Chapter 51 Dharma Talk

– Karma and grace

Sunday 15th August

‘Oh, Sam, I’m very pleased to see you,’ said Shingetsu as Sam entered the meditation hall to lead a meditation session before breakfast. ‘You didn’t seem to be in your room last night or early this morning. I was worried about you, and I was uncertain if you’d be around to lead the meditation this morning.’

‘I’m fine. I’m sorry I worried you. I spent the night with Sahadeva.’

The innocent, matter-of-fact way in which she made that statement left Shingetsu with no clue whether Sam and Shingetsu had been meditating all night or had been making love. Shingetsu assumed the former. It had, in fact, been the latter.

‘I’m constantly surprised how many people turn up for these early morning meditations,’ said Sam.

‘Thank you for agreeing to continue to lead some while you’re here.’ Shingetsu smiled. ‘Word about your rock star, guru status is getting around.’

This morning, Sam spotted an ego trying to draw energy from Shingetsu’s quip. It failed.

Sam sat in her usual position, paused until the room fell silent and then began. ‘This morning, prior to our meditation session, I would like to clarify some points about karma.

‘When I hear people talk about karma, it often seems to be in the same sense that people talk about supermarket clubcard points. It’s as if one gets points for good deeds, whatever they may be, and loses points for bad ones. After that, someone in the cosmic cloud tots up the score. The higher your score; the better the things that subsequently happen to you.

‘But how does this scorekeeper in the sky manage what happens to you?

‘There is no scorekeeper, of course. Cause and effect, influenced by your past behaviour, will have brought you to the present moment. That’s how the effects of your earlier karma play out.

‘All of that derives from the past though. What I would like to consider this morning is what you can do now to influence your karma for the future.

‘We only make contact with reality in the present – in the here and now. The only control that we can exert over the future lies in what we do in the here and now.

‘So, what do we have with us when we meet reality in the present? We have our thoughts, we have our emotions, and we have our sense perceptions. All of those are learned patterns – previously constructed templates that are, often unconsciously, projected onto our experience.

‘If someone offends you, the hurt and the angry templates may seem to fit best. These then define your personal reality. Alternatively, love and compassion may be first out of your toolbox. In that case, the situation will probably pan out quite differently.

‘The templates in your toolbox are your karma. They will define the future. The question is to what extent you can identify those templates and consciously change them.

‘It’s not easy to change the patterns of a lifetime – or maybe many lifetimes. It may take a lot of work to dispose of the angry templates and replace them with compassionate templates, but once you do that, your karma and your future will be changed.

‘This is the same thing as the Christian concept of grace. I sometimes talk about the metaphors used by spiritual traditions to point to underlying reality. They all have their problems, and the cosmic dualism that’s built into the common understanding of the Christian myth can be particularly confusing and misleading for pilgrims.

‘For the moment, however, let us simply consider Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in the Christian New Testament. The relevant part of the text states that people are saved through grace, gifted by God, and not through works.

‘Unfortunately, that makes it sound as if pilgrims just need to follow the rules and wait for an external God to grant forgiveness of sins – like some feudal king granting clemency to a loyal, but miscreant, subject. In reality, grace is the effect of changing the templates in your toolbox to ones you understand to be wiser. Once that happens, the old karma is gone, and your past sins have been metaphorically forgiven – although there may still be some residual consequences to live through.

‘To phrase it in another way, the effect of karma is not directly about the past, it’s about the patterns that the past has led you to bring to the present.

‘The insight that leads to grace can happen in an instant, but it can’t be directly brought about by activity of any kind. It can’t be directly brought about by works – however positive.

‘It happens when you see reality more clearly in the here and now because that is where you meet God.

‘Thank you.’

Chapter 52 The Sunday paper

Sunday 15th August

Ben turned the key, opened the door of Sue’s flat and went inside.

‘Did you get the paper and some milk?’ Sue called from the shower.

‘Yes.’

Ben walked into the lounge and put the Observer on the table. He then switched on the kettle. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

Sue turned off the shower. ‘Yes, please.’

Ben made them both a coffee and took the mugs to the table. He then sat down and began to look through the newspaper.

Sue soon joined him in her bathrobe. ‘Anything interesting to read about?’

‘This insanity about Beth seems to be escalating more and more. It’s not just a few religious nutcases. Polls seem to suggest that at least fifty percent of the population in any country you can name believe that Beth portends some momentous event. The Pope hasn’t ruled out that it could herald the second coming of Christ, and most other religious traditions expect something to happen. Some think it will lead to paradise, others to the end of the world.

‘Why in the twenty-first century do so many people think in the same way their ancestors would have done in the middle ages? They’ve seen what the scientific method can achieve in the technology they rely upon every day, and yet unreasoned superstition constructs their models of the rest of reality. NASA didn’t get to the moon by using magic rituals, and NASA thinks that Beth is no more than a very interesting astronomical phenomenon.’

Sue sat down next to Ben. ‘The Abrahamic religions are probably something to do with it. Once people are trained to believe doctrine, rather than think about it all, the dividing line between fact and fantasy fades away.’

‘It says here,’ Ben pointed to the page, ‘that world economies are taking a hit as millions of people have left their jobs to spend time doing something related to the fourth of September. Some are preparing celebrations. Some are spending time with loved ones before the end of the world. Some are sending messages to the aliens they expect to land. The whole world’s gone mad!’

‘I think about fifty percent of the world has gone mad – mostly those that education systems have failed.’

‘What’s this?’ said Ben, his attention suddenly arrested by an article on page six.

‘What is it?’

‘Apart from being the first article that’s not about Beth, which is remarkable in itself, it talks about a firefight at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City.’

‘Why’s that interesting?’

‘It might not be, but we know that Rogers said something to Mackenzie about an operation in Mexico City to recover Teterodat. It says here that the Russian Embassy in Mexico City was evacuated yesterday morning, and then there appears to have been a firefight between groups of special forces.

‘Initial reports indicated that Russian, Chinese, American and UK forces may have been involved. The Mexican government has put a mile restriction zone around the area, and no news media are allowed within that. They originally said there’d been an international training exercise in managing a terrorist attack, but then withdrew the statement. Bodies have been reported as having been removed from the area.’

‘An international training exercise involving Russia, China, America and the UK would bode well for international cooperation, but not if they all shot each other.’

‘It all sounds crazy, Sue, unless you postulate that the last supply of Teterodat may have been in the embassy and that those countries were so anxious to get it that the fallout from a daylight attack on a foreign embassy didn’t deter them.’

‘I hope they don’t get wind that there’s another supply in this flat. I’ve only just had the kitchen painted, and I don’t want special forces from four countries shooting the place up.’

Sue and Ben both stopped joking at the same moment as they took on board the risks they could be running. There was a supply of Teterodat in Sue’s refrigerator that could be similar in size to a consignment which may have precipitated a multi-national special forces firefight in Mexico City.

‘Best not to think too hard about that,’ said Ben. ‘What can we do to distract ourselves?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Sue. She stood up and walked towards the bedroom.

‘Good plan,’ Ben replied as he followed her.

Chapter 53 A review and planning meeting

Sunday 15th August

‘If we knew the real significance of the fourth of September, we’d be better able to guess what Rogers, Mackenzie and the countries involved in the Mexico City firefight are trying to do,’ said Ben as he, Sue, Sam, Sahadeva and Shingetsu shared lunch in the dining hall of the Bodhiisha Temple.

‘What do we know?’ asked Sam, prompting a review of the information they currently possessed.

Sahadeva pointed to the salad bowl to request it be passed to him. ‘Rogers and Mackensie are involved in a project which is now based in a bunker at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Folkestone. That project follows, in some way, from the Stargate project that was conducted by the DIA at Fort Meade, Maryland in the nineteen-nineties. Those experiments were aimed at gaining military intelligence by remote viewing.’

Sue picked up the salad bowl and passed it to Sahadeva. ‘During the past two years, experiments have been conducted here at the Bodhiisha Unit as part of what the MOD calls Project Starchild. The work here involved experimenting on unsuspecting soldiers who believed they were being treated for PTSD. Those experiments used some kind of computer technology and a drug called Teterodat – a hallucinogen used in religious rituals around the world and famously used in Haiti to induce zombie-like states. It appears from what Al Smith said to Ben that the experiments here achieved dissociation of awareness and remote viewing, although we don’t know with what degree of success.’

‘In addition,’ added Shingetsu, ‘the functional invisibility of John Henson and the sense of having lost part of themselves described by John, Al and Joe, seems to imply that underlying awareness has remained dissociated for at least some of the participants.’

‘It’s interesting they can still function in that state,’ Sam observed. ‘The sense of self, constructed by their egos from thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions, seems to do a fair job of impersonating a whole human being. I guess that’s because most people function in that unconscious, ego-driven state a lot of the time.’

Shingetsu selected a bread roll from a basket on the table. ‘Because a dissociated awareness isn’t obvious to those who aren’t close to the person involved, it could have happened to many more of those who were involved in the experiments here.’

Ben cut into his bread roll. ‘That’s a bit worrying if you consider that Al and Joe unconsciously acted out a dream-like scenario that resulted in them trashing their local high street.’

‘So, where do we go from here?’ asked Sue.

Sam had already thought through the situation past the point the conversation had just reached. ‘Peter Rogers very probably knows the answers to all our immediate questions. I think we should relocate to Folkestone. Ben’s mum owns a holiday bungalow very near to Shorncliffe Army Base and has generously agreed that we can stay there. That will put us closer to the action and possibly closer to our ally who knows about Starchild.’

‘What ally?’ asked Ben.

‘The anonymous person who originally wrote to Sahadeva in July, warning him of Starchild.’ Sam paused. ‘I also think that I should try some limited experimentation with Teterodat.’

‘That could be dangerous, Sam,’ responded Sahadeva with concern.

‘It could,’ Sam replied, ‘but I wouldn’t inject an entire dose. Just a small amount to give me some idea of the effects it has.’ Sam paused again before changing the subject. ‘I keep wondering what the significance of the fourth of September is for Starchild? I somehow feel it must be related to the closest pass of Beth to the Earth, but how could it be? There’s no reason to assume that anything’s going to happen as a result of that.’

‘Maybe not,’ answered Sue, ‘but a lot of people think that something’s going to happen.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Chapter 54 Lost in space

Sunday 15th August

Three hundred and seventy miles above the Earth’s surface, a hatch opened on the surface of a Yaogan 30-type satellite. These Chinese military satellites were tracked by other nations, but only the Chinese military knew their exact purpose and the nature of the encrypted data they transmitted back to Earth.

An apparatus emerged from the hatch, which was attached to a robotic arm. The orientation of the apparatus changed to a pre-programmed position. One second after movement ceased relative to the satellite, the apparatus emitted a narrow, blue beam. Only an instrument on the direct line of that laser burst would have detected it.

The apparatus was then withdrawn within the satellite once more, and the hatch closed.

Three hundred and sixty-five miles below the satellite, the transponder identifying a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III ceased to transmit.

Chapter 55 Dhama Talk

– On the road again

Monday 16th August

‘Good morning everyone.’ Sam began the early morning session in the meditation hall at the Bodhiisha Temple. ‘I’m sad to say that I’ll be leaving after breakfast this morning. I hope, however, that I’ll be able to return before too long, and I also look forward to an association with this temple into the future.

‘If I had to give this talk a title, it would have been “On the road again” – with apologies to Willie Nelson. In part, that’s because I’ll shortly be on the road again, myself, but also because I want to focus this morning on the view from the spiritual road.

‘All of you here will be familiar with the forms of words that are used to describe the practice of meditation and what might be experienced in the course of spiritual development. You will be aware, for example, that the fundamental starting point to exploring underlying reality is remaining in the present and not allowing the mind to dominate. Many of the exercises engaged upon by the participants on the recent retreat were with a view to reaching that starting point.

‘Once residing in the present, and with thoughts to some extent controlled, it becomes possible to comprehend thoughts, emotions and sense perceptions for exactly what they are – phenomena generated by the body and the brain within consciousness.

‘Some spiritual teachers give thoughts, emotions and sense perceptions very bad press. They are useful phenomena, and they are not your enemy. Thinking has brought the human race to the level of understanding that it now possesses, and emotions have been vital to our survival on the way to this knowledge. Emotions relate to thoughts in the way that pictures relate to text. Emotions and pictures provide a lot of information that can be quickly understood and acted upon. That is the evolutionary function of emotions. One could stop to reason the most likely future scenario when that sabre-tooth tiger is approaching, or one could feel that it’s time to run away.’

There was a murmur of laughter.

‘The last of the three phenomena, sense perceptions, are, of course, necessary to monitor the state of the body – like gauges on a dashboard.

‘So, you can learn to observe those three phenomena, at which point you might wonder who or what is doing the observing.

‘Sometimes, the apparent observer is another set of thoughts and feelings which the mind has grouped into an ego, so it’s worth pausing for a moment to ponder again on the nature of that ego.

‘You will all have heard the word “persona”. A persona is a character, much like a character acted on a stage, that we choose to project in a given set of circumstances. You will probably behave in slightly different ways depending on whether you are with friends, family, at work or at some more formal gathering. A persona incorporates attributes you possess, but it is highly selective in which ones it portrays to the world. An ego is very much the same, except that the ego is not a role you choose to play to interact with people in specific circumstances. It’s the often unconscious role you play to present yourself to yourself.

‘As such, it’s much harder to differentiate it from your true self. Most people think that they are their egos. They fully identify with the conditioned thoughts and feelings that arise in consciousness – even though their egos are just a construct and no more real than any other persona.

‘Once a person on the spiritual path can identify ego, then she is ready to experience her underlying awareness. You can’t observe that awareness any more than you can directly observe your own face, although it’s very possible for awareness to be aware of itself.

‘But what is this awareness? You’ve heard me and other teachers say that the awareness is the true you, but also that everybody has the same awareness. You may have thought this makes little sense, as everyone is very different and trapped within their own heads. How can the real you be exactly the same as the real self of everyone else? Also, you might ask, if the underlying awareness is common to everyone and everything, then why can’t you see through my eyes right now rather than just your own?’

‘That last question has been the subject of scientific experiments, and it is possible to see through someone else's eyes.

You might recall something the Americans called the Stargate Project, back in the cold war days. That was about something called remote viewing – gaining information about a target from a long distance away. Although the Stargate Project ended, it proved that remote viewing could happen – just not with the consistency required for military purposes.

The Stargate Project was therefore able to exploit this single underlying awareness to potentially view anything, anywhere. So, how can we conceptualise this awareness?

‘An analogy I sometimes use comes from where I lived when I was teaching physics at Oxford many years ago. All the accommodation at my college was set around a quadrangle. It would have been possible, though perhaps a bit anti-social, to walk around that quadrangle and look into all the windows. Each window would have afforded a different view of objects and people and activities.

‘If you stared at a particularly interesting scene, you might lose yourself in it – as you might when watching a film. You might forget you were the “Watcher in the quad”.

‘Despite the weakness of any analogy, that is a picture you might like to ponder in relation to awareness. The “Watcher in the quad” is the Universal Awareness. When she moves to the next window, she is still the same Watcher. Our finite minds, however, filter out the rest of the quad, and so we do not see beyond our awareness of our own individual circumstances. That is why most people are not able to experience the wider awareness that is accessible to the Watcher in the quad. We are trying to understand the wider view she possesses by looking only into our own small windows.

‘This is where I would like to stop for the moment and leave you to meditate upon the extent to which you can recognise the “Watcher in the quad” and what that might mean for your own spiritual roads.

‘Thank you.’