"One-pointedness, concentration and meditation are not related to each other at all. This is one of the confusions prevalent all over the world.

One-pointedness is another name for concentration, but meditation is just the opposite of concentration. But in most of the books, in most of the dictionaries, and by the so-called teachers, they are used as if they are synonymous.

Concentration simply means one-pointedness. It is something of the mind. Mind can be a chaos, a crowd. Mind can be many voices, many directions. Mind can be a crossroads. Ordinarily, that's what mind is, a crowd.

But if the mind is a chaos, you cannot think rationally, you cannot think scientifically. To think rationally and scientifically, you have to be concentrated on the object of your study. Whatever the object is, the one thing necessary is that you are pouring your whole mental energy onto that object. Only with this much force is there a possibility to know the objective truth; hence, concentration is the method of all sciences.

But meditation is totally different. First, meditation is not of the mind. It is neither one-pointed mind nor many-pointed mind; it is simply not mind. Meditation is going beyond, beyond mind and its boundaries. They cannot be related; they are opposite to each other.

Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind.

The West, particularly, has not known meditation. It has remained confined to concentration -- hence all scientific progress, technology -- but it has not known the inner science of silence, peace, of being a light unto oneself.

One-pointedness can reveal the secrets of the outside world. Meditation reveals the secrets of your own subjectivity. It can be said, concentration is objective and meditation is subjective. Concentration moves outwards; meditation moves inwards. Concentration is going far away from yourself. Meditation is coming home to your innermost center. Mind, reason, logic, all point towards the outer -- to them, the inner does not exist at all.

But this is a fundamental law of the inner reality that nothing is ever accomplished in the inner world by a reasonable man. It is an irrational, or better to say suprarational approach -- to know oneself you don't need mind, you need utter silence. Mind is always concerned with some thing or many things. There are thoughts and thoughts, ripples upon ripples -- the lake of the mind is never ripple-less.

Your inner being can be reflected only in a mirror without any ripples. No mind -- absolute silence of all thoughts, absence of the mind completely -- becomes the mirror without any ripples, without even a single fluttering of thought. And suddenly, the explosion: you have become aware for the first time of your own being.

Up to now, you have known things of the world; now you know the knower. That's exactly what Socrates means when he says: Know thyself. Because without knowing thyself -- I want to add to the Socratic advice -- you cannot be yourself. Knowing thyself is a step to being thyself, and unless you are yourself, you can never feel at ease. You can never feel contented; you can never feel fulfilled; you can never feel at home in existence.

Some discomfort, some misery... you are not exactly aware what, but a constant feeling that something essential is missing; that you have everything and yet something which can make everything meaningful is absent. Your palace is full of all the treasures of the world but you are empty. Your kingdom is big but you are absent. This is the situation of the modern man; hence, the constant feeling of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, angst.

Modern mind is the most troubled mind that has ever existed for the simple reason that man has come of age. A buffalo is not disturbed about the meaning of life -- the grass is his meaning of life; more than that all is useless. The trees are not interested in the meaning of life; just a good shower and a rich soil and a beautiful sun and life is a tremendous joy. No tree is an atheist; no tree ever doubts. Except for man, doubt does not exist in existence. Except for man, nobody looks worried. Even donkeys are not worried. They look so relaxed, so philosophically at ease. They have no fear of death, no fear of the unknown, no concern for the tomorrow.

It is only man and his intelligence that has given him a very difficult life, a constant torture. You try to forget it in a thousand and one ways, but it goes on coming back again and again. And this will continue until your last breath unless you know something of meditation, unless you know how to turn inwards, how to have a look at your own interiority.

And suddenly, all meaninglessness disappears.

On a very high level, you are again as at ease as the trees. At a very high consciousness, you are as relaxed as the whole of existence. But your relaxation has a beauty to it -- it is conscious, it is alert. It knows that it is. It knows that while the whole of existence is asleep, it is awake.

What is the point of a beautiful sunrise if you are asleep? What is the beauty of a rose if you are asleep? Mind is your sleep, concentrated or not. Meditation is your awakening. The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.

Remember that any teacher who says to you that concentration is meditation is committing a great crime. Not knowing that he is misleading you, and misleading you on such a fundamental subject, he is far more dangerous than somebody who can kill you. He is killing you far more significantly and deeply. He is destroying your consciousness; he is destroying your very possibility to open the doors of all the mysteries that you are.

Albert Camus has one beautiful statement to remember: "The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth." Naturally, when mind is not there, no-mind cannot be a rational concept. It is absurd. It cannot say anything reasonably -- where it is, what it is, what it signifies. It can only indicate mystically -- hence all the parables of the world. The mystics could not say in a logical way what they have experienced. They went around telling stories, parables, which can be understood on two levels: one of the mind and one of the no-mind.

That is the beauty of a parable. You can understand it just like any other story, but it was not meant to be just another story; it was meant to give you some hint, some hidden hint towards that for which mind is absolutely inadequate. I will give you a few examples.

A blind man is brought to Gautam Buddha. The blind man is not an ordinary man, he is a great logician. And his whole village is tired of his logic. They are very annoyed and irritated by the blind man, because he refuses to believe that light exists. And he requires of the whole village that if they say light exists, they have to give him proof: "I can touch things; let me touch your light. I can taste things; let me taste your light. I can smell things; at least let me smell your light. I can hear things; beat the light so I can hear the sound. Do something. These are the only four senses I have."

Light is neither available to the nose nor to the ears; neither to the mouth, nor to the hands. Unless you have eyes, there is no way to prove that light exists.

Gautam Buddha said to the people, "You have brought him to a wrong man. You have all given all kinds of proofs, and you have not been successful. What can I do? Take him to my personal physician. He is just sitting behind me. He is the greatest physician of our time; perhaps he can cure the blind man's eyes. He does not need any argument, he needs treatment. He does not need any evidence, logical proof about light; he simply needs eyes. Then there will not be any question or any doubt or any asking for evidence."

He was given to the physician. It took six months for him to cure that man from his blindness. The day he saw light he cried and went from house to house in the village to offer an apology, "Forgive me. Although I was being rational and logical I had no idea that unless you have eyes, you cannot be given any proof that cannot be rejected by you, argued against." Although the whole world knows that light exists, the whole world cannot make a single blind man convinced of it.

Your consciousness is not available to the mind. Your mind is not the right vehicle to know yourself. Unless you have a new eye -- what in the East we have called the third eye, symbolically.... These two eyes open outwards. Just as a symbol, the third eye opens inwards. The two eyes are for the duality of the world, the one eye is for the singleness of your being.

As you start looking inwards, you are amazed: you were ignoring yourself, and that was the trouble. That was why you were in misery, anxiety, suffering. You were trying everything to remove the misery, but it was caused by your unawareness, by your unconsciousness, by your ignorance of your own being. That was the cause. And unless that cause is removed, you will never have a taste of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of immortality, of the divineness of existence.

Go beyond the mind -- and the way beyond the mind is very simple -- just become a watcher of the mind, because watching immediately separates you from the thing you watch. You are watching a movie; one thing is certain, you are not an actor in the movie. Watching the road and the crowd passing by, one thing is certain; you are standing by the side, you are not on the road in the crowd.

Whatever you watch, you are not.

The moment you start watching the mind, a tremendous experience happens -- a recognition that you are not the mind. Just this small recognition that "I am not the mind" is the beginning of no-mind. You have transcended the crowd, the voices, the chaos of the mind; you have moved into the silences of the heart.

Deva Premal and Miten - Gayatri Mantra

Here is your home, your eternal being.

Here is your deathless, essential existence.

Knowing this has never been transcended by anything more blissful, more ecstatic.

You may have heard about Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Mind is not only two, it is many. A man with mind is not sure of anything. He is doubtful about everything; he is unsure about everything. And a life of doubt and unsureness is not a life; you don't have any roots anywhere. And without roots you cannot have flowers, and you cannot become fruitful. Your life will remain barren, a desert where nothing grows..."

Osho - The Invitation

www.osho.com

Is any wonder that I take medication three times a day, or need a dose of nicotine and music just to feel the earth spin beneath me?

I am one of seven billion on this planet.

Occasionally, the thought is comforting, that this life is meant only to please me. It's absolutely impossible to please anyone else with only my sheer existence. I can only make my decisions based on my analysis of their consequences and hope to God that someone won't die along the way. And even if they do, I can't do a damn thing about it.

Still, other times, the thought makes me spit. My ego takes over, and I want desperately to be bigger than I am. I want to scream as loud as I can, thinking that I can outshout the billions of others. I gnash my teeth in disappointment, in despair, because I feel I've failed. I'm insignificant.

And yet, I am not.

After all, I'm a lover, a friend, a daughter, a sister. I can never drop these labels on my own-fate must have his hand in it.

So maybe I am a lump of clay, molded by the hands of fate. Take the razor blade out, put the cigarette in, pull the cigarette out, put in rehab, pull out of rehab, adjust this, trim that...

And I'm left on the rack-as is.

Irregular, like a toss-out at Ross.

Hey, it's where I shop.
It's where I got this sweater.

Patches...

Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order for over 50 years, joined the Beloved on Friday, October 10, 2008.  May God bless his soul and raise his rank to those of His true lovers. Amin.

Through Love, I have reached a place
Where no trace of Love remains,
Where "I" and "we" and the painting of existence
Have all been forgotten and left behind...
- Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh

Ya Haqq!

NEW DELHI, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – After police in the eastern state of Orissa confirmed this week that Maoists killed Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a Hindu extremist group circulated allegedly forged documents in an attempt to implicate a local church in the Aug. 23 murder.

The Hindu Jagaran Samukhya (Society for Revival of Hinduism or HJS) circulated documents saying the plan to kill Saraswati in Kandhamal district was made at a meeting at Bethikala Church on May 25 attended by 17 people following a briefing and command from religious leaders, the Press Trust of India news agency reported yesterday.

Local Christian leaders responded by saying they will file defamation charges.

“We will file both civil and criminal defamation cases against the person who made such allegations,” Father Joseph Kalathil from the Catholic Archbishop House in Bhubaneswar and the Rev. Fr. Prafulla Ku Sabhapati, president of the Bethikala Parish Council of Kandhamal, said in a statement. “Not only our signatures were forged, the contents of the documents were also fabricated.”

On Oct. 6 Orissa state police confirmed that Maoists killed Saraswati, a day after the chief of the Orissa unit of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist, Sabyasachi Panda, told NDTV 24X7 news that his organization was behind the murder.

The Maoists killed Saraswati because he was a key leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), Panda told the channel. The VHP, he said, used non-tribal traders’ money to build VHP’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal, and ran a campaign against Christians, falsely accusing them of forced conversions and killing cows, considered holy by Hindus.

“This forced us to attack him,” Panda said. “We left two letters claiming responsibility for the murders. But the [Chief Minister Naveen] Patnaik government suppressed those letters. It is a BJP [Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party] government; they will support the VHP. The state government made it look like Christian groups were responsible for the attack. The Christian community in Orissa does not have any Maoist organization supporting them here.”

There were also reports, however, of the Orissa police having arrested three tribal Christians in connection with Saraswati’s murder. The Indian Express reported that the three had confessed their involvement.

A representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass that according to sources, the police had tortured the three Christians to pressure them to confess a crime they did not commit.

After the assassination of Saraswati, Hindu extremist groups blamed local Christians and began attacks on them, their houses and their churches. The worst violence against Christians in modern India erupted in spite of the Orissa police and media stating on the day of the murder that suspected Maoists killed Saraswati.

According to the All India Christian Council, more than 60 people have been killed, more than 18,000 injured and around 4,500 houses and churches destroyed in the “retributive” violence. Two Christian women, including a nun, were also gang-raped. The violence, which later spread to at least 14 districts of Orissa, has left more than 50,000 people homeless.

Attacks Continue

Orissa’s Kandhamal district remained tense even 48 days after the violence began.

Yesterday about 15 houses were burned down by a mob in the Lansaripalli village in Kantamal Block of neighboring Boudh district, The Hindu reported. The attackers came from the Gochhapada area of Kandhamal district.

“Thursday’s was the third incident in Boudh district,” added the daily. “More than 100 houses were burnt down in two separate attacks in the past few days.”

On Wednesday (Oct. 8), a mob burned and looted at least 25 houses belonging to Christians in the Balligada village under Daringbadi police station in Kandhamal’s Nuagam Block, Father Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bhubaneswar told Compass.

On Tuesday (Oct. 7), over five houses were torched in Jalespanga area under Phiringia police jurisdiction in Kandhamal. Another house was burned in the Sujeli village of G. Udayagiri Block the same day.

The Hindu also said the more than 16,000 Christians living in various relief camps were not returning to their villages, fearing attacks on them if they refused to convert to Hinduism.

Fr. Singh from the Bhubaneswar Archdiocese told Compass that over 12,000 Christians from various relief camps had moved out of Kandhamal to other districts and states, as they feared more attacks.

Supporting Violence

The president of the VHP, Ashok Singhal, told Zee News channel on Sunday (Oct. 5), “What Hindu organizations including the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India’s chief Hindu nationalist group] are doing in Orissa is all legal and is the reaction of the murder of VHP leader Saraswati, who was like Jesus Christ to us.”

In an interview with The Week magazine (Oct. 5), Singhal said that Hindu youth are “ready to die and, if necessary, to kill. [Their] patience is ebbing.”

Singhal added that a “Hindu uprising” had begun, “and the political parties will have to rethink and reinvent themselves, for their own existence. If there is no arrangement for Hindus’ security, they’ll do it on their own. The Hindus will not die. If that self-defence is militancy, so be it … the Hindu never went around the world for suzerainty or to convert ... now they are here, undermining us. That causes anger. In fact many want to fight back this harvesting of Hindus.”

In addition, a leader of the Bajrang Dal in the southern state of Karnataka admitted to supporting recent attacks on churches while speaking to The Week magazine. “We supported those who attacked the churches, as it is a justified fight,” Bajrang Dal convenor Mahendra Kumar said.

The violence in Orissa spread to several other states, including Karnataka, where around 20 churches were destroyed and 20 Christians were attacked in the recent weeks.

As many political parties and rights groups have demanded a ban on the Bajrang Dal for attacking Christians and churches in Orissa and other states, the federal government ruled by the United Progressive Alliance has mandated the National Integration Council to give its recommendations, reported the Times of India today.

The Bajrang Dal, however, warned that any such move would have “grave consequences” for the government politically, saying there was “no legal ground” for such an action.

There are 897,861 Christians in Orissa, which has a population of 36.8 million.  

Report from Compass Direct News

That love is reverence and worship and glory and the upward glance.Not a bandage for dirty sores.But they don't know it.Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it.They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy,compassion,contempt and general indifference and they call it love.Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it-the total passion for the total height-you're incapable of anything else

One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.It's one or the other.One doesn't love God and sacrilege impartially.Except when one doesn't know that sacrilege has been commited.Because one doesn't know God.

The book is one of the best if not the best i have read till date.The book makes you realize that humanity will always have the two classes,those who create and those who eat the creation and the creator.It shows you that belief in yourself is more important belief in anything else.Life is what we make out of it.

The egoist in absolute sense is not the man who sacrifies others.He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner.He does not function through them.He is not concerned with them in any primary matter.Not in his aim,not in his motive,not in his thinking,not in his desires,not in the source of his energy.he does not exist for any other man-and he asks no other man to exist for him.This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men

The book gave me the confidence that I am right.Thinking is the way to live and for us to survive we need to think.The book showed me that the path is the same for everyone,when one desires to achieve something,there is always the society,one which doesn't have a particular source,except within each and everyone of us.There maybe a lot of parasites but our aim is to create.The parasites can feed on and on,yet they can never drain out the energy of those who are born to create.

man cannot survive except through his mind.He comes on earth unarmed.His brain is his only weapon.

I love this book,for all that it says.And the truth is that we all here for a purpose and that purpose,is the goal of the self.It is not the goal of the masses we are here to fulfill but THE GOAL- to do what we want to do the most.If you haven't read this book,read it.And think while you read.

Picture from here.

I exist because I think.

The light shines the brightest

Darwin's religious views were (or became) those of a muddled agnostic.  In a recent article in Times Online, Nick Spencer offers Ten Surprising Things Darwin Said About Religious Faith:-

1. "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." (Autobiography)

2. "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

3. "I hardly see how religion & science can be kept as distinct as [Edward Pusey] desires... But I most wholly agree... that there is no reason why the disciples of either school should attack each other with bitterness." (Letter to J. Brodie Innes, November 27 1878)

4. "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

5. "I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

6. "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God." (Letter to Frederick McDermott, November 24 1880)

7. [In conversation with the atheist Edward Aveling, 1881] "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?" (Edward Aveling, The religious views of Charles Darwin, 1883)

8. "Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" (Letter to Graham William, July 3 1881)

9. "My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design." (Letter to Joseph Hooker, July 12 1870)

10. "I can never make up my mind how far an inward conviction that there must be some Creator or First Cause is really trustworthy evidence." (Letter to Francis Abbot, September 6 1871)

The interview is tomorrow. The show will post Monday on www.webtalkradio.net.

The current show is a small portion of interviews I recorded at the 2008 Raw Spirit Festival in Sedona just three weeks ago (September 12-14). It includes an interview with Dr. Doug Lehrer, Medicine Wolf of Sacred Health, and Prem Gyan, author of Aura Transformation and Mystic Gemstone Treasures.

You can listen to that one by following this link.

One of my favoutir examples would be the fact that we lack tolerance.

I had a conversation with my mother and it went thus.

Me: I had a very restless mind yesterday and I strangely wanted to have non-vegetarian food yesterday

Amma: How could you have such thoughts? We are fasting the whole month.

Me: I am not worried about fasting or anything else. I am looking at avoiding non-vegetarian food for good and this thought was strangely without any explanation. I do not understand why I had this urge.

Amma: How can you say that you do not care for the fact that we are supposed to be fasting this whole month?

Me: Why cannot you independantly tolerate the fact that I am trying to avoid non-vegetarian food for good? Why does it even have to be tied to religion? Why canot we tolerate each tolerate each other's religious views in a non-biased manner?

The conversation then meandered into tangential discussions which did not mean much.

The moot point is that we lack the ability to tolerate each tolerate each other's belief systems without being personally affected by it. We kind of take ourselves and our beliefs too seriously. We also seemt to lack the ability to respect the individual and their own set of motives for a particular direction of thought and actions. Most of the skirmishes in the personal space, I believe, happen because of this lack of tolerance, generally. 

I believ we should take ourselves less seriously and be more tolerant.

En jij,
die evenmin weet waar je bent.
Op reis met jezelf,
zwevend tussen het niets van de beslissing.

Jij speelt met finesses.
Altijd weer,
verdwaald tussen namen
in de echo's van het beminnen.

Ik wil het spel niet leren.
Zoek jezelf niet langer bij mij.
Maar laat mij tot je
komen
en je nemen
zoals je bent.
En zoals ik ben.

The third eye blind concert didn't even bring me any kind of enlightenment that I was semi-expecting. I have been so numb-ish lately trying to decode my own behavior. I just know that whatever I am doing, I am letting more of my subconscious do the directing... since my brain and most of my heart has been disagreeing.

But.. they say that radically changing your behavior patterns is hard (don't they? who the hell is they??!!). So I continue to do things out of character or even against what I feel like I have done in the past. It's kind of like tough love that I am doing to myself.

But... in doing this, somehow its pushing my emotions back. It's like - I don't feel much. Not much sadness, happiness, disappointment, anger or anything. I am just.... here.

I can't tell if it's bad or if it will pass or what's going on... and in searching for spiritual and/or conscious guidance, I find myself back to square 1 every time and in the essence of just "being".

My patience is being very tested lately and I believe that is where some of the questions are coming from. But the more questions that I ask, the more I am guided to simply exist.

Something is going to happen.

I don't know what. I don't know when, I don't know why. I don't know how many people it will affect... I just can feel something..... as nutso as it sounds.

SSSooooooo.... I will just keep waiting around....

I am going to the salton sea next week for the field sampling job. I'll take lots of pictures. Maybe something there will open my eyes??

I am looking forward to being able to see the stars. We'll be out in the middle of nowhere. No light pollution.

That should put some perspective on things.

One way of responding to this is to note some of the limitations of science's explanatory power.  For example, science is unable to:-

1. tell us why the universe came into being.  It is generally agreed that the universe came into being at a moment in time, but science is powerful to tell us why there should have been such an event.
2. explain why there are scientific or natural laws or why they are so consistent and dependable.  Science cannot explain why our universe is a cosmos, and not a chaos.
3. explain why the universe is so amazingly fine-tuned to support intelligent life on our planet.
4. explain why as human beings we are persons and not merely objects.
5. tell us why the mind exists and functions as it does.
6. add anything to the inner quality of life.
7. define or explain ethical principles.  It cannot explain love, justice, freedom, beauty, goodness, joy or peace, and so on.
8. answer life's deepest questions, such as why are we here, what is the point of being alive, how ought we to behave.

Nor can science deal with the great question of the existence of God.  This is not surprising, because,

1. God has no physical or material dimensions or characteristics.
2. God is transcendent - over, above and beyond time, space and all finite reality.
3. it is impossible to prove a universal negative.

 Based on an article in Evangelical Times.

Adam, you’ve never heard of the “placebo effect”? People trying it for themselves and feeling better may indicate there’s something worth investigating, but it is no demonstration of efficacy. Efficacy can only be demonstrated when you have placebo control.

Dear Theo, as you could safely assume, I've heard of placebo effects, and even if I hadn't, you can now be assured that I have. Here's my problem with your supposition.

Efficacy is demonstrated, not when you have "placebo control," but when the problem goes away. If your conclusion was true, we would have to outlaw chemotherapy, radiation, and many other accepted forms of treatment for acute diseases, because they kill their patients, sometimes more so than the disease itself.

Chemotherapy cocktails are poisonous. Morphine is poisonous, yet it is administered (and sometimes over administered) daily, without anyone batting an eye. Yet, you sit in intellectual isolation judging what constitutes efficacy of something that is not toxic and non-lethal, dismissing the real effects that people have experienced.

People have called and told me of giving MMS to friends who were skeptical (which itself is not a problem) of its efficacy, but were open minded enough to try it for themselves. While they might have been looking to address one thing, they were surprised to address something else, such as tumors that they had simply lived with for decades, or warts that suddenly shriveled up and dropped off their body. Was that a placebo, or evidence that it works as described?

Then there's the Zen question... if an individual uses MMS to successfully address a cancer, candida, Lyme, malaria, MRSA, or other condition that goes away, but a researcher who is not funded to do a double-blind randomized trial didn't care to watch, did it really work? 

My answer is, who cares about the researcher?! If it worked for the people who used it, then that's all that's important!

MMS is not the end-all in a disease releasing protocol. Gaining proper nutrition is far more important than MMS. However, chlorine dioxide effectively reduces a major contributor to the perpetuation of disease, that is, acidifying elements, such as anaerobic microorganisms, which tend to be in overgrowth for most people, and who produce more acid in through waste products, and deposits of heavy metals, and various other forms of toxicity.

A double blind randomized trial would easily do this and would be extremely easy to set up and run.

It won't help one person who hasn't actually tried and used MMS. The only way to know the efficacy of anything, is to use it. You can't do it in an intellectual vacuum.  

I’d love to know the title of a published paper that shows this?

Jim?

I’d love to see some independent verification?

Jim?

With independent verification you’d win the noble prize for medicine…

There is plenty independent verification of MMS's efficacy. A couple weeks ago I met a man who contracted malaria while on a trip to Africa. And guess what he used to get rid of it? You guessed it, MMS.

Your glib sarcasm may sound informed, but it only identifies you as one who doesn't know what he's talking about.

You might find it interesting to read Gregg Braden's The Spontaneous Healing of Beliefs. He talks about placebos, and nocebos... the effect where nothing works if the individual doesn't believe that it will.

In the final analysis, each individual decides what works for him or herself. All is placebo, including chemotherapy and radiation in those rare and infrequent cases where a person recovers. Nothing will work unless the individual allows it to. This is part of the real education and understanding that we must now incorporate into our world view.

In this moment of fractured orientation, I seek to look around and put my best into each day so that no matter what happens, I look back and smile. I have a lot to owe my parents, my Guru, my wife and my friends who all have played an active part in whatever I have done till now.

I am thankful to my parents as they have never been dependant on me financially and for offering me the freedom to grow in the way that I have. I am thankful to my Guru, Thangaswamigal, for having been the guiding force in the kind of inner growth that I have cultivated and sustained in the last five years. I am thankful to my wife for being more than a partner and friend in such a short period of time. She must get an award for having understood me in such a short period of time. I am thakful to all my friends for having given me near free accomodation in the first few months of the year.

Thanks to a lot of people. 

Lots of work to done and looking forward to the break of dawn when the night is the darkest. Breathe.

1. Love (sex)
2. Death (violence)

Or maybe both. Because all existence is an obsessive dance with this pair. They're the fundamental principles upon which all drama, all stories, all existence is based. It's not a huge shocker, so I don't think it's worth consciously thinking about or worrying about too much. But it is certainly interesting. How perverse that I would find these concepts almost more alluring than the subjects they point to, eh?

Yeah, sometimes I worry I'll get to the point where I find sex and violence so boring that I'll simply forget to exist.

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Hail अस्ति- TATVA

]]> http://theimmanent.wordpress.com/?p=8 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:47:42 +0000 theimmanent http://theimmanent.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/the-status-of-status/ There is something very quaint about the notion of social status -- something which should be immediately clear to anyone and yet seems rarely to be considered. For, certainly, while media frequently bemoans those whom it depicts as doomed to lives of low social status (and in extension "pathetic" lives), and have people shudder at the thought of being so powerless, yet what is the need of social status if not powerlessness? That is, how utterly "pathetic" is not one who frets about social status and shies the loss of it with a fervor, since he by the very act admits himself as powerless before the opinions of others.

By this I mean to say that none can make a forgery of power through attaining social status; for it is the pathetic nature of a man, not his noble nature, that drives him to accumulate it, and that makes him fear the lack of it, and that makes his mind be consumed by it. Thus, those who draw a sigh of relief at having attained a certain social status, so that they are not mistaken for "lowly ones", are the very lowly ones they hold others to be, though they are too confused about the concepts to realize it.

For how could it ever be said that a man is kingly in yearning a crown, rather than in not needing it; when he depends upon it, he is not even sovereign in his own mind, but on the contrary he is a slave, and all the conventional power he may claim is thus not truly commanded by him. On the other hand, a slave who is unperturbed by the barks of his masters and their opinions of him are to a very high degree sovereign.

But none of this is truly strange, for it should be counted as nothing but mankind's lapse in reflection that has made him worship strength and independence without realizing how the need for status is the opposite of both.

Let me take an example. 

John has a problem. The water is leaking in the faucet. Now what do you think he will say?

'Damn faucet!'

According to John, it is the faucet's problem. Can anything be more ridiculous than that?

Another not so simple example.

Ram has been asked to do something and he has not done it. What do think he will say?

'I have no time'

According to Ram, he is so busy that he has used every moment in the 24 hours available to him in a day and he has not been able to squeeze out even a single minute to try doing the task.

Apart from obvious things, the most important point is that for each person, he/ she is the centre point of the Universe and everything else revolves around them. Anything which is not in the scheme of things is the fault of some other animate or inanimate object. The result of such an approach would be that problems are more discussed and positions defended than getting to the root couse of the problem and getting it set right at a fundamental level.

Look around and you will see ramifications of the same in your office, family, friends etc etc. Public debates, political mud-slinging and what not.

It would make such a difference if people take themselves less seriously and look at what is wrong rather than who is wrong. It is time to have a discussion rather than a debate. There needs to be a serious change of things in the public conscious.