THOTH

thank you Sip...note - this guy has his CAP lock on...see other threads where posted. ANd hello there BTW - long time no see...back from West Coast (etc) travels...PM or email me or something OK? Oh & to keep on topic - did you happen to catch R Jeremy out there - I hear he is a friend of Azats...or were you just checking out his flicks?

LOL!!! http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1987...987-12-06.shtml

Sun Yung Moon (the "savior" of our times: " stand before you as one who has received Heaven’s appointment as Savior and True Parent for the sake of liberating and releasing God and, on that foundation, liberating and releasing humankind. I do not come out of a need for money and power, or honor and fame. For more than 80 years, I have lived oblivious to morning or evening, day or night, even weathering the coldest winters and harshest snow and rain, in order to move as quickly as I could along the heavenly path. Even in the torture chamber, where my flesh was torn from my body and I was made to vomit blood, I never prayed for God to save me. Instead, my life has been that of a filial son, patriot, saint, and divine son of Heaven and Earth who sheds tears to comfort God’s heart as He weeps to look upon the tragic state of His children. I left my parents and homeland behind to follow the straight and narrow path to human salvation, that is, the path of true love that lives for the sake of others. My life of never compromising and never acting in a cowardly manner may seem incredibly pitiful and bleak from a worldly point of view. " "I am completing the spiritual conditions on many levels that are needed for God to exercise His authority of all-immanence, all-authority, all-power and all-transcendence." Oh and Domino - perhaps he is your guy eh: "There will be a purge on God's orders, and evil will be eliminated like shadows. Gays will be eliminated, the 3 Israels will unite. If not then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders."

From a Christian site: What are the "works" of those who purport to be spiritually above the rest of us? What are their devices? What are there rights? You may be surprised at some of what follows, but please bear with me. 1. They have a special calling or revelation for the masses 2. They have been given a special ability to reveal the truth of the scriptures 3. They are on a mission to save mankind in the last days 4. They have a special mission to accomplish for God (Jesus) 5. They are above any other organization or authority 6. They have some special powers not available to others 7. They play on people's fears and emotions like predators Now let us review what some of these so "leaders" have accomplished. Jim Jones' Jonestown- the mass suicide of hundreds of men, women, and children Hale Bop cult - another mass suicide but involving a so called "flying saucer." Europe------ the mass suicide of hundreds in Switzerland of "business type" people Japan------- Subway attacked with poison gas by cultists with deaths and injuries http://www.gcmi.net/moon.html

more - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sri_Chinmoy_Information/ "I think that the content of Realize Me exposes the psychosis of SC. For him to encourage worship of himself, he places himself in a very deranged class. Although, I suppose the party line is that he is equal to or greater than Jesus Christ, and thus can command that type of reverence." REALISE ME I hope some of you will realise who I am either in this incarnation or in one of your future incarnations. Once you realise who I am, then you do not have to do anything, you do not have to say anything, you do not have to become anything. Once you know who I am, you will make me truly happy and you yourselves will be truly happy. Before you know who I am, I will not be happy and you people will not be happy. So, either in this incarnation or in some of your future incarnations, try to realise me. Then only your earthly journey will be fruitful. Otherwise, many times you have come to earth and many, many more times you will come in the future, but it will all end in vain. So dear children, always keep one thing in mind, and that is to realise me, realise who I eternally am. I am not this body; I am something else. That something else you will realise if you stay in my boat and please me always, always, always in my own way. Think only of me: what I say, not what others say; what I do, not what others do. If you please me, then you have pleased the Real in me; you have pleased the Supreme. If you do not please me, then on matter whom you have pleased, or whom you are going to please, your life will be a barren desert from the beginning to the end. But if you please me in my own way, and if I am satisfied with you, then our Absolute Beloved Supreme is pleased with you. And if He is pleased with you, then there is nothing either on earth or in Heaven that you need. Everything us useless, everybody is useless except the one Reality: the Supreme in your Guru, the Supreme with your Guru, the Supreme for your Guru and the Supreme as your Guru. Realise me. Then only you will discover the meaning of your life. Realise me. Then only satisfaction – Eternity's satisfaction, Infinity's satisfaction, Immortality's satisfaction – will all be yours. Realise me … Realise me… Sri Chinmoy

Good link Domino...aprently Chinmoy is into sex after all...just his disciples he urges to abstain - lol - very typical I might add... "The armchair, upon which no one else may sit, belongs to Alo Devi, aka Beverly Siegerman who has lived with Sri Chinmoy in his home in Queens for the last 40 years. It is a sad, sad story. Originally, when they started their mission, she had the same status as Chinmoy. Disciples were told that she was enlightened like Chinmoy, that she was his spiritual Shakti, his divine consort, that they were "the obverse and reverse of the same coin" to quote Chinmoy. Disciples revered her as the Queen of the Universe. ... Some years later select disciples were taken aside privately either by Chinmoy himself or by senior disciples and told that Alo Devi had lost her spiritual realization, that she had "fallen". Now this is contrary to every religious tradition that I know of. The consensus is that once someone has become fully realized or enlightened they can never lose that state: however it gives us a glimpse into how a cult leader rules. The power of information is heady stuff. ... In my day they fought and argued regularly in front of disciples. It was generally accepted that she was jealous of the small group of young women disciples with whom Chinmoy constantly surrounded himself. Although at the time I knew nothing of the secret sex club, in hindsight I cannot believe that I was so naive. Once again it shows the power of cult conditioning." Hey Sasun - maybe you could join a Rama group..he's dead now - so is relieved of the pressure of earthly vices....

Yes I have...to a degree...(not practice,,,but studued teachings and methods and such)...but thats not my point...my point is that Eastern religions - when taken to extreme - focus on individual transcendence (to the exclusion of the worldly)....and to me this can only take one (and society) so far - OK - so one can become enlightened/aware of underlying currents/obtain insights - that is certainly valuable and worthwhile - as are the personal benefits one can achieve - but IMO - it is a major blind spot to ignore the corporeal - the world around us - and I cannot ascribe to any philosophy that purports that physical reality - flesh & blood, environmental and societal concerns are less important the ethereal (and striclty mental and nonm-corporeal spiritual) ones. I don't deny that Eastern appoaches cannot and do not have their great benefits - and the Western religious approaches are incomplete without such - all I am claiming is that the Eastern approaches (and yes I am generalizing) are incomplete/insufficient - and to me there is a great danger (likewise with Western religious approaches - which tend to cast a broader moral net - in a sense...) in thinking that they are the do all and end all...and bottom line I reject the notions that our physical world and societal and worldly issues are not the paramount concern for humans on this planet. To me no "enlightenment" is complete without acknowledgement of such and thus - taken to the extreme - as called for by practicers of such - is in effect a diservice and ultimatly a lie. All the same I do understand that Buddism - in general - does have a substansial corporeal aspect and concern...but those who adhere to the denial of the flesh and who favor the ascetic approach are not doing the rest of us any favors. Sure - insights are possible/available and self - realization and such...but this is incomplete IMO - and this is what I reject....

No not at all - I believe in what I said and I say it with more knowledge and understanding then you might imagine.

Crusades throughh Arab Eyes - great book... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

Hm...maybe it wasn't her after all (seems to be a consensus that she was Muslim...but I did read somewhere....) Anyway could be this one perhaps (no name yet): 1035-50 Regent the Caliph-Mother of the Fatimids She was a former Sudanese Slave. (OK says Sudanese....but still looking...) nice little Egyptian crusade history...also giving some more detail on Shagger ad Durr (note - only mention of her being a Mamaluke [slave] - nothing of origin... http://touregypt.net/hayyubid.htm

I think this is her... http://historymedren.about.com/gi/dynamic/...2Fheroine1.html ...though in this link there is no mention of her being Armenian (says here she is of Turkomen origin). WHere I have read about her was in an (historical) account of the crusades written by an Arab author depicting the crusades from Arab view - a very worthwhile read (I'll get the title if I can...I've had the book twice and both time have given it to others to read....highly recommended)

Actually - don't know about Nefertiti - but perhaps the "Egyptian" Queen your friend was refering to was an Armenian wife (one of many) from the Fatamid dynasty (or it may have been the Mamalukes) during/just after the crusades who took over the kingdom after her husband died and groomed her eldest son for rule...unfourtunatly I don't recall the names...anyone?

Mosjan - some list of positives for propane eh? ...I also remember my bud was very concerned to not get rear ended/in an accident...any guesses why?

I knew this guy who lived in San Diego who had converted his truck to run on propane (don't know if it was normally a diesel or gas - but I think the latter). He had a tank in the back...and would cross over into Mexico and fill up. The propane he got was for heating and such and not for auto fuel - so he avoided many taxes and such and it was substansialy cheaper then US prices at the pump (this was in the mid-late 80s)....yeah - memories of some good times...he was a beach life guard in San Diego and always seemed to have the (wild beach) babes hangng around/tagging along etc...some memorable trips to Ensenada and down Baja..yeah baby!

more.. "I had always wanted to get a ride in Rama’s car. He told me to wait while he pulled around. A minute later his black V12 Mercedes pulled to a stop, purring softly and powerfully by the curb. The passenger door opened and I got in. The first thing I thought as I sunk into the massive leather seat was that this wasn’t a normal car. A myriad of lights, gauges and communication devices ran all the way across the dashboard, making it look more like the cockpit of an airplane. I had climbed into Rama’s “Command and Control” center, not a passenger vehicle! Rama didn’t look at me when he said, “You’re only the second person to ride in this car.” That made me even more nervous. I sat very still, trying to quiet my mind, as I’ve learned that a person’s thoughts can leave impressions on things that psychics will sense long after that person physically departs. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my thought “fingerprints” in Rama’s car. But my fears were blasted to bits a moment later when Rama turned on his sound system. There was going to be no conversation on this journey, as heavy metal rock filled the car with a sudden fury as we pulled quickly out of the parking lot. The music wasn’t just loud – it was all around me and seemed to be penetrating my bones. The music was so consuming that I forgot about being nervous and just listened. In contrast to the soul-scorching music, Rama drove slowly and carefully as we headed toward the diner. ... After eating, we got back in the car. Rama put the heavy metal music back on, full volume. It occurred to me at that moment that he was not seeing the same things when he drove that I was seeing. I remembered his comment from a lecture years before when he mentioned that while most people see everyday objects in the world as fixed and static objects, he sees the world as energy patterns, as shapes and formations of shifting, living light. Everything is alive, he said, and it’s just our conditioning that prevents us from seeing things as they really are. I could only imagine what an experience it must have been for him to drive! When we got back to the office, I got out of the car and started towards my own car to set out on my way home. I got into my economy model Honda with its tidy fabric bucket seats and its plastic moulded dashboard. I felt very different, like I had stepped out of a five-star restaurant into a Burger King. It became very clear to me at that moment that the environment that we choose to surround ourselves with impacts the type and quality of thoughts that we think. I understood why money is so important to a modern spiritual seeker: we need it in order to establish an environment that will be conducive to the meditative practice, because it’s impractical and probably illegal to live in a cave. I thanked Rama inwardly for showing me his 20th century “cave”. A few months later I leased a luxury car which had a profound effect on my self image and my level of inner peace. " 3 times lol!

"Then Rama stood next to the cliff and the moon rising over the ridge behind us bathed him in soft light. But in addition to the moonlight, I could see two thick shafts of white light shooting out from Rama's chest: one in the direction of the moon, and one angling down to the earth." ... "You see, you're running someplace, trying to accomplish something. But you missed the point, because you've already arrived. Right now, here in the desert we're living the best moments of our lives. These are the times that stand far apart from our ordinary lives, because it's here that we witness eternity. But even here in the desert, where unfathomable mysteries unfold before you, you still just don't think about God, because I know you don't want to hear about God. But every once in a while we should remember what it is that we're doing in this study. You're misers, maybe not with your money, but with your hearts. Dead at age twenty or thirty, because you don't know what it means to love existence." "Your purpose in this world is not to become powerful. It's to help people, to live your life like a warrior, and to love." Rama said that there are countless varieties of beings, all using the universe in different ways for their own benefit. But there are a very few beings who simply love and appreciate creation, who love the weeds and the frogs and the people, who have a deep reverence for all life." ... ... "First Rama explained the biological theory of "ontogeny recapitulates philogeny", which postulates that during earliest growth the human fetus recapitulates all stages of the evolution of life. The growing fetus, in a few weeks, retraces the entire evolutionary process, from single-celled organism, to fish, to mammal, to human. Thus within every human is the recapitulated development of all life. In the context of reincarnation, every being is a composite of all creation; that within a frog is all the recapitulated development and knowledge of the universe. "That we are, each one of us, eternity." We meditated again and Rama told us to watch him. He spun back towards the cliff, leaving tracers of light behind him. When he walked, I saw after-images of light in all the places that he left behind. Then he raised his hands, pointing them diagonally into the sky towards the east. There were straight thin rays of golden light shooting from his hands into the night sky. When he dropped his hands the rays of light lingered for a time, and then dissipated slowly, like a jetstream." ... "Another student said that he had seen "wavy-floaty things" hanging around the area, like streamers of light hanging and twisting in mid-air. Rama explained that these are very high beings who have gone beyond physical incarnation, pure manifestations of light. They are attracted by Rama's purity. The image of them that we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Some of them are thousands of feet tall. Rama said that many great composers and inventors have been inspired by these beings during dreaming." http://www.buddhistmonk.com/ ...I'll have you converted before you know it Sasun...lol ... "Rama claimed to be a "multi-incarnation" teacher with a resume that included stints in many of the high holy places known for eastern religion, magic and mysticism. Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama, Japanese Zen Master, and even High Priest of the Atlantean and Egyptian Mystery Schools were listed among his accomplishments."

http://www.americanbuddha.com/ I like this one: The new Canadian mantra is "Om Mani Padme, Eh?"

Who is Rama? Imagine walking on a forest trail and meeting a magical deer. The deer is not of this world yet is there, just before you, radiating love, wisdom, and power. You grow still. Soon you and the deer communicate to each other in levels deeper than words. Then it leaves. You keep walking but can't wait to see someone else on the trail to tell them about the deer, someone who still believes in magic. Rama--Dr. Frederick Lenz was a contemporary Buddha (enlightened one) who taught over 100,000 people how to meditate. Throughout his 20+ years of teaching, he also inspired with his fearlessness, entertained with his humor, and educated meditation students in his unique blend of Eastern mysticism and American pragmatism. His teachings, called American Buddhism, have helped thousands to discover the best in themselves and others. Because he was an enlightened master, Rama was able to transmit enlightened states of mind to those who meditated with him. Seeing gold light around Rama while he meditated was as common to those who meditated with him as seeing green grass is in the spring. After an amazingly full and varied life, Rama achieved his Mahasamadhi (left his body) on April 12, 1998. Yet magical deer never really go away; they remain for all who call upon their compassion and their love. For more information about Rama, including a longer biography, please visit the following websites: Frederick Lenz Foundation Frederick Lenz.com

From a follower of Rama (Uncle Tantra): When pressed to delineate the characteristics of an enlightened being, Rama only named two. The first was that, when you meditated with them, you could see that they radiated an aura of golden light. The second, in my opinion, was far more interesting. It wasn’t one of those things you’d expect if you’ve read a lot of books about enlightened beings. It wasn’t, “They are completely positive beings, and can neither conceive of nor do any harm to those around them.” It wasn’t, “They are incapable of speaking anything but truth.” It wasn’t, “They are fun to be around, so studying with them will turn your life into endless bliss.” Nope, none of that. What Rama named as the second characteristic of the enlightened was much simpler, and possibly more profound: “They are funny.” http://www.ramalila.net/RoadTripMind/index.html

Here we go: http://www.zenmasterrama.com/ http://www.ramalila.com/ http://www.threethings.net/index.htm http://www.imeditate.com/ http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/glance-br...8995838-4347255 footnote: aparently he is dead... and remember now: Care, share and be fair!

Of course I see that there are many Rama's on the net - includig: http://www.turkorama.com/ lol

I have a friend who follows this guy Rama - http://www.fredericklenz.com/ He speaks of him much the same way you speak of Chinmoy Sasun...more in fact - as he has meditated and such with him out in the desert in California (Mojave I believe)...anyway he claims that he has seen Rama manifest himself into a beem of light...perhaps you should check him out. One thing about Rama that has always amused me while he claims no material needs etc (or did - I really haven't checked him out latey - he may have transformed into a neo-Reagan republican - like Bush Jr by now)...anyway he says the one worldly thing he gets off on is driving his Porsche at high speeds on the LA freeway! lol...well there is at least one thing I can agree with him on....

Well said Domino. I think most folks can benefit from a little reflection now and again - and from this aspect I don't see Chimoy as a bad thing - I could see where its possible to glean something useful from this guy - but I agree - he is a bit overblown. (and certainly inconsistent - as shown above)...likewise these Eastern trancedental philosophys can only get you so far - and to take them further doesn't necessarily bring "enlightenment" - at least no more then a good heroin habit will...bottom line they have it wrong IMO - it is the material - the flesh and blood - and the social intercourse that are of paramount importance - not being irresponsible and wandering off and just being worried about your own trip...

Er - so the latter (sex, marriage etc) are "wordly interferrences" (hey Domino you ought to oppose this guy with all your might - no sex or marriage - what if all followed Chinmoy - the human race would be doomed for sure eh?)...but the former - weight lifting, distance running and swimming are OK? I don't get it - the latter seem pretty worldly to me....dunnoh Edit: this was not the first post. This thread was split from another thread.

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/in...ep=2&item=10850 http://www.wfm.org/protect/endorsement.php http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/sudan/index.do http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cfm?arti...8F21420E6EA1874 http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/darfur/index.htm http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/