Who Am I?

THE GATE OF THE YEAR And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”  And he replied:  “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”  So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.  So heart be still:   What need our little life Our human life to know,   If God hath comprehension?   In all the dizzy strife Of things both high and low,   God hideth His intention.   God knows. His will Is best. The stretch of years Which wind ahead, so dim To our imperfect vision,   Are clear to God. Our fears Are premature; In Him,   All time hath full provision.   Then rest: until God moves to lift the veil From our impatient eyes,   When, as the sweeter features Of Life’s stern face we...

Visitor: This Consciousness is like a screen, and I am the screen. Maharaj: "Understand what I say without concepts; adding new concepts. Now go to zero concepts. There are many spiritual seekers whose aim is to acquire sufficient merit to reach a certain place, such as Heaven or Vaikuntha. I have had no aims except to find out. I was not aware of my Awareness, and suddenly I became conscious that ' I Am'. Where and how did this Consciousness arise on me? That was my inquiry, going back to that state when the presence of phenomena was not there. That is original knowledge of the original Self. So, I went back, tracing this original Self, and I reached a stage where I wanted to know what my state was before this Consciousness arose. That is the destination which I have reached. Brahman, Isvara, God, all these are names given to the Consciousness when it is conscious of itself. If you have properly understood this knowledge, what will be your position at the moment of so-ca...

  Communion in the Churchyard at Litchfield August 2020 - the first service following lockdown. The services are now by video, and are followed by a coffee meeting by Zoom My letter to the Padre at Litchfield, Mark Christian in November 2020 following remarks he made about God in one of our Zoom coffee talks Mark, your interesting homily at coffee yesterday prompted me to write to you with my thoughts on the subject of God.  When you read them, you will understand why I didn’t raise them in company, and I hope they won’t lead to my ex-communication! I believe that there is God - so let’s get that out of the way - but I also believe that he/she/it is COMPLETELY unknowable.  And with that understanding, goes many of the conundrums that we wrestle with, such as why a ‘loving God’ lets terrible  things happen. There is no such thing as a ’loving God’ - or indeed a 'vengeful God’.It’s a comfortable human-sized construct that  doesn’t accord with reality. Yes, love ex...

I am not easily frightened.. Not because I am brave but because I know that I am dealing with human beings and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning, not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion and I would have liked to ask" Did you have a very unhappy childhood? has your girlfriend let you down? " ......Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him then and therefor I know that pitiful men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself. Something else about this morning: the perception, very strongly borne in, that despite all the suffering and injustice, I cannot hate others. All the appalling things that happen are no mysterio...

The UN confers Special Consultative Status on the Sai Central Trust  The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) conferred ‘Special Consultative Status’ on the Puttaparthi-based Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust. It will enable the trust to interact with the United Nations Secretariat and participate in its programme The United Nations body accorded global recognition for the humanitarian work being done by the trust, The ECOSOC adopted the recommendation of the committee on NGOs to grant the status to the trust, enabling it to actively engage with ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies. It will enable the trust to interact with the United Nations Secretariat and participate in its programmes. The trust can also make representations to the UN in the fields where it has contributed over the past decades. \ Managing Trustee R.J. Rathnakar said this gives the trust a global stage for promoting and spreading the five human values — sathya (truth), dharma (righteousness), sha...

All definite things, everything we may name and identify and everything we may desire and cherish, including our own bodies and our own lives, emerge from and are rooted in something formless and indefinite: Forms emerge from formlessness, the divided from the undivided, the named from the unnamed, concrete things from vaporous energies, even “beings” from what we’d call “nothing.” Some forms of religious Taoism seek immortal vitality through a reconnection with this source of life, the inexhaustible energy that gave us birth. Many forms of cultivation, visualization and ritual are developed, with deities both inside and outside one’s own body, to reconnect and integrate with the primal energy in its many forms. The philosophical Taoism of the “Tao Te Ching” seeks to remain connected to this “mother of the world,” the formless Tao (meaning “Way” or “Course”), that is seemingly the opposite of all we value, but is actually the source of all we value, as manure is to flowers, as the empt...