Modern Society - Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
"There is something to this fabric of life that is beautiful. If you find the world unpleasant, I don't think that is wisdom. That is a sign of a lack of wisdom.
This world is not a middle point in evolution. It's one step down from the middle point in evolution. This is the world of desire and fulfillment, frustration, but at least once in a while you can go to Burger King.
Shakespeare said:"There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Everything happens perfectly.
We live in a world where no one believes. Enlightenment and knowledge are laughed at. Those who seek and teach the mysteries are scorned and often persecuted. Welcome to the planet earth: environment hostile.
We live in a world filled with automobiles, highways of the mind, urban disasters, billions of people living on a tiny planet, sharing the diminishing natural resources of the earth.
You are awareness. You are mind. You are not from this world. I mean, think about it, could you really be from here?
We are in the twilight of this earth. The societies and civilizations of human beings will not endure much longer because of their abuses of power.
Human beings go to church. The guy in the front dressed in black is the guy you defer to. He is charge of the mysteries of universe, which ordinary human beings don't seem to have the inclination to understand.
We remember a few people who've been enlightened. We build churches and edifices in their name. But few people, if any, feel that they could ever be like that; and if that's how they feel - that's how it will be.
In the western philosophy you can't perceive infinities at every moment. It's not there to do.
Religion is either something we scorn because we are too rational or it's the realm of the fanatic who insists that their God and their religion is the only way and everyone else is dammed.
In the West people are basically oblivious to power, solstices, enlightenment and everything that matters.
They don't understand the multi-life sequences. Anything they can't see in a laboratory, they think is nonsense.
We live inside too much. We live inside and we have square thoughts and square ideas because we live in square houses. Our lives are colored by our environments. Our attention fields are colored by it.
In the Far East, we look at life in terms of circles. In the West, they look at life more in terms of squares and rectangles.
The constraints that humankind has set upon itself are so narrow, so rigid. If you don't wear your clothes one day, they'll lock you up. That's a pretty simple action.
We've developed a very complex filing system for existence. We see things in terms of good or bad. We feel happiness, joy, pain, loss, guilt and remorse.
Human beings are not so in harmony with the dharma. That is why they suffer so much. But you as an individual can reach a plane of attention and can become attention itself.
This is a world that defines everything backwards, a world in which good is called bad, brightness is called darkness, up is called down, enlightenment is called abnormal behavior and abnormal behavior is applauded as reason.
Who are these human beings anyway? They walk around, strut, fret, as if they owned the planet, or the goddamned universe. I mean, who do they really think they are?
Everything is stuck together. People are stuck together. They can't change. Ideas are stuck together. They're irrevocable. We think that the end of the universe is as far as the telescope can see.
Everyone has sunk on this plane to such a low state of consciousness. It is the natural state. We have deviated so far from the norm in this age of darkness.
It's easy to tell the evolutionary level of a group of beings, or an individual being, simply by examining their behavior, their art, their psychology, their thought forms, their lingual structures, their history, their present moment, their future ideas, and the quality of their emotions.
You will always see, if this group is a highly evolved group or on the way up, a movement towards oneness.
This is a place where the strong often victimize the weak.
The population of the planet is increasing at an alarming rate, and yet each day human beings manage to destroy ten species.
A society that destroys the environment that supports it, I would not consider to be intelligent life. It's like the cancer that ultimately kills itself by destroying the host it feeds on.
The rhythm of life is give and take. It is necessary to put things back into the system. To not do that is to foul your own nest - to use up all the natural resources greedily.
To over-consume is the lack of wisdom. Suffering follows the lack of wisdom.
There's degradation of the environment. But the real issue is the degradation of one's inner environment.
The level of evolution in this world is not exactly high.
People think they can tame the earth. How absurd! The vanity of human wishes is endless. It is more fun to dance with life.
Its funny how human beings tend to think that they're the masters of the earth never realizing that the earth, for a time simply, tolerates its tenants and then, when the mood strikes, it shifts its continents around.
Symbiosis is a much higher reflection of intelligent life.
In this world we see nothing but diversity. Everyone thinks separate ideas and wants to develop a separate identity. They fight wars with each other. They destroy each other's identities.
The strong conquer the weak. The weak serve the strong and hope to become strong so they can conquer others who are weaker.
The vast majority of beings who incarnate on this planet are at the stage of their evolution where power is the dominant theme. They are learning about power. That is why we live in a world where there are so many wars and so much destruction.
People on this planet are currently preparing to blow themselves up in ultimate thermonuclear wars. We are living among beings whose state of mind is destruction.
The operative condition on this particular planet, the central mode which human beings follow, is fear. We are taught to fear.
Fear which has been embedded in your mind since you were a tot doesn’t go away easily – it’s conditioned in. And because we have fear, we fail to fulfill and realize our potential as human beings.
Consider that we live in a world predicated upon fear. The underlying assumption is that human beings are innately evil and must be groomed and controlled. That is the dichotomy that is set up within the human mind, good and evil.
Societies on this planet are based upon fear, not upon love. The strong dominate the weak.
The most knowledgeable person is not necessarily the person who runs the government, nor the church, nor the business.
People are kept in line in society because they fear punishment. The assumption that underlies this mentality is that a human being will follow their desires without mitigation.
In this world we see more passion than dispassion. We see more fear than knowledge. Armies rule the world. Fear-net is happening. Consequently, everyone is raised with fear embedded in their consciousness.
Overcoming fear is a critical factor for anyone who wishes to be really happy, or anyone who wishes to become enlightened
Who's to say what's right or wrong? The courts and the society can be totally wrong. Nazi Germany, what did they say was the right thing to do? To destroy and burn Jews.
This is a dark age. That's not news. It's a dark time when we have to be particularly aware of danger.
While the comforts of modern civilization and technological success or economic success seem at the moment quite fulfilling, I can assure you that all of these things are transitory and will fall away.
Just because you are innocent does not mean that others cannot harm you. History teaches us that lesson.
Human beings, when they encounter that which can't be understood, either run away from it, run towards it blindly, or just rationalize it out of existence.
There are a lot of human beings out there who are very hostile towards anything that rocks their perceptual boat.
They'll kill you in a minute rather than deal with truth. It's more convenient because then they can forget about it and rationalize your death.
Obstructions on the way to enlightenment, are you kidding? Hey, they crucify people here. You think this is an easy place?
Whether it's a fully enlightened Christ or Buddha, or just a more aware Martin Luther King, Kennedy or Gandhi, what did they do with them here? They shoot them, crucify them, and get them out of the way because people are afraid of truth.
Spiritual people are often persecuted because of their beliefs. Christians were fed to the lions. Jews were slaughtered in concentration camps. Various forms of persecution still exist today throughout the world.
In this prison camp, the Gestapo state brain-police planet Earth, what is normal is insane and what is insane is normal. But it doesn't pay to tell that to the local politicians or other organizational structures that run the place that. They didn't crucify Christ because they liked what he said.
There are those who want to revolutionize the world with meditation. I really don't think that is necessary. The world is already revolutionized.
Humanity actually has the gall to feel they are more advanced than they were; technology somehow defines intelligence. If technology enables you to kill more people, that doesn't define intelligence. An intelligent species survives.
This is the age of electrical energy. The age of atomic energy hasn't really dawned yet, not in the way that atomic energy has evolved in other worlds.
In our world, in our pre-World War III condition, meditation is considered a cult activity and people who practice self-discovery are actually persecuted and ridiculed.
The 1990's will be a determining period of time for another cycle. If humanity during this time chooses to throw away a lot of the mirages and illusions it's fooled itself with, we will enter a very bright and golden age. It won't happen in one day.
We live in the dark ages. If an intelligent society can destroy itself in large numbers and places the largest amount of revenues in instruments of destruction, it is certainly not an evolved society or an intelligent society.
The teaching that we receive is not necessarily very accurate. The value systems that our cultures have developed are not every open. They are very restrictive. We live in an age that is not enlightened.
This is still a very primitive age, and I'm afraid they may not get much further here.
The imbalance I speak of in the world, which we see manifested in wars, violence, poverty and other depressed social conditions stems from a lack of knowledge.
In a time of continued population growth the consequences are devastating, needless to say. The Earth is too crowded already in terms of aura, and it's growing at 20 percent a decade.
There are billions of people on earth. They are all transmitting thoughts and impressions, most of which are not directed towards enlightenment. If you are not focused, you will pick up these energies.
There is a world of deaf, dumb and blind people out there, who are shuffling through their lives, not knowing how wonderful life can be. They have their moments, but they are very unconscious.
Very few people are happy in this world. Most are miserable. Even in their so-called happiness, they are unhappy; it is so short of ecstasy, of god-consciousness; it’s almost pitiful.
What these people do here is obviously not working. They sit in their commuter traffic hour after hour. They make the earth a toxic waste dump.
They've got lots of theories, books, sciences -- I've read a lot of those books. Most of them are pretty unhappy.
In the dead world of the Western mind all that is seen are shades of gray. There's a cloud over every experience. There's no possibility of divine incarnation, divine intervention, let alone that one's self in every moment is divine.
Philosophers are all caught up in their philosophies. That's their house of cards. Religious leaders are caught up in their religious movements to the point where they forget about freedom. Everybody's got their drama going.
The planet earth is a sub-world, way below what's average, because if an enlightened being walked through New York City today, no one would see him or her. They wouldn't see the glow
What we see in this world is a gross abnormality. The human consciousness fails to perceive the very simple, divine nature of every atom in every moment.
When we see a hero, on the one hand, we applaud them; on the other hand, there is something in a lot of people that wants to tear the hero down.
Human beings going to their jobs and living their lives are unconscious. They don't know what's going on. They don't know why you are born or why you die.
That's why we call this a dark age. It's a dark age in the sense that there are so many people on the earth who are un-attuned that they create such a level of white noise, in a sense, that it drowns out things that we'd like to see.
The condition of humankind is not good, in the sense that the illusory prisons we create for ourselves through our desires and our frustrations are unhappy..
It wasn't until after living in California for many years that I realized that you don't believe what anybody says, ever. Whatever they say, they're just making a movie. They just like the way they sound.
It doesn't pay to listen much to what human beings have to say in their evaluation of you, since they don't evaluate themselves very properly.
The human mind generates an auric field that covers up naturalness, innate divinity of life. That auric field is a field of doubt.
At every moment, you have the opportunity to crap out. The world will always tell you to play it safe and just be dead.
The aura of billions of people coats all experiences like a thick cloud of smog. Just to live on the earth is to live in that smog.
You are a stranger in a strange land. As an evolved person living in a relatively unevolved world, you are constantly subjected to a bombardment of seemingly endless negative vibrations emanating from those around you.
The toxic residue of humanity -- you have to guard yourself, guard that sensitivity even more heavily because otherwise you can pick up so many pollutants that you'll become more toxic.
When you're around the aura of humanity in those cities, you can't feel anything.
Nature soothes us. Nature heals us, and something more, the woods are a place of power. Any woods that are still surviving on this planet, those are powerful areas to have kept themselves free from the encroachment of the industrial societies of our earth.
A walk in the woods can reveal many things, and it is a good time to practice transcendentalism. Look at a tree and realize it's not just a tree, its roots may go into the ground but it may also go into other worlds, other eternities.
It is good to take a weekend and just you, or you and your dog, head out into the wilderness. Walk by yourself. Be by yourself. It will help you in your search for stillness and perfection.
Slow down. Enjoy life. It's tough to slow down if your mind is going a million miles a second. It's tough to slow down if you think what these people do here matters.
You're looking for purity. Something that just isn't all garbled; someplace where you can feel the earth again. Where you can feel what the wind feels like. Where you can see the stars at night, and actually, not just look at little dots in the sky, but feel an energy from them.
The best thing that you can do to deal with these high speed times is to slow down, inwardly, to take a little more time for meditation, a little more time to enjoy your morning cup of coffee or tea, and to look around at the people in your life with a little more love.
There is no point in being a responsible member of society. Nor is there any point in being an irresponsible member of society. Both are very defined descriptions of selfhood
With the frenzied pace in our own country, with the degenerating school system, with a crime rate that rises 30% a year, and with politicians that seem more interested in posturing than in governing, it has become more difficult, or should I say challenging, to achieve that inner symbiosis with life.
You do have an effect on the universe. If you think positive thoughts, if you are happy and progressive, then that energy affects everyone on the whole planet, in subtle ways, perhaps, but it does.
We feel crowded by other people; we feel crowded by social rules; we feel crowded by ourselves, mainly.
In the world of interactive multi-media highways we are all traveling somewhere interactively and we are all shopping for something, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions for ourselves, for those we love - these little scenarios we play out endlessly in our mind.
This is a time of great confusion, of great darkness; other networks are slipping in through other dimensional planes. Soon the network of enlightenment will leave this earth.
The Network of Enlightenment watches over a world and guides it, tenderly. Not interfering in its natural course of evolution is our way.
The network of enlightenment is a very wide network. It's not relegated to a simple type of being. It's not the network of the goody-goods.
Countless forms make up this network. In this world, there are few of us.
Other networks seek to interfere with the natural process of chaos. Enlightenment is chaos, complete beyond conception
We're at the end of the cycle. You've all known it since childhood. In the Hindu division of the ages, this is the Kali Yuga, the dark age. At the end of a cycle, Vishnu takes incarnation as a person. Vishnu is that aspect of God that preserves and protects life. When Vishnu leaves, Shiva comes.
The world is entering another dark age. After 1985, the Maya will be so thick that it will be difficult to advance spiritually without a strong foundation.
There comes a time when a race of beings makes a decision. When they chose to reject enlightenment, it's the end of their world because the karma is inevitable. They have to destroy themselves.
It is not the part of divinity to go to humanity and to modify itself in any shape, manner or form; rather it is up to humanity to make itself available to divinity.
When a civilization, a race, a people, a society, when they lack love, they are soon destroyed.
There's this cave and all humanity is in it and there's this terribly bright light at the other end and everybody's afraid of it.
"What you have to do is just walk into the light. Then you find that it doesn't burn, and it's not particular frightening.
God does everything perfectly. The world doesn't really need saving; it's exactly the way God wants it to be at the moment.
Humankind has no idea what existence is, at this stage. They're all dreaming, they're all asleep....Once in a great while a fully awakened one is here, observes everybody is sleeping and leaves, quietly."
- Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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