What I expected to see when I came back to the Fairfield scene after 20 years away from Transcendental Meditation was a group of mainstay meditators true-blue to Maharishi and a group of robust dissenters, whose minds questioned everything they learned from their guru days. Instead, I found the true-blue meditators, but not the kind of dissenters I anticipated. I encountered people who had left the TM movement but hadn’t substantially changed their belief system. This latter group had changed in the way that people change hats, or redecorate their homes, leaving unaltered the structure underneath.
The dissenters had splintered into a myriad of Eastern or Eastern-related philosophies: Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie and Andrew Cohen were popular, and Neo-Advaitin gurus had rallied many behind their minimalist philosophy. “Saints” like Ammachi visit Fairfield regularly, dispensing dharshan and picking up new recruits. Across town, small groups meet in “satsangs” to discuss their growing enlightenment or to chant songs to the gods. Heated debate is common between adherents of competing gurus, and people grow vitriolic over whether Maharishi has slept with young women or not. There is a smattering of hedonists and atheists, but ex-TMers in the Fairfield circuit mostly show up with an intact Vedic worldview. That worldview is a lens through which they perceive and measure all gurus and reality itself.
I find this disturbing. It’s rather like people who’ve been swindled by a con man, despising him for how they were treated while they continue to invest money in the enterprise he sold them on. Why doesn’t the skepticism extend beyond the procurer, to that which he procured for?
And what did Maharishi procure for? The Vedic gods. He sold us a meaningless word that was supposed to guide our minds to transcend superficial consciousness. Later we learned those meaningless words, our mantras, were names of deities. He taught us advanced techniques with the Sanskrit word “namah” at their core: “I bow down.” Mantra meditation is a form of paying worship to those who call themselves gods. When you scrape away all the fancy and misleading explanations – like “meaningless sounds” and “impulses of creative intelligence,” what you get very simply is people with their eyes closed bowing down in their minds to an assigned Hindu deity.
Of course we can explain this away using TM explanations, much like the townsfolk explained away the emperor’s nakedness using the reasoning they were fed by the tricksters who paraded him through the town. But the emperor has no clothes. Mantras worship the gods. “Namah” means “bow down.” It’s right there on the surface for anyone to see if we toss out the excuses we were handed and look at the situation with even a shred of unbiased observation.
Who are these gods, that we’re so willing to explain away as “impulses of our own consciousness”? The same gods have appeared in other religions and cultures, even in societies that had no contact with each other. They go by different names, but the entities are the same. In Hinduism, you have Indra, god of thunder, ruler of the gods, married to Indrani, queen of the gods, known for her jealousy. In Greek mythology, you have Zeus, god of thunder, ruler of the gods, married to Hera, queen of the gods, known for her jealousy. One-to-one correspondence like this is common. The gods are a global phenomenon, with their imprints on every society.
Historically, the gods exacted worship and sacrifice – blood sacrifice commonly, including the murder of humans. While Hinduism has a history of human sacrifice, it has been reduced today to worship of Kali, the goddess with her bloody tongue hanging out, whose body is adorned with a necklace of bleeding, decapitated human heads. Or Shiva, adorned with serpents, who dances on graves. Or Vishnu, whom Arjuna perceived in His cosmic form with pieces of devoured victims’ flesh sticking between his teeth. Gods feed on the energy of suffering, the fearful energy of the victim. In one South American sacrificial ritual, a bull has his throat slit, as slowly as possible. The reasoning given is that the gods cherish “live blood” as the blood with the greatest energy, so the animal must be kept alive while the blood drips from its body. In other words, the greater the fear and suffering of the sacrificial beast, the greater is the pleasure of the gods.
The Shrimad-Bhagavatum, among other scriptures, explains the antipathy of the gods for human enlightenment. According to the Vedas and the mythology of other cultures, the gods feel threatened by the human race, afraid mankind might grow as powerful as they. The gods want humans to remain ignorant and “inferior” because if man realized his intrinsic nature as consciousness, he would no longer be subject to deva control. The devas wish us to believe, and have told us throughout scripture, that their divine hands manipulate and guide the laws of nature – creation itself. For this reason we should worship them, chant to them, send them our soma (subtle energy generated in meditation). Because our energy feeds the gods and is needed by them to stay strong and in control of this material dimension. And they wish us to believe that their control is in our best interest.
Who would make the rains come or the sun shine if the gods are rightful stewards of those things and we humans didn’t support them? All creation would crumble without the blessing of the gods. That, scriptures tell us, is why we should worship, which is equivalent to paying an energy-tithe. It’s the same reasoning human warlords use against the people they dominate: pay your tax, because you need us; we will protect you. Don’t pay the tax, and we will punish you. The gods threaten to punish, even destroy mankind if he doesn’t bend before their yoke and serve them. They fulfilled that threat in the Great Flood (a story which appears in disparate cultures) and in other visitations of divine vengeance recorded in countless tales throughout cultural history.
But really, who are these characters? And do they really exist? The modern mind relegates “gods” to the overactive imaginations of pre-civilized peoples, and in so doing, dismisses the concept. But actually, deities appear in highly civilized early societies, including Sumeria, Babylon, Greece and Egypt. Isn’t it ethnocentric of us to suggest that civilizations capable of constructing the pyramids or accurately charting the course of the stars for centuries into the future, should be dismissed as childlike and ignorant when they write of their experiences with other-worldly beings? Archeologist Zechariah Sitchen, in his voluminous tomes, details the countless references in ancient writings and artifacts to beings who visited this world in fiery flying ships, who taught mankind, interbred with humans, and set up a government of divine-right kingship. Visiting beings who called themselves gods.
Kings were considered “sons of the gods,” connected to the deities by bloodline, hence their right to rule. In the Mahabharata, Arjuna’s mother was said to conceive her numerous sons by intercourse with several different deities. The first chapter of Genesis speaks of the Nefelim, a giant race that interbred with early humans. In Egypt, the pharaohs were literally “sons of the gods.” We find stories of gods interbreeding with humans to create a kingly line in Zulu shamanism and in South American Indian lore.
Time and again, in culture after culture, the gods appear doing the same things, demanding the same things. Even Christianity springs from a pantheistic tradition: Jehovah was one god among many for the Hebrews. A self-righteous fellow fond of war and genocide, he had to compete with the other local gods for the Hebrews’allegiance. Today, having beat out the competition, revered as “God” by his followers, Jehovah garners the worship not just of Jews but Protestants and Catholics as well.
How foolish and arrogant is it to laugh off the existence of a race of beings who appear in the annals of every civilization? I was amazed to see ex-TMers, who spent years feeding soma to devas through chants and mantras, whose walls are still plastered with pictures of Lakshmi, Kali and Shiva, dismiss with a toss of their head the idea that gods might exist as real persons.
Who, in truth, are the gods, and what do they want from us? Do “deities” sit at the controls of the universe, managing the laws of nature? Beings with such awesome power that our lives are in their hands? Entities we must never challenge at the risk of losing all we hold dear? I suggest, if the gods are innately as powerful as they purport to be, they would not need human worship to survive. They would be self-sufficient, drawing on the Infinite within them for every need. Instead, they tell mankind to bow down and pay tithe, and threaten in the scriptures to destroy us if we don’t. What kind of power is it, that can’t exist without feeding?
It sounds more like psychic enslavement to me. Convince the people whose world you contrive to control that they are powerless without you, that the rains won’t come and the sun will go dark if they don’t please you. Drink their soma, the positive energy of worship, and drink their negative energy, too, when you can incite it and siphon it off. Feed yourself on human astral energy, whatever the quality, and you and your race can control human life as long as the system remains intact. Planetary farming. If anyone starts to wake up a little, divert their efforts at spiritual independence by luring them into mantra meditation.
Consider this quote by the currently popular guru, Ramana Maharshi: “Repetition aloud of His name is better than praise. Better still is its faint murmur. But the best is repetition within the mind — and that is meditation. Better than such broken thought is its steady and continuous flow like the flow of oil or of a perennial stream.”
Ramana Maharshi’s statement represents mantra meditation’s goal: a state where the mind is timelessly identified with surrender to the name of one’s god – identical with the god himself. The mind itself has become self-negation at the feet of the deity. Empty of original thought and dynamic desire, the “liberated” person’s ego is dissolved: the very thing that made him or her human. All that is left is a mind-body shell, a meat-robot, that moves through life as a surrendered instrument of some greater will. I suggest the greater will is not that of the Infinite. It is the will of the god who has taken the place of one’s mind.
Does this sound like possession? It surely appears to be. Think of all the gurus you’ve met with their palpable shakti. An energy so real no one who experiences it can deny it. What is that light in their eye, a light beyond this world? Whose is that power they touch you with, embrace you with? Is it the shakti of Brahman, the light of pure consciousness? Or is it the power of Kali or one of her friends? Gurus often say they are the embodiment of Shiva, Kali, or some other god. Why do we not take them at their word?
I would like to suggest that mantra meditation turns humans into zombies who serve the agenda of the gods. That agenda is procurement of more humans and more human energy. This explains the common phenomenon of proselytizing by the religious, including fundamentalist Christians, TMers, and disciples of other varieties. Servants of “God” or the gods feel a driving need to bring in more recruits. The god that moves through them fills them with this zeal, as a hungry stomach fills the mind with an overwhelming need to procure dinner.
There are no gods, in the sense the gods would have us think of them. No one has been designated by the Infinite to control creation and administer the laws of nature. The sun shines by itself as an entity with its own consciousness. The rain and wind don’t need a god to direct them; they move where they will in harmony with their fellow elements. All things are children of the Infinite, spirits or egos in their own unique right, expressing in physical form and also in astral dimensions.
The gods are spirits/egos like everybody else. Most of the time they dwell on astral planes, which is why human senses normally don’t perceive them. According to ancient records, they have visited the earth in ages past in physical forms of their own, as entities from the stars.
They are no more divine than a ghost, no more cosmic than you or I, and no more entitled or intended to run the universe than any other gang of warlords might be. Somehow they’ve gained control of this planet, and have held that control at least since the beginning of recorded human history. But that is no reason to think the Infinite wants it that way, or that life needs to continue that way.
True empowerment is not the Indian concept of enlightenment. It is knowing what we are and living from there. We are spirit: individual and eternal, moving within the consciousness of That which created, sustains and pervades all life. Knowing this is not difficult. It only requires putting attention on that which is beneath the content of thought. Acting from this place of empowerment is natural: we can ordain reality from that quantum level. Everyone can do it. Everyone is equally powerful moving and creating in the depths of their own consciousness.
Unfortunately, people rarely do that, though, as the mass hypnosis that governs human life convinces us that karma, fate or the will of God runs the world, that we as individuals have little direct control over what happens to us. The gods are the purveyors of this global hypnosis. It serves their agenda of control. True liberation does not mean rising above the illusion of ourselves as egos. It means rising above the illusion that as egos we are cut off from the powerhouse of creation. That as individuals we are something less than pure, eternal, powerful spirits – in our own right, very much gods. Gods with a global case of amnesia.
The “enlightened” have surrendered their personhood to the deities who control their meditations. Their bliss is the euphoric stupor which their appeased deities grant them as reward. The words, the thoughts, the desires of the enlightened are not their own any longer, but those of their controlling god. The word “zombie” is appropriate because of its meaning as the walking dead.
But all is not lost for such people. No one can keep the human soul enslaved against its will. An act of personal empowerment, of willfully recalling one’s ego, must surely destroy enslavement by any possessing entity. One can recall surrendered pieces of one’s being as a magnet can recall iron filings. Native American traditions speak of our ability to do just this, calling back the parts of our lost personhood.
When people cease to surrender their energy and spirit to those who call themselves gods, the deceivers will lose their power over this dimension. They will shrink back to “normal size,” entities responsible for themselves like everybody else. Our world will know a freedom, creativity, harmony and joy it has never demonstrated in its history, because interdimensional manipulation will cease. The suffering on this planet, god-inspired and god-feeding, will dwindle and disappear. The need to kill to eat will no longer exist. Sickness, aging and death will have no substructure. Each wonderful created being – animal, human or astral – will thrive on the power of the Infinite source within itself, and victim/tyrant relationships, which ran the planet for eons, will fade into thin air. Living will become what surely the Infinite intended in Its original vision for the universe: a symphony of minds, not a competition; a tapestry of spirits, not a hierarchy; a garden of consciousness, not a painful struggle.
When I hear “the enlightened” excuse all the atrocities of this world by saying that in their exalted perception, everything is “perfect” just as it is, I hear “fraud.” The God I perceive in the depths of my being is not a God who is content with fathers raping infants, animals being ripped apart alive, or human sorrow so great only suicide can quell it. This kind of world is not perfect, and anyone who sees it as such has something seriously wrong with them. If the gods were really beneficent and powerful, they would not operate a world that runs like this. When their mouthpieces and procurers tell us this world is just as it should be – that shows you the true nature of the gods.
These beings are not our friends, though surely, if there are scoundrels in astral dimensions, there must be virtuous entities there as well. Perhaps the ones who don’t seek lordship over this planet are watching to see if humans take back control of our world or continue to surrender it, piece by piece, to the cosmic band of thugs who want to own it. Will we continue surrendering our governments, media, schools, workplaces, taxes and spirituality to those who would lead us farther away from personal freedom and self-actualization, closer to a world without responsibility, originality or joy? Such a world is the goal of the gods, because it’s more controllable.
Their lackeys in the political arena (many – George Bush, for instance – are genetically linked to European royal families and the god-engendered lines of divine-right kings) call this future society the New World Order. Centralized control, humans functioning on autopilot. The death of free will, passion, desire and originality – sounds a lot like enlightenment, doesn’t it. The surrender of the individual to the collective. Control of the collective by divine-right rulers, and control of those rulers by the cosmic band of thugs themselves. The rise of the great Fourth Reich.
Who were the mystical entities Hitler conversed with and took guidance from? Why was group meditation a part of Nazi protocol? Why were many TM/ New Age slogans (“established in Being, perform action,” for instance) also slogans of the Third Reich?
Total control and spiritual domination. The destruction of everything that makes life worth living. Creation imploding on itself, like a snake swallowing its tail. That actually is a symbol found in mystery schools, which were controlled by the gods.
It’s time to give up beads and mantras, chanting and bowing down to dirty feet. It’s time to fire the gurus, stand up and be the powerful, sublime individuals we are. It’s time to question the dogmas we swallowed whole from Vedic tradition and take a closer look at what is happening when we meditate.
It’s time to reclaim our birthright, our divinity and this Earth. Only we can do it, as the conscious beings we are. As Alice in Wonderland said, turning and facing the Red Queen’s army that was hot on her heels, “Pooh! You’re nothing but a pack of old cards.” That army toppled, turning into a heap of playing cards the moment the girl broke through her bad dream. Our controllers too will topple, and dragons will turn into geckos. It’s time to give up the cosmic illusion and de-hypnotize.
Bronte Baxter
© Bronte Baxter 2008
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Splinter in the Mind 
jay said,
April 14, 2008 at 1:36 am
Do you think meditation is helpful as long as it’s not focused on any deity or dogma? Do you believe in enlightenment or experiencing that there is no self as such but only pure experience?
brontebaxter said,
April 14, 2008 at 2:49 am
Bronte here, and thanks for your thoughtful comment. I don’t believe in the Eastern dogma that there is no individual self. While consciousness is universal, it is also unique for all of us. When I say “I,” it is distinct from what you refer to when you say “I.” Telling us there is no unique “I,” or soul, is one major way gurus get people to give up all the things about themselves that would be useful in defeating the New World Order. Why care what happens in this world if it is just an illusion anyway and I myself as a person am even just an illusion? Better to renounce everything earthly and focus on what’s real, that other world. That kind of thinking allows those who want to control this world to do so unchallenged.
Their teaching is a manipulation of the truth that all things are made of consciousness and held in place/changed by consciousness. The gurus don’t tell you that. They twist that ever so slightly and say, “The world is nothing but illusion.” That’s true in a sense, but only as a portion of the truth. The important part they leave out is that all beings co-create this illusory 3-D reality and that we can change and manipulate it through thought and intention. That truth is empowering, and that’s the part they don’t want you to know.
Meditation that simply focuses the attention on the consciousness within can be very useful, in my experience, as long as no deity or mantra is involved and no teacher is telling you that “you” don’t really exist. Do I believe in enlightenment? Not the way it’s defined these days. I believe the Eastern definition of enlightenment is a very dangerous thing to aim for. Rather, I believe in self-empowerment, empathetic kindness and spiritual exploration. I don’t think there’s a point of arrival for those who empirically explore the inner or invisible dimensions. There’s always more to experience and know, just as in the material world. That’s what makes life an endless adventure.
Bronte Baxter
K. Kojei said,
September 23, 2013 at 5:03 am
Wow!!! It took me a long time to find anybody who had come to the conclusions I find here, conclusions I came to myself but prayed I wasn’t alone in deducing. After decades of research and experimentation, I found myself coming to realizations that were absolutely profound.
While performing at various trance dance, santeria and Vodun ceremonies as a drummer, I saw people drop to the ground in trance, I witnessed possessed persons communicate with entirely different personalities than the ones they came with and I again began to question whether what I was doing was moral, because I had NO idea whether those persons ever regained themselves. Not only that, by the grace of whatever true spirit assisted me with the knowing, I made the connection between the drumming, the music [whether at a ceremony or even at the local club where folks danced themselves into a frenzy under the influence of alcohol and drugs] and the multi-colored lights as tools of raw, undisguised HYPNOSIS!!! In one instance, I witnessed with my own two eyes as people at a famous club on Miami Beach one after another were possessed by spirits hanging out on the sidelines waiting for them to be too drunk and too high to resist. I can name two clubs on Miami Beach, now defunct, where that happened. Possession is real. It happens in bars, it happens in churches, it happens in political frenzies, it is the state of a zealot of every kind and most insidious, it happens in every day television programming. Witness the beginning, where silent films began a process that became more and more violent-especially against women, more and more sexual, more and more desensitizing until now it is brazen in its efforts. Having sold us on all kinds of violence as the norm, now it is rampant in our neighborhoods. Having sold sexual profligacy for decades, morphing from innocent romance into sexual blatancy, now the players of the game try to sell innocent children in the sneakiest ways possible. Miley Cyrus’ teddy bear and sex presentation at the VMA with the learing satanic tongue and hair made into horns is NO accident. It stepped up the evil a notch and went after very young children and preteens.
Speaking of which, the hyper-sexuality that results from our media’s reliance on sex to sell everything has a similar and intended consequence. The entities that seek our energy, that seek to dispossess us use sex as the means for an inoculation of themselves directly into clueless persons who fail to see it. Want to know if it is love or possession? Watch what happens when you suspect something, like energy drainage, control, obsession and possessiveness from your “beloved” and withdraw energy, affection and physical access from that person. I literally had encounters where that person morphed right in front of my eyes into something so hideous I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was while I was contemplating just what could have happened that the spirit of grace suggested I look up the word glamour and I found this:
1
: a magic spell
2
: an exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness ; especially : alluring or fascinating attraction.
Bronte, you are so on point about it until you have finally given me a peace about my own knowing. I thank you for being brave enough to step up and say out loud, what soooooo many of us think but rarely speak by virtue of being somewhat isolated because not many people actually get to share this with others. The good news is my persistence in searching for the Infinite Spirit, the source of all life and phenomena led me to it and thankfully, it is LOVE. There is no judgment from it, only LOVE. There is no punishment. Just LOVE. I found that in no church, in no ritual, in no spell or formulation, nor as the result of a repetition of a mantra to some God. The road to there was inside me, and there were NO detours, hellhounds, gatekeepers or judges. Nor does it describe itself as God. Every single God there is, every pantheon of them, even Shiva and Vishnu acknowledge it, despite their grand claims. Best of all, it needed no worship from anybody about anything. All it needed was for us to be what it is…LOVE!!!
Rob Zabel said,
June 5, 2014 at 7:38 am
Probably worth remembering that most of the ‘eastern’ movements you’re talking about are not non-dualist and in fact INSIST that there are individual souls that are seperate from God. It was the scholar Adi Shankara’s lineage who proposed that all individuality is an illusion of ignorance (and so told you to pick whichever god you wanted to worship because ‘they’re all the same’). Sankhya (the basis of Yoga), Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and Achintya Bheda Abheda (the basis of the Hare Krsna movement) say the opposite. These are the one’s usually with the highest reliance on Guru’s grace. The most strongly theistic devotees are insistent that they are individuals distinct from both God and one another. It’s also worth noting the majority of non-dualists you attack are Nirguna Bhaktas (meaning they see God as unlimited consciousness without any specific name or form to limit Him). Hence the use of mantras like AUM, Sa-Ham, Tat Tvam Asi, Ahimsa Paramo Dharma (all atheistic) and countless others that do not use the formula of Namaḥ (I bow to). To lump the whole diverse family of mantra meditation into one poorly defined pile seems a disservice to those who would try to understand the phenomenon. Most of the books on meditation from these traditions list mantra as one of four possible paths along with knowledge (jñana), hatha, and laya. The idea of black magic mantras largely evolved out of the medieval tantric movement of mantramarga. Also, most of the Vedic gods are agreed to be representative of aspects of nature (though some like Avatars Krsna and Rāma are likely historically figures conflated with preexistent deities). To name the Dusk and Dawn as twin horsemen is no more an invitation to possession than calling our planet ‘mother earth’. Personification is an integral part of poetry, which these mantras are. This is not to say that repetition of mantra can’t be used for mind control, but that is just the power of repetition. When agnostic Theravada Buddhists chant the Diamond Sutra they aren’t singing about gods; they’re studying philosophy. Mantra is a tool and any teacher worth his salt will tell you only to chant what you’re comfortable with…like Om. And pick up some literature, no two schools of Hinduism even seem to agree on what enlightenment is, so to dismiss the ‘eastern definition’ of enlightenment means you probably have only a fraction of its definition.
brontebaxter said,
June 5, 2014 at 9:31 am
Rob, thanks for your intelligent comment. I do not share your approval of all things non-dual (the advaita tradition of India), as it robs the aspirant of their personhood as thoroughly as the the dual traditions (the devotional, guru-focused traditions).
Both approaches teach that everything that makes us individual is nothing but ego, maya, and ignorance. In so doing, they encourage people to sacrifice everything that makes them unique, creative, dynamic individuals on the chopping block of so-called enlightenment. While the guru worshippers dissolve their personhood in the being of the guru, the non-dualists dissolve it in some massive consciousness they take to be the consciousness permeating all things. In fact, this second group opens themselves up to possession as much as the guru addicts do, because when you abdicate your authority as the driver of your life, anything outside of you is free to come in and take over.
This accounts for the experience of “witnessing” that so many meditators proudly report, where “I’m acting, yet I do not act” — where they feel separate from their action. Their actions proceed from them automatically, without their intention, choice, or volition. In this form of possession, it’s as if the foot is on the gas pedal but they’re no longer holding the steering wheel. They think it is God or the Infinite moving through them, but I am convinced it’s something quite different. Some of the other chapters of this book examine this premise thoroughly.
To the non-dualists, nothing really matters in life because all the world is an illusion anyway. They claim no one has free will, because everything’s predetermined. Feed people this sort of dogma long enough, and you will program them to abdicate all the best parts of themselves. Whichever of the two Indian traditions one subscribes to, the end results are the same.
Bronte
vixonbarratt said,
February 18, 2015 at 6:22 pm
thank you for this beautiful article, I have linked it to my own page. Thanks for empowering the spirits of all you encounter
Barbara said,
April 14, 2008 at 7:04 am
I am interested in the the resolution of the palestine Israeli conflict and very sad to see media bias the whole thing being perpetuated. I was at a talk where the ancient geography was being explained. It came to me suddenly that these religions of Abraham were for the countries that they came from, not for us. Our religions would be about druids and Stonhenge maybe, A friend who was brought up a Catholic was talking about God and forgivness and how you are supposed to talk to God and to the rest of us God seemed to be a petty minded character indeed.
I have a couple of small books by a local theologian who looks at bible stories and explains them. This shows how people are killed in the name of God, the people of Jericho for instance. God seems to be a very nasty character. There also seem to be two Gods the one in the old testament and the one in the new testament seem quite different. your blogs are shedding more light on the subject that I have ben trying to understand.
Barbara
Jim Porter said,
April 17, 2008 at 10:19 pm
“The important part they leave out is that all beings co-create this illusory 3-D reality and that we can change and manipulate it through thought and intention.” Fascinating, Bronte. May I point you in the direction of someone whose views are not a million miles from yours: http://www.matthewdelooze.co.uk
patty said,
April 18, 2008 at 1:03 am
right on Bronte Baxter–I think all religions are full of shit including the mantra to what sounds like demonic energies feeding off of blood ritual sacrifice and energies of suffering. I’m really glad I blew off all of these religions as well as the moonies which turned out to be another fraud! i felt the Spirit of Righteousness in a dream when I was able to make the choice to lose everything wordly for justice & the highest good-not an easy choice but the only right one. The Spirit I felt was of love, compassion and total Bliss
and not the Nasty God in the Bible which by the way was revised by a Satanist-Sir John Dee-now called the King James Version (satanic revision). Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to me. Thank you so much Bronte Baxter for shining the light of truth amidst so much confusion. And others would do well to check out Bible Myths (15,000 discrepancies between Satanist’s version and original Mt. Sinai Bible. Here’s to real enlightenment to all! Best Wishes to you all. God is LOVE. Patty
Judith said,
May 30, 2019 at 8:04 pm
Dear Patty, If you ever read this… could you send some links about the revision of the bible that has taken place and resulted in the “King James Version” ? I know that the “reformation” was nothing but a bloody war. Nothing to be proud of, yet the protestants celebrate it’s anniversaries… I want to know more about this period and all the (false) editing into the bible.
Or if anyone else can guide me in this quest? Thank you very much?
Judith
AK said,
April 19, 2008 at 4:29 am
A few months after the tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands people in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, I had a dream.
In the dream, I was a traveller in southern India. I was walking along a pristine beach, the sea calm, clear as a mirror. I reached a small village of a few score houses. A local celebration/puja was taking place in honor of Ramana Maharshi, who had lived nearby.
I was invited to join the crowd. An altar with garlands and Maharshi’s picture was the focus of the celebration. People were kind and friendly and it was a simple neighborhood event.
I looked around this small and peaceful village, and assumed it had always been this way. People were happy, at ease, content.
To my amazement, I learned that just a couple of months before, thousands of people had lived here and they, and all their houses had been instantly obliterated in the tsunami. The people who surrounded me, so content, so peaceful, had lost family, friends, landmarks, had lost entire kinship networks.
Yet I saw no evidence whatsoever of sadness, of loss of grief, that all those deaths had made no impact whatsover.
There was no sign of mourning.
Pondering all this, I wondered,
1)’Are the people here genuinely at ease because they miss their loved ones, yet really have found a spritual perspective that enables them to mourn and yet not be overwhelmed in their grief?’
2)’Or is there something about this kind of spirituality that so trivializes emotions, whether of joy or loss, that human emotion flattens out, loss is trivialized and humanity is lost?’
It was in the middle of this question that I woke up from the dream.
Gus said,
April 19, 2008 at 11:43 am
always smile and laugh, both nourish the body!
: )
PenName said,
April 22, 2008 at 12:02 am
Am so happy to land on this blog! I cannot tell you how lonely its been to have come to so many of these same realizations on my own.
I remember two years ago I independently did some collection of factoids on blood sacrifice rituals in various religion. It is so clear that the “gods” and spiritual dimension powers thrive on the sacrifice of life — preferring blood, gorging on death. That seems to summarize the Middle East situation. The powers over that region have always demanded continual wars and bloodshed on the land. From the time of birth when Jewish males are circumcized, or when Muslim babies’ foreheads are smeared with the blood of goats, blood is the currency of the religious. Once in awhile you see the same rituals performed with salt water — or holy water. The salt-water seems to be a thinly veiled substitute for blood in these instances. Salt and iron are other commodities featured or conversely banned on the altars and in the rituals of many religions — including wicca and pagan rites.
All of these substances may have something to do with conducting energy better.
Your observation: “I suggest, if the gods are innately as powerful as they purport to be, they would not need human worship to survive,” has haunted me all my life.
Even when I was young and a devout Christian at that time, the question kept nagging me that if God was omnipotent why did he need the sacrifice of Jesus in order to forgive us? Was Jesus like the higher version of a chicken sacrificed on some South American tribal alter? And that hymn — “there’s power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the lamb…”
There is not a single holiday in America that is not accompanied by the massive slaughter of animals for the rite, and flesh-eating as the center of the celebration — how many millions of turkeys killed at Thanksgiving, millions of pigs at Easter for hams, etc….
I did spend some time reading the writings of the “white bortherhood” and summarily moved on— but one phrase does stand out from a master who noted “we arrogantly think we are at the top of the food chain, and we are mistaken.”
It has occurred to me that we live in a dimension of “devouring” — we devour our resources, animals, goods and experiences in the constant gnawing hunger for happiness and satisfaction. In turn our energy is devoured by powers we know little of and are tricked into serving, be they vampiristic gurus, religions or higher dimensional parasites, or our own misguided self-destructive actions.
The way out I am still working on…… it does have something to do with that kernel of divine energy and consciousness within each of us. We are each endowed with it. It is what makes us so desireable and delicious to the other worlds which perhaps are not endowed independently with such divine energy, but must constantly feed on ours.
Anita said,
June 21, 2019 at 9:21 am
Wow! This is so spot on! Thank you for sharing! I am loving this blog.
Anna said,
April 28, 2008 at 6:07 am
Hi Bronte,
I read this with interest.
“Archeologist Zechariah Sitchen, in his voluminous tomes, details the countless references in ancient writings and artifacts to beings who visited this world in fiery flying ships, who taught mankind, interbred with humans, and set up a government of divine-right kingship. Visiting beings who called themselves gods.”
I have heard theories (Edgar Cayce & some others) that rather than aliens, the ‘beings’ who visited certain worlds in ‘fiery flying ships’ may have been Atlanteans, who are said to have had remarkable technologies (including some kind of aircraft) before their continent of Atlantis sank into the sea.
The continent sank, according to Cayce, due to the arrogance of these people who abused their advanced technologies outrageously and came to believe that they were higher than God. That certainly might explain why they would look for worship from the technologically inferior peoples who they ended up living amongst.
What do you think about this theory?
Anna said,
April 28, 2008 at 6:13 am
I like this comment of yours, Bronte, it helpful and a good insight from your obviously many years of spiritual research.
“Rather, I believe in self-empowerment, empathetic kindness and spiritual exploration. I don’t think there’s a point of arrival for those who empirically explore the inner or invisible dimensions. There’s always more to experience and know, just as in the material world. That’s what makes life an endless adventure.”
brontebaxter said,
April 28, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Anna, in answer to your question, I think it goes much deeper than that. Check out a book called “The Gods of Eden,” by William Bramley. It’s well-researched and scholarly yet very readable and fascinating.
Bronte
Anna said,
April 28, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Thanks Bronte, you have given me a plenty of great food for thought and reading material. I’m glad I joined the ex-amma group because I’ve learned a lot in a short time.
I really appreciate your help & feedback over these last few days :)
(graceannrose)
Pilgrim said,
June 6, 2008 at 1:56 am
A wonderful thought provoking site, thanks Bronte.
I was wondering, do you have any thoughts regarding ‘Eugenics’ and population control in connection with society becoming more enlightened. With the planetary alignment creating a ‘quickening’ of that awareness and the 26000 year cycles or Yugas, wouldn’t it be in the extraterrestials interest to make sure global catastrophies occurred at this peak time, in order to create a “groundhog day” effect.? To knock us back to the stone-age and start the cycle over & over.
brontebaxter said,
June 6, 2008 at 4:51 am
Pilgrim, I don’t get what you mean by “creating a groundhog day effect.” Please elaborate on your idea.
Are you familiar with the theory that global warming and global catastrophes are being brought on by “the return of Planet X”? This would be the rogue planet Nibiru described in ancient Sumerian texts. See Sumerian scholar Zechariah Sitchin’s book “The Twelfth Planet” and this online article:
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/04/17/02340.html
According to Robert Morning Sky, Nibiru is not a planet but a planet-sized spaceship that houses the Annunaki (extraterrestrials who genetically engineered the human race). My second “loosh” article mentions Morning Sky and the comment underneath it gives more information about him and his research.
These theories interest me. I think another possible explanation to your question is that global catastrophes create extra “loosh,” strengthening the loosh harvesters (they might need that extra boost of empowerment when mankind is so close to waking up, in order to maintain the deception).
You’ve given me an idea for a future blog topic. Thanks.
Bronte Baxter
Pilgrim said,
June 7, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hi Bronte,
Groundhog day was a film starring Bill Murray, in which he wakes up each morning reliving the same day over & over again, meeting the same people doing exactly the same things.
What I was trying to say in the last post I wrote was; are these ‘gods’ waiting for us to reach the cusp of spiritual awakening as a species, thus creating a powerful desire, only to create catastrophies on Earth to wipe out billions of people. This would have a double whammy effect insofar as, a controllable population and loss of technical achievements. The survivors would be too traumatised trying to exist, therefore any knowledge that was gained, spiritual or otherwise, would be lost. (forgotten). Similar to Atlantis. Hence the reference to “groundhog day”, i,e. It all starts over again until the next cycle!!
I hope this makes more sense to you, if not just say and I try again. lol.
Yes, I have read about planet ‘X’, but the problem is there is so many conflicting versions about it, it’s hard to know which one to even start with. The David Wilcock spiritual convergence one, or Dan Burisch with timeline 2 has been averted and so on & on… I just gave up on it to be honest.
You book so far is enthalling and enlightening, can’t wait for the next chapter.
Thanks, Tom.
S. Singh said,
June 8, 2008 at 11:14 pm
”I don’t believe in the Eastern dogma that there is no individual self”. Neither does the vast body of Eastern teachings. The yoga sutras, for instance, are dualistic based on sankhya philsophy, So too the Puranas.The oneness and illusion of individual existence is one school of Indian thought Advaita Vedanta, taught by one teacher Shankar Acharya.
Transcending material conditioned ego and understanding one’s consciousness in relationship to God or super consciosuness is quite different. Almost any Indian would tell you that the loss of personal existence taught in advaita vedanta is not popular amongst the Indian masses.It is unfortunante that most westerners have not studied with more main stream philosophy teachers. The Indian concept of Deity is simple and is the one the Greeks and Romans and ancient Europeans followed. God is one, God has infinite manifestations. We are all spiritual souls eternal in an eternal relationship with a loving non-vengenful, non angry God who has no chosen or unchosen peoples.
Rabble said,
June 18, 2008 at 3:23 am
Bronte this was outstanding. We’ve been conditioned to believe that we must worship, fear and give our very own divinity to someone else’s ideas.
It is negation of our birthrights and freedoms. it’s amazing that we do this so willingly.
Fear is a powerful inducer, it is the very chain by which we are bound.
We will reclaim our divine birthrights when we refuse to be mentally terrorized and dominated. As it stands right now we are afraid to think and live with our own thoughts. We would much rather be told what to think and how to feel…
But we are slowly returning to Love…it is the substance of our being.
Rabble said,
June 18, 2008 at 3:34 am
Pilgrim
RE: Groundhog Day…
The lesson in that movie is that Bill Murray’s character LEARNED to treat each day differently despite them all looking the same…I believe that we as a people are learning albeit slowly that the same tactics and habits won’t work anymore…That we need to try different solutions and actions on the same “problems” that constantly reappear.
The reason these same problems keep reappearing to us is because we haven’t gotten the act or answer “right” yet as a people.
We constantly face war, poverty, disease and disasters because our response to them has been lacking.
Groundhog Day was a great metaphor movie on our slumbering existence. I learned a lot from it.
AK said,
June 25, 2008 at 3:47 am
In the light of your post, how do you then view buddhism? No gods to worship there, except for in the vajrayana buddhism of Tibet which treats their gods as provisional mind constructs to eventually be moved beyond. And yet buddhism, similar to Advaita Vedanta (which some say evolved as a hindu response to the then growing popularity of buddhism), focuses on ‘no self’. Who then are the buddhists entrusting their consciousness to as they dissolve their egos? Do the ‘gods’ or spirits take over even uninvited, same as in possessions?
And what about how other human beings attempt to take over the lives of those who have given up their will in this manner. And I mean normal people, parents, workmates, partners etc . It’s not just ‘gods’ and those in authority who can be predatory.
Ron said,
July 4, 2008 at 8:14 pm
In Soviet Russia the gods worship you.
brontebaxter said,
July 4, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Ron, would you care to elaborate on that?
Bronte
AK said,
July 15, 2008 at 5:59 am
Why so rude? I asked a polite question of you Bronte, that pertained to the subject under discussion in this article. If you can’t think of an answer to it, that’s fine, but it’s simply good manners to acknowledge the comment rather than obviously snub them.
brontebaxter said,
July 15, 2008 at 10:14 am
AK, I really object to the tone of your post. First of all, if you have a personal gripe against me, address it to me personally at my email address, not on a public forum. THAT was rudeness. Second, when I first read your angry post, I didn’t even know what you were referring to. I had to go into the old article to figure it out.
Regarding your first post: I found it thought-provoking, with very good questions. It is not my job, AK, to respond to every poster’s post and answer every question. The comment section is a public forum, and I join in when I have something I feel is useful to say. I am not Miss Answer Woman, and this is not a question and answer section. Sometimes I don’t respond to questions because I am thinking about them, still forming an opinion, and sometimes because I want other people to have a chance to think about them.
There can be any number of reasons why I don’t comment on a particular post, just as you may have any number of reasons for not choosing to comment on everything YOU read in the comment section. In this case, I didn’t respond because I believed the subsequent articles in the “Blowing the Whistle” series, which I presumed you hadn’t read yet, had adequately addressed the questions you brought up. Perhaps they didn’t. If you have read the series and don’t think they were answered, tell me, and I’ll address this subject in a future article.
But please, abstain from personal attacks toward me or others on this forum. That spoils the friendly tone of the forum and is not acceptable here.
Bronte
Andrew said,
August 14, 2008 at 12:17 am
Hi Bronte,
Glad to see fellow light workers waking up to our prison planet. I was curious as to what your impression is of the ohm incantation. I have never come across any information hinting towards a hidden purpose/agenda with it but it is clearly used in tibetan and buddhist Mantra meditations. It has become a commonplace tattoo as well. Love and Light.
Andrew
R Wenner said,
August 17, 2008 at 9:27 am
I like how you related one civilization’s deities as coresponding by different names to those of another. As St Paul said, “The gods of the pagans are demons.”
alias said,
August 30, 2008 at 4:36 am
I didn’t understand a word of this article, what the frack is the guy trying to say ? For one thing mantra’s are as natural as a sun rise, there’s nothing evil or deceptive about them. The problem is when you have retards who know nothing about them write about it. Mantra’s are just a way of expressing something intentionally. FYI most of the new agers who study meditation don’t have a clue.
Blowing the whistle ha ha what kind of crack you smoking, there is no secret agenda to mantra’s, stop drinking the kool aide.
Mat said,
September 25, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Hello Bronte,
thanks for your writing. I’ve had a similar experience, but with another group, and I very much know what you’re writing about. This was to introduce myself a bit.
I’m going to read all your articles and comments and add some thoughts to it, as you said to feel free to comment.
Best regards,
Mat
Mat said,
September 25, 2008 at 8:31 pm
BB:
“I suggest, if the gods are innately as powerful as they purport to be, they would not need human worship to survive. They would be self-sufficient, drawing on the Infinite within them for every need. Instead, they tell mankind to bow down and pay tithe, and threaten in the scriptures to destroy us if we don’t. What kind of power is it, that can’t exist without feeding?”
Mat:
I like your suggestion. It awakens the reasoning mind. To answer your question, one may say: it is full power in one sense and fool power in another.
On one hand, we are fully dependent on the environment, including the Sun, the Moon, water, earth, wind, fire, etc. Somebody may see only impersonal energies in this case; somebody else may start wondering that maybe there are some beings that steer the wheels of these energies’ vehicles. Two different points of view which are well known in the philosophy. If we take the former stand (advaita), the problem of gods dissepear, at least in our own, limited point of view. But taking the latter stand, the story starts to be interesting and full of adventures.
So, we, humans, are fully dependent in our earthly life on the external energies, on gods (taking the dvaita position). According to Bhagavad Gita, chapter 3, verses 10 to 17, we’ve got three options:
1. We can simply forget about gods and immerse in sensual pleasures as much as possible, exploiting all available resources. Verse 16 says, this option is pointless. However, putting aside this scriptual conclusion, we may find stories of people who having all possible resources at hand had tried any sensual fancies available and still they were not satisfied. Unfortunately, most people do not read such stories and strive hard to achieve such a position to be able to enjoy life in any possible way. Long way to go.
2. The second option is to enter into the contract with the gods and play one’s part in the give and take relationship. I’m very sorry that you entered in such a contract by trick, without full consciousness and agreement. Unfortunately, this is a very popular model of relationships between institutions and individuals, when ordinary people are not conscious that they enter into the contract as soon as they state their name after having being asked by an officer for it. This is called master-slave relationship and it has been practiced for centuries in a many different forms in all civilizations. Even the Vedic Culture, which some say was/is the most advanced culture on earth, supported the master-slave relationships (Srimad Bhagavatam, canto 9, chapter 7). As long as you have no knowledge about the commercial relationships with gods, you are like an animal and you are treated accordingly. There are gods and powerful people who do not want such human animals to advance and get this knowledge. But in the same time, there are other universal forces (like true spiritual masters) who try and preach the true knowledge. Sadly, most humans who are animal-like do not take advantage of it. Fear is the main restraining factor.
And still, this option is a very troublesome one, even if feasible.
3. The third option is proposed by the verse 17 of chapter 3 of Bhagavad Gita. This is one is a very dangerous proposition as by realizing it, one advances beyond the gods’ jurisdiction – they know it and they do not like it.
So, the first point means that gods’ power is a full one. The second point brings some balance between both parties. However, the third point pushes the scale into a position which shows the gods’ power as that of a fool. Do you think that they will willingly and freely let anybody to come this point of inner spiritual freedom? I think they are the first to trick you, to put obstacles on your path, to cheat you and make a fool of you before you make a fool of them.
Therefore, the process of awakening is called “self-realiztion”. And ‘self’ is a key word.
Best regards,
Mat
brontebaxter said,
September 26, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hi Mat.
I would argue your first point that we are “fully dependent” on the sun, rain, etc. Each person, each consciousness, influences the material universe (including influencing sun, weather, Earth, etc.) through thought. Thought is the creative force, and all of us possess it. The reason Native Americans could call for the rain and bring it is just this. As soon as we assume we are “totally dependent” on anything outside the Infinite itself, which is a field of all possibility and exists as the power source in each of us, we give up our power.
Second, we’d better share that verse with readers if you are going to reference it. Verse 17, chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita, India’s most respected holy book, says “But one who remains ecstatic within the Self, self-illuminated and fully satisfied within the Self only, activities do not exist for them.”
Lord Krishna, who gives this teaching, also speaks outrightly in the same Bhagavad Gita about the rightness of the caste system and expresses other blatantly questionable atrocities, yet he is held up as an incarnation of the supreme god and this scripture of his is the core of Hindu teachings. That’s for context, for any uninitiated readers.
Addressing this quote specifically, we get what? That true happiness only exists if you turn up your nose at action in the world as beneath you, as “animal-like” – something for materialists – and, withdrawing from involvement in the world, find that neutral place within the Indians call “Bliss.” To hell with what the world is doing or the suffering around you, because you are insulated now from all that. You’ve reached the pinnacle zombie state of “don’t care.” You are untouched, unaffected, being superior to the masses, and free.
Hundreds of thousands of wonderful people of my generation, who could have made the difference in waking up the world and turning it away from its march into the arms of the New World Order, were seduced by just this teaching which formed the core of the philosophy of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (see my other articles in this series). We were told all was well with the world really, the only problem was in ourselves, in our attitude.
We bought this line, and abandoned our instincts that told us something was seriously wrong with “the Cystem.” Now we are paying the price for that seduction by Indianism.
I believe there are no “true spiritual masters,” as you call them, from the Indian tradition trying to help people get free because the very core of the Indian tradition is this teaching of Lord Krishna. That teaching is that outer life is an illusion fraught with suffering and the door to freedom is to simply turn your back on the outer world, to not take it seriously. “Detachment” is their prized solution.
What does this do, in fact, but give free reign to the gods and their emissaries on Earth to do whatever they like, with no opposition? The very purpose of this teaching by Lord Krishna is to neutralize human resistance to the takeover of humanity by the cabal of those who call themselves “the gods.”
I don’t think the gods care if people achieve this kind of “freedom” you talk about. I think it’s precisely what they hope will happen to those who are waking up enough to see they are in a master-slave relationship. Instead of getting them to challenge the Cystem that allows the master-slave scenario to subjugate humanity, the awakening crowd is enticed with this detachment teaching to just walk away from the show. They’re lured to do this partly by the suggestion that they are superior to the “animal” masses and that the “animals” deserve what they get on account of their materialistic ignorance.
People aren’t “animals” and “materialists,” Matt. They’re exhausted slaves, who barely have energy to keep their eyes open and find a little solace at the end of a long day or week in things like TV, sex and beer. The problem is the Cystem they’re enslaved to and work to support, not some essential hedonism in their character.
But back to the design of the gods. Those seduced by this tricky detachment teaching that says being wise and blissful means walking away from the show – those humans become the spiritual elite, new buddies with the gods whom they allow to do whatever they (the gods) like, unopposed. This is precisely as the gods want it.
They only pretend to oppose “enlightenment,” much as a con man, selling you a piece of junk, will say something like, “Now I wouldn’t do this for everyone, and I really hate to part with this little beauty. I’m taking a loss here, but I like you, so I’m going to make you a really good deal. I’ll sell it to you for half of what it cost me.”
The con man WANTS the fool to buy the thing he’s selling. He only pretends to be losing by the sale, to make the fool feel special and like he’s getting the better of the seller. In the same way, the gods pretend to be opposed to enlightenment, but actually benefit from it.
Here’s how they really think about that state: “If a human gets too smart and realizes he’s a sheep to be shorn, let him jump the pen and leave our confines. Then praise him for what a smart sheep he is, so much better than the rest, and make a pet out of him. That way he’ll never return to rile up the other sheep.
“Never let a smart sheep continue identifying with and being moved by the plight of his fellow sheep, because if he does, he’ll not only jump the pen but take the whole flock with him. So encourage his detachment from the suffering of the crowd, explain that sheering is their karma and that it will help them to learn and grow spiritually. Make that fence-skipping sheep identify with you and your world rather than that of his fellows, and he’ll never give you any trouble. You can go on running the shearing operation, business as usual.”
Bronte Baxter
David said,
December 16, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Hi Bronte
It seems one positve aspect of detarching from “some” of the things around us is much of it is contrived and staged by the Looshers.
Unfortunately I feel about 90% of my life should be throw in the round file as a staged looshing. except what I can / have learned about their methods so I can avoid being looshed and how I can avoid being manipulated into causing others to spill their loosh to the looshers.
They dont want to kill us right off. that would be like a farmer killing his good milk cows.
I’ve heard all kinds of opinions, that we are rebels put here to be punished or learn something or to grow.
that seems far fetched.
The looshers are very hungry right now.
This is a strange place.
It is too easy to slip back into thinking all is OK.
The snapping back to the realization this is a managed illusion like a cattle farm.
It is a little traumatic each time, snapping back to the Un reality
Nice Site Thanks, David
June said,
March 10, 2013 at 1:03 am
Could anybody please explain the words “loosh”, “looshing”, “loosher”. I am a non-native speaker and i couldn’t find these words in any dictionary apart from here:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Loosher
Quote:
“1. Loosher
When you are out in a pub/bar/club with your friends and one of your friends is drinking very slowly, you call him a Loosher.
Mate,c’mon drink up you Loosher, wanna get the next pint in”
But that doesn’ seem to fit in the context here.
brontebaxter said,
March 10, 2013 at 5:18 am
It is a word that Robert Monroe, the author, used, and you won’t find it in a dictionary. If you want to know more about loosh, read the rest of the articles here that discuss it, or read Robert Monroe’s books.
Bronte
Rob said,
June 5, 2014 at 11:31 am
Be above the world and action is just one option Krishna lists. Ultimately he recommends the yoga of action. He says to Arjuna that he must fight this battle because it is his duty (dharma) and that to renounce your duty to the world would be wrong. 3:35. “It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another”. Most people summarize this as the point of the book: don’t renounce actions, renounce attachment to their outcome…in other words keep perspective and do what must be done. The teachings are very much aimed at householders with obligations to family and society. Monks on Mount Athos are no different than yogis in Nepal, they are renunciants. And Hinduism primarily teaches renouncing once your obligations are fulfilled (i.e. the kids are grown, your life’s work complete, and your youth gone). Just because you know a bunch of people who used Hinduism to run away from life…well that’s on those guys. If they understood the Gita they would see it told them to stand and fight, never to run because there is nothing to fear from life’s illusions.
Kevin said,
October 15, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Dear Bronte Baxter,
This is a great piece of work. I commend you for your courage to stand up to the “Cystem”.
I spent many years as a student of the occult, practicing ritual and ceremonial magick. Within the practices is a particularly important part refered to as “vibrating”. The tradition demands the use of “vibrating” divine names of the gods during rituals and meditations. The idea is that by intoning or “vibrating” (like a mantra, although, repetition was not necessary) the divine names, one invokes the energy of that god. The notion is that these gods have a particular frequency that one taps into, and that, in reality, these gods are merely aspects of oneself. Most writers, of course, state that this is all part of the process, it must be done, and that the ultimate goal is to acheive godhead (i.e. self-empowerment).
I mention this because it seems to be a similar teaching in that no one starts off by telling us that we are the divine, we already have “godhead”, and that we are the creators (or, at least, co-creators) in this holy experience we call life. That we are already powerful, limitless beings. Maybe if they started off that way, then we could go on about the business of discovering just how powerful and limitless we are. Instead we are fed this dogma of how life and reality are illusions, thus, we are, too. The individual does not matter, and that reverence to some god is the only way to salvation.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the true divine source of the universe is in no way involved with any of the religions of today. The Eastern religions have quite a history, but I think western religions bypassed their body count long ago. That is specualtion, on my part, of course.
Your reference to the snake eating itself is brilliant, by the way. It is known as the ouroboros. It is said to represent the process of life and death and the cycles of time, or infinity. Looking at it from a different perspective, however, reveals the true meaning of the symbol: the snake is eating itself, or it’s SELF. By consuming one’s SELF the powers that be can control and manipulate. And that is the point I think you are getting at: that religion is a mechanism for control by convincing us to surrender ourselves and, thus, our energy and power.
I, personally, prefer the Jungian construct of the psyche or self, in that it consist of a persona, ego, shadow, and the anima/animus. Why? Because it demands the acknowledgment of all aspects of the self, including the ego, as real and necessary. Through individuation we become whole (or holy).
As for the practice of meditation, I am in favor of it, simply because I know it works. The problem, as you laid out, is this business of mantras and the bombardment of outdated and false teachings. I always understood meditation as having many purposes. For starters, it is an act of self-control. No one can deny that the mind is like a chaotic sea. By observing this through meditation, one becomes aware of this, and knowledge is power. Self-control will follow with practice. (Self-control is not a bad thing, in my opinion. Most people have none, and live there lives being controlled by their parents, peers, co-workers, bosses, governments, and religions. That is the control hierarchy from the bottom up, basically. “Gods” create religion. Religion controls the masses through the dogma. Dogma dictates how individuals act and think, thus, controls the people in government, our bosses, co-workers, peers, and finally our parents. The only thing not controlling the individual is the individual.)
There are visualization techniques, as well, that are very useful. For example, after acheiving some degree of control of the chaos in the mind, one can visualize a keyhole in their mind, then see themselves walking through this key hole into another realm. This is useful for astral travel, and other techniques like this. Mainly, however, I feel meditation helps calm things down and hightens awareness, not just of oneself but of the outside world around us. It has worked for me. One just has to get rid of that garbage from the gurus and gods. Tap into yourself, not the gods, and the rest will follow.
One other thing, I noticed your particular distaste for eastern religions with all of the death and blood sacrifice. Have you ever noticed the Eucharist ritual of the Christian church? The consumption of the bread and wine as symbols of the flesh and blood of Christ. Sounds like cannibalism to me.
Kevin
K.Charanyanond. said,
November 4, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Thanks for your post,I’ve learn some information and get new idea to work with.
jonno said,
November 5, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Hiya Bronte, nice work, i,m so thrilled an energised after finding this blog, an i must say thanx to David Icke for the link an a BIG thankyou to your self for helping to put me back on track. For years i have been searching for the truth and have dabbled with a few religions an cults (ie jehovahs witnesses, hare krishnas etc ) but have always felt something wasnt quite right, it seemed there were a lot of contradictions and questions that were not satisfactorily answered, i spent a few months with the hare krishna cult back in the early 80,s at one of there establishments and got quite deeply involved in there way, an living the life of a devotee, getting up at dawn everyday an having a cold shower then proceeding to the temple an spending around 3 hours chanting the maha mantra or holy names of god, followed by a breakfast of prasadam (or spiritual food) an then on to some daily chores (or spiritual service) followed by more prayers an chanting an study of the vedic philosophy, followed by more chanting, etc etc, until bedtime around 9.30 pm then repeated day after day. I continued to do this for a few months until i started to get extremely fed up with it , as nothing seemed to be changing in my head , i still felt uneasy about what i was being told and also the apparent luxury and wealth in which the other end of the hierarchy apeered to live, one of these luxury’s was driving around in expensive cars (mercedes-benz). an when i questioned this, pointing out that if they were a non-profit organisation, how come they needed to drive around in expensive cars when a cheaper version was available, i was told that everything was dedicated to the service of krishna the absolute,so therefore the absolute deserves the best of everything , an this is devotional service. Well, i couldnt buy this baloney as i’m sure that the Absolute would be better served an pleased with feeding an housing the poor an needy,instead of swanning around in flash cars an building fancy opulent temples which must cost phenominal amounts, unless they have been donated by certain gullible rock stars. Another thing i noticed in the time i spent with them was that they seemed to favour black an white floor tiles in there temples, which to me seems very similar to what the freemason temples have on there floors, also another suspician i have is there ban on garlic an onions which according to them, agrivates the senses an makes one horny basicaly, which is forbidden,( arn’t Vampires afraid of garlic ? ) I would just like to finaly say that after i left there or more like asked to leave as they didnt want me infecting the other devotees with my rebellious attitude, i found that for years after i felt uneasy about wether i had made the right choice in questioning there beleifs and it continued to haunt me causing me to relapse back to reading there literature and even returning to the soho temple one time an then realising why i doubted them , but continuing to doubt myself an like a yo yo have returned to there books time an time again,even after reading david ickes books,who incidently they do not agree with, as his final conclusion of oneness is impersonal and God according to the vedas is personal ( the supreme personality of Godhead) but i have noticed on there website that they are now selling davids dvd’s and also alex jones prison planet. (a nice little earner ? ) anyway after i read your work it has finaly dawned on me along with davids work that what ive been thinking all along but doubting myself constantly is that it is a kind of dis-ease of the mind giving oneself over to Them ( illuminatii )an sacrificing the joy of living an celebrating the beauty of life,which to me, is all sacred and not seperate and material as they would have one believe,( maybe there world is the illusion ) i think i will burn all my religious books ,well, the ones that demand Self sacrifice to there false gods. so once again Bronte i sincerely thank you with all my heart, keep up your righteous an uplifting work on our journey to freedom an help make what the native americans call the Rainbow dream a reality. Love,Light an Life…jonno
Doven said,
November 9, 2008 at 8:14 pm
“As soon as we assume we are “totally dependent” on anything outside the Infinite itself, which is a field of all possibility and exists as the power source in each of us, we give up our power.”
That about says it.
Infinite potential….the rest are thought creations within.
But it can be tough to give up those “spiritual” teddy bears. ;-)
People, our collective has parasites. Time to cleanse. Start with your mind.
Jesse said,
November 19, 2008 at 7:00 pm
YES! Every time I read one of your articles, I am overwhelmed and have to go away for a while to calm down, because I know exactly where you are coming from.
Some highlights –
1** “According to the Vedas and the mythology of other cultures, the gods feel threatened by the human race, afraid mankind might grow as powerful as they…”.
So don’t forget the story of the Tower of Babel which also demonstrates this –
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth
So the interpretation of these passages, according to the point you’ve made, could very well mean that at one point in history, humanity was in a state of unity, all speaking one language, growing powerful and unlimited – “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”. The Lord (it’s funny how this supposedly single God refers to himself as ‘us’) went down and confounded humanity, scattered apart this unity, in order that we would not grow equal in power to these deities.
2**”True empowerment is not the Indian concept of enlightenment.”
The Vedic concept of enlightenment is also the foundation of Buddhism, is it not? These Eastern concepts are pervasive throughout spiritual writings, being promoted as the ultimate noble truth. Yet I also feel that they are not.
Howard Bloom, in The Lucifer Principle, illustrates this religion as ‘the device with which one conquering group managed to validate its theft of power, prestige and goods from a rival [group]’
‘Hinduism has seemed to its admirers in the West as a profoundly spiritual view of the world. It rejects materialism, lays aside earthly desires, tells its adherents to go with the flow, to accept the world as it is, to build up a positive karma, and to strive for Nirvana in a selfless world. What could possibly be more benign?
Under the surface, however, the Hindu religion is not what it seems….Why does this religion tell its adherents to go with the flow, to abhor the things of the world, to set aside earthly desires, to hope only for an improvement of their lot after this life is over?
Because Hinduism was designed to keep the conquered [peoples] in their place. It told those in the lower castes to be content with their humiliation and shun the appalling actions that might spring from desire and discontent. It instructed them never to overthrow their…masters’
3*** “The word “zombie” is appropriate because of its meaning as the walking dead……But all is not lost for such people. No one can keep the human soul enslaved against its will. An act of personal empowerment, of willfully recalling one’s ego, must surely destroy enslavement by any possessing entity. One can recall surrendered pieces of one’s being as a magnet can recall iron filings. Native American traditions speak of our ability to do just this, calling back the parts of our lost personhood.”
Bronte, I’ve outlined some of my personal experience of how this almost happened to me; I became one of the living dead. I became disconnected, dissasociated, and had a distinct feeling that pieces of myself were shattered. I fought against complete surrender, as it felt forced upon me, so the process was not complete. Some small part of my personhood still remained althought it was very weak and almost dead.
Remember how I told you I felt like I had no face? I actually had a dream in which I saw my face shatter into pieces, and each piece was connected by a thin silvery thread to the center of my head.
Over the years, I have managed to mostly come back and piece myself together by recalling my lost personhood! What you have said here exactly reflects my own experience. This is the first time I have read this article you posted.
Jesse said,
November 19, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Also – the ouroboros! That’s another symbol I also independently came to recognize as a symbol of implosion, parallel to what you are saying here.
Jesse said,
November 19, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Doven, as you said in the comment above mine:
“People, our collective has parasites. Time to cleanse. Start with your mind.”
WORD to that.
Sesame said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:19 am
Bronte, this is a great site! I have some familiarity with Bramley, Sitchin & David Icke. I don’t agree with everything in their books, but they have all caught the thread of something real. I don’t have any doubt that UFOs are real — just too much evidence from credible sources. I’m glad you’re aware that energy vampires are real and use energy generated from rituals, etc. Neville Goddard is my favorite LOA teacher, but I don’t agree with everything he believed in either. It could spend I lot of time (I don’t have) trying to respond to so many of the things you’ve written. But if I wanted to teach, I’d start a book. This is a very strange Universe and although I agree with much you’ve written, there are many statements I disagree with. Topics that are just too complicated to get into.
gwen said,
April 26, 2009 at 4:12 am
on a websearch of amma’s scheduled dates for seattle visitation (i just watched the movie ‘darshan’ and was intrigued), i was fascinated to come across your article and subsequent links. while interesting, the negativity of the article surrounding the ‘hugging saint’ almost made me give up, as in my initial scrolling (i was on a PDA), i just about had you pegged for a christian fundamentalist…(sorry!) who in my experience often love conspiracy and spend most of their time picking apart and building cases that ‘reveal’ the evil in other world views and traditions rather than practicing (the more difficult path) of finding some truth or value (on any level) in them and putting it to work on a personal and/or global scale. i was ready to give up on you, that is, until i linked here, and found this, the one hope your personal philosophy/musings (as i’ve experienced them thus far—i don’t have time to read it all!) engenders:
“True empowerment is not the Indian concept of enlightenment. It is knowing what we are and living from there. We are spirit: individual and eternal, moving within the consciousness of That which created, sustains and pervades all life. Knowing this is not difficult. It only requires putting attention on that which is beneath the content of thought. Acting from this place of empowerment is natural: we can ordain reality from that quantum level. Everyone can do it. Everyone is equally powerful moving and creating in the depths of their own consciousness.”
while this gave me pause and a reason to read on, it isn’t very practical advice. it’s kind of at the 5, 000 foot level, actually. perhaps your role is not to offer advice? i’ll ask for it to see.
i am a person who practices meditation, and have found a great opening of mind and spirit doing so. too general? sounds like a match dot com bio line doesn’t it. let me be more specific: i practice yoga, iyengar and purna traditions (hatha), to quiet my ‘monkey mind’ or constant desires and fears that often keep me from being present or calm in any moment and put me off course from my recognized and celebrated goals and resolutions that are at the core of my being and stem from my experiences here on earth. (i mean to say nothing more than that i practice to help in my struggle to navigate what i experience as the internal and natural contradictions between healthy choices/practices and non healthy ones on a daily and lifetime basis. this seems a central challenge of being human, and yoga has been for me a simple tool to aid.) however, i have absolutely no experience with ‘TD’ meditation nor any other sort. i sit with my back straight, and exist in my body and cells. my meditation involves simply moving my body with focus and mindfulness, and then sitting still and examining the results (sometimes) from a place beyond what i consider, and have experienced to be, a superficial version of my conscious Self. i subscribe to no dogma. i worship no god in my practice, nor do i chant hindu names…and i must say i have never felt at risk of loosing mySelf to another entity, even when i practice moving away from my ‘ego’ and instead practice operating from my ‘heart center’ or what i would call my spiritual ‘instinct’—a very real and eternal place for me. i do sing occasionally and find chanting (as many spiritual practices to, as many cultures and human beings do), to be satisfying, uplifting, and fun. i like to smile.
bear with me, i’m getting to my question.
i am a professional person who believes that when presenting a problem or issue to my vp, i have a responsibility to also present at least one alternative solution, or a beginning to a solution. i find this practice helpful in all aspects of my life as well.
i have shared this because i’m hoping you can present a working solution to what you’ve identified as pretty much the greatest conspiracy ever: gods (personages) exist, they like to aid in brainwashing folks who want to be liberated from suffering in order to steal their spiritual power, and no one is safe unless they can empower their own ego. i’m very hopeful for advice and perspective.
questions:
in your criticism of indian philosophy, do you separate the vedic tradition from the yogic–for example, the difference between what the bhagavad gita and patanjali’s yoga sutra’s might have to offer a practitioner? i ask as a novice. your statement ‘true empowerment is not the indian concept of enlightenment’ (i’m not sure ‘empowerment’ is the focus of the scope of all indian philosophy in any event, but i’ll run with your statement regardless, as i get your point), you suggest instead that “It is knowing what we are and living from there. We are spirit: individual and eternal, moving within the consciousness of That which created, sustains and pervades all life. Knowing this is not difficult. It only requires putting attention on that which is beneath the content of thought.”
this last statement of yours is exactly how i see patanjali’s advice (in the yoga sutras) on liberation, and so if reflection through meditation is unsafe as you’ve suggested (perhaps even on a quantum level), how do you advise (on a practical level) that one goes about ‘putting attention’ to what is ‘beneath thought’? in other words, if it is not difficult, and anyone can do it, how do you practice? i ask because i find thinking about what is beneath thought confusing and difficult—and thought provoking. help.
namaste?
gwen :)
brontebaxter said,
April 26, 2009 at 10:22 am
Gwen, you’re right, I’m not in the business of giving advice. But I’ll comment on a few of the things you brought up.
The kind of meditation you practice sounded much like my own – a removal of attention from exterior objects and a focus inward, which results in a sense of peace and expansion – experience of our innermost levels of being. I should say, your description sounded like what I do until you mentioned chanting – that to me is a dangerous arena, as all the chanting practices I’m aware of invoke mantras and similar god-related words.
Chanting, in my experience, creates a passive, hypnotic, endorphine-rich state that is designed to resonate with the energy signature of the god whose name or mantra is being chanted. This opens the door to possession – a blissful experience but possession nonetheless. One’s own ego seems to dissolve in the grandness of the Oneness, but what I believe is actually happening is a dissolution of personal self-hood, with the personal will being replaced with the will and self-hood of the god.
This increases with practice until a state of “enlightenment” is reached where “I act but I do not act” – where one witnesses one’s thoughts and actions in a detached, non-involved way, as if “Something Else” is acting through them. Indeed, something else is. This is the ultimate breakdown of one’s personal will, one’s doership – that which makes us human.
But back to your points … what solution do I offer, you ask? You say you don’t have time to read all I have written, but if you read the chapters written so far in “Blowing the Whistle on Enlightenment: Confessions of a New Age Heretic,” you will get the gist of what I see as the solution.
I can’t sum it all up here, but in essence, I believe that while meditation that reminds us of our deeper nature is useful, equally important is developing habits of thinking and choice that strengthen our personal freedom, that develop our will. It isn’t just about developing universal love, or sensing our unity with all our life, though those things are important.
Becoming a master of life, a master of this dimension, requires being able to shape our own experience consciously, and this only happens through development of the will. My article on “Creating Reality” in the “Blowing the Whistle” series goes into this quite deeply, but there’s much more to be written. This is an area I’m fascinated by and am focusing on now in my research and in my personal life. I expect to write more about it when my perceptions and insights have gelled.
Regarding your recommendation of looking for the good in the traditional solutions we’ve been given, rather than finding fault in them, I don’t agree at all. To rise to a higher level of understanding, we need to think critically. We need to look past the established explanations, that bury self-contradictions behind easy answers, and really examine those places where the answers we’ve been given don’t jive.
Those places are the seams in the fabric of reality which, when examined, allow us to break through the facade into a higher level of knowledge. They are the hidden holodeck door that, when discovered, lead out of the illusion.
Simply focusing on “the good” in essentially deceptive explanations keeps us locked in the system and ignorant. Of course, the system tells us that such questioning is “negative” (a term you also used), because that deters people from questioning. Calling critical thinking “negative” places a judgment on it, a social stigma that deters people for challenging the established order. It keep the sheep in the pen.
In fact, there is nothing negative about insisting on truth or the questioning that requires. Is it negative to wash mud off your hands, because you’re acknowledging the dirt? Is it negative to say “no” to someone who tries to manipulate you, because “no” is a negative word?
Bronte
swissguy said,
June 17, 2009 at 6:41 am
I am glad I found this blog as I too was a seeker who got snared into the spider web of a Jamaica based guru who no longer walks this earth. Let me share a little of what I have found so far in my journey. Do not bow to any person as the only worthy of such praise is the only one, the Creator, God. All the others are impostors sucking your vital energy while killing your soul. We yearn to go back to our true home, the spiritual realm where love reigns supreme. This world seems so conflictive and karma is not the answer to our queries, the answer is too seek a true relationship directly with our Father. Gos is good, He has healed my heart, my knees and my spirit.
Dr Jacinto Pereira said,
October 31, 2009 at 11:50 pm
If you are in spiritual une with your self go on to meditate, but mantras are very overpriced and this is the reason mouvement is in regression
Bob Ellal said,
February 19, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Good morning,
I have practiced Taoist internal energy arts–mainly standing post meditation–for 15 years. It helped me beat my four bouts of bone cancer in the early nineties. One doesn’t chant, or focus on a deity, but concentrates on the breathing, or perhaps moving energy in various ways. It’s used both to promote health and internal power for martial arts. It’s a meditative technique employed by people of all religious beliefs–or those with none at all.
If anything, it’s done more to strengthen my individual will and ego. I’ve found this to be true among my fellow practitioners; perhaps because we arise out of martial arts traditions. I find the notion of surrendering the will in some Eastern traditions to be extremely dangerous. Once this happens, critical thinking evaporates and one can be led down the garden path by the Deepak Chopra’s of the world: the bullshit that is the “law of attraction,” “co-creation” and “manifestation” of abundance.
Great site.
Bob
brontebaxter said,
February 20, 2010 at 3:13 am
Thanks for your interesting comment, Bob. The only thing I would disagree with is your disparaging of the law of attraction, co-creation, and manifestation of abundance. Please see my blog article on this subject (one of the chapters in my online book – see left column on this blog site to find it), and you’ll understand why. Also, you may want to check out a book by Neville called “The Law and The Promise,” which is my favorite book on the law of attraction.
Best regards,
Bronte
Bob Ellal said,
February 20, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Don’t want to go round and round about the “Law of Attraction,” have done so many times on Chopra’s intent.com site. In a nutshell, people have added a metaphysical element to positive thinking, positive action, positive interactions with people–which leads to positive outcomes. The universe is neither benevolent or malevolent; it just “is.” If one thinks it’s possible to bend it to one’s will, like a sorcere–think of Aleister Crowley, the greatest mage of the last hundred years. He ended his life penniless, hopelessly addicted to morphine, sponging off people who were fascinated by his former celebrity. “My life is in my hands, not in heaven’s.” Taoist maxim. Which dovetails with Oliver Cromwell’s reply to one of his generals, asking whether his army should pray before battle: “Certainly, pray to God. But keep the powder dry.”
At any rate, I’m done with this site, off to find one that combines serious study of Eastern energy arts with critical thinking.
brontebaxter said,
February 21, 2010 at 3:42 am
Alister Crowley was a victim of his own demons. He thought he was powerful as “a mage,” but his power came from the beings he worshipped. Which of course is no power at all. Practitioners of magic are in debt to the beings they summon, and in time they must pay. That’s where the old stories come from about “the price of selling your soul to the devil.”
It’s a whole other story when you learn to access – through will – your own power within you, which – to my way of thinking – is infinite. We are all creative impulses of the infinite quantum field, and as such, can access it through intention. Have you ever studied quantum physics? I think not, because you’d find it provides ample models to support this theory.
Martial art traditions that teach accessing will are certainly on the right track. They teach one to harness one’s own internal power. But if they address only the visible dimensions of reality, they stop short. We are so much more than bodies that disintegrate. Real freedom, real power, come of learning the subtle dimensions of mind and how to manipulate it.
I caught your dig about “critical thinking,” obviously directed at me. I’m actually usually accused of being way too critical, way too much of a sceptic. About the only thing I’ve ever been taught that I still “believe in” is the power of the mind and will to create and bend outer reality. That’s not due to a lack of discernment but to my personal, direct experience. I’ve been working in my own life for years, experimenting with personal power, and my theories are founded on what I’ve found yields real results. I believe we’ve both just been conducting different kinds of experiments.
Bronte
Sunil said,
May 1, 2010 at 1:06 am
Thanks a lot for your articles. I’m from India and i can 100% agree with your views. All gods and goddess in India are here for one reason. The battle for your souls. period.
I was almost gone to the darkness by the sweet talk of yogis and gurus, its my will and to do what i felt right has gotten back my life. 99% of Indian population is claimed by the dark forces…i believe that is the case all over the world. In India it seems more extreme.
With that being said, i have met with some individuals who are more powerful than all the gods and demons combined. Those were the beings that came in human body and help me get out of the hypnotism. Its not easy, it took me 4 years to come out of the programing the evil ones did all my life for 28 years.
I believe there are forces that are helping humans beings to come out of hypnotism. Thank you again.
Carole said,
August 29, 2010 at 8:07 am
Bronte I certainly agree with most of what you have to say. As a former “seeker” I have spent many years trying to dehypnotize myself. When I was finally able to detach myself from certain “spiritual” groups I found myself saying, “I think I was hypnotized.” I also started to look at the “teachers” and “gurus” as psychic vampires. I am sorry to say that I had to have this experience several times, as at first I thought I had just not found a “real” guru or the “right” religion. Good grief, how many times must one get hit over the head? It’s taken me a long time to be able to say I don’t believe in any organized religion. It is so hard to deprogram. I’ve tried discussing with friends that the whole idea of enlightenment as presented by eastern religions is a scam and a myth, but most people get disturbed when I bring up this notion. It’s good to find some like-minded people. I look forward to reading more of your writings. Thanks, Carole
Kushta said,
September 19, 2010 at 1:06 am
Bronte,
To say that your writings against the doctrine of Monistic Oneness that sprung up from the Advaita school of Vedanta are refreshing would be an understatement! I am thrilled to finally see somebody exposing the fallacy of this doctirne that has now began to cling to the Western Religious Mystical Tradition with the atrophying of effect of rust clinging to iron. I have been increasingly disturbed by many well meaning adherents in both the Gnostic tradition and Jewish Kabbalah attempt to parallel their spirituality on par with Eastern traditions like Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta creating oxymoronic terms like ‘Buddhist Christianity’ or ‘Yoga of the West’. I have written a rebuttal on this current phenomenon called ‘The Fallacy of Gnostic Monism’ that is very much in sync with your arguments and conclusions.
As a Gnostic it is clear to me that the adherents of such paths do not understand the philosophical ramifications that proceed from the negation of the self into a monistic oneness with ‘God’ that you have so eloquently pointed out here and in other articles. They also don’t consider that the experience of merging into a oneness with God is done within the context of having both form and persona – being an individal. They also don’t consdier that the experience of love requires a giver and reciever, duality. Any form of spirituality that negates the possibility of experincing love in transcendence – thr true religion of the soul, is not worth pursuit, in my opinion. Dear sister, thank you for your Gnosis, it is both revolutionary and a neccessity in a world drowning in agnosis and suffering.
Blessings to you in the name of the Great Life…
– Kushta
Ecclesia Gnostica Parakletos
m said,
November 4, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Bronte,
You express yourself eloquently. You have a gift for communicating in writing.
Your point of view is fascinating.
I’m surprised I’d never come across your site, before tonight.
Several of your paragraphs hit me with such force because they described my own thoughts and experiences exactly, yet arranged them with a perspective that I’d not yet taken. Several times I’ve had to stop reading and look to the side and think for a few minutes before continuing, and I don’t do that ordinarily, no matter what the reading material is.
Yesterday I prayed to “God” (my conception of which seems to be what you call the “Infinite”) to give me understanding of how things really work, to give me protection against the mysterious entities which have unexpectedly had me in their sights the last few years, and to give me courage to carry on as my lone self without the protection of an intercessionary ‘junior’ god, Christian or otherwise, because I honestly just can’t bring myself to “believe” in (so thoroughly that I could follow it/him/her, even in my imagination) any of them, and to surrender to such an intermediary, even though I’ve got ample respect for and vague fear of many such mythical-or-real beings, and I think that the few essays I’ve read of yours tonight are a partial answer to that prayer request, because they have given me a perspective I’d never considered before. It was an odd path I traipsed across the internet tonight, originally looking up something entirely different, to land here at 3 am.
I’ll bookmark your site and try to get through the rest of your posts/essays/chapters in the coming weeks. I have a feeling I will agree with 80% of what you say, which is more than I agree with most people, and that I will think that you are a bit la-la/woo-woo on the other 20%. ;-) That’s not an insult!
Many of the folks who comment on your posts also have thoughtful, interesting, insightful things to say. It’s appreciated.
Thank you (Bronte and everyone else) for sharing and being genuine.
paul rio said,
December 14, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Interesting analysis of mantra meditation. i have been contemplating a connection from TM to some astral plane for some time. Especially after reading “Autobiography of a Yogi”. This could ex-
plain the mental conditioning that is so prevalent in the TM movement. Has anyone noticed that
John Hagelin, with a PhD in Physics, at times, sounds like a TM zombie? Is he under the influence of
some astral dimension?
josey said,
July 7, 2011 at 9:55 pm
AK and Bronte, Your comments were so good that I had to post them and link your website. I hope you don’t mind.
AK, You awakened. When I was in these Eastern religions I noticed the same about people, the lack of empathy for those harmed. I even read a book by Dr. Margaret Singer, which is posted on my blog which link I already gave here, but if I am anon here, then here it is again so you will know: http://downthecrookedpath-meditation-gurus.blogspot.com/2011/07/dangers-of-meditation.html
So this is to validate you feelings, yes, meditation according to dr. singer can flatten out your emotions.
Bronte, what I coped was your comment on the soul. So beautiful. I have given up eastern religions. I rather like the idea of experiencing the presence of God in everything. There has to be a soul, because without that there is not rebirth that the Buddhists talk about, even though they deny the soul. There just has to be a carrier of karma.
justdoit8 said,
July 21, 2011 at 9:14 am
You’ve hit the nail on the head here. I believe these so called “gods’ are serpent like. Reptilian in form maybe. I also believe they are the so called ‘pleiadians’ and lovely spirit guides that so many ‘psychics’ are channeling these days.
I was once into all this ‘New Age’ stuff myself. I used to meditate and do some forms of Yoga. Funny, I always felt drained after my Yoga sessions and had this feeling that energy was being sucked from the neck area. It took me some time to break out of it and found people such as yourself who put things into perspective for me. These ‘gods’ are full of deception and can take many forms and give us all sorts of lovely sounding messages.
I do believe there are good beings out there too. I just don’t believe they need to ‘channel’ through certain individuals, write books, have swanky internet sites, and make money. Money and spirituality don’t mix.
And the whole letting go of all your thoughts, feelings and emotions that a lot of meditation talks about I believe is totally wrong. Our individuality is a gift.
Thanks again for your writing. Very well put together and I feel what you’ve said here is of absolute importance, especially in this day and age of money making ‘gurus.’ ”
There is no teacher who can teach you anything new, he ca just help us to remember the things we always new.” We are our best gurus!
Scanlon Sayer said,
July 29, 2011 at 4:07 am
It’s been a while since I’ve visited this site. It’s an interesting one. I don’t agree with many of Bronte Baxter’s ideas, but I don’t find it necessary to argue. The Universe is large enough for maybe (?) infinite viewpoints. I would recommend “The Gods of Eden” even though I don’t agree with all of Bramley’s ideas — it’s still worth reading. I agree with Sitchin’s basic idea that humans are part starseed, the genetic hybrid engineered by ETs. I’ve just ordered a book that may give me some answers I’ve been looking for. Currently, I lean towards the gnostic view that this material world is ruled by Satan (which may be different than the traditional biblical view of Satan). In any case, I believe the Elites who rule this planet do not have good plans for the average man/woman. Wars intentionally started to create chaos, etc.
lrm said,
October 1, 2012 at 12:03 am
Mantra, possibly, is part of what was hijacked by the ‘gods’ and their human slave counterparts?
when you resonate with any sacred music [which does feel different, regardless of which religion or tradition is comes out of-there’s a sense of ‘sacredness’ and i’m sure most people can relate to sacredness, whatever object or form one projects it onto-it’s a feeling state that does exist….an awareness that is individual]-sacred music, including some mantra, does have this feeling. For myself, only when it is pure sounding, ie, not someone’s agenda but someone’s sincere expression, this vibration does provide clarity, upliftment and helps me access creative solutions, ideas, original thought, etc.
Mantra giving in small amount by many of these organizations-including that buddhist group-soka gakai-i just googled it(:-, it absolutely dumbed down and not of free-will. Couched in secrecy, manipulative use of the power of sound to achieve other means.
Since scientists are also discovering vibration as the basis of matter, I’m pretty sure there may be some legit use of mantra for personal empowerment.
Also, Siddhi powers are widely known to be a ‘distraction’ on the path. They come naturally but are not in and of themselves relevant or necessary to knowing yourself. But….everyone wants to be Harry Potter. And these types of powers certainly do a lot to convince others that you’ve got some validity, or that the interdimensional world has validity.
‘The path’ of course, it what each person makes it; but there is a ‘purity’ that is individual-ie, purely you. People mistakenly project that outwards onto ideas, beliefs, thought forms, intellectual or scientific constructs.
This purity ‘the truth will set you free’, gets lost in the process, b/c it’s your own definition of truth that will do it, not someone else’s.
But, I do think there are tools in many of these traditions, interwoven with cultural garbage and trappings, along with unsavory motivations, and the history of hierarchy in spiritual tradition and religion-all of which conspire to remove the beneficial aspects.
Well, i say to each his own-and reclaim what’s wise and true for you. Certainly, though,it will not be found within the confines of TM or any other organized ‘group’ where you must subjugate yourself to surrender to the teacher, to tradition, to particular etiquette [ways of bowing etc]. And that’s the real rub, I think: People say they want freedom, but I wonder if they really do? Security, certainty, belonging-these are the truer motivations, for the majority. Being honest with oneself is the best starting point, perhaps.
brontebaxter said,
October 1, 2012 at 10:33 am
Hi Irm
Regarding your remarks about mantras … Having used a TM mantra myself for 17 years, I can assure it did have a very pleasant and “sacred” feeling associated with using it. Nonetheless, I later found out the translation meant “I bow down to (name of a certain god).” Every mantra I have ever examined, in any tradition, when translated, amounted to the same thing: saying you bow down (or negate yourself) in front of some deity. So our subjective feelings can’t really be counted on to guide us here: the feelings all feel good. I guess an analogy would be that you can’t evaluate the goodness or badness of heroin just by assessing whether or not it gives you good feelings (because it does). We have to look beyond the feelings, which are one of the hooks that lure the innocent in.
Bronte
Stuart Resnick said,
October 2, 2012 at 10:08 pm
> Having used a TM mantra myself for 17 years… I later
> found out the translation meant “I bow down to (name
> of a certain god).” Every mantra I have ever examined,
> in any tradition, when translated, amounted to the same
> thing: saying you bowing down (or negate yourself)
> in front of some deity.
It’s VERY common these days for people to practice mantra for stress-reduction, pain management, etc, outside of any religious context. You’re simply wrong to suggest that mantras must have a particular meaning. Many people practice meditation without making these ideas about “God” the way you do.
The effect of mantra is a result of the intention you bring to it, along with the time, effort, and belief you put into it. The actual words of the mantra are completely trivial. Whether you repeat “Krishna” or “Jesus” or “Coca-Cola,” it makes no difference.
brontebaxter said,
October 3, 2012 at 4:48 am
Stuart
You have taken the bait and swallowed the hook. You honestly think words have no more power than that? You believe that you can entertain a thought on the subtlest levels of consciousness, as happens in mantra meditation, and that thought/phrase has no impact on your reality? If mantras are that powerless, why do you even recommend their use? How can they reduce stress or pain, if they are basically impotent?
I was one of the people, back in the ’70s, who approached corporations (at Maharishi’s behest), telling them the TM mantras are “meaningless, life-supporting sounds” that would “reduce employee stress,” etc. I was one of the wave of teachers responsible for inserting this false meme into the public consciousness. Surely there is stress reduction and other superficial benefits when one offers worship to the gods, because in exchange for bowing down to them, they grant boons. But at what cost in the long run? And it is a total deception saying that the mantras are “meaningless.”
Bronte
sudarshaisnamaskar said,
June 3, 2013 at 11:05 pm
Hi, Bronte
I only today found your Blog and this wonderful on-line book. I was one of Mahesh’s secretaries in the early 70s. I knew first-hand what a conniving piece of phooey he was and still was sufficiently brainwashed (thanks to repeating a mantra) to think there was some good in what TM really was.
I’ll go out on a limb, please feel free to saw it off, and say that the mantra is meaningless, all words are meaningless, until we make an association and that association is what gets us hooked. This is how Mahesh used his little TM gimmick to get us hooked so he could manipulate us and make us dependent on him. Many escaped. Many became institutionalized into Mahesh’s very devious thinking. He moulded his followers into “givers” – so many gave him everything they had.
brontebaxter said,
June 4, 2013 at 2:20 am
You were pretty high up in the org – inner circle? – if you were one of Maharishi’s secretaries. Would you care to share what you experienced / observed firsthand when you were in that role that convinced you he was “a conniving piece of hooey”? Were you aware this “monk” was sleeping with young girl disciples?
I beg to differ with your opinion that “all words are meaningless unless we make an association” with them. In the case of the mantras, we didn’t know the association, but still it was there. We were calling out, literally, a God’s name and (if we had an advanced technique) following it with the Sanskrit word for “I bow down.” That’s pretty powerful stuff. If I’m in a crowded auditorium and someone’s calling out my name, I’m going to hear them, whether they know the meaning of my name or not.
Bronte
Sunny said,
June 6, 2014 at 1:42 pm
You are absolutely correct!
Why only monks? Every saints, priests, bishops, etc., throughout all nations & religions…everyone are the birds of the same feather today!!! See and judge for yourself!
1. CHILD SACRIFICES IN LONDON –
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/child-sacrifices-in-london-7267353.html
2. Human Sacrifice in the Christian Church
http://www.fellowshipofthemartyrs.com/articles/44-about-the-church/89-human-sacrifice-in-the-christian-church-doug-perry-
3. http://sacrificeofchildren.blogspot.in/
4. Catholic Church & its Ritualistic Child Sacrifices Exposed –
http://www.vaticancrimes.us/2013/01/catholic-church-its-ritualistic-child.html
5. AMERICA’S CHILD SACRIFICE –
http://www.ucg.org/doctrinal-beliefs/americas-child-sacrifice/
And there are lot more to go… :-(
hippie99 said,
November 18, 2013 at 12:01 am
Enlightenment (non-duality, or extinction of the individual consciousness) as a spiritual goal has been very confusing to me since I first learn about it. I never wanted such a state. It is not something that could understood. On top of that, I had found that all the supposed Enlightened saints were nothing but cunning crooks.
In this I agree with Bronte Baxter about Enlightenment. And I know that TM was using tricks to get unwitting folks into taking on the Maharishi as their guru, their mantra initiation with its usual offerings of incense and fruits to his photo was actually a ceremony for becoming a disciple – I was tricked into it in 1984 not knowing the significance of the ceremony. I have no problem with Vedic mantras but I had like to know what it is about, instead of being told that it was a meaningless word with the right vibrations for me personally.
iChimp said,
April 9, 2014 at 2:09 am
Dear All and Bronte,
I want to thank you for taking time and effort to write your thoughts so that a random 50 year old person like myself can learn that she is not alone. :)
There are many questions here which cannot be answered because the questions are based IMO on a fundamental error of knowledge. The error resides in a simple role switch between the ego and the spirit leaving our souls in eternal limbo.
I will try to explain what I mean above:
Religions with all the pompous phraseology are nothing else but implicit instruments of mass behavior correction. As nicely put somewhere upstairs, he who dares to make smart waves, is promoted to ‘pethood’ (my word). I was raised atheist, so for the first half of my life I did not hang around too much spirit forming and reforming factories. I did not worry about my soul either as I was only aware of it at decision points where it had to be happy with taking the decision. In other words I always stayed true to myself or … my soul? I will return to this later.
The Cystem (I like this word!) on the other hand and the Society deals explicitly with behavior rules, power hierarchies and pecking orders. One has to be ‘adjusted’. Well Communism for the first 25 years and then the ‘self help’ and ‘self improvement’ technologies for the second 25 years made me a chimp with an adjusted EGO.
For some 10 years I have been trying to meditate do yoga, as my mental creative energy was on big decline. I did not succeed and while looking for a reason for my incapability I started to read anything and everything that came my way albeit at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum but nevertheless presented as ‘out of the norm’ and so it struck me that:
What we’ve been educated to call EGO is in fact the SOUL (albeit confused and immature) and that the so called SOUL is a completely repressed EGO with a fundamental arrested development as still today we are still looking for explanations at texts written thousand of years back???? translated and recycled over and over instead of looking forward?????? and use our potential for creation.
It is difficult to explain in more detail but think of one thing. When do you think someone is really happy? I am happy when I know and feel and act that way. So I propose that through the SOUL I know first and that my EGO feels second and so I act by choice which validates my existence.
My earliest notion about myself that occurred around 2-3 years old (confirmed by my mother, as I had the habit of hiding in the oddest places talking to my toys) was that I knew. That was and still is the centerpiece of myself. The fact that I am still looking to find out what I knew is a different story altogether. :) I am still learning. :)
So, again, thank you for your kindness in sharing your thoughts.
brontebaxter said,
April 9, 2014 at 2:59 am
iChimp:
Great sentence of yours: “What we’ve been educated to call EGO is in fact SOUL (albeit confused and immature). Yes! And this is what gurus want us to surrender and dissolve … the soul, the individual aspect of ourselves. I call that a travesty.
Bronte
CrissCross said,
June 6, 2014 at 1:47 pm
ARE NOT THESE TRAVESTIES???
http://www.remnantofgod.org/rccsex.htm
iChimp said,
April 9, 2014 at 5:01 am
Thank you Bronte! I am sorry for not being able to articulate on the gurus as I have not yet met any. However, from my failed (!) experimentation as well as reading about meditations and other practices that use repeated verbal / mental formulas I see them as a risk for reducing the individual capacity of enacting free will for critical and creative thinking.
Free will IMO is the birth right of every human being as a direct spontaneously creative manifestation of the soul.
Then the individual conscious and sustained effort of nurturing and growing the power of the EGO (which is currently called soul) to guide and educate (tame?) the SOUL (currently called ego, BTW always hungry for learning, but more often than not being prone to excess and mischief) generates the human SPIRIT (currently not talked about) hence generating individual CONSCIOUSNESS (currently talked about a lot) as a state of constant and conscious human creation of own spirit.
The individual conscious and sustained effort of nurturing and growing the power of the EGO to guide and educate (tame?) the SOUL generates the human SPIRIT hence developing individual CONSCIOUSNESS.
Fascinating perspective! Now it makes sense (at least for me).
Thank you Bronte, I am grateful and happy.
iChimp
Rob said,
June 5, 2014 at 10:37 am
You’re very articulate. I guess my main point was to say that Hinduism is very diverse in its beliefs and that mantras occur in many forms (and I should add, in many if not all faiths). And also that these gods that you distinguish from nature worship and elemental forces are actually the same. When you say the wind doesn’t need the gods to tell it where to go…that’s because the concept of the wind is the god. Hence the Vedic gods were literally Vayu (wind), Indra (storms), Agni (fire) Prthvi (earth), Surya (the sun).
I suppose at it’s core I just don’t believe in possession, but maybe this isn’t the place for that argument, because I don’t really have one: I’m just not convinced from what I’ve seen that anyone is possessed my a malevolent spirit absorbing our worship for nourishment. There are definitely ‘gurus’ who wield their power and learning like a leash. But that is what power hungry people do: through politics, religion, money etc. I think psychology explains much of what we see from demonic possessions, meditation, prayer, sensory deprivation, dream yoga etc. And the fact is that most followers of mantra meditation, or other ego removing practices still live pretty much the same life they would otherwise, just get a form of contentment out of their spiritual practice, and get less upset about the little things because they have perspective. If you wake up every morning and read playboy, you’ll go out into the world with that mindset, looking for happiness under every skirt. If you chant words that to you mean happiness is within, then you’ll leave the house thinking happiness is inside you. And if it’s true, all the better!
That said, humans are compulsive and some people get so enthused they turn their back on their duties in life. The practice effectively possesses them. This is a problem, but only one caused by demons of the mind. But then, much like how the Vedas turned nature into personified beings and westerners turned them into devils, we turn our negative emotions into external entities. Hateful or negative behavior is then seen as a result of government mind control, demons, fluoridation, and Metallica lyrics. But when you look at the Yoga Sutras, it doesn’t tell you what god to worship or how; it just says focus, be a good person, peel back the layers of your mind like an onion and unlock who you are. You don’t really lose yourself so much as you get a chance to pluck out those behaviors or parts of your personality you can see as roadblocks. The same way you pluck twinkies out of your diet, and twerking out of your vocabulary because you know you should.
Just my two cents, and I’ll check out some more of your blog and keep an open mind about it.
hippie99 said,
June 5, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Commenting on Rob’s comment and his quotation from the Bhagavad Gita that “It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another”? This means to accept your role as a dalit or slave than to strive for freedom and equality!!
By the way, Rob, Buddha didn’t fulfill his worldly obligations, he walked out on his wife and child, yet he is worshiped. Now irresponsible modern men would quote him as a supreme example of a saintly life when they decide to walk out on their parenting responsibilities!
brontebaxter said,
June 6, 2014 at 12:42 am
Excellent points, Hippie99.
Bronte
Ayla Lily Infinite said,
April 11, 2015 at 4:37 pm
Is it not that there exists different definitions of the word “ego” and is it not important to make this distinction? In my experience I have defined the difference as follows: when realising ones own divinity a certain disbelief (even fear?) sets in initially. It is the fear of being powerful and the disbelief of ones own identity. When this is the case and it is experienced as a very real fear and disbelief (yet almost a childlike awe)one is acting from the true ‘ego’ or true identity. When on the other hand, in contemplating ones identity the realisation is made that one is in fact a god and that one in fact is divinely powerful and the overwhelming feeling is that of pride and glee and thoughts of using that power to promote only oneself it is the false ego who is making the realisation. The test one can self-administer is as follows. When you have realised your own true identity as being a divinely powerful being, capable of creating and you view others as the same (equal to yourself, neither above nor below) even when they have not made the realisation yet, and your primary concern is to find gentle ways to guide them rather than to ridicule or oppress them you are operating in true ego or true identity. This is often experienced as a deep longing even aching desire to help others, to set them free or to ‘wake them up’. Yet with the full knowledge that one must tread lightly because the possibility always exists that one could create a monster rather than an angel in the process. When you find yourself viewing others who have not made the realisation as somehow less than yourself, lower forms of expression or ignorant and deserving of being fooled and conned you are operating in false ego which puts you at risk of becoming as big of a playground bully as the false gods you have just managed to release yourself from. To put in perspective, this ‘realisation’ does not happen over-night or in the blink of and eye (not yet because there are too few who do) and at present it is still a long and painful process oscillating between two polar opposites. Like a balancing act, walking the tightrope. Perhaps it would suffice to say that humans are ‘gods in the making’ and still toddlers at that, in the bigger scheme of things and as a newly ‘awakened’ soul ones overwhelming sensation is often that of helplessness due to the magnitude of the power of the trance faced by 99% rather than powerfulness. ‘;Awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’ in its true form right now still in 2015 can be likened unto a child waking up from a deep sleep, delighted to be alive, brimming with energy and joy to find the sun shining outside in a brilliant clear blue sky and all it wants to do is to run outside and go play yet it is unable to leave the house because everyone is still sleeping and the child finds itself all alone with nobody around to share its bubbling joyspring of life with. Such a child could grow so despondent, cold and lonely because it is unable to shake anyone out of their slumber. Such a child also knows that waking someone up before they are ready to open their eyes makes for grumpiness and possibly a scolding and is never a good idea so the child just sits around patiently/impatiently observing quietly those who are still sleeping….perhaps whispering softly just their name close to their ear yet not too close…. And sometimes the child gets so despondent that it forcefully contains its excitement and pushes its energy back into the box like the clown on the spring of the Jack in the Box….it can happen that the child even decides to go back to sleep to give others a chance to wake up on their own…and sometimes it will lay there quietly and patiently waiting, pretending to be asleep… As a parent nothing makes you more proud than to find your toddler quietly playing by him/her self on a weekend morning :) There is no need to force anyone to wake up before they are ready even when it feels as though your very life depends on it. All in good time.
stormyblue79 said,
March 13, 2017 at 3:30 am
The best article I have read in a long, long time. Expresses everything I feel to be the truth deep down after years of study and many strange experiences with meditation and religion and beings from other realms. If my deepest intuition could write an article after digesting all the information, this would be it.
Dirk said,
March 10, 2018 at 7:34 pm
How about Yoga Asanas? Are they just means to relax the body or do they lead to losing ones energy to the ‘Gods’, too? (like it is the case with mantras) Anyone?
brontebaxter said,
May 23, 2019 at 6:27 am
I don’t see any problem with yoga asanas.
Bronte