Here by Heloise

Is Random Access Meditation (RAM) Possible?

…when beholding her image on the waves of Space she whispers “This is I,”—declare O Disciple, that thy soul is caught, in the webs of delusion. (Voice of the Silence p. 4) 

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/voice/voice.htm (URL for VOC)

Helena Blavatsky wrote, The Voice of the Silence, her last work in the year 1889, a rather small, inspirational book.  Despite its few pages it covers the “two paths” and the seven sounds one hears upon climbing the “ladder” or the “Way” to unseen spiritual regions. There is a sound associated with each region. And one “understands” this “language” through notes, sounds, registered to the soul, mind and brain, all in turn, carried over when the meditation moves from there back to here. Each of the melodious sounds are heard on the successive and individual planes by the meditator lucky enough to venture there. Or is it here? That is the real question: Can we access there from here?

Blavatsky’s book title suggests to the spiritual seeker, of every level, a paradox. But what we may not know is that it is a real event. It is centered and focussed at the eye center.  This is where we are taken during true meditation—the eye center is the goal for everyone. We also may not be aware of what Albert Einstein and other physicists have since “discovered”: that time is relative; we experience time as something that speeds or drags on us. Thus finding a place of silence is a real and “relative” event. But one that does not happen in real time. The seven sounds audible only to the soul, become real to the mind, and filter down to the brain. In order to discover serenity and simplicity the would-be meditator must divorce himself from real time in the real world.

A biologist studies the highly complex and simple facts such as the five senses. The five senses, also called the portals of the body, allow every sentient being to intake information through these doors and make decisions based on what has been observed, felt, smelled, tasted and heard. In addition to the senses, the animal body is (including humans) is equipped with portals that allow for reproduction and excretion, i.e., the nine portals of the body. Just like resources,  they can be misused or become objects of obsession. The senses and portals of the body can become sources of dissipation if the man or woman is not on guard. The spiritual parallel to these 9 portals of the body, are the powers of the soul.

In my lifetime of spiritual studies, I have learned that the soul has two powers: sight and sound. In other words, the soul can see and hear on its own plane! That is startling news that we can use to propel ourselves fast and forward. If we know tht the soul has the power, then it is possible that the mind has the access (through bridge-building meditation).  Finding the place where these sounds occur may not be so real or readily understood. Again, another paradox.

It is like describing an elephant to a blind  man. Or rather reminds us of the parable of the blind men who each feel different parts of the elephant, report different things—all correct, but still the picture is incomplete, therefore untrue. The elephant cannot clearly be seen with only one hand open and two eyes closed. However, this is exactly the pose that one can strike, including the Buddha, when meditating. Both eyes are kept closed, some use the slit-eye (squinting) method…but you get the idea. And often people leave one hand open softly on the lap. That is a spiritual suggestion of emptiness. Spiritually one is ready to receive the gifts of the spirit, instead of earthly gifts. The gift of the great silence is a true gift indeed. One, once experienced, needs no interpretation, no guide, no explanation.

When the meditation reaches “there” to that lofty abode of the soul—the time for study, reading and following a particular path have come to a close. Reading about or listening to speakers discuss meditation is easy. But this spiritual practice is anything but easy. It involves among other things great change. And as the saying goes: no one wants change except a wet baby. One has to change the order of priorities in one’s life in order to create the space for meditation to move into one’s life. It takes time, space and energy to change. And who really wants to work that hard, merely to sit and expand the qualities of the soul? Blavatsky cleverly calls the soul the voice, or  the “Silent ‘God’—and says it remains silent. Through spiritual and Buddhists texts we are advised that the guru (God) appears when the disciple or aspirant is ready. But this writer believes that the outer guru will disappears (they become one actually) as the disciple takes this next leap of faith into higher regions, and contacts the real inner man.  But wait, we have more to tell in this article about sound and its place in the life of the pilgrim and the path.

As a meditator for more than 30 years, it was always a priviledge to sit down and attempt to still my mind for what might range from 30 minutes to 3 hours. The mind, to be sure, is never silent. Mystics have written that one can conquer the world in a lifetime, but never conquer or completely still/silence the ever-moving mind. Astrologers have given it the symbol of Mercury to indicate its swiftness, its “shiftiness.” So, why should one try to enter the silence, when getting there, gaining access, when the work has been described as both difficult and as dry as licking a stone? It is the opposite of the flash found in the world. In fact it is not like here at all. Meditation is considered the most spiritual, or better yet, the only spiritual dish here on earth. Yes, the only one. Nothing else, no other act is spiritual except remembering the Holy Spirit. And in meditation we are offering our prayer, our humble self to the spirit we sense within.

In my hometown, recently, there were a couple of screening of the movie Into Great Silence. It is a detailed and divining look at cloistered life inside the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps. The conversation as well as the prayers are in French, with English subtitles. But its rarified atmosphere is more like Lourdes than Paris. Filmed by German filmmaker Philip Gröning in 2006.

Silence is a typical vow of those who enter cloistered orders. It is based on the belief that the five senses (nine portals) of the body are sources of evil, or where evil can gain a foothold and thus pull one down and away from God. Those who follow an order and its “rules” must shun any sort of stimuli that might lead to impurity in thought, word or deed — a truly holy life the goal. This movie offered such a rare glimpse into this life. But I suppose there are some who might read this article and shake their heads in silent agreement because they too recall the silence or scenes from a silent life lived within the halls of one of the great monasteries in either China or Europe. As one who read and studied the writings of Alice A Bailey and the Tibetan, I was captivated immediately by that idea, and certain that I too had lived a life of devotion within the walls of a monastery. The only question was where?

In the film The Great Silence the audience becomes the watcher. But instead of the watcher moving around the picture, the picture moves around the watcher. The audience is taken by the hand inside the cell (a small walled-off space) of the monk and inside his life. The grounds are also on display, an alpine view of snow-covered mountains, valleys, woods and streams. Throughout the film each of the monks, from applicant to abbot, is introduced. We are not told their names, nor do they talk on camera. It is only a face that we study. Monks here live a life that is sparse by modern standards. The sacrifices are more than just  physical: It is also emotional and spiritual. The men are seduced into following Christ and they are fully aware and welcome this seduction.

Interestingly enough, the manner in which this movie unfolds is exactly how, to the mind’s eye, the pilgrim, or seeker’s past lives here on earth also unfold. We are turned this way and that. A face appears. It speaks only to our minds. We watch. We accept or reject the image, much like a phone call. Is that person, voice or image really my own? Is it calling me?  You don’t have to answer that question now. Its silent message sinks first into the software of the mind, and later into the hardware of the brain, until it becomes your own. As the brain is seen to behave as computer, and the computer compared to the brain, with many levels of memory banks, we can borrow from that and use its acrynoyn “RAM” random access memory. Why not random access meditation?

Pilgrims, seekers leave the path, die (or so they think) or loose interest just as people left before the movie ended, realizing that they could not deal with so much silence and stillness. But you will never hear that complaint from the spirit. Why? Because it is patience itself. While one can ignore or not turn one’s face to the spiritual side without obvious physical harm, it does not end there.  Spiritual walkers know that they are not on a linear path. They know that they are not walking from point A to point B, only to end with no return. So, for them it becomes simply a question of whether or not they will do the needed work in this life or in the next. Such a person really has no choice. And why is that? Because the work that was begun in the past lives will return for completion. The equation must be solved, worked out. There is no hurry in God’s universe. However, eventually the soul stirs and send out a message to the not-so waiting mind. This tap on the shoulder, the right side next to the ear, often goes unheeded. It goes unheeded because it is unwanted. The mind knows, with this alert from the spiritual self; the not-physical, non-pleasure-seeking self is gaining in strength. It does not want to answer its call, why? Because it means an end to the “good times.”

But are they really the good times? What of the sublime bliss? What of the drink, or elixir, that is culled in the middle of the night—3:00 a.m. which is also called time of elixir? When the spiritual lotus is most likely to fully flower for the one who meditates.

While studying meditation and enjoying spiritual practice, I have also closely studied French medieval monasticism for the past seven years. I was astonished to learn that it was from the lives, letters, lectures, and writings of Heloise and Abelard that the university system was born, first near Paris and later disseminated throughout Europe. Monasteries have long been the repository of and a treasure trove of the world’s knowledge, especially the Classics. The very Western tradition we enjoy was imported from the great minds and philosophies of the ancient world: Greece and Rome, the place where the Bible was translated from Aramaic to Greek, where it was then able to be translated into Latin. The advent of the printing press and the Latin Bible both made “modern” life possible.

Many books, I dare call scholarship, have been written lately causing a renewed interest in atheism. Well-meaning men have once again put God on the critical list. Religion is its roommate. Religion and the genetic code that causes us to seek God are espoused as evil, both pegged as the source of war and human suffering. The fragile individual, however, seems to forget one thing: along with the rest of the world, that they owe the very Western legacy/literacy to religion and faith, all faiths. Science was born from religion. Man should not forget that regardless of the status of this relationship, one birthed the other.

I have included a discussion of this film precisely because it does not extol or count the civilization contributions of the Catholic Church per se, or of any other church. What it does do well is to remind us that simplicity is what we are missing in our lives. And that simplicity can be had for free, just by closing the eyes, turning off the TV and breathing the fresh air during a walk. Stress reduction never looked so good as watching grown men playing and sliding down snow-covered slopes. The brothers in Christ in this film took group walks as a means of exercising the soulful communion and familial connections one with the other. During all activities however the brothers were never to forget the rules that governed all aspects of this life, even rules to walk by.

The pealing of the bells in the towers of cathedrals and churches is the exoteric reminder of the esoteric work the pilgrim aspires to accomplish: Rest inside the silence. During my discovery of the role that monastic life played in my own past lives I was led to information about people who also lived secluded, spiritual lives. They were not part of any order. But by order of their soul sequestered themselves, living absolutely alone, trying a self-imposed inner silence. In that silence they sought Christ inside. They were called anchorites. By definition, mostly women “anchored” who themselves to a place (alone) from which they never left. They would have travelers visit them, stopping by their windows to talk and bring news. The news often grim because the Black Plague (1347-1350) was stalking Europe during most of the time period under study. Thus while the great monastic and perapatetic (master teachers who went from place to place teaching) movement was underfoot, this group also made their contribution to the great work of silence.

Helena Blavatsky often lived alone, worked alone and spent hours in deep concentrated thought. Her focus of bringing together knowledge from all disciplines and domains into a few great books was not merely the work of a woman of flesh and blood. It was truly the work of a great spirit. She had to seek an inner silence during periods in her life to allow that still small voice, she wrote about, to be heard. In her decades of work I always thought it a paradox that she would complete it with a small, but powerful, book of poetry, a final paradox.  Her life and times often reflected that of either an abess or an anchorite woman busy in her extended beehive of spiritual activity. It took a strong hand to keep outsiders from taking the honey away from the hive before it was ready. But she was equal to the task.

I found that besides the physical irony of this book Voice of the Silence, there was equally a spiritual one. The meditator who goes there inside the meditation, swiftly discovers that the early stages of it are anything but silent!  From the initial roaring train-rushing sound of the opening astral plane; to the absolute silence of the mental plane (another surprise), to the clanging of the bell when the highest head center is reached. There is only wonderment when the meditator returns here.

Here I want to finish the discussion earlier mentioned about physical laws that “discovered” that now explain the workings of the “inside.” Theoretical thinking has cleared up events that heretofore were only good guesses made by good men. Men such as Galileo and Newton first described what eventually became laws. Galileo, in particular, laid the groundwork for understanding what happens with time and space or timespace. Out of that came Einstein’s great work. And one thing led to another. A scaffold was carefully built, where inner experiences of sound and light now made sense.

Since physics has established that nothing travels faster than light, it meant that time had to take a backseat to light. Einstein literally saw the light, and completely reversed the thinking on this. He also realized that time attaches itself to space, therefore we literally feel the passing of time while waiting we feel impatient, no doubt. But while waiting we don’t see or encounter light. No, it is simply moving too fast. When it  is encountered, as in meditation or in near-death experiences, what happens has been bourne out by all those who have experienced it: time slows down to a crawl. Space or distance, however, shrinks. This is how I remember it, space shrinks, but time thickens. What does this have to do with our subject meditation? Everything in fact. One of the most stunning things I learned on the path is that the earth plane was the perfect place for man to work out his karmas. Why? Because it all has to do with time and how it is perceived or experienced here on earth as opposed to other planes (such as the various levels of heavens or the astral plane). Within my spiritual quest I was taught that time spent in meditation and devotion shortens, lessens (bud does not change) the karmic debt allowed to be paid off in any one particular life. Here’s the catch: only if offered in the human form.

This organic convergence of physical laws has shown what the meditation masters have always maintained: Time seems to, or stretches out to near-infinity in the higher regions. The space or vast distances can be covered in short bursts of “time.” Thus as one approaches the speed of light (as in meditation) time slows down (time dilation). Therefore, the man in human form can access both here and there from here on earth. The common feeling is that one has been away from the body for a long period of time (on return) when, according to clock time, it may have been only 30 minutes in duration!

Just as all life is governed by laws, so too is monastic life. It is generally governed by the rules of its founder and the particular faith. Therefore there is more than one type of robe a man might wear, and more than one type of abbot that a monk might follow. In the film, the audience walked through and within a grand stone estate where the men lived and slept in a cell, with a stove at its heart and a small area where they could study. Silence, prayer, and study make up the atoms of their existence. The pursuit of knowledge through reading and study after all, wrote Tullius Marcus Cicero, is the root of true happiness in life. If that is the case then the cloistered are some of the happiest people in the world. But they are not the only happy people. Those who live, what the Indians call the householder life, can also find happiness. They too can lead a “cloistered” life within the walls of spiritual convinction.

Final thoughts: The work of matching the cloth of our life here inside the random mind, with the work of matching our life there inside the meditation soon will be seamless. You won’t even see the seams. 

Copyright 2007

Portions of this article originally published by Blogcritic.org as Into Great Silence a movie review, by Heloise.

Book URL: http://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Vinci-Royale-Through-Rebirth/dp/1933538554/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9491295-0123132?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177695902&sr=1-1

Biography: 

The author Leslie J. McClinton (writes as Heloise) is a science teacher, new author. As a keen observer of humanity, using her background in anthropology, occultism, and science/research she writes in multiple genres. This writer is also an online spiritual guru who combines spirituality and politics, at her politico-spiritual blog (Theosophy Talks Truth). She is a native of Chicago mother of two, grandmother of three. She prefers walking and biking for exercise. Author has B.S., biology and M.A., anthropology, certified science and French teacher. Theosophy Talks Truth

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