The Consciousness in Things

A very interesting comment by a visitor having until now never expressed herself, prompts me to take up the topic she talks about, as the subject of this next post on my Research Blog:
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On 12/27/2012 11:38 PM, WordPress wrote:

New comment waiting approval on Lab of Evolution Anneli Karlsten Montin commented on The Inner Meaning I See in What Happened Here RecentlyBhaga, thanks for your blog posts, I find them peaceful, funny and curious, and also deeply interesting. I found Olga Kharitidis book about Altai, Umai etc really fascinating, and it reminded me that we can approach the truth about life’s reality from different angles, and still find the same source in the bottom. I wonder now, are you familiar with the work of Machaelle Wright? I have studied her books and workshops for some 6 years now, and use what I have learned from there daily. She is in conscious contact with the intelligence within form around (and within) us, and she simply describes her experiences and what she has come to understand about this aspect of life. She calls it nature intelligence, and it is the conscious life that is all form (more specifically the devic level that designs the forms, the nature spirit level that inhabits and lives in the forms). We humans have our free will, but not the all-covering knowledge about balance. We may be in contact with this nature intelligence unconsciously (when we follow our gut instinct) and create some really good things, or we may be far from in contact with it, and just go ahead and create very unbalanced versions of our intentions. Here, in this conclusion of her discoverings, it is not that we are making manifestations happen, we are not “gods”, but instead nature follows our intentions, our focus, and simply create it for us according to the choices we make with our free will, in order for us to learn from what we just created. We get to know ourselves, and now it is also time, urges Machaelle (after being deeply involved in communicating with nature for 35 years, and to apply their knowledge), to get to know nature intelligence. We are equal, co-creative partners in an involutionary/evolutionary balance, where we make the decisions in what to do and what to create here in our daily lives and on earth, meanwhile nature supplies the matter, means and action to make it come into five sense form. If we keep neglecting all the immediate and all-covering knowledge about dynamic balance in life (in every level of existence, micro and macro), we keep creating very unbalanced results around us. If we start turning to the intelligence within form, and ask “How is it appropriate to build this house/vehicle/garden?”, then we get results that are highly balanced.I both wanted to present you with this concept and hear your thoughts or maybe even experiences from this, and also I wanted to let you know where I come from in my view of life (as a way to present myself at the same time, since I don’t have any blog of my own yet, which by the way seems really stimulating to have…) .Kindest regards, Anneli, Sweden Approve  Trash | Mark as Spam More information about Anneli Karlsten Montin IP: 83.226.78.204, c-cc4ee253.5707940–62697410.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se E-mail: anneli.karlsten@hotmail.com URL: Whois: http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/83.226.78.204 Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

At the time of writing this, my internet connection, as often, isn’t working, so I have been unable to go and check anything yet about Machaelle Wright, but I guess I can still start answering Anneli just from the viewpoint on this offered by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, as well as from the direct experience I happen to have had myself about this for many years.
What is certainly a distinctive aspect of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s evolutive vision and work is that:
1/ it includes the transformation of Matter too, and
2/ this transformation of Matter is to happen through a gradual awakening of the consciousness that has been present since ever in Matter itself, just as in every other level of the One Reality there is.
In this blog, what I mostly speak of regarding this, is the awakening of our body-cells’ consciousness, because this new development is already a fact difficult enough for most people to become used to, for a start!…
But Evolution is definitely not concerned with us Humans only, the new Consciousness-Force now at work everywhere on this planet is affecting everything.
Moreover, the very reason why it was indispensable for this new Energy to be activated at last in the atmosphere and very substance of the Earth, was that only this Supramental Energy, and not the other energies activated one after the other for the previous steps of terrestrial evolution, would have the power necessary for the consciousness in Matter itself to finally awaken back to its own secret divine nature. Without this awakening and divinisation of Matter too, one could never really speak of a ‘Life Divine’ upon Earth, for our poor physical bodies would be condemned to remaining in their present condition, which is far from being divine, with the constant and ineluctable threat of wound, disease or death. The tremendous unused potential that even scientists are starting to see in our DNA and in the normal immortality of our body-cells would remain only that: an unused potential.
In the past some of us humans had been awakening at other levels of our being, thanks to the growing activity of the spirit within each of us, for Evolution kept leading us forward, as a species too, into a life more and more influenced and guided from within by our innermost being: our soul.
But our physical body and generally all things physical were still considered off limits for this gradual spiritualisation of our being: Matter in itself was still believed to be alien and opposed to the Spirit, and devoid of consciousness.
This is changing, though. More and more of our renowned contemporary scientists now refute the materialistic dogma that is still the official basis of our therefore obviously futile attempts to understand the world in which we live, and ourselves within that world: more and more experiments everywhere show the undeniable presence of some form of consciousness, and even of will-power and capacity of choice, in everything, down to the quantum particles that are the very constituents of Matter.
The work of Pr. Amit Goswamy is particularly revealing and daring in this regard.
But we who concern ourselves, not in abstractions, but in what can be practically done already in our lives dedicated to Conscious Evolution, will not wait for the mainstream scientists to finally acknowledge the truth: with or without their permission, we will immediately take advantage of all the possibilities offered to us by this factual truth that Spirit and Matter are actually one, two forms of the very same unique Reality that everything there is, is part of.
Since ever there have been human beings capable of contacting the vibratory contents left in objects (rings, for example) by those who at some point used them on a daily basis, and of restituting the experiential origin of those vibratory ‘recordings’, with all the vividness of the visual and emotional situation, be it from centuries or millennia ago, a capacity known as Psychometry today.
And even more commonly, every modern man who has taken care of his beloved car like so many of them still do in spite of living in a ‘consumers’ society’ that pushes them to change their car again and again; most men build a relationship with their car that they know is really reciprocated by the car in some way, as crazy as this may seem to a dry rational mind. I remember a wonderful book by Lyall Watson that focused on that particularity of objects in general to last longer or remain in better condition than normal, because of the amount of actual tenderness their owners bestow upon them. In Lyall Watson’s findings, the opposite was true too: there were many cases of objects of all kinds taking revenge, so to say, on their careless or brutal owners by finding ways to hurt them or sometimes even kill them if they could manage that!!!
When I read that book, I was not surprised by those findings: in our little world of Auroville, I am well-known for the uncanny way the objects and clothes I use last much longer than they generally do for other people. I must say I am indeed the caring type to an especially high degree, and build up a little relationship with everything that is part of my daily world, and this may include sometimes everything I happen to come in contact with outside of my world.
Some other Aurovilians, not to mention all the ‘normal ‘ persons I also meet, probably consider me a bit queer if they see me saying a few words to the object I hold, or caressing it briefly the way I would an animal pet, but I know I am right, and my body knows it too: just as I am writing this, the body-cells in both my hands, although quite busy typing all these words for me on my laptop, still communicated fervently their own approval to me by suddenly warming up and sending to my central consciousness the memory of a totally unexpected (as usual…) but so moving experience I had years ago:
I was doing the dishes; and I was not doing the dishes consciously at that precise moment, I was doing them as unconsciously as anybody else would who is not leading a life of Conscious Evolution. I must have been preoccupied by some stupid usual human reason for being preoccupied, so instead of paying attention to what I was doing, I was washing those dishes with my mind somewhere else… when suddenly my attention was brought back to what was really happening – for something was indeed happening, something very special, down there in that sink, between my hands and those dishes they were washing: my hands – not me, but my hands – were full of love, radiating it quietly but so strongly it was the intense feeling of that love that had pulled my attention back there; slowly, lovingly, they were caressing the dishes they were washing, with as much tenderness and care as a mama would her child; and the cups and plates and bowls were responding joyously to their touch, and sending back love too to them, it was a wonderful flow of love from matter to matter, like a dance of love within Matter itself, so utterly sweet and moving that a few tears of soul joy rolled down my cheeks, while I was witnessing this so simple, yet so miraculous little event happening silently in that sink, on this small planet, in this tiny corner of the universe…

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Les Deux Expériences de 2002 reliées à Celle Maintenant de Gaia

C’est quand même bien utile, cette habitude que j’ai prise depuis très longtemps, d’écrire,  ne fût-ce que sous forme de brèves notes, ce que je vis intérieurement, genre rêve ou expérience ou autre fait important! C’est grâce à cette habitude que je viens de retrouver dans le carnet de 2002, où je me rappelais fort bien l’avoir notée, l’expérience super-puissante à Chartres… et puis en cherchant celle-là, quelques pages avant je suis tombée sur la description première de l’expérience qui lui est maintenant reliée, celle de moi-même en tant que vajra/dorje tibétain étincelant de lumière…!
C’était le jeudi 9 mai 2002, en fin de journée, j’ai noté:
“Séance de massage sacro-cranial chez I., avec sa géode améthyste d’abord aux pieds puis à la tête.
A la fin, image soudaine:
Au niveau du nombril, une sorte de joyau lumineux blanc lançant des sortes d’éclairs très blancs dans tous les sens, et le reste du corps, ou du moins sa forme extérieure ou énergétique, apparaissait tel un dorje tibétain.”
C’était donc il y a déjà dix ans!!! Je n’avais à l’époque aucune attirance spéciale pour le Tibet et ses objets rituels de culte, habituellement en cuivre ou autre matériau opaque, à l’aspect aussi obscur et peu bienveillant que la plupart des divinités qu’ils servaient à adorer; mais là, ce dorje totalement transparent et lumineux, c’était autre chose!…
C’est pendant l’été de la même année que j’ai pu enfin aller à Chartres. Voici ce que j’ai écrit plus tard à ce sujet, dans le même carnet:
“Il est temps maintenant de noter ce qui s’est passé le 12 Juillet, au cours de ma visite à Chartres grâce à la gentille invitation de ce cher F. dans sa petite Clio qui lui va comme un gant, savourant chaque kilomètre de cette Vallée de Chevreuse que nous avons choisi de traverser, délaissant l’autoroute…
Dans la Cathédrale (vitraux incroyables, même pour mon oeil de néophyte), j’ai tout de suite cherché à me rapprocher du fameux Labyrinthe dont j’espérais bien qu’il serait, comme supposément tous les vendredis, débarrassé des chaises qui les autres jours le recouvrent. Il était en effet découvert, ô joie!
Malgré le flot chaotique des gens et enfants le traversant dans tous les sens ou même y courant, visiblement sans se douter du tout de son sens ni de son potentiel initiatiques, j’ai fini par voir où était l’Entrée, et je m’y suis engagée avec un appel intérieur à Mère et Sri Aurobindo. J’avais déjà repéré la Grande Rosace où Notre-Dame et l’Enfant trônent, au centre… du Symbole de la Mère Divine!… On l’a dans son dos quand on se place à l’Entrée du Labyrinthe.
Très vite, une fois dessus, chacun de mes pas s’est accompagné spontanément, tout bas, du mot “Mère”, et ma concentration intérieure s’est approfondie de plus en plus, oubliant le chaos bruyant des gens autout de moi.
Quand je suis finalement arrivée au Centre, je n’attendais rien de spécial; mais dès que je me suis avancée là (après qu’on en ait retiré la poussette avec enfant qui y était, empêchant d’y accéder!…), immédiatement une Energie extraordinaire à commencé à descendre, m’immobilisant de plus en plus fortement, de la tête aux pieds, au fur et à mesure que le temps passait. Je ne pouvais plus bouger, ni ouvrir les yeux. Un grand sentiment de la Présence de la Mère Divine avait envahi mon coeur intérieur, et la gratitude en sortait à flots intenses.
J’étais absolument sidérée.
L’Energie passait surtout verticalement et par les chakras. Le chakra d’en haut n’était plus qu’un très large entonnoir, élargi à en être pratiquement plat, comme un lotus grand ouvert. Pas une pensée, pas une émotion, rien, seulement la sensation de cette Energie qui entrait, entrait, et se déversait dans mon être. Finalement je l’ai perçue, cette Energie, comme une Lumière Dorée qui formait comme un énorme Pilier occupant tout le Centre du Labyrinthe (y compris les huit pétales et les entre-pétales où je m’étais reculée d’un pas pour pouvoir rester aussi longtemps que nécessaire sans pour autant gêner l’accès des autres au Centre proprement dit).
Et ce Pilier continuait vers le bas – loin de s’arrêter au sol, il s’enfonçait aussi dans la Terre, m’y enracinant par la même occasion!…
Ce Pilier de Lumière Dorée reliait le Ciel et la Terre, et me passait à travers au passage. Fabuleux!..
Mon visage baigné de larmes de joie était en extase calme, souvent levé vers la Rosace de la Mère Divine (qui maintenant me faisait face), et vers ses deux occupants à qui mon être se donnait sans réserve – au moins centralement, car ce n’est que plus tard, quand j’ai pu m’asseoir, (non pas sur le Labyrinthe, bien sûr, mais sur le bord du socle d’un des piliers de pierre qui en sont proches), qu’enfin mon corps a pu avoir sa part de l’expérience. Là, mes cellules aussi ont reçu et éprouvé la charge, dans une certaine mesure.
Je n’étais finalement sortie du Centre du Labyrinthe qu’après un temps qui m’apparaissait comme une eternité intense. Mon immobilité pour ainsi dire pétrifiée par cette Descente, n’a été mûe que par le surprenant movement de rotation en vortex, que lui imprimait de temps en temps la Force. Au bout d’un certaine durée de ce temps pétrifié, il m’a été dit intérieurement que ça suffisait, qu’il fallait maintenant quitter le Centre… ce que je n’ai fait pourtant qu’à regret, un regret infini, poignant, d’avoir à me séparer à nouveau de cette Union indicible et de l’intensité presqu’écrasante de Présence que j’éprouvais.
Le parcours du Labyrinthe en sens inverse m’a été une grande aide pour peu à peu revenir au monde extérieur.
Une fois sortie complètement du Labyrinthe, je n’avais qu’une envie, c’était d’y retourner aussitôt, de retrourner vers ce Centre béni. Ce m’était douleur que de résister à cette envie, et de rester dans la vie extérieure suffisamment pour aller m’asseoir sur une chaise proche et, après un long moment, être capable de retrouver F., tout étonné de mon silence et état “bizarre”, et de lui adresser quelques mots anodins et rassurants.
Plus tard, pendant qu’il me ramenait dans la Clio chez ma mère, je me suis rendue compte que j’avais la fièvre. Le lendemain encore, cette fièvre a continué, et je n’ai pas été “dans mon assiette” de toute la journée… “
… mais je savais pourquoi, et ça en valait bien la peine!…
Tout cela était d’autant plus sidérant pour moi qu’ordinairement j’étais parfaitement incapable de sentir toutes ces “énergies” diverses, auras et autres, que tant d’autres personnes perçoivent communément et sans difficultés!… Je me considérais comme complètement bouchée!…

Quant à ma vision, tout à fait stupéfiante elle aussi, de moi-même sous la forme de ce dorje tibétain lumineux, le souvenir m’en est revenu un dimanche soir, 12 avril 2009, ayant entre-temps découvert les livres d’Olga Kharitidi dont j’ai parlé surtout au début de ce blog, mais qui restent facilement accessibles parce que je leur ai dédié une des Catégories sur lesquelles on peut directement cliquer. Voici mes notes  à propos de cette vision, et de ce qu’elle m’a évoqué ce soir-là:
“Mon passé “shamanique”?!?… Moi qui rejette tellement le Shamanisme!…
Il va falloir que je cherche dans ces cahiers: Quand ai-je rêvé une nuit d’un grand objet sacré tibétain, le Dorjé [et dans mes notes je l'ai dessiné remarquablement bien] tout fait de lumière, et qui était… Moi, mon Moi vrai à ce niveau-là. Le réveil  sur cette expérience m’a laissé un goût de splendeur dans la conscience, très intense.
Maintenant je découvre grâce à un jeune Belge (!) un shamane hongrois (!!!), Joska Soos de Sovar, du Clan de Baksa, à travers qui s’exprimait encore (mort 15.8.08) la filiation ouralo-altaïque du shamanisme hongrois – lien à nouveau avec le premier livre d’Olga Kharitidi, “Entering the Circle”, et les anciens shamanes de l’Altaî.
Tout semble converger vers cette origine pré-sibérienne, altaïque (plus la partie mongole maintenant de l’Altaï), du temps d’un autre climat, comme pour le Désert de Gobi (Mongolie aussi) autrefois fertile, comme l’affirme Edgar Cayce. Mon impression d’exhilaration, très lointaine dans le passé, chevauchant au galop “dans les plaines de l’Asie Centrale”… Mon amour pour les yourtes… LA yourte. Bien plus pratique en fait que la tente amériendienne toute pentue, qui a perdu sa “muraille” circulaire verticale, au-dessus de laquelle la tente était posée.
Bon. Au dodo!….
Vais-je rêver de Belovodia?…”

Feeling our Heart Self

I’ll keep this focus on the most important realities Olga Kharitidi was given access to – her own Heart Self, and humanity’s – to describe in this new post more precisely how this Heart Self feels within us, not especially in the Ancient Altai cultural context, but taken out of all cultural contexts, as It manifests in its Essence, recognizable by any human being anywhere, for it is the very Core of us.

Anytime you feel love in you – not passion or sexual desire, which in themselves are altogether different things than true love – know that you are feeling what comes from your Heart Self, the central You. Every time you feel tenderness, compassion, gratitude, it is your Heart Self in you that emanates those feelings you experience and that you then in turn radiate too; every time you admire somebody or something you are genuinely awed and inspired by, that is a sign that at least at that moment your mind also is under the beneficial influence of the Heart Self in you, instead of the influence of your ego.
Every time you feel relaxed, at peace with yourself and life and the universe, confident that all is well because it will all end well, thank your Heart Self for giving you that true feeling about All There Is. Every time you notice that something bad you knew could happen, didn’t happen, thank your Heart Self for its faith in the Divine, which has protected you. If sometimes you can even feel the Protection around you, enveloping you, it is not your ordinary senses but again your Heart Self that is capable of sensing That.

Our Heart Self is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother preferred to call our ‘Psychic Being’: the ‘Being of our Soul’, the Being that develops and keeps growing, from the spark of our individual Soul, through the various lifetimes It goes through, the eternal and unalienable part in what we call ourselves.

The utmost characteristic of what our Psychic Being is about, is Love, and Love’s characteristic in turn is its unbelievable sweetness, a sweetness that all the mystics in the world have compared to honey, so strong is the analogy, the correspondence, the sameness experienced between sweetness as a lingering, delicious taste melting in our mouth, and the sweetness of love as a feeling, a very special substance one could almost say, surging from somewhere in our depths and making all hardness in our being simply melt as well into that sweetness.
This ‘somewhere in our depths’ is the inner space, behind our physical heart but in a non-physical dimension, where our Psychic Being normally resides, a secret Sovereign waiting for its time to come in order to guide our entire outer being, all the parts of it, towards their true divine nature and fulfillment.

At first It can only act as an influence hardly felt by our outer consciousness, except as a more or less constant attraction to whatever in the outer world is felt as expressing Truth, Beauty, Justice, Harmony. Whenever we do feel that, there will be in us a spontaneous rejoicing at the presence of the Divine in the form of these Qualities; we may not know consciously why we are so elated and happy witnessing for example acts of kindness among other human beings, or the beauties that abound in Nature; but it will be actually the Psychic Being in us that will be rejoicing, and communicating its joy to whatever other part of our being will open itself to that joy. Don’t be surprised to find yourself suddenly moved to tears, not for any sadness, but because of soul emotion.

There can be also a need for our consciousness to remain quietly within from time to time, instead of being interested and caught by all the little or big events and changing scenes of outer life. Many small children are still like that, and don’t all the time go out and interact with others as they are usually expected to; they spontaneously rather remain interiorized, still absorbed in the silent but so full and fulfilling immersion in their inner life. But then their ignorant parents, cut since long from any remaining sense of their own Inner Self, are afraid that the child is sick or something, and urge her or him to go out and play. The child quickly learns that it is somehow wrong to ever stay quietly within oneself and not do anything outwardly. What a pity. Later on, the adult that child will become will be obliged to learn again how to ‘meditate’, simply to be again able to go and stay within, instead of living only in the outer world, which at this point in its evolution is still mostly hiding the true Reality of everything…

In the Inner life as experienced by our Psychic Being, the sense of the divine Presence becomes normal and constant. The Psychic Being feels itself spontaneously as the beloved child of the Divine, eternally safe in the loving arms of the Divine as its eternal Mother, or eternally safe in any other form of loving relationship It may have with the Divine, wonderfully rainbow-like in all the hues of that Love that our Soul can choose from at every moment:
[475] ‘Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our Comrade and Playfellow, blissful servitude to god the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are the seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.’

Of course, yes, as the Adwaïtin say, who wants only the Absoluteness of the One, in the Ultimate Reality there is only one Being and one Consciousness, and we all are That, for there is only That;  our own consciousness, once it is awakened to that central Fact, will know itself as That in its very essence; and yet, those innumerable forms of expression of that One Being are there within It, so that this very relationship of Love can exist and be experienced… precisely, as the Mother would say, ‘For the joy of that “Thee’…’

We exist as our Heart Self, our Psychic Being, so that together with our identity with the One, we also can enjoy the Delight of that ‘Thee’…

May you all who read this, discover that Delight and grow into it, for it will transform your whole existence as I can testify it does, for it has indeed transformed my own existence, just in the wonderful way described here:

[429] ‘When one has the vision in the heart, everything, Nature and Thought and Action, ideas and occupations and tastes and objects become the Beloved and are a source of ecstasy.’

Altai, Belovodia & the Physics of Time

If there have been people during the last few days visiting this blog in the hope of a new post, I apologize for the unusually long delay in putting up this one: I had no internet connection for all this time… Now that the technical aspect is again working properly, here is the new post at last!  And this long interruption has given me time to start also on the next post, which then should be ready to be posted soon as well.

Having again mentioned young Russian psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi towards the end of my previous post, I felt I had to re-read once again, still with the same keen interest, her first book, ‘Entering the Circle’, looking especially for the moments when she has an unmistakable contact with her soul, something she herself learns to notice because of the specific ‘symptoms’ (my word) she experiences when that happens.
This is very important, so I decided to make of it my next post – this one – for it constitutes a major difference with Castaneda’s description of his training with Don Juan, Don Genaro etc, where no such contact with his soul happens at all, it all concerns only the occult planes and the contact with the powerful but obscure and dangerous beings and forces that, whether we are conscious of it or not, do try to invade us and make puppets out of us.

During Olga’s few days away from her big hospital in Novosibirsk and inside the two remote villages of Siberian Altai where she goes, she too will encounter  those hostile occult realities she has had to face already through some schizophrenic patients; this time, once back in his Altai village, her ex-patient Nikolai, the young man who has guided her and her sick friend Anna there, realizes that he isn’t becoming insane as he feared, but simply being changed into the new ‘kam’ (the real Altai word instead of ‘shaman’) needed for replacing his uncle Mamoush, the old kam who just died; the problem is, Nikolai’s normally friendly consciousness inherits at the same time the devious intentions towards Olga from Mamoush, for perpetuating the kam-lineage he and now also Nikolai belong to; but in the other village, Olga’s own newfound feminine mentor, the healer Umaï, although strange and sometimes scary in her behavior while she quite effectively cures an Altai woman and then also Anna, is actually a wise, warm and often smiling woman-kam from another lineage, dedicated to good; she protects Olga and very soon makes her discover the Spirit Lake within herself and her true Spirit in it, ever to guide her if she calls upon it.

The images, symbols and terminology aren’t the same as the ones from, say, the traditional spirituality of India, but still the inner realities perceived and the characteristic feelings are essentially the same, so I’ll summarize the part leading to the Spirit Lake, and then quote from what is said about it:
As conscious individualized energy, entranced Olga experiences herself at first as the undulating smoke rising from the fire lit in the middle of the isba’s earthen floor on which she lies, then as the fire itself going up, then as a snake struggling to come out of some very deep, resistant waters, desperately swimming up and up to reach the surface:
‘Finally the moment comes when I break out of the water and float on the surface of the ocean. Instantly it becomes a place of peace and calm. I love this ocean and could float like this in it forever. Nothing disturbs me. There are no thoughts other than appreciation for this water that now holds me up. I begin swimming. I swim and swim until I see the coastline. I realize that land meets that mysterious body of water on all sides and that I am swimming in a big round lake. Now I notice what is on the coast. It looks like a city. I can see buildings, cars and people. Panic takes me again. This is my city, my friends and my relatives. I don’t want to go back to them. I want to perceive nothing but the soft, flowing water.
A soft, feminine voice comes through my panic. “Be calm. I will talk to you now.” It is Umaï’s voice. I don’t know what language she speaks, but I know it is Umaï and somehow I understand her words.
“Now you are in your inner space, the place of the Spirit Lake. This is your first conscious time here. Each of us has this inner space, but during the lives of most people, it becomes smaller and smaller. As we go through life the world around us tries to fill up and kill this inner space, your Spirit Lake. Most people lose it entirely. Their space is occupied by legions of foreign soldiers, and it dies.
“Now you have experienced this space within yourself. Now you know it. You will no longer be afraid of the world around you. Your space will never be filled up with anything but yourself, because now that you have experienced it, you recognize its feeling and its pulse. You will continue to explore it. Later you will also learn that there is an important Inner Being who lives there. You will need to meet and learn to understand this Spirit Being. I will help you do this when you are ready.”‘

All this is already important enough, but even more is told to Olga then:

‘Umaï’s voice is soothing, and I hang onto every word as she continues.”This next thing is the greatest secret I could tell you. We have the task of building two things while we are in our physical lives. Our first task is to construct the physical reality in which we live. The second task is the creation of ourselves – of that very self that lives within this outer reality.
“Both tasks require equal attention. Keeping the balance between them is a very sacred and demanding art. As soon as we forget one task, the other can capture us and make us its slave forever. This is why the place of the Spirit Lake, the home of the Inner Being, becomes empty and dead for so many people. They come to truly believe that the outer world is the only one worth their attention. Sooner or later they will realize their mistake.
“For you, the main danger is not this but only in exploring your inner self. This is why you were already so interested in other people’s minds. You were using that information to try to understand your own psyche. You must learn to accept the importance of creating your own reality. Believe me that your work in the outer world has an absolute and equal power and ability to satisfy. Don’t be afraid of the shore around you now. Everything you see there is your own manifestation, and it is ridiculous to be afraid of your own creation. I will help you.”‘

By revealing this truth to Olga, Umaî helps her already to learn how to protect herself from her own possibly threatening creations:
1/ by remembering that outer situations in her life are only that, her own creations; and
2/ by not accepting the reality of those situations, but on the contrary asserting her own inner power to change them.

I personally appreciated particularly the remark about Olga’s way of being, more turned inward than outward, as I myself have the same tendency; the advice given by Umai has helped me to be less fearful of the threats from the outer reality, and sometimes already I have been successful in transforming them  into a more positive reality. Thank you, Umaï!… And Olga too, for writing this book!

Speaking of threats, we have to remember that all this was happening in Olga’s life while still under the Soviet regime.
One of the book reviews I copied for my first post about ‘Entering the Circle’ contained among other things this summary of the events that follow:

‘The author’s involvement with shamanism is fraught with danger, for in the Soviet Union, interest in the occult can lead to psychiatric commitment. But Kharitidi manages secretly to incorporate her new powers into her practice at the hospital. During her trance voyages, she visits Belovodia, more commonly known in the West by its Tibetan name of Shambhala, where a parallel human race with advanced spiritual knowledge hints at a radical new future for humanity. Others are also discovering Belovodia, Kharitidi learns, particularly a Soviet physicist researching the nature of time.’

What was put there in a nutshell I need now to expand about, for the ‘Conscious Evolution’ purpose of this blog:

One of Olga’s patients had been a sweet, idealistic and naive very young man, Victor, whose only crime at seventeen had been to say openly or even write things like ‘Soviet society is imperfect and could be improved in many ways’.
Interest in metaphysics and ‘anti-soviet’ ideas were always diagnosed as schizophrenia and ‘treated’ in ‘special clinics’. It was after having been sent to such a ‘special clinic’ that young Victor had been brought to Olga, a broken man:
‘(…) all his answers carefully memorized and rehearsed, (…) repeated without change: “I was sick. I understand it now. I want to continue taking my medicines to prevent the disease”.
‘There was only one time that I saw even a trace of remembered animation on his face. He had noticed a forbidden samizdat book that had been secretly reproduced for me on a copying machine by a friend. It was by Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher and mystic, and I normally kept it hidden in my desk. After Victor glimpsed it, our relationship slowly began to change. It was the beginning of his trust for me.’

When reading Olga’s story for the first time, how moved I have myself been to discover the precious help Sri Aurobindo’s books had represented for all those Russian people oppressed also inwardly, by the heavy materialism inherent to the Soviet regime… How glad I have been to learn one of those books had been the silent, secret bridge between Olga and Victor.

He had never been really insane, and didn’t need any medical care except for recovering as much as was possible from the terrible ‘treatment’ he had received. Worried, though, about sending him back home to an egocentric and vain mother who rejected him, all the more now with the stigma of having been in the ‘crazy house’, Olga kept him in the hospital under her own safe wing for as long as she could extend his stay, but in the end, he had to be discharged and sent home.
‘After his release, Victor had written me a short letter telling about his attempts to find a job. He had been rejected at the few places he had tried, but he still hoped to find something. He also mentioned that his mother had sold all his books while he had been gone.’

Six months later, it is this poor Victor’ suicide, when she is informed about it upon returning to hospital duty after her Altai leave, that shakes Olga with deep enough sorrow to bring into her a new determination: she will discretely start making use of the changes that have occurred in herself and in her whole understanding of sanity, insanity and healing, for the sake of her patients, even at the risk of being discovered.

By one of those ‘coincidences’ that start happening in your life when you are aware of your Inner Being, a patient not really sent to her knocks anyway ‘by mistake’ at her office’s door in the hospital, and she gets invited to visit this Dmitriev, a renowned physicist, at his laboratory in the very important and highly respected ‘Academy cum City of Science’, Akademgorodok, near Novosibirsk. In spite of her original intention not to go, after Victor’s death Olga finds herself following not that mental decision, but her intuition, and eventually she does go to that laboratory, another turning-point in her life: confirming by direct personal experience the usefulness of the cutting-edge, strange-looking new equipment devised by Dmitriev, Olga’s consciousness shifts frequency and enters for a short while the dimension of this very Belovodia she longed to learn more about.

There she meets at last in person the man in white who had acted as her inner guide already in several major ‘dreams’: this masculine being is actually a part of Belovodia…. and so is Umaï, he reveals to her, so Olga needn’t worry, Nicolai’s claim that Umaï had died was a lie, she cannot die; but it wouldn’t be good to remain too attached to her emotionally, for that would hamper Olga’s own growth. Olga does have a deep inner connection with the tattoed mummies from an ancient unknown culture, and those mummies themselves are linked with Belovodia too: although they are seemingly dead, ‘their intentions are alive’, she is told. The discovery and opening of those tombs is one of the visible signs that a new evolutive step is already started on Earth. For individual human beings as well as for humanity at large, the most important thing is to be in contact with one’s Heart Self, which for humanity is precisely Belovodia/Shamballa, so it will come to be known more and more, also with the help of scientific devices like Dmitriev’s invention and the notes users like Olga are able to write while in a deep trance inside.

A few days later Olga has on her own another ‘dream’, at the end of which Umaï appears again to her, to reveal some more invaluable inner secrets for the true Healer Olga is indeed meant to become.
Following trustfully the advice received from Umaï, she has so much success with even supposedly ‘incurable’ cases that she can see these new approaches do work. Her colleagues and superiors see it too, but she presents her strange methods as taken from innovative experiments elsewhere!…
Every time, calling upon her ‘Spirit Twin’ inside herself makes her behave and speak in just the right, if apparently crazy, way, to help a patient… or, when she is finally suspected of ‘subversion’, to escape being found out by the dangerous interrogator she has to face… This moment turns out to be one of the funniest moments in the whole book!!!

Akademgorodok

Longing to have another session inside the curved, tubular ‘mirrors’ of Dmitriev, Olga goes again to his laboratory… only to find that in the meantime he himself has been able also to reach Belovodia, following the same wavelength frequency route that she had spontaneously and unwittingly used. Just to curl up again inside the ‘mirrors’, and there to read Dmitriev’s moving notes of his own visit to Belovodia, is enough for Olga to go back home fully satisfied again, as if she had had the experience herself. The story of Belovodia as told to Dmitriev traces the origins of humanity and of its various main religions back to that area of the world, and particularly the Altai region, long ago, when its climate was entirely different and this specific people there very developed spiritually.

It is so moving to realize the long foreseen vision that this people must have had of our times, of this later period of humanity when we would become ready to welcome again this spiritual wisdom that patiently waited for us to grow enough, and these beings who in the meantime, from their secret and protected realm of existence, have helped us at every step through their inner influence – or, as in the case of Umai, also through their physical presence with us here… Even mummies not so dead as they seem to be have helped and are helping still, through their ‘alive intentions’!
How beautiful and encouraging those teachings are, that together with Sri Aurobindo’s teachings, have shown Olga Kharitidi, and all of her readers, and now all of mine too on this blog, the great promised evolutive Future that is joining more and more our far evolutive Past to form in our Present the New Earth and the New Life we need so urgently!…  

Evolutive & Non-Evolutive Spiritual Paths: the Crucial Difference

In Spirituality there are many paths – an infinity, should we say; and so should it be, as actually for each individual there is her/his own path to be gradually traced, as unique as the inner needs of that individual spirit are. So the main known spiritual paths are merely those that are the main avenues, so to say, through which most people must pass to reach their own individual goal, absolutely identical to no other.
The crucial thing to be understood, then, is that not all spiritual paths will lead you to the same result, and certainly not to the full result that is needed if your aim as a soul is to participate in the Divine Plan going on here on this terrestrial plane, through the immense Process of Evolution.
If my personal goal had been only to achieve what the central aim of all spiritual paths is, that is, to realize (= live the Reality of) my Divine, immortal and eternal Essence, with the intention then to withdraw entirely and for ever from this Physical Dimension, that spiritual goal would have been reached already since many years and I would only need to wait until this physical body I have been wearing in this lifetime finally dies and my spirit is free to return to its true realm of existence, away from physicality.
But as you may have read in my previous post on this blog,”What I Really Want’, such is not my full goal at all: the central Fact described above, experienced only briefly at first and then becoming a permanent Realization, is indeed the indispensable beginning, the necessary central starting-point for achieving all the further conquests I want to achieve too; but I cannot stop at that traditional only goal, a lot more inner work remains to be done, that can be addressed only through the few new spiritual paths that have been figured out and traced more recently for this newly discovered purpose of Spirituality: Conscious Evolution. It is only through Conscious Evolution that we can reconquer here, for the Divine in ourselves and in everything else, this realm of Matter.

So for example you may discover the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great yogi of Arunachala Hill in Tiruvanamalai, Tamil Nadu, and be attracted to those teachings; but you better know in advance that they talk only of the central awakening needed, and that even after this awakening had happened in Ramana himself years before, his mind didn’t get really transformed, and he remained unable to perceive the divine Meaning and Purpose also of this physical dimension; when in his later years his body was affected by a painful illness, some disciples were telling him,

‘What terrible nuisances those physical diseases are!…’

He answered:

‘But the physical body itself is a disease!!!’

Well, when I read that, I saw at once that the Maharshi’s way towards the Spirit wasn’t the right one for me, as for me this poor body was not at all a disease, but, as Sri Aurobindo explained, the means of existence and expression of ‘me’, individualized divine spirit among innumerable other ones, for the progressive manifestation of the One Spirit in this specific physical dimension of Itself.

For the same reason, the Vipassana Meditation, a traditional form of meditation originating from Buddhism and popular also nowadays in the West, is rather not to be advised for people interested in Conscious Evolution: the very aim of that form of meditation is on the contrary to go back to only the Unchanging Essential Permanence, the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, in Sanskrit ‘Sat-Chit-Ananda’. From that extreme point of view, even our individual souls within that One Existence are considered unreal and unwanted, illusory products of the same ‘Maya’ supposedly responsible for this entire physical dimension as well.
But this theory is incapable of telling you what is this ‘Maya’, and where it originated from, and how it has been able to manifest all this if it is supposed to be extraneous to the Divine Reality and contrary to the Divine Will. Instead of helping us making sense of All That Is, this theory makes it all seem absurd and directs us backwards, back to square one, so to say, not seeing at all the vaster purpose and special delight to be experienced through the whole individualization and growth process that Evolution is. That the Divine Being may indeed have an absolute and permanent way of being, but may want also on the other hand to experience change and the surprise of the unknown and the unexpected, is totally not understood; in this too one-sided outlook, one misses the whole point of this great Game and Adventure that Evolution, on Earth or anywhere else, is for the Spirit.
This outlook has practical consequences of course: for a Vipassana Meditation you are instructed to disregard and reject the signs and feelings you may get from your very soul while your consciousness goes into the depths of your being; the problem is, such instructions are quite contrary to what you need to do for evolving consciously here on earth: the advice of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is to give the first importance to your soul, through what they call the Concentration in the Heart, in order to get back the inner contact with your soul, the only part in each of us still aware always of the Divine and of being a portion of the Divine – which makes it the only part capable of guiding us constantly in the long process of spiritual transformation that our further evolution asks from each of us.

Another path, actually shamanistic rather than spiritual, that still intrigues many and has attracted a great number of Western followers in the sixties, but will not lead you to Conscious Evolution at all, is the path indicated in the teachings of Don Juan Matus as reported by the famous Carlos Castaneda in his many books.
The weird experiences given by his various mentors to Castaneda, the bizarre incidents and feats attributed to their hard-gained powers can indeed be totally fascinating for ordinary people who have no personal experience of what true spirituality is about, but those who do may throw the books across the room in disgust for this dark travesti of the real thing. When as a researcher years ago I forced myself to read some of those books, starting dutifully from the first, I had many times to stop myself from expressing aloud my anger at the endless histrionics of the shamans who in those books are presented as spiritual masters.
The main thing I found interesting and valuable in the whole series was the Way of the Warrior, for the inner strength and sense of dignity it indeed teaches, that is needed especially for all the people who too easily consider themselves as victims of everything and wallow in self-pity and a degrading sense of both guilt and fear.
But if the Way of the Warrior is a need indeed in the vast, many-faceted approach necessary for Conscious Evolution, the problem in the Castaneda books is that the importance of the Warrior Attitude is greatly exaggerated, to the point of unduly being made the central thing. And the very reason behind that absolute importance given to the Warrior in ourselves, is an appalling belief, the almost totally obscured perception of the Divine that is given as the overall context in which we and everything else live: the belief that all there is, including all human beings, constitutes merely food for the Unknowable that exists supreme – called, for lack of a more precise description, ‘The Eagle’.
Such a horrendous central belief explains why everything in those teachings is viewed and conveyed as a kind of self-defense system, and in such an atmosphere of negativity, fear, terror even, within Carlos Castaneda himself and the other apprentices, when they are not being mocked again and again mercilessly at every mistake. The only goal of all that harsh training, for them as for their trainers, is in fact to escape supposedly for ever from this terrestrial dimension, seen as a realm of inevitable death, into an unknown dimension of supposed Freedom, but where Divine Love is as terribly absent as it seems to be in all other dimensions too. Everything is interpreted at that lower level of understanding, due to a consciousness not really open to the Love of the Divine nor to its utterly sweet and fulfilling Presence in ourselves too.
At every page it is the same reductionism due to this basic ignorance or, even worse, this total misunderstanding of the Supreme Reality underlying and containing all there is: the ordinary reactions of human beings in general in front of the Unknown are seen through the nearly constant demonstration of them by poor Carlos, and are denounced as false and laughable; but the explanations provided as to what things truly are, and how to react to them in the true way, are themselves false and laughable too, seen from a still higher level: granted, they are less ignorant and ridiculous than the ordinary beliefs and habits people usually have, but still all those supposedly shamanistic notions are a far cry from the real Truth they are claimed to be.

In all the three examples given above, we have seen Inner Paths that do not aim at any Conscious Evolution, because Evolution simply isn’t known, or it is deliberately not taken into account at all in the overall interpretation of Life. It is still possible of course to learn something, or even a lot, from such teachings (just as from anything else…), but one has to be very careful to keep only what doesn’t go against one’s real aim, if that aim is the vaster and more complete Truth offered through Conscious Evolution.

To understand this crucial difference is extremely useful for dispelling the utter confusion in which most spiritual seekers find themselves for a long time, wondering why there are so many paths (often contradicting each other on top of it!), and which one is the true one: it all depends what your aim is…

There are, though, forms of ancient shamanism (see my posts about Olga Kharitidi) that are much closer to true spirituality than the example I have had to write about today, so what I have written in this specific case should not be taken at all as a blanket condemnation of all shamanism; but caution and discernment must be there in our being before we entrust our inner life to any path – also those labelled  too easily ‘spiritual’… and even some of those paths which are truly spiritual, but may not be the right ones for reaching the specific inner goal our soul has.

One can always start simply by trying out whatever teachings one is attracted to, but always while observing what effect(s) it has on one’s being and one’s life. If after some time one notices one lives in fear rather than quiet inner joy and obvious progress, something is wrong.

It can be for example like what happened to me in 1971, when as a young adult I was desperately looking for some satisfactory meaning to Life, and found a book, ‘Fragments of an Unknown Teaching’ (my translation of the French title…), by someone named Ouspensky about his Master, Gurdjieff. My mind at once got totally fascinated by the intricate notions presented in that book, it was a mighty and very impressive mental edifice I kind of lost myself into for three months, until suddenly I realized that if indeed our human consciousness could evolve further as was said in that book, that was momentous news, no doubt, but if that further evolution had to happen in the manner and through the means described and practiced by that Gurdjieff, I was not interested at all, thanks: I looked within myself and saw that only my mind had been caught by the prospects, then totally new to me, of a possible Conscious Evolution; the rest of my being in the meantime had been shocked and horrified by the downright dangerous methods used to make it happen, based on the sheer willpower and personal determination of the solitary individual human being, under the watching eye of an indifferent and not helping sort of God in an equally indifferent cosmos.

Nothing in me was actually attracted to such an evolutive possibility, if such was the context and the conditions in which it had to happen. These teachings, I could see, hadn’t sparked in me an interest real enough to translate itself as a will to live, so I simply dropped them then and there.

Once this book was rejected as definitely not what I was looking for, I realized the only two things I had really discovered thanks to it were, the first one, Consciousness, and the other one, Evolution. I could feel somehow that those two discoveries were important: essential keys that were not to be thrown out like the proverbial baby together with the dirty bath-water.

And indeed, a mere few weeks later, another book came to me, brought by a young fellow seeker: ‘The Life Divine’, by a certain Sri Aurobindo, in which Consciousness and Evolution again jumped up out of the pages, but this time as part of a totally different Universe, born of Joy and Love as I had intuitively known it really had been, and evolving further and further under the loving eye and caring guidance of a God who was not exclusively masculine as we believed in the West, but was also our Divine Mother.

There it was, the secret Knowledge I longed for, that finally made Life worth living!… It gave me at last the desire to live, as to go on living in this physical dimension would be to use this lifetime for a Conscious Evolution process in which I would have the constant help of that divine Presence while growing towards a joyful and loving existence, right here on Earth, and in a better body… ‘The Life Divine’ indeed!…

That book propelled me towards the Future my whole being instantly recognized as the one it wanted, when I read the very first lines of its first page, containing already the full splendor of the whole thing, like the Overture contains and announces the full splendor of the entire Symphony.

Not only the Goal, but the Way towards it have to be your own, the ones your whole being rejoices in.. even if you know it is also going to be hard work, and it indeed is!…

To Greece… and my other Far Roots

New Journey! In addition to my current Yoga Journeys in Costa Rica, here is the preview of my new Journey to…. GREECE!

Combine a discovery of Athens, Epidaurus, Delphi and the Greek Islands with a journey of discovery within yourself!

So goes the announcement sent to me recently by the friend of mine who is organizing this ‘Journey’… This was my reply to her:

‘Thank you for this very nice and cheerful announcement message! My very best wishes to all those who will participate, and particularly to you of course, dear Janine!

Bhaga

PS: Something in me would like very much to go physically to Greece and all those beautiful places there where I lived in at least one other lifetime, and about which I taught in this lifetime as a young teacher in the Classics (Greek, Latin and French literature), without ever a chance to physically go there again. But it is not a real need, I’ll just be as happy if I can see some pictures of all the beauty there when you all come back…  Thank you in advance!‘

Yes, the temptation is there to go back and experience the places again…  in Greece, in Egypt, in Palestine, in the high stones of Macchu Picchu, in the Siberian Altai Mountains, among the nomad Berbers in the Atlas Mountains, under Native America teepees, and in ‘Douce France’ too, where I had several lifetimes, be it in a castle or in a poor peasant home… Some nostalgia is definitely there sometimes of the countries in themselves: their atmosphere,  their cherished landscapes, their familiar animals and plants, the very land one has walked, the air one has breathed, the bright or cloudy sky one has looked at, the rivers or the sea one enjoyed swimming in…

But in our modern times it is anyway not the same any more, the pilgrimages are most often disappointing…

And after all, is not the present lifetime the most important one to live now as fully and consciously as possible?…

This is why spiritual masters in general, like Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, didn’t speak much to their disciples about other lifetimes they themselves had had, or the disciples – unless for some special reason it was important for someone to be told or to remember about a specific lifetime, or a precise moment in it, in relation to the present lifetime.

Does one gain anything actually, for one’s overall individual evolution, from knowing about one’s other lifetimes?…

In my own experience at least, there is a big difference between being told about having lived here or there at this or that time, and actually living moments or entire scenes of a certain lifetime, or of several of them. What was just told to me by some clairvoyant, I remember only because I took notes I have later on read again and again; what I found myself directly living, I remember just as much as the memories of this lifetime: those memories are indelibly part of me, part of the total that I am.

In a few cases this has proven so true that it is because of some special, intense and troublesome recurring tendency in this lifetime that I have been able to recover the memory of the lifetime when the root cause of that problem originated; in those cases the difficulty started to fade away after the memory came back to my consciousness and the healing of the original trauma started taking place within me. An extremely interesting process to watch happening within oneself when one had been afflicted with some obsessional, compulsive tendency for decades before that.

The very real spiritual development that has happened in this present lifetime was, I realized later on, what enabled my stronger Inner Being to gradually help those wounded parts of me in other personalities to find a better and truer way of reacting to a certain type of situation than it had since that other lifetime when the trauma had occurred and the wrong kind of reaction had become the habitual, repetitive one, in spite of the pain it every time created in the being.

In another case it has been on the contrary the sudden vision of a very important but beautiful moment in another lifetime, that led me then to  live intensely the expanded time sequence around that moment, while becoming aware again of the gist of that other forgotten lifetime when I had been blessed like in this one with a surging forward of my soul to greet the special embodiment of the Divine that I was given to meet, and that transformed my life then.

The still totally alive memory of that moment most definitely reinforces powerfully in my being the still totally alive memory I also have of the moment when the same thing happened again in this lifetime, with another special embodiment of the Divine my soul again instantly recognised and kneeled to, in a surge of love and adoration from within.

This is why more conscious embodiments of the Divine are born among us from time to time, in various parts of the world; every time something of the evolutive work to get done at that time gets done, and also many souls get to see the Divine in those special embodiments, and this hastens the individual process of awakening for those souls who respond to that special contact. Whether or not some form of religion and church gets formed around each special embodiment is another matter, and not always beneficial, for in that collective  outer process a lot may be lost or twisted beyond recognition, of the actual teachings the ‘special being’ had tried to leave behind for humanity.

As for the soul who in different lifetimes gets to meet with different such ‘special beings’, through each of them that soul gets to come into contact with yet another aspect of the Divine, and that contact enlarges the capacity of that soul to recognize the Divine Presence in this dimension and everywhere else, through the characteristic vibratory frequency emanated by each, all of them variations of the same essential blissful divine way of being.  When the memory of that inner contact with another ‘special being’ in another lifetime surfaces again, it becomes impossible for that individual to get caught at the mental level by the tendency to fanaticism and exclusivism that is such a common and terrible problem in most human beings: the need is felt from within to accommodate in one’s consciousness more than one aspect of the Divine, and it is impossible to feel them as antagonistic in the way the mind, in its divisive natural mode of functioning,  automatically would see them, creating inner tensions and doubts in the person, that have in the spiritual reality no ground at all.

The remarks above are all from my own experience, although they could probably be confirmed by some authoritative quotes by a spiritual master or another if I looked for such a confirmation. On this blog I usually prefer to speak directly in my own words and from what I have gathered through my own experience, which might be of use for other people too. It is important for them to be able to see and feel that what I am saying is indeed the fruit of a personal process of Conscious Evolution, and not the mere repetition of some guru’s words. My example then will be encouraging for them to also trust their own Inner Being and start on their own Conscious Evolution Adventure – with the inner help, if they want, of any spiritual master towards whom they may feel an affinity to start with, as long as they keep themselves open to vaster beliefs than those that specific master may have taught. 

Another benefit from remembering at least some of one’s other lifetimes is that one recovers faster one’s sense of Universality:

A vastness of being, a capacity to recognize and sense as oneself any form, appearance, skin color or way of dressing a human being can take on outwardly, and any religious belief  or cultural habit a human being can take on inwardly. All that just doesn’t matter anymore, it’s simply all part of the diversification process that is a central purpose of our endeavor here, given the essential Identity that  gives us anyway our Unity in spite of that utter Diversity. 

The only reason many people are still racists, etc, is because of the narrowness, the smallness of their mind, and the lingering in it of all the so limiting prejudices an unevolved mind builds up since childhood from its need for only one truth, one skin color, one culture to be acceptable, recognized as the correct one. It is the only way they know yet of keeping their own identity safely on the imagined ‘correct side’ of what they call the Truth, or as close to it as they can. In a more diverse world where all variations are welcome and valid, they feel lost like kids in a place too big for them, where they can’t find anymore the outer marks that before delimited clearly and safely for them the accepted, ‘correct’ way of being they would have simply to copy, instead of growing to be truly themselves in a wonderful uniqueness they would have to discover, honor and enjoy step after step, the way a flower quietly blooms. There is an even more total safety in that inner process, but in our present societies it is not yet always safe to follow it, and that’s the real problem.

So, to Greece and my many other ‘Far Roots’, I smilingly raise my glass (of Greek wine of course…!) and I say a big thank you for all the inner vastness, flexibility and richness you bring from within into my present life, making me in truth a Citizen of the World.

While writing this, I realize that I probably should learn to draw more from the latent capacities and talents those other personalities make available to me as my larger background… Hmmm.  Oh my. A whole new avenue of inner development opening up for me!…

‘Entering the Circle’, by Olga Kharitidi

Entering the Circle: The Secrets of Ancient Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist, Kharitidi, Olga

Various reviews and comments:

From Publishers Weekly
“The term “shaman” is Russian and, until recently, was applied only to members of the indigenous tribes of Siberia and Central Asia by such scholars as Mircea Eliade. This exciting autobiography cum spiritual adventure by a Soviet psychiatrist is the first popular account of initiation into those tribes’ ancient and mysterious traditions. Kharitidi writes (with no translator) in the slightly stilted English of a native Russian-speaker, an effect that highlights the fantastic nature of her encounters. From the grim state hospital where patients are fed only gruel to the isolated Altai Mountains, Kharitidi is inexorably led to Umai, a female shaman who passes her power to Kharitidi on her death and who continues to instruct her from the spirit world. The author’s involvement with shamanism is fraught with danger, for in the Soviet Union, interest in the occult can lead to psychiatric commitment. But Kharitidi manages secretly to incorporate her new powers into her practice at the hospital. During her trance voyages, she visits Belovodia, more commonly known in the West by its Tibetan name of Shambhala, where a parallel human race with advanced spiritual knowledge hints at a radical new future for humanity. Others are also discovering Belovodia, Kharitidi learns, particularly a Soviet physicist researching the nature of time.
(Whether one swallows this whole, with salt or not at all, there’s no doubt that with its classic New Age elements?the skeptical protagonist turned believer, exotic locales and esoteric knowledge, suspense and synchronicity?this is a great read that should sell briskly. Drawings, not seen by PW. $75,000 ad/promo; BOMC, QPB and One Spirit selections; film rights to North Tower Films; translation rights sold in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland; author tour. Copyright 1996)”

Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description:
“When the young Russian psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi set out on an impetuous journey into the snowbound Altai Mountains of Siberia, she never dreamed that her experience there would shatter and rebuild her view of reality. Among the wintry villages and pine forests of Siberia, guided by mysterious native sages, Kharitidi unearthed the wellspring of the worlds mystical traditions, discovered deep secrets of healing and magic, and encountered revolutionary teachings about the true nature of the human soul. Entering the Circle shares her thrilling adventure–and her stunning discoveries–with the world. As a dedicated young psychiatrist at an austere state hospital in the former Soviet Union, Olga Kharitidi battled the difficulties of Soviet life and the constraints of medical science in her fight to save her suffering patients. Joining an ailing friend on a spur-of-the-moment trip into Siberia’s Altai Mountains, Kharitidi was launched on an unexpected journey of revelation when she was taken into apprenticeship by an enigmatic native shaman. The wild adventure that followed would forever change Kharitidi’s view of healing, science, consciousness–and the potential of the human soul itself. Entering the Circle shares Kharitidi’s remarkable true story and the revelatory teachings she received during her sojourn with mysterious sages of Siberia. Guided through bizarre, magical, and often terrifying experiences by her shaman-teacher Umai–and by a radical Soviet physicist whose studies challenged the very nature of reality–Kharitidi unlocked a storehouse of spiritual learning that had lain hidden in inaccessible Siberia for centuries. Deep in Siberia, Kharitidi’s path of knowledge led her ever closer to unlocking the secrets of Belovodia, also known as Shambala, a fabled civilization of highly evolved humans who have for eons spread their sacred knowledge through the world’s great faiths, including Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Sufism, and Vedic Hinduism. She learned, through firsthand experience, that waking reality–the fabric of our daily lives–is only the near shore of our Spirit Lake, the sea of…..(?)”

By: Isle
Postings: 200
Regular Topic Posted: Apr 05, 2004 – 11:25 PM

A MUST READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* * *
Entering the Circle : Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist
by Olga Kharitidi (Author)
* * *
Allright, I shall admit, the real reason I even opened this book was because I am Russian, and in love with my far away homeland (I live in NY, but don’t get me wrong, I LUV NY).
But by the Lady, the moment you start reading this book, there is no putting it down.
CHOCK FULL OF WISDOM PEOPLE!!!!!
A MUST READ!!! I REPEAT, A MUST READ!!!!!!!!!
And there is also a VERY lovely bonus.
This book will be found in your public library. (Trust me, if my tiny library has it, yours does too.)
That’s right, no dishing out the green for Wisdom, Adventure and Knowledge.
And trust me, by the time you finish this book, not only will you want to write to Olga and tell her she’s the woman! and want to catch the next plane to Russia, then down to Siberia to visit the Altai Mointains, but you will also begin to search for your own Belovodia. If you have not already begun.
FIND THIS BOOK! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!!!!!
And I will be willing to stake all I have on that.
Merrys,
Nina
P.S.
My only regret is that she did not write a published copy in Russian so I could get the full sensation…ahh…one cannot have everything. *wink*
By: Isle
Postings: 200
Regular Topic Posted: Apr 05, 2004 – 11:35 PM

Spelling Error:
***Mointains, allright, I wanted to write MOUNTAINS.
Mointains…I’m sorry, but does anyone else find it a bit funny………………..right.

Ohh and here’s the Amazon.com Summary:

Book Description
“Olga Kharitidi’s debut book is a remarkable account of her spiritual adventure in snowbound Siberia.Joining an ailing friend on a spontaneous trip to the Atai Mountains, Dr. Kharitidi is taken into apprenticeship by a native Shaman who guides her through bizarre, magical, and often terrifying experiences that open her eyes to a wellspring of deeper learning. On the road to Belovedia, a fabled civilization of highly evolved beings, she encounters revolutionary mystical teachings while discovering ancient secrets of magic and healing. At once a modern odyssey and a timeless dreamscape, Entering the Circle is an inspiring story of personal growth and an insightful work about the limitless potential of human spirit.”

From Library Journal
“A sort of autobiographical adventure, this book describes Kharitidi’s mystical experiences in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. When a friend asked her to come along and observe a healing ceremony there, the perceptions of the Soviet-trained psychiatrist suddenly and drastically changed. Kharitidi’s whole belief system was shaken with the help of Umai the shaman/teacher, whose wisdom is imparted through dreams. The author set out to broaden the base of this knowledge and met a prestigious physicist who also experiments with time/space studies and filled in some of the gaps in Kharitidi’s knowledge. Now committed to sharing her new-found understanding, Kharitidi has moved to New Mexico and lectures all over the world.”

Los Angeles Times
“[This Book] may prove as revelatory to readers at the end of the millennium as anthropologist Carlos Castaneda’s… in the late `60s.”

Variety
“This exciting autobiography cum spiritual adventure by a soviet psychiatrist is the first popular account of initiation into…”

Michael Harner, Ph.D., author of The Way of the Shaman
“Castaneda a la Russe-a psychiatrist’s account of transformation through encounters with a Siberian shaman.”

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OMG, I cannot express how much this book is just…there are no words. Read it…for yourself.
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From http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/4076/gbarchives/qt_2_2000.html

Fransje Bik – 06/01/00 12:59:56
My Email:fransjebik@zonnet.nl
How you found us: http://weten.shamanismweb.org/index.htm

Comments:
Thank you so much for all your work and beautiful sites. i am many times on your pages. I want you to return something. I have made on my trip to Altai in Siberia, Russia, a beautiful picture of the holy Mountain Belucha, the natural Shaman of Siberia. Yo can use this and the other photoos in your articels when you want, I do not use copyright, because it has a healing power and transformation powe in it and that power is not mine!!! I speak about the healing power in the photo of Belucha. In the old Mongolian-sanskriet language it is called: Utsch Sumer, The Three in One. (Holy Trinity)How do you find this fotoos of Altai: you go to the http as I give you in: how did you find us. Thi is the Dutch Sjamanic circle. Than you go to homepage or guestbook. In guestbook you will find Fransje Bik and my e-mail adres. Klik op Fransje Bik and than the front page is coming. When you klik on the foto of belucha, it will be a bigger one. In the frontpage you will see some items: Klik Altai and there is two pages with fotoos. Go to Altai frame again, and klik on info: There you will find the spiritual mountain Yarlu in the vallei from Belucha. Panorama of the smaal Altai village Tyungur, what means: Tambourin of the Shaman. And a foto from the Baba stone, with face. Baba means wise old woman or man and the were the Sha ans of the area. This place is also called: the initiation place of the Shaman. Wonder happens there, there are power-stones too. The Baba stones give anwers on all your questions, coming from your hart. Go up in this tekst again and next to Yarlo foto you see in the text: de zeven chacra meren. Klik there and you will find one of the seven coulored lakes, called too: the seven chacra lakes. Too in the vally of Belucha. And the white horse took met the fi st trip (1994) to Belucha!!! And if you ore someone else are interested to go to Belucha in Altai Siberia, i will give you the e-mail adres of the Russian organisation, who organise those trkkings from Tyungur to belucha. They make a combination of trekking, adventure and spiritualit and they are very trustfull people. When you make contact, say hi from Fransje Bik!!! Just for fun. So, this was my message to you. Thank you again for your beautiful site. My power animal for the past is a ground squirrel and for now and the future a polarbear. I found the meanings on your page. Myself, I give the workshop that Olga Kharitidi gave here in Amsterdam last year: my workshop is called: Dream Healer – war healer and based on healing trauma spirits in us and in the meanwhile for all who is connected with us in the past (seven generations) and for them who will come to earth (seven generations). it is trauma therapy with miracoulus results. Olgha Kharitidi is an psychiater from Novosibirsk. She wrote the book: Entering the circle and now she works in America. Bye bye, Fransje Bik

My first contact with Siberian Shamanism

The tattooed arm of the Altai male mummy

I have never been attracted at all to Shamanism; my Way (at least in this lifetime!) being more the Way of Mysticism, the Way of the Heart and the Beloved. So the story which follows will be all the more extraordinary:
In the early years after 1984 and my creating the ‘Laboratory of Evolution” here in Auroville, someone donated to our Specialized Library his whole ongoing collection of ‘National Geographic’ magazines. One day while exploring the oldest issues, I found an article with some photos of ancient drawings that strangely provoked a deep emotion within me; those drawings were those of the many tattoos found on the just discovered, remarkably well preserved thousands of years old body of a princess, a warrior princess apparently, buried with horses like a warrior prince would have been; she must have been some kind of priestess too, the article said, or anyway been a very special woman to have been honored in such a remarkable way as her tomb showed.
I didn’t care much about the scientific details given, totally fascinated as I inexplicably was by the princess herself, and those tattoo drawings full of what must have been her life, her beliefs, her culture, her times, long, long ago… The attraction was so strong I kept that magazine aside and looked at it again and again, always with the same fascination and deep emotion.
Time passed (or such is the illusion we have while incarnate in an Earth period-play!…), the other preoccupations arising from my work for the Laboratory of Evolution made me gradually forget about that whole article in the National Geographic.
Then, in May 2000, a passing guest in the Auroville place where I live gave me when leaving a book, ‘Entering the circle’, by a Russian young psychiatrist, Olga Kharitidi, whose photo on the back showed an open, pretty, luminous face, that decided me to look inside the book in spite of its darker, slightly weird overall cover. Trying to read Castaneda’s books had been an inner ordeal for me, so I certainly didn’t want to inflict upon myself yet another unpleasant mud bath.
I started hesitantly leafing through the pages… To my utter amazement and downright emotional shock, I recognized over the title of each chapter the tattoos of the ancient Warrior Princess!!!  I had to sit down, my legs all shaky, before I could go on looking, this time avidly, into the contents of that book. For the next four hours I could not put it down. When I finally did after reading the very last page, I remained immobile and silent for a long time, aware that I had just reconnected with a world known intimately long, long ago.
Particularly striking had been the inner experiences lived by the author herself, Olga, that young, modern psychiatrist from Novosibirsk in the Soviet Union, under the powerful but loving guidance of the shaman-woman, Umai, that she is unexpectedly led to meet in a small, remote village up in the Altai Mountains where she has followed a ‘mental patient’, Nikolai… whose so-called disease is that he is actually becoming himself a shaman or ‘kam’, uniting inwardly with the village’s just dead kam Mamoush – that process happens independantly from Olga’s growing relationship with Umai, whom she trusts more and more. Although the vocabulary and the inner images were somewhat different, some of the experiences lived by Olga thanks to Umai were definitely what I call mystical experiences, that is, connecting her to her own soul, the deepest part in herself, and had a most beneficial effect on her and on her understanding of true Healing. But one last experience stood out for me as the reader, it will be easily understantood why:
About to leave that village and go back to Novosibirsk instead of staying on as Nikolai/Mamoush is urging her to, Olga is asked inwardly by Umai to lie down directly on the cold ground, and she is told “Here is something you must know. The kams were supposed to keep only one line of immortality, but instead there are more. You and Mamoush belong to different lines. Olga, you must leave here today. If you stay as Mamoush is requesting, he will try to destroy your line. (…) Time is not as simple as you think it is. You are not only Olga who works as a psychiatrist in a Siberian clinic. There is something else about you, something you have to figure out.”
Lying there she has a ‘dream’, which she describes thus:
“I feel a chill go through my body. Perhaps I have caught a fever. I remember that I have been lying on ice for I don’t know how long. The earth begins swaying under me.
In the distance I hear the sound of a galloping horse. It grows louder and louder. I can feel the pounding of its hooves upon the earth. Then a white horse comes into view. Its entire being emanates a passionate energy.
A voice says to me, ‘Get up on his back and ride away!’, and I notice for the first time the small but powerfully built young woman standing besides the horse’s head, holding his bridle. My attention moves from the horse to the woman’s bare arm, which is entirely covered with tattoos. I have never seen anything like them. Tattoos of unknown animals circle around and around one another from her shoulder to her wrist. As I stare at her, the animals gradually begin to seem more familiar to me, although I don’t actually recognize them or remember where I have seen them. (…) The horse and the dream dissolved, and I was awake.”
After the long bus and train journey back to Novosibirsk, Olga is relieved to find herself again in her little apartment and her ‘normal reality’. But another surprise is awaiting her right there too:
‘I looked through my mail, saving the newspapers for later. Eventually I snuggled into my worn sofa to read them. At first all the news seemed exactly like the same old news of the week before.
Then, as I turned the page of the newspaper, a headline reading “Science in Siberia” caught my eye. Under the headline was a large picture showing the opening of an ancient tomb in the Altai Mountains. The picture looked interesting, so I continued reading.
The article described the discovery the summer before of the tomb of a young woman. She had been about twenty-five years old when she died.  Her tomb had acted as a deep freeze for millennia, keeping its contents in a remarkable state of preservation. (…) The picture and description of the tomb reminded me of the scene where my last encounter with Umai had taken place, and as I read further my heart began to beat faster.
According to the article, one particular discovery in the tomb had created a great archeological sensation. The woman’s arms had been covered with tattoos of strange symbolic animals circling her limbs and merging into one another. (…)
Instinctively I was certain this was the same woman who had come to me in my dream.’
And I, Bhaga, was simply stunned to find myself stumbling again upon that same story that in the National Geographic had so strangely moved me years before!… How was it that precisely this book had been given to me by this unknown guest?!
In that book, there is also the question of Time, and of Belovodia, which I’ll have to present in some other post some other day…