Where did all the good hippies go? Raising consciousness.

"I want more. 

This isn't it. 

This isn't it.

Fame is not the goal. 

Money [is not the goal.] 

It's not the answer." 

Where did all the really good hippies go when they all dropped out?

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about stilling the mind and how to do that. Who doesn't want to stop the wheels from going round and round from time to time? This concept is the first of the sutras that Pantanjali writes:

The answer is tried and true, especially when you hear an authority on this type of thing: Stilling the mind can happen thanks to mantra. The notion of mantra that I have, from various simple sources, is this: it gives the mind words to resonate in the mouth... ear.... heart.... and mind. And though it can feel like one is doing nothing at times... that is kind of the point too. There is silence and sound in the mantra.

"Transcendental is beyond the senses, beyond the intellect," as George Harrison says. "Everybody is so limited and so really useless when you think of it about the limitations on yourself and the whole thing is to change, try to make everything better and better;  that's what the physical world is about is change, but the change that happens through meditation is a gradual sort of thing but the more you realize with anything, with just growing old, the more you realize: it helps you in some way. With meditation you are able to understand that there is this unity lying beneath everything; there's something there within every atom that holds it all together and the actual fact that it really is one, but on the intellectual level to say, "We are one," then I mean, again, you missed the point. It's an experience. You have to really have that perception that it is one."

If one adds a devotional aspect to one's mantra, for example with the maha mantra, then the heart can be more engaged in the practice of japa.

And, following Rumi, if one thinks of the moment 

as the now, or consciousness, 

or the awareness of reality that the seer within sees and hears... 

and goodness, kindness, creation, love, and greater wisdom to its source,

then there can be sweet nectar.

I like what George Harrison says:

"How to get peace of mind and how to be happy? That's really what we are supposed to be here and the difficult thing is we all go through our lives and our days and we don't experience bliss. It's a very subtle thing to experience that, to be able to know how to do that is something you don't just stumble across. You gotta search for it."

VHI interviewer: "Did you experience bliss on stage or in the studio? In a way did performing put you in touch with that bliss?"

"We had happiness at times but not the kind of bliss that I mean where, like, every atom of your body is just buzzing, you know, because again, it's beyond the mind. It's when there's no thought involved. It's a pretty tricky thing to try to get to that stage because it means controlling the mind and being able to transcend the relative states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming, which is all we really know. But there is another state that goes beyond all that and that state is where the bliss and the knowledge are available."

Also teaching people to be healthy, rather than focusing on disease. Teaching consciousness.

There is a generation of kids now open to consciousness and vegetarianism. So, can we be positive about today's society? "It is getting better *and* worse because that's the nature of relativity: good and bad, good and bad, but if the individual gets on that consciousness, you can retain the balance between the good and the bad. Because really, good and bad are the same thing."

Personally speaking, I don't get how good and bad are part of the same thing; how can they be the sap from the same tree? [Especially] when one is acknowledging real evil in the world--Lord, protect the innocence of children--how can awful cruelty and selfishness be any bit related to the good we have in mind through devotional practice--how is such darkness the same as the goodness we have seen in the world?

***

Harrison: "Put your own house in order. Until I'm straight, then I'm in no position to criticize others."

Like Harrison's teacher said: For a forest to be green, every tree has to be green.

Let us be green, then, and silent.

Antarctic Beech, Northwestern US