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This is the beginning of one of the 'mahatma letters' from K.H. in 1881.  The letters can be read in the book  The Mahatma Letters To A. P. Sinnett from The Mahatmas M. & K.H. ( 1923) transcribed, compiled and with an Introduction by A. T. Barker.  The potentialities of human experiences following an Earth life are suggested in books chronicling cases of transcendental communication.  Among these, Edward Randall wrote about his and Emily French's investigatory work concerning Direct Voice mediumship (profiled in the article "Researching the Afterlife" ).  The commentary of contemporary ascended master Ramtha is 'channeled' through JZ Knight, who has explained that she goes out of her body for intervals to allow Ramtha to speak.  Ramtha offers audiences his philosophy that occasionally encompasses "verbiage contradictions" and morality stories concerning spiritual development and ...

The last two posts on fat and carbohydrate were written to answer a few important, but relatively narrow, questions that I feel are particularly pertinent at the moment: Was the US obesity epidemic caused by an increase in calorie intake? Could it have been caused by an increase in carbohydrate intake, independent of the increase in calorie intake? Does an unrestricted high-carbohydrate diet lead to a higher calorie intake and body fatness than an unrestricted high-fat diet, or vice versa ? Could the US government's advice to eat a low-fat diet have caused the obesity epidemic by causing a dietary shift toward carbohydrate? However, those posts left a few loose ends that I'd like to tie up in this post.  Here, I'll lay out my opinions on the relationship between macronutrient intake and obesity in more detail.  I'll give my opinions on the following questions: What dietary macronutrient composition is the least likely to cause obesity over a lifetime? What dietary macro...

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Self-investigation, effort and sleep , Venkat wrote: May I ask for your comments on the following. Science tells us that our fundamental building blocks (chemicals . . . electrons, protons, neutrons . . . ultimately energy waves) are inter-dependent and non-differentiated. For whatever reasons, the universe has evolved, and from which has evolved body-minds. These body-minds are fundamentally non-separate. Bhagavan's self-enquiry is for the seemingly separate ‘I’ to see this non-differentiated non-separateness and thereby to dissolve. If you agree that this model is feasible, is consciousness a product of the mind? Nisargadatta talks about consciousness as a product of the food-body-mind, and the Absolute that is aware of this consciousness. Since the reply I drafted is too long to post as another comment on that article, I am giving it here: Venkat, what science tells us is a combination of observations and theories that have been devel...

Guy Warren Ballard (1878-1939) and his wife Edna (1886-1971) were photographed in San Francisco in 1938. Guy Warren Ballard married Edna Anna Wheeler in 1916.  He was employed by Ford Motor Company and she was an accomplished harpist.  They met in 1912 soon after Ballard moved to Chicago.  Upon seeing a gleaming gold harp on display at a music store, he felt impelled to learn more about the instrument.  What happened next is reported in The History of the "I Am" Activity and Saint Germain Foundation: In the Ascended Masters' Words and the Recollections of Those Who Were There (2003).  He was sent to Miss Wheeler's studio on the second floor and a "profound recognition occurred between the two young people." There are thousands of transcripts of discourses dictated from 'ascended masters' to Guy and Edna Ballard.  Volume III of the 20-volume Saint Germain Series The "I Am" Discourses (1936) is th...

In a comment on my previous article, What do we actually experience in sleep? , Wittgenstein wrote with reference to my ‘gap’ argument that the featureless gap called ‘sleep’ that we experience between some consecutive states of waking and/or dream ‘also characterizes the discontinuity of world-body (they always pair up), space-time, causation and ego (all belonging to non-self, jada ). So, in a single attempt we do come to know the continuity of the background self ( sat-chit ) and the discontinuity of the non-self. Further, such discontinuous entities should be unreal even when they appear’, and then went on to discuss why we do not experience the existence of the world or any other non-self items in sleep. In general I agree with his inferences, but the following are my own reflections on this same subject: Because our natural predisposition (or rather the natural predisposition of our mind) is to believe (at least while we are experiencing them in the waking state) that this body...

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A friend wrote to me recently asking me to further clarify what I had written in Chapter 2 of Happiness and the Art of Being about sleep being a state in which we are still conscious or aware that we exist, and after I replied to him he wrote again saying that though he would like to be convinced that he is aware in sleep, he is still not entirely sure that this is the case. The following is adapted from the replies that I wrote to his two emails. First reply: When you say, ‘I fall asleep and I’m not aware of anything’, what exactly do you mean by saying ‘I’m not aware of anything’? Do you mean that you are not aware at all, or that you are aware of nothing? Please do not rush to answer this question to yourself, but think about it carefully. Consider the difference between the experience of a totally blind person (B) and a normally sighted person (S) when they are both in a completely dark room. B does not see anything because he does not see at all, so he does not know that the roo...