In the work I do with the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi I try to find fresh phrasings for ineffable experiences. Sometimes I get deathly tired of the terms I have been shuffling and re–dealing for sixteen years: love, joy, union, majesty, the one who teaches, compassion, infinity, splendor, deep intelligence, life, ocean, generosity, beauty, emptiness, fullness, practices, and presence. And let's not forget soul, spirit, energy, courage, truth, and those unspeakable cliches—being, consciousness, bliss. I just get flat out tired of words, and one thing I love about Joe Miller is how he was always bone–weary of spiritual language. That's why he yelled. FIRE! HEART! LIVE IT FROM THERE! He got stuck on those pretty bad. Words weren't his thing. But rather what two people felt for each other, the surge in the eyes and the chest. Words were friendly, kind noises to make while the other went on, the vibration. This book is Joe's whoop and hollering to help us remember that we're all WILD–
When I first met Joe, we were talking along, and I said, "Here, let me read you something." A piece of Rumi's Mathnawi that I'd been working on, the story where someone on hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, goes through the Sufi master Bestami's town and Bestami says, "Why go all that way? You can just circumambulate me seven times and be done with it!" That made Joe start singing, and I sang him some old Appalachian hymns, and that was it. Joe liked to talk about Headquarters, or the natural state; he had many names for IT, the place where love and knowing mingle. There is a deep intimacy that our truest spontaneity springs from. In another Rumi story a young man very skilled at archery is given directions on how to find a treasure. It involves using his bow and arrow and then digging where it lands. He fires off many shots with beautiful arcs and digs and digs. No luck. Finally he prays and in his prayer he hears a voice from inside himself. "You were told to put a
I went a long way once, to Bhutan, and hiked up eight thousand feet to the Taksang monastery, constructed in the 17th century while John Milton, elsewhere, was writing Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Taksang was built around a cliffside cave where Padma Sambhava meditated on his way bringing Buddhism from India to Tibet. The story is, he flew there on a flying tiger. Some of us climbed down into "the tigers nest," which is a large, rocky hole there inside the monastery. So it was pretty holy in that place, and I tried to get quiet and appropriately empty. I stayed behind, away from the group I was with, alone in one of the shrine rooms where there was a large painted tiger to look at. As I was sitting there, one of the three young boys who were training to be monks came in, looked at me, went over to the tiger and pulled loose its detachable tongue and took it around to the other end and held it to make serve for a pink tiger penis. He greatly enjoyed the language–less sigh
Joe used to tell a Padma Sambhava crow story. This crow is sitting by a pond, but he has a thirst for some other water, he's not sure what kind. He sets out and flies all over looking for the right water, and ends up at his old pond. There is a wonderful, nearly miraculous spring at the top of Taksang mountain, and the taste of that water is fine, after the five–hour climb, mighty fine. I wouldn't want to keep anyone from trying it. The water here in Georgia is good too. Joe–Padmasambhava also used to tell about the guy who kept tracking the elephant, carefully following prints, after the elephant had been found! Here's the other Rumi story Joe mentioned that afternoon we sat and sang (satsang!) in his San Francisco tiger's nest, about the Hindu elephant.
Elephant in the Dark
Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
"A water–pipe kind of creature."
Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving
back and forth, fan–animal."
Another, the leg. "I find it still,
like a column on a temple."
Another touches the curved back.
"A leathery throne."
Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk.
"A rounded sword made of porcelain."
He's proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are
how the senses explore the reality of the elephant..
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.
Coleman Barks
March 20, 1993
Joe was an authentic American revolutionary of the spirit. He challenged his young friends to issue their own declarations of independence from the empire of fear and wanting. Joe wanted people to seek the truth for themselves within themselves. He felt that each person had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life—as in "the resurrection and the life;" liberty—as in spiritual liberty from the tyranny of opposites; and the pursuit of happiness—as in the inner contentment that flows unceasingly from the depth of the heart if you "let go and let God."
Joe didn't have a university degree. He had no formal education beyond the eighth grade. He held no hierarchical position in any religious organization. Joe didn't publish any books or write any articles for prestigious reviews. He didn't travel the national lecture circuit. Joe had no videos to market, and he didn't organize seminars.
Joe didn't take any money for public speaking or private consoling. He spoke for free, and he would talk to anyone who was interested. He simply discoursed on the dharma (or gospel) as he understood it, and in his own vernacular, the language of the common man with a generous helping of show business slang for enriched flavor.
Joe absolutely refused the role of guru or spiritual teacher. He did not initiate disciples. He referred to himself as "just a friend."
Joe Miller's talks offer a unique expression of some essential human truths. His style was definitively American, but his message was timeless and universal. He had only one subject–matter—spiritual realization—the means through which to experience it as well as its practical application in daily life.
In collaboration with his wife, Guin, Joe tirelessly extolled the way of unconditional love and simple awareness. Joe and Guin studied the eastern teachings without ever visiting India, Tibet, or the Holy Land. They came to their own personal understandings of life's source, substance, and goal by using common sense, a sense of humor, and the love of the Reality. Together, they reached many hundreds of young people both on their weekly walk through Golden Gate Park, and at meetings of the San Francisco Theosophical Society.
Their message was simple—universal love and the unity of life—the essence of all the world's great mystical teachings. What was remarkable was their medium—they actually lived it, they didn't work toward universal love and the unity of life, they worked from them.
Throughout Joe's talks, you will hear a few exhortations over and over again. That's just Joe "beating on skulls," and "shaking cages."
Be still, be very still!
Just BE!
Truth can't be bought or sold.
You've got to do it for you. No one else can do it for you!
You are, and all you have to do is be.
Take a gentle in–drawn breath into the heart, and feel unselfish love flowing out.
Joe reiterated these simple statements incessantly to drive home the message that spiritual truth and power are accessible to you from moment to moment. "All you have to do," Joe declared, "is BE!" He wanted everyone to know that this reality could be experienced without "shelling out any loot" or "bowing to anybody" or "giving up sex" or "contemplating your navel until it gets as big as a washtub." When unconditional love flowing from the depth of the Heart floods the personality, everyday existence is transformed into a communion with the divine. Sincerity of intent and willingness to surrender to what is are all that the reality requires of you.
""Shortly after I moved to San Francisco, in 1977, a friend of mine said, "You should meet Joe Miller. He's a retired vaudeville and burlesque entertainer. He takes a walk with his wife in the park every Thursday morning. That's where you'll find him. He's kind of a Zen Master. And he was a friend of Sam Lewis (the American Sufi Murshid) too. They played pinochle together." So, at 11 a.m. on Thursday morning, near the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, I met Joe Miller.
When I first saw him, Joe was standing in a great splash of sunlight. He was a small, white–haired old man with a goatee, a red nose and brilliant sky–blue eyes. He wore an olive army jacket, blue jeans, hiking boots, a work shirt, and a beret. He wore a silver cross with an amethyst around his neck. He wore several rings (amethyst, carnelian and gold). In a brown paper bag, he carried a loaf of Wonder Bread for the ducks and some of his brother–in–law's breakfast cake for the people.
There were a dozen or so young people standing around, waiting for him. I watched as he greeted them, one by one, with an embrace. He was deeply absorbed with each person, in turn. Some got small talk, others a wise crack, others silence and a probing glance. When he got to me, he looked up and seemed startled. I felt startled that he was startled. He just said, "Oh, you've been here before," and hugged me.
I watched him throughout the rest of the walk, I listened and drank in what I could. Joe rambled at ease, working the crowd, using his show business flair for timing, seasoning his exposition with schmaltz, drawing others into the act, rubbing the bellies of the ego–alligators and imbuing the faint–hearted with courage. Joe and Guin just strolled through the natural beauties of the park, stopping occasionally so Joe could lean up against a tree or sit down on a bench to give a "rap" on the twists and turns of life on the Path. Afterward, he would call on some young friend to lead a Sufi practice or sing a ballad or perform an improvisational dance.
"I see you watching the old man," he laughed later, "taking it all in." A barrier collapsed inside, a dam burst, an irreversible change reaction began. Silently, I vowed for my own sake, to stay around him and take it all in.
Joe wasn't interested in little sheep, bah, bah, bah. Unless, of course, they were black sheep. He wanted "goats and giraffes." Goats are stubborn, they kick, they eat everything and they can climb high up where others can't. Giraffes are rather unusual looking creatures. They can reach far above the heads of all the other animals and they can't help but stick their necks out.
Over the years, the crowd grew from a small band of a dozen or so to a scene of forty or fifty people a week. On the big holiday walks, the crowds swelled into hundreds. Many paths crossed in Joe's presence. There were Sufis, Dharma practitioners, Theosophists, Hindu devotees, and Christians. There were also many who had left one of these groups behind, and others who had never belonged to any group and were relieved to find a luminous person who said, with great certainty, that they didn't have to join to get the truth.
No one took your name. There was no mailing list. No one collected any membership fee, there was nothing to join. No one pushed any particular code of behavior on you. That was entrusted to karma and your own conscience. No one was held to a set pattern. People came and went according to their own whims or convictions. The walk was simply a marvelous, un–reproducible "happening," an extraordinary testament to the expansiveness of the Millers' awakened hearts.
After dark, the scene shifted to the San Francisco Lodge of the Theosophical Society. Just as the Thursday Morning Walk showcased Joe's unique expression, the Thursday Evening Music Hour showcased Guin's.
In a musty, turn of the century library downtown on Nob Hill, Guin would thank everyone for coming and remind them that "Whenever two or more are gathered in the Master's Name, He is with us...." She would play some of her compositions on the piano and Joe would lead the group in singing along. "Feel, feel, feel for real. No mind makes no deal. Be, be, be still and feel...."
After the singing, Joe would give a short talk about "dis–ease" and getting back into harmony. "Just by being here together and opening our hearts, we've created an etheric bubble and the JUICE that we've generated can be spread out and used by the forces that are holding the whole world together until we all fall fully awake."
Following Joe's remarks, Guin would reel off her interpretation of Lotus Land composed by one of her mentors, British composer, author and occultist, Cyril Scott. From there, she would launch into her own improvisational meditations with wild riffs that shook the room and sent forth wave after wave of spiritual force, like peals of thunder or toiling cathedral bells.
Next came Joe's solo. Maybe he'd milk a sentimental favorite like Mother Macree or Little Bit Of Heaven, maybe he'd blast off with one of Guin's Songs To Live By. These compositions, mostly verses from the world's sacred scriptures, sung by Joe with Guin's piano accompaniment, were the driving force behind their invitation to an "intimate experience of the ultimate." Joe's tenor voice had tremendous power. So did Guin's piano–playing.
After Joe and Guin had established a deep, vibrant atmosphere, they would ask others, their young friend, their "kids," to participate in whatever way their own creativity or inspiration would manifest—singing, dancing, telling a story, reading a poem, playing a musical instrument, or leading a chant. Many who attended the Music Hour gained greatly in self–confidence with flashes and surges of insight. We participated not so much by giving as by receiving, showing the startling change that can be wrought in a single human life when two other beings refuse to see anything but the perfection in that person.
Joe and Guin Miller shared "falling awake" as a common goal. Working together, they said, a man and woman could grow faster, evolving "geometrically" rather than "arithmetically." For many, they were a symbol of the spiritual marriage. And it was a real, earthy marriage too, with all its trials and triumphs, foibles, frustrations, and furies.
Guin always said they were "a team." And that's what they were. Everyone heard Joe's joyful harangue. Everyone felt Joe's boundless enthusiasm. Guin's work was different. She saw it all from a different vantage point. But they were a team. Their contrasting styles strengthened them; their contradictory natures presented their young friends with a divine paradox within which a great secret could be discovered.
Guin was Joe's antithesis in many ways. Joe was the son of a house–painter. He grew up in the Midwest, dirt–poor and uneducated. Guin was the daughter of a renowned sea captain. She grew up on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
Joe utilized slapstick, shtick, and corn. Raised with high episcopalian "airs," Guin was far more mannered. Unless, of course, she suspected that you expected a certain behaviour from her, then she would delight in mocking and confounding you. Joe's musical training was barber shop quartets and "girlie shows." Guin's was Chopin nocturnes and Wagner preludes.
Gregarious and extroverted, Joe boasted of suffering from "diarrhea of the mouth." Guin, on the other hand, often spoke nostalgically about the Pythagorean school (which she intimated she remembered). There, she would point out, the students couldn't ask any questions at all for the first seven years of their training, and then even after that, they never asked questions of a personal nature.
Reflections on Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, pp. 142-143.
Joe felt that these comments from Ramana and his disciple explained a great deal about his own deepening experimentation with the "gentle, in–drawn breath" and the resultant ecstasy. So, in 1971, Joe and Guin wrote S.S. Cohen c/o Ramana Ashram and received an encouraging response:
"Supremely peaceful, wholly benevolent, Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi smiled down from high on the wall above Joe and Guin's fireplace. As the years went on, the large sepia print took on a life of its own. Joe remarked that it never faded. And, indeed, to many visitors it seemed to grow brighter.
Guin often gazed up at Ramana's picture. Communing with his sublime countenance, Guin would smile and let go of her troubles. She would sometimes whisper a few words, then close her eyes to drink the grace. From where? Bhagavan's image felt as if it were a portal into the unseen, all–seeing radiance, through which we could look beyond and, in return, feel the divine effusion flowing from the nowhere into the here.
Joe considered Ramana's teachings to be the exquisite culmination of the quest, the penultimate expression of the divine wisdom for our age. "In a hundred years, what that guy Ramana was putting out will be understood. But it will take that long for people's consciousness to ripen to that point."
The truth struck Ramana at a young age, it overwhelmed him. He ran away from home, traveled to the foot of Mount Arunachala and collapsed there. Years passed before he spoke about his experience. Those who found him dressed him and fed him. Ramana had no guru. He initiated no one. He founded nothing. He insisted any one could realize what he had realized. He did not reject other practices, he simply suggested that since it all ends in the Self, perhaps you can get to that point sooner by dealing with the issue of existence directly.
Simply ask yourself, "Who am I?" Not as a mental exercise, not as a parroted phrase. The inquiry shouldn't be a purely intellectual endeavor. It isn't merely a thought process, it isn't the mental repetition of a question. It is a "diving in," a turning of awareness in upon itself, a sinking, a letting go into the nucleus, that from which the ego arises as the shadow of Sat (pure being).
By forcing the awareness inward when saying "I am cold," "I am tired," "I am sad," and asking "Who is sad?" "Who is tired?" "Who is cold?" And if the answer is, "Well, I am!" then return to the inquiry. "Well, who am I? Am I this body? These senses? This skein of memories? These predispositions?" All these phenomena are transitory, they are subject to alteration or disappearance. But I am not, I just am. Even in deep sleep, I am. But what am I? I return to the waking state and know that I have slept well, although I know nothing else about the elapsed time. When the veil of everything that passes away is removed from my inner sight, what do I see? What am I? The coin is being alive. Its two sides are simple awareness and unconditioned love.
In the small pamphlets and other publications that issued from the Ramana Ashram, Joe found corroboration for much of his own experience and predilection. In S.S. Cohen's work, Joe read a statement about something called Sphurana that struck very close to home:
Sphurana is felt on several occasions, such as fear, excitement, etc. Although it is always and all over, yet it is felt at a particular center and on particular occasions—it is the Self. If the mind is fixed on the sphurana and one senses it continually and automatically, it is realization.
Sphurana is described as a "kind of indescribable but palpable sensation in the heart centre . . . ." The apparent discrepancy in its location as "all over" and in the "heart centre" is due to the degree of firmness in, or proximity to the Self. Between the first sensing of the sphurana and the discovery of the heart, which is the Self proper, there is only a short lag of time. Therefore, those who are so fortunate as to begin to feel it, should take heart at the imminence of the supreme experience.
Reflections on Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, pp. 142-143.
Joe felt that these comments from Ramana and his disciple explained a great deal about his own deepening experimentation with the "gentle, in–drawn breath" and the resultant ecstasy. So, in 1971, Joe and Guin wrote S.S. Cohen c/o Ramana Ashram and received an encouraging response:
Sphurana interests only those who are very near the end of their spiritual journey. But to describe correctly the sphurana, as you do, is the end itself.
The American Sufi master Sam Lewis called himself Marpa and dubbed his friend Joe, Milarepa. The nicknames referred to two ancient yogis who helped bring a Dharma renaissance to Tibet. In the Kargyu lineage, the mantle passed from Marpa to Milarepa. In late 20th–Century America, there was no mantle, only the common ground of two diamond–willed
Growing GeometricallyJoe and Guin Miller shared "falling awake" as a common goal. Working together, they said, a man and woman could grow faster, evolving "geometrically" rather than "arithmetically." For many, they were a symbol of the spiritual marriage. And it was a real, earthy marriage too, with all its trials and triumphs, foibles, frustrations, and furies.
Guin always said they were "a team." And that's what they were. Everyone heard Joe's joyful harangue. Everyone felt Joe's boundless enthusiasm. Guin's work was different. She saw it all from a different vantage point. But they were a team. Their contrasting styles strengthened them; their contradictory natures presented their young friends with a divine paradox within which a great secret could be discovered.
Guin was Joe's antithesis in many ways. Joe was the son of a house–painter. He grew up in the Midwest, dirt–poor and uneducated. Guin was the daughter of a renowned sea captain. She grew up on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
Joe utilized slapstick, shtick, and corn. Raised with high episcopalian "airs," Guin was far more mannered. Unless, of course, she suspected that you expected a certain behaviour from her, then she would delight in mocking and confounding you. Joe's musical training was barber shop quartets and "girlie shows." Guin's was Chopin nocturnes and Wagner preludes.
Gregarious and extroverted, Joe boasted of suffering from "diarrhea of the mouth." Guin, on the other hand, often spoke nostalgically about the Pythagorean school (which she intimated she remembered). There, she would point out, the students couldn't ask any questions at all for the first seven years of their training, and then even after that, they never asked questions of a personal nature.
He would detonate one of his incendiary devices—but his intent was to revivify, not to destroy. He wanted to lead others by example to the fount of the crazy wisdom.
During a Universal Worship Service at the Palace of Fine Arts, Joe was to represent all those unknown beings who have selflessly tended to the flame of truth through this age of darkness. He asked Pir Vilayat Khan (son and successor of Hazrat Inayat Khan who founded the Sufi Order in the West), to make him a "Madzub." Pir answered: "You are a Madzub, aren't you? I can't make you one. That's what you've always been." And although he was recognized as a Murshid by both S.I.R.S. (the "official" organ of Sam's spiritual legacy) and the Mevlevi Order In America, it was the label Madzub (divine idiot or divine fool) that Joe was most comfortable with and which he used to categorize himself most often.
A year or so before the passing of Joe and Guin, the Dalai Lama visited San Francisco and spoke at the Grace Cathedral. The Dalai Lama is wonderfully articulate. He didn't resort to the use of metaphysical concepts. He never invoked a deity. He didn't refer to any spiritual practice. He said that unconditional love was the universal principle, the common ground. "Look at the new–born child," he said. "It responds to kindness. That's the core. Before the infant learns the least bit about the particular religion or ideology it has been born into, it responds to kindness. This is the core that we must draw on. Compassion is the transforming agent."
I was struck by the simplicity. I realized that Joe had been delivering this message for many years in his own idiosyncratic way. After his talk had concluded, I worked my way slowly through the throng to meet Joe and Guin. As they emerged from the antechamber through which they had passed to take their seats in the vestibule, I saw and felt that something big had occurred. Several of the lamas who had been sitting along side Joe and Guin were looking at them in wonderment. Everyone was sparkling.
On his way out of the cathedral, the Dalai Lama had walked down past the inner vestibule where Joe and Guin had been sitting. All the people rose and stood with their hands in prayerful mudra. The Dalai Lama stepped away from his entourage, walked up to the Millers and took their hands, silently blessing them. For Joe and Guin, that simple, unplanned and unspoken gesture was a kind of final benediction on their lives.
In June of 1990, Joe suffered a serious stroke. Many wouldn't have made it back from that plunge into the abyss. Joe went far out into "the Gnashing of Teeth and the Darkness at the Rim of the World." When Joe emerged, his atmosphere felt like purity purified, his white hair was whiter, his blue eyes were bluer. His body was very fragile, but his consciousness seemed even more powerful and expansive than before the stroke. He told me he knew just what he had already known, but from a deeper, bigger place. Life in a deathless oneness, everyone is inextricably interwoven. Harmlessness is the only power; joy, the inevitable end.
In June of 1992, Joe fell and suffered a head injury. He kept fighting. He didn't want to depart the world. He loved Guin and their work. He felt the hunger of the sangha and wanted to keep going, but his physical vehicle had broken down. Will–power wasn't enough anymore. There was suffering and there was rapture.
In the hospital, late at night, a young male nurse came in to draw a blood sample, Joe smiled at him and said, "You don't know it, but I love you. You're part of my pattern too." Early in the morning, the interns visited and Joe burst into a full–voice performance of the "Clown's Lament" from I Pagliacci. Later, as he was being wheeled in for a catscan, he blasted the technicians with "MAY ALL BEINGS BE WELL, MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY, PEACE, PEACE, PEACE!"
Back at home, his final few days were an exhibition of courage, surrender and love. His exit was victorious and peaceful. One bright morning, he swept Guin in his arms, as if to take her with him.
In the end, you couldn't slice the moment of departure from the moment before or the moment after. It never happened. The body was simply suddenly no more than an object, a hallowed, hollowed vessel. The being stretched and blossomed into nowhere, the now here!
Joe often told the story of Ramana Maharshi's end. The disciples were weeping, they begged him to stay, "Don't go." Gently, Ramana asked, "Where would I go?"
Guin left shortly after her husband. They always said they would leave together. And that's what they did. Joe went on ahead to blaze the trail, Guin took up the rear for the sake of the stragglers. Just as they did on the Thursday Morning Walk.
Guin and I had a few heavy (no, light) talks in the pre-dawn hours over her last weeks in the birdcage of flesh and blood. One night I said, "You're not your body." "No," she agreed. "And you're not your mind." "That's right," she agreed again, "So what are you?" She pondered, then asked in earnestness and delight, "A draft?" It was joyous and liberating view, it was our last uproarious laugh.
Thanks to the Millers' friend, Scott Sadler, who pilots his own small plane, we scattered Joe and Guin's ashes over the Pacific, out beyond Jenner where the Russian River pours into the sea. The trails of white ash billowed, plumed, and spiralled downward, falling from the brilliant blue sky to the brilliant blue waters. A joyous, traceless release. Along with Guin's ashes, we sent the red rose she received as an apport in a 1953 seance during which she communed with the soul of her son, a young pilot who crashed and burned in WWII. For many years, Guin had carefully kept the rose in little box inside her piano bench.
Joe Miller was never at a loss for words. The material from which this collection of talks is condensed is voluminous. Joe also read and enjoyed many books in his ceaseless personal effort to elucidate the spiritual truths. Great Song's bibliography provides a snapshot of Joe's own shelf of favorite texts. Many of the footnotes reflect the dog–eared pages and underlined passages that he felt verified his own findings or spoke directly to the needs of Americans in the later quarter of the 20th Century.
Joe Miller qualified everything he said with a disclaimer: "If you pay any attention to what I'm saying, you're nuts. But if you feel what I'm trying to radiate as I talk, then you're cookin' on the big burner." Joe also took advantage of every opportunity to remind his friends that "It can't be found in books." In other words, the divine reality within the human heart can't be verbally expressed or grasped with the intellect. Whenever Joe spoke the dharma, there was a palpable and indescribable grace in the atmosphere. However, there are books that can help. Joe often said that if there is an attunement between reader and author, something deeper, more profound than words can be transmitted. It can be drawn upon by those with a desire to realize truth experientially.
There is a story regarding the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem saw a demon walking through his house, carrying a book. The Baal Shem asked, "What book is that you have in your hand?" "That is the book of which you are the author," the demon replied. In this way, Baal Shem discovered that one of his students had been secretly writing what the master had said in his talks. When he uncovered the identity of the guilty student and the young man surrendered the notebook, Baal Shem sat down and read it page by page. His final remarks were, "In all this there is not a single word I said. You were not listening for the sake of Heaven, and so the power of evil used you for its sheath and your ears heard what I did not say."
I happily risk the ignoble fate of the Baal Shem's poor student in the hope that these talks will be of some help to those who tread the way of the heart.
Richard Power
February 14, 1993
Words stand in the way of understanding, spiritually speaking. If you use it all to get an intellectual background, that's good. But I once saw a cartoon that showed a man becoming an intellectual. At first, all these words were flying around him. The farther he went, there were even more words and less man. Then finally, just a bunch of words.
You can practice this or that and you can go to a hundred gurus and they'll charge you a moderate sum. Of course, that's unless you want to get the "esoteric teaching," then it might get up to three or four thousand dollars. After awhile, you'll find that nine times out of ten, the advertised "guru" is not a guru at all. He's a business man. But if it comes from the Heart, it's real. People know it! It isn't so much what you say, it's where you are. It radiates out.
You've got to go further into the mirror of consciousness and realize that whatever position you stand in or whatever attitude you may have is but a reflection. We're all living out concepts that we have in our consciousness. If we didn't acquire them in this time, we got them in some other lifetime. But behind it all is the mirror of reality itself. The only way you're going to get there is pure love flowing out. Not by grabbing, not holding or wanting to make it yours, "Oh, this is mine, nobody else can have it."
The mirror is a wonderful symbol because whatever's in front of it, the mirror itself is not affected. You have that within you which reaches and stretches to the reality that's in each of your hearts. When the heart is purified, it sees God, it is God. If there is one place in the physical vehicle you could point to where the reality is living, it's somewhere in your chest, not your head or feet. This is the Immortal I that you can bring alive if you believe in the love of God, not only believing it intellectually but to be it and live it!
Maybe I scare people, maybe I'm a little nuts. I've been called a Madzub. But a Madzub isn't as nuts as people think because he is hearing that eternal and internal music all the time. It's an ecstasy! There is a great song, a great music happening in life at all times. So be the true note you are. Don't let someone else tell you what to do. Be what you are, intuitively, from the depth of your being. Do you want to give me an argument? No? Well, a rolling stone gathers no moss, but it does get a hell of a polish.
There used to be a gag in vaudeville. We'd say, "What is love?" The answer would be, "Love is a great light." "Well, what's marriage?" "Marriage is the short–circuit that blows out the light." But it doesn't necessarily have to be so.
If you just got married for sex .... Well, who didn't? But there's got to be something more than that. A friend of mine once said, if that's all there is to it, you could have gone home and made a bowl of oatmeal and dropped it right in. There isn't any closeness to it. If it isn't a union at all levels of consciousness, feeling and being, it's a most unfortunate thing.
The Tibetans say that when you're married and you're with your wife, you represent the Buddha, the God of the Universe and she represents Tara, all femininity in the world. Then in the joining there is a spiritual lift. It isn't just a matter of getting that momentary satisfaction, but that's great. There is nothing wrong with it. After all, I'm an old man, but even at the age of seventy–eight, there is still fire in the basement. So you've got hope, men. It isn't going to wear out as quickly as you think.
Try to get the feel of it, the spirit in you. In fact, when I hear these ladies that speak of psychology on the radio, I always want to call in and say, "Now look, I know about unendurable pleasure, but how do you make it indefinitely prolonged?" That's what we all want.
In the Chinese teachings of the Tao, they explain that when the explosion occurs, the feelings you have represent the Tao, that's what you will enjoy for Eternity if you'll fall awake! Who wants to fall awake? Yeah, all right. This is what we're heading for. The Indians put it as Sat–Chit–Ananda. Sat is being. Chit is consciousness. Ananda is bliss. Can you imagine living all the time in the way you feel at the height of orgasm? Could you take it? Would you mind trying it?
So if this is what we are coming to, we better take some time getting ready for it. In other words, do a little practice. The dawning of this love flows out not only from one point in the body, but from all points in the body. The hands are considered the parts closest to the heart. We find that most healing is done with strokes or some use of the hands. They're closest magnetically to the heart. But there isn't anything that isn't love if you look at it that way. Can you look at it that way? Can you look at it that way if someone is spitting at you or giving you hell for not doing something you should have done? Can you see that as love? It is. The gimmick is that if it wasn't love they wouldn't want to have anything to do with you. But the fact that they're picking on you or fighting with you shows that there is still attachment. If they become entirely indifferent, you're through.
I found out about that. I lost three wives that way. But I don't think I'll ever lose my present beautiful lady. She might lose me sometime, but I don't think I'll ever lose her. In the other marriages, I figured I would get younger babes. You know, "Why shouldn't I get young meat, I am a man after all." Believe me, it didn't work out. I filled the bill in one way, but I wasn't with them in other ways. For instance, I don't give a damn about going to all the shows in the world or running around or anything like that. I like to just sit at home and eat, watch the boob tube, and have fun. Hell, that isn't a bad life. So if you are contemplating matrimony, try to be friends with the person that you are going to be with. You have to have common interests and still you have to keep interests that are quite different from each other. You don't want to just be a copy, one of the other. Each has got to do their own thing, but you still have to have things in common. The problem is that a man doesn't think
Of course, ladies, I don't know whether to say this or not, one way to work with a man is to remember that when he's hard, he's soft and when he is soft, he's hard.
You can have ecstasy with just an in–drawn breath with no thought and the feeling of love flowing out. It is not one of these bits where you hold your breath so damn long that you burst a blood vessel or get a hernia. Just a gentle in–drawn breath. But also there is this feeling about it as you draw in that gentle breath, there's love flowing out from the heart. Just breathe gently in. It happens, it happens.
Try it now. Why not? Take a gentle in–drawn breath right now. Go ahead. Let it out. On the outgoing breath, it doesn't happen. By doing this and some other things, you can reach the reality within yourself, at once. It's right there. Maybe not after the first time. It took me years to have it happen a second time. Another way, you see something so damn beautiful that it blows your mind and you're drawn right to it. Just like that, it's right there. I want to pass this on because I believe that in sharing we grow. So I share anything that comes to me that might be of help to other people.
I don't happen to be held down to any sacred vows which say you can't tell these things because this is the esoteric teaching. I'm not into any of that at all. Anything of an esoteric nature is only esoteric because the people don't dig it and can't do it. You don't have to hide anything. It can be right out in the open. If you aren't ready for it, you can't do it and if you can't do it, you can't. There's nobody else holding you back. Ever.
When you get mad, go ahead and get angry. Don't think, "Oh, I'm committing a sin." Just get really mad! Then when you get really mad, take the reason out of the way and use the energy that's there.
We each have that point of awareness and aliveness within us. It must he stirred up. When you're singing or you have a belly laugh, it's the same energy. You've activated the aliveness, the energy of the very Oneness. It doesn't have any name on it. It's only in the focus of your own limited mind that you think it's this or that. It isn't.
This power is in feeling, in love. It isn't in thinking. You don't activate the thinking you do. Still, you get a feel about it. So just as a little summation: You can get more stinkin' from thinkin' than you can from drinkin', but to feel is for real!
I was working down at the burlesque house in the old days. After I finished the midnight show on Saturday, I used to go up on my roof and stay up there until daylight. One morning, I was up there until daylight and just as the sun started to rise, a flock of words came to me and I said to myself, "Now where did I read that?" But I couldn't think of where I had read it and it has stayed with me over a period of years.
The manifested universe is the keyboard
upon which the master artist of spiritual
Now that's quite a mouthful, isn't it? If I'd read something like that, surely I would remember it. Now where did it come from? I'm not psychic. It just was Pow! There it is. I've never tried to throw myself into any kind of a fit. I don't do any practices and never have. I don't believe in it.
Oh, once I did. I went up to Chinatown and sat for a couple of weeks with my legs folded up until I damn near killed myself. But nevertheless, I stuck it out. At the time I thought, "Miller, you're a blundering idiot." After all, what good's a pain in the legs going to do your head and heart? That is not what it's all about. If it's a matter of hurting your legs, go get a hammer! Or put your testes on a rock and just tap them. It doesn't make any sense to sit there and suffer. What am I doing this for?
Look, you're using your mind when you're meditating, so what's your spine got to do with it? Oh well, they say, "The Kundalini . . . . " Well, they've built up a great thing about that. But this sort of thing about Kundalini is a lot of hogwash. What you've got to do is come to the Reality itself! Try to reach the Oneness of It and know that the One you're looking for is not out there somewhere but is already inside of you!
Someone asked Rama, "Is it hard to come to enlightenment?" Rama said, "It is and it isn't." He said, "Although we tell them constantly, it's in the heart, few people believe us, but if they would turn to it, they would come to the realization very quickly."
You overcome attachment by a change of focus, a change of viewpoint. If you must be attached, be attached to the very essence itself. And if you point at the very essence itself, whatever comes down is no longer an attachment to you. Any argument? No?
These attachments, tell me, who are they pulling at? What is this thing inside of you? Who's the I in it? Your problem isn't attachment, your problem is primarily fear. You're attached to something because you don't want to find that other part. You don't want to have the experience because you're afraid it might isolate you and rob you of the pleasure that you have in the desires that come and go.
You have to just let go of attachments. All of them. Can't you look at it from a contented point of view? From a different level where you're not tied up to that little tassel that you're carrying around? Or bound to some special idea that you learned from some book? Can't you just give it all up and just be? Huh? Have you tried it? What happens when you do try it? It's a pretty nice place, isn't it? It's just letting go. Just let go. I'll tell you what stops attachment quicker than anything else: INDIFFERENCE, indifference to the particular attachment. Indifference is the only power that can get you to let go of attachment. The normal way is that in trying to rid yourself of an attachment, you're against it, you're opposed to it, you find something to dislike about it. You don't want it and you're pushing it away. Well, it's just as present then as when you were attached to it. So the only way through it is indifference.
Can you drop your attachments to things and view them openly, without any bias in a particular direction? Can you look at something clearly? Like a camera takes a picture? Can you make your mind and consciousness like a mirror? To let it reflect back what's up in front of you, so that when it's gone nothing has touched you at all? Because you see, the mirror's still the same. Make your consciousness just that way.
I'm not in favor of anybody running away from their responsibilities. You really can't run away. There is something called the Law of Karma, or Cause and Effect. If you walk away from your responsibilities, that's all right. It's just like borrowing money from the bank, you'll just be charged extra interest.
I've got something that is working for me, it's working! I'm healthy! Oh, I'm not prosperous, I'm not important. But I'm contented, I'm full of joy, I'm full of life.
You think you want to be on a power trip, or you say, "Man, I gotta be a millionaire," or "I gotta be the boss." Find contentment first, and everything else will fall into place. First, find that Peace That Passeth Understanding, if you want to put it in Christian terms. It abides in the hearts of those who live in the Eternal. That's now! This is the Eternal.
There isn't anyone alive who doesn't have the feeling that, "Well, that guy's gonna die, but not me. I'm never gonna die." You're sure of it. Unless they say you have cancer and that you're terminally ill. Then you realize something is going to happen. But normally, no one thinks of dying because That part which is the essence never dies.
I believe in the doctrine of reincarnation. I feel we've lived many times before. If we've had so many incarnations, why don't we remember them? Well, if you could remember them before a certain level of tolerance and understanding, the world would be in even more of a mess.
These people from India say, "It's all an illusion." Yeah, it's an illusion, from a certain state, if you get to that state. But don't lean on it until you get to that state. It's a subtle thing, yet it is the most important thing. You've got to find that place of balance within you. Everybody has got it.
So you say, "Yeah, I know that. But you don't know the troubles I've had. It's not my fault." Well, let me tell you something—any troubles you have you richly deserve from somewhere, so you might as well get done with them and be through with it here and now.
Most of you seated here haven't reached the half–way mark in the number of years I've gone through. I'm trying to help you get a jump on these experiences. I want to help you look at them. But you can't change anyone. I can't change you. Everyone has to do it for themselves. You have to find it for you and your only responsibility is for yourself.
Once you get yourself running smoothly, as far as you're concerned, the whole world will be running smoothly. And the biological urges? Nothing wrong with them. They're healthy.Marriage, Sex, and the Gentle In–Drawn Breath
Anger
Practices
reality plays the symphonic arrangement of life.Attachment
Troubles
Nirva–kalpa samadhi is being unconscious and in an ecstasy, but with no awareness. But sahaja is when it's in the natural state and you remain within the center of your consciousness with awareness of everything that is happening on the outside.
In sahaja, you're aware of everything, yet it doesn't change the fact that you're at one with the reality itself all the time. You still have thoughts like anybody else, thoughts that bug you, but they're in a quiescent state and stay at the periphery of the thing.
Nirva–kalpa samadhi is another way to go to sleep and enjoy the ecstasy. You've got to have it with the consciousness, otherwise you don't have anything. If it were just a matter of going to sleep to be enlightened, everyone could go to sleep and that would be it. Ramana Maharshi states all this very clearly.
The drug experience is a distortion in which you are using something out of the unconscious. Whether you're projecting it in the particular way you formally experienced it or it's distorted, it's still an imaginary thing. It is a projection of the imagination. True samadhi, sahaja samadhi, is an awareness in ecstasy at all times. It's a total awareness with no biases connected to it.
One more thought concerning acid trips, at least those who have gone through that experience are aware that there is another phase of consciousness beyond the one they are ordinarily in. The young people who have come to me were those who had these experiences and then decided, "Well, if there is this other dimension I can get into, surely there's a way to get into it without drugs, in a perfectly natural way." So those who can take it in the natural way are satisfied and don't take the acid or smoke hay anymore.
Now I don't know whether Muhammed was celibate or not, but he was married to twelve different women after his first wife died. Now I suppose he could have said, "All of you sit down and pray." But if Muhammed was half the man I think he was, he was using the facilities at hand!
And in all the books of the Old Testament, you find they had a few concubines on the off-beat. To give you a specific view on that, King David was very aged, they thought he was going to pass away, so they sent to a nearby village and got a young virgin of sixteen summers and laid her on his bosom and he lived for five more years after that.
There's a purpose that can be holy and uplifting, if it's not selfish. You're sharing! Sex can be used as a means, just as eating or meditating can be used, a means to refine you more and bring you into that space. What I feel from inside is that those of you who are here in this room and people in this country at this time are the seed of a new world. And that you can help tremendously in this way, by making it a holy thing. If you don't desire that sort of thing, okay. But to abstain from something because you think it's going to make you more holy is selfish. The rule is—universal love!
I remember reading something in a book on this particular subject. I didn't try it. It said that if a man found himself in an excited condition, he should take two little bowls, one filled with hot water, the other with cold water and dip his testes into them. It would damn near kill you, I figure.
But can you see the yin and yang? It can be a temple of union between man and woman lifting them to the highest! Remember that lady of Rama's, she was looking around for him and instead of saying, "Where's Ram? Where's Ram?" she was using her own name?
If you want to go the other way, there have been many saints that went the celibate way. But I'm not so much in favor of saints. I prefer sages. Because they had saints in every great religion, but some of these were, to my way of thinking, very fanatical. A sage is someone who has to be a saint as well as have the other understanding. So we take it where it is.
For instance, I hug everybody when they come in. And I'm sure that I am more intimate with those people in embracing them, heart to heart, and by giving them a silent "Ya Fatah!" with my whole being than anybody that's ever been in bed with them.
Love can lift you up! It can lift you up or tear you down. It can be lower than the dogs that run in the streets or higher than the angels. It's up to you. If you don't want to use it, okay. But I don't think it'll ever go out of style.
It's there all the time. You're never away from it. Okay, let's take the business where you go to sleep at night. You put in a day's work, maybe it's been a rough day and so forth. Okay, you've had your dinner and you've sat down, maybe you've had sex, maybe not. Anyway, you decide it's about time to go to sleep. When you finally get to that little edge of falling asleep, the thoughts of the day aren't there. Everything is quiet. And you feel just like you did when you were a little kid and you'd wake up in the morning and say, "God, what a beautiful day it is." We go through this cycle every day. We live, we're born, we die, we reincarnate for the next day. You're having a little death each day.
So you go to sleep, you dream. Your dreams are usually a distorted expression of things you haven't settled during the day. Then you go into deep sleep. Of course, people come over and tell me they have prophetic dreams. Some of them are, some of them are not. They're just a distortion of what they have been living in the daytime. They didn't get an answer, so they're working it out on the subjective plane. They have their own movies, they're running their own tapes. When they come to me and ask about them, I can usually explain and they see how it fits in.
Sometimes you just get mixed up in that looking glass. If there's a twist in that looking glass, you get awful surprises. I stopped in a cheap hotel one night and woke up to look in the mirror, I thought, "No, that can't be me."
When you have your dreams, you have washed out a little of what has happened during the day. Next, you go into what's called deep sleep. You don't remember that. You say, "Well, I'm not there." But if you wake up the next morning and somebody asks you can you tell them whether you slept well or not, how the hell do you know it? There must be a part in the depth of your consciousness that never sleeps and is always aware. If you get to a point where you can keep your consciousness focused, you can go through the whole period of falling asleep, dreaming, deep sleep and back awake again without losing that awareness. Now when you can do that, you're cooking on the big burner.
The first time I tried to do that was in the city of Chicago and I had been studying these books about keeping your consciousness centered, so you'll know where you are all the time. Okay, so I kept my consciousness centered. Well I felt myself going to sleep and I found out that my wife was right when she said I snored. I do. But I still was holding that consciousness. And it seemed as if there were different roads like a pie out to all kinds of different places. I could go some way, but no, I held it there. Okay, now I'm going to see if you really get out of your body in deep sleep. Then the phone rings. I thought, "Gee, I gotta answer the phone." So I jump out of bed and fall flat on my butt. So much for inquiring into other dimensions.
But you can develop the awareness and sometimes you can do it in the dream state. Sometimes you can change your dream. But if you try to do it too violently, it'll wake you up, but if you just insinuate yourself into it, you can change your dreams. Now there is a whole dream yoga among the Tibetans. If you can do it, that's great. I've done it a couple of times. But on the other tries, I missed completely. Anyway, these are just things to experiment with. Your awareness is all!