A friend asked me recently to write about how I came to Ramana. I was brought to him by a chain of events that started with my father’s death and culminated in a visit to Meenakshi Amman Temple in southern India. I’ve written about some of those events on this blog in individual posts but […]
Tag: Freddie’s biography
The second way I meditated
When I was a freshman in college half a century ago, my favorite novelist was Doris Lessing. In one of her novels, maybe several of them, a character makes a deliberate effort to silence his or her mental chatter. The idea intrigued me because it touched a major feature of everyone’s experience yet I had […]
Why I believe in auras
A friend asked today if I believe that some people can see auras. Although I can’t see them, yes I do. Here’s why. This is a true story. When I was a child my father barely survived a heart attack. From that day on I lived with the expectation that at any moment he might […]
My experiment in the New York City subway
The subject of external aids (videos, satsangs, music, chanting, books, etc.) came up in a comment yesterday. These things can be very helpful by reminding us, inspiring us, and transmission. Incidentally, if you’ve never been in a large hall, especially a large wooden hall, where hundreds of people are chanting, try to arrange it at […]
After my kundalini woke up
Twenty years ago I wrote an article for Realization.org called ‘The Day My Kundalini Woke Up‘. The article says nothing about the long-term effects of that experience because when I wrote it, I didn’t yet know what the long-term effects would be. Today I’m going to tell the rest of the story. As I explained […]
The most surprising thing that ever happened to me
Instead of the title you see on this article I could have chosen, “The night I completely lost interest in my thoughts.” Both names are accurate. The experience that I’m about to describe occurred about 20 years ago, shortly after I became an earnest seeker, on a particular night when I made a much greater […]
How to destroy a vasana (example 3): Julia’s father
Earlier posts in this series are here and here. Before I published this article, Julia checked it for accuracy and made a few changes. She told me, “I got goosebumps and felt tenderness in my heart while I read it because this was the night my heart chakra opened.” How the vasana got created Julia […]
My reunion with Julia
Here’s an example of the kind of thing I called “supernatural” in a recent post. First let me give you a little background. My girlfriend Julia and I became a couple 31 years ago but in 2004 we broke up and had no contact with each other for 14 years. About a year ago we […]
Was this telepathy?
Here’s the story I mentioned at the end of the previous post. Many years ago (39 to be exact) I had a girlfriend who I will call Anna. One night while we lay in bed, about to go to sleep, she told me that she had experienced telepathy several times. The fact that we were […]
How to destroy a vasana (example 1): I am a coward
In this article, I’ll describe in detail how I destroyed a vasana which had tormented me for decades. Vasanas must be destroyed in order to realize the Self. This particular vasana was painful because it made me hate myself. Painful, self-hating vasanas are especially insidious. First I’ll tell you how the vasana got created. When […]