WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

Does heaven exist? With well over 100,000 plus recorded and described spiritual experiences collected over 15 years, to base the answer on, science can now categorically say yes. Furthermore, you can see the evidence for free on the website allaboutheaven.org.

Available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086J9VKZD
also on all local Amazon sites, just change .com for the local version (.co.uk, .jp, .nl, .de, .fr etc.)

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

This book, which covers Visions and hallucinations, explains what causes them and summarises how many hallucinations have been caused by each event or activity. It also provides specific help with questions people have asked us, such as ‘Is my medication giving me hallucinations?’.

Available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088GP64MW 
also on all local Amazon sites, just change .com for the local version (.co.uk, .jp, .nl, .de, .fr etc.)

Suppression

Contemplation and detachment

Category: Actions

Type

Voluntary

Introduction and description

The activity of Relaxation uses some of the techniques used in contemplation and detachment, but true contemplation can be achieved under conditions and in environments which are anything but relaxing.  You have no need to lie down, and the place you do it in can be teeming with people and noise.

In order to understand the following it may be helpful to have the Model of the Mind open for cross reference.

Functionally, the objective is to withdraw all inputs to the Will in order that the Composer takes over completely from the Will giving the person whatever spiritual experience is appropriate at the time. 

The aim is to turn inward on ourselves, focus all our awareness on nothing!  Thus no streams of thought, no memories, no attempt to think of anything.  To do this it requires us to

Unlike many of the other mechanisms described on this site – this is an act of Will, it is not achieved by a set of diversionary tactics, or by chemicals or plants or manual manipulation, it is achieved via the mind only.

It is extremely difficult to do, for reasons which should be obvious, but if achieved, very very profound spiritual experiences are possible,  experiences of 'out of time' , profound flashes of inspiration or wisdom, overwhelming waves of divine love, and also genuine meetings with Intelligences and other Spirit helpers.

Even if the profounder experiences are not obtained, the Visions obtained should be long lasting and appear wholly real, there will be a feeling that you are living the vision you are receiving.

Background

This activity is found in practically all religions, but it is a mechanism that has been a stalwart of deep and profound intuitional thought  - the source of inspiration and wisdom for many geniuses - for thousands of years.  It can be found in Shinto and Qigong, even in Magic. It is practised extensively in Jainism and Taoism.

Greeks - The Greeks used the activity extensively – one of its major proponents was Socrates and I have an observation for him. 

Hindu and yoga - Samadhi is the Hindu and yoga term meaning contemplation or 'absorption'.  There are four types of samadhi 

  • Savitarka samadhi or 'concentration upon gross objects'
  • Savidhara samadhi – concentration upon 'subtle elements'.
  • Sa-asmita samadhi –  contemplation of your Higher spirit
  • Sa-ananda Samadhi– contemplation upon 'the void'.

Within the overall category of samadhi the first type of 'distinguished' contemplation – called Samprajnata samadhi is contemplation upon actual 'things'.

Christian - The Catholic Christian brand of this activity is called contemplation and introversion.  You will find it mentioned a great deal in the texts of many theological works in the Catholic religion.  One is apt to led to believe that all the ‘saints’ of the Christian church achieved their visions and hallucinations and so called ‘revelations’ in a spontaneous way or by doing good works and penances.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  These people worked and worked and worked at techniques like these to get what they did.  They treated spiritual experience and its attainment a bit like an Olympic athlete treats the Olympics – they trained every day and ‘went for gold’ as it were.  Because of the level of sacrifice they underwent, they tended to treat anyone who obtained spiritual experience any other way with deep disdain.  This quote is wonderful, very funny and just a dash too elitist …..

...this dilute cosmic emotion and limp spirituality hangs, as it were, on the skirts of the true seekers of the Absolute 

Bahá'í Faith - Contemplation and detachment are also an important practise in the Bahá'í Faith.

"Thou hast inquired about detachment. It is well known to thee that by detachment is intended the detachment of the soul from all else but God. That is, it consisteth in soaring up to an eternal station, wherein nothing that can be seen between heaven and earth deterreth the seeker from the Absolute Truth. In other words, he is not veiled from divine love …."

Buddhism - Detachment is a central concept in Zen Buddhist philosophy. One of the most important technical Chinese terms for detachment is "wú niàn", which literally means "no thought."  

Judaism and kabbalah - It is employed in the Kabbalah which leads in to the approach by using levels of prayer

Keter shem tov – section 387
In prayer one needs to put all one's energy into the words and move in this manner from letter to letter, until one forgets about the physical world.  One should think that the letters join together and connect to one another. 
This is a great joy, for if one can take pleasure in physical matters, how much more so in spiritual ones.  This is the world of formation. 
After that one comes to the letters in thought, where one does not hear what is said.  In this one comes to the world of Creation. 
After that one comes to the quality of Nothingness where all a person's physical powers are nullified.  This is the world of emanation, the aspect of wisdom

Sufism - For the Sufis, Safar dar watan means ‘travelling in the Homeland’ and for many western translators this means a literal visit to one’s place of birth.  But this is a totally wrong interpretation – going home means going back to the spiritual plane, it means going back to ‘source’ to the spiritual world and the way one does that is by going inside oneself not travelling in a literal sense.
For the purposes of understanding, it cannot really be separated from the additional technique of Khilwat dar anjuman (or khalwat dar anjuman) — “retirement in company”, which is developing the ability to detach from and distance oneself from external noise, disturbance and confusion when in company, and remain tranquil.
So once you have taught yourself khalwat dar anjuman, you can then Safar dar watan!

 

Philosophical interest - Contemplation and detachment  also became a subject of interest during the last two decades of the nineteenth century - in France, England, and in America from 1890 to 1910.  The people who started to get involved in this form of thinking tended to be those interested in eastern philosophy in general, for example, William James, Boris Sidis, Morton Prince, and William McDougall.

Others - Carl Gustav Jung also took an interest in the effects of detached thinking and recognised that it ‘described special or extreme cases of the normal operation of the psyche’.   He believed that dissociation is needed in order for consciousness  - the Will - to operate.  When problems get too much, it enables the Composer to temporarily take over and solve the problem, thus a ‘flip-flop’ type approach to problem solving between the Will and Composer can be highly productive. 

Method

One extremely important activity that is a prerequisite for this to work is Believing in the spiritual world [faith]. 

If you turn to the Model you will see that the Will has a number of inputs which it uses to direct our course of action, in order to starve the Will of inputs you have to do the following: 

Stilling the Memory
The memory needs to be subdued partly because it provides us with belief systems and information that may be wholly wrong and may lead us to interpret what we see incorrectly, also because we need to starve the Reasoning function of input in order that it is quelled.  Thus since the Reasoning system uses Memory, we need to quell the Memory.  Memory is also a source for 'thoughts' or memories, pictures and thoughts that are unconnected with Reasoning.  Again these have to go, albeit temporarily.  If the Memory is full of sad or worrying things, then this elimination is not at all easy, so there is a case to be made for sorting out your Memory and making peace with yourself before you tackle this mechanism.  Thus a prerequisite step before this step is Suppressing memory

Calming Emotions
This technique does not work via overload thus one has to calm all your emotions.  In order to do this it you should have performed the activity Reducing and controlling emotions.

Eliminating Objectives 
All of our objectives need to go.  All our wants, desires, wishes and hopes need to be [temporarily] squashed.  It actually helps to squash many of them on a more permanent basis and lead a much simpler life, as switching objectives on and off is no easy task, thus a prerequisite activity is Reducing Desires

Eliminating Obligations
Obligations are usually input to us as Perceptions – something we have to do then and there, or are fed to us from Memory.  Obligations  - what we have to do as opposed to want to do – also need to be temporarily suspended and forgotten.  Again, better to get them sorted out on a more permanent basis or get them sorted before you start doing this, so they don't keep popping their head above the parapet.  And again a simpler life helps in this.  Use Suppressing obligations

Eliminating Threats
Immediate threats  - being cold, hungry, headache, feeling sick, etc need to be sorted out, but so do long term threats - worries and things that go round and round your head diverting you away from any sense of peace and tranquillity.   These are very difficult to get rid of in practise, but they have to go, if you are to have any chance of getting this mechanism to work. So before you start, there is a prerequisite activity – Reducing threats. 
Given that some threats are from our own nervous system it is also helpful to have performed Exercising and keeping fit in order to minimise any sensations from this area, along with the activity of Healing yourself.  It also helps to have used Dietary moderation before starting. 

Eliminating Opportunities 
Opportunities are things we have perceived that make it possible that we can achieve our objectives.  In this we need to ignore opportunities.  But it helps in this to have used Reducing opportunities before you start.  If you have genuinely reduced your desires [Reducing desires] , 'opportunities' will come and go and be ignored, because without desires or wants any event will just be an event. 

Will
The Will itself directs actions, and again in order for this activity to work, you must have trained the Will not to seek activity, to be placid and accept no activity.  The Personality is the driver to activity as such there has to be some attempt to control the input of the Personality.  Thus one prerequisite activity is to Squash the big ‘I am’ 

Perceptions
This is the difficult part because you have not sensorily deprived yourself other than for example closing your eyes.  This requires you to concentrate all your 5 senses on the idea of nothing, ignore all perceptions coming in and go ‘inward’, concentrating at first perhaps on some visualised object, then on a single object then nothing and then going deeper within yourself.  You learn this by stages.  The stages and their order are as follows 

 Some additional helpful pointers can be found in the following descriptions that come from people who have used the techniques and can thus write about what they know 

We have also found a very good starting method - Mooji Hawaiis simple meditation for beginners

How it works

It may be helpful to refer to the generic description of How spiritual experience works to see this activity in context.

The Emotions have been stilled, the Nervous sensations and the 5 senses input is being ignored, the Personality has been squashed, the Objectives – both Desires and Obligations have been suppressed, there is no attempt made to learn from Perceptions - whatever happens, happens,  all recall from Memory has been suppressed, thus there is nothing requiring Reasoning and thus Reason is suppressed.

The only input thus entering the Conscious mind and the Will is from the Composer and the Higher spirit and it is thus that you get a complete unsullied unfettered spiritual experience.

It is via this route that Nirvana and moksha can be experienced and it is via this route that Annihilation takes place.

But one should not expect these to be the immediate outcomes of having achieved this level of concentration.  Before these you may experience Visions or simple lessons or even Perception recall.

You may experience what it is to be ‘Out of time’.  If we cut out our Perceptions completely there is nothing to give us any sense of time – we go beyond time and into that space of stillness that is Divine love itself.  Our sense of time lies in the mind itself, time is an idea, a concept to be thought as a by-product of consciousness,  so leave this behind and you will indeed discover what eternity is.

So all the most ‘important’ types of experience spiritually are achieved via this route, but of course you may never get them, because in the end, the spirit world and your Composer decide what you need at the time, and whether you are ready for such gifts.

Advantages

Some of the ultimate spiritual experiences are achieved via this route.

Disadvantages

Almost impossible for the average person to achieve [and if you think you are not an average person then you are already on the path to failure because your ego is going to get in the way]

It takes years and years and years and years to learn how to do this, living the life I have described.

Observations

Contemplation is probably the most difficult mechanism of spiritual experience to use, firstly because so much training is required using other activities before it can ever hope to succeed  and secondly because this is a type of activity entirely reliant on you and that training, there is no help from stimulation or any form of other ‘prop’. It is also a form of contradictory activity because you use the Will to still the Will.  Enormous self-discipline is required and thus you need considerable perseverance and determination, a feature often of a strong personality – and yet to succeed the Personality must at the moment of action be entirely squashed.

So few have genuinely been here. I have given some people the benefit of the doubt in the list of observations, but it may well be that whatever they achieved was more properly ascribed to Relaxation and not pure contemplation and detachment.

Related observations

Healing observations

Hallucination

Wisdom, Inspiration, Divine love & Bliss

Out of time

Near death, Out of time, Out of body, Rebirth

Enlightenment

Kundalini, Ecstasy, Moksha, Nirvana and Annihilation

In time

Synaesthesia, Pure or enhanced perception, Inter composer communication, Vision, Dream, Perception recall, Exploring group perception

Prophecy

Dying

Environmental Influence

Other observations