Soil Sex Third Eye Star

Twelve Principles of Native American Philosophy






1. WHOLENESS. All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe
is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to
everything else. It is only possible to understand something if we
understand how it is connected to everything else.




2. CHANGE. Everything is in a state of constant change. One season
falls upon the other. People are born, live, and die. All things
change. There are two kinds of change. The coming together of things
I and the coming apart of things. Both kinds of change are necessary
and are always connected to each other.




3. CHANGE OCCURS IN CYCLES OR PATTERNS. They are not random or
accidental. If we cannot see how a particular change is connected, it
usually means that our standpoint is affecting our perception.




4. THE PHYSICAL WORLD IS REAL. THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS REAL.
They are two aspects of one reality. There are separate laws which govern
each. Breaking of a spiritual principle will affect the physical
world and visa versa. A balanced life is one that honors both.




5. PEOPLE ARE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL BEINGS.




6. PEOPLE CAN ACQUIRE NEW GIFTS, BUT THEY MUST STRUGGLE TO DO SO.
The process of developing new personal qualities may be called "true
learning."




7. THERE ARE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF TRUE LEARNING.
A person learns in a whole and balanced manner when the mental, spiritual, physical, and
emotional dimensions are involved in the process.




8. THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT HAS FOUR RELATED CAPACITIES:


* the capacity to have and to respond to dreams, visions,
ideals, spiritual teachings, goals and theories.
* the capacity to accept these as a reflection of our unknown
or unrealized potential.
* the capacity to express these using symbols in speech, art
or mathematics.
* the capacity to use this symbolic expression towards action
directed at making the possible a reality.




9. PEOPLE MUST ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR OWN POTENTIAL.




10. A PERSON MUST DECIDE TO DEVELOP THEIR OWN POTENTIAL.
The path will always be there for those who decide to travel it.




11. ANY PERSON WHO SETS OUT ON A JOURNEY OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT WILL BE AIDED
. Guides, teachers, and protectors will assist the traveler.




12. THE ONLY SOURCE OF FAILURE IS A PERSON'S OWN FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE TEACHINGS.




~source












Primal Religions




Huston Smith characterizes both African and native North and South American religions as "primal", or alternatively, "tribal". These primal religions are far older than the so-called "historical religions" that have supplanted them in many parts of the world. Primal religion is "the religion of peoples who live in small communities, on subsistent economies that are the direct product of their own efforts, and without depending on writing". (Smith 365) Primal religion is now found only in parts of "Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Siberia, and among the Indians of North and South America." (ibid)




The following are some important differences between primal and modern religions and world-views:




1. Unlike modern societies, tribes feature relatively little division of labor. Tribes typically do differentiate between the tasks of men and women, but they don’t distinguish between clergy and laity, or between sacred and secular, human and animal, animate and inanimate. In that sense, the tribal world is unfragmented. Tribal people are embedded in the natural world around them, and that whole world partakes in the sacred. Because primal religions see humans at one with nature, and all nature as sacred, primal religions revere all aspects of the natural world. There is little distinction between the individual and the tribe, or between the tribe and its environment, or between the human and the non-human. There is no metaphysical hierarchy of being in terms of which humans are "higher" or "better" than animals or plants or even rocks; every individual thing is alive and important. Animals and plants are usually thought of as "people" too. Hence there is no distinction between religious and non-religious activities: every interaction with the world has religious significance. Primal religions celebrate nature in the cycle of the seasons, and often in totemism (the symbolic joining of a tribe or clan with an animal species).




2. Primal religions assume a single reality, which includes two kinds of being, and thus can be experienced in two different ways. One sort of being is temporal, and is the stuff of "normal" experience of the world. Temporal beings go in and out of being; the seasons change, people are born and die. The second sort of reality includes unchanging entities which are always potentially present in ordinary experience. Humans can partake in the immortal and give significance to their lives by ritually re-creating eternal archetypal patterns. For the Aborigines and Native Americans the normally unseen world is populated by eternal archetypes of not only things (the man, the woman, the fish, the wolf, the eagle, the bear, etc.) but also activities (hunting, lovemaking, war). An individual in the temporal world can partake of eternity by identifying completely with the archetypes in daily life: by "becoming" not a hunter or warrior but the Hunter or the Warrior. The Aborigines call these states of ritual identification "the Dreaming"; they are the closest thing to "worship" that we find in Aborigine culture. Primal religions frequently use natural hallucinogens and other drugs (alcohols, mushrooms, peyote, cannabis, mescaline, cocaine) to facilitate this identification with the archetypes. For example, Castaneda "becomes" The Crow only while tripping.




3. Primal cultures are oral cultures; they have no tradition of literacy. The "texts" of primitive religions are myths, which are transmitted orally. "Oral transmission" includes drama and spectacle in addition to simple storytelling. Since primal peoples cherish their ancestors (who are thought to be closer to the primal Source of being), they have the highest respect for the myths given to them by their ancestors, and they treat the myths with the utmost respect, memorizing them carefully, and repeating them often. The myths contain not only stories of archetypal heroes, but specific instructions for hunting, gathering, building houses and boats, cooking, preparing medicines, etc., so memorizing them correctly is important for the continued well-being of the tribe. According to Smith, orality is important for primal religion because it keeps primitive people focused on their own experience of the world. Sacred texts cannot assume undue importance; oral cultures can still "sense the sacred through nonverbal channels" (Smith 370). Orality ensures that primal peoples do not fill their heads with endless trivia; if something is learned, it is used or it is forgotten. Orality also protects primal people from over-valuing thought itself (a tendency of the lettered, according to Smith).




4. Primal religions value individuality; they see the uniqueness of things and places. One bird is not interchangeable with another. One corner of the room might be more suitable for sitting in than another; and the same corner might not be suitable for me and for you. (Don Juan tells Castaneda to find the place in the room that feels right for him.) One man’s house is not interchangeable with another’s. You cannot uproot a person from one place and expect that she will necessarily thrive elsewhere. A human is not like a machine that needs only electricity to run well, that can be transported anywhere and just plugged in. A human is not like an angel, a pure intellect that can flourish no matter where it lives or what it is nourished by. Animals and humans are much more like plants; they thrive in some habitats but not in others.




5. Primal nature rites focus mainly on maintaining the regular course of natural events. The rites do not try to force nature to do anything supernatural; rather, the tribe seeks merely that rainfall and temperature and local wildlife supply stay normal. This cooperative orientation toward nature makes primal peoples essentially conservative about making large-scale alterations to the natural world that would upset nature’s norms or damage individual plants and animals, e.g., dams, cities, highways, etc. Indeed, they are conservative about small alterations. Environmentalists often look to primal peoples as models of proper human interaction with nature.




6. The natural world and the body are valued in primal religious thought, unlike in most historical religions. Thus there is little interest in escaping the body or despising the world. As Smith says, "Primal peoples are ... oriented to a single cosmos, which sustains them like a living womb. Because they assume that it exists to nurture them, they have no disposition to challenge it, defy it, refashion it, or escape from it. It is not a place of exile.... Its space is not homogeneous; the home has a number of rooms, we might say, some of which are normally invisible. But together they constitute a single domicile. Primal peoples are concerned with the maintenance of personal, social, and cosmic harmony, and with attaining specific goods – rain, harvest, children, health – as people always are. But the overriding goal of salvation that dominates historical religions is virtually absent from them, and life after death tends to be a shadowy semi-existence in some vaguely designated place in their single domain." (377)




7. Primal religions appear on the surface to be polytheistic, but in fact usually suppose one High God or Ultimate Power or Supreme Being. But the High God is often not named or even spoken of directly; it is assumed unknowable. Naming the High God would also conceptually separate that God from the world, thus draining some of the holiness from the ordinary world, since the conceptual separation makes clear that the world is not the High God (yet in the primal view, it is). The ordinary world is thought to be obviously a manifestation of the Great Power. Obviously, to the primal mind, the world of the senses is not the whole story. That sensible world signifies; it can be only if there is something More. Nothing is merely as it appears; rather, everything is symbolic, "transparent" to its divine source.




Western philosophers find the primal approach intriguing but problematic, especially in its rejection of ordinary metaphysical categories. But there lies its attraction for other Western minds. Curious reversals abound. In the American colonial times and through the 19th century, white Americans were fascinated with the natives. "Indian captivity narratives" were a popular literary form, e.g., James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. The popular captivity narratives usually pictured native Americans as cruel savages (e.g., Ethan Allen’s accounts) in order to build popular support for the expansionist goals of the young America. But in fact as early as the 16th century, captured Europeans often voluntarily rejected their culture to live with Native American tribes; Daniel Boone was the most famous example. The hero of the recent film Dances with Wolves is another. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1753: "When white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and have lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay ... yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."




Nowadays, as Richard Rodriguez points out, native Guatemalans embrace Mormonism while "blond animal-rights activists in Orange County are becoming the new pantheists, California’s new tribe of Indians – proclaiming the equality of all living things."




~source











Paintings By: Susan Seddon-Boulet
Content from Soil Sex Third Eye Star
Additional Programming by DPC

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Threads of Union

Translation by BonGiovanni

---

1. on Contemplations
2. on Spiritual Disciplines
3. on Divine Powers
4. on Realizations

---

Before beginning any spiritual text it is customary to clear the mind of all distracting thoughts, to calm the breath and to purify the heart.

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.

1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.

1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.

1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.

1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.

1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.

1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.

1.9. Fancy is following after word-knowledge empty of substance.

1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.

1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.

1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.

1.13. Practice is the effort to secure steadiness.

1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.

1.15. Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.

1.16. This is signified by an indifference to the three attributes, due to knowledge of the Indweller.

1.17. Cognitive meditation is accompanied by reasoning, discrimination, bliss and the sense of 'I am.'

1.18. There is another meditation which is attained by the practice of alert mental suspension until only subtle impressions remain.

1.19. For those beings who are formless and for those beings who are merged in unitive consciousness, the world is the cause.

1.20. For others, clarity is preceded by faith, energy, memory and equalminded contemplation.

1.21. Equalminded contemplation is nearest to those whose desire is most ardent.

1.22. There is further distinction on account of the mild, moderate or intense means employed.

1.23. Or by surrender to God.

1.24. God is a particular yet universal indweller, untouched by afflictions, actions, impressions and their results.

1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.

1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.

1.27. God's voice is Om.

1.28. The repetition of Om should be made with an understanding of its meaning.

1.29. From that is gained introspection and also the disappearance of obstacles.

1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.

1.31. Pain, despair, nervousness, and disordered inspiration and expiration are co-existent with these obstacles.

1.32. For the prevention of the obstacles, one truth should be practiced constantly.

1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.

1.34. Optionally, mental equanimity may be gained by the even expulsion and retention of energy.

1.35. Or activity of the higher senses causes mental steadiness.

1.36. Or the state of sorrowless Light.

1.37. Or the mind taking as an object of concentration those who are freed of compulsion.

1.38. Or depending on the knowledge of dreams and sleep.

1.39. Or by meditation as desired.

1.40. The mastery of one in Union extends from the finest atomic particle to the greatest infinity.

1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.

1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge.

1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.

1.44. In this way the meditative and the ultra-meditative having the subtle for their objects are also described.

1.45. The province of the subtle terminates with pure matter that has no pattern or distinguishing mark.

1.46. These constitute seeded contemplations.

1.47. On attaining the purity of the ultra-meditative state there is the pure flow of spiritual consciousness.

1.48. Therein is the faculty of supreme wisdom.

1.49. The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.

1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.

1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.

End Part One.

Part Two

on Spiritual Disciplines

2.1 Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.

2.2 This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

2.3 The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.

2.4 Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.

2.5 Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

2.6 Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.

2.7 Attachment is that magnetic pattern which clusters in pleasure and pulls one towards such experience.

2.8 Aversion is the magnetic pattern which clusters in misery and pushes one from such experience.

2.9 Flowing by its own energy, established even in the wise and in the foolish, is the unending desire for life.

2.10 These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.

2.11 Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.

2.12 The impressions of works have their roots in afflictions and arise as experience in the present and the future births.

2.13 When the root exists, its fruition is birth, life and experience.

2.14 They have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according as their cause be virtue or vice.

2.15 All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.

2.16 The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.

2.17 The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.

2.18 The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play. It is of the nature of cognition, activity and rest, and is for the purpose of experience and realization.

2.19 The stages of the attributes effecting the experienced world are the specialized and the unspecialized, the differentiated and the undifferentiated.

2.20 The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.

2.21 The very existence of the seen is for the sake of the seer.

2.22 Although Creation is discerned as not real for the one who has achieved the goal, it is yet real in that Creation remains the common experience to others.

2.23 The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.

2.24 The cause of the association is ignorance.

2.25 Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissassociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.

2.26 The continuous practice of discrimination is the means of attaining liberation.

2.27 Steady wisdom manifests in seven stages.

2.28 On the destruction of impurity by the sustained practice of the limbs of Union, the light of knowledge reveals the faculty of discrimination.

2.29 The eight limbs of Union are self-restraint in actions, fixed observance, posture, regulation of energy, mind-control in sense engagements, concentration, meditation, and realization.

2.30 Self-restraint in actions includes abstention from violence, from falsehoods, from stealing, from sexual engagements, and from acceptance of gifts.

2.31 These five willing abstentions are not limited by rank, place, time or circumstance and constitute the Great Vow.

2.32 The fixed observances are cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study and persevering devotion to God.

2.33 When improper thoughts disturb the mind, there should be constant pondering over the opposites.

2.34 Improper thoughts and emotions such as those of violence- whether done, caused to be done, or even approved of- indeed, any thought originating in desire, anger or delusion, whether mild medium or intense- do all result in endless pain and misery. Overcome such distractions by pondering on the opposites.

2.35 When one is confirmed in non-violence, hostility ceases in his presence.

2.36 When one is firmly established in speaking truth, the fruits of action become subservient to him.

2.37 All jewels approach him who is confirmed in honesty.

2.38 When one is confirmed in celibacy, spiritual vigor is gained.

2.39 When one is confirmed in non-possessiveness, the knowledge of the why and how of existence is attained.

2.40 From purity follows a withdrawal from enchantment over one's own body as well as a cessation of desire for physical contact with others.

2.41 As a result of contentment there is purity of mind, one-pointedness, control of the senses, and fitness for the vision of the self.

2.42 Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.

2.43 Through sanctification and the removal of impurities, there arise special powers in the body and senses.

2.44 By study comes communion with the Lord in the Form most admired.

2.45 Realization is experienced by making the Lord the motive of all actions.

2.46 The posture should be steady and comfortable.

2.47 In effortless relaxation, dwell mentally on the Endless with utter attention.

2.48 From that there is no disturbance from the dualities.

2.49 When that exists, control of incoming and outgoing energies is next.

2.50 It may be external, internal, or midway, regulated by time, place, or number, and of brief or long duration.

2.51 Energy-control which goes beyond the sphere of external and internal is the fourth level- the vital.

2.52 In this way, that which covers the light is destroyed.

2.53 Thus the mind becomes fit for concentration.

2.54 When the mind maintains awareness, yet does not mingle with the senses, nor the senses with sense impressions, then self-awareness blossoms.

2.55 In this way comes mastery over the senses.

Part Three

on Divine Powers

3.1 One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.

3.2 Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.

3.3 That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.

3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.

3.5 By mastery comes wisdom.

3.6 The application of mastery is by stages.

3.7 The three are more efficacious than the restraints.

3.8 Even that is external to the seedless realization.

3.9 The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.

3.10 From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.

3.11 The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.

3.12 The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.

3.13 In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.

3.14 The object is that which preserves the latent characteristic, the rising characteristic or the yet-to-be-named characteristic that establishes one entity as specific.

3.15 The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.

3.16 By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.

3.17 The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signfies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.

3.18 By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.

3.19 By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.

3.20 By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.

3.21 Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.

3.22 By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.

3.23 By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.

3.24 By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.

3.25 By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.

3.26 By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.

3.27 By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.

3.28 By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.

3.29 By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.

3.30 By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.

3.31 By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.

3.32 There is knowledge of everything from intuition.

3.33 Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.

3.34 Experience arises due to the inability of discerning the attributes of vitality from the indweller, even though they are indeed distinct from one another. Self-control brings true knowledge of the indweller by itself.

3.35 This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.

3.36 To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.

3.37 When the bonds of the mind caused by action have been loosened, one may enter the body of another by knowledge of how the nerve-currents function.

3.38 By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.

3.39 By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.

3.40 By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.

3.41 By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.

3.42 By self-control on the mind when it is separated from the body- the state known as the Great Transcorporeal- all coverings are removed from the Light.

3.43 Mastery over the elements arises when their gross and subtle forms,as well as their essential characteristics, and the inherent attributes and experiences they produce, is examined in self-control.

3.44 Thereby one may become as tiny as an atom as well as having many other abilities, such as perfection of the body, and non-resistence to duty.

3.45 Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.

3.46 By self-control on the changes that the sense-organs endure when contacting objects, and on the power of the sense of identity, and of the influence of the attributes, and the experience all these produce- one masters the senses.

3.47 From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.

3.48 To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.

3.49 Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.

3.50 When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.

3.51 By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.

3.52 From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.

3.53 Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.

3.54 Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.

End Part Three

Part Four

on Realizations

4.1 Psychic powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.

4.2 Transformation into another state is by the directed flow of creative nature.

4.3 Creative nature is not moved into action by any incidental cause, but by the removal of obstacles, as in the case of a farmer clearing his field of stones for irrigation.

4.4 Created minds arise from egoism alone.

4.5 There being difference of interest, one mind is the director of many minds.

4.6 Of these, the mind born of concentrated insight is free from the impressions.

4.7 The impressions of unitive cognition are neither good nor bad. In the case of the others, there are three kinds of impressions.

4.8 From them proceed the development of the tendencies which bring about the fruition of actions.

4.9 Because of the magnetic qualities of habitual mental patterns and memory, a relationship of cause and effect clings even though there may be a change of embodiment by class, space and time.

4.10 The desire to live is eternal, and the thought-clusters prompting a sense of identity are beginningless.

4.11 Being held together by cause and effect, substratum and object- the tendencies themselves disappear on the dissolution of these bases.

4.12 The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.

4.13 Whether manifested or unmanifested they are of the nature of the attributes.

4.14 Things assume reality because of the unity maintained within that modification.

4.15 Even though the external object is the same, there is a difference of cognition in regard to the object because of the difference in mentality.

4.16 And if an object known only to a single mind were not cognized by that mind, would it then exist?

4.17 An object is known or not known by the mind, depending on whether or not the mind is colored by the object.

4.18 The mutations of awareness are always known on account of the changelessness of its Lord, the indweller.

4.19 Nor is the mind self-luminous, as it can be known.

4.20 It is not possible for the mind to be both the perceived and the perceiver simultaneously.

4.21 In the case of cognition of one mind by another, we would have to assume cognition of cognition, and there would be confusion of memories.

4.22 Consciousness appears to the mind itself as intellect when in that form in which it does not pass from place to place.

4.23 The mind is said to perceive when it reflects both the indweller (the knower) and the objects of perception (the known).

4.24 Though variegated by innumerable tendencies, the mind acts not for itself but for another, for the mind is of compound substance.

4.25 For one who sees the distinction, there is no further confusing of the mind with the self.

4.26 Then the awareness begins to discriminate, and gravitates towards liberation.

4.27 Distractions arise from habitual thought patterns when practice is intermittent.

4.28 The removal of the habitual thought patterns is similar to that of the afflictions already described.

4.29 To one who remains undistracted in even the highest intellection there comes the equalminded realization known as The Cloud of Virtue. This is a result of discriminative discernment.

4.30 From this there follows freedom from cause and effect and afflictions.

4.31 The infinity of knowledge available to such a mind freed of all obscuration and property makes the universe of sensory perception seem small.

4.32 Then the sequence of change in the three attributes comes to an end, for they have fulfilled their function.

4.33 The sequence of mutation occurs in every second, yet is comprehensible only at the end of a series.

4.34 When the attributes cease mutative association with awarenessness, they resolve into dormancy in Nature, and the indweller shines forth as pure consciousness. This is absolute freedom.

The end of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
*source*
programming by DPC

Nobody

You have to become a nobody. The moment you are nobody, a silence descends on you, followed by a contentment. It is not contentment with the world; it is contentment with existence, with the stars, with the roses, with the ocean, with the rocks, with the mountains. It is not contentment with being a president of a country or a prime minister; it is not contentment with being the richest man in the world. It has nothing to do with your so-called world of ambitions. It is a very non-ambitious state. You are utterly empty, even empty of yourself. Only in that emptiness, contentment blossoms, flowers -but that contentment is divine.

OSHO



{image linked/programming by DPC}

excerpt from Dhammapada

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.

See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

He who seeks happiness
By hurting those who seek happiness
Will never find happiness.

For your brother is like you.
He wants to be happy.
Never harm him
And when you leave this life
You too will find happiness.


~
excerpt from Dhammapada
translated by Thomas Byron


art by Peretti Sibylle/programming by DPC