Last summer I experienced conscious sleep for the first time. I mean conscious deep sleep, not lucid dreaming. In this article I’ll describe what it felt like. Conscious sleep is mentioned in some of the upanishads, especially the Mandukya Upanishad, which says that the three states of consciousness — waking, dreaming, and deep sleep — […]
Author: Freddie
The Effortless Thought-Free State
In response to How To Stay Conscious 1 a friend wrote: The only question I have regarding the sadhana you have posted about is about effort. Any attempt to consciously still the mind is contrary to my nature and experience. Even repeating a mantra is for a set period of time and then I just […]
The Emotion that Has No Name
Part 1 The folks who write advertisements often call movies ‘heartwarming’. They wouldn’t do this unless they were sure that most people know what ‘heartwarming’ means. A movie is ‘heartwarming’ if it makes you feel a certain way. If it causes a certain emotion. What’s the name of this well-known emotion? This is a trick […]
How to Stay Conscious 2
Let’s call this tip the bouncing-tennis-ball method. I’m giving it a stupid name but as you’ll see, it’s a technique for attaining samadhi taught by Patanjali in the ancient Yoga Sutras. Sadhana doesn’t get more serious than that! I assume you’ve read my article How to Stop Thoughts and understand what it means to be […]
How to Stay Conscious 1
I assume you know what it’s like to be conscious. If not, you can find out by following the suggestions in my article How to Stop Thoughts. The next step is to remain in that state as intensely as possible, as frequently as possible, and as long as possible. Most people find this hard to […]
Sadhana 1
Sadhana means ‘practice’ in Sanskrit, the language of Hindu scriptures. ‘Sadhanas’ are exercises or techniques that can help people get enlightened. I’ve named this sadhana ‘Number One’ because if you could write a syllabus for enlightenment — you can’t, of course, but if you could — this sadhana might be a prerequisite for the […]
Sadhana 26
Sadhana means ‘practice’ in Sanskrit, the language that the oldest Yoga books were written in. It means an exercise that people can do to help get enlightened. Sadhana is to enlightenment what weight-lifting is to muscles. Sorry, no, I don’t know where you can buy steroids for enlightenment. The basic idea of the sadhana that […]
Charlie’s Magic Camera
My friend Charlie — excuse me, my brother Charlie — often sends me pictures that he takes with a certain camera. Either Charlie has a strange talent or there is something unusual about this camera. Maybe both. Yesterday he sent this picture of a dead salmon. I wrote and said: “Okay, let’s face it, this […]
My Two Days at Meenakshi Amman Temple
The first two posts on this blog pay homage to my guides and protectors, the Goddess and Sri Ramana Maharshi. No amount of thanks could ever be adequate. In a way my spiritual path began during the experience I’m about to describe although I wasn’t aware of until many years later. For a prequel to […]
Ramana Maharshi and Meenakshi Amman Temple
The first two posts on this blog pay homage to my guides and protectors, the Goddess and Sri Ramana Maharshi. No amount of thanks could ever be adequate. The house where Ramana Maharshi lived as a teenager is about 300 feet from Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, India, as shown in this picture from Google Earth: […]