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  • Samadhi

  • is an ancient Sanskrit word, for which there is no modern equivalent.

  • There is a fundamental challenge with making a film about Samadhi.

  • Samadhi points to something that can’t be conveyed on the level of mind.

  • This film is simply the outer manifestation of my own inner journey.

  • The intention is not to teach you about Samadhi, or provide information for your mind, but

  • to inspire you to directly discover your true nature.

  • Samadhi is relevant now more than ever.

  • We are at a time in history where we have not only forgotten Samadhi, but we have forgotten

  • what we forgot.

  • This forgetting is Maya, the illusion of the self.

  • As humans most of us live immersed in our daily lives, with little thought of who we

  • are, why we are here, or where were going.

  • Most of us have never realized the true self, the soul or what the Buddha called annata

  • - that which is beyond name and form, beyond thinking.

  • As a result we believe we are these limited bodies.

  • We live in fear, either conscious or unconscious, that the limited self structure that we are

  • identified with, will die.

  • In today's world the vast majority of people who are engaged in religious or spiritual

  • practices such as yoga, prayer, meditation, chanting or any kind of ritual, are practicing

  • techniques which are conditioned.

  • Which means they are just part of the ego construct.

  • The seeking and the activity isn’t the problem- thinking you have found the answer in some

  • external form is the problem.

  • Spirituality in its most common form is no different than the pathological thinking that

  • is going on everywhere.

  • It is a further agitation of the mind.

  • More human doing, as opposed to human being.

  • The ego construct wants more money, more power, more love, more of everything.

  • Those on the so-called spiritual path desire to be more spiritual, more awake, more equanimous,

  • more peaceful, more enlightened.

  • The danger for you watching this film is that your mind will want to acquire Samadhi . Even

  • more dangerous is that your mind might think it has acquired Samadhi.

  • Whenever there is a desire to attain something you can be sure that it is the ego construct

  • at work.

  • Samadhi is not about attaining or adding anything to yourself.

  • To realize Samadhi is to learn to die before you die.

  • Life and death are like yin and yang- an inseparable continuum.

  • Endlessly unfolding, with no beginning and no end.

  • When we push away death, we also push away life.

  • When you experience the truth directly of who you are, there is no longer fear of life

  • or death.

  • We are told who we are by our society and our culture, and at the same - time we are

  • slaves to the deeper unconscious biological craving and aversion that governs our choices.

  • The ego construct is nothing more than the impulse to repeat.

  • It is simply the path that energy once took and the tendency for the energy to take that

  • path again, whether it is positive or negative for the organism.

  • There are endless levels of memory or mind, spirals within spirals.

  • When your consciousness identifies with this mind or ego construct, it ties you to social

  • conditioning, which you could call the matrix.

  • There are aspects of the ego that we can be conscious of, but it is the unconscious, the

  • archaic wiring, the primal existential fears, that are actually driving the whole machine.

  • Endless patterns of grasping towards pleasure and avoidance of pain are sublimated into

  • pathological behaviours .... our work.... our relationships.... our beliefs, our very

  • thoughts, and our whole way of living.

  • Like cattle, most humans live and die in passive subjugation, feeding their lives to the matrix.

  • We live lives locked into narrow patterns.

  • Lives often filled with great suffering, and it never occurs to us that we can actually

  • become free.

  • It is possible to let go of the life that has been inherited from the past, to live

  • the one that is waiting to come forth through the inner world.

  • We were all born into this world with biological conditioned structures, but without self awareness.

  • Often when you look into a young child's eyes there is no trace of self, only luminous emptiness.

  • The person one grows into is a mask worn over consciousness.

  • Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players".

  • In an awakened individual, consciousness shines through the personality, through the mask.

  • When you are awake, you don't become identified with your character.

  • You don't believe that you are the masks that you are wearing.

  • But nor do you give up playing a role.

  • Twenty-four hundred years after Plato wrote the Republic, humanity is still making its

  • way out of Plato's cave.

  • In fact we may be more transfixed by illusions than ever.

  • Plato had Socrates describe a group of people who lived chained in a cave all of their lives,

  • facing a blank wall.

  • All they could see were shadows projected on the wall by the things passing in front

  • of a fire which was behind them.

  • This puppet show becomes their world.

  • According to Socrates, the shadows were as close as the prisoners would ever get to seeing

  • reality.

  • Even after being told about the outside world they continued to believe that the shadows

  • were all that is.

  • Even if they suspected there was something more they were unwilling to leave what was

  • familiar.

  • Humanity today is like the people who have only seen the shadows on the cave wall.

  • The shadows are analogous to our thoughts.

  • The world of thinking is the only world that we know.

  • But there is another world that is beyond thinking.

  • Beyond the dualistic mind.

  • Are you willing to leave the cave, to leave all that you have known to find out the truth

  • of who you are?

  • In order to experience Samadhi it is necessary to turn attention away from the shadows, away

  • from the thoughts towards the light.

  • When a person is only used to darkness then they must gradually become accustomed to the

  • light.

  • Like acclimatizing to any new paradigm it takes time and effort, and a willingness to

  • explore the new, as well as shed the old.

  • The mind can be likened to a trap for consciousness, a labyrinth or a prison.

  • It is not that you are in prison, you are the prison.

  • The prison is an illusion.

  • If you are identified with an illusory self, then you are asleep.

  • Once you are aware of the prison, if you fight to get out of the illusion, then you are treating

  • the illusion as if it is real and you still remain asleep, except now the dream becomes

  • a nightmare.

  • You will be chasing and running from shadows forever.

  • Samadhi is awakening from the dream of the separate self or the egoic construct.

  • Samadhi is awakening from identification with the prison that I call me.

  • You can never actually be free, because wherever you go your prison is there.

  • Awakening is not about get rid of the mind or the matrix, on the contrary; when you are

  • not identified with it, then you can experience the play of life more fully, enjoying the

  • show as it is, without craving or fear.

  • In the ancient teachings this was called the divine game of Leila: the game of playing

  • in duality.

  • Human consciousness is a continuum.

  • On one extreme, humans are identified with the material self.

  • On the other extreme is Samadhi, the cessation of self.

  • Every step we take on the continuum towards Samadhi, brings less suffering.

  • Less suffering does not mean life is free from pain.

  • Samadhi is beyond the duality of pain and pleasure.

  • What it means is that there is less mind, less self creating resistance to whatever

  • unfolds and that resistance is what creates suffering.

  • Realizing Samadhi even once allows you to see what is at the other end of the continuum.

  • To see that there is something other than the material world and self interest.

  • When there is an actual cessation of the self structure in Samadhi there is no egoic thought,

  • no self, no duality yet there is still the I am, annata or no self.

  • In that emptiness is the dawn of prajna or wisdom- the understanding that the immanent

  • self is far beyond the play of duality, beyond the entire continuum.

  • The immanent self is timeless, unchanging, always now.

  • Enlightenment is the merging of the primordial spiral, the ever-changing manifested world

  • or lotus in which time unfolds, with your timeless being.

  • Your inner wiring grows like an ever-unfolding flower as you disidentify with the self, becoming

  • a living bridge between the world of time and the timeless.

  • Merely realizing the immanent self is only the beginning of one’s path.

  • Most people will have to experience and lose Samadhi countless times in meditation before

  • they are able to integrate it into other facets of life.

  • It is not unusual to have profound insights into the nature of your being during meditation

  • or self inquiry, only to find yourself once again falling back into old patterns, forgetting

  • the truth of who you are.

  • To realize that stillness or emptiness in every facet of life, every facet of one’s

  • self, is to become emptiness dancing as all things.

  • Stillness is not something separate from movement.

  • It is not opposite to movement.

  • In Samadhi stillness is recognized to be identical with movement, form is identical to emptiness.

  • This is nonsensical to the mind because mind is the coming into being of duality.

  • Rene Descartes, the father of western philosophy, is famous for the saying “I think therefore

  • I am”.

  • No other phrase more clearly encapsulates the fall of civilisation and the full scale

  • identification with the shadows on the cave wall.

  • Descarteserror, like the error of almost all humans, was the equating of fundamental

  • being with thinking.

  • At the beginning of his most famous treatise, Descartes wrote that almost everything can

  • be called into doubt; he can doubt his senses, and even his thoughts.

  • Likewise in the Kalama Sutra the Buddha said that in order to ascertain the truth, one

  • must doubt all traditions, scriptures, teachings and all of the content of one’s mind and

  • senses.

  • Both of these men started with great scepticism, but the difference was that Descartes stopped

  • inquiring at the level of thinking, while the Buddha went deeper- he penetrated beyond

  • the deepest levels of the mind.

  • Maybe if Descartes had gone beyond his thinking mind, he would have realized his true nature

  • and Western consciousness would be very different today.

  • Instead, Descartes described the possibility of an evil demon that could be keeping us

  • under a veil of illusion.

  • Descartes did not recognize this evil demon for what it was.

  • As in the movie the Matrix, we could all be hooked up to some elaborate program feeding

  • us an illusory dream world.

  • In the movie, humans lived out their lives in the matrix, while on another level they

  • were merely batteries, feeding their life force to the machines which used their energy

  • for their own agenda.

  • People always want to blame something outside of themselves for the state of the world or

  • for their own unhappiness.

  • Whether it is a person, a particular group or country, religion or some kind of controlling

  • Illuminati like Descartesevil demon, or the sentient machines in the Matrix.

  • Ironically, the demon that Descartes envisioned was the very thing that he defined himself

  • by.

  • When you realize Samadhi, it becomes clear that there is a controller, there is a machine,

  • and evil demon leaching your life day after day.

  • The machine is you.

  • Your self structure is made up of many little conditioned sub-programs or little bosses.

  • One little boss that craves food, another craves money, another status, position, power,

  • sex, intimacy.

  • Another wants consciousness or attention from others.

  • The desires are literally endless and can never be satisfied.

  • We spend a lot of our time and energy decorating our prisons, succumbing to pressures to improve

  • our masks, and feeding the little bosses, making them more powerful.

  • Like drug addicts, the more we try to satisfy the little bosses, the more we end up craving.

  • The path to freedom is not self improvement, or somehow satisfying the self’s agenda,

  • but it’s a dropping of the self’s agenda altogether.

  • Some people fear that awakening their true nature will mean that they lose their individuality

  • and enjoyment of life.

  • Actually, the opposite is true; the unique individuation of the soul can only be expressed

  • when the conditioned self is overcome.

  • Because we remain asleep in the matrix most of us never find out what the soul actually

  • wants to express.

  • The path to Samadhi involves meditation, which is both observing the conditioned self; that

  • which changes, and realizing your true nature; that which does not change.

  • When you come to your still point, the source of your being, then you await further instructions

  • without any insistence on how your outer world has to change.

  • Not my will, but higher will be done.

  • If the mind only tries to change the outer world to conform with some idea of what you

  • think the path should be, it is like trying to change the image in a mirror by manipulating

  • the reflection.

  • To make the image in a mirror smile you obviously can’t manipulate the reflection, you have

  • to realize the you that is the authentic source of the reflection.

  • Once you realize the authentic self, it doesn’t mean that anything on the outside necessarily

  • needs to change.

  • What changes is the conscious, intelligent, inner energy or prana which is freed from

  • conditioned patterns and becomes available to be directed by the soul.

  • You can only become aware of the soul’s purpose when you are able to watch the conditioned

  • self and its endless pursuits, and let them go.

  • In Greek mythology, it was said that the gods condemned Sisyphus to repeat a meaningless

  • task for all eternity.

  • His task was to endlessly push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll down again.

  • The

  • French existentialist and Nobel Prize winning author, Albert Camus, saw the situation of

  • Sisyphus as a metaphor for humanity.

  • He asked the question, ‘How can we find meaning in this absurd existence?’.

  • As humans we are toiling endlessly, building for a tomorrow that never arrives, and then

  • we die.

  • If we truly realize this truth then we will either go mad if we are identified with our

  • egoic personas, or we will awaken and become free.

  • We can never succeed in the outer struggle, because it is just a reflection of our inner

  • world.

  • The cosmic joke, the absurdity of the situation becomes clear when there is a complete and

  • utter failure of the egoic self to awaken through its futile pursuits.

  • In Zen there is a saying, “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water.

  • After enlightenment chop wood, carry water”.

  • Before enlightenment one must roll the ball up the hill, after enlightenment one must

  • also roll the ball up the hill.

  • What has changed?

  • The inner resistance to what is.

  • The struggle has been dropped, or rather the one who struggles has been realized to be

  • illusory.

  • The individual will or individual mind and divine will, or higher mind, are aligned.

  • Samadhi is ultimately a dropping of all inner resistance - to all changing phenomena, without

  • exception.

  • The one who is able to realize inner peace, irrespective of circumstance has attained

  • true Samadhi.

  • You drop resistance not because you condone one thing or another, but so that your inner

  • freedom is not contingent on the outer.

  • It’s important to note that when we accept reality as it is, it doesn’t necessarily

  • mean that we stop taking action in the world, or we become meditating pacifists.

  • Actually the opposite can be true; when were free to act without being driven by unconscious

  • motives, then it is possible to act in alignment with the Tao, with the full force of our inner

  • energy behind us.

  • Many will argue that in order to change the world and bring about peace we need to fight

  • harder against our perceived enemies.

  • Fighting for peace is like shouting for silence; it just creates more of what you don’t want.

  • These days there is a war against everything: a war against terror, a war against disease,

  • a war against hunger.

  • Every war is actually a war against ourselves.

  • The fight is part of a collective delusion.

  • We say that we want peace, but we continue to elect leaders who engage in war.

  • We lie to ourselves saying that we are for human rights, but continue to buy products

  • made in sweatshops.

  • We say we want clean air, but we continue to pollute.

  • We want science to cure us of cancer but won’t change our self-destructive habitual behaviours

  • that make us more likely to be sick.

  • We delude ourselves that we are promoting a better life.

  • We don’t want to see our hidden parts that are condoning suffering and death.

  • The belief that we can win a war against cancer, hunger, terror, or any enemy that was created

  • by our own thinking and behaviour, actually lets us continue to delude ourselves that

  • we don’t have to change the way that we operate on this planet.

  • The inner world is where the revolution must first take place.

  • Only when we can directly feel the spiral of life within will the outer world come into

  • alignment with the Tao.

  • Until then, anything we do will add to the chaos already created by the mind.

  • War and peace arise together in an endless dance; they are one continuum.

  • One half cannot exist without the other.

  • Just as light cannot exist without dark, and up cannot exist without down.

  • The world seems to want light without darkness, fullness without emptiness, happiness without

  • sadness.

  • The more the mind gets involved, the more fragmented the world becomes.

  • Every solution that comes from the egoic mind is driven by the idea that there is a problem,

  • and the solution becomes an even greater problem than what it was trying to solve.

  • What you resist persists.

  • Human ingenuity creates new antibiotics only to find nature getting more cunning as bacteria

  • gets stronger.

  • Despite our best efforts in the ongoing fight, the prevalence of cancer is actually increasing,

  • the number of hungry people in the world steadily grows, the number of terrorist attacks worldwide

  • continues to rise.

  • What’s wrong with our approach?

  • Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Goethe’s poem, we have taken hold of a great power,

  • but do not have the wisdom to wield it.

  • The problem is that we do not understand the tool that we are using.

  • We do not understand the human mind and its proper role and purpose.

  • The crisis is born of the limited conditioned way in which we think, the way we feel and

  • experience life.

  • Our rationalism has robbed us of our ability to recognize and experience the wisdom of

  • many ancient cultures.

  • Our egoic thinking has robbed us of the ability to feel the depth and profound sacredness

  • of life, the numinosity of life, and to realize entirely different levels of consciousness,

  • which are now almost lost to humanity.

  • In the ancient Egyptian tradition, Neters were archetypal forms whose characteristics

  • could be embodied by those who purified their physical and spiritual bodies in such a way

  • that they were fit to house higher consciousnesses.

  • The original Neter, or the divine principle of this wisdom was known as Thoth or Tehuti.

  • Often depicted as a scribe with the head of a bird or Ibis, and represented the origin

  • of all knowledge and wisdom.

  • Thoth could be described as the cosmic principle of thinking or thought.

  • Thoth gave us language, concepts, writing, mathematics, and all the arts and manifestations

  • of the mind.

  • Only those who had gone through special training were allowed to access Thoth’s sacred knowledge.

  • The book of Thoth is not a physical book, but is the wisdom of the akashic or etheric

  • realm.

  • Legend tells that Thoth’s knowledge was deeply hidden in a secret place within every

  • human being, and was protected by a golden serpent.

  • The archetypal or perennial myth of the serpent or dragon guarding a treasure is one that

  • permeates many cultures and has been called by names such as kundalini shakti, chi, holy

  • spirit, and inner energy.

  • The golden serpent is the egoic construct which is bound in the inner energies and until

  • it is mastered and overcome, the soul will never be able to attain true wisdom.

  • It was said that the book of Thoth brought nothing but suffering to any individual who

  • read it, even though they would find the secrets of the gods themselves and all that is hidden

  • within the stars.

  • What must be understood is that the book brought suffering to any individual who read it, any

  • ego that tried to control it.

  • In the Egyptian tradition awakened consciousness was represented by Osiris.

  • Without this awakened consciousness, any knowledge or understanding obtained by the limited self

  • would be dangerous, disconnected from higher wisdom.

  • The eye of Horus had to be open.

  • The esoteric meaning that we find here is similar to the more familiar story ofthe

  • fallin the garden of Eden.

  • The book of Thoth parallels the book of knowledge of good and evil whose fruit Adam and Eve

  • were tempted to eat.

  • Humanity of course has already eaten the forbidden fruit, already opened the book of Thoth, and

  • has been cast out of the garden.

  • The serpent is a metaphor for the primordial spiral that extends from the microcosm to

  • the macrocosm.

  • Today the serpent is living as you.

  • It is the egoic mind expressed as the manifested world.

  • We have never before had access to so much knowledge.

  • We have gone deep into the material world, even finding the so-called God particle, but

  • we have never been more limited, more ignorant of who we are, how to live, and we do not

  • understand the mechanism by which we create suffering.

  • Our thinking has created the world as it is now.

  • Whenever we label something as good or bad, or create preference in our mind it is due

  • to the coming into being of egoic structures or self interests.

  • The solution is not to fight for peace or conquer nature, but to simply recognize the

  • truth; that the very existence of the ego structure creates duality, a split between

  • self and other, mine and yours, man and nature, inner and outer.

  • The ego is violence; it requires a barrier, a boundary from the other in order to be.

  • Without ego there is no war against anything.

  • There is no hubris, there is no overreaching nature to create profit.

  • These external crises in our world reflect a serious inner crises; we don’t know who

  • we are.

  • We are completely identified with our egoic identities, consumed by fears and are cut

  • off from our true nature.

  • Races, religions, countries, political affiliations, any group that we belong to, all reinforce

  • our egoic identities.

  • Almost every group that exists on the planet today wants to claim its perspective as true

  • and correct, as we do on an individual level.

  • By claiming the truth as its own, the group perpetuates its own existence in the same

  • way that an ego or self structure defines itself against other.

  • Now more than ever different realities and polarized belief systems are co-existing on

  • earth.

  • It is possible for different people to experience completely different thoughts and emotional

  • reactions to the very same external phenomena.

  • In the same way, samsara and nirvana, heaven and hell, are two different dimensions occupying

  • the very same world.

  • An event that may appear apocalyptic to one person, could be seen as a blessing to another.

  • So what is becoming obvious is that your external circumstances don’t have to affect your

  • inner world in any particular way.

  • To realize Samadhi is to become a self-propelled wheel, to become autonomous, a universe unto

  • oneself.

  • Your experience of life is not contingent on changing phenomena.

  • An analogy can be made with Metatron’s cube.

  • Metatron is mentioned in various ancient Christian, Islamic and Jewish texts, and is archetypally

  • related to the Egyptian Neter Thoth, as well as Hermes Trismegistus of Greece.

  • Metatron is intimately connected with the tetragrammaton.

  • The tetragrammaton is the fundamental geometric pattern, the template or primordial emanation

  • of physical reality, which has been called the word of God or Logos.

  • Here we see a two dimensional representation of the figure, but if you look a certain way,

  • you see a three D cube.

  • When you see the cube, nothing has changed in the figure, but your mind has added a new

  • dimension to your seeing.

  • Dimensionality or one’s perspective is simply a matter of becoming habituated to a new way

  • of perceiving the world.

  • Upon realizing Samadhi we become free of perspective, or free to create new perspectives, because

  • there is no self invested in or attached to a particular viewpoint.

  • The greatest minds in human history have often pointed to levels of thought beyond the limited

  • self structure.

  • Einstein saidThe true measure of a human being is determined primarily by the measure

  • and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

  • So it’s not that thinking and the existence of the self is bad, thinking is a wonderful

  • tool when the mind is in service to the heart.

  • In Vedanta it is said that the mind makes a good servant but a poor master.

  • The ego perpetually filters reality through language and labels, and is constantly judging.

  • Preferring one thing over another.

  • When the mind and senses are your master, they will create endless suffering, endless

  • craving and aversion, locking us into the matrix of thinking.

  • If you want to realize Samadhi, do not judge your thoughts as good or bad, but find out

  • who you are prior to thought, prior to the senses.

  • When all labels are dropped then it is possible to see things as they are.

  • The moment a child is told what a bird is, if they believe what theyre told then they

  • never see a bird again.

  • They only see their thoughts.

  • Most people think that they are free, conscious and awake.

  • If you believe you are already awake, then why would you do the difficult work to attain

  • what you believe you already have?

  • Before it becomes possible to awaken, it is necessary to accept that you are asleep, living

  • in the matrix.

  • Examine your life honestly, without lying to yourself.

  • Are you able to stop your robotic, repetitive life patterns if you want to?

  • Can you stop seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, are you addicted to certain foods, activities,

  • pastimes?

  • Are you constantly judging, blaming, criticizing yourself and others?

  • Does your mind incessantly seek out stimulus, or are you completely fulfilled just being

  • in silence?

  • Do you react to how people think about you?

  • Are you seeking approval, positive reinforcement?

  • Do you somehow sabotage situations in your life?

  • Most people will experience their lives the same way today as they will tomorrow and a

  • year from now, and ten years from now.

  • When you begin to observe your robot-like nature you become more awake.

  • You begin to recognize the depth of the problem.

  • You are completely and utterly asleep, lost in a dream.

  • Like the inhabitants of Plato’s cave, most who hear this truth will not be willing or

  • capable of changing their lives because they are attached to their familiar patterns.

  • We go to great lengths justifying our patterns, burying our heads in the sand rather than

  • facing the truth.

  • We want our saviours, but we are not willing to get up on the cross ourselves.

  • What are you willing to pay to be free?

  • Realize that if you change your inner world, you must be prepared to change the outer life.

  • Your old structure and your old identity must become the dead soil out of which new growth

  • comes.

  • The first step to awakening is to realize that we are identified with the matrix of

  • the human mind, with the mask.

  • Something within us must hear this truth and be roused from its slumber.

  • There is a part of you, something timeless, that has always known the truth.

  • The matrix of the mind distracts us, entertains us, keeps us endlessly doing, consuming, grasping,

  • in a cycle of craving and aversion with constantly changing forms, keeping us from the flowering

  • of our consciousness, from our evolutionary birthright which is Samadhi.

  • Pathological thinking is what passes for normal life.

  • Your divine essence has become enslaved, identified with the limited self structure.

  • The great wisdom, the truth of who you are is buried deep within your being.

  • J. Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of one’s health to be well adjusted to a

  • profoundly sick society.”

  • Identification with the egoic mind is the sickness and Samadhi is the cure.

  • The saints, sages and awakened beings throughout history have all learned the wisdom of self-surrender.

  • How is it possible to realize the true self?

  • When you peer through the veil of Maya, and let go of the illusory self, what is left?

Samadhi

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