Who Am I?

Although I experienced my first brush with inner reality as a schoolboy at St Ronan's, lying under a great oak tree at the entrance to the playing fields, I first started to enquire deeply into these things at the prompting of my mother-in-law Timmie Watson in the (Australian) summer of 1972. At that time - and for about four or five years after my marriage to Prue and when we had just moved into Harvestgate - I devoured books beginning with William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, Alan Brunton, anything by Alan Watts, the Theosophists, RH Nixon's Man, The Measure of All Things, PJ Sayer's Eastern Wisdom and Western Thought, Hubert Benoit's The Art of Detachment According to Zen, Raynor Johnson's The Watcher on the Hills and many other mainstream works. Then, a kind of knowing opened up in me, through which I seemed to understand the world more fully. I could feel the spiritual nature of the world a...

I saac Tigrett at friend Peter's birthday party at the German Bakery in Puttaparthy in October 2008 His talk at Dallas in February 2009 is available at http://www.saibabaofindia.com/mr-Isaac-tigrett-video-talk-given-in-dallas-usa.htm

"As regards the technique of meditation, different teachers and trainers give different forms of advice. But I shall give you now the most universal and the most effective form. This is the very first step in spiritual discipline. At first, set a few minutes every day for meditation, and extend the time as you feel the bliss that you get. "Let it be in the hours before dawn. This is preferable because the body is refreshed after sleep, and the dealings of daytime will not yet have impinged on you. Have a lamp or a candle before you with an open, steady, and straight flame. Sit in front of the candle in the lotus posture or any other comfortable sitting position. Look on the flame steadily for some time, and closing your eyes try to feel the flame inside you between your eyebrows. Let it slide down into the lotus of your heart, illuminating the path. When it enters the heart, imagine that the petals of the lotus open out by one, bathing every thought, feeling, and emotion in t...

Modern Education is breeding selfishness. It is for acquiring goods and services for one's own comfort. These are worldly pleasures. The qualities of desire, anger, greed, delusion, pride and envy drive one's efforts in pursuit of worldly pleasures. No doubt worldly education helps to provide comfort and joy in the objective world, but it does not at all contribute to inner bliss. Only the five human values of truth, peace, love, non-violence and righteousness can confer inner bliss. A person who cultivates these five human values will always be happy. The five senses of action provide external pleasure whereas the five human values confer inner bliss. Baba's Divine Discourse, 22nd Nov 2009.

On my visit to Perth to see the Fraser family (and my godson Sean) who very sadly lost their dear mother Gopika in March, I was booked to catch the 12.20 flight back to Singapore and London. But although I had stayed the night with the family, I hadn't had any time alone with my godson and wanted to spend time with him. Preparing for the morning flight, Iain Fraser (who was also flying out) said 'Hey, there's no 12.20 flight; you must be on the 15.30.' I didn't both to check and instead spent the morning with my godson (who drove me to Freemantle where we had a coffee) before getting a taxi to the airport in good time for the 15.30. On checking in, they looked puzzled and said that they had been expecting me for the 12.20, but would try and put me anyway onto the 15.30 - which was a shorter connection in Singapore to the London flight - but it was full. I waited without concern and was duly handed the boarding pass shortly before take-off. When I got home, I foun...

Dr Jack Hawley has produced on of the most accessible translations of the Bhavagad Gita available . In addition to the written version, there is also spoken (by Jack Hawley) version and once one gets used to his accent, it's a fine way to listen to the teachings, either in the car or on an iPhone. An interview with Jack Hawley can be seen here

A scientist named Dr. Baranowski, Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona and a specialist in Kirlian photography, once came to see Sai Baba. ( Kirlian photography , or ‘biomagnetic field radiation photography’, is done with a special camera which photographs the energy bands around living beings; different colors in the biomagnetic field correspond to different emotional qualities. To quote Baranowski, “When a person is full of love the aura around him is blue and when the love is pronounced, it becomes pink.”) Baranowski had scientifically trained himself to see auras, and with this trained vision was investigating the various holy men of India. Some years ago he gave a talk at the Prashanti Nilayam ashram on his experiences with Sai Baba. Some excerpts: “I have met over a hundred holy men in India. Too many of these holy men are involved in their own personal egos. Their auras show mostly concern for themselves and their institutions. So [their auras] are only a f...