Weekend Retreat with Rupert Spira December 9-11, 2016   The winter weather kept three people from attending this weekend retreat, but the five who did attend were able to immerse themselves in the teaching and guidance provided by Rupert Spira, well respected teacher of Advaita Vedanta practice, on the subject of self-inquiry. We followed the videotaped sessions of a retreat given in Amsterdam in May of this year which featured guided meditations and explorations into the nature of awareness and the significance of realizing it as our true nature. There were also plenty of questions on various aspects of self-inquiry practice from his audience that were skillfully dealt with by Rupert. He gave some simple and effective direct ways of bringing attention to awareness and its unlimited, unbounded nature. Participants remarked that his clear and precise mode of communication makes what he is pointing to very comprehensible and available. Two short videos about Krishnamurti and his teachings were shown on Saturday evening: an introduction by Professor Alan Anderson and a BBC interview with Bernard Levin. Both are excellent and instructive presentations. The weekend also included time for walks and quiet contemplation as well as opportunities to dialogue within the group and share informally. The chance to meditate without distraction on the truths of such beautiful teachings and to benefit from the good company of other contemplators was much appreciated by all.  

  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, December 3, 2016   The four who seem to be the core members of the group met to study Chapter 21 in The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti. The title of the chapter is “Power and Realization”. K asks what will bring about a fundamental change in our consciousness and suggests that it is “everyday watchfulness, being aware from moment to moment of our motives, the conscious as well as the unconscious.” This awareness has the power to transform “what is” when the division between the observer and the observed is seen and dissolved, bringing about a state of “creative emptiness” in the mind. There was some excellent discussion of the ideas presented in the text, including the issue of doing and non-doing. Can the mind, or thought, actually do anything to bring about real change in the psyche or is it a question of seeing clearly that thought can do nothing? This and other questions were explored to some depth. Next session we will look into the Questions and Answers section of the book, beginning at #3, “Why Spiritual Teachers?”

  Eckhart Tolle – Our Human Destiny   The November Stillness Within Meetup was well attended by 14 members.  Due to a technical glitch we watched a rebroadcast of a talk called Our Human Destiny.  As usual it was an exceptional talk.   Eckhart emphasized the illusory nature of our reality and all the daily dramas there within, suggesting that our sleep states provide a valuable pointer to our awake journey toward deeper realization.  He likens the dream state to that of our awake life, if lived from a place of ‘unconsciousness’.  This unconsciousness is based in identification with thought as well as a long held egoic identity (our ideas about who we are + our unconscious programming).  That conceptual identity is experienced, much like in a dream, through dramas that are appearing.  We can observe this sense of self:  reacting, asserting, defending and even feeling reinforced or ‘fed’ by these dramas… The trials and tribulations are almost as satisfying to the egoic self as the triumphs!   He proposes that there is a ‘power’ within us that we can discover when we realize that we are actually ‘no-thing’ – there is a new sense that can be discovered that there is no one ‘here’…    For many of us, this can be a startling suggestion.  Eckhart shares his experience that the individualized personal self, egoic identity, once it becomes less ‘dense’ or even seen through, is replaced by an open sense of spaciousness.  And the sense of self can shift to a sense of simply being: an expression of pure existence/oneness/consciousness/creation.  He isn’t the only teacher to suggest that one can live primarily from that spaciousness (rather than as the personal self), although the personality can still make appearances.   Looking to Krishnamurti’s teachings (“The First and Last Freedom”), there are some strong parallels in teachings.  K. Talks about the self both in terms of the mind and also ideas within the mind, bringing in a suggestion of quiet awareness/observation:   “When you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you’re completely aware of it in action … then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating.  Whatever the mind creates is in a circle, within the field of the self…”   Similarly K. suggests: “Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas – which is the me, which is the mind… only when one can go beyond that, once thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is.”   Eckhart emphasizes that the natural state of humans is one of connection to our essential beingness and that state brings a sense of fundamental wellbeing (whereas the suffering, anxiety, fear etc. is linked to the state of separation). He also offers a sense of possibility… describing the self as being like a ripple in the ocean.  The freedom comes when the ripple sees the larger view… realizing the rippleness in the ocean and the oceanness in the ripple.  It can be discovered that the egoic sense of self is purely an illusory identity, and in fact, that the ocean (spaciousness/the infinity of existence) is the truth of who we are.  Resting in that allows something quite wonderful (and indescribable) to pour through, sometimes called the transcendent state.  This is really key to not only the end of personal suffering, but also (he speculates) could be a spark igniting a much broader expression of our collective human destiny.  

  Inquiry Sunday November 6, 2016   Sunday was a full day of “inquiry”, with morning and afternoon sessions bringing out a good number of participants. Eight of us watched three videos on the subject of “the holographic universe,” beginning with an interview between Jeffrey Mishlove and Michael Talbot, author of the book The Holographic Universe. It is an excellent discussion which sheds light on recent studies on the nature of the observer and the observed, a popular subject with David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti, as well as other concepts scientists are exploring which have correlations with nondual spiritual insights concerning the “oneness” of all reality. Two other videos exploring the same domain were helpful in making sometimes difficult scientific concepts more accessible to the average person. One of the speakers, Professor Susskind, did acknowledge that it might take quite a lot of education for most people to grasp some of the complexities. For the afternoon session, the co-authors of two interesting books, Blowing Zen and The Shadow that Seeks the Sun, were present to talk about their spiritual adventures in India. Ray and Dianne Brooks conducted the gathering in front of fourteen others with humour and wisdom as they spoke of their experiences with teachers in Rishikesh and of the truths of nondual understanding which bring seeking and suffering to an end. Ray’s long-time interest in Krishnamurti, and his meeting with K in Ojai, California, were significant contributors to his own realization. Dianne read some passages from the second book which pointed to the essence of what he learned and now lives in his daily life. Questions were fielded and there was some interesting discussion amongst the group on the topic of fear and conflict. It was an afternoon apparently enjoyed by all present.

  Science and Nonduality Weekend October 21-23, 2016   Eight people attended the various presentations available from this year’s conference in San Jose, California. There were no major technical problems and the weekend unfolded in a relaxed manner, with most of the six participants who took in the entire weekend attending almost all the events. There were a mixture of pure scientists and pure non-dual presenters, with others somewhere in between. Subjects included an opening talk by Rupert Spira on “The Nature of Consciousness,”, followed over the weekend by Heart Intelligence, Christianity and Unknowing, Inherited Family Trauma, The Spiritual Dimension of Trauma, Being a Self, Mind-Body Mechanics, The Qualitative Science of the Heart, Is the Soul Obsolete?, Mongolian Shamanic Trance, Emotional Sentience, Science and Spirituality, The Freedom of Nothing to Grasp, along with an excellent video presentation by Ken Wilber entitled “The Edge of the Unknown in the Human Being.” Some entertaining humour was inserted with Swami Beyondananda, and some traditional satsang with Francis Lucille. There were four panel discussions over the weekend. We added videos of David Bohm in conversation with David Suzuki, an interview with Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe, and a video of the same name. We also played an audio clip of David Bohm speaking on the nature of thought and its tendency to deceive itself. Highlights for the writer were Kabir Helminski (The Qualitative Science of the Heart), Swami Beyondananda, Francis Lucille, Joan Tollifson, and particularly Ken Wilber, who was obviously suffering from a debilitating disease. There was far more material than can be described in this report. Overall, there seemed to be a fairly good integration of the scientific perspective with the “spiritual” one, and many presentations were inspiring, but sometimes the scientific language was all but incomprehensible to the majority of us who took part in the live streamed event. All participants reported that they enjoyed the weekend very much and found it to speak to some of their real interests.