MEDITATION

(Last updated July 16, 2007

If you have ever felt the need to meditate, even once, congratulations, for it is genuine evidence of evolutionary development. Not until a certain point in the reincarnational process, which is spread over many lives, does the soul (your higher self) begin to take real interest in its vehicle or instrument, the personality (the you which you think you are ,currently) and begin to bring it into line through meditation. This process is designed to make you a much happier, freer person and has many benefits. It improves personal relationships (because it removes the friction caused by egotistical and selfish behaviour), stimulates health and vitality (for it releases much energy into the body and removes blockages to its flow) and helps you find a sense of direction, meaning and purpose in life (because the higher self is the source of these things.) So, if you have ever felt a call to practice this, take it seriously and learn how to do it properly. Before attempting to practice meditation, it is essential to understand how it works and what it does to you. Take time to read and allow the following to sink in; it will aid you greatly in your efforts.Read, and re-read these instructions as you practice. You, no doubt, are familiar with the concept of virtual reality, where you don a set of goggles and headphones,etc., and it simulates such real life experiences as flying an airplane, etc. You may also have had the experience of waking up in a dream (lucid dreaming) where you KNOW that your head is on the pillow and all you see is a dream, but it keeps on happening anyway and you can even manipulate it and change it. In both of these instances, the real you is apart from and BEHIND, detached from, what you see, hear and feel, and you are not so caught up in or IDENTIFIED with what is going on. The movie, THE MATRIX used this concept extensively to suggest parallels between the earthly life we experience from day to day (the Matrix) and our REAL existence as souls (the life aboard the ship). Imagine you are now wearing virtual reality goggles, but, like in the movie, THE MATRIX , your real self is back behind all this, just watching. Or imagine all you now see is a dream, and your head is really on the pillow. Thus, anything you see, hear, feel, even think, is part of the virtual reality program or dream. You cant, in fact, even find you at all in a way that lets you LOOK at you, because the goggles or the dream

wont allow this. No matter what you focus on, its not you: It is part of the matrix, part of the dream. Yet, you still feel as though you are there, looking. Just WHAT is looking, you are not sure, because it cant be anything you can identify. Actually try this. Get the feel of it. The idea of being back behind this physical body you see, those emotions, those thoughts, and seeing them all as not you, not the real you, but some projected image, is the idea we are looking for. the idea of being back behind this whole panorama of sight and sound,this matrix we call reality, is what we seek to experience in meditation. Before we incarnate on Earth, we exist in a condition which is out of this matrix of three-dimensional reality we call daily life. We exist then as souls, in soul realms. The idea of meditation is to reconnect with this level of consciousness and identity. Shakespeare observed that all the Worlds a stage, and all the people on it merely players. Prior to incarnation, we, with the cooperation of the other members of our soul groups, write the script for this Earth-play. Meditation is about getting in touch with this script and realizing the purpose of our existence on Earth. It is learning to IDENTIFY what is often referred to as The I AM PRESENCE, or pure, conscious BEING, rather than being this or that which you can see. It is learning to REALIZE that the ego, or sense of a SEPARATE identity is purely illusion: what is called in Eastern terminology, Avidya, or IGNORANCE. It comes from IGNORING the all and IDENTIFYING with the PART, which we feel is our separate self, or ego. It is like sitting in a room in which you own and control all the furniture, and suddenly reducing yourself to the couch, being trapped INSIDE the couch, with couch consciousness instead of whole ROOM consciousness. If you became, through identification, only the couch, instead of the owner of the room, you would also lose all the POWER you have now, and could not move or control any of the other furniture. Well, this is what happens when we, in the process of developing self-consciousness, slip into Avidya, or individual ignorance. We lose all the power we would have if we identified with the Divine within us, and by identifying with the mortal, limited parts ( our bodies), we BECOME these limitations. When we read of enlightened beings like Jesus or the Saints performing miracles, we must understand that they can do so simply because they have BROKEN this false IDENTIFICATION with the mortal self. It is as though you, trapped in your temporary identification with the couch, suddenly realized that you were YOU, the OWNER of the room and all its furniture. Then YOU could do what it is

your RIGHT to do, and move anything, change anything. To the end table or the Lazyboy, this would certainly be a miracle, coming from a couch, but in your OWN mind, you would no longer BE just the couch; you would be the rooms owner (in effect, the GOD of the room.) Now you would then probably encourage THEM to do the same, and realize that they too were the owner. Here is where it gets interesting though: When the table and the chair became, in their respective consciousnesses, the owner, (the GOD) they would be inseparable from YOU as the God or owner of the room. While you might each retain a connection to your own former separate identities as different pieces of furniture, when you dropped this identification and moved into the God consciousness, there would be only one Self present, no matter how many shared in it. This is actually the way it is in Life, and among Realized or enlightened beings: Each feels an IDENTITY with the Divine, and feels God acting through them. Each identifies with the I AM Presence, and it is the SAME Presence in all, the ONE Self behind all separate manifestation. So, meditation is about REALIZING that SEPARATE selves are an ILLUSION, and come from this One Self identifying, here and there, with separate THINGS (such as human bodies.) There is no argument that such separate things EXIST (at least under the Cosmic illusion, called Maya, which creates the MANIFESTATION INTO FORM of Universal Being).The argument is that Self, is a mortal thing instead of that Divine consciousness which pervades ALL things. Now, this needs to be qualified somewhat: As long as The World IS a Stage (i.e. as long as the Universe exists in a MANIFESTED state of separate forms, rather than in Pralaya, or Unmanifest Pure Being), it will need Players, or separate actors to play all its parts from the Lead Character right down to the horse and the tree. We cannot escape from individuality, and we cannot escape from ego, in SOME form. While we are MANIFEST, we must, even on the higher planes, such as the astral, mental, causal and buddhic, use SOME vehicle or form in which to MANIFEST our existence, and this will always be a SEPARATE form, and we will always be, to SOME degree, IDENTIFIED with it, or we would lose all connection with this form with which we play our role in the Cosmic Drama. The PROCESS OF INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION though, involves an increasing refinement and expansion of our sense of identification, and thus, our ego becomes more and more tenuous as we evolve. From identifying with a physical body, we move to an identification with our ASTRAL

body, and thence to an identification with the MENTAL, and then the CAUSAL, and so on. What we call a Saint, is someone who no longer even identifies with the CAUSAL vehicle (the soul) , but has moved into an identification with the Buddhic and the ATMIC (the Divine Spirit within.) So, the ego is not something we try strenuously to get RID of: By simply OBSERVING it, in meditation, we have thereby DETACHED from it, and have thus broken the IDENTIFICATION with it, for if you are LOOKING at something, the you cannot be the object you are looking at (in this case, the ego, at whatever level it has been formed. Now, just as if you were standing in one spot, and stepped backwards to reveal the spot you had been standing upon, when you mentally step backwards (i.e. DETACH) you will have stepped SOMEWHERE and will be standing upon SOME spot. This will be your new ego, and of course, you will never be able to see it while you are identified with IT, but SOME day, you will see IT for what it is (a LIMITATION) and will step back from IT. This is like the chambered nautilus, moving out of one compartment of its shell into another as it spirals in growth. Consciousness is just like that. But how to do this, you ask. Lets go over this again, from a slightly different angle, for it is through REPETITION that these deeper conscepts begin to dawn upon our consciousness, and in esoteric studies, repetetion IS necessary. To do this, to reconnect with SOUL consciousness and soul identity, we must first disconnect (detach) from our IDENTIFICATION with our PERSONALITY identity, and this is a long process and involves other people. Lets look briefly at this INTERPERSONAL aspect and then concentrate on the INTRApersonal(what goes on strictly within you). We (that portion of our total consciousness we now IDENTIFY with and think is us) incarnate in separate, individualized bodies to learn a very difficult lesson which eventually results in a state which could be called ISOLATED UNITY: a state of being a totally individual, separate life entity on the one hand, and yet FEELING as if we were TOTALLY ONE WITH EVERYTHING. This would be like singing in a choir and totally holding our own separate part of the harmony, yet feeling one with the music. This is not easy and other people are here to help us learn this. It is called finding ourselves. The other people provide a SAFETY DEVICE for us in this process. When we IDENTIFY WITH OUR INSTINCTS AND LOWER DESIRES, they soon reject us, and being as lonely as we are, we take this seriously and go to plan B and plan C and so on, until we hit that part of us which is REALLY us and not simply

one of our vehicles, and identify with THIS. THEN others go Now THATS OK! and we are finally accepted and loved and yet one with ourselves. THIS is the Self Shakespeare referred to when he said To thine own self be true/ And it so follows as the night the day/ Thou canst not be false to any man. However, prior to this point ,there are TEMPTATIONS, and one of the biggest temptations is to NOT BE ONESELF SO THAT ONE WILL BE ACCEPTED BY OTHERS. Others want us to sing the same notes THEY are singing, because that makes their job much easier, and so they bully and bribe us to forget our own mission down here and do THEIR thing; THEN they will love us, they say. Well maybe, but soon we start to not love OURSELVES, because we have sold out; we have betrayed our soul purpose just to keep warm and cosy because it is so frighteningly lonely down here. Who can blame us? But the point is: This never works and is not good for others either, because often they begin to compromise being who THEY really are, or we find someone who will yield to US in this. None of it works. Only when we hit that REAL Self in us do interpersonal relationships really work, never before, in any lasting sense. Now, onto the INTRA PERSONAL: The personality is made up of three separate vehicles or bodies: The PHYSICAL, ASTRAL (or emotional) and MENTAL. (Clairvoyants can actually see these as 3 separate layers of the aura, and we use the astral body separately, each night, leaving our physical body on the bed and astral travelling (consciously or unconsciously) on the astral plane. Our remembrances of these travels, we call dreams. If you have ever felt yourself falling in a dream and jerked awake in bed, this is the astral body re-entering the physical, and your consciousness transferring quickly between the two) The long and short of it, as strange as it may seem, is that your personality is made up of these 3 bodies meshed into one during waking life. The combined input from all three of these bodies (the sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts) creates the virtual reality of Earth Life, which is even more powerful than the virtual reality the characters in the movie experienced when they put on the Matrix goggles. We take it for real. We believe in it. But, think for a moment: Dont you also believe in your DREAMS while you are dreaming them? The only way you KNOW they are dreams is when you wake up. Meditation is about waking up. enlightened beings, like the Buddha or Christ. have awoken, and it is from beings like these that we, in fact, learn that we ourselves are asleep.

So now, Lets try: What follows will be a series of hints, or directions. Some will speak to you; others will not. Fasten on those which make sense to you immediately, and leave the rest for later. If you find it helpful, read the follow-up Teachings to attain a deeper understanding of the concepts involved. Meditation is probably the hardest thing there is to learn on Earth. Be patient. It takes lifetimes to master, but no step along the way is ever lost. What you gain in this life, you keep forever, and can build upon in the next . And, take heart: ALL human beings must learn this part of the human curriculum some day. By learning it yourself now, you put yourself in a position to help others, when they also become ready. Sit upright comfortably in a chair, on a pillow or in whatever UPRIGHT position will allow you to totally relax and yet remain poised and alert. During the meditation you SHOULD NOT MOVE AROUND, so be sure the position is comfortable. Try it for 20 minutes at first and then increase this to 30. Keep your eyes open. Direct your gaze ahead of you, fixed in general direction, but not necessarily on one spot. Dont shift your gaze or move your body. You may blink as you need to. Your attitude is like one of the MATRIX crew, about to put on the virtual reality goggles: You need to REMEMBER who you really are, and not getlost in this illusion.SELF REMEMBERING is a keynote in several Teachings and is very important. But what is Self (spelled with a CAPITAL S) ? You probably dont think of your body as the real you, but rather as something you use. However, when it comes to your feelings and thoughts, we are probably getting pretty close to what you think of as you, correct? I mean Whats left? you say. Well, that whats left is the HIGHER self (the REAL you, which is running this whole show, and the purpose of meditation is to get you to , first, become conscious of this, and next , to IDENTIFY with it as the real you, like you now do with your feelings and thoughts. Here is the point: You already ARE conscious of, and in, this higher self. There is nothing new you need to achieve or develop. It is simply to REALIZE it and recognize it, (Thats why it is called selfREALIZATION and not self DEVELOPMENT). Your Higher Self is reading these words, through your eyes, even now, but you are no more aware of it than of you have been of your breathing for the last few seconds, yet both are there, if you look.(Yes, I know, the Higher self is a lot harder to detect-at first). But, There is nothing to achieve; you are already there. Have you ever gone off in a daydream and suddenly come back

to where you were and snapped to? Its like that: You are already HERE (in your higher self), only you are too caught up daydreaming (with the phantasmagoria of daily life) to see it. Once you strip away all the clutter, (your identifications with your lower vehicles and the phenomena they produce for your senses), you will REALIZE :Oh, I am here!(But when you say this, the I you mean wont be the one you NOW would refer to, yet will feel TOTALLY FAMILIAR.) Here is a hint. Try to remember this when you are struggling to adjust your consciousness properly during meditation: The feeling you should get when connecting to your I AM Presence or Real Self is like seeing your own face in the mirror, only you see it from inside your own head. This sounds strange, until you actually experience it, but this actually happens. It is also like looking deeply into the eyes of a loved one, and opening up totally until you get that jolt of connection, only there is no one else in the room, and you are staring into space. PRETEND you are staring into someones eyes. See how it FEELS. That is the feeling: intimacy, union, heightened awareness, all at once.

One thing many people tend to overlook in meditation practice is the COMMUNION aspect found in PRAYER and in love relationships. To the end of INCLUDING this in your practice, you might wish to consider the following: Normally, conscious is like a searchlight, turned OUTWARDS, on the world of physical sense perception. However, when you turn the searchlight of consciousness BACK ON ITSELF you get not sense perception, but increasing degrees of ENLIGHTENMENT. Even when you MEDITATE, the tendency is STILL to turn your consciousness OUTWARD, onto OBJECTS, though THESE objects may be more as subtle, and include your thoughts and feelings. Try instead, turning the searchlight of consciousness back on ITSELF: consciousness beholding CONSCIOUSNESS, without an OBJECT OF FOCUS other than ITSELF. This how you can DO it in meditation and here is how it WILL FEEL: When you look into someones EYES and CONNECT, you feel COMMUNICATION. This is really the ONE SELF OF LIFE COMMUNICATING WITH ITSELF through TWO BODIES and 4 eyes. Ponder on this. As this connection moves toward LOVE, the communication established takes on more of a tone of COMMUNION. It is a SPARK you feel at this connection. This is

actually what PRAYER is all about: the COMMUNICATION and COMMUNION aspects of consciousness, which, in terms of NonDualism, is simply consciousness TURNING BACK ON ITSELF, rather than looking OUT on OBJECTS, which would create a subject-object DUALISM. Subject-subject awareness, (when they are the SAME subject, which they ALWAYS ARE, since there is only ONE Subject in existence) creates NON-dualism: LOVE turning back on itself, GOD turning back on Himself, you turning back on yourself. This is like PRAYER WITHOUT WORDS OR THOUGHT, (because thought creates OBJECTS) leaving just that SPARK of CONTACT. Without that CONTACT, you miss the point, so be sure this is there in your meditation, and dont just be aware of OBJECTS, such as your thoughts, energy and states of mind. The objects will still BE therePERIPHERALLY but you wont be FOCUSING on them. It will be like being in a room, staring into the eyes of someone you love. WITHOUT THE SOMEONE THERE. The room will still be there, on the edge of your perception, but it wont REGISTER much. So, do this in meditation, only do it all by yourself. Let the one self communicate with itself in your own head, establishing a state of LOVING COMMUNION. Pretend you are looking deep into the eyes of someone you love and COMMUNICATING, so it feels REAL. Then REMOVE THE PERSON and hold only the COMMUNION feeling. You will get a RUSH. Thoughts and breath will stop as you enter the realm of NONDUALISM, and the kundalini may even start to rise. Give it a try! T.S. Eliot described the condition you will attain here as one of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything. I would add that it is also one of complete SINCERITY, where you can feel the energy in every cell of your body reaching out, holding itself OPEN, your WHOLE BODY (not just your eyes) STARING in a mode of total GIVING that is also 100% OPENNESS, and so 100% RECEIVING at the same time. See if you can feel this. Here is an important point concerning the I AM PRESENCE concept. Some of your HIGHER faculties actually work DIFFERENTLY than your LOWER ones. With your CAUSAL perception, the object is OUTSIDE of yourself and you SEE it. When you rise to the BUDDHIC level of perception, the object is now INSIDE , and you BE it. This is because, above the causal level, ones vehicles of perception are no longer enclosed and enclosing, separate and separating

bodies. The Buddhic vehicle is thus described as a circle with its center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere. Applying this to seeing God, or ones own God-Self, with ones higher faculties then: to SEE it, you must BE it. To contact God at the Buddhic level, you must feel like you ARE God. Take this into your meditations, apply it, and you will see how it raises up your entire experience to a new dimension. It is like taking the glory of what you are perceiving INSIDE, into your heart, and YOU become that radiating center of God power and light. You really need to TRY this to grasp the concept. Now, since the EGO is that illusory self created by pulling AWAY from the Whole of Life, try now, to do the opposite: Go into your heart and stir up a sense of strength and courage which will allow you to STAY with the Whole and not, after a few moments of concentration, pull apart again, and lapse back into the separativeness of daydreaming. Feel that you will hold on to the TOTALITY of the Here and Now you are experiencing no matter what; that you will do or die. It is this type of Olympian effort of total concentration, without thought, that successful meditation requires. This is not PHYSICALLY straining and tensing up, and it is not an effort to DO anything; it is an effort NOT to do the wandering that your mind is used to. Here, while you are staring directly into the Here and Now, without thought, seeing your original face, remember that is your Divine Self you are really staring into: the SOURCE of all you are; God, in the limited confines of time and space. Feel all the GRATITUDE of which you are capable for all this divine source within you has given you over the years, and this will serve to increase the energy in your heart and help you hang on and concentrate even better. In effect, you are now Communing with God, in a very real sense, and if you believe in God, does not this God, your own source, DESERVE a little attention and gratitude? You will not find the response from this Source lacking! People often get their first sense of their ESSENCE, the core of their BEING, the I AM or the true identity they really are, when they READ or WRITE. As you read more of this, you will realize why this is so, and may, perhaps, be able to trace back your own first experiences of a higher consciousness to a time when you were reading and then stopped, just staring off in space to ponder. Creative writers often achieve the same thing while they write. The reason for this, is that, in both cases, the individual has literally CREATED a VIRTUAL REALITY in which

they live for the moment, but THEY KNOW THEY ARE DOING IT, so it has the quality of a LUCID DREAM, and gives that same sense of amazing aliveness one gets with such dream experiences. In such a dream, as in a genuine creative process, one KNOWS one is NOT in the matrix of this creativity, and yet one has become ,for the moment, TOTALLY SELFLESS, as one has forgotten about ones daily worries, cares, and even ones daily identity. Sorry this is so hard to get, but if it were easy, you wouldnt have to meditate to get it ,now, would you? This is SELF-REMEMBERING )remembering you are the HIGHER self (the soul) and not the LOWER self (the personality) . Being identified with the higher self is not selfishness because all of our higher selves are totally open, telepathically, to one another, and totally loving. This is their very nature. Your three bodies or vehicles (physical, astral, mental) are actually composed of myriads of little lives, and each body, as a whole, has its own composite identity (We call these the three BODY ELEMENTALS). These elementals have their own agendas which are very different from your own. Imagine getting in your car (your vehicle ) with the intention to go to the Library, and your car going No, we are going for lube and oil; we are going for gas! The desires You think are yours, are NOT yours at all, but THEIRS. By getting you to IDENTIFY with these desires, they get their way: (It is not you-the SOUL- who is hungry; it is the BODY elemental) The SOUL does not have fits of rage or passions or depression; it is the astral elemental who does. The SOUL does not have chattering, wandering thoughts which jump from thing to thing like a monkey; it is the mental elemental who does. When this begins to dawn upon you, you begin to DETACH and BREAK this spell the senses have put upon you. You begin to wake up. Can you believe this? Can you believe you are NOT your body, NOT your feelings, NOT your thoughts, but that they are sources of input for the virtual reality machine (the senses)? If you can, you are ready to do battle: You must sit there and WATCH them all- watch them WITHOUT getting swallowed up by them (i.e. identifying with them and with the you they tell you you are) This is like asking a prison guard to watch Hannibal Lecter, and saying Now, hes very TRICKY, so just WATCH him, but dont LISTEN to him or get INVOLVED with him or he will draw you in and then overpower you. How long do you think that prison guard is going to last in there alone with him? Well, your lower self (the 3 elementals) make Hannibal look like a pussycat; they are INFINITELY trickier,

so dont feel bad when they draw you in and overpower your consciousness again and again. Nevertheless, persistence WILL pay off; you WILL dominate them in time. So,you must CONSTANTLY (from one second to the next) REMEMBER who you are. And who is that? You are THE SILENT WATCHER behind all this- the eyes behind the goggles, the head on the pillow. Can you do it? Can you just sit there and Watch everything you now think of as you as though it were an OBJECT? Try this:Look at your physical body as an object. Got it? Now add to this your feelings as though they were an object in front of you. Now add your thoughts to this composite object. Body, feelings, mind, together, we call the PERSONALITY. Can you hold the WHOLE PERSONALITY out there all at once? Like a composite OBJECT? Well, if you can, where will YOU be? What will be LEFT? What will be WATCHING this object? : The REAL you- The Silent Watcher; the SOUL. You will be standing in SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. This is the aim of meditation: to arrive at this. You DO it by the process of elimination (as one Teacher says, by the process of netti, netti: not this, not that: not the body, not the feelings, not the thoughts. Whats left? The SOUL.) Lets talk for a moment about this soul, this real you, this Silent Watcher which remains when you stop thinking. First of all, it will feel like it is you, just as much as the you in your present state of consciousness feels like you. Did you know that ANY state of consciousness, even that of another person, would, despite its vast differences, contain this SAME FEELING THAT IT IS ME that is here? This is because ALL SOULS ARE ONE. There IS only one Self, and this self is God. So ANY self-conscious person anywhere feels two things: 1. The UNIQUENESS of their particular situation (ignorance, wisdom, health, vitality, fatigue, fear, joy, etc.) and the SAMENESS of the sense of I. So, when you DO contact the soul, it will feel like THIS IS ME, every bit as much as your present PERSONALITY consciousness feels like THIS is me. In other words, THE SELF IS A CONTINUUM. It is like the frequency band on a radio. No matter how high or low the frequency, it is all radio. So no matter how unevolved or evolved you are, you always feel This is me. Right now you are experiencing the Self in its lower, PERSONALITY frequencies. Later between the1st and 4th initiations, you will experience the Self in its SOUL frequencies. After the 5th initiation, you will experience the Self in its MONADIC (Spirit) frequencies. and after the 7th, in its LOGOIC or Divine frequencies . Just remember when you were a child. You

thought THAT was you just as much as now you think THIS is you. It is just like that. Now here is what happens as you meditate, holding this sense of self before you in your consciousness like a searchlight, without thinking. (This is often referred to as holding the mind steady in the light.) : You begin to notice it MORPH. It begins to change, to transform, right before your eyes. What you think of as you begins to take on a different face as it were, even as you watch it, as your concentration increases and your meditation intensifies. It is like you get in a better and better mood while watching yourself do it, but mood is only part of it. The reality is that you get in a better and better STATE OF BEING as you watch it. Each of these separate states of being along the continuum of consciousness is called a SUBPERSONALITY. Many psychologists and psychiatrists have investigated these subpersonalities, and an understanding of how these operate has a lot to do with your happiness or the lack of it in Life. Meditation can make these subpersonalities work FOR you instead of AGAINST you. You know what the Jungian Persona is: Your Face to the world, your social self or mask which you don in order to get along in society. The quality of this persona is largely determined by which of these subpersonalities, or individualized states of being are dominant at one given time. Surely, you have noticed someone who is not him/herself on a given day and is acting strangely. This phenomenon, in the extreme, produces a case of multiple-personality, like Sibyl, where each of the subpersonalities not only had their own names, and behavior patterns, but would withhold information from one another, and in fact, did not know of the existence of one another. One at a time, they would take over Sibyl, like people in a car grabbing the wheel and steering in different directions. Yours do the same thing, but they know one another and are more cooperative. This is why on some days you can do things which on other days are very difficult or nearly impossible: A different subpersonality is behind the wheel that day. Now, how can meditation help you to get the BEST ones to drive and put the laggards in the back seat? When we plan an incarnation, we generally look back and choose one particular past life as our anchor life. This becomes our KEY sub-personality, as this past life contains qualities and states of consciousness which we will particularly need to draw upon in the incarnation in question. Surrounding this, we pick 4 or 5 others as supplemental past lives, each of these becoming a supporting sub-personality. As for the 600 odd others in our

past-life repertoire, we draw on them as we need them (in emergency situations, times of crisis, deep joy, need for particular skills, etc.). Here is the rule for which subpersonalities come to the forefront and begin to take command: OUTER CONDITIONS CALL UP APPROPRIATE SUBPERSONALITIES. If you had to work in a really tough environment, you would soon find yourself becoming tougher, as you would start to draw upon subpersonalities formed in lives where the conditions were tough. Conversely, if outer conditions changed, and you found yourself amongst much refinement and exquisite style. you would again change in awhile, as those refined and artistic subpersonalities which had assumed the back seat during the tough period were now called up to take the wheel. Now, every time you meditate, you CREATE OUTER (to THEM) CONDITIONS for your hordes of subpersonalities, and the appropriate ones RISE TO THE OCCASION, and most importantlyTHEY STICK AROUND. They AND their close buddies (associated states of being). When you meditate CORRECTLY, as described here, you create conditions WHICH DRAW FORTH HEROIC SUBPERSONALITIES. Think about it: WHEN, in a normal life, would you EVER concentrate SO HARD and STOP THINKING and become ONE-POINTED and totally aligned? ONLY in a situation requiring HEROIC EFFORT (fighting for your life, sky-diving or ski-jumping, making a life or death decision. etc.). Now you HAVE done this in past lives at times, so you DO have these subpersonalities kicking around in your psyche, but they are almost always asleep in the back seat, as very little in your current daily life ever draws them forth. YET THEY REPRESENT THE BEST AND MOST NOBLE QUALITIES WHICH ARE IN YOU. Can you not see the benefit of using meditation to DAILY, call them forth? HOURS after you finish meditating, they, or their close buddies still have a few fingers on the steering wheel, and your day is going amazingly well. The laggards who USUALLY drive are still crawling forward, after being booted into the back seat by your meditation. Just watch your own face change as you meditate and these noble subpersonalities begin to come forward. Now this is hard to explain, but you can see your current state of consciousness from the inside if you look, and it looks like a face, as strange as this may seem. (You really have to DO this to understand it.) First it is the same old you as always. Then, as you pick up steam, your inner face MORPHS, and more refined, stronger and more noble faces present themselves until you are looking through the eyes of a Galahad or a Saint.

This sounds incredible until you EXPERIENCE it. This Galahad or Saint is YOU, at the SOUL level of frequency along the continuum of consciousness. Get it? You have simply raised your vibration or frequency to this new station of being and are looking through ITS eyes and calling it ME. Now, if you do this DAILY, these NOBLE subpersonalities begin to get comfortable sitting up front, and soon they refuse to let go of the wheel and your life TAKES A NEW DIRECTION. See the possibilities? So, The essence of this meditation is to BE HERE NOW to remain entirely in the present moment, WITHTOUT THINKING. When you THINK, you pull away from attending to the present moment.(You get swallowed up in the MATRIX), It was for a good reason that the Lord warned Adam and Eve not to eat of the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE in the Garden. As soon as one knows (i.e., THINKS) one is instantly EXPELLED from Paradise, which you will find IS the present moment (youve just never really EXPERIENCED it fully). Can you see WHY? : By THINKING, you will have slipped into IDENTIFICATION with your mind (your mental elemental) No longer will you be looking at it; you will be IN it, all caught up in its thoughts. if you want to get back to the Garden consciously, you must be AWARE, WITHOUT THINKING. But, you say how can I stop thinking? You dont HAVE to stop thinking; you simply have to DETACH from it and it will slow down and stop of its own accord. Pretend your thoughts are ICONS moving across your computer screen: You see one come from right to left. You know it is a thought about school or work or the weekend (the icon has a title). Be aware of it but DONT DOUBLE- CLICK ON IT! It will slide right off the screen, No click, no IDENTIFICATION. But, once you click, you OPEN the icon and it FILLS your screen. Get it? Observe it from OUTSIDE and it simply slides by. Your job is to keep the screen of your mind CLEAR. To use another analogy, you may have observed how slowly your computer runs when you dont have much RAM, and you are multi-tasking (e.g. downloading music, printing and trying to do emails all at once).When you meditate, no multi-tasking! Dont be running programs in the background (e.g. be working on a relationship problem in the back of your mind while meditating.) You need ALL your RAM for this one task! Here is how it works: All wandering thoughts (daydreams) arise from DESIRES. Your astral or emotional body initiates a prompt or a command and the mental

body responds by creating appropriate thoughtforms (ideas) to carry out this command. To stop the wandering thoughts, you must CUT THE ROOT OF THESE DESIRES. The root of all these desires is THE SENSE OF SELF. Once you have a belief in self, you desire to protect it and keep it alive at all costs. Life seems threatening, so it becomes a never-ending process: a continual stream of desires for SELF-protection and perpetuation, giving rise to a never-ending stream of THOUGHTS about how to do this. Simply examine the stream of your OWN wandering thoughts at any given moment, and you will see that they ALL, indirectly lead back to SELF to keeping you going. Now, if you could get RID of this sense of self you could STOP that stream of desires and END that stream of thoughts, couldnt you?Well, this is where this MATRIX/virtual reality idea comes in. If you, back behind this all, detached, see this self like a character in a virtual reality video game, you will be seeing your PERSONALITY the way your soul sees it: Identified, TO A DEGREE, (i.e. you CARE what happens to it) but not OBSESSED ( and thus COMPULSIVELY generating THOUGHTS designed to protect it, non-stop.) Feeling THIS way about you, you can DISTANCE yourself from any thoughts that DO arise, and see them as icons on your screen which you COULD, but dont NEED TO, open. With ENOUGH distance or detachment, the personality itself will start getting the message and will RELAX and stop generating this compulsive stream of desires and thoughts altogether. It will stop taking itself so seriously, and start sharing the souls perspective. Now, Lets go back: You are sitting comfortably in your chair: Start with SOUND. Get something that TICKS and KEEP UP with the ticking. Dont miss a beat.At every tick, REMEMBER. Really listen. Now (keeping this going) add an awareness of your BREATH until you are keeping up with BOTH. Next throw in an awareness of what your EYES see (in a general way dont mentally name objects just see the whole visual field clearly). Then add an awareness of your body against the chair. Finally, include stray NOISES as they occur. What you want to be is a PERFECT MIRROR. a mirror that reflects things perfectly AS THEY OCCUR and LETS THEM GO instantly when they have passed. You will see that our usual minds CLING to things in thought or memory and this clinging prevents us from perceiving the present moment because we have OVERLAYS of the LAST moment still on our screen.

Be like a tv camera. Try to send back a PERFECTLY CLEAR picture. Dont ADD anything. Dont SUBTRACT anything. As the Buddha says, In the seen there should be ONLY the seen, in the heard, ONLY the heard no OVERLAYS OF YOUR COMMENTARY. HINT: You will probably get some of these signs when you are doing it right: Your breath will slow and eventually stop altogether (for up to a minute; no, you wont die!) and you will get a rush of energy through your body. You may feel your consciousness centre in the brow chakra (between the eyes) or in the heart. HINT: The self (your PERSONALITY) is like a VIRUS; it KNOWS you are trying to KILL it (i.e. become UN-self-ish) and it will do all in its power to stay alive by ADAPTING to every strategy you use to stop thinking. It will seek out and find the HIGHEST IDEALS you have (those just BELOW becoming unselfish which is the highest POSSIBLE ideal-) and USE these to TEMPT you to start THINKING again. It is being STARVED TO DEATH by you not thinking, you see. THINKING FEEDS THE SELF. Do you understand this? (if not, reread the above. You must get this.)So, the Personality will make you believe this thought or that thought is just ESSENTIAL, and soon you will be swallowed up.GONE. Or, if THAT doesnt work, it will start on the VISUALS: Colours, visions, apparitions: Hey, something is happening to ME! (Did you get that? ME! It has you THINKING and focused on SELF again. Tricky, isnt it? DONT FALL FOR THIS STUFF! NO EXCUSES. STAY STRONG. Now, when we say kill the personality, this must be understood correctly: It dies to its old rulership (the 3 elementals) and is born again, this time under the rulership of the soul . It is the same old puppet with a different master pulling the strings: YOU, instead of them(the body elementals, or your selfish. personality desires.(If you cant get with the elementals concept, just think of 3 sets of desires, ok? : physical desires, emotional desires and mental desires.) It does not need to become withered or beaten out of shape. You NEED a good personality to be USEFUL in the world, and to be of SERVICE. It is like breaking a horse: The personality on its own is a bucking bronco, totally rebellious and of no service. Tamed, it is like a partner to its rider; they make a team. Soul sits astride personality, guiding the reins, and you go somewhere useful in life.

HINT: if you find yourself saying Im not getting much out of this meditation; it doesnt work for me, you can be 100% sure YOU ARE NOT DOING IT. You are doing something ELSE 99% of the time (e.g. letting your mind wander). This meditation contains the essence or common denominator of all the Worlds top-of-the-line meditations: Zen, Mahamudra, Raja Yoga, Dzogchen, Vipassana, etc. IT works, and HAS worked, for thousands of years, all over the world, and was even at the core of the Buddhas own practice when achieving enlightenment. It is YOU who arent working. But dont give up. and dont settle for an easy one (like visualizing yourself on a pleasant hillside) for that is the equivalent of painting a room inside the Matrix (the world of self or the personality life) all pretty colours instead of getting OUT of the Matrix (becoming UN-selfish) altogether. If you are going to invest time and energy over many years, why not go for the Gold, the ultimate: Liberation (from self) : Enlightenment (Knowing you are NOT lower self but Life or God ( I and my Father are One as Christ put it).

HINT: To EXTEND your meditation practice into the realm of daily life (which you should increasingly try to do if you want to live CONTINUALLY in a higher state of consciousness), try this: Following your sitting practice, choose an activity you do privately (showering, brushing teeth, etc. ) and continue practising while MOVING AROUND. About 10-15 minutes per day is good for this. Jogging and walking (alone) are perfect. (Alone, because you arent going to be great company while doing this, until you get good at it.) Our TRUE NATURE (higher self) IS like a mirror. The mirror is VOID-EMPTY. It has no CONTENT. When you look into it, you dont see IT; you see THINGS. The mirror CONTAINS these things but is NOT these things. You are not young or old, male or female. these are qualities that your consciousness can manifest, but these things are not YOU. When you were dead (out of the body between lives) you (as a soul) were something like PURE ENERGY without form (the SILENT WATCHER).Isnt this the way we think of God? As pure, formless, infinite energy? Every religion says we are a spark or piece or part of God. In meditation, you begin to feel your divine nature.

You PERSONALITY is THE CAT. Your TRUE NATURE is the MIRROR. You normally identify with the CAT looking in the mirror. NOW try identifying with the MIRROR itself. When you IDENTIFY with ANYTHING out there, you DISTORT the mirror; you distort your true nature. You mislead yourself into believing you are some THING. That is VERY limiting! Even being a MALE or a FEMALE cuts off half of human experience. Why do this?You have been male, female, young old, black, white, fat and thin.You are a god in the making; you are unlimited, immortal ! (Your current BODY is not immortal; your current personality is not immortal, but you, the SILENT WATCHER, observing this, is immortal. Just think: Was it not you who looked out of your own 7-year-old eyes? Yet, if you saw that 7-year-old in the mirror TODAY, you would say thats not me! When you are 70 years old, the SAME silent Watcher will be looking out, but the body again will have changed completely. In the next life, and the next, the SAME silent watcher will look out of OTHER eyes in OTHER bodies! So get with the program! Identify with the WATCHER the one who STAYS- and not the BODIES!) It would be like the mirror BULGING into the shape of a cat. That destroys the mirrors CLARITY. It is biased. It wants to be SOMETHING SPECIAL. This thought is key: Look how hard you try to BE something special. It is so hard to just look at the personality and LET IT BE. However, this IS the Zen way, as portrayed in the phrase When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep. In other words, just let this vehicle unfold its own karmic patterns; let it be NATURAL. The process of making yourself a better person is ANOTHER THING ENTIRELY (see SPIRITUAL ASPIRATIONS package); THIS is about DETACHMENT. Just REFLECT; dont CLING. Keep up with the moment. When you think (or play video tapes in your head) you are adding to reality something from SOMEWHERE ELSE something that is NOT there NOW, and SUBTRACTING all you MISS while DOING this. We are always COMPULSIVELY DOING. We cant just BE. Meditation is just BEING, without DOING-Anything! Thinking is compulsive doing, itjust HAPPENS to you (wandering thoughts). What you want is a NOT MOVING MIND, as ZEN expresses it a KNOW-NOTHING MIND. When you do this meditation correctly, you will experience a condition of COMPLETE PURITY. T.S. Eliot calls it a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything. He is right. It costs. But it is worth it. Keep at it. Like an ice cube, each time you expose the ego to these higher

vibrations, it MELTS a little. What has taken time to build up takes time to dissolve, and when it is gone, you are free. You are like a rocket which has broken free of the Earths gravity and floats free in space, effortlessly. You are beyond the clutches of self, free from the virtual reality of the senses, out of the matrix, and into reality. QUICK CHECKLIST: 1.Attitude of detaching fromvirtual reality 2.Three vehicles/bodies/elementals in front of you. 3.Self-Remembering:Dont get swallowed up 4. Be Silent Watcher: Just stare, keeping bodies in your sights at all times. 5.Whole PERSONALITY out there as object: netti, netti. 6.Be Here Now. Keep up with present moment. 7.Be clear mirror/tv camera: no additions or subtractions . 8. No compulsive doing 9.Stare into Original face, I AM Presence; gratitude to Source. Not-Moving Mind. Dont click on icons. 10.Beyond clutches of self: effortless bliss and freedom. Good Luck!