Weblog von Hans-Wolfgang

Tathata is an individuality in emptiness -- in a void. It should be said, it is a living void within. It is a void which is surrounded by bones, flesh and tissues. He is a man of tao who becomes like this void. He reaches the fourth stage. To be a tathata is to jump from collective unconsciousness to cosmic unconsciousness. In the condition of a witness, we go from the outer world, and the individual enters the unconscious. In awareness, the individual goes beyond unconscious, and enters collective unconscious. In collective unconscious the individual has to practise to be a tathata, then he enters the cosmic unconscious. There is no Sadhana left after cosmic unconscious. There is no Sadhana in tathata. In this stage, everything in life goes on by itself, no effort is needed to work it up. The effort to go within is no longer there, what one was within is lost. Tathata is the achievement to sink deep down the abyss of life. Religion is the door. Yoga is the process of going up to that door. And tathata is the presiding Tao in that temple.

THE DOER AND THE SLEEPER

An unawakened -- sleeping -- person is not a doer. Things are happening to him, but he thinks I am doing. The awakened person also is not a doer but thinks I am not the doer. This is the only difference. There is no difference in their actions but there is difference in their attitude -- knowing -- of their performance. The awakened also walks, the unawakened also walks. An individual full of awareness walks with the knowledge of, 'I am not', and a person without awareness walks full of ego -- full of pride. This is the difference.

The crystallization of an awakened person happens when an individual takes birth in such a person. Jung also says the same thing which Gurdjieff says, when a person is a awake within, his individuality becomes stronger. So, it is natural to raise a question whether the individualization of an awakened person becomes strong or dies out. Is it transformed into ego or does it go away? This is merely the difference in language, nothing more. The birth of void -- emptiness which Gurdjieff calls crystallization. Really speaking an individual is born for the first time by being 'void', because by becoming void, he achieved that virat -- huge individual. By becoming void, by losing individuality, a person becomes 'an individual' for the first time, but this is difficult to understand.

This is one of those contradictions of religion we fail to understand. When a drop of water falls into the ocean, someone can say the drop is lost, where is it now? And someone else can also say that the drop has become the ocean. Someone can say, the drop is lost, it is non-existent, it has become void. Someone can say the drop has become the ocean. It was nothing before, but it has become the ocean now for the first time.

One has to be selfish! All teachings about being unselfish and sacrificing to others and doing this and that are simply idiotic -- and they don't help anybody! You don't become unselfish, you remain selfish; it is just that you remain guilty. They don't destroy your life, they just poison your sources.

So if you are alert, get rid of it forever -- because these habits follow you; even dead habits follow you.

If a person decides alone to himself that he will not smoke, and he says nothing to anybody: there are ninety-nine chances that he will smoke. Now the second person decides that he will not smoke and he goes and tells everybody -- to all the friends, to all the society, he goes and says that he has decided not to smoke. There are ninety percent chances that he will still smoke.

First there were ninety-nine chances that he would smoke; now there are ninety chances that he will still smoke, but there is nine percent less possibility.

The third possibility is that he joins a society of non-smokers where nobody smokes. Now there are ninety-nine percent chances that he will not smoke.

Gurdjieff used to say that if you want to do something, find a few friends so that you can do it together.

It is almost as if you are imprisoned in a gaol: you want to escape, but to escape alone will be very difficult. If you make a gang the possibility is more: you can kill the guard -- alone it will be very difficult; you can break the wall -- alone it will be very difficult. But still there is a possibility you may not be able to succeed, because your gang will be a small gang of prisoners, helpless prisoners. The forces who manage the gaol are bigger than you.

The third thing, the best thing, is make contact with people who are outside, who are already free, who are not in the gaol, who can supply things to you, who can manage, who can give you the map, who can bribe the guards, who can take the gaoler away for a picnic, who can manage a thousand and one things.

If somebody has taken LSD and is high on it, turned on, sometimes it happens that if you love the person and you just sit by his side, you turn on. Now, you have not taken LSD, but if you love the person something telepathic happens, something communicates with your inner being.

His state of being turned on, somehow becomes an opening to you -- if you love the person. If you are in a communion with the person, you suddenly feel that you are on the LSD-trip yourself.

This has happened only within ten, fifteen years since drugs became so available to the new generation, but in the east they have always known it. And exactly the same is the situation with spirituality -- more so.

NASA Still Proving Moon Landings Were Real

More than 36 years after the United States landed men on the moon, NASA is spending more than $15,000 to convince people that it really did happen and that the space agency didn't make it all up. Stubborn conspiracy theorists claim that NASA's six Apollo-program moon landings were faked. After decades of belittling and ignoring the disbelievers, NASA has decided to fight back. It hired James Oberg, a Houston-based former aerospace engineer and award-winning author of 10 books on space, to confront skeptics point by point. Many scientists already have done that on the Internet, but skeptics remain unconvinced. "Ignoring it only fans the flames of people who are naturally suspicious," Oberg said Tuesday in an interview. Last year, Fox television twice broadcast a show entitled "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon?" and NBC's "Today" show staged a debate on the topic. Last month Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, punched a conspiracy theorist who had been pestering him to swear on a stack of Bibles that the landing was real. After the Fox show first aired, NASA put out a one-paragraph press release titled "Apollo: Yes, We Did." Yet a 1999 poll found that 11 percent of the American public doubted the moon landing happened, and Fox officials said such skepticism increased to about 20 percent after their show, which was seen by about 15 million viewers. Stephen Garber, NASA's acting chief historian, said Oberg's 10-chapter, 30,000-word monograph "is not going to convince the people who believe in these myths. Hopefully, it'll speak to other people who are broad-minded." The book will expose "space myths writ large (and will) look at some of these broader issues of how these myths get initiated and promulgated," Garber said. Oberg "has got one hell of a job ahead of him," said skeptic Ralph Rene, a New Jersey carpenter who said he's self-taught in physics and has self-published two books. One book claims the moon landing didn't happen; the other criticizes Isaac Newton's grasp of physics. "I could care less what they do." "It's a real shame that it has to be done," said Sonoma State University astronomy professor Phil Plait. He runs the badastronomy.com Web site, which debunks space myths, including the moon hoax. "It's beneath NASA's dignity to give these twinkies the time of day," Plait said. "The problem is, if you ignore a problem, it doesn't go away."