Glossary & Endnotes

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Abyss: An experience of the worst possible sense of grief, forsakenness, helplessness and darkness… the final gift of which is the clear and rewarding insight into the worthlessness of a life devoid of an acute awareness of Anima, Love or God that lies at its core and which sustains it.

Advaita: A Sanskrit word for ‘non-duality’

Advaitin: A proponent of the doctrine of non-separation, namely Advaita.

Appa: Patrick’s Teacher (formerly Hugo Maier)

Arunachala: The name of the sacred mountain in south India to which Sri Ramana Maharshi was drawn to in his youth.

Awareness: See ‘Awareness and Consciousness’ under End Notes

Berg: A colloquial abbreviation for the Natal Drakensberg mountain range.

Bhagavan: Lord, or a term encompassing both the reverence and affinity that devotees have for the Lord, in this case for Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Booster rocket: The large rocket attached to the space shuttle which has been referred to in the unTeaching as a metaphor for the double-edged sword of the ego – a blessing in its ability to lift one from a tamasic state to a rajasic one but a drag or dead weight if not jettisoned after it has achieved its purpose.

Cecil Margot: A Supreme Court judge and war hero. At the end of the war in Europe he was chosen to lead a VE Day victory fly-past of 1,000 Allied aircraft over Austria.

Centre: The quote of Sri Ramana Maharshi in this regard – “Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart or the seat of Consciousness it is all the same. The point to be grasped is this, that Heart means the very core of our being, the Centre, without which there is nothing whatever.”

Cognitive: A cognitive is one who naturally defaults to intellect, reason and logic and who’d be naturally inclined to the path of wisdom/knowledge (Jnana yoga in Sanskrit).

Conceptual ‘reality’: See End Notes

Consciousness: See ‘Awareness and Consciousness’ in End notes.

Diksha: A Sanskrit word for ‘Initiation’ by a Guru, by ‘look’, ‘touch’ or ‘word’.

Experiential-field: The sum total of our conscious, subconscious or unconscious memories/experiences including all perceptions, concepts, conclusions, beliefs, premises, archetypal images, hidden significances, karmic records, symbols etc.

Exploring:  This is a reference that the unTeaching makes to the early years of a seeker’s life in which they are seeking ‘truth’ outside of themselves and in which the search is directed to the ‘circumference’ of life…. to some nebulous ‘that, then, there’. A seeker on the other hand has called off this outer search, sensing that what they are truly seeking lies in ‘this, here, now’ and are drawn inwards to the Centre of their being.

Extraordinary events: See End Notes

Gangamma: The Ganges. A holy river in north India referred to as Ganga or more endearingly by devotees as Ganga–Amma or ‘Gangamma’ (Mother Ganga).

Hard yards: In sport, the team player who takes the ball from their own back line, running with it all the way through the opposition players to the goal posts or try line, doing all the hard work before finally having to pass it to a team mate to score the try or shoot the goal. 

Hugo Maier: The writer’s Teacher who later became known as ‘Appa’.

Human awareness: See ‘awareness and Consciousness’ in End Notes

Human sentience: This is taken to mean the same as human awareness – which is not Consciousness as the word is used in this text.

Lila: A Sanskrit word used to describe all of manifestation (including the cosmos) as being the creative ‘play’ of the Divine Absolute.

Madiba: The name by which most South Africans fondly refer to the prime minister who was voted into power after the very first multi-racial elections in 1994 – Nelson Mandela.

Maharshi: The local rendition of the Sanskrit title ‘Maha Rishi’ (Great Enlightened-Master).

MahaSamadhi: The shedding of the physical sheath or form of a realised Master.

Mainstream mind-set: A reference to the set of core values, beliefs, premises and viewpoints that are common to any specific collective or society that serve as a conscious/subconscious bond between its people.

Mind: ‘mind’ does not refer to the Vedic vision of the 4 different aspects of mind. In this context ‘mind’ refers merely to the ‘mainstream’ meaning of the word, i.e. the rationalising, projecting, judging aspects of mind.

Mind-set: An established and fairly inflexible set of values, beliefs & viewpoints that are held by an individual and which are not easily relinquished even in the face of reason or logic.

Mindfreeness: The temporary absence of any trace of mind as we ‘know’ it. It is not the absence of thought & thinking such as that pertaining to a stilled or blank mind, but the absence of that specific aspect of our ‘person’/mind/being that projects duality. It is the very antithesis of absent-mindedness… a mindfreeness in which all dichotomies (including free will & destiny) are resolved into the Silence of Being. See End notes

Mystic: A Mystic is the embodiment of love and wisdom, existing in equanimity beyond the duality pertaining to thought & reason.

Nicol Campbell: The founder of the School of Truth. See End notes

Namarupa: A Sanskrit work meaning ‘name and form’ or the mental and physical aspects of the body-mind-sense complex of a human being.

Paradox: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.

Path of the Masters: The book written by Julian Johnson, a satsangi associated with the Radha Soami Satsang Beas community in north India (‘satsangi’ – Sanskrit for ‘spiritual seeker’).

Pendant: The pendant (or medallion) that appeared to have its roots in Christianity which led him not only through the Satsangi tradition (outwardly at variance with orthodox Christianity) but also beyond to the all-inclusive way of Sri Ramana Maharshi who pointed to the un-nameable One of a 1000 Names inhering in our Innermost sense of ‘I’ or Self.

Peloha: The most recent name to be associated with the retreat centre in Hout Bay.

Pujas: Spiritual rituals directed with veneration and devotion to a Deity or aspect of God.

Rajas: The quality of action, passion, motivation, alertness.

Rajasic: descriptive of someone who is imbued with the quality of rajas.

Sadhu: A religious ascetic, mendicant or any holy person in Hinduism who has renounced the worldly life. Sometimes referred to as a Sannyasin (if a male) or Sannyasini (if female).

Sage: An extremely wise person, mystic or spiritual teacher. In some cultures also taken to be an Enlightened being.

Sangha: An assembly of people held together by the common denominator of a search for the Truth.

Sannyasa: A form of asceticism which is marked by renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, and has the purpose of spending his/her life in peaceful, spiritual pursuits. Wikipedia

Saraswati: A title bestowed on a venerated Traditional Advaita Teacher in honour of The Hindu goddess of knowledge, wisdom and learning.

Satsang: A coming together or association of truth seekers.

Seeking: is an urge of the Soul, drawing it inwards by longing or nostalgia for what it once knew. Unlike ‘exploring’ it is no longer just a propensity or desire of an outwardly turned mind.

Self: Consciousness in the absolute meaning of this word – the Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent Principle of both seen, unseen, manifested and unmanifested. The totality of all that is. The antithesis of ‘self’ or persona.

self: A mental image ‘picture’ that one has of oneself. A personal collage of concepts, beliefs, values, premises etc that one has borrowed or gone into agreement with, and which is continuously being modified or altered by circumstance, people, events and time.

Sister Bernadette: See End Notes

Soul: The spiritual, immutable, immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.

Sri Ramana Maharshi: The enlightened Master and Sage associated with the sacred Arunachala Mountain of south India.

Sri Ramanashramam: The colloquial word for the ashram of the sage Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Shanthimalai: The name of Appa’s ashram at the foot of Arunachala.

Starling puja: An event in Nature that happened on PeLoHa at the very start of lockdown which related to the extraordinary behaviour of a flock of birds known as starlings, and which was subsequently been referred to as the Starling puja. (See ‘Extraordinary Events’ in End notes)

Stuck viewpoints: A particular way of ‘seeing’ something or someone that remains impervious to change, no matter how much the person or event my change or transform. Much like the aphorism ‘you cannot teach new tricks to an old dog’.

Supreme Being: As the word is used here it is a synonym for the First Cause, the One without a 2^nd, God or the non-dual Self (chose your word).

Swarupa: Our true nature beyond the outer form or appearance to which we return upon awakening from the waking dream. The essence of what one is at the core of our Being, undivided, whole, at-one-with-all. That which mainstream mind is unaware of given its fixation on namarupa (name and form). Being limitless and timeless it survives death; variously referred to as Soul, Spirit, Atman, Atma, and Consciousness, to mention a few.

Tamas: The quality of inertia, inactivity, dullness, or lethargy.

Tapas: The effort & commitment relating to spiritual practice.

The 18^th Elephant: See End Notes

The way of AND: See End Notes (The way of AnD)

Truth:  That which is without form, timeless, limitless and prior to all manifestation. Being the ultimate independent Reality it is often expressed as Consciousness-Existence-Limitlessness (or Sat-Chit-Ananda in Sanskrit). In Christian parlance: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). In the School of Truth referred to as the all-pervasive Omniscient-Omnipotent-Omnipresent Being.

Turiya: See End Notes

unTeaching: Is an antidote to formal education which honours the root of what education was intended to convey (as derived from the Latin root ‘educe’) i.e. to  lead forth or bring out the essence of something, not to the stuffing in of conceptual data. It has nothing to do with the doctrine of AND but merely a tool to express the essence of this doctrine.

Vasana: A behavioural tendency or karmic imprint which influences the present behaviour of a person. It is a technical term in Indian philosophy, particularly Yoga, as well as Buddhist philosophy and Advaita Vedanta. (Wikipedia)

Vasanas: Plural of vasana.

Waking dream: The ‘normal’ day to day life of people which Enlightened Masters see as an illusion that needs to be awoken from.

Zen in the art of archery: See End Notes

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Endnotes

Awareness and Consciousness

The unTeaching draws a distinction between the awareness of the ‘person’ and Consciousness; proposing that human ‘awareness’ relates to Consciousness as moonlight relates to Sunlight. In as much as the moon can only reflect a limited portion of the totality of the Light of the Sun, so too does the persona reflect only a tiny portion of the totality of Consciousness. Putting it differently… Sunlight is the Truth and the Source while moonlight is a fragment of reflected Light having no independent existence of its own.

Consciousness represents an unfathomable all-pervasive principle; the Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent presence referred to by Nicol Campbell, or as others have expressed it… the substratum or Mystery relating to the ‘Mind’ of God, while human awareness applies to the mind of man.  Consciousness is a profound word referring to the totality of all that IS, whereas awareness is that funnelled fragment peculiar to the human condition, which is not referred to as Consciousness… in the same way that moonlight is not referred to as Sunlight. “Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart or the seat of Consciousness, it is all the same. The point to be grasped is this, that Heart means the very core of our being, the Centre*, without which there is nothing whatever.” (Maharshi’s Gospel)

Coming full circle (Patrick’s submission)

Conceptual reality

From the perspective of Truth, the conceptual reality being referred to in this writing is no different in essence to the virtual reality in which computer games are played on a computer… both are projected ‘realities’ of mind, not the Reality of the Sage which is devoid of ‘mind’ as we know it.

Extraordinary events

The astonishing behaviour of various species of wildlife that started with starlings & doves, including incidents relating to two owls & a dove, many instances of butterflies alighting on humans, a round of robins and 3 squirrels, all of which took place within a span of 5 or 6 days. Unfortunately only the first 3 were recorded.

Starlings & doves

“River of Love, river of Grace”

was a theme touched on (during the last day of the zoomed retreat on 3 May 20) acknowledging the Love & Intelligence that is governing every aspect of manifestation and which may be sensed whenever the mind is set free – to be replaced by the awe and wonder of an open ‘heart’.

The Ganges flows unerringly back home to its Source…

With this theme a large flock of Starlings appeared and showered a stream of big red berries onto the roof of the meditation hall. Those who were linked to us in Pretoria were marvelling that the sounds coming from Hout Bay were orchestrated almost to the second to coincide with the sounds of a vocal flock of Ibis birds that were circling the Zoomed venue in Pretoria.  A roundletter was sent to the zoomed participants who were not present in the hall together with an MP3 recording of the event for their amusement.    

Two owls & a dove

Early one morning an owl arrived, taking up a position on the lower branch of a Plane tree in front of the Homestead veranda. It was followed shortly thereafter by a 2nd owl which did the same and only 2 to 3 meters from the first one.  A few minutes later, and quite surprisingly a dove alighted in front of both and in such a way as to form a closed triangle between the two meat-eaters and the vegetarian. All 3 remaining still for several minutes.

The appearance of a flock of Doves that landed on the front lawn just as the Starlings had finished their ‘delivery’ was quite noteworthy.

Butterflies alighting
regrettably only these photos were captured

Mindfreeness

For the perception (or illusion) of duality to disappear, the mind needs to disappear. What pertains prior to such disappearance is a state referred to as the ‘waking dream’ by Bhagavan, while ‘That’ which remains after such ‘disappearance’ could be referred to as mindfreeness.

Mindfreeness (if permanent) is the defining characteristic of Liberation, Moksha or Enlightenment. Patrick is aware of 3 ways in which such mindfreeness can occur, namely…

A stopped mind (which can last for seconds or minutes). Can be caused by a shock, a cognition, an overwhelming wave of awe, reverence, wonder or gratitude or even a hearty laugh on hearing the punchline of a joke that really resonates. When the thinking mind re-appears it has undergone virtually no change,

A suspended mind as in Kensho or Satori (which can last for days, weeks or months before retuning). Can be caused by diksha* from an Enlightened Being, a sudden flash of profound insight or a major mental cognition which releases the thinking mind, and when it does return it is initially to a satvic state, with the crossover from mindfreeness to satvic mind being imperceptible and usually missed by most… the neo-enlightenment of the modern west and

An erased mind (which Sri Ramana Maharshi refers to) is one in which all vasanas*, impressions, karmic residues, memories, beliefs etc have been burned off through incredible and prolonged spiritual practice or tapas* (the timeless Enlightenment of Bhagavan or the Buddha, an extremely rare phenomenon).

Namaskar

(“Gnosticism” stems from the Greek word, gnosis, meaning Knowledge)

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Nicol Campbell and the School of Truth

An extensive correspondence is carried on with inquirers – thousands of letters each month, they report – seeking help in every sort of problem that the human individual faces. Prayers are continuous throughout the day, and sessions are held daily in the Johannesburg Chapel, attended by most of the staff.The student sums up briefly the teachings of Nicol Campbell, which are of course the teachings of the School of Truth. Their main points are:

1. Man is God in manifestation, not a forlorn entity fighting a losing battle against adverse situations and events.

2. Love is the fulfilment of the law of progress in all good, and only as he loves all things – great and small – does the individual truly live.

3. God was from the beginning, and is, and ever shall be the supply of man’s every need, the consummation of his every right desire, his all- sufficiency in all things, his guarantee of complete well-being here on earth, so that in the entire universe he has nothing to fear, nothing to ask for, nothing in which to seek change.

4. His one duty on this and every other plane of consciousness is to love, first God, and then his neighbour – who is himself – as himself.

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Pilots Corner

The 18^th Elephant

The 18^th elephant is an eastern parable involving the distribution of assets in a Father’s estate amongst his 3 sons. In his will he had left 1/2 of his entire estate to his eldest son, 1/3 to his second son and 1/9th to his youngest with the residue to go to the poor. The executors of the estate could honour the condition of the Will with respect to the various classes of assets that were being apportioned until it came to the division of the 17 elephants that were highly valued at the time.

Long did they argue about how this was to be achieved without killing one or more of the elephants in order to adhere to the letter of their Father’s will.  Their discussions and arguments just tended to generate more heat than light until a wise man, mounted on his own elephant approached the group of frustrated relatives and advisors. Seeing the confusion he politely asked what the nature of the problem might be, and upon being informed he dismounted from his elephant and said “I can help you”. Please bring all of your Father’s elephants here where we are standing and arrange them in a line moving away from us, and then please add my elephant to the far end of the line”.

Surprised they replied that they could not possibly accept this ‘gift’ and that the problem needed to be resolved amongst themselves. Smiling, he finally persuaded them to do as requested, and then looking at the eldest son asked, “what is your share?” to which he replied “a half sir”. The wise man responded by asking “would you be content with 9”? Sceptically the eldest said “yes, but…” which the wise man interrupted by saying “then please take the first 9 and walk away… and don’t look back” (to see what the others will get).

Then to the 2^nd son, “what is your share?” to which he replied “a third sir”. The wise man responded “would you be happy with 6”, to which the 2^nd son also responded “yes but…” and the wise man interrupted in the same way… “then please take the next 6 and leave and don’t look back”. When the 3rd son was approached he was smiling because he could see that 1/9th of 18 was 2 and that there were 3 left. After he had happily taken the nearest two the wise man smiled, remounted his elephant and continued on his way.

The 18th elephant* had been introduced into the group of squabbling beneficiaries and then removed in much the same way that the aviation property had been introduced into Patrick’s life and then removed: In both cases that which was temporarily ‘added’ was nothing more than a catalyst to bring about change, whether by release, resolution or a new way of moving forward. Eventually nothing remained but deep gratitude.

Turiya

Up until recent decades, the majority of westerners were only aware of 3 ontological states of existence, namely; the sleep state, the dream state & the ‘awake’ state (with ‘day-dreaming’ or ‘absent-mindedness’ merely a modification of the ‘awake’ state). In the East one finds reference to 4 states of existence: The first 2 being the same as the first 2 above but in the west what is referred to as the ‘awake state’ is not taken to be an ‘awake’ state at all, being seen as essentially no different to the dream state except that one is no longer in bed snoring.

While eastern mystics refer to the ‘awake’ state as illusory, an Enlightened Master (such as Sri Ramana Maharshi) has referred to it as the ‘waking dream’ … declaring it to be no different to the ‘sleep dream’. Awakening from this ‘waking dream’ gives rise to the 4th and final state known as the Awakened state or Turiya… where one has awoken from the limitations & conditioning inherent in human awareness and mind to Universal Consciousness, or from mental understanding to the Knowing (referred to in the Vedas). Only in the extremely rare case where this is permanent can it be referred to as Enlightenment.