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Hong-Sau I have found this to be one of the best "instant" meditatoo techniques I have come across Hong-Sau’s three components of observing the breath, gazing at the spiritual eye, and mentally repeating the mantra, (Hong, with the incoming breath, and Sau, with the outgoing,) all work powerfully together to draw your consciousness toward Spirit. Although it may appear to be a simple technique, its simplicity is its greatness. Paramahansa Yogananda Notes – sau is pronounced “saw” - I am he / I am spirit – “only start concentrating on the spiritual eye (the point between the eyebrows), when you feel the sensation of air stimulating this point. Otherwise your concentration will be divided” 1. As the breath flows, so flows the mind, yogis say, because there is a feedback system between the mind and the breath. As the breath becomes calmer, so does the mind, and vice versa. In the practice of Hong-Sau we concentrate on the breath, and as we do so, the quieter it becomes. 2. While many meditation methods ask you to concentrate on something outside of yourself, the beauty of the Hong-Sau technique is that you focus on something inside of you — the breath. Since our minds are naturally drawn toward movement, the breath also is a natural focal point for meditation. 3. As the breath quiets, you will feel your breath coming from higher and higher in the nose until you feel it at the highest part of the nose, at the point between the eyebrows. (An important benefit of Hong-Sau is that it directs the mind to the spiritual eye (the point between the eyebrows), but it is important not to try to concentrate at the spiritual eye until you feel the sensation of air stimulating this point. Otherwise your concentration will be divided.) In time, your breath will gradually diminish, until finally, it is automatically and effortlessly suspended in breathlessness. Although this may seem incredible, when the body is totally still and no longer creating waste, there is no longer a need for the heart and breath to keep working. 4. Hong-Sau’s three components of observing the breath, gazing at the spiritual eye, and mentally repeating the mantra, (Hong, with the incoming breath, and Sau, with the outgoing,) all work powerfully together to draw your consciousness toward Spirit. Although it may appear to be a simple technique, its simplicity is its greatness. 5-8. Repeating the Hong-Sau mantra not only gives the mind a point of focus, its Sanskrit syllables stimulate the chakras and have a vibratory connection with the breath, thereby calming it. Yogis say that on a subtle level “Hong-Sau” is the very sound made by the astral breath. Gazing upward at the point between the eyebrows, or spiritual eye, puts you more in tune with the superconscious, because in deep meditation your energy is centered there. Observing the breath helps to calm it, and since the breath, as we’ve said, is the greatest obstacle to deep meditation, Hong-Sau works in the most direct way possible to bring you to a state of true meditation. 9. The practice of watching, but not controlling, the breath brings deep spiritual benefits, one of the most important being a sense of detachment from your physical body and mental processes. Every time you observe the breath without controlling it, you are affirming the attitude, “I am not this body.” Every time your mind wanders and you bring yourself back by repeating the Hong-Sau mantra, you are saying, “I am not this personality.” Paramhansa Yogananda said, “The ego is the soul identified with the body.” 10. Using the Hong-Sau technique also to discipline your mind will bring you a great sense of peace and clarity. You will find that you can think more clearly and efficiently, and so work more quickly. Holding onto the deep calmness you feel from meditation will enable you to apply that peace to all of your activities and relationships. Besides the many spiritual benefits you’ll receive from your Hong-Sau practice, you will discover countless physical and mental ones as well. 11. While visualizations, affirmations, and relaxation practices are extremely beneficial, the Hong-Sau technique is notable for its potential to take you to God. Yogananda said this technique is “the greatest contribution of India’s spiritual science to the world,” and that one hour of Hong-Sau equals twenty-four hours of sitting in the silence. One of the most sacred and ancient of all yoga practices, Hong-Sau is one of the four main techniques that comprise the path of Kriya Yoga, which Paramhansa Yogananda brought to the West in 1920. May your practice of Hong-Sau be blessed with deep peace and awareness of God’s Presence.

A lot of the statements from Nisargadatta Maharaj relate to memory and the problems that arise from memories. I originally started looking at this, as I wondered why people with dementia were not in a position to find awareness if their memories were lost. Unfortunately the conclusion from this brief look at the psychology of it tends to show that dementia affects all the types of memory, whereas Nisargadatta (unknowingly?) refers to one type of memory, namely "Episodic" Memory There are three main types of (Long Term) Memory which were originally proposed, I read, by Tulving - whereby he differentiated between between "procedural", "semantic" and "episodic" memory. Procedural memory is responsible for knowing how to do things, i.e. (unconscious) memory of motor skills. eg, riding a bike Semantic memory is the part of the long-term memory responsible for storing information about the world. This includes knowledge about the meaning of words, as well as general knowledge. Specifically think of "knowing that" (say) Paris is the capital of France. It involves conscious thought / effort. The third type, and I believe the one to which Nisargadatta refers, is Episodic Memory This is the part of both the short and long-term memory responsible for storing information about events (i.e. episodes) and experiences in our lives. Episodic memories tend to be about people and events in time. They involve conscious thought, but these memories are capable of being triggered by almost any association and may "run" for long periods of reflection. "Day-dreaming" might be another way of putting it, as this is the one that takes you out of the "here and now" of awareness. In my opinion, this is also the type of memory that acts as a "millstone around the neck" of anyone looking for enlightenment. In simple terms, these are often the memories that interrupt and lessen the depth of meditation and the ones which tie you down at the point of death. The ability to "push these episodic memories gently aside" is one of the keys to staying in the present, but, the trouble is, that these memories are probably the ones that define who you are.

Rabindranath Tagore Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. Plato A philosopher spends his whole live preparing to die Socrates The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways. I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows Ming-Dao Den What is an archer without a target? There is only one universal goal: a gracious death with no regrets Tom Wolfe (re a quote from Guardian about Tom Wolfe) "More profoundly, Wolfe wondered whether neuroscience would eliminate the popular notion of the soul – nothing but a poetic name for “the self”, he admitted How wrong can you be? - well I am not alone in thinking that the soul only reaches Nirvana by getting rid of "self" - pretty much a Buddhist basic tenet Sri Ramana Maharshi What you gave up is of no importance now. What have you not given up? Find that out and give that up. Sadhana [spiritual practice] is a search for what to give up. Empty yourself completely... Tao te Ching (verse 48) In the pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped. Herman Hesse - Siddhartha p121 Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile. "Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this that you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?" "This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real” William Samuel Arithmetic (as a principle) is, and is infinite, whether there is time, space, numbers or whatever. God is in a similar way. The only thing you know for sure is that (you) are aware. Stop believing that you are a separate ego that is aware and identify as being (part of) awareness itself - which is. From Two plus Two = Reality by William Samuel Jon J. Muth It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean Albert Einstein The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self The Prophet Mohammed Whoever know himself, knows God Kalu Rinpoche We live in illusion, the appearance of things. But there is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and, being nothing, you are everything. That is all. What you gave up is of no importance now. What have you not given up? Find that out and give that up. Sadhana [spiritual practice] is a search for what to give up. Empty yourself completely... Sadhguru Yesterday lives only in your mind Friedrich Nietzsche God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” "Sailor" Bob Adamson Who are you if you don’t think about it? Who are you without your past? (those bloody memories again!) Hui-neng 6th patriarch Shen-hsiu's said- The body is the bodhi tree; The mind like a bright mirror standing. Take care to wipe it all the time, And allow no dust to cling! Hui-neng responded- There never was a boddhi tree, Nor bright mirror standing, Fundamentally not one thing exists, So where is the dust to cling? Diamond Sutra One should produce that thought which is nowhere supported / One should produce the thought which abides nowhere Zen koan Q - which moves, the flag or the wind? A - neither it is the mind The Pope When no one is to blame everyone is to blame ..... and to add a bit of local flavour Bar Niño wall plaque No te preocupes tanto por la vida, pues no saldrás viVo de ella (Don't worry so much about life, since you won't get out of it alive”.

This is what the official announcement says about the next 3 weeks here in Andalucia "The Andalusian Regional Government announces how it will progressively de-escalate health measures against the coronavirus from Saturday 12 December. It will be carried out in two phases: From 12th December to 17th December: Mobility between municipalities within the same province will be allowed. Shops will be able to open until 9pm. However, the hotel and catering industry must continue to close at 6pm. The curfew will be from 22.00 to 06.00. From Friday 18th December to 10th January: Mobility between municipalities and between provinces is allowed. Shops will be able to open at their usual times. The hotel and catering industry must close at 6pm, but may reopen from 8pm to 10.30pm. The curfew is set from 11pm to 7am. Most important dates: From 23 December to 6 January, families are allowed to enter and leave Andalusia for family reunification. Family reunions are still limited to six people except on 24, 25, 31 and 01 January, when a maximum of 10 people can be reunited. The Andalusian Regional Government does not recommend the meeting of more than two different cohabitation groups and removes the concept of "relative" as it is considered "ambiguous". The curfew for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve is delayed until 1.30am." Basically what this means is that we have all been in lockdown for ages and managed to get the incidence down to a reasonable level, but now they are going to open up over Christmas and all the tosswits from everywhere will be out hugging, kissing, sneezing, singing and shouting - and by the second week in January, we will be worse off than we are now. .... and that could have been written about the UK too I think

Popped down to do the rubbish this morning and "threw it to the wind" as to whether I went for a coffee and chupito in the Niño. As "luck" would have it, a space appeared just as I went past and the car was sucked into it as if by magic. Whatsapp´d G to tell her and she was amazed (but not surprised, if that is possible). Anyway, I went in and up to the far end of the bar where I could best distance myself. Juan was not in evidence, but one of his daughters was on the bar. Within a couple of minutes a guy came and stood next to me - far too close in my opinion - so I took all my various drinks and bottles to a spare seat on the far side of the bar. From there I could observe what was really going on. There were about four groups of 3 blokes all chatting about work, life and women, a table of six racing-bikers talking about work, life, women and bikes, a couple and two or three sad sods like me on their jack-jones. Realising that this probably added up to about twenty people, I decided that it was all too busy for me. Why is it that people walk off the street, take off their masks, then act like things are normal? A friend of G´s was commenting during the week that she couldn´t see the value of masks in the way they were being used, but my response was that the masks acted as a reminder to people as to the problems we face and the necessity for distancing. This bunch in the Noño underscored my theory. As the reporters in the News of the World used to write when they found themselves in a tricky situation of their own making, "I made my excuses and left". I doubt if it would have been quite so "free for all" if Juan had been there, but no matter. When I got home, G asked me if we were going down there for a bite tonight. We agreed that me making a curry was a better idea - especially as it is "Celtic Night" in the pueblo and the dregs of that do are no something I want to mix with. So, tonight it will be a chicken curry at the Bronze Lion pub (yes, I had to repaint it).

The primary reason for going to the Niño is to provide a bit of support for Juan - but it is getting increasingly difficult to justify it. Popped in last Saturday morning for the usual coffee, chupito of anis and to see the world passing. Noticing that there were two families at tables, I took myself to the most distant one available. Now since the last post (hmm) about the Noño, they have "reduced the number" of tables inside and put small tables for two at the bar - with multiple signs reading" please do not stand athe bar". The law also states that masks should be worn except when actually in the process of consumption. Well - and here is spain in a microcosm - the parents just do not care what their princess / princesses are doing as they are their children and can do no wrong. So one four-ish year old was wandering around the bar, touching things and singing to herself. The other three-ish boy climbed on and off every seat at the table where he was with his parents - touching every surface on everything. Not a peep from the parents. Next three blokes walked in from outside. No masks. All three together up to the bar next to the little table and up to the "no standing at the bar" sign. Suddenly one of them sneezes a pure spanish sneeze - just turn to the side and blow it out. Jesus. Needless to say, I left pretty swiftly. As before, it was Sarai alone on the bar and she was struggling to serve inside and outside and clean tables after use. Impossible. Perhaps the key thing is that the people (not just the spanish) seem to regard bars and restaurants as part of their bubble, where they can take off their masks, talk and laugh loudly and behave as they would at home. It is no wonder the infection rates have been so high. A no-go beyond your own municipal boundary, forcing businesses to close at 1800 and having a curfew of 2300 for the past three weeks has obviously had a major effect in reducing the spread, but as long as people seem unable to think, or care, about their own actions, we are all doomed.

Stan Grof is mentioned elsewhere on the site. I wasn´t totally hooked on everything he wrote, but some interesting quotes on death and dying. "Dying and death are the most universal and personally relevant experiences for every single individual The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual’s way of being in the world An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type. There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment. Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution. The beliefs concerning reincarnation have great ethical impact on human life and our relationship to the world The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality. It is possible to spend one’s entire lifetime without ever experiencing the mystical realms or even without being aware of their existence. The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death. The function of the brain is to reduce all the available information and lock us into a limited experience of the world.... LSD frees us from this restriction and opens us to a much larger experience. Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in. Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious. The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology."

Firstly, Welcome Back! This "WiX" website I am developing is more or less the same as the old WordPress site - that is just a diary (OK, a blog), with thoughts and comments being posted as and when they occur - and when I have the time to post them. I was using Wordpress, but problems with the site hosting meant that I had to look for an alternative. WiX had better recommendations than most of the other options for the style I want - and, most importantly, allows me to maintain the password-style privacy to let you in and keep the general public out. One, hopefully minor, issue is that the site needs to be set up for both PCs and phones / pads - I am concentrating on the PC side at first, then will “refine” the portable device version. Why not Facebook? It is an obvious alternative, but it´s not for me. Despite producing this blog, I hate social media and all it has become. The sections are pretty-much as before, with Living in Spain, In My Opinion (ie my rants!), Philosophy and Friends & Family - which is just a collection of things that occur to me about things I have done, places I have been and people I have met (be warned!). I think that the "philosophy" section is relatively timeless, so I will probably bring a lot of that across (and it inspires me to take another look at things that have caught my imagination in the past). The "Tags" are quite useful as I will try to use them to indicate the type of content - eg Diary is just what has been happening recently, xWP is for anything I have brought across from the old Wordpress site during the trial, etc., etc. In general, names have been changed to protect the innocent and avoid legal action! Photographs have usually been taken by me or, more rarely, borrowed from sharing sites. As I become more familiar with the software, I may change the look and feel of the site, but as a "quick & dirty" method of starting up, I tried to get it into a look that should be familiar. There are now 6 buttons at the head of the page, with home, posts and galleries, plus search, information and contact. Contact is a weird screen you will possibly have encountered already and that allows you to send me a message - I have modified it to make it as neutral as possible! Posts takes you to the section with all the posts, whilst galleries takes you to the photo section - which is probably mostly the same old stuff, but should be better catalogued and ordered as I get into it. The post categories are listed on the left of the homepage and there is a tag-cloud on the right which allows you to find post relating to a particular topic. When you are in a specific post, you will now see a selection of the categories appearing as a header line too (and I have absolutely no idea why I can only see it there, so there are still mysteries in my universe)

I may have mentioned before that try not to be possessive and would happily give almost anything to someone else who really needed it. There are only a few things that are meaningful in the house, and they are things with memories of different people in the family. I would love them to go on to the next generation, but I have a feeling they wouldn´t want them - mahogany is not a popular wood, despite being one of the most beautiful, and mechanical clocks are an anachronism (literally). One thing I do cherish is an old Victorian mantle clock which belonged to "Gramps", my mother´s mother. I think she bought it at a big house sale in Derbyshire, but am not sure. Anyway, it was one of the few treasured possessions she had in her house and I "inherited" it when she moved into an old people´s bungalow. It is black slate and beige marble, with a french movement with a "brocot" external escapement. For over 40 years, it has been sitting in our lounge, wherever we were, and when we were "overseas" had a specially made transportation box as it is heavy. It was cleaned in the mid-seventies by a clock-engineer in Burnage, a nice old guy called Mr. Cawse - who, like all clock repairers, left his name inside to show he had cleaned it. It wasn´t running at one point when I lived in Bramhall and I vividly remember my mother leaning over and straightening the dial fractionally, saying that it was always temperamental about being absolutely level - as it started purring. Anyway, said clock threw a bit of a hissy in the early part of the year and stopped. It was partially my fault, as noticing the chimes were out of sequence, I ran the hands around to see if it would sort it self out (which sometimes works). This time it didn´t and the whole thing "locked solid". Knowing that it was a point when further meddling could damage it, I took it into the local jeweller and watch-repairer in Fuengirola and asked him to clean it and sort it out. That was a week or so before lockdown. I naively thought he had a perfect job for lockdown, whereby he could sit in his workshop working on all his clocks (and especially mine), but when I went down to check in July, it turned out that he had just shut his premises and walked away for 3 months. He said he would get on with it, but for some reason, and despite my having been a very good (and well paying) customer for twenty years, I had my doubts. This week I told G I would go in and check, and if the clock still hadn´t been touched, I would bring it home anyway. My logic being that I would rather have it stopped in my house than stopped on a shelf in his workshop. Yesterday a went in and the clock was still in exactly the same place. I asked what was happening, and he told me he had ordered a part months ago, but with the crisis, it had never arrived. When I asked what it was, he told me "the suspension", which is a part holding the pendulum, so I knew he was bu*****ting me. I just told him to let me know if it ever arrived, then took the clock away on G´s garden trolley. Yesterday I looked at a couple of Youtube videos on french clock mechanisms and decided I could possibly sort it myself as long as nothing was broken - and even then there is an army of parts suppliers on ebay. So today, I put it on the bench and took out the movement. Gently I touched a couple of ratchets relating to the striking mechanism and suddenly it started ticking. At that point I realised he hadn´t given me back my pendulum. I jury-rigged a pendulum from another victorian clock (which had been living in a cupboard for 40 years) and which fitted well enough to allow it to swing and tick and show it wasn´t jammed any more. I zoomed down to Fuengirola and, despite being very busy down there, got a parking space right outside the market doors. (Thanks, Oscar). When I went and asked for the pendulum, he said it was probably inside the clock, and asked if I had looked. "Yes", maybe a bit tersely. He reached on the shelf and pulled out two scruffy, and totally out-of-place, pendulums (penduli?) which were better suited to a skip. "No, mine had my name on it" I told him. He begrudgingly got a stool and got up and checked the shelf - eventually bringing down the correct pendulum in an envelope with my details. Thanking him, but lacking in any real sincerity, and not mentioing that I now had it running, I returned home - actually rather gleefully. At this moment, the clock is sitting on my bench and running. I will let it get a bit more "unwound", then actually check the chimes. I think I know how that bit of the mechanism works now, so may try to sort it if there are still problems - but on the other hand, it might as well be back in the lounge and not chiming - as with my hearing I can´t actually hear the chimes from my chair anyway! PS now the 24th and the clock is back in the lounge, running and chiming perfectly. I found a couple of sites where they showed how to reset clocks which were "out of sync" with times and chimes, including how to reset and move the hands - and luckily had the "other" old french clock to test the techniques. It all worked - to the extent G decided the "other" clock was nice enough to have in the dining room. Unfortunately it was a bit tatty-looking, with a slight "bloom" on parts of the slate. Received wisdom is to use washing-up liquid and warm water, but this did not do much other than get rid of old grime. In a moment of inspiration, I thought of WD40 (about which there are legendary claims for almost everything you can think of online). Cleaning slate was not one of the claims, but now it should be. Ta-da!

Impermanence, aging, and illness Do not give people a set time. One may be alive in the morning, Then dead at night, Changing worlds in an instant. We are like the spring frost, Like the morning dew Suddenly gone. - Kuei-Shan (771-854)

I have a folder of “philosophy” notes going back more than 40 years and I started re-reading it yesterday. I was actually surprised to see how long I have been thinking about the philosophical issues and the influences I have had. The whole mind, body, spirit thing has been occupying me for as long as I have been on the journey and I was reading about religions and philosophies looking for (what I now know to be) Cartesian dualism for a large proportion of that time - but even when I managed to find what I thought I was looking for, I couldn´t make it fit with what I felt to be true. After all that time and reading, I eventually come to what is the ancient Hindu thinking on Advaita Vedanta - the philosophy that basically says all that exists is consciousness, of which we are a part, but that everything else is a product of that consciousness. All that time where I tried to work out how to reconcile "matter" and "spirit" (basically dualism), but could never quite find an answer with which I was happy, but now I am. I haven´t become a Hindu, but I now understand my personal philosophy and am happy to use their term for it. It comes as a bit of a blow to find out the answer has been around for about 2500 years though. I was just not aware.

Karl Marx is quoted as having said "Religion is ... the opium of the people." Francis Bacon, however, was of the view that "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." and Mahatma Ghandi said "I came to the conclusion long ago ... that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them" ... on the whole, I think I like the simplicity of George Harrison´s "All religions are branches of one big tree". Harrison found what he was looking for in India - and Krishna Consciousness - and remained true to his philosophy despite all the distractions of incredible talent, wealth and fame. - so, if all religions are branches of the same tree - well, what is the commonality? In the philosophy that I have come to, there is "universal" consciousness and we, each with our individual consciousness, form a part of that whole. So you can call it God, you can say we have "souls", you can be a Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, or any one of the countless other religions with their adherents, but when you replace their specific words for "God" with "consciousness", you pretty much get the same conclusion. Science is exploring the quantum world and discovering that matter is really comprised of energy. In this vein, the eastern philosophies have always suggested that matter is a product of consciousness. Fundamentally there is only the energy of consciousness. It is sometimes possible to get an insight into the totality of it all, and most religions have methodologies (originally) aimed at doing that, but coming to the realisation of it yourself is the ultimate door to awareness. I had written "key", but then realised that what almost all religions purport to do is provide that key. Unfortunately the rituals adopted by most "faiths" end up obscuring truth (and the power that comes with having adherents, and their property, has corrupted the leaders of most of them, whilst the rituals they developed to mesmerise their flocks are just that - empty ritual). Zen implies that you do not need all the trappings of religion and learning, but that enlightenment can be attained in a moment. "That moment" is what all philosophers are seeking, especially through eastern philosophies (as few are religions in the western sense). Whatever the way of getting there, the aim is to actually become aware of that overall consciousness. To get rid of the distractions which obscure reality, to get rid of the concepts that bind us by filling our minds with the past and the future, of desires and fears. All the writers I have been following stress the same thing, that there is only this present moment. If you can empty your mind of everything, even stopping the passing thoughts and not allowing the senses to invade the mind with alerts about sounds, smells, sights or feeling, then you are almost there. The focal point for concentration such that you can block out all the (other) senses is usually recognised as your breathing. When you pass through that focus of the breath, you are just left with awareness, awareness of what is - and the awareness that you are part of it all.