An Experiment in The Power of Human Consciousness to Free Itself from the Fear of Life
A proposal from John Sherman
I have something to propose to you that I believe to be of great importance to the future of humanity and to the lives of each and every human being. But first I need to tell you the story of how it has happened that I should be here like this in the first place, speaking of such extreme matters and making this extraordinary proposal to you.
Continue reading "Just One Look" »
We can see now the way forward to bring the miracle of inward looking to all of humanity. Our experience of our own lives has shown us directly what is possible for all human beings: an end to fearfulness and alienation from life that can easily be accomplished by anyone willing to try one simple act of inward looking. This is like nothing you have ever heard before; this is a revolution in the making for all of humanity.
Continue reading "The Way Forward" »
We have been in this work for ten years now, and over that time much has changed in the way in which I speak about what I see. From the beginning, when we started, I could see very clearly what I wanted to say, but I had no vocabulary apart from ideas from philosophy and mystical spirituality to use in communicating this that I see so clearly, and this vocabulary turns out to be too limited for the task of speaking of so simple a thing — strangely enough, I think this may actually be because of its obsession with limitlessness. But over time, much of the spiritual and metaphysical idiom has fallen away from me, and I have come to see that there is no better way to speak of these matters than in plain English (or plain whatever language is your own). Because of this, much of what I said in the past now seems obsolete and inadequate to me as an expression of what I actually see and wish to convey. We have made no effort to remove this outdated material from the web, because we think it might be useful for some to see the process of evolution that has gradually shaped the way we speak about our work.
Continue reading "Our Work" »
I want to invite you to enter into an ongoing conversation with us about the human predicament, its cause and its cure. By human predicament I mean the fact that a creature with such promise as humanity should, in such a short time, bring itself to the actual brink of extinction as a result of the efforts of each and every one of us to follow the fear of individual extinction into an endless project of survival at any cost, to protect ourself, to save ourself, from life itself.
Continue reading "Look At Yourself" »
In 1993, I was in a federal prison in Englewood, Colorado in the fifteenth year of my imprisonment for a number of politically motivated bank robberies and acts of sabotage I had done in the '70s. At that time, I was absolutely, utterly uninterested in anything spiritual. I had long since persuaded myself that all things spiritual were just stories we told ourselves to get us through the days without dying from despair at the obvious uselessness and hopelessness of our lives — lives that were in the end just dead meat walking and talking until it fell down dead again. I really didn't have any interest in anything spiritual. But in September of 1993, a friend of mine invited me to a meeting with a spiritual teacher who was coming to the prison — according to him, a gorgeous, blond, southern American woman — bringing some exotic, Indian spiritual teaching. He asked me if I would like to come to the chapel and spend a couple of hours with her. Well, of course I would. Her purpose was beside the point. I'm offered the chance to spend a couple of hours in a small group with a gorgeous, blond Southern woman with some exotic teaching to offer. What could possibly be the down side to that?
Continue reading "The story of how I met Gangaji, became all spiritual, and happened upon the secret of eternal happiness" »