I’ve recently become involved for the first time in decades with a spiritual organization, and this led me to write to one of the members that such organizations often come under the control of people who are given over almost entirely to their egos. Then I remembered a counter-example and wrote the following postscript: Dear […]
Tag: Freddie’s biography
What’s new with me
I feel an impulse to start writing here again. I want to write about several impersonal topics but before I do that, I think I should describe recent events in my life. This is probably the first time I’ve written here about my life without intending to illustrate some point or other that applies to […]
How I was brought to Ramana
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 […]
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 […]