Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond (Ajahn Brahm)

Every serious Buddhist practitioner needs to read this book. It is the clearest and most complete exposition of the core and essence of Buddhist meditation that I have encountered. It's not like other books in the Buddhist genre that describe the philosophy of Buddhism, or even some of the Buddhist psychology that can be employed in transformative work. This book is an extremely well-written, and highly entertaining operator's manual of the mind. It's a clear and lucid step-by-step guide to what meditation actually is, how to do it, and what to expect along the way. The second part of the book, focuses on what can happen in the deeper stages of meditation. It is clear that Ajahn Brahm is something of an authority on the subject, as he speaks with first hand experience of the phenomena he is describing. This isn't mystical mumbo-jumbo either: he gives it to us straight. This is exceedingly refreshing amidst so much new-age "spiritual" literature available today.

Ajahn Brahm (short for Brahmavamso) spent nine years as a student of Ajahn Chah in the forest monastic tradition of Thailand. This after graduating from Cambridge University with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. After reading this book I felt as if so many pieces of the path that were previously known, but not understood in terms of how they related to each other, suddenly became clear and connected. Images in Tibetan Tangkas suddenly came to life. The essence of Zen, and the teachings of Eckhart Tolle became clear in terms of how they fit into this framework and what purpose they serve. Ajahn Brahm presents a framework that contains all these teachings, as parts of a larger whole. And the whole that he presents, he contests, is the pure, orthodox teaching of the Buddha, in it's original form, adjusted only in presentation for a Western mind and palette. He gives ample citations to the orthodox Pāli canon, which contains the original teachings of the Buddha, as direct support for his statements. He points out that what he is saying was said by the Buddha. This is a wonderful distillation of the entire Pāli Buddhist Canon, in terms of its most important aspects: practice which leads to liberation of the mind.

The distinct image that comes to mind is that of the famous elephant and the blind men. Many today describe only one aspect of the elephant. But what Ajahn Brahm has done here is succeeded in presenting as complete a picture of the whole elephant as one could ever hope to achieve from a distinctly Buddhist perspective.

From the backcover:

"Ajahn Brahm here shares his knowledge and experience of the jhānas—a core part of the Buddha's original meditation teaching. The beginning instructions are some of the best anywhere, and the descriptions of the advanced states are unparalleled in their vividness. Never before has this material been approached in such an empowering way, by a teacher of such authority and popularity. Full of surprises, delightfully goofy humor, and stories that inspire, instruct, and illuminate. Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond will encourage those new to meditation and give a shot in the arm to more experienced practitioners."

and

"Like a broom through cobwebs, Ajahn Brahm sweeps away the mysteries surrounding the jhānas. Salted with his often witty stories, this book is like an operator's manual that one finds after struggling for years with a foreign-language manual. Brahm uses accessible language to explain subjects that other teachers shy away from. This is a bold and important book." — John Roberts, Buddhist Council of the Northwest

Ajahn Brahm describes several stages of meditation. Stage one is called Present-Moment Awareness, and involves giving up the baggage of past and future. In essence we remain only with the raw material of experience in the moment. There is no thinking about it, only observing and noting what happens in the moment. The analogy used is developing a mind like a padded cell. When any perception, experience or thought hits the wall of the cell it does not bounce back, and instead sinks into the padding and stops. In this stage of meditation we keep our attention in the present moment. All we know is what moment it is right now.

Stage two is called Silent Present-Moment Awareness, and involves dropping all commentary surrounding perception and experience. Whereas previously we noted what was happening, perhaps even commenting mentally on what was happening, now we drop all commentary. Ajahn Brahm draws a wonderful simile by comparing this state to what happens in a tennis match. There are two things going on: the tennis match, and the commentator's description of the tennis match. In this stage there is no commentator.

Stage three is called Silent Present-Moment Awareness of the Breath. Instead of being silently aware of whatever comes into the mind, at this stage we choose a single object. This object can be a number of things, including the idea/experience of metta, the visualization of a colored disc, or simply the breath. Focusing on a single object, such as the breath, implies letting go of diversity and moving into unity. Ajahn Brahm employs a useful comparison: the awareness at this stage is like replacing six telephones ringing simultaneously with one private telephone. Essentially, we focus on a single object to the exclusion of all other sensory phenomena. This exercise quickly lends the insight of how burdensome the six telephone lines really are. Awareness of the breath is not about locating the breath anywhere, but rather about the overall experience of the breath. And most importantly, the breath is natural—it is not forced or controlled in any way. When we can maintain this silent present-moment awareness of the breath for about a hundred consecutive breaths, we can proceed to the next stage.

Stage four is called Full Sustained Attention on the Breath. This stage occurs when our attention expands to take in every moment of the breath. Here we follow in detail the entire process of the breath, from the first sensation of in-breathing, through its gradual expansion, and culmination, pause, and the beginning of the out-breath, it's evolution, and ultimate fading away. When we can experience every part of the breath for many hundreds of consecutive breaths, then we have arrived at full sustained attention on the breath.

Stage five is called Full Sustained Attention on the Beautiful Breath. This stage flows naturally and seamlessly from the previous stage. As we enter this stage, the mind recognizes the breath to be extraordinarily smooth, calm and peaceful, and delights in it. This is what is meant by "beautiful breath." At this stage "you" do not do anything, the "doer" has to disappear. Instead you are just a knower, passively observing. Ajahn Brahm mentions that one helpful trick at this stage is to briefly break the inner silence and say to yourself: "calm." The mind at this stage is very sensitive, a kind of fully awake and highly focused self-hypnosis, and making such a gentle suggestion at this stage, nudges the mind to follow.

Stage six is called the Beautiful Nimitta. As Ajahn Brahm puts it, at this stage we let go of the body, thought, and five senses (including the awareness of the breath) so completely that only a beautiful mental sign, a nimitta, remains. This pure mental object is a real object in the landscape of the mind, and when it appears for the first time, it is extremely strange. One simply has not experienced anything like it before. Still, perception tries to categorize this disembodied beauty, this mental joy, according to our individual perceptual inclinations: lights, sensations, feelings etc. Ajahn Brahm indicates that we can recognize a nimitta by the following six features: (1) it appears only after the fifth stage of meditation; (2) it appears when the breath disappears; (3) it comes only when the external five senses are absent; (4) it manifests only in the silent mind; (5) it is strange but powerfully attractive; and (6) it is a beautifully simple object. If the nimitta arises but it is dull, Ajahn Brahm advises to return to the previous stage of meditation. He says that one must be able to sustain one's attention on the beautiful breath with ease for a very long time before the mind is capable of maintaining clear attention on the far more subtle nimitta. When it is time for the nimitta, it will be bright, stable and easy to sustain.

Stage seven is called Jhāna. This stage arises when we let the mind incline naturally towards the center of the nimitta, where the light is brilliant and pure. Here Ajahn Brahm advises to just let go and enjoy the ride as the attention gets drawn into the center, or as the light expands and envelops us completely. He says there are two common obstacles at the door into jhāna: exhilaration and fear. In the first case the mind has a "wow!" response which disturbs tranquility. In the second case there is the recognition of the sheer power and bliss of the jhāna, or else the recognition that to go fully inside we must leave "ourselves" behind. As Ajahn Brahm puts it:

"The doer is silent before entering the jhāna, but it is still there. Inside the jhāna, however, the doer is completely gone. Only the knower is still functioning. One is fully aware, but all the controls are now beyond reach. One cannot even form a single thought, let alone make a decision. The will is frozen, and this can be scary for beginners, who have never had the experience of being so stripped of control and yet so fully awake. The fear is of surrendering an essential part of one's identity."

All of the above stages of meditation describe the first half of meditation known as samatha or tranquility meditation. The second half of meditation is called vipassana or insight meditation. In order to do this second half of meditation effectively, we need to bring a calm, clear, and tranquil mind to the practice. In vipassana we apply this tranquil mind to one of three important areas: insight into the problems affecting daily happiness, insight into the way of meditation, and insight into the nature of "you." This is where things really start to happen. We will explore this further after touching on the Five Hindrances.

Ajahn Brahm goes on to describe five hindrances to meditation known as nīvarana in the original Pāli. This literally means "closing a door" or "obstructing entering into something." They obstruct us from entering into deep absorption states, or the jhānas. According to Ajahn Brahm, if you have not experienced the jhānas yet, then you have not fully understood these five hindrances. The Buddha named these five hindrances as sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. However, these labels as Westerners understand them do not quite do justice to the original definitions.

In the original Pāli, sensory desire is given as kāma-cchanda. Deconstructing the Pāli definition, kāma relates to anything to do with the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Chanda means to delight in or agree with. Together they mean "delight, interest, involvement with the world of the five senses." For example, when we hear a sound, we almost never simply register it and then drop it. Instead we get all caught up and "interested" in the sound and what it represents, which in turn gives rise to a stream of associations—memories and imaginings of the past and future. We are no longer in the present moment, our minds are "lost in time." From delight in a specific sensory experience rooted in the present moment, our minds have become absorbed in thinking about sensory experiences in the past and future. This "thinking" about sensory desire was distinguished by the Buddha as an important aspect of sensory desire called kāma-vitakka in the original Pāli.

The second hindrance, ill will is another major obstacle to deep meditation. There are different forms of ill will, including ill will towards others, towards oneself, and towards the meditation object. Ill will towards others is a common experience which can be remedied by seeing the Buddha Nature in all sentient beings, and seeing how poor behavior is just people temporarily getting caught up in their "stuff." This view of other peoples' suffering leads towards compassionate understanding and non-identification. Ill will towards oneself can manifest as guilt and feelings of unworthiness, particularly for Westerners due to the way many of us have been brought up. Ajahn Brahm points out that an aversion to inner happiness is a sure sign of guilt, and in meditation this often leads to a form of punishment that involves denying ourselves the joy of deeper states of meditation. As expected, the remedy is to do some loving-kindness meditation, the key being to give oneself unconditional forgiveness. Lastly, ill will towards the meditation object often occurs for those who have been meditating on the breath without much success yet. In this situation, we tend to look at meditation as a chore, or with a certain amount of aversion. The solution is to generate goodwill towards the meditation object. One method Ajahn Brahm uses to deal with this scenario is to view the breath like a newborn son or daughter. Would you lose sight of it for long? If you appreciated the breath as much as you appreciated your child or someone who is very dear to you, you wouldn't drop, forget or abandon it. As Ajahn Brahm summarizes,

"[...] ill will is a hindrance you overcome by being compassionate to all others, forgiveness toward yourself, loving-kindness toward the meditation object, goodwill toward the meditation, and friendship with the breath."

The third hindrance is given as sloth and torpor. This occurs in meditation when we don't really know what we're watching. This is because the mind is gray, blurry and dull. Dullness in meditation is the result of a tired mind, usually one that has been overworking. Fighting that dullness only makes us more exhausted. Ajahn Brahm introduces two useful concepts representing the two halves of the mind: the knower and the doer. The knower is the passive half that simply receives information, and the doer is the active half that responds with evaluating, thinking, and controlling. Both share the same source of mental energy, and so when the doer consumes too much, little is left for the knower, and we experience dullness. Ajahn Brahm tells the story of a high-stress executive that came to a retreat, and in the first sittings her mind was almost as dead as a corpse. So for the first three days he advocated not doing anything, only rest and sleep. After three days, her mind was much brighter, after three more days, she caught up to the rest of the group, and by the end of the retreat she ended up being one of the star meditators. The most effective way to overcome sloth and torpor is to stop fighting our mind. We need to stop trying to change things and instead let things be. Then sloth and torpor will naturally disappear. Ajahn Brahm indicates how giving value to awareness can also help when we encounter an important fork in the road of meditation: one path leads to sloth and torpor, while the other leads to bright awareness. The first path gives up both the doer and the knower, while the second path gives up the doer but keeps the knower. When we value awareness we will automatically choose the second path.

The fourth hindrance is given as restlessness and remorse and is considered one of the most subtle of hindrances. The main component of this hindrance is restlessness of mind but can also include a sense of remorse. Remorse comes from hurtful speech or actions we may have performed. Forgiving oneself, letting go of the past, is what overcomes remorse. Restlessness, on the other hand, arises because we do not appreciate the beauty of contentment or the pleasure of doing nothing. We have a faultfinding mind rather than a mind that appreciates what's already there. Restlessness is going around looking for something else to do, something else to think about, or somewhere else to go. Ajahn Brahm indicates how developing a perception of contentment in all things is the most important thing we can do to alleviate restlessness. He advocates that we must be aware of finding fault in our meditation, as this is just the activity of a discontented mind. Be content with whatever is and our meditation will go deeper.

The fifth and last hindrance is called doubt. Doubt can be towards the teaching, about the teacher, towards oneself, or even towards one's experience. When doubt is directed towards the teaching, one is advised to trust in one's experience thus far. These experiences, while not the purpose of meditation, strengthen our confidence that our meditation is gradually moving along. With regard to teachers, we need to understand what their role is in our meditation. They serve as guides, often providing suggestions or recommendations based on their own experiences in meditation, while also serving to inspire and motivate. But Ajahn Brahm makes it very clear that before one places one's confidence in a teacher, to really check them out. Self-doubt, is perhaps the most insidious form of doubt as it can halt practice altogether. It often causes us to think that we are hopeless, useless, or incapable. It can be overcome with the help of a teacher or friend who inspires and encourages, or through reading about inspiring or encouraging accounts. It is important to have confidence that you can achieve what you want. As Ajahn Brahm says, failure only comes when we give up. Finally, doubt towards one's meditative experience in the moment is problematic. This form of doubt questions, for example, whether what we are experiencing is jhāna, or something else. If we are questioning then it is defintely not it, as jhāna is beyond reach of the conceptual/analytical mind. Ajahn Brahm says, afterwards we can review the meditation and examine our experience within it. But during meditation, keep the mind as peaceful and quiet as possible.

Ajahn Brahm ends the discussion of the Five Hindrances with a couple of important notes on the 'workshop of the hindrances,' and what happens when the hindrances are 'knocked out.' He points out that they all emanate from a single source: they are generated by the control freak inside of us that refuses to let things go.

"Meditators fail to overcome the hindrances because they look for them in the wrong place. It is crucial to success in meditation to understand that the hindrances are to be seen at work in the space between the knower and the known. The hindrances' [...] workshop is the space between the mind and its meditation object. Essentially, the five hindrances are a relationship problem.

Skillful meditators observing their breath also pay attention to how they watch their breath. If you see expectation between you and your breath, then you are watching the breath with desire, part of the first hindrance. If you notice aggression in the space in between, then you are watching the breath with the second hindrance, ill will. Or if you recognize fear in the space, maybe anxiety about losing awareness of the breath, then you are meditating with a combination of hindrances. For a time you may appear to be successful, able to keep the breath in mind for several minutes, but you will find that you are blocked from going deeper. You have been watching the wrong thing. Your main task in meditation is to notice these hindrances and knock them out. Thereby you earn each successive stage in meditation, rather than trying to steal the prize of each stage by an act of will.

In every stage of meditation you cannot go wrong when you put peace or kindness in the space between you and whatever you are aware of. When a sexual fantasy is occurring, put peace in the space and the daydream will soon run out of fuel. Make peace not war with the dullness. Place kindness between the observer and your aching body. And agree to a ceasefire in the battle between you and your wandering mind. Stop controlling and start to let go.

Just as a house is built of thousands of bricks laid one by one, so the house of peace (i.e., jhāna) is built of thousands of moments of peace made one by one. When moment after moment you place peace or gentleness or kindness in the space between, then the sexual fantasies are no longer needed, pain fades away, dullness turns to brightness, restlessness runs out of gas, and jhāna simply happens."

So what happens when the hindrances are knocked out? Are they overcome forever or just during one's meditation? Ajahn Brahm provides this explanation:

"At first, you overcome them temporarily. When you emerge from a deep meditation, you'll notice that those hindrances have been gone for a long time. The mind is very sharp, very still. You can keep your attention on one thing for a long time, and you have no ill will at all. You can't get angry with someone even if they hit you over the head. You aren't interested in sensory pleasures like sex. This is the result of good meditation. But after a while, depending on the depth and the length of that meditation, the hindrances come back again. It's like they're in the boxing ring and they've just been knocked out. They are "unconscious" for a while. Eventually they come round again and start playing their tricks. But at least you know what it is like to have overcome those hindrances. The more you return to those deep stages—the more often the hindrances get knocked out—the more sickly and weak they become. Then it's the job of the enlightenment insights [vipassana] to overcome those weakened hindrances once and for all. This is the age-old path of Buddhism. You knock out the five hindrances through meditation practices in order to provide an opportunity for wisdom [vipassana]. Wisdom will then see through these weakened hindrances and destroy them. When the hindrances have been completely abandoned, you're enlightened. And if you are enlightened, there is no difficulty in getting into jhānas because the obstacles are gone. What was between you and jhānas has been completely eradicated."

Ajahn Brahm goes on to describe in detail the quality of mindfulness. He says that if it's not fully understood and practiced, one can waste a lot of time in meditation. An amusing anecdote is given to bring the point home. Imagine that you are a wealthy person with a gatekeeper guarding your mansion. One evening before going out you tell the gatekeeper to be mindful of burglars. When you return you find that your home has been burgled. When you question the gatekeeper, he says that he was mindful: he gave attention to the burglars as they broke in, he was clearly attentive as they walked out with your plasma-screen TV and sound system, and he watched mindfully as they repeatedly walked in and took all your antique furniture.

As Ajahn Brahm says, a wise gatekeeper knows that mindfulness is more than bare attention. He must also remember the instructions and act on them with diligence. For example, when a meditator sees an unwholesome state trying to break in, they must try to stop the defilement. And if it manages to slip in, they must try to evict it. So there are these two aspects of mindfulness: awareness and remembering the instructions.

In fact, in the Buddhist suttas, the same Pāli word sati is used for both awareness and memory. A person who has good awareness also has good memory. If we pay full attention to what we are doing, this awareness creates an imprint in our mind, and the strength of that imprint corresponds to the strength of our awareness in that moment. We need to give full awareness to clear instructions so that we will be able to remember and act on them.

Ajahn Brahm makes a point of reminding us that at the beginning of the meditation, one needs to remember that there is a gatekeeper inside—something that can be aware of what's happening and remember instructions. He gives several instructions to be given to the gatekeeper depending on one's stage of meditation. However, like a servant or worker, one doesn't have to keep giving the same instructions over and over again. Repeating them just two or three times, clearly and with full awareness at the beginning, is all that is necessary, and then the gatekeeper can get on with it's task.

Satipaṭṭhāna

Now we come to the second half of meditation or what is called vipassana or insight meditation. In order to do this second half of meditation effectively, we need to bring an extremely calm, clear, and tranquil mind to the practice, such as the type of mind that exists after emerging from jhāna. There are different variations of vipassana which deal with various types of contemplations and insights, but the most powerful—those that can have the deepest and most far-reaching effects—are formally called Satipaṭṭhāna, or the Four Focuses of Mindfulness. These contemplations are simply a detailed examination of the "nature of you."

Before continuing, Ajahn Brahm points out how satipaṭṭhāna practice is not original to Buddhism, that intelligent and inquisitive people in all races and religions have directed their mindfulness towards aspects of nature in order to understand their meaning. However, the key element that is unique to Buddhism is the practice of jhāna. The originality of the Buddha was in using the experience of jhāna to profoundly empower investigation and give mindfulness a huge boost.

Incidentally, the practice of vipassana/insight meditation by way of satipaṭṭhāna, and the practice of samatha/tranquility meditation, are precisely the seventh and eighth factors of the noble eightfold path. All factors require cultivation in order to realize enlightenment: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness (vipassana/satipaṭṭhāna), and right concentration (samatha).

Before entering into a description of satipaṭṭhāna, Ajahn Brahm prepares the ground by showing how important it is to enter into jhāna first. The Buddha said that if anyone should develop the satipaṭṭhāna "in such a way," for seven days, then they would realize full enlightenment or the state of non-returner (a state just prior to full enlightenment). Many Buddhists, monastic and lay, have completed many meditation retreats longer than seven days and remain unenlightened. Ajahn Brahm says the reason for this is that they have not followed the instructions correctly. With a new and more accurate rendering of a one hundred year-old poorly translated key phrase, the suttas actually indicate that one practices satipaṭṭhāna "having temporarily abandoned the five hindrances." And it is precisely the function of jhāna to temporarily abandon the five hindrances. From the Naḷakapāna Sutta, MN 68,6:

"[...] not attaining a jhāna, the five hindrances invade one's mind and remain. Attaining a jhāna the five hindrances do not invade the mind and remain."

Ajahn Brahm gives a wonderful anecdote that beautifully describes the relationship between mindfulness, jhāna, and the five hindrances in this extended quote:

"If mindfulness is like a light, meditation brightens that light. When I was a young monk at Wat Pa Nanachat in Northeast Thailand, I became quite peaceful by doing walking meditation in the hall. I would walk with my gaze on a spot on the concrete floor some two meters ahead. Then I had to stop. I couldn't believe it, but the dull concrete surface began to open up into a picture of magnificent beauty. The various shades of gray and the texture suddenly appeared as the most beautiful picture I had ever seen. I thought of cutting out that section and sending it to the Tate Gallery in London. It was a work of art. An hour or two later, it was just a boring, ordinary piece of concrete again.

What had happened, and this may have happened to you, is that I had a short experience of "power mindfulness." In power mindfulness, the mind is like a megawatt searchlight, enabling you to see so much deeper into what you are gazing at. Ordinary concrete becomes a masterpiece. A blade of grass literally shimmers with the most delightful and brilliant shades of fluorescent green. A twig metamorphoses into a boundless universe of shape, color, and structure. The petty becomes profound and the humdrum becomes heavenly under the sparkling energy of power mindfulness.

What is happening is that the five hindrances are being abandoned. The five hindrances are said, in the suttas, to "weaken wisdom." When they are gone, the experience is like seeing through a windshield that has been cleaned of grime and dust, or hearing through ears at last unclogged of wax, or reflecting with a mind released from its fog. When you know the difference between power mindfulness and weak mindfulness as a personal experience, not a mere idea, then you will understand the necessity for jhāna prior to satipaṭṭhāna.

Jhāna generates "superpower" mindfulness. If power mindfulness is like a megawatt searchlight, then jhāna-generated superpower mindfulness is like a terawatt sun. If enlightenment is your goal, then the superpower mindfulness is the level that's needed."

[...]

In satipaṭṭhāna, the thousand-petaled lotus is a simile for this body-mind, that is, "you" [...]. The sun is a simile for mindfulness. You have to sustain power mindfulness for a very long time on this body and mind to allow the innermost petals to open up. If the five hindrances are there, no insight happens, just as when there are clouds or mist, the sun cannot warm the lotus.

If you haven't sustained power mindfulness on this body and mind for long, then your understanding sees only outer petals. But if you generate power mindfulness and sustain it on the body-mind continuously, then you begin to see all this in a completely different light. You thought that you knew what "you" were, but now you realize how deluded you were and how little you knew. Through sustaining power mindfulness on the body and mind, truths start to unfold."

So what is the purpose of satipaṭṭhāna? As Ajahn Brahm puts it, the purpose is to see anattā, that there is no self, no me, nor anything that belongs to a self. According to the original texts, "Such mindfulness is established enough to discern that there are just body, feelings, mind, and objects of the mind, and these are not me, nor mine, nor a self." Keeping this purpose in mind, we can appreciate why the Buddha taught only four focuses for mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, and mind objects: because these are the main areas where life assumes a "me" or a "mine." Therefore, the satipaṭṭhāna practice sustains superpower mindfulness on each of the four objects in order to unravel the illusion of self.

These, then, are the prerequisites for successful satipaṭṭhāna practice:

1. vineyya loke abhijjhā domanassam—first abandon the five hindrances through an experience of jhāna.

2. satimā—be possessed of superpower mindfulness resulting from jhāna.

3. atāpi—diligently sustain that superpower mindfulness on the focus.

4. sampajāno—keep in mind the purpose of satipaṭṭhāna on each of the four focuses in turn.

The first focus of mindfulness is the body. The body is composed of several groups: (1) breath, (2) bodily posture, (3) bodily activity, (4) composition of the body, (5) the body seen as four elements, and (6) the nine corpse contemplations. Ajahn Brahm declines to discuss the fifth grouping, perhaps due to his extensive background in theoretical physics. As such, one might be inclined to update the second last grouping with a more modern version such as, (5) the body seen as atomic elements and processes.

The second focus of mindfulness is feeling (vedanā). However, this term requires further explanation as it is not quite an accurate translation. In English, the word feeling has a wide range of meanings. It can mean both emotional states and physical sensations in the body. Ajahn Brahm states that the Pali word vedanā means that quality of every conscious experience—whether through sight, sounds, smell, taste, touch, or mind—that is pleasant, unpleasant, or somewhere in between.

The third focus of mindfulness is mind consciousness (citta). This focus of mindfulness is one of the most difficult to practice. As Ajahn Brahm states, most people's meditation is not developed sufficiently to even see mind consciousness. Mind consciousness is like an emperor covered head to toe in thick garments. It is so completely clothed by the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch that one cannot see it underneath. To see the emperor, one has to remove his clothes, that is, the five external senses. And it is precisely the task of jhāna to remove the five senses and reveal the citta. Thus one cannot even begin to practice this third focus of mindfulness until one has experienced a jhāna. "For how can you contemplate citta when you haven't really experienced it? It would be like contemplating the emperor when all you can see are his (or her?) clothes." Ajahn Brahm provides two analogies that make this clearer:

"When you sustain superpower mindfulness on the pure citta, the nature of all types of consciousness reveals itself. You see consciousness not as a smoothly flowing process but as a series of discrete, isolated events. Consciousness may be compared to a stretch of sand on a beach. Superficially the sand looks continuous over several hundred meters. But after you investigate it closely, you discover that is is made up of discrete, isolated particles of silicate. There are empty spaces between each particle of sand, with no essential sandiness flowing in the gap between any two particles. In the same way, that which we take to be the flow of consciousness is clearly seen to be a series of discrete events, with nothing flowing in between.

Another analogy is the fruit salad analogy. Suppose on a plate there is an apple. You clearly see this apple completely disappear and in its place appears a coconut. Then the coconut vanishes and in its place appears another apple. Then the second apple vanishes and another coconut is there. That vanishes and a banana appears, only to vanish when another coconut manifests on the plate, then another banana, coconut, apple, coconut, mango, coconut, lemon, coconut, and so on. As soon as one fruit vanishes, then a moment later a completely new fruit appears. They are all fruits but completely different varieties, with no two fruits the same. Moreover, no connecting fruit-essence flows from one fruit to the next. In this analogy, the apple stands for an event of eye consciousness, the banana for an incident of nose consciousness, the mango for taste consciousness, the lemon for body consciousness, and the coconut for mind consciousness. Each moment of consciousness is discrete, with nothing flowing from one moment to the next.

Mind consciousness, the "coconut," appears after every other species of consciousness and thereby gives the illusion of sameness to every conscious experience. To the average person, there is a quality of seeing that is also found in hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. We can call that quality "knowing." However, with superpower mindfulness, you will discern that this knowing is not a part of seeing, hearing, and so on, but arises a moment after each type of consciousness. Moreover, this knowing has vanished when, for example, eye consciousness is occurring. And eye consciousness has vanished when knowing (mind consciousness) is occurring. In the simile of the fruit salad, there can't be an apple and a coconut on the plate at the same time."

The fourth focus of mindfulness are objects of the mind. The mind objects listed in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta are the Four Noble Truths, the Five Hindrances, the Five Aggregates, the Six Sense Spheres, and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. Ajahn Brahm specifically includes other mind objects such as thought, emotions and will (which are technically part of the aggregate of mental formations within the five aggregates).

The Four Noble Truths are often given as:

(1) The nature of suffering (dukkha): "Now this ... is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering."

(2) Suffering's origin (samudaya): "Now this ... is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination."

(3) Suffering's cessation (nirodha): "Now this ... is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it."

(4) The way leading to the cessation of suffering (magga): "Now this ... is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is the noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration."

The Five Hindrances, which we've already discussed in detail, obstruct the subject from entering into deep absorption states or the jhānas. They include sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt.

The Five Aggregates categorize all individual experience, among which there is no "self" to be found. It is often stated that a "person" is made up of these five aggregates. The aggregates consist of form (rūpa), consciousness (viññāṇa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saññā) and mental formations (saṅkharā). Form involves external and internal matter. Externally, form is the the physical world, internally form includes the material body and the physical sense organs. Consciousness is a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance. Feeling senses an object as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Perception registers whether an object is recognized or not. Mental formations involve all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, compulsions, and decisions triggered by an object.

The Six Sense Spheres include the six sense organs (or internal sense bases) and six sense objects (or external sense bases). Based on these six pairs of sense bases, a number of mental factors arise. Thus, for instance, when an ear and sound are present, the associated consciousness (viññāṇa) arises. The arising of these three elements—ear, sound, and ear-related consciousness—lead to what is known as "contact" (phassa) which in turn causes a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral "feeling" or "sensation" (vedanā) to arise. It is from such a feeling that "craving" (tanhā) arises. These mental factors are also the essential elements of the cycle of Dependent Origination.

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment are mental factors that begin to arise as the subject approaches states of enlightenment. These include mindfulness (sati), investigation (dhamma vicaya), energy (viriya), joy (piti), tranquility (passaddhi), concentration (samadhi), and equanimity (upekkha).

This summarizes the practice of satipaṭṭhāna and concludes part one of Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond. Ajahn Brahm then continues in part two of his book to describe in much greater detail the jhānas and an experiential account of the various stages of enlightenment. Fascinating to the nth degree. It is worth repeating that the Buddha promised that anyone who practices the four satipaṭṭhānas diligently would reach either the state of the non-returner or full enlightenment in seven days. But it is crucial to understand that this means first developing superpower mindfulness by entering jhāna. As Ajahn Brahm concludes,

"Develop superpower mindfulness generated by jhāna so you know for yourself how impotent ordinary mindfulness is. Put the citta (the knower) or cetanā (the will) under the spotlight of superpower mindfulness, courageously going beyond the comfort of your views. Await the unexpected. Don't second-guess truth. Wait with patience until the thousandth petal of the lotus fully opens to reveal the heart. That will be the end of delusion, the end of saṃsāra, and the end of satipaṭṭhāna."

Now, where did I put my cushion?

What Makes You Not a Buddhist (Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche)

This book is a very important distillation of the core of Buddhist philosophy. The book revolves around expounding the four seals, the quintessential teaching of the Buddha which state that:

1. All compounded things are impermanent.
2. All emotions are pain.
3. All things have no inherent existence.
4. Nirvana is beyond concepts.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche makes a note of his choice of words in translating the four seals into contemporary English. He indicates that trade-offs are often made in order to appeal to a broader audience that would better understand what is being said. Even though the words used do not capture the fullness of meaning behind the four seals, they are somewhat clearer to a Western audience. For example, the second seal speaks of emotions being pain. This is often given as dukkha (suffering) in the original Pali, and many Buddhist scholars have rendered this as "all compounded things are suffering." The underlying intention here is to signify that all things, when grasped at or clung to, ultimately bring emotional suffering.

The book has a light, almost flippant, quality about it. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche weaves threads of contemporary pop culture into his exposition of Buddhist philosophy, to make it more palatable and entertaining to the average person. The book reads as deep Buddhist thought interspersed with a smattering of amusing Western cultural observations, that really puts things into perspective: we see the spin surrounding consumerism and materialism for what it is. But the essence of the book is an exposition of core Buddhist philosophy. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche intertwines the story of the Buddha into the exposition of the four seals. He describes briefly the life of the Buddha, and his path towards realization.

So what makes you not a Buddhist? This brief excerpt summarizes the essence of the teaching and the book:

If you cannot accept that all compounded or fabricated things are impermanent, if you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that is permanent, then you are not a Buddhist.

If you cannot accept that all emotions are pain, if you believe that actually some emotions are purely pleasurable, then you are not a Buddhist.

If you cannot accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty, if you believe that certain things do exist inherently, then you are not a Buddhist.

And if you think that enlightenment exists within the spheres of time, space, and power, then you are not a Buddhist.

The book is organized into fours parts, with each seal taking one chapter. Chapter one is entitled "Fabrication and Impermanence." We discover what the Buddha found after a long time of contemplation: that every phenomenon we perceive is the product of many things temporarily coming together to create the illusion of an independently existing phenomenon. This illusion is dissipated when we penetrate to the truth: all that arises ultimately passes away, and that everything is in a state of continuous change.

After a long time of contemplation, [the Buddha] came to the realization that all form, including our flesh and bones, and all our emotions and all our perceptions, are assembled—they are the product of two or more things coming together. When any two components or more come together, a new phenomenon emerges—nails and wood become a table; water and leaves become tea; fear, devotion, and a saviour become God. This end product doesn't have an existence independent of its parts. Believing it truly exists independently is the greatest deception. Meanwhile the parts have undergone a change. Just by meeting, their character has changed and, together, they have become something else—they are "compounded."

The second chapter is entitled, "Emotion and Pain." Here we see what the Buddha uncovered concerning emotions and their relationship to suffering: that all emotions are suffering because they involve clinging to an idea of self. The Buddha taught that all emotions are ways in which we identify with a sense of self—whether those emotions are positive or negative. We tend to grasp after those emotions we call "positive," and push away those we call "negative." Whether we're grasping or pushing away, we're either trying to "increase," or "protect" ourselves. In either case, we're attached to a sense of self.

Siddhartha was also trying to cut suffering at its root. [...] He explored suffering with an open mind, and through his tireless contemplation Siddhartha discovered that at the root, it is our emotions that lead to suffering. In fact they are suffering. One way or another, directly or indirectly, all emotions are born from selfishness in the sense that they involve clinging to the self. Moreover, he discovered that, as real as they may seem, emotions are not an inherent part of one's being. [...] Emotions arise when particular causes and conditions come together, such as when you rush to think that someone is criticizing you, ignoring you, or depriving you of some gain. Then the corresponding emotions arise. The moment we accept those emotions, the moment we buy into them, we have lost awareness and sanity. We are "worked up." Thus Siddhartha found his solution—awareness. If you seriously wish to eliminate suffering, you must generate awareness, tend to your emotions, and learn how to avoid getting worked up.

A deeper analysis of the second seal reveals the root of emotions as suffering to be the nonexistent self. This sense of self is manufactured at an early age, and we are taught to think that our body, feelings, perceptions, consciousness, thoughts, and actions are who we are. This misunderstanding then permeates everything we do and experience. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche elaborates:

All of these various emotions and their consequences come from misunderstanding, and this misunderstanding comes from one source, which is the root of all ignorance—clinging to the self. We assume that each of us is a self, that there is an entity called "me." The self is just another misunderstanding, however. We generally manufacture a notion of self, which feels like a solid entity. We are conditioned to view this notion as consistent and real. We think, I am this form, raising the hand. We think, I have form, this is my body. We think, Form is me, I am tall. We think, I dwell in this form, pointing at the chest. We do the same with feelings, perceptions, and actions. I have feelings, I am my perceptions... But Siddhartha realized that there is no independent entity that qualifies as the self to be found anywhere, whether inside or outside the body. Like the optical illusion of a fire ring, the self is illusory. It is a fallacy, fundamentally flawed and ultimately nonexistent. But just as we can get carried away by the fire ring, we all get carried away by thinking that we are the self. When we look at our own bodies, feelings, perceptions, actions, and consciousness, we see that these are different elements of what we think of as "me," but if we were to examine them, we would find that "me" doesn't dwell in any of them. Clinging to the fallacy of the self is a ridiculous act of ignorance; it perpetuates ignorance, and it leads us to all kinds of pain and disappointment. Everything we do in our lives depends on how we perceive our "selves," so if this perception is based on misunderstandings, which it inevitably is, then this misunderstanding permeates everything we do, see, and experience. It is not a simple matter of a child misinterpreting light and movement; our whole existence is based on very flimsy premises.

The third chapter is entitled, "Everything is Emptiness." This is often given as anatta (no-self) in the original Pali, and many Buddhist scholars have rendered this as "all compounded things are non-self," or "empty of self." That is, no compounded phenomena has any inherent existence or is-ness. This follows quite naturally from the first seal and also from our modern physics, which states that everything is in a state of continuous flux. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche describes how Siddhartha was willing and able to see that all of our existence is merely labels placed on phenomena that do not truly exist, and through that he experienced awakening:

Although Siddhartha realized emptiness, emptiness was not manufactured by Siddhartha or anyone else. Emptiness is not the result of his revelation, nor was it developed as a theory to help people be happy. [...] Emptiness doesn't cancel out our daily experience. Siddhartha never said that something spectacular, better, purer, or more divine exists in place of what we perceive. He wasn't an anarchist refuting the appearance or function of worldly existence, either. He didn't say that there is no appearance of a rainbow or that there is no cup of tea. We can enjoy our experience, but just because we can experience something doesn't mean that it truly exists. Siddhartha simply suggested that we examine our experience and consider that it could be just a temporary illusion, like a daydream.

Siddhartha completely understood that in the relative world you can make a cup of oolong tea and drink it; he would not say "There is no tea" or "Tea is emptiness." If he were to say anything at all, it would be to suggest that the tea is not as it seems; for example, tea is shrivelled leaves in hot water. But some tea fanatics get carried away with the leaves and composing special mixes, creating names like Iron Dragon and selling small amounts for hundreds of dollars. To them it is not just a leaf in water. It was for this reason that some fifteen hundred years after Siddhartha taught, one of his dharma heirs, named Tilopa, said to his student Naropa, "It is not the appearance that binds you, it's the attachment to the appearance that binds you."

The classic Buddhist example used to illustrate emptiness is the snake and the rope. Let's say there is a cowardly man named Jack who has a phobia about snakes. Jack walks into a dimly lit room, sees a snake coiled up in the corner, and panics. In fact he is looking at a striped Giorgio Armani tie, but in his terror he has misinterpreted what he sees to the point that he could even die of fright—death caused by a snake that does not truly exist. While he is under the impression that it is a snake, the pain and anxiety that he experiences is what Buddhists call "samsara," which is a kind of mental trap. Fortunately for Jack, his friend Jill walks into the room. Jill is calm and sane and knows that Jack thinks he sees a snake. She can switch on the light and explain that there is no snake, that it is actually a tie. When Jack is convinced that he is safe, this relief is none other than what Buddhists call "nirvana"—liberation and freedom. But Jack's relief is based on a fallacy of harm being averted, even though there was no snake and there was nothing to cause his suffering in the first place.

It's important to understand that by switching on the light and demonstrating that there is no snake, Jill is also saying that there is no absence of the snake. In other words, she cannot say, "The snake is gone now," because the snake was never there. She didn't make the snake disappear, just as Siddhartha didn't make emptiness. This is why Siddhartha insisted that he could not sweep away the suffering of others by waving his hand. Nor could his own liberation be granted or shared piecemeal, like some sort of award. All he could do was explain from his experience that there was no suffering in the first place, which is like switching on the light for us.

The fourth chapter is entitled, "Nirvana is Beyond Concepts." This final seal is of particular interest, as it is not explicitly stated as one of the three characteristics of existence in the original Pali Suttas. Namely, anicca, dukkha, and anatta, which correspond to the first three seals. However, this last seal can be seen to follow naturally from the first and third seals. If all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, empty, and without inherent existence, then we cannot label things as if they truly exist: a rock, a tree, a cloud. All these things are actually processes, verbs, not things. In fact, there are no things to speak of, and that includes more complex processes such as you and I. Everything is process. This is also the realization of modern quantum physics: even the tiniest detectable particles of matter are not permanently enduring and indivisible parts, but continuously moving and interacting fields of energy (which aren't things). In other words, there are no nouns, no real things, just labels signifying those apparent things as conveniences of language. And so it is with this thing we call Nirvana—it is beyond words, labels, and concepts, and like everything else, lies directly in the field of experience—a state of mind. But because we understand this, we can talk about Nirvana as if it were a thing, in order to facilitate communication as a matter of linguistic convention.

When Siddhartha became enlightened, he became known as the Buddha. Buddha isn't a person's name, it is the label for a state of mind. The word buddha is defined as one quality with two aspects: "accomplished one" and "awakened one." In other words, one who has purified defilements and one who has attained knowledge. Through his realization under the bodhi tree, Buddha awoke from the dualistic state that is mired in concepts such as subject and object. He realized that nothing compounded can permanently exist. He realized that no emotion leads one to bliss if it stems from clinging to ego. He realized that there is no truly existing self and no truly existing phenomena to be perceived. And he realized that even enlightenment is beyond concepts. These realizations are what we call "Buddha's wisdom," an awareness of the whole truth.

[...]

In Buddhist texts, when these questions are posed, the answer is usually that it's beyond our conception, inexpressible. Many seem to have misunderstood this as a sly way of not answering the question. But actually that is the answer. Our logic, language, and symbols are so limited, we cannot even fully express something so mundane as the sense of relief; words are inadequate to fully transmit the total experience of relief to another person. [...] While we are caught in our current state, where only a limited amount of logic and language is used and where emotions still grip us, we can only imagine what it is like to be enlightened. But sometimes, with diligence and inferential logic, we can get a good approximation [...]. Using what we have, we can begin to see and accept that obscurations are due to causes and conditions that can be manipulated and ultimately cleansed. Imagining the absence of our defiled emotions and negativity is the first step to understanding the nature of enlightenment.

As the Buddha said in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, all phenomena are like a dream and an illusion, even enlightenment is like a dream and an illusion. And if there is anything greater or grander than enlightenment, that, too, is like a dream and an illusion. His disciple, the great Nagarjuna, wrote that the Lord Buddha has not stated that after abandoning samsara there exists nirvana. The nonexistence of samsara is nirvana. A knife becomes sharp as the result of two exhaustions—the exhaustion of the whetstone and the exhaustion of the metal. In the same way, enlightenment is the result of the exhaustion of defilements and the exhaustion of the antidote of the defilements. Ultimately one must abandon the path to enlightenment. If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet.

This idea is beautifully captured in one of the more well-known teachings of the Buddha: that the path, the vehicle, is a temporary device that allows us to cross over to the other side—like a raft that carries us across a turbulent river. It may even be uniquely tailored to our specific circumstances. However, once we've crossed over, we don't carry the raft on our backs—having served its purpose, we toss it away.

In this book, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche has provided us with a drop of much needed clarity in an age of confusion and information overload. In his exposition of the four seals he has swept away much of the confusion surrounding the many schools of Buddhism. He has helped us to understand what is essential by relying on the original teachings, life, and experience of the Buddha.

Now, where did I put my raft? See you on the other side.

Island (Aldous Huxley)

In his quasi utopian work Island, Aldous Huxley describes the functions and structures of a semi-enlightened society in the midst of an increasingly mad world riddled with greed and conflict. What makes the island's idealistic existence possible is the relative geographical isolation from outside influences. The island nation has evolved structures over a period of 150 years catalysed by a few semi-enlightened individuals, to support individual and social development into realms of higher consciousness. In fact, Pala is a forbidden island, a place no journalist has ever visited. However, as the madness of the outside world encroaches, these structures begin to be attacked, and the core values of this island nation fall into jeopardy. Nonetheless, by the end of the story, a broad panoramic portrait of an extraordinarily functional and enviable society is provided.

Interestingly, the ideological roots of this island society originate from a mix of Western and Eastern influences, in the persons of a Scottish doctor, Dr. Andrew, and a Palanese king, the Raja. An odd friendship between a Calvinist-Turned-Atheist and a pious Mahayana Buddhist. Dr. Andrew saved the life of the terminally ill Raja by using unorthodox techniques of Western medicine and hypnosis. They fast became friends, a pair of complimentary temperaments, talents, and philosophies, as well as complementary stocks of knowledge,

[...] each man supplying the other's deficiencies, each stimulating and fortifying the other's native capacities. The Raja's was an acute and subtle mind; but he knew nothing of the world beyond the confines of his island, nothing of physical science, nothing of European technology, European art, European ways of thinking. No less intelligent, Dr. Andrew knew nothing, of course, about Indian painting and poetry and philosophy. He also knew nothing, as he gradually discovered, about the science of the human mind and the art of living. In the month's that followed [...] each became the other's pupil and the other's teacher.

The story begins with Will Farnaby, a Westerner who is beached on the island of Pala after having failed to negotiate some difficult waters. Injured and traumatized, he is found by a young girl and her little brother. The young girl, cautious at first, applies some simple but powerful psychological first aid to get Will to confront the deep emotional pain surrounding the experience. The first aid consists simply in repeatedly reliving the traumatic experience until all blockages in the form of suppressed emotions have been palliated by finding a conscious avenue of expression and therefore release. After a cathartic episode, Will is able to enter into more normal interaction, having been freed from some of the psychological blockages caused by the traumatic experience. What is fascinating is the ease with which the technique is applied, even by a child. And even more, that all inhabitants of Pala have knowledge of such techniques at a very early age.

A recurring theme in Island is the use of hypnosis for dealing with pain in all its forms. The members of Palanese society are taught how to use self-hypnosis for relieving physical pain—and the women in particular employ this precise technique for painless childbirth. This same hypnotic procedure is also used to provide anaesthesia-less surgeries. The essence of the process is described when Susila hypnotizes Will after his traumatic ordeal, in order to speed physical recovery of his injuries. Susila later reveals in beautiful metaphor, that we must send our little "selves" into the garden to play, so the "grownups" can get to work on things. And it is at this moment that indirect suggestions can be made to great benefit. In the case of Will's injured knee, she makes some suggestions about his body image, making him imagine it much bigger than in everyday reality, and the knee much smaller. "There can't be any doubt as to who's going to win." Interestingly, this description of using hypnosis to treat injury and illness in general, was certainly influenced by Aldous Huxley's collaborations with renown psychiatrist and hypno-therapist Milton H. Erickson.

On a related note is the scathing commentary on the state of Western medicine. What transpires is a brilliant coup de grace in favour of holistic medicine, and treatment of the entire human being—with significant emphasis on prevention rather than cure. Will is speaking with the peppery little nurse Radha, who has brought him his afternoon meal.

     "So you think our medicine's pretty primitive?"
     "That's the wrong word. It isn't primitive. It's fifty percent terrific and fifty percent non-existent. Marvellous antibiotics—but absolutely no methods for increasing resistance, so that antibiotics won't be necessary. Fantastic operations—but when it comes to teaching people the way of going through life without having to be chopped up, absolutely nothing. And it's the same all along the line. Alpha Plus for patching you up when you've started to fall apart; but Delta Minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from sewerage systems and synthetic vitamins, you don't seem to do anything at all about prevention. And yet you've got a proverb: prevention is better than cure."
     "But cure," said Will, "is so much more dramatic than prevention. And for the doctors it's also a lot more profitable."
     "Maybe for your doctors," said the little nurse. "Not for ours. Ours get paid for keeping people well."
     "How is it to be done?"
     "We've been asking that question for a hundred years, and we've found a lot of answers. Chemical answers, psychological answers, answers in terms of what you eat, how you make love, what you see and hear, how you feel about being who you are in this kind of world."

[...]

     "So whether it's prevention or whether it's cure, we attack on all the fronts at once. All the fronts," she insisted, "from diet to autosuggestion, from negative ions to meditation."

Nurse Radha offers this telling little rhyme that every student nurse must commit to memory on the first day of training:

'I' am a crowd, obeying as many laws
As it has members. Chemically impure
Are all 'my' beings. There's no single cure
For what can never have a single cause.

On the issue of family and parenting, Island offers a refreshing alternative to conventional family structures. The centrepiece of Palanese family life revolves around the mutual adoption club or MAC. These are groups of about twenty families where children are raised in communities of mothers and fathers. Every member of society is a member of an MAC. Most children reside with their biological parents as with conventional family structures. However, in the event of family difficulties, children know they are free to leave their parents' home, and stay at one of their adoptive parents' homes until the difficulty passes or is resolved. The beauty of this approach is the exceedingly desirable side-effect of having children protected, to a large degree, from the repeated and extended exposure to the neurosis of a single set of parents. These children become the recipients of a number of diverse parenting styles, and derive tremendous benefit from a pool of role models. This dramatically curbs the passing of neurotic patterns from one generation to the next, as so often occurs in conventional parent-child relationships. Children are virtually guaranteed the love and attention they require at all stages of their development. Further, this care and attention is extended to every member of an MAC, from infants to centenarians. These communities are organic, fluid, and easily adapt to changing situations and circumstances of individuals.

So what does the educational process look like for a semi-enlightened society? In short, there is a great deal of attention given to the question of how to educate children on the conceptual level without killing their capacity for intense non-verbal experience. To begin with, education in Pala centres around a kind of practical semi-mystical deep psychology of mind and essence. First principles are discussed early on, the nature of being, mind, language, symbols, how language influences perception, and how the map is not the territory. Oddly, in our Western world we think these are high and flighty concepts, but only because most never encounter them until later in life. But if they are presented skilfully, these ideas can easily be grasped by children, and most importantly, could then inform all future learning, placing it in the correct context. But why is this so important? Well, briefly, when a human being sees the difference between language and the reality language attempts to approximate (albeit poorly), there is a marked reduction in one's identification with verbally expressed ideas, opinions, and views. And it's precisely this identification (and subsequent attachment) with the verbal expression of an idea, opinion, or view which is the cause of so much human conflict and suffering. Mr. Chandra Menon, the Under-Secretary of Education provides this explanation:

[Children] are taught to pay attention to what they see and hear, and at the same time they're asked to notice how their feelings and desires affect what they experience of the outer world, and how their language habits affect not only their feelings and desires but even their sensations. What my ears and my eyes record is one thing; what the words I use and the mood I'm in and the purposes I'm pursuing allow me to perceive, make sense of and act upon is something quite different. So you see it's all brought together into a single educational process. What we give the children is simultaneously a training in perceiving and imagining, a training in applied physiology and psychology, a training in practical ethics and practical religion, a training in the proper use of language, and a training in self-knowledge. In a word, a training of the whole mind-body in all its aspects.

Further, the point is made that a trained mind-body learns more quickly and more thoroughly than an untrained one. That it is more capable of relating facts to ideas, and both of them to life. And this includes wonderful visualization exercises, that bring to mind elements touched upon in the Harry Potter series, and techniques for dealing with powerful negative emotions. Some specific examples of teaching methodology include, how logic and structure are taught in the form of games and puzzles; children play and incredibly quickly catch the point, which can then be followed with practical applications. Children begin learning about ecology very early on; they are never given the chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. And what's especially important about this early teaching is the way in which it roots children in the development of an ecologically-based morality. The child isn't taught by way of constrictions and prohibitions, but rather indirectly through ecological investigations on the effects and repercussions of various actions in the environment. This gradually and naturally transforms itself into a higher Morality in relation to all things, a Morality that develops from clear understanding, rather than being imposed from without.

The morality to which a child goes on from the facts of ecology and the parables of erosion is a universal ethic. There are no Chosen People in nature, no Holy Lands, no Unique Historical Revelations. Conservation morality gives nobody an excuse for feeling superior, or claiming special privileges. 'Do as you would be done by' applies to our dealings with all kinds of life in every part of the world. We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence. Elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism.

Also, training in receptivity becomes the complement and antidote to training in analysis and symbol manipulation:

If one chooses to [...] one can always substitute a bad ready-made notion for the best insights of receptivity. The question is, why should one want to make that kind of choice? Why shouldn't one choose to listen to both parties and harmonize their views? The analysing tradition-bound concept maker and the alertly passive insight receiver—neither is infallible; but both together can do a reasonably good job.

As we move forward in our discovery of the infrastructure of a semi-enlightened society, we approach the hallowed realms of economics, politics, and media influence. These three areas are examined more-or-less simultaneously, as they are all directly to do with one grand over-arching idea: power. As Will Farnaby is given a tour of the productive resources of Pala, and the efficiency with which the society produces goods and services, he asks his guide on where ownership lies. His guide describes a co-operative system that lends itself to streamlined co-operative techniques for buying and selling and profit sharing and financing, without the need for commercial banks.

[...] Most of the time we're co-operators. Palanese agriculture has always been an affair of terracing and irrigation. But terracing and irrigation call for pooled efforts and friendly agreements. Cut-throat competition isn't compatible with rice-growing in a mountainous country. Our people found it quite easy to pass from mutual aid in a village community to streamlined co-operative techniques for buying and selling and profit sharing and financing. [...] No commercial banks [as] in your Western style. Our borrowing and lending system was modelled on those credit unions that Wilhelm Raiffeisen set up more than a century ago in Germany. Dr. Andrew persuaded the Raja to invite one of Raiffeisen's young men to come here and organize a co-operative banking system.

And to the question of what is used for money or the means of exchange, Will's guide indicates a paper currency that is 100% backed by physical gold, silver, and copper. The benefits of this approach is at first somewhat unclear, but with persistence of examination its power becomes painfully obvious; such an approach prevents excesses in government spending (the welfare state); it also prevents inflation and hyper-inflation, by way of terminating the virtually endless supply of unbacked paper (or electronic) currency, which dilutes the money supply and dramatically reduces purchasing power, the diseases of most modern Western economies.

There is a very interesting relationship presented in the effects of overpopulation, and the attendant inability to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, and education, and the subsequent rise of megalomaniacal demagogues due to civil unrest and discontent. The point is made that solving ones economic problems is not possible until the issue of overpopulation and its immediate side effects are adequately dealt with.

Solving [our economic problems] wasn't difficult. To begin with, we never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity. Not being overpopulated, we have plenty. But, although we have plenty, we've managed to resist the temptation that the West has now succumbed to—the temptation to overconsume. [...] Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism and breeding, these three—and the greatest of these is breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving the economic problems until that's under control. As population rushes up, prosperity goes down. [...] And as prosperity goes down, discontent and rebellion, [...] political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise. Another ten or fifteen years of uninhibited breeding, and the whole world, from China to Peru via Africa and the Middle East, will be fairly crawling with Great Leaders, all dedicated to the suppression of freedom, all armed to the teeth by Russia or America or, better still, by both at once, all waving flags, all screaming for Lebensraum.

Further examination reveals the deep connection between economics and politics. Will questions how the people of Pala prevent the arising of so-called "Great Leaders." His guide responds that they don't engage in warfare and therefore have no need for military hierarchies, or a centralized government. And this lack of centralized power structure is further supported by virtue of Pala's policy preventing anyone from becoming more than four or five times as wealthy as the average. The result, of course, is to prevent the arising of centralized power structures that are economically-based. A related premise is presented in Buckminster Fuller's The Grunch of Giants where he maintains that large multinational corporations have become the worlds true (but hidden) governing elite, due to the economic power they possess to influence everything from public opinion (through mass media), education, religion, commerce, and the body politic.

Well, to begin with we don't fight wars or prepare for them. Consequently, we have no need for conscription, or military hierarchies, or a unified command. Then there's our economic system: it doesn't permit anybody to become more than four or five times as rich as the average. That means that we don't have any captains of industry or omnipotent financiers. Better still, we have no omnipotent politicians or bureaucrats. Pala's a federation of self-governing units, geographical units, professional units, economic units—so there's plenty of scope for small-scale initiative and democratic leaders, but no place for any kind of dictator at the head of a centralized government. Another point: we have no established church, and our religion stresses immediate experience and deplores belief in unverifiable dogmas and the emotions which that belief inspires. So we're preserved from the plagues of popery, on the one hand, and fundamentalist revivalism, on the other. And along with transcendental experience we systematically cultivate skepticism. Discouraging children from taking words too seriously, teaching them to analyse whatever they hear or read—this is an integral part of the school curriculum. Result: the eloquent rabble-rouser, like Hitler or our neighbour across the Strait, Colonel Dipa, just doesn't have a chance here in Pala.

The key to achieving this hegemony of power lies in the control of mass media. When a centralized power structure controls mass media, it controls public opinion, and has complete autonomy over that society's decision-making process in the guise of a functioning democracy. Through television, radio, newspaper, etc., the populace is gradually conditioned to take on the views inculcated by these centralized power structures. Noam Chomsky's paraphrased remark is quite apropos, that violence is to dictatorship what propaganda is to democracy. When Will Farnaby discovers that their is only one newspaper in Pala, he enquires on who enjoys the monopoly:

"Nobody enjoys a monopoly," Dr. Robert assured him. "There's a panel of editors representing half a dozen different parties and interests. Each of them gets his allotted space for comment and criticism. The reader's in a position to compare their arguments and make up his own mind. I remember how shocked I was the first time I read one of your big-circulation newspapers. The bias of the headlines, the systematic one-sidedness of the reporting and the commentaries, the catchwords and slogans instead of argument. No serious appeal to reason. Instead, a systematic effort to install conditioned reflexes in the minds of the voters—and, for the rest, crime, divorce, anecdotes, twaddle, anything to keep them distracted, anything to prevent them from thinking."

Turning our attention towards less secular matters, perhaps most controversial is the approach towards spirituality and the religious impulse in Palanese society. Here, society consists of an admixture of religious philosophies, and adherents can best be described as "Buddhist Shivaites and Tantrik agnostics with Mahayana trimmings." However, deeply connected with the more theoretical aspects of religious philosophy, is an intensely practical, experiential aspect that is strongly emphasized. Virtually all Palanese participate in a deeply transformative initiation ceremony when they enter adulthood. It involves ingesting what is called the moksha-medicine in a very special context. This so-called "medicine" is a mescaline-like substance in the form of a mushroom, which plunges one into an altered state. However, this isn't just a wild ride down hallucination lane. Quite contrary, a great deal of attention is given to mind-set and environmental setting, and the entire process is ritualized so that the experience revolves around a spiritual core, where participants are encouraged to point their heightened and altered perceptions back onto themselves developing a realization of who and what they really are. The word moksha is borrowed from the Sanskrit and can be translated as "liberation." And this is precisely what the medicine is intended to convey: a brief taste of the experience of liberation or enlightenment, and also what's possible in terms of other modes of human consciousness. Once the experience is complete, the idea is then to continue the spiritual, psychological, emotional, and mental work necessary that prepares the ground for arriving at this heightened state in a completely natural way. The moksha-medicine is subsequently used only as a periodic aid, perhaps once or twice a year, to provide deeper insight in the course of one's personal development.

     "Another thing we're just beginning to understand," said Vijaya, "is the neurological correlate of these experiences. What's happening in the brain when you're having a vision? And what's happening when you pass from a premystical to a genuinely mystical state of mind?"
     "Do you know?" Will asked.
     "'Know' is a big word. Let's say we're in a position to make some plausible guesses. Angels and New Jerusalems and Madonnas and Future Buddhas—they're all related to some kind of unusual stimulation of the brain areas of primary projection—the visual cortex, for example. Just how the moksha-medicine produces those unusual stimuli we haven't yet found out. The important fact is that, somehow or other, it does produce them. And somehow or other, it also does something unusual to the silent areas of the brain, the areas not specifically concerned with perceiving, or moving, or feeling."
     "And how do the silent areas respond?" Will enquired.
     "Let's start with what they don't respond with. They don't respond with visions or auditions, they don't respond with telepathy or clairvoyance or any other kind of parapsychological performance. None of that amusing premystical stuff. Their response is the full-blown mystical experience. You know—One in all and All in one. The basic experience with its corollaries—boundless compassion, fathomless mystery and meaning."
     "Not to mention joy," said Dr. Robert, "inexpressible joy."
     "And the whole caboodle is inside your skull," said Will. "Strictly private. No reference to any external fact except a toadstool."

[...]

     "You're assuming," said Dr. Robert, "That the brain produces consciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness. And my explanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set of events belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belonging to an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has the faintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses. And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, as another. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain which cause them to produce a set of subjective events to which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain which opens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume of Mind with a large 'M' to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can't demonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truth of mine. And even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make any practical difference?"
     "I'd have thought it would make all the difference," said Will.
     "Do you like music?" Dr. Robert asked.
     "More than most things."
     "And what, may I ask, does Mozart's G-Minor Quintet refer to? Does it refer to Allah? Or Tao? Or the second person of the Trinity? Or the Atman-Brahman?"
     Will laughed. "Let's hope not."
     "But that doesn't make the experience of the G-Minor Quintet any less rewarding. Well, it's the same with the kind of experience that you get with the moksha-medicine, or through prayer and fasting and spiritual exercises. Even if it doesn't refer to anything outside itself, it's still the most important thing that ever happened to you. Like music, only incomparably more so. And if you give the experience a chance, if you're prepared to go along with it, the results are incomparably more therapeutic and transforming. So maybe the whole thing does happen inside one's skull. Maybe it is private and there's no unitive knowledge of anything but one's own physiology. Who cares? The fact remains that the experience can open one's eyes and make one blessed and transform one's whole life."

Another important aspect of Palanese spirituality involves the use of tantrik mysticism through the practice of maithuna, or the yoga of love. Although the view is expressed, that most tantra is silliness and superstition, there is a hard core of sense. The technique employs the use of male sexual restraint. The practice revolves around bringing great attention to the act of sexual union, in all its many details, its sights, sounds, smells, tactile sensations, etc., and to delay the male orgasm indefinitely. The essence of maithuna is movement from the purely physical, to all at once the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms. The simple act of exercising male restraint, coupled to a particular kind of intention and focus, is enough to bring both partners to an heightened state of awareness due to the deep attention given to intensely pleasurable sensations over an extended period of time.

In short, the essence of Palanese society revolves around a single text that was written by its greatest king the Old Raja, some 150 years ago. Pursuant to this text, the king had hundreds of mynah birds trained to regularly call out "attention" and "karuna" in an effort to remind Palanese citizens to bring their awareness to the two most important qualities of being present, and exercising compassion. The text is entitled, Notes on What's What. The content of the text is mainly concerned with what we really are on the level that's beyond individuality. It contains the essence of what Aldous Huxley wished to communicate in Island. And so we conclude with this extended quote, taken from the mouth of the great visionary himself:

     Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there.
     If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.
     What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.
     In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.
     Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other aspiring and frustrated Manichees.
     Conflicts and frustrations—the theme of all history and almost all biography. "I show you sorrow," said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow—self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two.

[...]

     Knowing who in fact we are results in Good Being, and Good Being results in the most appropriate kind of good doing. But good doing does not of itself result in Good Being. We can be virtuous without knowing who in fact we are. The beings who are merely good are not Good Beings; they are just pillars of society.
     Most pillars are their own Samsons. They hold up, but sooner or later they pull down. There has never been a society in which most good doing was the product of Good Being and therefore constantly appropriate. This does not mean that there will never be such a society or that we in Pala are fools for trying to call it into existence.

[...]

     The Yogin and the Stoic—two righteous egos who achieve their very considerable results by pretending, systematically, to be somebody else. But it is not by pretending to be somebody else, even somebody supremely good and wise, that we can pass from insulated Manichee-hood to Good Being.
     Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves, all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are.
     Concentration, abstract thinking, spiritual exercises—systematic exclusions in the realm of thought. Asceticism and hedonism—systematic exclusions in the realms of sensation, feeling and action. But Good Being is in the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to all experiences. So be aware—aware in every context, at all times and whatever, creditable or discreditable, pleasant or unpleasant, you may be doing or suffering. This is the only genuine yoga, the only spiritual exercise worth practicing.
     The more a man knows about individual objects, the more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza's language into ours, we can say: The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is—or rather Who (capital W) in Fact (capital F) "he" (between quotation marks) Is (capital I).
     St. John was right. In a blessedly speechless universe, the Word was not only with God; it was God. As a something to be believed in. God is a projected symbol, a reified name. God = "God."
     Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words—people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history—sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.

[...]

     Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact—sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

[...]

     'Patriotism is not enough.' But neither is anything else. Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.

[...]

     We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
     In Pala, after three generations of Reform, there are no sheeplike flocks and no ecclesiastical Good Shepherds to shear and castrate; there are no bovine or swinish herds and no licensed drovers, royal or military, capitalistic or revolutionary, to brand, confine and butcher. There are only voluntary associations of men and women on the road to full humanity.
     Tunes or pebbles, processes or substantial things? "Tunes," answer Buddhism and modern science. "Pebbles," say the classical philosophers of the West. Buddhism and modern science think of the world in terms of music. The image that comes to mind when one reads the philosophers of the West is a figure in a Byzantine mosaic, rigid, symmetrical, made up of millions of little squares of some stony material and firmly cemented to the walls of a windowless basilica.
     The dancer's grace and, forty years on, her arthritis—both are functions of the skeleton. It is thanks to an inflexible framework of bones that the girl is able to do her pirouettes, thanks to the same bones, grown a little rusty, that the grandmother is condemned to a wheelchair. Analogously, the firm support of a culture is the prime-condition of all individual originality and creativeness; it is also their principal enemy. The thing in whose absence we cannot possibly grow into a complete human being is, all too often, the thing that prevents us from growing.
     A century of research on the moksha-medicine has clearly shown that quite ordinary people are perfectly capable of having visionary or even fully liberating experiences. In this respect the men and women who make and enjoy high culture are no better off than the lowbrows. High experience is perfectly compatible with low symbolic expression.
     The expressive symbols created by Palanese artists are no better than the expressive symbols created by artists elsewhere. Being the products of happiness and a sense of fulfillment, they are probably less moving, perhaps less satisfying aesthetically, than the tragic or compensatory symbols created by victims of frustration and ignorance, of tyranny, war and guilt-fostering, crime-inciting superstitions. Palanese superiority does not lie in symbolic expression but in an art which, though higher and far more valuable than all the rest, can yet be practised by everyone—the art of adequately experiencing, the art of becoming more intimately acquainted with all the worlds that, as human beings, we find ourselves inhabiting. Palanese culture is not to be judged as (for lack of any better criterion) we judge other cultures. It is not to be judged by the accomplishments of a few gifted manipulators of artistic or philosophical symbols. No, it is to be judged by what all the members of the community, the ordinary as well as the extraordinary, can and do experience in every contingency and at each successive intersection of time and eternity.

The Only Dance There Is (Ram Dass)

The story of Ram Dass (formerly Dr. Richard Alpert) is a tragic one to some, and a testimony of the exquisite beauty, unpredictability and serendipity of life. After having received his doctoral degree, Richard Alpert was offered a prestigious post at Harvard University, where he eventually held appointments in four departments—the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service where he was a therapist. After some years of research and teaching, he met with Dr. Timothy Leary, who introduced him to LSD and it's effects on consciousness. Intrigued, they began conducting experiments on the psychotropic, administering the drug to individuals in double blind studies, and gradually began to draw a great deal of media attention to their work. The work placed the psychology department at Harvard and the University as a whole in an unfavorable light, and they were pressured by the conservative right to terminate the research. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were subsequently dismissed from Harvard in 1963, and here began a new chapter in psychedelic research and consciousness exploration.

The depth of insights offered by this man are truly phenomenal. He moves along his descriptions of consciousness, experience, and phenomena so fluidly and effortlessly, that one wonders where it is all coming from. In fact, he often says, that "he" isn't speaking, but that there "is" simply speaking. That there is a certain stepping aside of the egoic self so that truth can flow according to the circumstances and needs of the moment.

Ram Dass makes some important allusions to spirituality and its relation to entheogens, particularly LSD, in its ability to give individuals a brief taste of what's possible. He draws a great deal from his own experiences, but makes it very clear that these are only temporary states, and once one comes down from the experience, one is left with the dilemma of how to proceed. One has been metaphorically admitted to the "wedding banquet," but cannot stay. And this is the essence of esoteric Eastern spirituality, to enter into these expanded states of awareness, and there remain, through a gradual process of mind development, and consciousness unfolding. However, the use of entheogens can be useful for many as a kind of initiation or periodic pointer, alerting one to the possibility of what's available to human consciousness. This is particularly apropos for the West, where philosophical materialism makes it extremely difficult to accept something unless there is strong material or experimental evidence.

Ram Dass describes many of his experiences in detail, often times leaving the reader in a state of amazement and perhaps disbelief if s/he has never encountered such possibilities of experience before. But for the initiated, the territory covered is at least partially familiar. He does a wonderful job of connecting the various maps from different traditions, and presenting how they are all similar, and what it is they are accomplishing. He takes examples of some common practices, and examines the purpose and effects of these practices on consciousness. As things become clearer, one begins to develop an appreciation of the esoteric traditions in many cultures. At the very least, one begins to see the value of reproducible verifiable experiments on oneself. One begins to see oneself in the role of the consummate scientist, where one's entire being becomes a laboratory for experimentation.

The book originates from the recording of a series of talks given at the Menninger Foundation in 1970, and Spring Grove Hospital in 1972. The content can best be summarized by providing a topical list of the various ideas covered. There is simply too much breadth, and depth of insight to do justice in the form of a conventional summary of main ideas. However, the golden thread that unites all topics is clearly to do with consciousness expansion. Ram Dass really gets to the crux of issues, and most importantly, communicates them in a very accessible, low key, informal style, that makes for extremely entertaining reading. A series of section subtitles follows.

Part 1: The Path of Consciousness, The Four Component Design of Ashram, Consciousness as Freedom from Attachment, Higher Consciousness as State of Unity, Mantra, The Mandala Process, The Eternal Present, LSD, The "Book", Psychotherapy as a Path, Game Theory, Guide of Consciousness Journeys, Simple Rule of the Game, Chakra Centers, Levels of Consciousness, Krishna, Ram Story, The Issue of Social Responsibility, Increasing the Amount of Consciousness, Interchange of Methods, Modification of Group Consciousness, The Problem of the Experimenter, Limitations of Knowing, Evolving Consciousness

Part 2: Meher Baba and Bhakti Yoga, Edgar Cayce and Two States of Consciousness, Fear and Higher States of Consciousness, Love as a State of Being, The I Ching, Diet and Food, Perceptual Vantage Points and Psychosis, Another Karmic Relationship, Compassion without Pity, Attractions and Dangers of Powers, Need for a Guru, Gnostic Intermediary, The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chakras, Optimum Being, Transmutation of Energy, Centering, Distinctions Between English and Sanskrit, One-Pointedness of Mind, Teachers as Conveyors of the Universe

Part 3: "Miracle Stories", Nirvana, "Eastern" and "Western" Models of Man, Raising the Kundalini, Maharaj-ji. The Planes of Consciousness, Lawfulness of the Universe

Part 4: Karma and Reincarnation, Attachment, How Do We Know?, Deepest Desires Connected with Survival and Reproduction, Other Forms of Life, Comprehension, Desires, Beyond Dualism

Ram Dass, psychonaut extraordinaire, has given an incredible account of human potential and possibility. With his explorations of mind and consciousness, he has journeyed where few others have gone. And from these panoramic vistas and dizzying heights, he relates back to us that this exploration is truly the only dance there is.