} Sunday, May 20, 2001 "I am 60 years old, Now retired. I am rejoiced and I was Bohemian, loving the celebrations, the good life and the meat. For this reason three years ago I was committed the military hospital in Lima for six months where they diagnosed ambulatory arthritis. {Rheumatoid arthritis}. My normal treatment at the hospital did not make the intense pains go away and I suffered in the joints, knees, elbows foot and fingers, heel inflammation of the legs inflammation of the joints. I could not eat neither a piece of meat nor drink any type of liquor, and especially beer. I had the luck to find the works of the WATER OF LIFE and URINE-THERAPY. Good luck for all the people who wish to follow this method, for it is a 100% effective.'' World-wide Case Histories of Urine Therapy by Gary Ward  RINGWORMS  “S. Shamalbhai had an allergy, impurity of the blood (which resulted in ringworm of his body, Its worst attack on his nose), and diabetes. He began Urine Therapy on his own in a faulty way. Without full consideration of his bodily condition, he did not abstain from taking saccharine in tea, even during the course of treatment. With-in a couple of days, nettle-rash appeared on his entire body,  along with a few pimples. He was urged to stop sacchanne and do the rubbing of urine with slight pressure so that the pimples may burst. He did accordingly and his troubles disappeared within a couple of days.”  Urine Therapy by Dr. John O'Quinn  ****************************** S ****************************** SADNESS 166  “Dear Harald, may I tell you how urine has changed my emotions; from a situation of hurts and sadness and uncertainties, I am now calm and peaceful. I am told this is the “S” factor in my urine. Thank you for writing your book ‘Water Medicine’. May you help many other people like you have helped me. PF.M”  Urine: The Holy Water by Harald W. Tietze  SCIATICA  “Shri Malkiat Singh Gill is Sports Instructor at the Central Public School of the Pherozepur Cantonment (Punjab). He was suffering from nervous ailment of the hips and the thighs. He was also a patient of gastric congestion. He had very little appetite. Nature-cure could not give him complete relief. Urine therapist Shri Vijay Kumar Gupta, Advocate, treated him under auto-urine therapy and put him on a fast with urine. A fortnight urine intake and massage cured him of all his complaints.”  from Manav Mootra by R. M. Patel  SCORPION STING  Consuelo MS. Mexico. "In my family, my husband and children used urine therapy for cuts, blows, angina, cough, etc. For my husband, a scorpion pricked him. We took his urine and I put a compress on the bite. He resisted the poison. Thanks to God." World-wide Case Histories of Urine Therapy by Gary Ward  SEIZURE  “While visiting Palmira, Colombia, one of my students described what happened one afternoon when the 11-year-old child of a friend had an epileptic seizure. While the family hysterically looked for medication for the child, my student quickly went to the bathroom and put 10 drops of his urine in a dropper and immediately applied it under the tongue of the sick child. He activate the chronometer in his watch to see what happened since this was an experiment to see if the urine could help in this case. Within 30 seconds the epileptic attack stopped and two minutes later the child was back to normal. By the time the family obtained the medication the child was out of danger. They were baffled to see how quickly he recovered and wanted to know what on earth 167 was so effective that the child recovered so miraculously fast. At first they thought my friend was joking, then they thought he was trying to poison the child. They could not believe that all this time they had been powerless to deal with the situation when they always had the treatment at hand. Six months later the child has not had another epilepsy attack after learning to drink a little urine (two to four ounces) every morning.”  Uropathy by Martin J. Lara  SEPSIS  “Rampyari of thirty years had irritation in her right fingers and they had sepsis also. But a fortnight's urine-wash made her fingers return to their healthy normal state.”  from Manav Mootra by R. M. Patel  SHOULDER PAIN  “ A religious minded lady suffered from pain and stiffness in her shoulders for three years. Doctors could not cure her, but Urine Therapy with regular drinking and massage cured her completely. Moreover, she got rid of her poor eye sight by applying urine drops in her eyes and washing them with urine. She has cured wounds and other ailments by the use of urine.”  Urine Therapy by Dr. John O'Quinn  SINUS  We shall now report a successful case of sinus, which was related to Raojibhai by the patient himself. The patient, Shri K.B. Patel is a spiritual person. His age at the time of narrating his experience was 58 years. Six years earlier he had some inflammation in his nose. A foul smelling thick watery discharge used to come out of the nose. Some times it was mixed with blood also. Nose used to pain. He got it punched in V.S. Hospital three-four times but the trouble didn't go away. He again got it punched by nose specialist Dr. Balage but the condition persisted. For eight months he suffered unintermittently. One of his well-wisher Shri Jitendra Ray one day gave him the book 'Manav-Mutra'. After reading it, he started inhaling first urine of the morning daily throughout both of his nostrils and continued the practice for seven months. As a result he got rid of his sinus trouble and remained free from it thereafter. 'Mutra-Neti' i.e. sucking urine through nostrils is an excellent practice for bleeding from the nose. In addition it improves the eye-sight also. A patient with the irritation and bleeding of the nose used to take allopathic medicine. In between sometimes he 168 practiced Mutra-Neti for a day or two and his trouble subsided. He did not continue the practice and after two months bleeding recurred again. He inhaled urine from his nose again for two-three days and when bleeding subsided he left it. This was repeated thrice in the short duration of six months. However, even this much irregular application of urine therapy cured him of his trouble and he is now free from it. "Miracles of Urine Therapy" by Morarji Desai  SINUSITIS  Maria Isabel Covarrubias L { Mexico } "I had sinusitis because I filled with pus during three years of the bone being infected. For a month, I have drank my Urine and I put drops in the nose. No longer does my body have fever. In addition, it served to improve my nervous system and to cure of colitis and gastritis." World-wide Case Histories of Urine Therapy by Gary Ward  SKIN CANCER  “Two years ago, a small sore appeared on my right inside lower arm. It was very small and, at the time, appeared quite significant. However, within three or four weeks the sore started itching, accompanied by a burning sensation. Within the following six months it had noticeably enlarged. I later self diagnosed it as possible cancer and kept an eye on it. It continued to enlarge and I consequently visited my doctor. He confirmed it was cancer and advised that it would require surgical removal as soon as possible. From my recent studies of cancer cases on alternative medicine regarding cancer cures, I was most reluctant about surgery in view of the fact that, in many cases, surgery has only served to aggravate the area in question on the body where it has been performed, thus weakening the region for further later invasion to take place. However, my health did decline somewhat as time passed on, and, by Christmas 1995, this cancer sore was now accompanied by yet another one in close proximity which grew at an alarming rate and became in a short time linked with the original outbreak. Margaret nagged me incessantly to get the surgery done, and by the New Year my resolve was weakening along with my health. It was following the release of your February-March 1996 issue in which you featured the “Urine Therapy” article by Martha Christy, which I read several times, that I decided to give this therapy a go myself, albeit in a slightly modified approach. If this brave woman could annihilate all her health dramas in this way, why should I not try it? Immediately I devised a way whereby, I could apply the urine in an ongoing way so that the core of the cancer was saturated continuously with fresh urine. (Margaret 169 threatened to divorce me!) I first of all opened my diary to Saturday 27th January ‘96 and entered “First treatment started”. All treatments and noticeable results were entered from then on. On Wednesday 28th Febraury ‘96 entry reads, “Growths completely healed.” Saturday 9th March reads, “Area of growth now difficult to discern.” 16th March reads, “Now there is no trace of where growth originally existed, i.e. no scar.” The actual healing time was 32 days. Margaret and I went down to the doctor’s and showed him the arm. He and his nurses could not find any trace of cancer and kept rubbing the hairs of my arm away to try to find it. One of the nurses at the clinic has become


 may be necessary to substitute celery,
mushrooms, or watercress in a recipe for decongesting Moisture  that
calls for asparagus unless you choose to use frozen asparagus spears. For added avor, the following condiments may be used: soy
sauce, rice wine and vinegar, roasted sesame oil or seeds, ground
peanuts, chopped cilantro, parsley, basil, scallions, garlic. The
chopped greens are suitable for color as well as avor. The bland
recipes can acquire some subtle zip from this sauce:
2 tbsp. rice wine (the Chinese product is called Shao Xing )
1 tbsp. soy or tamari sauce
1 tsp. roasted sesame oil
The recipes listed provide six servings. If only one person is
cooking a recipe for an acute condition, then it may be wise to
prepare half the recipe and eat one serving three times,  twice the
rst day, and once the second. Or for general strengthening, prepare
half the recipe and eat one serving per day over the course of three
days. Adjust the amounts listed to accommodate the number of
people being fed or the number of days the meal will last. Again, be
guided over time by your own assessment and experienc e. In cases
of grave weakness, appropriate recipes like an easy-to-digest congee
can be eaten three times a day for as long as necessar y. If these
foods make you feel good, you need not worry that you are
overdoing them. PANTRY HERBS(see larger image)(see larger image)(see larger image)
Click  to download a PDF of Pantry Herbs
ITEMS FOR  PREPARING  RECIPES
These items would be useful in the preparation of the recipes:• cheesecloth or muslin bag to place herbs that are used in the
recipe but are not eaten as part of the meal
• nonaluminum 8-quart cookware
• food mill, blender, or coee grinder  to make herbal ours or
powders
Fresh ginger should be availa ble at your local supermarket. If not,
see if they will order it for you. The herbs in the followin g recipe to
supplement Qi (astragalus, dioscorea, lotus seeds, codonopsis, and
red dates) probably win the “most often used in these herbal
recipes” prize. This Qi recipe, along with the similar one to
supplement and harmonize Earth  later on, would be a good place to
begin if you are unsure about which recipes best suit your needs. SIMPLE RECIPES TO  HARMONIZE  QI, M OISTURE, AND  BLOOD
Supplement Qi
Energizes, builds vital capacity, and increases immunity
Invigorates Organ Networks  especially Spleen, Lung, and Kidney
1 oz. astragalus root
1 oz. dioscorea rhz. 1 oz. lotus seeds
1 oz. codonopsis root
12 red dates, soaked and pitted
1 inch fresh ginger root, minced
7–8 c. vegetable or chicken stock ( this page –this page )1 turnip
2 yams
½ c. chopped parsley
A. To prepare as a soup or stew:
• Tie the astragalus and codonopsis in a bundle with string or
place in a muslin bag. • Simmer all the herbs in the stock for 1 hour. • While the stock simmers, peel and cut the turnip and yams into
cubes. • After  an hour, add the turnip and yams and simmer an
additional 30 minutes. • Garnish with parsley and serve. B. To prepare as a casserole:
• Tie the astragalus and codonopsis in a bundle with string or
place in a musli n bag. If the dioscorea has not been soaked,
break it into ½-inch pieces. • Peel and dice the turnip; peel and slice the yams into?-inch-
thick medallions. • Add the herbs to the stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the
red dates and continue cooking for another 30 minutes. • Line the casserole dish with the yams and turnip. • Preheat the oven to 350°. • Add the herbal broth to the casserole and all the herbs except
the astragalus and codonopsis. • Cook for ½ hour in a 350° oven. • Garnis h with parsley and serve the casserole over rice with soy
sauce to taste.Common Cooking Herbs:  Dioscorea, Codonopsis, Astragalus,
Lotus Seeds, Dates
Supplement Moisture
Supports vital uids, eliminates thirst, softens skin, and
lubricates mucous membranes
Moisturizes Organ Networks, especially the Spleen, Lung, Kidney,
and Heart
1 oz. polygonatum rhz. 1 oz. American ginseng root
1 oz. lily bulbs
12 red dates, soaked and pitted
½ c. wheatberries7–8 c. vegetable or chicken stock ( this page –this page )
2 c. string beans
2 large thin-skinned potatoes
8 oz. tofu
4 tsp. oil
2 tbsp. soy sauce
¼ c. sesame seeds
• If possible, soak the herbs and wheatberries in 1½ cups of water
for at least 1 hour. • Slice the polygonatum into ¾-inch lengths. • Simmer the wheatberries and herbs in the stock for 1 hour. • Diagonally slice the string beans in 1-inch segments, dice the
potatoes into ¼-inch cubes, and cut the tofu into ½-inch
triangles. • Heat 1½ tsp. oil in a wok (at high heat) or in a skillet (at
medium heat), add potatoes, and sauté for 10 minutes. • Add ⅓ cup of the herbal broth, cover, and cook until tender. Then remove the potatoes to a saucepan. • Heat 1½ tsp. oil and sauté  the string beans about 5 minutes. Add ⅓ cup of the herbal broth until it evaporates, then add the
beans to the potatoes. • Add the tofu to the beans and potatoes along with the soy sauce
and 2 tbsp. of water. Cover and heat for 3–4 minutes until the
tofu is warmed through. • Serve the vegetables and herbal soup as separate dishes, and
garnish both with sesame seeds as well as with seasonings  (such
as soy and sesame oil) to taste.Supplement Blood
Nutries Blood, improves circulation, enhances reproductive
capacity
Forties Organ Network s, especially Kidney, Liver, and Heart
1 oz. (cooked) rehmannia root
½ oz. ligusticum rhz. 2 oz. lycii berries
1 oz. longan fr. 12 red dates, soaked and pitted
1 in. fresh ginger sliced
½ c. black beans
7–8 c. vegetable or chicken stock ( this page –this page )
6 shiitake or black mushrooms (if
dry, soaked), slivered
½ c. peanuts (with skin)
½ c. pine nuts
4 tbsp. rice vinegar
• Rinse the black beans and simmer them in 3 cups of boiling
water for 1 hour. • Combine the cooked beans and bean water with the herbs
(except for the red dates) and simmer them in the stock for 1
hour.• Add the dates and mushrooms to the stock and simmer for
another 30 minutes. • Roast the peanuts until golden brown in a 350° oven (about 10
minutes), and roast the pine nuts (about 5 minutes.) • Add the peanuts, pine nuts, and vinegar to the herbal stew, and
serve with white or brown rice. Options: Spina ch can be added to the above or served as a side dish
with steamed carrots. Decongest Qi
Improves digestion of protein and carbohydrates, stimulates
peristalsis Especially benecial for Liver, Stomach, and Intestines
½ oz. radish seeds
½ oz. sweet almond seeds
2 in. fresh ginger, minced
½ oz. dried tangerine peel, soaked and cut in strips
1 c. fresh radishes
3 c. vegetable stock ( this page )
3 shallots
2 beets
1 c. shiitake or black mushrooms (if dry, soaked), slivered
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 c. chopped cabbage
1 tbsp. sesame oil• Grind the radish seeds in a mortar or coee mill. • Simmer the radish seeds, almond pits, ginger, and tangerine
peel in the stock for 1 hour. • Dice the shallots, radishes, and beets, and sauté them with the
mushrooms and garlic in sesame oil until tender, about 15
minutes. • Add the cabbage and stock, cover, and simmer 5–10 minutes
until the leaves are wilted. Serve. Decongest Moisture
Improves circulation and discharge of uids Especially
benecial for Spleen, Lung, and Kidney
1 oz. corn silk
½ oz. tangerine peel
¼ c. peel of fresh ginger
1 bunch parsley
1 oz. poria fungus
½ c. pearl barley
7–8 c. vegetable stock ( this page )
1½ c. asparagus


	doer	behind	the	actions,	with	an	endless	list	of
descriptive	adjectives. The	‘I’	becomes	submerged	beyond	recognition	into	an	endless	morass	of
self-definitions. If	they	are	‘good’	definitions,	one	feels	happy;	if	they	are
‘bad’,	one	then	feels	depressed	or	guilty. In	actuality,	all	self-definitions	are
fallacious	and	equally	misleading. It	is	useful	to	recognize	that	the	illusion	of	a	separate	self	or	entity	creates
a	false	identity	whose	tenacity	is	seemingly	difficult	to	overcome	for	several
reasons. One	becomes	enamored	of	this	precious	‘self’,	which	then	becomes
an	obsession	and	the	subjective	focus	of	languaging	and	thought. The	self
becomes	glamorized	as	the	hero	or	heroine	of	one’s	life	story	and	drama. In
this,	the	‘I’	self	becomes	the	perpetrator,	the	victim,	the	cause,	the	responsible
recipient	of	all	blame	and	praise	and	the	principle	actor	in	the	melodrama	of
life. This	also	requires	that	the	self	be	defended	and	that	its	survival	becomes
all	important. This	includes	the	necessity	to	be	‘right’	at	any	cost. Belief	in	the
reality	of	the	self	becomes	equated	with	survival	and	the	continuance	of
existence	itself. To	transcend	the	identification	with	the	self	therefore	requires	letting	go	ofall	the	above	mental	propensities. This	requires	the	willingness	to	‘sacrifice’
all	these	traits	and	mental	habits	to	God	out	of	love	and	humility. Radical
humility	can	be	arrived	at	only	by	confining	thoughts	and	opinions	to	their
verifiable	validity. This	means	the	willingness	to	let	go	of	all	presumptions	of
thought. With	persistence,	the	vanities	disappear	as	truths	and	are	now	seen	as
the	basis	for	errors. In	one	final,	glorious	crash,	one	realizes	that	the	mind
does	not	really	‘know’	anything. If	anything,	it	only	knows	‘about’,	and	it
cannot	really	know	because	to	really	know	means	to	be	that	which	is	known,
e.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>
Q: What is the calibrated level of the Bible?,
A: The text does not mention a specific calibrated level for the Bible.
Q: What is the main point of the spiritual teachings?,
A: The main point of the spiritual teachings is to avoid negativity and focus on the positive, and to understand and forgive others rather than judge them.
Q: What is the difference between the ego and the Self?,
A: The ego is seen as a separate entity that is tied to the individual's own desires and fears, whereas the Self is seen as the true, unchanging, and all-knowing aspect of the universe.
Q: What is the significance of the "I" or the ego?,
A: The text suggests that the ego is an illusion and a source of suffering and negativity, and that it is not the true self. It is also implied that the ego is a major obstacle to spiritual growth and enlightenment.
Q: What is the purpose of meditation?,
A: The text does not explicitly state the purpose of meditation, but it does suggest that it is a means to transcend the ego and connect with the true Self.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Here	again,	there	is	no	entity	that	is	doing	thinking;	neither	is	there	a
witness	behind	witnessing. Witnessing	is	an	impersonal,	inborn	aspect	and
characteristic	of	consciousness	itself. One	can	retreat	from	involvement	with
the	content	of	thought	and	choose	to	adopt	the	point	of	view	of	observing	or
witnessing. To	be	proficient,	this	does	take	some	practice. To	get	a	feel	for	it,
one	can	practice	watching	out	the	window	of	a	car	by	fixing	one’s	gaze
through	a	specific	spot	on	the	window;	the	focus	is	then	no	longer	on	each
object	specifically	but	on	an	imaginary	slit	through	which	objects	seem	tostream	by,	and	as	a	result,	one	cannot	with	certainty	identify	each	object
because	one	does	not	focus	upon	them	individually. Witnessing	or	observing	does	not	focus	on	any	idea	or	image	but	allows
them	to	flow	by	without	involvement. One	then	realizes	that	the	thought
images	are	occurring	spontaneously	and	the	thoughts	are	not	choices	made	by
personal	decision	but	that	the	thought	stream	is	impersonal. The	thoughts	are
not	‘mine’	as	there	is	no	‘me’	involved. As	the	physical	eye	sees	images,	it
does	not	claim	authorship	of	the	images	nor	does	the	ear	claim	authorship	of
sound. Therefore,	with	some	experience	with	witnessing	and	pure	observing,
it	also	becomes	apparent	that	the	thoughts	are	not	authored	by	a	unique
personage	called	‘I’. They	are	the	result	of	combinations	and	permutations	of
ideational	and	emotional	programs	that	are	playing	on	the	game	board. The
realization	that	the	mind	is	not	the	same	as	‘I’	or	‘me’	breaks	the	identification
of	the	self	with	the	mind. This	realization	also	extrapolates	to	the	body	as	one	realizes	that	one	is
merely	the	witness,	experiencer,	and	observer	of	sensation. One	does	not
actually	experience	the	body	but	only	the	senses. Proximate	to	witnessing	or	observing	is	experiencing. There	is	witnessing
and	observation,	and	then	there	is	the	experiencing	or	that	which	is	witnessed
and	observed. By	moving	the	point	of	observation	from	what	is	being
witnessed	to	that	of	witnessing,	the	next	step	into	the	field	of	consciousness	is
awareness	of	experiencing. Is	experiencing	done	by	a	‘who’	or	by	a	‘what’? One	will,	by	observation,	discover	that	‘something’	rather	than	‘someone’
is	functioning	as	the	impersonal	experiencer	and	observer,	which	is
unchanged	and	unaffected	by	the	content	of	that	which	is	being	experienced,
observed,	or	witnessed. The	next	thing	to	notice	is	that	the	content	of	mind	is	form. For	form	to	be
observable,	it	must	occur	against	a	background	of	nonform. Analogously,
objects	are	visible	only	in	space	because	space	is	empty	and	without	form. Similarly,	one	can	only	hear	sound	against	a	background	of	silence. The	use
of	white	sound	to	blank	out	speech	is	an	obvious	example. Because
consciousness	is	formless	and	devoid	of	content,	it	is	able	to	recognize	form. Thoughts	are	only	discernible	if	they	move	in	a	field	of	non-thought. The
background	of	the	mind	is	therefore	the	silence	of	the	field	of	consciousness
itself. In	turn,	consciousness,	which	is	a	field	of	potential	energy,	is	detectable
because	it	is	illuminated	by	the	light	of	awareness,	which	is	the	Self. Meditation:	Observation	of	The	Mind’s	Stream	of	Consciousness
IntentionalThe	stream	of	thought	is	propagated	and	energized	by	layers	of	motives
and	intentions	that	can	be	identified	as	follows:
1. The	desire	to	language	emotions:
This	takes	the	form	of	recall,	rehearsing,	and	repetitious	processing	of
events	and	ideas	that	are	linked	to	emotions. This	process	is	sometimes
referred	to	as	the	mind	working	through	its	failings. 2. Anticipation:	Making	plans	for	expected	or	possible	future	events	or
possible	conversations	or	encounters. 3. Rehashing	the	past. 4. Rewriting	scenarios,	real	or	imaginary. 5. Creating	imaginary	scenarios—daydreams. 6. Remembering—reruns	and	recalling. 7. Solving	problems. Unintentional
1. Unasked	repetitions	of	the	above. 2. Senseless	ramblings,	phrases,	fragments	of	mentations,	background	voices,
and	music. 3. Commentary. 4. Dysphoric	memories,	painful	moments


 contagious. In a dor m at college, if you
happen to r oom with someone with good study habits and
high grades, your grades ar e likely to impr ove by
association. But the second ﬁnding fr om Christakis and F owler was far
more mysterious. They found that social connections can
skip a link. If person A is obese and knows person B, who
isn’t, a friend of person B is still 20 per cent mor e likely to be
obese, and a friend of that friend is 10 per cent mor e likely. This “thr ee degr ees of connection ” holds good for all kinds
of behavior. A friend of a friend can mak e you pr one to
smoking, unhappiness, or loneliness. The statistics ar e ther e
to prove it, even though you have never met this friend of a
friend. The ﬁndings of Christakis and F owler suggest invisible
connectors that run thr ough a whole society. If their
resear ch holds up, think about the implications. The notion
of a collective unconscious was posed almost a century agoby Jung. Did Jung hit on invisible connectors long befor e
data came along to support them. That’s r eally a side
question to the main one: What kind of connections can
exist invisibly, without people talking to each other,
watching each other’s behavior, or even knowing about
each other’s e xistence. These ar e comple x issues, and I’m giving only a hint of
how mysterious they ar e. But the new r esear ch on social
contagion is e xciting, because it supports the notion that
there is actually one mind that coor dinates not just how
people catch on to fads or decide to imitate each other, not
just how distant brain cells know what other brain cells ar e
doing, but far -ﬂung phenomena lik e how twins separated by
thousands of miles suddenly know what’s happening to
each other. These invisible connectors ar e bringing the
collective unconscious into many, many ar eas of life. Social
contagion is making news because we all lik e to r ely on
data, but the possibility that we all participate in one mind
challenges r eligion, philosophy, and the meaning of life
itself. The shadow, then, is a shar ed pr oject. Anyone can have a
hand in building it. All you need is the ability to r emain
unconscious. Countless fear -mongers believe they ar e doing
good. Every defender of the homeland e xpects to be
honor ed and praised. T ribes war ring against other tribes
deeply believe that they must struggle in or der to survive. We resist our shadow and deny its e xistence because of
past indoctrination and the hypnosis of social conditioning. Childhood e xperiences cause unending later r eminders that
“this is good, this is bad; this is divine, this is diabolical. ”
Such indoctrination is the way all societies ar e structur ed. What we overlook is that we ar e creating a shar ed self at
the same time. If childr en wer e taught to become awar e of
their shadow, sharing even dark feelings, for giving
themselves for not being “good” all the time, lear ning how
to release shadow impulses thr ough healthy outlets, thenthere would be much less damage to society and the
ecosystem. Creators of the Shadow
Even if you haven’t paid a moment’s attention to F reud or
Jung, you have inherited a diﬀer ent self because of them. They made it impossible to think about human natur e as
something other than a deep mystery. Like the tip of an
iceber g, only a fraction of who you ar e is visible in the
physical world. Unseen and of ten ignor ed, the human soul is
a place of ambiguity, of contradiction and parado x. And
that’s as it should be, because all e xperience in life, which is
the manifestation of the soul, is the r esult of contrast. Y ou
have no e xperience in the absence of contrast: light and
shadow; pleasur e and pain; up and down; backwar d and
forwar d; hot and cold. If you didn’t have these divisions,
there would be no manifestation. Consciousness would be
one vast ﬂat ﬁeld, lik e a desert. Y ou would be awar e of
everything, but nothing in particular. In order to have manifestation, you need opposing
energies. That is why e xplicit enemies ar e also implicit
allies. F or example, Osama bin Laden and Geor ge Bush
cocreated each other. On the surface they wer e enemies,
but under neath they wer e allies. It’s a general principle. Y ou
need your enemies to be who you ar e. Jung had the courage
to see that each of us needs a dark side to be who we ar e. In fact, the collective unconscious is how the human race
evolved, by passing on every new discovery in invisible
form. These ar e primarily discoveries about the self. It’s a basic fact of physical anthr opology that in Homo
sapiens  a massive part of the brain, the corte x, is devoted
to higher functions. The corte x allows us to r eason; it gave
rise to love and compassion. R eligion was bor n in the corte x,
along with our concepts of heaven and hell. W ithout thehigher brain, we would never have developed r eading and
writing, mathematics and art. What a shock, then, to dig up the r emains of
Neanderthals, only to ﬁnd that not only did that species
have a huge corte x, but it was slightly bigger than ours. Y et
Neanderthals r oamed Eur ope hunting lar ge animals for four
hundr ed thousand years—twice as long as Homo sapiens
has been ar ound—using only one tool: a heavy spear with a
stone point tied to it. Despite their huge corte x,
Neanderthals never discover ed a second tool. They didn’t
even pr ogress to a lighter spear they could thr ow. Instead,
they used their heavy spears to attack their pr ey, such as
woolly mammoths and giant cave lions, at close quarters,
thrusting the stone point into the animal’s side. As a result,
almost every male Neanderthal sk eleton e xhibits multiple
fractur es. Those big animals fought back, and yet for almost
half a million years the Neanderthal brain couldn’t ﬁgur e out
that it would be much safer to mak e lighter weapons that
could be thr own fr om a distance. The evolution of human beings depended not on the
physical brain, but on the mind that used it. In the domain
of the unconscious, lear ning was taking place, silently and
out of sight. Homo sapiens  was able to use the brain for
much mor e comple x things than any of its ancestors. Once
the mind ﬁgur ed out how to mak e better weapons, life
became easier. Farming r eplaced hunting and gathering. As
life became mor e complicated, language ar ose so that
people could e xchange ideas. In other wor ds, Jung hit upon a secr et place wher e all the
action was. The collective unconscious is the mind’s library,
a stor ehouse of all past e xperience that we, in the pr esent
moment, can draw upon. The question “Who am I” never
has a ﬁx ed answer. The self is ﬂuid and constantly changing,
meaning your own self and the self you shar e with everyone
else. Studies have shown, for e xample, that the brains of
people who have master ed computer skills and video gameshave new neural pathways unknown in the brains of people
who ar e “digitally naïve,” as the saying goes. If we want to ﬁnd the true self, we must dive into the
shadow world and its constant ﬂux. This has seemed lik e a
danger ous quest, one that would cause all but the most
heroic to tur n pale. A t the beginning of his famous ﬁlm
Hamlet,  Laur ence Olivier placed these wor ds: “This is the
story of a man who couldn’t mak e up his mind. ” Hamlet has
proof that his uncle killed his father in or der to gain the
crown of Denmark. He has every r eason to seek r evenge,
and yet he can’t. The perilous jour ney into the shadow,
wher e killing and r evenge ar e nor mal, thr eatens Hamlet’s
very e xistence, his nobility and civilized br eeding. Even so,
the prince does accept the perilous jour ney, and it leads him
into disgust, self -loathing, the loss of love, and thoughts of
suicide—typical r eactions when you face the monsters of
the deep. When he himself is ﬁnally mur dered, Hamlet
accepts his fate with r elief and unearthly calm. The wor ds at
the beginning of Olivier’s ﬁlm should have been: “This is the
story of a man afraid of


 enhancing that false
sense of self then becomes your primary motivating force. ***

Many expressions that are in common usage and somet imes the structure of
language itself, reveal the fact that people don't know who they are. You say, “He
lost his life.” Or, “my life” as if life were somet hing that you can possess or lose. The truth is you don't have a life, you are life, t he one life, the one conscious that
pervades the entire universe and takes temporary fo rm to experience itself as a
stone or a blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy. Can you sense
deep within that you already know that. Can you sen se that you already are that? ***

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become
an expert, make a cup of tea. Time is useless, however, for the most essential th ing in life, the one thing that
really matters, self-realization–which means knowin g who you are beyond the
surface self, beyond your name, your physical form,  your history, your story. You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The  only place where you can find yourself in the Now. Spiritual seekers look for sel f realization or enlightenment in
the future. To be a seeker implies that you need th e future. If this is what you
believe, it becomes true for you. You will need tim e until you realize that you don't
need time to be who you are. ***

When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or
feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable or
painful experience, you are aware of that experienc e. These seem to be true and
obvious statements. Yet if you look at them very cl osely, you will find that in a
subtle way their very structure contains a fundamen tal illusion, an illusion which is
unavoidable when you use language. Thought and lang uage create an apparent
duality and a separate person where there is none. The truth is you are not somebody who is aware of t he tree, the thought, feeling or
experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things
appear. As you go about your life, can you be aware  of yourself as the awareness in
which the entire content of your life unfolds? ***

You say, “I want to know myself.” You are the I. Yo u are the knowing. You are the
consciousness through which everything is known and  that cannot know itself. It is
itself. There is nothing to know beyond that. And y et all knowing arises out of it. The “I” cannot make itself into an object of knowle dge, of consciousness. So you cannot become an object to yourself. That is  the very reason the illusion of
egoic identity arose because mentally you made your self into an object. “That's
me,” you say, and then you begin to have a relation ship with yourself and tell
others and yourself your story. ***

By knowing yourself as the awareness in which pheno menal existence happens,
you become free of dependency on phenomena and free  of self seeking in
situations, places, and conditions. In other words,  what happens or doesn't happen
is not that important anymore. Things lose their he aviness, their seriousness. A
playfulness comes into your life. You recognize thi s world as a cosmic dance, the
dance of form. No more and no less. ***

When you know who you truly are, there is an abidin g alive sense of peace. You
could call it joy because that's what joy is, vibra ntly alive peace. It is the joy of
knowing yourself as the very life essence before li fe takes on form. That is the joy
of being, of being who you truly are. ***

Just as water can be solid, liquid, or gaseous, con sciousness can be seen to be
frozen as physical matter, liquid as mind and thoug ht, or formless as pure
consciousness. Pure consciousness is life before it  comes into manifestation and
that life looks at the world of form through your e yes because consciousness is who
you are. When you know yourself as that, then you r ecognize yourself in
everything. It is a state of complete clarity of pe rception. You are no longer an
entity with a heavy past that becomes a screen of c oncepts through which every
experience is interpreted. When you perceive withou t interpretation, you can then
sense what it is that is perceiving. The most we ca n say in language is that there is a
field of alert stillness in which the perception ha ppens. Through you, formless
consciousness has become aware of itself. ***

Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Des ire is the need to add something
to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All  fear is the fear of losing
something, and thereby become diminished and be les s. These two movements
obscure the fact that being cannot be given or take n away. Being in its fullness is
already within you, now. Chapter 6
Acceptance and Surrender

Whenever you are able, have a “look” inside yoursel f to see whether you are
unconsciously creating conflict between the inner a nd the outer, between your
external circumstances at that moment–where you are, who you are with, or what
you are doing–and your thoughts and feelings. Can y ou feel how painful it is to
internally stand in opposition to what is? When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this
futile conflict, this inner state of war. ***

How often each day, if you were to verbalize your i nner reality at that moment,
would you have to say, “I don't want to be where I am?” What does it feel like
when you don't want to be where you are–the traffic  jam, your place of work, the
airport lounge, the people you are with? It is true, of course, that some places are good pl aces to walk out of–and sometimes
that may well be the most appropriate thing for you  to do. In many cases, however,
walking out is not an option. In all those cases, t he “I don't want to be here” is not
only useless but also dysfunctional. It makes you a nd others unhappy. It has been said: wherever you go, there you are. I n other words: you are  here. Always. Is it so hard to accept that? ***

Do you really need to mentally label every sense pe rception and experience? Do
you really need to have a reactive like/dislike rel ationship with life where you are
in almost continuous conflict with situations and p eople? Or is that just a deep-
seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doin g anything, but by allowing this
moment to be as it is. ***

The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form
identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender. ***

“I have so much to do.” Yes, but what is the qualit y of your doing? Driving to
work, speaking to clients, working on the computer,  running errands, dealing with
the countless things that make up your daily life–h ow total are you in what you do? Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered? This is what determines your
success in life, not how much effort you make. Effo rt implies stress and strain,
needing to reach a certain point in the future or a ccomplish a certain result. Can you detect even the slightest element within yo urself of not wanting to be doing what you are doing? That is a denial of life,  and so a truly successful
outcome is not possible. If you can detect this within yourself, can you als o drop it and be total in what you
do? ***

“Doing one thing at a time.” This is how one Zen Ma ster defined the essence of
Zen. Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what  you do, to give it your complete
attention. This is surrendered action–empowered act ion. ***

Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper le vel where your inner state as
well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind's judgment of “good” or
“bad.”

When you say “yes” to the “isness” of life, when yo u accept this moment as it is,
you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you tha t is deeply peaceful. On the surface, you may still be happy when it's su nny and not so happy when it's
rainy; you may be happy at winning a million dollar s and unhappy at losing all
your possessions. Neither happiness nor unhappiness, however, go all that deep
anymore. They are ripples on the surface of your Be ing. The background peace
within you remains undisturbed regardless of the na ture of the outside condition. The “yes” to what is reveals a dimension of depth w ithin you that is dependent
neither on external conditions nor on the internal conditions of constantly
fluctuating thoughts and emotions. ***

Surrender becomes so much easier when you realize


er ge. Wayne:  I think … I don’t think I’ve had family for a long time. I
think my family was killed by invaders of some kind. I ran away and
escaped. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward to another moment in the lifetime
and see what happens. Wayne:  I’m … I can’t get anyone to notice me. I’m looking for
clothes, for something to keep me warm. So I steal them and no one
notices. Mira:  Do you still have the ruby on your finger? Wayne:  It’s green. Mira:  How did you get it? Wayne:  I found it. Mira:  You found it? That’ s a good treasure to find. What do you do
with it? Wayne:  It’s meaningless. It doesn’ t mean anything to me. I feel like
I’m lost and I can’t get anyone to realize what has happened. I ran
away for a long time. I have sores on me and cuts. Mira:  Tell me about these sores and these cuts. How did they come
to be? Wayne:  I think from scratches from the trees, thorns, and bushes. Wandering through that kind of brush. I haven’ t eaten in a while.Mira:  What do you do next? Wayne:  I’m going up to people and asking. I’m just invisible to
them. They don’t know I’m there. I could take anything I wanted. I’m
like a ghost. Pale. Just wearing a little loincloth. I’m not afraid  at all. Just can’ t figure out why nobody is paying attention. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward and see what happens next. Wayne:  I just gather up fruits and figs and dried fruit, oranges,
apricots. And I have no pockets to stuff them in, so I just take this tray
of treasu res and go back. That doesn’ t make any sense. I just go back
into the brush. Mira:  And that’ s where you eat them? Wayne:  Yeah, but I’m … I think I had a sister, and I think she’s still
alive. I want to take this stuf f back to her and find her. Mira:  Is she there when you go back? Or are you looking for her
now? Wayne:  Yeah, I’m wandering. Looking back … there’ s a fireplace,
and the fire is out. There are bodies around. People have been killed. My father ’s been killed. He’ s old. There’ s women weeping. Mira:  Has your mom been killed as well? Wayne:  I don’ t have a mom. Mira:  How about any other family? Y our sister? Wayne:  She’s hiding by an older woman. I guess it’s her
grandmother. I think her moth er has been gone. She’s been taken
away. She’ s little. She’ s younger than me. She’ s got blonde hair. Mira:  How do you feel seeing all this? Wayne:  Sick. Angry. Sad. And I bring  her food—the apricots, the
dried apricot, oranges, and she’ s only three, four.Mira:  What do you call her? Wayne:  Samantha. Sam. Sammy. Mira:  And how does she call you when she wants to speak with
you? Wayne:  She just smiles. She doesn’ t talk. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward and see what happens to her and to
you. Wayne:  She’s too afraid  to move, and I feel we have to get out of
there. I try to persuade her that we have to leave, but she doesn’ t want
to leave. The old people are still unharmed, grieving. I can see dead
bodies around me in this enclave that is there. Mira:  Has it been more than your father who has been killed? Wayne:  That’s my father. He’s lying there helpless. He’s dead. Blood coming out of his mouth. He makes no sound. It’s so weird. His
grandmother is dressed like an Arab woman. My father had a pair of
brown pants on, a belt, no shoes, and the pants only come to his
calves. They’re tight. He had no shirt on. And he’s been ambushed. And the grandmother is just dressed in all black clothes. Mira:  What are the old people saying to each other? What do they
think has happened? Wayne:  The women are just crying. They have obviously been
attacked, and I’m just bewildere d by how I am going to take care of
this mess. Mira:  What do you do next? Wayne:  I try to find something to dig with to bury my father
because there are flies flying around his body now. Mira:  Do you find anything?Wayne:  Just some pieces of wood. And I try to find a place to put
him in. Mira:  Is anybody helping you? Wayne:  No, there’ s nobody to help me. I’m alone here except for
my little sister with these pigtails. Mira:  And now let’s go forward in time to another important day
and see what happens in this lifetime. Wayne:  I actually just leave, I just leave and take care of that. Mira:  Do you leave your sister behind? Wayne:  Yeah, I think I do. I can’ t believe it, but I do. Mira:  And where do you go? Wayne:  I go to the sea. I go to a place where there’ s a lot of boats. It’s before modern boats. It’ s like tall masted boats. Mira:  What do you do? Wayne:  I’m older now. I get passage to someplace, but I don’ t know
where. And I agree to work. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t
know where the ship is going. I don’t know these people. I don’t
speak their language. Mira:  What kind of work do you do on the ship? Wayne:  I’m working in the galley. I think it’ s going to Greece. Mira:  See the ship arriving and you getting off, and see where you
are. Wayne:  I’m much older. I’m 22. Strong. No shirt. Like a knapsack
with all my possessions, which is almost nothing, and boots … same
kind of pants my father had on. Mira:  Where do you go next? What do you do next?Wayne:  I’m just looki ng for a place to stay. And these people
befriend me who live in a hut. Greek. Mira:  What does the hut look like? Wayne:  It looks like an igloo without ice, just sort of round. Trying
to figure out when this is. Mira:  Who lives in the hut? Wayne:  A husband and a wife and … that’s it. A man and a wife. Older people. And they love me very much. They work the land. Agricultural. Olives. Olive trees. Grapes. Very poor. Lot of dust. I stay
there. I don’t like working the land. I go into the village, and I don’t
want to work the land. I don’ t want to do that. I meet a woman who works at … serving wine, I think it’s wine. And I don’t drink it. These casks, these containers of liquid … she
pours it into the cups. I’m attrac ted to her. She has the face of … it’s
clearly her. And we fall in love. This little Greek … she’s got long
black hair, very narrow face. And a little mouth. And big eyes. And
she’s young: 16, 17, 18. She just flirts and wants to know why I’m
dressed the way I am, why I look the way I do and how I look so
different from her. Because I’m fair, and she’s not. She holds my
hand. And I fall in love with her. Almost instantly. And I take a job on
a ship, and leave. W e’re married. And the ship is going all the way to the New World. It’s explorers. There’ s talk of islands and people who live on them all across the sea. And that excites  me. And I go, and I leave her. She’s pregnant. But I
leave anyway. That just sounds so enticing to find something that no
one’s ever seen before. It’s like a great adventure. And I’m gone for a
long time. Like years. We go to … we discover natives and new
things, new people. A lot of people dying at sea, bodies are being
thrown out at sea. A lot of scurvy, a lot sickness, a lot of vomiting, a
lot of people dying. And we find a place. Española? I don’t know
what that means. Dark people. Mira:  Do you find that in the middle of the ocean?Wayne:  Yeah. After months, six, seven, eight months of sea. Just
eating few berries and things that are left. We finally hit land. I have a
beard. But I’m strong. A lot of people dying. But


are a lot of things fr om those years I can’t r emember. Like a
lot of people at that time—late sixties, early seventies—I
was pr etty wild. Every door mark ed “no” by conventional
standar ds seemed to hold the k ey to some lascivious
pleasur e I had to have. Whatever sounded outrageous, I
wanted to do. And usually, I did. I didn’t know what to do with my life, though I r emember
my par ents k ept begging me to do something. I went fr om
relationship to r elationship, job to job, city to city, looking
for some sense of identity or purpose, some feeling that my
life had ﬁnally kick ed in. I knew I had talent, but I didn’t
know at what. I knew I had intelligence, but I was too frantic
to apply it to my own cir cumstances. I went into therapy
several times, but it rar ely made an impact. I sank deeper
and deeper into my own neur otic patter ns, seeking r elief in
food, drugs, people, or whatever else I could ﬁnd to distract
me fr om myself. I was always trying to mak e something
happen in my life, but nothing much happened e xcept all
the drama I cr eated ar ound things not happening. There was some huge r ock of self -loathing sitting in the
middle of my stomach during those years, and it got worse
with every phase I went thr ough. As my pain deepened, so
did my inter est in philosophy : Easter n, Wester n, academic,
esoteric. Kierk egaar d, the I Ching, e xistentialism, radical
death- of-God Christian theology, Buddhism, and mor e. I
always sensed ther e was some mysterious cosmic or der to
things, but I could never ﬁgur e out how it applied to my own
life. One day I was sitting ar ound smoking marijuana with my
brother, and he told me that everybody thought I was weir d.“It’s lik e you have some kind of virus,” he said. I r emember
thinking I was going to shoot out of my body in that
moment. I felt lik e an alien. I had of ten felt as though life
was a private club and everybody had r eceived the
passwor d except me. Now was one of those times. I felt
other people knew a secr et that I didn’t know, but I didn’t
want to ask them about it because I didn’t want them to
know I didn’t know. By my mid-twenties, I was a total mess. I believed other people wer e dying inside too, just lik e
me, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it. I kept
thinking ther e was something very important that no one
was discussing. I didn’t have the wor ds myself, but I was
sure that something was fundamentally oﬀ in the world. How could everybody think that this stupid game of
“making it in the world”—which I was actually embar rassed I
didn’t know how to play—could be all ther e is to our being
here? One day in 1977, I saw a set of blue books with gold
lettering sitting on someone’s coﬀee table in New Y ork City. I
opened to the intr oduction. It r ead,
“This is  A Course in Miracles. It is a r equir ed
course. Only the time you tak e it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish
the cur riculum. It means only that you can elect
what you want to tak e at a given time. The
Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of
love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It
does aim, however, at r emoving the blocks to
the awar eness of love’s pr esence, which is your
natural inheritance.”I remember thinking that sounded rather intriguing, if not
arrogant. R eading further, however, I noticed Christian
terminology thr oughout the books. This made me nervous. Although I had studied Christian theology in school, I had
kept it at an intellectual distance. Now I felt the thr eat of a
more personal signiﬁcance. I put the books back on the
table. It took another year befor e I pick ed them up again—
another year, and another year’s misery. Then I was r eady. This time I was so depr essed I didn’t even notice the
language. This time, I knew immediately that the Course
had something very important to teach me. It used
traditional Christian ter ms, but in decidedly nontraditional,
nonreligious ways. I was struck, as most people ar e, by the
profound authority of its voice. It answer ed questions I had
begun to think wer e unanswerable. It talk ed about God in
brilliant psychological ter ms, challenging my intelligence
and never insulting it. It’s a bit cliché to say this, but I felt
like I had come home. The Course seemed to have a basic message: relax. I
was confused to hear that because I had always associated
relaxing with r esigning. I had been waiting for someone to
explain to me how to ﬁght the ﬁght, or to ﬁght the ﬁght for
me, and now this book suggested that I sur render the ﬁght
completely. I was surprised but so r elieved. I had long
suspected I wasn’t made for worldly combat. For me, this was not just another book. This was my
personal teacher, my path out of hell. As I began r eading
the Course and following its W orkbook e xercises, I could feel
almost immediately that the changes it pr oduced inside of
me wer e positive. I felt happy. I felt lik e I was beginning to
calm down. I began to understand myself, to get some hook
on why my r elationships had been so painful, why I couldnever stay with anything, why I hated my body. Most
importantly, I began to have some sense that I could
change. Studying the Course unleashed huge amounts of
hopeful ener gy inside me, ener gy that had been tur ning
darker and mor e self -destructive every day. The Course, a self -study pr ogram of spiritual
psychotherapy contained in thr ee books, claims no
monopoly on God. It is a statement of universal spiritual
themes. Ther e’s only one truth, spok en diﬀer ent ways, and
the Course is just one path to it out of many. If it’s your
path, however, you know it. F or me, the Course was a
breakthr ough e xperience intellectually, emotionally, and
psychologically. It freed me fr om a ter rible emotional pain. I wanted that “awar eness of love’s pr esence” that I had
read about, and over the ne xt ﬁve years I studied the
Course passionately. As my mother said at the time, I “ read
it like a menu.” In 1983, I began sharing my understanding
of the Course with a small gathering of people in L os
Angeles. The gr oup began to gr ow. Since then, my lectur e
audiences have gr own signiﬁcantly her e and abr oad. I have
had the opportunity to see how r elevant this material is to
people thr oughout the world. A Return to L ove is based on what I have lear ned fr om A
Course in Miracles. It is about some of the Course’s basic
principles as I understand them and r elate them to various
issues that aﬀect our daily lives. A Return to L ove is about the practice of love, as a
strength and not a weakness, as a daily answer to the
problems that confr ont us. How is love a practical solution? This book is written as a guide to the miraculous application
of love as a balm on every wound. Whether our psychic painis in the ar ea of r elationships, health, car eer, or elsewher e,
love is a potent for ce, the cur e, the Answer. Americans ar e not that big on philosophy. We’re very big
on action, however, once we understand the r eason for it. As we begin to understand mor e deeply why love is such a
necessary element in the healing of the world, a shif t will
occur in how we live our lives within and without. My prayer is that this book might help someone. I have
written it with an open heart. I hope you’ll r ead it with an
open mind. Marianne W illiamson
Los Angeles, CA
OceanofPDF.comI N T R O D U C T I O N
When we wer e bor n, we wer e programmed perfectly. We
had a natural tendency to focus on love. Our imaginations
were creative and ﬂourishing, and we knew how to use
them. W e wer e connected to a world much richer than the
one we connect to now, a world full of enchantment and a
sense of the miraculous. So


 now, while  your mind is in the
future. T his crea tes an anxiety g ap. And if you are identified with your
mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the N ow, that
anxiety gap will be your constant companion. Y ou can always cope with
the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a
mind projection — you cannot cope with the future. Moreover, as long as you are i dentified with your mind, the ego runs
your life, as I pointed out earlier. Because of its phantom nature, and
despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and
insecure, and it sees itself as con stantly under threat. This, by the way, is
the c ase even if the ego is outwa rdly very confident. Now remember that
an emot ion is the body’ s reaction to your mind. What message is the
body receiving continuously fr om the ego, the false, mind-made self? Danger, I am un der threat. And what is the emotion generated by this
continuous message? Fear, of course. Fear see ms to have many caus es. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of
being hurt, and s o on, but ultima tely all fear is the ego’ s fear of death, of
annihilation. T o  the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this
mind-identified state, fear of death af fects every aspect of your life. For
example, even such a seemin gly trivial and “normal” thing as thecompulsive need to be right in an ar gument and make the other person
wrong — defending the mental position with which you have i dentified
— is  due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental posit ion, then
if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened
with annihilatio n. So you as the ego cannot af ford to be wrong. T o be
wrong is to die. W ars have been fought over this, and countless
relationships have broken down. Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are  right or
wrong m akes no dif ference to your sense of self at all, so the f orcefully
compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of
violence, will no longer be there. Y ou can state clearly and firmly how
you feel or wh at you think, b ut there will be no aggressiv eness or
defensiveness ab out it. Y our sen se of self is then derived from a deeper
and truer place within yourself, not from the mind. W atch out for any
kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An
illusory identity, an image in y our mind, a fictitious entity. By  making
this pattern conscious, by witne ssing it, you disidentify from it. In the
light of your consciousness, th e unconscious pattern will then quickly
dissolve. This is the end of all ar guments and power games, which are so
corrosive to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as
strength. T rue power is within, and it is available to you now. So anyone who is identified with their mind and, therefore, disconnected
from their true p ower, their deeper self rooted in Being, will have fear as
their con stant companion. The number of people who have gone beyond
mind is  as yet extremely small, so you can assume that virtually
everyone you meet or know live s in a state of fear. Only the intensity of
it varies. It fluctuates between a nxiety and dread at one end of the scale
and a vague unease and distant sense of threat at the other. Mo st people
become conscio us of it only when it takes on one of its more acute
forms. THE EGO’S SEARCH FOR WHOLENESS
Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic
mind is a deep-seated sense o f lack or incompleteness, of n ot being
whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is
conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not beingworthy o r good enough. If it is u nconscious, it will only be felt indirectly
as a n intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will
often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to
identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after
possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special
relationship, basically so that they can  feel better about themselves, feel
more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find
that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in
trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. W ell,  they can
and do, but it gets more dif ficult. As l ong as the egoic mind is r unning your life, you cannot tr uly be at
ease; yo u canno t be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when
you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled. Since th e ego is a derived sense  of self, it needs to identify with  external
things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most
common ego identifications hav e to do with possessions, the work you
do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical
appearance, special abilities, re lationships, personal and family  history,
belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and
other collective identifications. None of these is you. Do y ou find this  frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these
things y ou will have to relinqui sh sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as
yet h ard to belie ve, and I am certainly not asking you to believe  that your
identity cannot be found in any of those things. Y ou will know  the truth
of it for yourself. Y ou will know it at the latest when you feel death
approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret
of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.CHAPTER THREE
M O V I N G  D E E P L Y
 I N T O  T H E  N O W
DON’T SEEK YOUR SELF IN THE MIND
I feel that ther e is still a gr eat deal I need to learn about the workings of
my mind befor e I can get anyw her e near full consciousness or spiritual
enlightenment. No, you don’ t. T he problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level
of th e mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction, t here isn’ t
really much else that you need to learn or understand. Stud ying the
complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing
so w on’ t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’ t
enough to create sanity. Y ou have already understood the basic
mechanics of the unconscious state: identification with the mind, which
creates a false self, the ego, as a substitute for your true self rooted in
Being. Y ou become as a “branch cut of f from the vine,” as Jesus puts it. The ego ’ s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatene d and so
lives in a state of fear and want. Once you know how the basic
dysfunction ope rates, there is no need to explore all its countless
manifestations, n o need to make  it into a complex p ersonal problem. The
ego, of course, loves that. It is always seeking for something to attach
itself to in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self, and it
will readily attach itself to your problems. This is why, for so many
people, a lar ge part of their sense of self is intimately connected with
their problems. Once this has happened, the last thing they want is tobecome free of them; that would  mean loss of self. There can b e a great
deal of unconscious ego investment in pain and suf fering. So once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with
the mind, which of course inclu des the emotions, you step out of it. Y ou
become pr esent. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as
it is without getting entangl ed in it. The mind in itself is not
dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek
your self in it and mistake it for  who you are. It then becomes the egoic
mind and takes over your whole life. END THE DELUSION OF TIME
It se ems almost impossible to disidentify fr om the mind. W e  ar e all
immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly? Here is the key: End the delusion of time. T ime and mind are
inseparable. Remove time from  the mind and it stops — unless you
choose to use it. T o be identified with your mind  is to be trapped in time: the compulsion
to li ve almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates
an endle ss preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to


 Some patients report that when they release the castor oil enema, it burns
the anus. Burning can occur, but the circumstance to remember is that
castor oil does not burn. Instead it’s the release of highly toxic materialcoming out of the body’ s tissues that burns! This is one more indication of
how important it is to take these castor oil enemas. Indeed, after two or
three castor oil treatments, the burning is reduced and disappe ars. Such a
disappearance indicates that the toxic level in the system is lower and no
longer irritates the rectum and anus. If irritation exists, use a little petroleum
jelly to soothe the area. You may also use a little zinc oxide ointment (not
suppositories, which contain painkillers). A numb er of patients, if they previously suffered from hemorrho ids, have
a flare-u p of this situation. It can be uncomfortable for a few days; but the
patient should definitely not stop the enemas. Zinc oxide ointment may be
applied locally. But please keep in mind that hemorrhoids are usually
caused by toxic pressure; therefore, detoxifying is extra-important, and
stopping the enemas is entirely  wrong. It has also been observed in those
patients that the hemorrhoids shortly disappear and do not recur. It just
takes a little waiting time and patience. PHYSICAL  FLARE -UPS FROM THE  ENEMA  TREA TMENTS
The frequency of taking coffee enemas as well as castor oil treatments is
reduced after a period of time. Some patients are so toxic that reduction of
enema frequenc ies do not apply to them. If they reduce the detoxification
too soon and then feel ill, toxic, or headachy, they should go back to the
more intensive level for a period of time. Later, they can try to reduce the
frequency again. Each patient needs to adjust the frequency of detoxifying
to his own needs. At times, when the patient does well upon receiving less-
frequent enemas, flare-ups still could occur. These may include new toxic
releases, increased swellings or pain, headaches, or lack of appe tite. At such
times, an extra coffee enema or a castor oil treatment has been known to
work wonders. Occasionally, flare-ups are accompanied by diarrhea. At such times, the
patient should only take perhaps  two chamomile tea enemas daily to gently
cleanse the colon. When the diarrhea lets up, the patient could instill one
chamomile tea enema, followe d four to six hours later with one coffee
enema, and another one of chamomile tea at night. When the colon is
calmed, the regular schedule may be resumed, but some of the coffee
enemas can still be mixed with chamomile tea.Some flare-ups are extremely intensive and cause a great deal of bile to
be released by the liver. This bile could flow over into the stom ach. Bile is
highly alkaline, but the stomach  cannot hold anything that is not maintained
in an acid medium. The alkaline bile will therefore bring on immediate
severe nausea, almost always accompanied by vomiting. At such times, the
patient should omit the coffee enemas, since they simply stimulate more
bile flow and more vomiting! Drink a lot of peppermint tea and eat oatmeal
gruel. Use only chamomile tea enemas. When the flare-up is overcome and
nausea or vomiting has stopped completely, then resume the cof fee enemas. Some patients have problems with a great deal of gas. When there is
much pressure from gas, it is difficult to infuse the coffee. At such times, it
will probably be necessary to lower the bucket to the patient’ s body height
while prone or even below the patient’ s body (if he is in bed or on a bench)
to allow the fluid to flow back into the bucket while also allowin g the gas to
bubble out of the rectum. However, if the gas is too high up in the intestinal
tract, this approach will not work. In A Cancer Therapy  (chapter 27, p. 201), Dr. Gerson discusses some of
the problems of flare-ups, includ ing difficulties with the coffee enemas. We
already mentioned (see above) that during these unpleasant flaring
reactions, patients occasionally have a problem with infusing  the enema
although previously this procedure went smoothly. The other problem
which occurs is that the patient  takes an enema, holds it for the optimum
twelve minutes, and then goes to release it. But the infused fluid won’ t
release! Such an uncooperative bowel comes from intestinal spasming or
cramping, which may not necessarily be accompanied by pain or
discomfort. There are several actions the patient can take for a spasming
colon:
1. Lie down on the bed, on the right side, legs pulled up, possibly  with a
warm water bottle on the abdomen. 2. Don’ t panic. 3. If after a little while, the coffee still cannot be released, take another
coffee enema, adding 3 tsp of a 3 percent solution of hydrogen peroxide
to the solution. 4. If the spasm still won’ t release, take castor oil by mouth. 5. For the next few days, put 3 or 4 tsp of the regular potassium
compound into each coffee enema. Do not continue the potassium  in the
enema for mor e than a week; otherwise, the colon becomes irritated.During the course of this bowel spasming, at no time is there any danger
to the patient even if she or he is not able to release the coffee. The entire
enema solution is easily absorb ed through the colon and excre ted through
the kidneys and urine if it is not normally released. There are still other ways to use the Gerson technique of enema therapy. These are not really cleansing enemas, but rather rectal implan ts. In a few
cases, patients during a healing reaction vomit almost everything they take
in. They become dehydrated and hypoglycemic. At such times, it is easy to
warm the regular carrot or green  juices (including the medications) to body
temperature and put the 8 ounces of juice into the bucket or bag and let it
run into the rectum. (Use only carrot/apple and green juices, not orange
juice. Do not add wate r to the juice.) This implant should not be expelled. Consisting of only 8 ounces, it can easily be held until it is fully absorbed. And instilling with a juice enem a may be repeated every hour as the juices
are ready. As soon as the patient is able, he or she should start to drink the
juices again normally. Somewhat in the same area, Dr. Gerson also suggested in cases of severe
ulcerations of the uterus or cervix to use a douche made up of green juice. This is gently cleansing as well as detoxifying, and the procedure stimulates
healing. Dr. Gerson suggested that enough coffee for a full day’s needs can be
prepared at one time. In that case, you can prepare a concent rated coffee
solution. HOW TO MAKE COFFEE  CONCENTRA TE
To concentrate coffee for later use as a dilution, use a fairly large pot and
perhaps 2½ to 3 quarts of water. Here is how to make cof fee concentrate:
1. When the water boils, add 15 rounded tbsp of organic drip-grind
coffee. Since each enema should contain the equivalent of 3 tbsp of
coffee, using 15 tbsp will give you enough coffee concentrate for five
enemas. 2. Bring the solution back to a boil for a few minutes, then let it simmer
for about fifteen minutes and then strain. 3. Divide the resulting concentrate into five equal portions. (You can put
equal amounts into five equal 1-quart glass bottles.)4. Then fill the bottle to the full quart with distilled water for use. 5. If you need to modify the coffee enema with chamomile tea as we
have already explained, you can add a pint of tea to the coffee
concentrate. 6. Finally, fill up the container with enough water to make a full quart. Before using this mixture, heat it to body temperature. Reference for Chapter Thirteen
1
Gerson, M. A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases and The Cure of
Advanced Cancer by Diet Therapy, 6th ed. Bonita, Calif.: The Gerson
Institute, 1999, p. 190. OceanofPDF.comPart Three
ADAPTING THE THERAPY FOR VARIOUS DISEASES
OceanofPDF.comChapter Fourteen
STANDARD GERSON THERAPY FOR MOST CANCERS
In 1984, Alexandra Lennox of Sacramento, California, aged forty-four,
divorced and raising three teenagers, was rediagnosed with invasive, in-
traductal carcino ma of the right breast after a previous lumpe ctomy. The
patient’ s initial diagnosis leading to the initial lumpectomy had been
simpler and less dangerous than it was this second time. Immediately following her repeat operation for lump removal, the breast
surgeon saw that the margins in her cancerous breast tissue s were not
“clean,” meaning that the lumpectomy had not cut away all the cancer. The
surgeon therefor e suggested that her lymph


 sun salute, 186–90 ;
when, how yoga originated, 193–94
Yoga Journal,  194
yogurt: lassi, 117, 129; making your own, 121; raita, 136
OceanofPDF.comFabout the author
ifteen years ago, Shubhra Krishan could not have written this book. Her
life was a heady mix of danger, excitement, and desperate deadlines. She was reporting for prime-ti me network news to 400 million viewers
across India. Shubhra never had the time to care for her own health, let
alone tell you how to care for yours. In the blink of an eye, her life changed
the day a vaidya  placed his finger on her pulse. That’ s when she discovered
the wonder of A yurveda. 268
The experience inspired her to pen a long-running series on Ayurvedic
living for netwo rk television in India called Feeling Fine. The immensely
popular weekly series focused on simple ways to live a healthy Ayurvedic
lifestyle. Shubhra worke d as the multi media editor for a successful natural
products compa ny in the United  States. She is now editorial director for a
Chicago-based company that produces media software on health and
entertainment. Besides writing on health and lifestyle for American
magazines and W eb sites, she is now working on her second book. She lives
with her husband, Hemant, and son, Harshvardhan, in Colorado Springs,
Colorado. OceanofPDF.com

New W orld Library is dedicated to
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challenge us to improve the quality
of our lives and our world. Our books and audios are available
at bookstores everywhere. For a complete catalog, contact:
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OceanofPDF.comOceanofPDF.com<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Once I realized this, I told myself I’d be happy if
I could do even one of those three things; in however small a way, I would
only be helping myself. It works — first, because it’s truly easy. And also because even the
smallest positive action toward self-improvement makes you feel really,
really good. That in itself adds a pinch of sattva to your being. Often, you’ll
find that if you’re feeling good about yourself, you won’ t even have to
remind yourself to help someone else; you’ll just spontaneously do it. giving ayurveda:
seven aah-inspiring gift ideas
It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving. — Mother T eresa
Before I discovered Ayurveda, I seldom thought beyond picture frames,
flowers, and cut-glass vases as gifts for my friends and family. Over the
years, however, I have realized that there is no greater joy than giving the
gift of well-being. Birthday or wedding anniversary, holiday season or for
simply no reason — I always, always pick up something that I know will
make my friends and family a little healthier. Bonus: the gift and its
goodness evoke in people a curiosity about Ayurveda — and knowing what
a world of difference Ayurveda can make, I am always happy to share what
I know. The Personal T ouchSome of the most beautiful moments in life come just after you have
given someone a thoughtful gift. The sight of a parent’ s or friend’ s eyes
lighting up, the spontaneous smile that spreads across their face — the
pleasure it brings makes gift-giving something of a selfish act, too. Along with your gift, include a handwritten note about its goodness. You could jot down quotations, make up your own poems (I made up this
one: “Stop that nerve going bang-bang — soothe it down with ylang-
ylang. ”), or type some Ayurved ic advice in an old-style font, then print it
out and paste it on the package. Happily, there are scores of heartwarming Ayurvedic gifts you can think
of. Let me share some favorite ones with you. Here’ s hoping these ideas
will change the way you give — for the better, forever. Something Scent-imental
I used to refrain  from presenting perfume to people, thinking the gift
would be forgotten once the scent had evaporated. But now I know that
scent is somethi ng that stays with us; it can be an everlasting gift. And there
is a perfectly scientific explanation for that. Where does a smell go once it has stolen up the nostrils. It trave ls to the
hypothalamus, and to some key areas of the brain that surround it — areas
that process feelings and memories. That is why the fragrance of a rose lifts
the spirits, and the scent of earth just after rain can remind you of happy
long-ago times. In the Ayurvedic world of healing, too, scents have a special place. Sweet orange, fennel, and ylang-ylang have a calming influence; they
pacify the vata dosha. Rose, sandalwood, and lavender bring feelings of
cool restfulness,  which makes them perfect for pleasing a pitta person. And
an unhappy kapha loves to be comforted by eucalyptus, rosemary, and basil. Then there are herbs that can ease away muscle tension and soothe
aching joints. Among the most effective are nutmeg, basil, spearmint,
camphor, pine, and peppermint. That is why healing with natural aroma is
an integral part of A yurveda. Give a Gift of Ser enityPick and pack a favorite essential oil, an aroma diffuser, or an herbal
neck-wrap. Stitch a cheerful cushion and fill it with healing, fragrant herbs. A tip for making your gift of oils extra special: read some good books on
the healing properties of differen t oils, then try blending them for maximum
benefit (see resources for some recommendations). Blended in the right
proportions, essential oils yield syner gistic benefits and balance each other
out. Attach a note about how you discovered that ylang-ylang complements
rose, or why rosemary and lavender make perfect companions. Thus
prepared, your gift will give a lot of pleasure — not only to your friends,
but also to you. Ah, the alchemy of aroma. Bottled Bliss
Pure, organic, cold-pressed sesame oil makes a thoughtful gift —
particularly for those who can obviously use some lubrication on their skin. Observe the skin texture of your family and friends. Parched, thirsty skin
will love being treated to a deep moisturizing massage. Then there’ s another kind of massage that needs no oil. Dry massage is
a great way to exfoliate skin and boost sluggish circulation. Done regularly,
this energizing massage can reduce the cottage-cheese appearance of
cellulite. How about giving your friend a pair of raw silk gloves for
performing a dry self-massage. A Jugful of Joy
There are things  in life that one doesn’ t usually think about. Your glass
of water, for instance. You notice the water, but the glass itself is just a
container. Some years ago, when I was staying with an aunt back in India, I
noticed that she observed a nightly ritual. She would fill a copper jug with
water and leave it overnight. Then, in the morning, she would pour herself
two glasses of water from that jug. I thought she loved her copper jug
simply because it was so pretty. Then she told me that leaving the water
overnight in that jug enriched the fluid with the goodness of copper. It
helped reduce acidity, improve digestion, and enhance the body’ s ability to
assimilate food better. So distribute health by the glassful: give your friends a copper cup. A Basket of Apples
Your friend has been missing breakfast. She often looks tired and
distracted. Or maybe she has just been working too hard these past few days
to pay attention to her health. Put her back on the path to radiance: give her
some apples or pears. Buy fresh, organic, sweet fruit. Make a bundle of
cloves, and jot down the recipe for stewed apple/pear (see chapter 9, where
you’ll also find information on how a stewed fruit makes the perfect start
for a day). A Sachet of Spice
If your friend’ s idea of a spice box is the salt and pepper shakers,
introduce her to the wonder of Ayurvedic spices. To begin with, introduce
her to the queen of spices: turm eric. In its solid form, turmeric looks like
twisted yellow sticks. In India, many housewives like to grind it fresh each
time they use it. But you could also buy good-quality turmeric in an Asian
grocery store. Attach a recipe for cooking with turmeric, adding
information on how it helps boost the immune system, flush out toxins, and
aid


 which plays a certain part in Tantric methods. ’
This ‘love contest’ appears also in western astrology in
Venus and Mars, the Pair of Lovers, who complement each
other in their signs, the old symbol for Mars being the
circle surmounted by the cross
, with Venus as the circle
above the cross
, both being a perfect union of the male-
female powe rs. Burckhar dt points out that the alchemical
meaning of the planetary signs is identical with the
astrological: ‘Each planet possesses two adjacent
“houses,” a left and right, or feminine and masculine, with
the exception of the moon and sun which have only one
house each and rule respectively the feminine and
masculine halves of the Zodiac. ’ The concept of the two
great powers appears in many civilizations. In Egypt Isis
and Osiris are the lunar and solar powers that brought
forth all things, and the doctrine of the contrary powers,
the positive sulphur and negative quicksilver, working on
each other, is present in all alchemy. Zosimus writes of
their interd ependence: ‘Above celestial things, below
terrestrial things, by the male and the female the work is
accomplished,’ and in Le Texte d'Alchymie  we read:
‘Sulphur cannot be without Mercury, and Mercury cannot
be without this Sulphur which is intimately united and
incorporated with it, as the soul is with the body. ’ Nicholas
Flamel says: ‘In the second operation thou hast twoconjoined and married natures, the masculine and the
feminine; and they are fashioned in one sole body, which is
the androgyne of the ancients. ’ This is the conjunctio, the
union of sulphur and quicksilver, sun and moon, king and
queen; the two together combining the blind strength of
the male with the subtle intuition of the female, of action
and thought, method and wisdom, of all the opposites
which together bring mankind back to the primordial unity
and perfection. In the interplay between the two, sulphur eﬀects the
coagulation of the body in dryness and hardness,
masculine qualities, and therefore requires modiﬁcation
and puriﬁcation in the dissolving and softening qualities of
quicksilver, the feminine power, which helps sulphur to rid
itself of its undesirable features and to reveal its noble
aspect; this is the Tantric play of the feminine on the
masculine which wakens  its active power. Sulphur also
symbolizes the rigid, rational and theoretical outlook of
knowledge which is sterile until dissolved by the
intuitional, instinctive feminine understanding symbolized
by quicksilver. In Hinduism, Purusha, the male,  the
contemplative intelligenc e, is ‘the great impotent one’ who
needs Prakriti, the female, generativ e, intuitional, to
activate it. A similar interaction is found in Buddhism. Though the western religious-philosophical thought,
based largely on Aristot elian dualism, asserted that the
two powers were initially in conﬂict, the yin-yang
symbolism of the East had no such dichotomy; the two
powers are held in harmonious tension, and though called
opposites they are, as Pu Cheng said, ‘incapable of mutual
negation. ’ The dualism of Heaven and Earth was resolved
into the unity of the Parent, spoken of as the Father-and-
Mother of all creatures. In a Great Declaration, at the
beginning of the Chou Dynasty (1122 BC), it was stated:
‘The Heavens are repre sentatives of divine majesty, theEarth is representative of divine care: the former teaches
paternal authority, the latter the more-than-maternal love. ’
Confucius, in the Li Chi, said: ‘Man is the product of the
attributes of Heaven and Earth by the interactions of the
dual forces of Nature, the union of the animal and
intelligent souls. ’ Humanity is frequently spoken of as ‘a
miniature Heaven and Earth,’ a product of the powers of
yin and yang, a microcosm which is a reﬂection of the
macrocosm. Like Heaven and Earth, the two great powers
cannot be separated; one implies the other, they cannot be
thought of in total separation. The two opposites, contrary
but complementary, bind and neutralize each other
without a diminution of either; together they produce
perfection, which is gold in alchemical terms and in
classical Taoism ‘the Return to the Source,’ union with the
Tao. The fact that each sex is only half accounts for the
universally expressed need, often amounting to an acute
longing, to ﬁnd the complementary partner, the ‘other
half,’ a comp letion, the regaining on the personal  level of
union and wholeness. From the alchemical aspect, the
union is spiritual rather than sexual, it is metaphysical in
signiﬁcance, transcendin g the personal and emotional
state and unifying on a higher level. Each individual has
also the two powers within; in the unregenerate state of
the base metal they are in conﬂict and are in the position
of a kingdom divided against itself. In this disharmony the
yin and yang  are out of balance, not only in the individual
but in the world in general, which is, naturally, only as
good as the individuals of which it is composed. The old,
base nature must die and much of alchemical symbolism
deals with death; everything must die before it can be
renewed, a theme found in all initiatory traditions. In
alchemy, the minerals die in the stove or athanor, to be
fused and ultimately united; this is also the ‘marriage’ ofthe metals and marriage  is also associated with death in
dying to the old life in which each partner ‘gives up’ to the
other. In the fusion of sulphur and quicksilver each loses
its individua l identity to take on the united character of
both. But death is always  a reunion, body to earth, soul to
the realm of spirit; it is a transmutation and
transformation. Continuing the marriage symbolism, Burckhardt writes:
‘Man and woman, who in natural fashion incarnate  the two
poles of the alchemical work, sulphur and quicksilver, can
by their mutual love—when this is spiritually heightened
and internalized—develop  the cosmic power, or power of
the soul which operates  the alchemical dissolu tion and
coagulation;’ or, again as Artephius wrote: ‘They will
embrace in such a way that never again will they be
separable one from another. Then indeed will the spirit
unite with the body in perfect harmony, so that together
they become an immortal thing. ’ The male-female
symbolism employed is merely a support for the esoteric
understanding of what is involved in the work: the
supreme aim being that of unity and return to primordial
perfection. OceanofPDF. com– 17 –
THE REAL ALCHEMY
That the real alchemy was concerned with the
metaphysical, mystical and religious life is made
abundantly clear in the writings of leading alchemists of
both East and West who state categorically: ‘Our gold is
not of this world. ’ All the exhortations to right conduct,
purity and religious observances show that the Work was,
for the true alchemist, a spiritual matter. Writing on yoga and alchemy and discussing the legends
and references in Tantris m, Eliade says: ‘We have here no
pre-chemistry, no science in embryo, but a spiritual
technique, which, while operating on “matter,” sought ﬁrst
of all to “perfect the spirit,” to bring about deliverance and
autonomy. gold is the one perfect solar metal and
hence its symbolism meets the symbolism of Spirit, of
spiritual freedom. ’ This is conﬁrmed by John Blofeld who,
travelling in pre-Commu nist China and visiting Buddhist
and Taoist monasteries, received from a Taoist abbot the
statement:
Ours is not a religion but a way to the Way. our
yogas and meditation begin with the generating of
tranquillity, that in the stillness of our hearts we may
apprehend the Tao within, around, above and below
us. We seek to nourish our vitality and prolong our
lives in order to gain more time for the reﬁnement of
spirit needed for attaini ng the higher goals. Then
comes the compounding of the Golden Pill which
some misguided persons have sought to produce by
alchemical processes, whereas in truth it can becompounded only within the body and is theref ore
known esoter ically as the immortal foetus. We Taoists
are generally  agreed that its creation is the means to
immortality, but at this point paths diverge, some
seek aeon-long immortality, the attainment of a god-
like state, as an end in itself; others strive to Return
to the Source, an apotheosis identical with the
attainment of Nirvana, though conceptions of the
in


 in the pow er of
miracles. I can have faith in the power of fear, or faith in the power of
love. I can have faith in the pow er of external things, or faith in the God
who lives within me.DA Y 216
T o d a y  I  c o m m u n i c a t e  w i t h  l o v e  a n d  n o t  f e a r. T he word “communication” includes the word “commune.” If I
communicate without communing, I do not communicate at all. I am  responsible for the hea rtspace between me and whom I
communicate w ith. If someone feels attacked or judged or bl amed by
me, they will not hear me. I might speak but I will not have been heard. T oday I will find the innocence within myself and others, the place of
holy com munion, before I speak. Then not only what I say, but how I say
it, will be heard as a sharing and not an attack. Dear God,
Please help me communicate
W ith love and not fear. Let me assur e whomever I speak with
Of their essential goodness,
Even if they might have been wr ong. For otherwise, I will be wr ong myself. Amen.DA Y 217
L o v e  c a n  b e  t r u s t e d. W i t h o u t  l o v e,  I  a m  i n s a n e. L ove makes all th ings right, by a ligning mortal events with the n atural
patterns of an i ntentional and creative universe. Love is my sanity. It
does no t lead me into unreaso nable or immoderate behavior. It is the
guidance system for a wise and peaceful life. The thinking of the world would lead me to believe that the ways of
love are often w ays of weakness, while the ways of fear are often ways
of stren gth. Never has a more  insane perspective taken hold of the
human mind. I s hall not be lured  into the thinking of darkness, but rather
I will cleave to love today. Dear God,
When the world
W ould lay its lies upon me
And tempt me to per ceive without love,
May Y our angels guar d my mind
And keep me firmly in Y our light. Amen.DA Y 218
G o d  h a s  a s s i g n e d  m e  a  f u n c t i o n  t h a t  o n l y  I  c a n  f i l l. E ach of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world. Each of
us is assigned by God a function that only we can fulfill. At the level of
our divine function, none of us are in competition with each other, for the
universe is infinitely abundant. My goo d doesn’ t take away from anyone else’ s, and no one else’ s
good tak es away from mine. There is space for everyone’ s gifts to flower. There is  more than enough room  for all of us. I embrace the assignment
revealed to me when I open my heart to love. As I  seek to live as God would have me live, He will r eveal to me
what He would have me do. He will pr epar e me in all the ways I
need, to carry o ut the r ole He would have me play. I need only t o
r elax into His p r esence within me, and all shall unfold in divin e
right or der. Amen.DA Y 219
G o d ’ s  g r e a t n e s s  i s  a  g i f t  t h a t  I  h u m b l y  r e c e i v e. G od’ s greatness is a gift that is of fered me, and it serves Him when I
receive i t. I have latent power that is mine to claim. I often lac k faith in
what exists within me because I lack faith in who exists within me. T oday I accept with gratitude and humility the presence of God
within m e. I am a vehicle for the  ecstatic power of grace, always  ready to
move th rough the veins of m y consciousness and my body. God’ s
greatness is the antidote to the suf fering of the world. God is gr eat, and God is within me for God is in my mind. I
surr ender my thoughts of br okenness and fear, to be r eplaced by
endless love. Thus shall I r ece ive the gifts of God and extend
them to the world.DA Y 220
FOR REFLECTION
O n  A c c e p t i n g  O u r  C a l l i n g
O ne o f the  most positive transition s you can make is from viewing your
work as a job to viewing it as a calling. A job is an exchange of ener gy in
which y ou do a material task an d someone provides money in exchange. A ca lling, however, is an or ganic field of ener gy that emer ges from the
deepest aspects of who you are. It is the fulfillment of what God has
created you to be and do. Ap proaching your work as a jo b versus
approaching it as a calling make s all the dif ference in whether or not you
dwell in the miraculous universe. Y ou hav e a calling simply because you are alive. Y ou have a calling
because you are a child of God. Y ou have a calling because you’re on
this earth with a divine purpo se: to rise to the level of your highest
creative possibility, expressing all that you are intellectually, emotionally,
psychologically, and physically in order to make the universe  a more
beautiful place. As you do this,  your entire life  becomes your ministry—a way to
serve God and to serve the world.DA Y 221
F o r g i v e n e s s  w o r k s  m i r a c l e s. I n any moment, I choose where to put my focus. I can fo cus on
someone’ s guilt, or I can focu s on someone’ s innocence. By seeing
someone’ s innocence, I transcen d the ef fects that their guilt might have
had on me. I a m only at the ef fect of what I accord reality. By for giving, I a ccord
reality to love, and therefore only love can touch me. Through
for giveness I let go of fear, to work a miracle instead. The pow er of for giveness is a miracle of God, a shift i n
per ception fr om world to spirit, fr om past to pr esent, fr om fear to
love. It is God’ s gr eatest gift to  me and my gr eatest power. My
willingness to for give is my r efuge, my security, and my str ength.DA Y 222
I  l e t  g o  o f  m y  a t t a c h m e n t  t o  t h e  p a i n  o f  m y  p a s t. O ften it’ s said we can be bitter or we can be better. T oday I choose not
to be bitter, for  my bitterness w ill create more reasons to be so. As I
rethink my past, for giving myself and others, I release myself from the
damage of old wounds. My clin ging to old hurts might inspire sympathy for a time, or  even
temporary support from others. But it will not inspire invitation s to start
over, from other people or from the universe itself. I can have a
grievance or a miracle; I cannot have both. I place my gri evances in the hands of God, and pray for
deliverance beyond my attachm ent to bitter wounds. I let go of
my grasping at what I cannot change, and pray for a miracle to
r elease me fr om my pain. I sur r ender all thoughts of judgment
and r evenge, that I might now be fr ee.DA Y 223
I  w i l l  n o t  p u n i s h  m y s e l f  f o r  t h e  m i s t a k e s  o f  m y
p a s t. T he dark nights of my soul have taught me many things: about w here I
got it wrong and where I got it right in life; about who I’ve been and who
I c hoose to be now. I take respo nsibility for my mistakes, I atone for my
errors, I do what I can to make things right, and I allow for giveness and
mercy to wash me clean. It ne ither serves me, nor anyone else, for me to beat up on myself
continually. Hav ing burned through appropriate remorse, I wish to move
ahead an d grow  from my mistakes. I will not stay stuck in the mire of
self-hatred. Alth ough I have ma de mistakes in my past I am n ot bound
by them  in