June 2009
SuperWisdom Foundation
Tom Russell, Editor
Table of Contents:
1) Vernon Howard: The Power of Your Supermind
2) J. Krishnamurti: Commentaries on Living Vol One
3) Idries Shah: The Commanding Self
4) Anthony de Mello: The Heart of the Enlighened
Enjoy these super powerful excerpts from authentic teachers of the inner life. Please forward this newsletter on to your friends.
Vernon Howard
From The Power of Your Supermind
a. The only true, honest, and enriching authority is the internal authority of your own Supermind. Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. (Buddha)
b. Consistently place yourself closer and closer to the secret source within yourself. The source itself becomes your newness. It is like a grove of trees bordering a river. The greenness and vitality of each individual tree is determined by its closeness to the river.
c. Try to see the difference between mere mental improvement and the development of cosmic consciousness. Mental improvement is good and legitimate, as when learning a profession or sharpening your skill at chess. However, mental improvement cannot penetrate the psycic world to make you happier, freer, or intelligent in the cosmic sense. To store facts away in the memory is like feeding information to a mechanical computer. The computer can only repeat what it has been told and nothing more. But consciousness — awareness — is always something new. It is never the mechanical parroting of memorized information.
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Recently SuperWisdom conducted an online class focused on Chapter One of Vernon Howard’s classic Mystic Path to Cosmic Power. Click here to listen.
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J. Krishnamurti
From Commentaries on Living Vol One
a. Confusion arises from the conflict between what you are and the myth of what you should be. The myth, the ideal, is unreal; it is a self-projected escape, it has no actuality. The actual is what you are. What you are is much more important than what you should be. You can understand what is, but you cannot understand what you should be. There is no understanding of an illusion, there is only understanding of the way it comes into being.
b. The mind . . . feeds on problems, whether they are world or kitchen problems, political or personal, religious or ideological; so our problems make us petty and narrow. A mind that is consumed with world problems is as petty as the mind that worries about the spiritual progress it is making. Problems burden the mind with fear, for problems give strength to the self, to the “me” and the “mine.” Without problems, without achievements and failuresd, the self is not.
c. It is an odd fact that followers like to be bullied and directed, whether softly or harshly. They think the harsh treatment is part of their training — training in spiritual success. The desire to be hurt, to be rudely shaken, is part of the pleasure of hurting; and this mutual degradation of the leader and the follower is the outcome of the desire for sensation. It is because you want greater sensation that you follow and so create a leader, a guru; and for this new gratification you will sacrifice, put up with discomfort, insults and discouragements. All this is part of mutual exploitation, it has nothing whatever to do with reality and will never lead to happiness.
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J. Krishnamurti shook the world with his daring speech before The Order of the Star. He dissolved it. In this widely listened to podcast Tom and Fred review key parts of this amazing moment in history.
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Idries Shah:
From The Commanding Self
a. The way out … is to refuse to dilute, to abstain from popularising, to deny oneself the satisfaction of compromising, when dealing with materials which unless absorbed in the manner which yields results turn into something else: into entertainment.
b. There are times and places where it is more important for people with mutual spiritual interests to be apart rather than together. Those who understand this and have experienced it are the spiritual people. Those who have not, are part of a sociological phenomenon: herding.
c. Looking at the history and development of belief-systems, it is not hard to perceive that they always deteroriate in their flexibility and capacity to understand. They also, as a consequence, tend to rely more and more upon authority and over-simplification.
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In this two part podcast series we explore Idries Shah’s deep insights on Learning How to Learn. What does it take to really absorb and live lofty spiritual Truths? What are some of the traps and pitfalls?
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Anthony de Mello :
From The Heart of the Enlighened
A large truck was moving through a railway underpass when it got wedged in between the road and the girders overhead. All the efforts of the experts to extricate it proved useless, and traffic was stalled for miles on both sides of the underpass.
A little boy kept trying to get the attention of the foreman but was always pushed away. Finally in sheer exasperation, the foreman said, “I suppose you’ve come to tell us how to do this job!”
“Yes,” said the child. “I suggest you let some air out of the tires.”
In the layman’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.
That’s all for today.
Cordially,
Tom
