That is, we do not deny the right of those to do their own religious
practices, but we are trying to be scientific here, and in order to do this,
we must now introduce the concept of kundalini, which will hopefully
make matters clearer.

That is, Gopi Krishna explains that there is an energy centre in every
human body, located at the base of the spine, called by ancient yoga texts
kundalini, which has been known to those of all races over thousands of
years, for instance even by the Pharaohs of Egypt who built the pyramids.

This energy is active to some slight degree in all of us, and it is
responsible for the development of our bodies in general, but in particular
our brains.

It becomes more active during the transition from childhood through
adolescence, when we note that our brains and therefore minds undergo a
dramatic growth in capacity and intelligence.

We thereby, with this fresh spurt of development of the brain, become
aware of and capable of doing and understanding many things which we
could not possibly have done and understood as a child.

For instance, we can see many ten or thirteen year olds who are brilliant
at playing mechanically some musical instrument such as the violin or
piano.

But what we almost never see, is a ten or thirteen year old who can
compose a symphony like Beethoven, or create a song like Lennon and
McCartney, or paint a picture like Salvador Dali.

It is not merely accumulated information which produces this creativity,
because that could occur in many people much earlier; the mind
flourishes fully to this mature awakened period of the brain only in
most people in their late teens and early twenties.

For example, we see the young J ohn Lennon or Bob Dylan at age sixteen
or seventeen producing nothing of any quality or lasting value, but then
suddenly Zok, Pow, etc. as they say in Batman they hit a period of
incredible creativity, which is at least initially as shocking to themselves
as anyone else.

Because, if this was merely an accumulation of data, then millions could
do the same as them. What makes them unique is some superfluidity in
their brain, which enables them to create so many remarkable things in a
very short space of time.

But then we see this period rarely lasts more than a few years especially
in modern man and therefore something has burnt out.

This extra special quality of their brain is no longer there, just as the
athlete past a certain age can no longer break records any more.

In the latter case it is the deteriorated state of the muscles, but in the
former case it is clearly the somewhat diminished functioning of the
brain.

For it may only be a hairs breadth, that separates the true genius
from the very talented, just an extra stage in the house of cards that
enables them to see for a while vistas which the rest of us cannot.

It may comfort the many fallen geniuses of society, whose greatest
hits are far behind them, to know that exactly the same happens to even
most of the prophets and the saints.

The well known state of samadhi, nirvana or bliss consciousness is
usually a fleeting experience, as in the case of Dr R M Bucke, who wrote
his famous Cosmic Consciousness in 1901, but experienced it only briefly
in his whole lifetime.

But let us be clear he got it once, and most of us get it never at all.

Certain saints however, like for example the famous nineteenth century
Hindu saint Ramakrishna, have apparently stayed in this state of bliss and
understanding for hours, days or longer.

According to Gopi Krishna, some very rare few one in billions - have
so far in our human history attained this state for years on end, which he
said he did in his own case, but only later in life, after long periods of
inner havoc and horror before the condition stabilized.

For once we have activated this kundalini force in a major way, most of
us are going to get heaven and hell, and quite likely most of us are going
to get mostly the latter.

And the reason for that is fortunately very simple.

Little do those who dangerously play around with meditation techniques
and chakras realise, but in the golden era of yoga, that is when there
were some genuine twenty-four carat specimens of enlightenment walking
around, nobody under the supervision of a guru was ever allowed to do
formalised meditation without undergoing a tough and lengthy
preparatory training period.

This is demonstrated by Patanjalis Eightfold Path of Yoga, which
states that purification processes and training in self-control are the first,
essential and pre-requisite stages to taking up the practice of meditation,
which is in fact the last step in the true path, or in fact we should more
accurately say the penultimate stage before experiencing samadhi, which
arguably is not a stage, but a conclusion to the path.

In fact, even the extremely rare attainment of this samadhi is not the
final stage in our development, as the experience will generally only be
brief, whereas it should ideally be made a regular or continuous
experience, as is arguably the case in so called cosmic consciousness.

So briefly, we will explain why meditation is the last step rather than the
first, which is to say, because such powerful, deliberate meditation
techniques can awaken this kundalini energy, which once roused, could
be compared to being bitten by a poisonous snake if our bodies and
minds are not ready.

That is, whether we like it or not, we are grossly mistaken if we think we
can live an undisciplined, decadent lifestyle overeating, too much sex,
overworking, using certain drugs of a prescription or non-prescription
variety and then meditate in order to arouse this kundalini safely.

Our life will become a torture if we succeed, or we may flip into some
awful state of mental illness.

It is our considered opinion and Gopi Krishnas that many people who are
currently or have been inmates or patients at the Western worlds mental
hospitals, have somehow had a sudden awakening of this kundalini
power, but without any knowledge of what has caused their condition, or
how to cope with it, and thus they will typically get pummelled into
oblivion by some powerful medication administered by the medical staff
there, without which they could not otherwise cope.

So apparently the issue of whether kundalini will awaken or not in any
particular persons life is largely a genetic one. Like those who are born
with the rare vocal chords of an opera singer, or the lightning quick brain
of a chess grandmaster, most of us will have had this capacity either
stamped on us or not from birth.

But the question as to who can awaken, and who cannot, is both
unanswered and likely unanswerable.

Perhaps the more important question is, who could awaken safely and
who could not?




For the most fantastic and fascinating revelation about this subject which
has come in its clearest form to date from Gopi Krishna, though
Vivekanandas 1893 work Raja Yoga is fairly clear also, is that what the
kundalini is all about is sending the sex energy up to the brain along the
spinal chord, to energise and evolve it.

Gopi Krishna describes this as an intensified nerve current of a
fundamentally electrical nature, so thus, we are asking the question,
whose neurones and brain circuits can we safely turn up the current up
on, and on the other hand, more worryingly, and gravely - whose brains
are going to fry?

Again, we are aware of people personally whose brains have been
somewhat fried, in the sense of the subjective experience of pain,
disorientation and sensation loss experienced by these unfortunate folk.

Many other horrors can accompany a kundalini awakening gone wrong,
in someone whose body was unfit to handle so much energy for
whatever reason, or whose lifestyle was not suited to this dramatic,
potentially dangerous and delicate evolutionary process.

Though we cannot prove this all to the skeptic and the scientist in one
brief chapter, or even several, we are just going to state quite boldly what
we are talking about, which we hope that with an open mind they will as
soon as possible do thorough scientific research upon, as was Gopi
Krishnas lifelong wish and most cherished hope.

That is, we are saying, human evolution is not finished, and it is also not
random. It is caused by this energy centre at the base of the spine, and
this has over the millennia and centuries evolved the brain.

This evolution is slow and almost unnoticeable throughout most peoples
lifetime, we just say, they mature, but in some few, the genius type
such as Van Gogh, Dali, J ohn Nash (of A Beautiful Mind), Leonardo Da
Vinci, Einstein and many others, this can be very dramatic indeed.

We have unbalanced geniuses for the reasons we have mentioned that
is an undisciplined lifestyle, immature genetics, and particularly lack of
control over the sex desire.




The good news for the one hit wonder type geniuses, who wrote a
brilliant song or novel or whatever but were unable to follow it up, is that
they very well might get their purple period back, by exercising a lot
more sexual restraint for some time.

For example, cutting sex to say twice a week or once a fortnight, rather
than once a day or more as is common. By sex, of course we do not
necessarily just mean conjugal sex, we mean any kind of stimulation of
the sex organs, and in particular that which produces ejaculation or sexual
fluids.

People lower down the evolutionary ladder may get away with sexual
excesses far more so than the higher strata of intelligence, because their
systems unlike our examples of say mathematician J ohn Nash and artist
Van Gogh are not so sensitive and in fact therefore souped up.

With the average genius type, what we have is a prototype
experimental engine, which we are test piloting to see how fast it can
fly, using a technology which is not yet properly developed and
standardized.

So we find it flies around a bit wildly, jerks and splutters.

Then if it doesnt actually blow up, it may suddenly have a short flight at
incredible speed and astonish us, but likely when we find it, the wings are
broken, the engine is blown, and we need to do a complete refit.

And sadly, this is what is happening to a lot of modern human beings of
this genius or near genius class, round the world, who are blowing a
gasket under the impetus of this kundalini energy, of which science is
currently blissfully unaware, but yoga in many countries has been
aware of apparently for several thousands of years.

We are saying once again, and once again with some knowledge of real
life cases, that this energy generally activates in those in their mid to late
thirties, and it is somewhat like a rebirth, in that we believe we have
reactivated in a definite way exactly the same processes of rapid growth
but in this case, only of the finer structures of nerves, organs and brain
which were going on in the baby in the womb and developing young
child.



Those who have this experience of kundalini awakening, feel heat at the
base of the spine, just like in the yoga books; they get to feel hot and cold
and light, just like in the yoga books; and they have a lot of strange
things happen in their bodies and minds, just like described in the yoga
books.

And there are other things, modern science has not yet dwelt upon, such
as the fact that many male youths in their teens and beyond awaken from
sleep in the morning with an erection, as do many older males.

This has been long explained away as the consequence of sexual dreams,
fantasies, or even a need for the toilet, but this is not always the case, and
can persist long after the person wakes and any fantasies are long gone.

The truth is that when kundalini is most active, and is sending up the sex
energy to the brain, as a side effect the male sex organ becomes erect.

This apparently is the reason also why many ancient temples have what
are believed to be depraved images on them, when in actual fact, they
are depicting this great secret and phenomenon, and also explains the
snake on the headdress of the Pharaohs of Egypt which again signifies
this phenomenon, of which their subjects were wholly unaware.

This same phenomenon of the erection accompanying the flow of energy
up the spine to the brain, and thereby enlivening and evolving it, is also
believed to be the origin of the so called Caduceus which shows two
snakes coiled around a rod, or Staff of Hermes, this symbol being the
modern one used by the medical profession.

The two serpents are the left and right nerves on the spinal canal, which
carry the hot and cold energy currents, and the central channel, called
the "sushumna" in yoga literature is the rod.

Furthermore, Gopi Krishna said that if the sex energy was conserved
rather more moderately than most men are doing now, this would
generally have a rejuvenating effect on both the body and mind.

He did not advocate celibacy however in most cases, but as we have said
moderation, the middle way, or avoidance of extremes, so we mention
this to discourage anyone with an overzealous wish to use this
information from trying out such a celibate practice which might
culminate in them having a terrifying awakening of kundalini, which
according to Gopi Krishna for example, could result in instant insanity
and death.

Likewise, we would warn those who are considering tantric sex
practices, that these may be safe for some, but the long term effects
cannot be known, and thus they are best steered clear of, especially for
those of a sensitive nature and constitution, and in no case "enlightening."

So here, we wish to point out that the ignored and misunderstood
scriptures of most religions, such as Christs New Testament and other
moral treatises by leaders such as Mohammed, Buddha, and so on,
actually were not just irrelevant religious works, but were giving us
psychological and physiological information, regarding the safe use and
development of our bodies and minds.

The treatises were there to say that, the evolving body and mind needs
balance, peace, harmony, tranquillity.

The poisonous animalistic emotions of greed, too much lust for sex or
power or ambition, spelt doom to you see, not merely the soul, but to
the nervous system, internal organs and brain of the evolving future
human being.

Any sensitive person will discover that an unchecked trip into rage,
shouting and bawling at someone will leave them in a wrecked and
unbalanced condition for hours afterwards, perhaps even days to properly
get the effects of such a thunderstorm out of their system.

If we habitually go into such uncontrolled emotional states, we will
sooner or later get unbalanced or mentally ill.

The doctors and scientists dont generally yet know this.

They limit their analyses to what is going on in the organs, how stress
and worry damages the heart, or hardens the arteries, and so on, but do
not seem to pay much attention to what states of rage and so on are doing
to the brain, and therefore to the balance of our minds.

So we see that meditating in the formalized way, which is going to
energise our brains and make us more sensitive, is also going to
unbalance us unless we are very careful, and that once our minds are
somewhat cracked up, just like Humpty Dumpty well you know all the
kings horses and all the kings men may never be able to quite put us back
together again.

And we jest not.

The other point that Gopi Krishna explains on this topic of meditation, is
that because of our increasingly mentally focussed society which is
reading more, concentrating more on studies and so on, we are already
meditating, we are already unwittingly speeding the kundalini up.

So we actually need not more meditation, but for us all to slow down, we
need a less frantic and gentler life style, which is less demanding on our
bodies and minds.

Thus, we are here saying, let us instead use this awareness technique we
have expressed in this volume, rather than focusing the rays of
concentration and likely scorching a hole in our minds and memories
somewhere, which may leave us out of our minds.

Let us concentrate on the preconditions to enlightenment, which you see
has been ninety-nine percent of what all the major prophets Christ,
Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Lao Tzu, etc. talked about.

They said we must become loving, kind, forgiving, tolerant, self-
controlled, caring and sharing people.

That is the real yoga.

We learn that yoga, not by escaping into mantras and chanting, but by
being aware of our wrong desires and rising above them.

By becoming aware of our bad habits, and gradually transforming them to
something good.

The real meditation is therefore the true life, full of dignity, harmony,
selfless love, true humility, and with just moderate passion, pleasure,
material possessions and a few luxuries thrown in.

We should be not like the proud peacock with its thousand brassy
feathers, but like the dove, with its quiet, sweet nature, its lovely white
plumage, soaring gently through the skies up to the heavens above.





Chapter Eight
Meditation and Authority search for the guru inside yourself

As Krishnamurti points out, for example in his very easy to read book,
Life Ahead, most of us are second hand people, whose whole lives are
dedicated to serving and bowing down to the authority of others.

We all have this tendency to try to find someone to put our trust in, and
look up to.

As Pink Floyd put it on The Dark Side of the Moon in Time
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
We are not self-directed beings, but this conditioning process which
starts upon us from when we are knee high becomes the pattern of our
life, so that we never become true individuals who set their own compass
and steer their own ship, but afraid people, who are really desperately
asking the question will someone please tell me what I should do?

But in itself, such a desire is we would suggest a good sign.

That is, the arrogant people who imagine they are masters of life, and
spend their days asserting themselves ambitiously to get what they dont
need and rule over others, dont ask for help, they are never going to read
a book like this, because they very foolishly we would say imagine
that they know it all.

Traditionally in the East, where some kind of spirituality has had a much
stronger hold for millennia, far more so than in the largely secular West,
to seek out and turn to a guru has been long considered the way to go.

This idea has been imported into the West gradually however over the
last hundred years or so, and in particular since the explosion of interest
in everything Indian and Eastern since the hippy era of the 1960s.

But the guru is not at all merely an Eastern figure a guru is really
anybody who starts talking and writing about the meaning of life or
how to live in an authoritative way, and who therefore professes to
have some kind of access to secret knowledge that we do not.
And then, if we think we find such a person, such a rare and privileged
being, who is some kind of an oracle, or fount of wisdom, we can
start to feel a reverence for them, which on closer inspection is generally
found not to be very healthy either for them or us.

According to yoga theory, there are four states of consciousness
waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and what is variously described as
samadhi, nirvana or the superconscious state.

This is the state which Gopi Krishna has described in his autobiographies
- an utterly staggering and transforming experience, in which his
understanding of what the human being is, and what everything else is, is
forever changed.

That is, in this elevated state, he saw himself as a mere bubble of
consciousness in a huge ocean of consciousness.

His experience was that the universe was not essentially of matter, which
physicists are now tending to express the dubious nature of, but of
consciousness.

That is, the universe is not a heap of dead matter, in which we somehow
have become conscious beings, and therefore some kind of aberrant
freaks, but is at root, one of consciousness, of intelligence.

The universe is at heart a consciousness, not a pile of elemental rubble
which accidentally strung itself together and created life forms and man.

There are of course millions, including many esteemed scientists like
Professor Richard Dawkins, who say all is random, the universe is the
construction only of a blind watchmaker.

But their problem, we see, is that they have not experienced this higher
state.

There are however a few who have had brief glimpses or intimations of
such a state, but who then also wrongly prematurely attribute too much
importance and surety to it, and build a whole cult around themselves on
such a flimsy basis of only brief and partial awareness.




But this is all very far from being a Gopi Krishna, a Christ, a Buddha or
Ramakrishna who has bathed in this higher state for hours, days, weeks or
years on end, and has gone though an enormous transformation which has
bestowed on them great knowledge and understanding, which no
relatively ordinary man or woman could possibly possess.

For we must appreciate that Gopi Krishna has given us a biological
explanation of what is going on with a true guru or prophet.

The reason for example that taking drugs could never possibly produce
enlightenment, is that the ability to experience and maintain this
superconscious state, this next stage of human evolution is based
entirely on brain physiology, which like the transformation of the brain of
an infant to that of an adult can only take place over a long period of
time.

What is it that separates the genius, the psychic, or the prophet from the
rest of us?

It is surely merely in the structure and physiology of their brains.

Scientists have been unable to locate the difference however between an
idiot and an Einstein to date, because the brain is such a fabulously
complicated organ, that it may prove in the final analysis even to be
beyond human understanding in its entirety.

For example, it is said that the possible interconnections between the
several billion brain cells of the average brain, is greater than the number
of atoms in the known universe.

Which means, millions of years would pass before we could even
partially count them all, let alone understand what they are all doing.

The brain for example seems to be at least partly holographic in its
nature.

That is, if we cut or damage a part of it out, as happens to some people in
operations and for other reasons, we may well find it reproduces the
functioning of the lost part elsewhere, as can happen in the recovery
phase after having a stroke.

But more generally we mean, that when we shatter a hologram we find
that the entire image is present in each single shattered piece.
This is deeply disturbing to our everyday logic, but has been proven true
by simple factual observation nevertheless.

That is, the brain, and the universe are not necessarily what we think.

If we imagine the universe as a field of consciousness, in a sense
therefore a field of dreams of some kind of omnipresent and omnipotent
intelligence which is holographically present at every point in the
universe, we see that in dreams anything is possible, when we are freed
from the limitations of our concepts about so called matter, time and
three-dimensional physical reality.

Briefly, the scientists are no longer sure what a so called atom is any
more, as when they have searched deeper inside it, they have found that
there doesnt seem to be anything much there at all.

The concept of matter has in fact been mostly replaced by the idea of
energy or force, and reality is felt to be more some kind of vast collection
of waves, vibrations and force fields, rather than solid and made of
indestructible atoms like billiard balls.

Furthermore, what is now thought to be happening with these wave-
particle hybrids inside the atom, appears to be more like a probability,
than a certainty, so that ultimately we will never likely be sure of what is
happening inside any particular atom or why.

So the scientists are trying to contemplate what reality is, using these
advanced scientific ideas, but yoga philosophy suggests they will never
find the answers to the meaning of existence questions on that level,
because they are still trapped within a model of the universe and
themselves as material, whereas we are suggesting life and the universe
is in essence an intelligent consciousness, not a physical thing at all in the
sense we currently imagine it to be.

That is, from the point of view of those who have dwelled long in the
higher state of consciousness, life and the universe becomes not
something limited by physical laws of time and space, but more in fact
like an enormous and perpetual dream which we are all living inside of.

But let us not forget that in our own dreams, we can feel joy, we can feel
pain, we can suffer, we can have the most awful and terrifying
nightmares, and thus in our current state of awareness, it is not practical
for us to imagine that the world we see around us is not real.
So in this enormous gulf between us and whatever or whoever animates
the universe, there is a huge doubt, and thus there are a never ending
queue of people wishing to step in to resolve our doubts whether they
really know or they dont and quite often money, celebrity or adulation
is behind their desire to answer our doubts, fears and questions.

Thus the guru is born, to tell us what we are and what we should do.

Some say we create God only out of our imagination and need to
believe, and certainly the same is often true of the guru.

The guru could be just as much a scientist like Dawkins, Stephen
Hawking, Einstein or Charles Darwin, because they are claiming to tell us
the nature of reality and life, and we are believing in them.

We tend to place a faith and credence in the famous and celebrities, as if
they had all the answers to our problems, just because of their elevated
status in society due to possessing one of these special talents, such as a
great ability to write songs or poetry like Bob Dylan, or having made
some outstanding scientific discovery, like Einstein.

But the truth is that most of these genius types themselves confess to not
knowing the answers to our fundamental philosophical and social
problems, though ironically many of the lesser lights will soak up the
adulation and pretend that they do.

Such is also the case with the lower classes of guru, who likewise seek
out wealth, fame, and the worship of the crowds, whereas the true guru
the Christ, Buddha or Gopi Krishna is something very different.

And as we have said, the main difference is that the true guru is
someone who is living more or less constantly in this higher state of
oneness with Nature, or cosmic consciousness, has got his or her ego
totally out of the way, and is not therefore motivated by the common
persons egotistical desires for worship, adulation, grandeur, dominion
over others and sexual conquest.

For surely, the desire to be a guru and have others even kings or queens
bow down to you, has got to be the most intoxicating desire that any
person can ever have, and thus we should beware.

That is, a beggar on the street might become a guru, though such a person
will never be able to become a ruler or king or get such enormous power
and influence by any other means.

The great true gurus such as Krishnamurti, who denied even the validity
of the term, and described himself merely as someone who points things
out, are frequently courted by the rich, kings and emperors, who all in
recognising their own inevitable decline and mortality wish to seek out
whether there is any meaning to life before it is too late.

But if we are not of this calibre, to resist the temptations of flattery and
offers of gifts put before us by the great of the world, we are liable to
become prey to the greatest vanity, and in fact, thereby ensure that we
never advance in the true sense spiritually, and worse - mislead others.

That is, let us recall that Christ was tempted by the devil in the desert,
who took him up to a high place and told him the whole world could be
his, if only he would acknowledge the devil and deny his loyalty to the
Holy Spirit.

So we are surely seeing in those words, just this kind of temptation which
he who could - because of this coat of many colours bestowed on him
from on high - have kings begging for knowledge at his feet, must
undergo and reject, if he or she is to become and remain a genuinely
spiritual and therefore humble being.

For as we have said, by humble, we mean merely someone who is not
accumulating flattering ideas and images about themselves, which would
then motivate them to assert themselves and dominate others using their
spiritual power and superior knowledge and understanding.

Such a person would not become a Christ or Buddha but a power hungry
and manipulative despot, a devil in disguise.

And thus, we find that some very talented or inspired people
throughout history have fallen to being one of these power hungry
seducers of their followers, whom they may have performing tricks for
them like circus animals and serving them as if they were emperors, kings
or even gods.




So on one level, that is the kind of risk that following a guru can bring,
and as we have said, this need not at all be an Eastern kind, but could just
as well be someone wearing a business suit, who seems entirely rational
and scientific in his outlook.

But we find in the final analysis that most so called modern gurus will
inevitably be some kind of hypnotists who are seeking power over others,
and to glorify themselves.

Equally, such a guru could be hiding inside a health service, or as a so
called therapist, hiding behind some kind of a qualification such as a
Ph D, but beware, because quite likely, at root all we have is another
egotistical, power hungry and frequently sexually overactive human
being.

Or else, we see, that many people women more than men will get a
feeling of security from seeming to cater to the psychological needs of
others, especially so called healer types, who actually may seek to
control our lives like puppets on strings.

The phenomenon here is that we can gain a false sense of security, from
spending our working hours in a seat of authority, as the average
modern psychologist or therapist does, purporting to solve the
problems of others, when in actual fact we cannot even many times sort
our those problems we have ourselves.

In particular, we should watch out for any guru, healer or therapist
who is telling us we are special.

For that is the greatest trick they can play, appealing to our ego, our
awful desire for recognition, so that we will believe in them, pay them,
and do what they say.

And even if they dont ask for money, let us not imagine that means we
are safe, for the mostly sad and lonely people who populate this globe
have many other motives to gain control over us than merely money.

So for us to place faith in and put any ordinary person on a pedestal
would be an error and a misjudgement.




If we must bow down to and put someone on a pedestal, it appears it is
safe to do so only with those who are the real gurus, such as
Krishnamurti and Gopi Krishna whom we have mentioned, both of whom
incidentally did not wish anybody to do that in their own cases.

Thus, what we have been offering in this book, is not another path to
worship any personality, but rather a path to awareness, a path to
coping with life by rising above illusions and delusions in so far as that is
possible for each one of us.

In particular this means thinking for oneself, and not attaching slavishly to
any human personality.

We have got to grow beyond the immature stage of belief in a person,
clinging to a person, and start to awaken the guru inside.

More accurately, by cleansing ourselves of prejudice and preconceptions,
which we have gathered during our long years of conditioning, we will
clear the fog from our mind, and thereby awaken our intuition.

That is, we will find our own inner compass to steer by, and then alone
can we be our own captain on the ship of life, and thus be free.

So does this mean that we should throw away all concepts of having a
guru of any kind as some imagined that Krishnamurti for example meant?

Not at all.

But it means we must assess what exactly it is we seek and mean by
having a guru of some variety in our lives, and what our relationship is
with that person.

And we would suggest above all, that it should not be emotional.

The goal is understanding, lighting our own light, not merely living
always by the light of another, and basking in their reflected glory.

Millions of us seek out stars and celebrities, since we believe foolishly
that if even we touch them, we have touched greatness and thereby
some of it will rub off on us.

And this tendency becomes even worse, when allegedly we locate a being
who seems to be wise, and appears to have god on their side.
But surely we should all stop this nonsense of attaching to those we
perceive to be the wise in a slavish doe-eyed way, like some young girl
screaming at the mere sight of a pop star?

Let us be respectful of the intelligence of those who seem to have more
than we, and therefore may see something that we dont, but let us not
grow to be idolisers of other human beings.

That is, if we idolise any other human being, whether a great artist,
musician, celebrity or whomever, we make the psychological manoeuvre
of validating our fantasy of them, and denying ourselves.

We try to lose ourselves in them.

We seek to merge with them, in a way that really we should only try to do
in actuality perhaps with a marital partner, for the sake of living
together and having children, when we know our feelings are returned.

For logically speaking, to lose ourselves in another person, is the denial,
the extinction of ourselves.

And when we become aware, we see that the reason we seek to do that is
that quite often we dont much like ourselves.

We decide they are wonderful, and we are nothing, and so we try to
psychologically meld with them, but in that process we fail to grow as
ourselves, we sell our minds into slavery, and fail to develop a valid
existence as an independent human being.

We idolise for example J ohn Lennon or Bob Dylan or some more modern
pop star such as Madonna or Robbie Williams.

They can sing and in some cases write songs and play music on a level
that almost none of us will ever be able to achieve.

So to try to be like them, is not the way to our individual success.

Rather we must learn to find our own vocation in life, even if that is
to be someone who digs the streets, and makes the roads safe for us all to
travel and walk upon.



It is not what a man or woman does for a living that counts so much, it is
what is in their heart, whether they have learned the only true success,
which is to become a genuine human being, of value to themselves and
others.

Not however, that we should fail to try to do what is best for ourselves
and society to do, within the limits of our powers.

But we must not think in terms of grandeur and fame, but of being like a
little bird that carefully makes its own nest and feeds its chicks, and lives
in peace with its neighbours on the fair meadow in which it happens to
dwell.

The lives of the great and famous mean no more than our own, unless
we voluntarily throw the meaning of our own lives away, and hand all our
time, energy and thoughts over to them.

Likewise even with the true gurus, who just modestly consider
themselves as our friends, brothers and sisters, and as Christ said, as
humble as even the least of us.

So let us rather think of all the gurus of one kind or another as like
modest and kind professors we are studying with.

We are this is the spirit in which this book is written attending the
classes of a lecturer, who has learned from other teachers in turn a few
things he wants to pass on, which he has found of benefit to himself - that
is all.

Let us put our attention not upon the guru, but rather upon ourselves,
rather than looking outward to hero worship someone else, as if this
was some kind of solution to our problems when it absolutely is not.

The game of becoming whole, harmonious and sincere, by becoming
aware, we would suggest is never about dwelling on the personal lives of
others, it is always about learning to be true and clear in ourselves.

By the continuous exercise of the meditation technique described
throughout this work, which is as we have seen, merely a habit of
developing awareness of our unawareness, and thereby exercising our
minds to discern the truth amidst the hypnotic suggestions of the false
constantly placed before us, we may gradually unfold to this state of
clarity and an increased sense of freedom, meaning and harmony in the
thoughts, actions and experiences of our lives.