Cine este Dumnezeu ?

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Insula Tonalului.docCarlos_Castaneda_-_04_-_Tales_of_Power.pdf


Cine este Dumnezeu ?
Mare ca Dumnezeul nostru.
Tu esti Dumnezeu,
Carele faci minuni.
(Psalm 76,13-14)



Cine este Dumnezeu
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Din volumul "Povestiri despre Putere = Tales of Power" al lui Carlos Castaneda, capitolul "Tonalul si Nagualul", subcapitolul "Insula Tonalului = The island of the tonal":

5. The Island of The Tonal
Don Juan and I met again the next day at the same park around noon. He was still wearing his
brown suit. We sat on a bench; he took off his coat, folded it very carefully, but with an air of
supreme casualness, and laid it on the bench. His casualness was very studied and yet it was
completely natural. I caught myself staring at him. He seemed to be aware of the paradox he was
presenting to me and smiled. He straightened his necktie. He had on a beige long-sleeved shirt. It
fitted him very well.
"I still have on my suit because I want to tell you something of great importance," he said,
patting me on the shoulder. "You had a good performance yesterday. Now it is time to come to
some final agreements."
He paused for a long-moment. He seemed to be preparing a statement. I had a strange feeling
in my stomach. My immediate assumption was that he was going to tell me the sorcerers'
explanation. He stood up a couple of times and paced back and forth in front of me, as if it were
difficult to voice what he had in mind.
"Let's go to the restaurant across the street and have a bite to eat," he finally said.
He unfolded his coat, and before he put it on he showed me that it was fully lined.
"It is made to order," he said and smiled as if he were proud of it, as if it mattered.
"I have to call your attention to it, or you wouldn't notice it, and it is very important that you
are aware of it. You are aware of everything only when you think you should be; the condition of
a warrior, however, is to be aware of everything at all times.
"My suit and all this paraphernalia is important because it represents my condition in life. Or
rather, the condition of one of the two parts of my totality. This discussion has been pending. I
feel that now is the time to have it. It has to be done properly, though, or it will never make sense.
I wanted my suit to give you the first clue. I think it has. Now is the time to talk, for in matters of
this topic there is no complete understanding without talking."
"What is the topic, don Juan?"
"The totality of oneself," he said.
He stood up abruptly and led me to a restaurant in a large hotel across the street. A hostess
with a rather unfriendly disposition gave us a table inside in a back corner. Obviously the choice
places were around the windows.
I told don Juan that the woman reminded me of another hostess in a restaurant in Arizona
where don Juan and I had once gone to eat, who had asked us, before she handed out the menu, if
we had enough money to pay.
"I don't blame this poor woman either," don Juan said, as if sympathizing with her. "She too,
like the other one, is afraid of Mexicans."
He laughed softly. A couple of people at the adjacent tables turned their heads around and
looked at us.
Don Juan said that without knowing, or perhaps even in spite of herself, the hostess had given
us the best table in the house, a table where we could talk and I could write to my heart's content.
I had just taken my writing pad out of my pocket and put it on the table when the waiter
suddenly loomed over us. He also seemed to be in a bad mood. He stood over us with a
challenging air.
Don Juan proceeded to order a very elaborate meal for himself. He ordered without looking at
the menu, as if he knew it by heart. I was at a loss; the waiter had appeared unexpectedly and I
had not had time to read the menu, so I told him that I would have the same.
Don Juan whispered in my ear, "I bet you that they don't have what I've ordered."
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He stretched his arms and legs and told me to relax and sit comfortably because the meal was
going to take forever to be prepared.
"You are at a very poignant crossroad," he said. "Perhaps the last one, and also perhaps the
most difficult one to understand. Some of the things I am going to point out to you today will
probably never be clear. They are not supposed to be clear anyway. So don't be embarrassed or
discouraged. All of us are dumb creatures when we join the world of sorcery, and to join it
doesn't in any sense insure us that we will change. Some of us remain dumb until the very end."
I liked it when he included himself among the idiots. I knew that he did not do it out of
kindness, but as a didactic device.
"Don't fret if you don't make sense out of what I'm going to tell you," he continued.
"Considering your temperament, I'm afraid that you might knock yourself out trying to
understand. Don't! What I'm about to say is meant only to point out a direction."
I had a sudden feeling of apprehension. Don Juan's admonitions forced me into an endless
speculation. He had warned me on other occasions, in very much the same fashion, and every
time he had done so, what he was warning me about had turned out to be a devastating issue.
"It makes me very nervous when you talk to me this way," I said.
"I know it," he replied calmly. "I'm deliberately trying to get you on your toes. I need your
attention, your undivided attention."
He paused and looked at me, I laughed nervously and involuntarily. I knew that he was
stretching the dramatic possibilities of the situation as far as he could.
"I'm not telling you all this for effect," he said, as if he had read my thoughts. "I am simply
giving you time to make the proper adjustments."
At that moment the waiter stopped at our table to announce that they did not have what we had
ordered. Don Juan laughed out loud and ordered tortillas and beans. The waiter chuckled
scornfully and said that they did not serve them and suggested steak or chicken. We settled for
some soup.
We ate in silence. I did not like the soup and could not finish it, but don Juan ate all of his.
"I have put on my suit," he said all of a sudden, "in order to tell you about something,
something you already know but which needs to be clarified if it is going to be effective. I have
waited until now, because Genaro feels that you have to be not only willing to undertake the road
of knowledge, but your efforts by themselves must be impeccable enough to make you worthy of
that knowledge. You have done well. Now I will tell you the sorcerers' explanation."
He paused again, rubbed his cheeks and played with his tongue inside his mouth, as if he
were feeling his teeth.
"I'm going to tell you about the tonal and the nagual" he said and looked at me piercingly.
This was the first time in our association that he had used those two terms. I was vaguely
familiar with them through the anthropological literature on the cultures of central Mexico. I
knew that the "tonal" (pronounced, toh-na'hl) was thought to be a kind of guardian spirit, usually
an animal, that a child obtained at birth and with which he had intimate ties for the rest of his life.
"Nagual" (pronounced, nah-wa'hl) was the name given to the animal into which sorcerers could
allegedly transform themselves, or to the sorcerer that elicited such a transformation.
"This is my tonal" don Juan said, rubbing his hands on his chest.
"Your suit?"
"No. My person."
He pounded his chest and his thighs and the side of his ribs.
"My tonal is all this."
He explained that every human being had two sides, two separate entities, two counterparts
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which became operative at the moment of birth; one was called the "tonal" and the other the
"nagual."
I told him what anthropologists knew about the two concepts. He let me speak without
interrupting me.
"Well, whatever you may think you know about them is pure nonsense," he said. "I base this
statement on the fact that whatever I'm telling you about the tonal and the nagual could not
possibly have been told to you before. Any idiot would know that you know nothing about them,
because in order to be acquainted with them, you would have to be a sorcerer and you aren't. Or
you would've had to talk about them with a sorcerer and you haven't. So disregard everything
you've heard before, because it is inapplicable."
"It was only a comment," I said.
He raised his brows in a comical gesture.
"Your comments are out of order," he said. "This time I need your undivided attention, since I
am going to acquaint you with the tonal and the nagual. Sorcerers have a special and unique
interest in that knowledge. I would say that the tonal and the nagual are in the exclusive realm of
men of knowledge. In your case, this is the lid that closes everything I have taught you. Thus, I
have waited until now to talk about them.
"The tonal is not an animal that guards a person. I would rather say that it is a guardian that
could be represented as an animal. But that is not the important point."
He smiled and winked at me.
"I'm using your own words now," he said. "The tonal is the social person."
He laughed, I supposed, at the sight of my bewilderment.
"The tonal is, rightfully so, a protector, a guardian - a guardian that most of the time turns into
a guard."
I fumbled with my notebook. I was trying to pay attention to what he was saying. He laughed
and mimicked my nervous movements.
"The tonal is the organizer of the world," he proceeded. "Perhaps the best way of describing
its monumental work is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the chaos of the world
in order. It is not farfetched to maintain, as sorcerers do, that everything we know and do as men
is the work of the tonal.
"At this moment, for instance, what is engaged in trying to make sense out of our conversation
is your tonal; without it there would be only weird sounds and grimaces and you wouldn't
understand a thing of what I'm saying.
"I would say then that the tonal is a guardian that protects something priceless, our very being.
Therefore, an inherent quality of the tonal is to be cagey and jealous of its doings. And since its
doings are by far the most important part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes,
in every one of us, from a guardian into a guard."
He stopped and asked me if I had understood. I automatically nodded my head affirmatively
and he smiled with an air of incredulity.
"A guardian is broad-minded and understanding," he explained. "A guard, on the other hand,
is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic. I say, then, that the tonal in all of us
has been made into a petty and despotic guard when it should be a broad-minded guardian."
I definitely was not following the trend of his explanation. I heard and wrote down every word
and yet I seemed to be stuck with some internal dialogue of my own.
"It is very hard for me to follow your point," I said.
"If you didn't get hooked on talking to yourself you would have no quarrels," he said cuttingly.
His remark threw me into a long explanatory statement. I finally caught myself and apologized
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for my insistence on defending myself.
He smiled and made a gesture that seemed to indicate that my attitude had not really annoyed
him.
"The tonal is everything we are," he proceeded. "Name it! Anything we have a word for is the
tonal. And since the tonal is its own doings, then everything, obviously, has to fall under its
domain."
I reminded him that he had said that the tonal was the social person, a term which I myself had
used with him to mean a human being as the end result of socialization processes. I pointed out
that if the tonal was that product, it could not be everything, as he had said, because the world
around us was not the product of socialization.
Don Juan reminded me that my argument had no basis for him, and that, long before, he had
already made the point that there was no world at large but only a description of the world which
we had learned to visualize and take for granted.
"The tonal is everything we know," he said. "I think this in itself is enough reason for the
tonal to be such an overpowering affair."
He paused for a moment. He seemed to be definitely waiting for comments or questions, but I
had none. Yet I felt obligated to voice a question and struggled to formulate an appropriate one. I
failed. I felt that the admonitions with which he had opened our conversation had perhaps served
as a deterrent to any inquiry on my part. I felt strangely numb. I could not concentrate and order
my thoughts. In fact I felt and knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that I was incapable of
thinking and yet I knew this without thinking, if that were at all possible.
I looked at don Juan. He was staring at the middle part of my body. He lifted his eyes and my
clarity of mind returned instantly.
"The tonal is everything we know," he repeated slowly. "And that includes not only us, as
persons, but everything in our world. It can be said that the tonal is everything that meets the eye.
"We begin to groom it at the moment of birth. The moment we take the first gasp of air we
also breathe in power for the tonal. So, it is proper to say that the tonal of a human being is
intimately tied to his birth.
"You must remember this point. It is of great importance in understanding all this. The tonal
begins at birth and ends at death."
I wanted to recapitulate all the points that he had made. I went as far as opening my mouth to
ask him to repeat the salient points of our conversation, but to my amazement I could not vocalize
my words. I was experiencing a most curious incapacity, my words were heavy and I had no
control over that sensation.
I looked at don Juan to signal him that I could not talk. He was again staring at the area
around my stomach.
He lifted his eyes and asked me how I felt. Words poured out of me as if I had been
unplugged. I told him that I had been having the peculiar sensation of not being able to talk or
think and yet my thoughts had been crystal clear.
"Your thoughts have been crystal clear?" he asked.
I realized then that the clarity had not pertained to my thoughts, but to my perception of the
world.
"Are you doing something to me, don Juan?" I asked.
"I am trying to convince you that your comments are not necessary," he said and laughed.
"You mean you don't want me to ask questions?"
"No, no. Ask anything you want, but don't let your attention waver."
I had to admit that I had been distracted by the immensity of the topic.
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"I still cannot understand, don Juan, what you mean by the statement that the tonal is
everything," I said after a moment's pause.
"The tonal is what makes the world."
"Is the tonal the creator of the world?"
Don Juan scratched his temples.
"The tonal makes the world only in a manner of speaking. It can not create or change
anything, and yet it makes the world because its function is to judge, and assess, and witness. I
say that the tonal makes the world because it witnesses and assesses it according to tonal rules. In
a very strange manner the tonal is a creator that doesn't create a thing. In other words, the tonal
makes up the rules by which it apprehends the world. So, in a manner of speaking, it creates the
world."
He hummed a popular tune, beating the rhythm with his fingers on the side of his chair. His
eyes were shining; they seemed to sparkle. He chuckled, shaking his head.
"You're not following me," he said, smiling.
"I am. I have no problems," I said, but I did not sound very convincing.
"The tonal is an island," he explained. "The best way of describing it is to say that the tonal is
this."
He ran his hand over the table top.
"We can say that the tonal is like the top of this table. An island. And on this island we have
everything. This island is, in fact, the world.
"There is a personal tonal for every one of us, and there is a collective one for all of us at any
given time, which we can call the tonal of the times."
He pointed to the rows of tables in the restaurant.
"Look! Every table has the same configuration. Certain items are present on all of them. They
are, however, individually different from each other; some tables are more crowded than others;
they have different food on them, different plates, different atmosphere, yet we have to admit that
all the tables in this restaurant are very alike. The same thing happens with the tonal. We can say
that the tonal of the times is what makes us alike, in the same way it makes all the tables in this
restaurant alike. Each table separately, nevertheless, is an individual case, just like the personal
tonal of each of us. But the important factor to keep in mind is that everything we know about
ourselves and about our world is on the island of the tonal. See what I mean?"
"If the tonal is everything we know about ourselves and our world, what, then, is the nagual?"
"The nagual is the part of us which we do not deal with at all."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The nagual is the part of us for which there is no description - no words, no names, no
feelings, no knowledge."
"That's a contradiction, don Juan. In my opinion if it can't be felt or described or named, it
cannot exist."
"It's a contradiction only in your opinion. I warned you before, don't knock yourself out trying
to understand this."
"Would you say that the nagual is the mind?"
"No. The mind is an item on the table. The mind is part of the tonal. Let's say that the mind is
the chili sauce."
He took a bottle of sauce and placed it in front of me.
"Is the nagual the soul?"
"No. The soul is also on the table. Let's say that the soul is the ashtray."
"Is it the thoughts of men?"
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"No. Thoughts are also on the table. Thoughts are like the silverware."
He picked up a fork and placed it next to the chili sauce and the ashtray.
"Is it a state of grace? Heaven?"
"Not that either. That, whatever it might be, is also part of the tonal. It is, let's say, the
napkin."
I went on giving possible ways of describing what he was alluding to: pure intellect, psyche,
energy, vital force, immortality, life principle. For each thing I named he found an item on the
table to serve as a counterpart and shoved it in front of me, until he had all the objects on the table
stashed in one pile.
Don Juan seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He giggled and rubbed his hands every
time I named another possibility.
"Is the nagual the Supreme Being, the Almighty, God?" I asked.
"No. God is also on the table. Let's say that God is the tablecloth."
He made a joking gesture of pulling the tablecloth in order to stack it up with the rest of the
items he had put in front of me.
"But, are you saying that God does not exist?"
"No. I didn't say that. All I said was that the nagual was not God, because God is an item of
our personal tonal and of the tonal of the times. The tonal is, as I've already said, everything we
think the world is composed of, including God, of course. God has no more importance other than
being a part of the tonal of our time."
"In my understanding, don Juan, God is everything. Aren't we talking about the same thing?"
"No. God is only everything you can think of, therefore, properly speaking, he is only another
item on the island. God cannot be witnessed at will, he can only be talked about. The nagual, on
the other hand, is at the service of the warrior. It can be witnessed, but it cannot be talked about."
"If the nagual is not any of the things I have mentioned," I said, "perhaps you can tell me
about its location. Where is it?"
Don Juan made a sweeping gesture and pointed to the area beyond the boundaries of the table.
He swept his hand, as if with the back of it he were cleaning an imaginary surface that went
beyond the edges of the table.
"The nagual is there," he said. "There, surrounding the island. The nagual is there, where
power hovers.
"We sense, from the moment we are born, that there are two parts to us. At the time of birth,
and for a while after, we are all nagual. We sense, then, that in order to function we need a
counterpart to what we have. The tonal is missing and that gives us, from the very beginning, a
feeling of incompleteness. Then the tonal starts to develop and it becomes utterly important to
our functioning, so important that it opaques the shine of the nagual, it overwhelms it. From the
moment we become all tonal we do nothing else but to increment that old feeling of
incompleteness which accompanies us from the moment of our birth, and which tells us
constantly that there is another part to give us completeness.
"From the moment we become all tonal we begin making pairs. We sense our two sides, but
we always represent them with items of the tonal. We say that the two parts of us are the soul and
the body. Or mind and matter. Or good and evil. God and Satan. We never realize, however, that
we are merely pairing things on the island, very much like pairing coffee and tea, or bread and
tortillas, or chili and mustard. I tell you, we are weird animals. We get carried away and in our
madness we believe ourselves to be making perfect sense."
Don Juan stood up and addressed me as if he were an orator. He pointed his index finger at me
and made his head shiver.
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"Man doesn't move between good and evil," he said in a hilariously rhetorical tone, grabbing
the salt and pepper shakers in both hands. "His true movement is between negativeness and
positiveness."
He dropped the salt and pepper and clutched a knife and fork.
"You're wrong! There is no movement," he continued as if he were answering himself. "Man
is only mind!"
He took the bottle of sauce and held it up. Then he put it down.
"As you can see," he said softly, "we can easily replace chili sauce for mind and end up
saying, 'Man is only chili sauce!' Doing that won't make us more demented than we already are."
"I'm afraid I haven't asked the right question," I said. "Maybe we could arrive at a better
understanding if I asked what one can specifically find in that area beyond the island?"
"There is no way of answering that. If I would say, Nothing, I would only make the nagual
part of the tonal. All I can say is that there, beyond the island, one finds the nagual"
"But, when you call it the nagual, aren't you also placing it on the island?"
"No. I named it only because I wanted to make you aware of it."
"All right! But becoming aware of it is the step that has turned the nagual into a new item of
my tonal"
"I'm afraid you do not understand. I have named the tonal and the nagual as a true pair. That
is all I have done."
He reminded me that once, while trying to explain to him my insistence on meaning, I had
discussed the idea that children might not be capable of comprehending the difference between
"father" and "mother" until they were quite developed in terms of handling meaning, and that
they would perhaps believe that it might be that "father" wears pants and "mother" skirts, or other
differences dealing with hairstyle, or size of body, or items of clothing.
"We certainly do the same thing with the two parts of us," he said. "We sense that there is
another side to us. But when we try to pin down that other side the tonal gets hold of the baton,
and as a director it is quite petty and jealous. It dazzles us with its cunningness and forces us to
obliterate the slightest inkling of the other part of the true pair, the nagual"
As we left the restaurant I told don Juan that he had been correct in warning me about the
difficulty of the topic, and that my intellectual prowess was inadequate to grasp his concepts and
explanations. I suggested that perhaps if I should go to my hotel and read my notes, my
comprehension of the subject might improve. He tried to put me at ease; he said that I was
worrying about words. While he was speaking I experienced a shiver, and for an instant I sensed
that there was indeed another area within me.
I mentioned to don Juan that I was having some inexplicable feelings. My statement
apparently aroused his curiosity. I told him that I had had the same feelings before, and that they
seemed to be momentary lapses, interruptions in my flow of awareness. They always manifested
themselves as a jolt in my body followed by the sensation that I was suspended in something.
We headed for downtown, walking leisurely. Don Juan asked me to relate all the details of
my lapses, I had a hard time describing them, beyond the point of calling them moments of
forgetfulness, or absent-mindedness, or not watching what I was doing.
He patiently rebuffed me. He pointed out that I was a demanding person, had an excellent
memory, and was very careful in my actions. It had occurred to me at first that those peculiar
lapses were associated with stopping the internal dialogue, but I also had had them when I had
talked to myself extensively. They seemed to stem from an area independent of everything I
knew.
Don Juan patted me on the back. He smiled with apparent delight.
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"You're finally beginning to make real connections," he said.
I asked him to explain his cryptic statement, but he abruptly stopped our conversation and
signaled me to follow him to a small park in front of a church.
"This is the end of our journey to downtown," he said and sat down on a bench. "Right here
we have an ideal spot to watch people. There are some who walk by on the street and others who
come to church. From here we can see everyone."
He pointed to a wide business street and to the gravel walk leading to the steps of the church.
Our bench was located midway between the church and the street.
"This is my very favorite bench," he said, caressing the wood.
He winked at me and added with a grin, "It likes me. That's why no one was sitting on it. It
knew I was coming."
"The bench knew that?"
"No! Not the bench. My nagual."
"Does the nagual have consciousness? Is it aware of things?"
"Of course. It is aware of everything. That's why I'm interested in your account. What you call
lapses and feelings is the nagual. In order to talk about it we must borrow from the island of the
tonal, therefore it is more convenient not to explain it but to simply recount its effects."
I wanted to say something else about those peculiar feelings, but he hushed me.
"No more. Today is not the day of the nagual, today is the day of the tonal" he said. "I put on
my suit because today I am all tonal."
He stared at me. I was about to tell him that the subject was proving to be more difficult than
anything he had ever explained to me; he seemed to have anticipated my words.
"It is difficult," he continued. "I know it. But considering that this is the final lid, the last stage
of what I've been teaching you, it is not too farfetched to say that it envelops everything I
mentioned since the first day we met."
We remained quiet for a long while. I felt that I had to wait for him to resume his explanation,
but I had a sudden attack of apprehension and hurriedly asked, "Are the nagual and the tonal
within ourselves?"
He looked at me piercingly.
"Very difficult question," he said. "You yourself would say that they are within ourselves. I
myself would say that they are not, but neither of us would be right. The tonal of your time calls
for you to maintain that everything dealing with your feelings and thoughts takes place within
yourself. The sorcerers' tonal says the opposite, everything is outside. Who's right? No one.
Inside, outside, it doesn't really matter."
I raised a point. I said that when he talked about the tonal and the nagual it sounded as if
there was still a third part. He had said that the tonal "forces us" to perform acts. I asked him to
tell me who he was referring to as being forced.
He did not answer me directly.
"To explain all this is not that simple," he said. "No matter how clever the checkpoints of the
tonal are the fact of the matter is that the nagual surfaces. Its coming to the surface is always
inadvertent, though. The tonal's great art is to suppress any manifestation of the nagual in such a
manner that even if its presence should be the most obvious thing in the world, it is unnoticeable."
"For whom is it unnoticeable?"
He chuckled, shaking his head up and down. I pressed him for an answer.
"For the tonal" he said. "I'm speaking about it exclusively. I may go around in circles but that
shouldn't surprise or annoy you. I warned you about the difficulty of understanding what I have to
tell. I went through all that rigamarole because my tonal is aware that it is speaking about itself.
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In other words, my tonal is using itself in order to understand the information I want your tonal to
be clear about. Let's say that the tonal, since it is keenly aware of how taxing it is to speak of
itself, has created the terms 'I,' 'myself,' and so forth as a balance and thanks to them it can talk
with other tonals, or with itself, about itself.
"Now when I say that the tonal forces us to do something, I don't mean that there is a third
party there. Obviously it forces itself to follow its own judgments.
"On certain occasions, however, or under certain special circumstances, something in the
tonal itself becomes aware that there is more to us. It is like a voice that comes from the depths,
the voice of the nagual. You see, the totality of ourselves is a natural condition which the tonal
cannot obliterate altogether, and there are moments, especially in the life of a warrior, when the
totality becomes apparent. At those moments one can surmise and assess what we really are.
"I was concerned with those jolts you have had, because that is the way the nagual surfaces.
At those moments the tonal becomes aware of the totality of oneself. It is always a jolt because
that awareness disrupts the lull. I call that awareness the totality of the being that is going to die.
The idea is that at the moment of death the other member of the true pair, the nagual, becomes
fully operative and the awareness and memories and perceptions stored in our calves and thighs,
in our back and shoulders and neck, begin to expand and disintegrate. Like the beads of an
endless broken necklace, they fall asunder without the binding force of life."
He looked at me. His eyes were peaceful. I felt ill at ease, stupid.
"The totality of ourselves is a very tacky affair," he said. "We need only a very small portion
of it to fulfill the most complex tasks of life. Yet when we die, we die with the totality of
ourselves. A sorcerer asks the question, 'If we're going to die with the totality of ourselves, why
not, then, live with that totality?' "
He signaled me with his head to watch the scores of people that went by.
"They're all tonal" he said. "I am going to single some of them out so your tonal will assess
them, and in assessing them it will assess itself."
He directed my attention to two old ladies that had emerged from the church. They stood at
the top of the limestone steps for a moment and then began to walk down with infinite care,
resting on every step.
"Watch those two women very carefully," he said. "But don't see them as persons, or as faces
that hold things in common with us; see them as tonals"
The two women got to the bottom of the steps. They moved as if the rough gravel were
marbles and they were about to roll and lose their balance on them. They walked arm in arm,
propping each other up with the weight of their bodies.
"Look at them!" don Juan said in a low voice. "Those women are the best example of the most
miserable tonal one can find."
I noticed that the two women were small-boned but fat. They were perhaps in their early
fifties. They had a painful look in their faces, as if walking down the church steps had been
beyond their strength.
They were in front of us; they vacillated for a moment and then they came to a halt. There was
one more step on the gravel walk.
"Watch your step, ladies," don Juan shouted as he stood up dramatically.
The women looked at him, apparently confused by his sudden outburst.
"My mom broke her hip right there the other day," he added and dashed over to help them.
They thanked him profusely and he advised them that if they ever lost their balance and fell
down, they had to remain motionless on the spot until the ambulance came. His tone was sincere
and convincing. The women crossed themselves.
75
Don Juan sat down again. His eyes were beaming. He spoke softly.
"Those women are not that old and their bodies are not that weak, and yet they are decrepit.
Everything about them is dreary - their clothes, their smell, their attitude. Why do you think that's
so?"
"Maybe they were born that way," I said.
"No one is born that way. We make ourselves that way. The tonal of those women is weak and
timid.
"I said that today was going to be the day of the tonal; I meant that today I want to deal with it
exclusively. I also said that I had put on my suit for that specific purpose. With it I wanted to
show you that a warrior treats his tonal in a very special manner. I've pointed out to you that my
suit has been made to order and that everything I have on today fits me to perfection. It is not my
vanity that I wanted to show, but my warrior's spirit, my warrior's tonal.
"Those two women gave you your first view of the tonal today. Life can be as merciless with
you as it is with them, if you are careless with your tonal. I put myself as the counterpoint. If you
understand correctly I should not need to stress this point."
I had a sudden attack of uncertainty and asked him to spell out what I should have understood.
I must have sounded desperate. He laughed out loud.
"Look at that young man in green pants and a pink shirt," don Juan whispered, pointing to a
very thin and very dark complexioned, sharp-featured young man who was standing almost in
front of us.
He seemed to be undecided whether to go towards the church or towards the street. Twice he
raised his hand in the direction of the church as though he were talking to himself and were about
to start moving towards it. Then he stared at me with a blank expression.
"Look at the way he's dressed," don Juan said in a whisper. "Look at those shoes!"
The young man's clothes were tattered and wrinkled, and his shoes were in absolute pieces.
"He's obviously very poor," I said.
"Is that all you can say about him?" he asked.
I enumerated a series of reasons that might have accounted for the young man's shabbiness:
poor health, bad luck, indolence, indifference to his personal appearance, or the chance that he
may have just been released from prison.
Don Juan said that I was merely speculating, and that he was not interested in justifying
anything by suggesting that the man was a victim of unconquerable forces.
"Maybe he's a secret agent made to look like a bum," I said jokingly.
The young man walked away towards the street with a disjointed gait.
"He's not made to look like a bum; he is a bum," don Juan said. "Look how weak his body is.
His arms and legs are thin. He can hardly walk. No one can pretend to look that way. There is
something definitely wrong with him, not his circumstances, though. I have to stress again that I
want you to see that man as a tonal"
"What does it entail to see a man as a tonal?"
"It entails to cease judging him in a moral sense, or excusing him on the grounds that he is like
a leaf at the mercy of the wind. In other words, it entails seeing a man without thinking that he is
hopeless or helpless.
"You know exactly what I am talking about. You can assess that young man without
condemning or forgiving him."
“He drinks too much," I said.
My statement was not volitional. I just made it without really knowing why. For an instant I
even felt that someone standing behind me had voiced the words, I was moved to explain that my
statement was another of my speculations.
76
"That was not the case," don Juan said. "Your tone of voice had a certainty that you lacked
before. You didn't say, 'Maybe he's a drunkard.'"
I felt embarrassed although I could not exactly determine why. Don Juan laughed.
"You saw through the man," he said. "That was seeing. Seeing is like that. Statements are
made with great certainty, and one doesn't know how it happened.
"You know that young man's tonal was shot, but you don't know how you know it."
I had to admit that somehow I had had that impression.
"You're right," don Juan said. "It doesn't really matter that he's young, he's as decrepit as the
two women. Youth is in no way a barrier against the deterioration of the tonal.
"You thought that there might be a great many reasons for that man's condition. I find that
there is only one, his tonal. It is not that his tonal is weak because he drinks; it is the other way
around, he drinks because his tonal is weak. That weakness forces him to be what he is. But the
same thing happens to all of us, in one form or another."
"But aren't you also justifying his behavior by saying that it's his tonal?"
"I'm giving you an explanation that you have never encountered before. It is not a justification
or a condemnation, though. That young man's tonal is weak and timid. And yet he's not unique.
All of us are more or less in the same boat."
At that moment a very large man passed in front of us heading towards the church. He was
wearing an expensive dark gray business suit and was carrying a briefcase. The collar of his shirt
was unbuttoned and his necktie loose. He was sweating profusely. He had a very light
complexion which made the perspiration all the more obvious.
"Watch him!" don Juan ordered me.
The man's steps were small but heavy. There was a wobbling quality to his walking. He did
not go up to the church; he circumvented it and disappeared behind it.
"There is no need to treat the body in such an awful manner," don Juan said with a note of
scorn. "But the sad fact is that all of us have learned to perfection how to make our tonal weak. I
have called that indulging."
He put his hand on my notebook and did not let me write any more. His rationale was that as
long as I kept on taking notes I was incapable of concentrating. He suggested I should relax, shut
off the internal dialogue and let go, merging with the person being observed.
I asked him to explain what he meant by "merging." He said there was no way to explain it,
that it was something that the body felt or did when put in observational contact with other
bodies. He then clarified the issue by saying that in the past he had called that process seeing, and
that it consisted of a lull of true silence within, followed by an outward elongation of something
in the self, an elongation that met and merged with the other body, or with anything within one's
field of awareness.
At that point I wanted to get back to my writing pad, but he stopped me and began to single
out different people from the crowd that passed by.
He pointed out dozens of persons covering a wide range of types among men, women and
children of various ages. Don Juan said that he had selected persons whose weak tonal could fit
into a categorization scheme, and thus he had acquainted me with a preconceived variety of
indulging.
I did not remember all the people he had pointed out and discussed. I complained that if I had
taken notes I could have at least sketched out the intricacies of his schemata on indulging. As it
was he did not want to repeat it or perhaps he did not remember it either.
He laughed and said that he did not remember it, because in the life of a sorcerer it was the
nagual that was accountable for creativity.
77
He looked at the sky and said that it was getting late, and that from that moment on we were
going to change direction. Instead of weak tonals we were going to wait for the appearance of a
"proper tonal." He added that only a warrior had a "proper tonal," and that the average man, at
best, could have a "right tonal."
After a few minutes' wait he slapped his thigh and chuckled.
"Look who's coming now," he said, pointing to the street with a movement of his chin. "It is as
if they were made to order."
I saw three male Indians approaching. They had on some short brown woolen ponchos, white
pants that came to their mid calf, long-sleeved white tops, dirty worn-out sandals and old straw
hats. Each of them carried a bundle tied to his back.
Don Juan stood up and went to meet them. He spoke to them. They seemed surprised and
surrounded him. They smiled at him. He was apparently telling them something about me; the
three of them turned around and smiled at me. They were about ten or twelve feet away; I listened
carefully but I could not hear what they were saying.
Don Juan reached in his pocket and handed them some bills. They appeared to be pleased;
they moved their feet nervously. I liked them very much. They looked like children. All of them
had small white teeth and very pleasing mild features. One, by all appearances the oldest, had
whiskers. His eyes were tired but very kind. He took off his hat and came closer to the bench. The
others followed him. The three of them greeted me in unison. We shook hands. Don Juan told me
to give them some money. They thanked me and after a polite silence they said good-by. Don
Juan sat back down on the bench and we watched them disappear in the crowd.
I told don Juan that for some strange reason I had liked them very much.
"It isn't so strange," he said. "You must've felt that their tonal is just right. It is right, but not
for our time.
"You probably felt they were like children. They are. And that is very tough. I understand
them better than you, thus I couldn't help but feel a tinge of sadness. Indians are like dogs, they
have nothing. But that is the nature of their fortune and I shouldn't feel sad. My sadness, of
course, is my own way of indulging."
"Where are they from, don Juan?"
"From the Sierras. They've come here to seek their fortune. They want to become merchants.
They're brothers. I told them that I also came from the Sierras and I'm a merchant myself. I said
that you were my partner. The money we gave them was a token; a warrior should give tokens
like that all the time. They no doubt need the money, but need should not be an essential
consideration for a token. The thing to look for is feeling. I personally was moved by those three.
"Indians are the losers of our time. Their downfall began with the Spaniards and now under
the reign of their descendants the Indians have lost everything. It is not an exaggeration to say
that the Indians have lost their tonal"
"Is that a metaphor, don Juan?"
"No. It is a fact. The tonal is very vulnerable. It cannot withstand maltreatment. The white
man, from the day he set foot on this land, has systematically destroyed not only the Indian tonal
of the time, but also the personal tonal of every Indian. One can easily surmise that for the poor
average Indian the reign of the white man has been sheer hell. And yet the irony is that for
another kind of Indian it has been sheer bliss."
"Who are you talking about? What kind of Indian is that?"
"The sorcerer. For the sorcerer the Conquest was the challenge of a lifetime. They were the
only ones who were not destroyed by it but adapted to it and used it to their ultimate advantage."
"How was that possible, don Juan? I was under the impression that the Spaniards left no stone
78
unturned."
"Let's say that they turned over all the stones that were within the limits of their own tonal. In
the Indian life, however, there were things that were incomprehensible to the white man; those
things he did not even notice. Perhaps it was the sheer luck of the sorcerers, or perhaps it was
their knowledge that saved them. After the tonal of the time and the personal tonal of every
Indian was obliterated, the sorcerers found themselves holding on to the only thing left
uncontested, the nagual. In other words, their tonal took refuge in their nagual. This couldn't
have happened had it not been for the excruciating conditions of a vanquished people. The men of
knowledge of today are the product of those conditions and are the ultimate connoisseurs of the
nagual since they were left there thoroughly alone. There, the white man has never ventured. In
fact, he doesn't even have the idea it exists."
I felt compelled at that point to present an argument. I sincerely contended that in European
thought we had accounted for what he called the nagual. I brought in the concept of the
Transcendental Ego, or the unobserved observer present in all our thoughts, perceptions and
feelings. I explained to don Juan that the individual could perceive or intuit himself, as a self,
through the Transcendental Ego, because this was the only thing capable of judgment, capable of
disclosing reality within the realm of its consciousness.
Don Juan was unruffled. He laughed.
"Disclosing reality," he said, mimicking me. "That's the tonal."
I argued that the tonal may be called the Empirical Ego found in one's passing stream of
consciousness or experience, while the Transcendental Ego was found behind that stream.
"Watching, I suppose," he said mockingly.
"That's right. Watching itself," I said.
"I hear you talking," he said. "But you're saying nothing. The nagual is not experience or
intuition or consciousness. Those terms and everything else you may care to say are only items on
the island of the tonal. The nagual, on the other hand, is only effect. The tonal begins at birth and
ends at death, but the nagual never ends. The nagual has no limit. I've said that the nagual is
where power hovers; that was only a way of alluding to it. By reasons of its effect, perhaps the
nagual can be best understood in terms of power. For instance, when you felt numb and couldn't
talk earlier today, I was actually soothing you; that is, my nagual was acting upon you."
"How was that possible, don Juan?"
"You won't believe this, but no one knows how. All I know is that I wanted your undivided
attention and then my nagual went to work on you. I know that much because I can witness its
effect, but I don't know how it works."
He was quiet for a while. I wanted to keep on the same topic. I at tempted to ask a question; he
silenced me.
"One can say that the nagual accounts for creativity," he finally said and looked at me
piercingly. "The nagual is the only part of us that can create."
He remained quiet, looking at me. I felt he was definitely leading me into an area I had
wished he would elucidate further. He had said that the tonal did not create anything, but only
witnessed and assessed. I asked how he explained the fact that we construct superb structures and
machines.
"That's not creativity," he said. "That's only molding. We can mold anything with our hands,
personally or in conjunction with the hands of other tonals. A group of tonals can mold anything,
superb structures as you said."
"But what's creativity then, don Juan?"
He stared at me, squinting his eyes. He chuckled softly, lifted his right hand over his head and
79
twisted his wrist with a sharp jerk, as if he were turning a door knob.
"Creativity is this," he said and brought his hand with a cupped palm to the level of my eyes.
It took me an incredibly long time to focus my eyes on his hand. I felt that a transparent
membrane was holding my whole body in a fixed position and that I had to break it in order to
place my sight on his hand.
I struggled until beads of perspiration ran into my eyes. Finally I heard or felt a pop and my
eyes and head jerked free.
On his right palm there was the most curious rodent I had ever seen. It looked like a bushytailed
squirrel. The tail, however, was more like a porcupine's. It had stiff quills.
"Touch it!" don Juan said softly.
I automatically obeyed him and ran my finger on its soft back. Don Juan brought his hand
closer to my eyes and then I noticed something that threw me into nervous spasms. The squirrel
had eyeglasses and big teeth.
"It looks like a Japanese," I said and began to laugh hysterically.
The rodent then started to grow in don Juan's palm. And while my eyes were still filled with
tears of laughter, the rodent became so enormous that it disappeared. It literally went out of the
frame of my vision. It happened so rapidly that I was caught in the middle of a spasm of laughter.
When I looked again, or when I wiped my eyes and focused them properly, I was looking at don
Juan. He was sitting on the bench and I was standing in front of him, although I did not remember
having stood up.
For a moment my nervousness was uncontainable. Don Juan calmly got up, forced me to sit,
propped my chin between the bicep and forearm of his left arm and hit me on the very top of my
head with the knuckles of his right hand. The effect was like the jolt of an electric current. It
calmed me down immediately.
There were so many things that I wanted to ask. But my words could not wade through all
those thoughts. I then became keenly aware that I had lost control over my vocal cords. I did not
want to struggle to speak, however, and leaned against the back of the bench. Don Juan said
forcefully that I had to pull myself together and stop indulging. I felt a bit dizzy. He imperatively
ordered me to write my notes and handed me my pad and pencil after picking them up from
underneath the bench.
I made a supreme effort to say something and again I had the clear sensation that a membrane
was enveloping me. I puffed and groaned for a moment, while don Juan laughed, until I heard or
felt another pop.
I began to write immediately. Don Juan spoke as if he were dictating to me.
"One of the acts of a warrior is never to let anything affect him," he said. "Thus, a warrior may
be seeing the devil himself, but he won't let anyone know that. The control of a warrior has to be
impeccable."
He waited until I had finished writing and then asked me laughingly, "Did you get all that?"
I suggested that we should go to a restaurant and have dinner. I was famished. He said that we
had to stay until the "proper tonal" appeared. He added in a serious tone that if the "proper tonal"
did not come that day we had to remain on the bench until it cared to show up.
"What is a proper tonal?" I asked.
"A tonal that is just right, balanced and harmonious. You are supposed to find one today, or
rather your power is supposed to bring one to us."
"But how can I tell it apart from other tonals?"
"Never mind that. I will point it out to you."
"What is it like, don Juan?"
80
"Hard to tell. It depends on you. This is a show for you, therefore you will set up those
conditions yourself."
"How?"
"I don't know that. Your power, your nagual, will do that.
"There are, roughly speaking, two sides to every tonal. One is the outer part, the fringe, the
surface of the island. That's the part related to action and acting, the rugged side. The other part is
the decision and judgment, the inner tonal, softer, more delicate and more complex.
"The proper tonal is a tonal where the two levels are in perfect harmony and balance."
Don Juan stopped talking. It was fairly dark by then and I had a hard time taking notes. He
told me to stretch and relax. He said that it had been quite an exhausting day but very prolific and
that he was sure the proper tonal would show up.
Dozens of people went by. We sat in a relaxed silence for ten or fifteen minutes. Then don
Juan stood up abruptly.
"By golly you've done it! Look what's coming there. A girl!"
He pointed with a nod of his head to a young woman who was crossing the park and was
approaching the vicinity of our bench. Don Juan said that that young woman was the proper tonal
and that if she would stop to talk to either one of us it would be an extraordinary omen and we
would have to do whatever she wanted.
I could not clearly distinguish the young woman's features, although there was still enough
light. She came within a couple of feet but went by without looking at us. Don Juan ordered me in
a whisper to get up and go talk to her.
I ran after her and asked for directions. I got very close to her. She was young, perhaps in her
mid-twenties, of medium height, very attractive and well-groomed. Her eyes were clear and
peaceful. She smiled at me as I spoke. There was something winning about her. I liked her as
much as I had liked the three Indians.
I went back to the bench and sat down.
"Is she a warrior?" I asked.
"Not quite," don Juan said. "Your power is not that keen yet to bring a warrior. But she's a just
right tonal. One that could turn into a proper tonal. Warriors come from that stock."
His statements aroused my curiosity. I asked him if women could be warriors. He looked at
me, apparently baffled by my question.
"Of course they can," he said, "and they are even better equipped for the path of knowledge
than men. But then men are a bit more resilient. I would say, however, that, all in all, women
have a slight advantage."
I said that it puzzled me that we had never talked about women in relation to his knowledge.
"You're a man," he said, "therefore I use the masculine gender when I talk to you. That's all.
The rest is the same."
I wanted to question him further but he made a gesture to close the topic. He looked up. The
sky was almost black. The banks of clouds looked extremely dark. There were still, however,
some areas where the clouds were slightly orange.
"The end of the day is your best time," don Juan said. "The appearance of that young woman
at the very edge of the day is an omen. We were talking about the tonal, therefore it is an omen
about your tonal."
"What does the omen mean, don Juan?"
"It means that you have very little time left to organize your arrangements. Any arrangements
that you might have constructed have to be viable arrangements because you don't have time to
make new ones. Your arrangements must work now, or they are not arrangements at all.
81
"I suggest that when you go back home you check your lines and make sure they are strong.
You will need them."
"What's going to happen to me, don Juan?"
"Years ago you bid for power. You have followed the hardships of learning faithfully, without
fretting or rushing. You are now at the edge of the day."
"What does that mean?"
"For a proper tonal everything on the island of the tonal is a challenge. Another way of saying
it is that for a warrior everything in this world is a challenge. The greatest challenge of all, of
course, is his bid for power. But power comes from the nagual, and when a warrior finds himself
at the edge of the day it means that the hour of the nagual is approaching, the warrior's hour of
power."
"I still don't understand the meaning of all this, don Juan. Does it mean that I am going to die
soon?"
"If you're stupid, you will," he retorted cuttingly. "But putting it in milder terms, it means that
you're about to shiver in your pants. You bid for power once and that bidding is irreversible. I
won't say that you're about to fulfill your destiny, because there is no destiny. The only thing that
one can say then is that you're about to fulfill your power. The omen was clear. That young
woman came to you at the edge of the day. You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A
fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when
we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way."
82

V. si fiserele atasate postarii (sub titlu, sub imagini).

[Bdi]

http://www.descopera.ro/dnews/7819041-istoria-religiilor-in-90-de-s...

 

[Bdi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_religion

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchal_religion

[Bdi]

Ma Ananda Mayi:

“Cum ţi-ai trăit viaţa, Pitaji? Fiecare răsuflare când nu ne gândim la DUMNEZEU, este irosită. Avem o şansă incredibilă că ne-am născut ca fiinţe umane. Ne putem apropia de DUMNEZEU pentru că suntem fiinţe umane“. Şi celor care stăteau în jurul ei: “Întrebaţi-vă ce faceţi cu timpul vostru. Uităm atât de uşor că nici o zi nu poate fi chemată înapoi. Se sting fără ca noi să observăm. Brusc, suntem bătrâni şi prea obosiţi să mai depunem eforturi. DUMNEZEU nu este munca noastră la bătrâneţe, când nu avem nimic altceva de făcut; El este munca vieţii noastre şi trebuie să ne folosim toată energia pentru aceasta. Cine nu a început, să înceapă astăzi. Acum, imediat“. Se uită încet în jur.

 

Pr Arsenie Papacioc:

"Şi oamenii nu preţuiesc viaţa de libertate. Mai mult, nu preţuiesc suflarea şi răsuflarea, că tot de la Dumnezeu sunt. Nu‑i supărat Dumnezeu pe noi atât de mult pentru păcate, cât este supărat că suntem nepăsători. Asta trebuie propovăduit la toată lumea. Şi vă spun şi eu vouă, acum, tot aşa. Faceţi act de prezenţă la Dumnezeu: „Doamne, Tu m‑ai făcut, Tu mă iei”. Ne‑a creat singuri numai pentru El, nu şi pentru dracul, pentru patimi. Nu ne jucăm cu timpul vieţii noastre. Am avut ocazie să fiu chemat de multe ori la căpătâi de morţi. Că eu, peste cinci ani, împlinesc o sută de ani de viaţă pe acest pământ. Am avut o viaţă trăită cu adevărat: puşcării, viaţă intensă, viaţă care măsura suflarea şi răsuflarea zi de zi, clipă de clipă chiar. Deci te obliga să iei o atitudine. Căci nu puteai să cedezi: era proba de credinţă sau de necredinţă. Nu te jucai. Dar nu m‑am folosit aşa, până în adâncul deliberativ al lucrurilor, ca la căpătâiul morţilor. Ţipete… sentimente omeneşti… muribunzii vedeau draci, aşa cum ştim că vin. Vedeau păcatele aşa cum le‑au făcut, nu cum le‑au spovedit. Și vroiau sa le spovedească, dar nu mai puteau… Înapoi nu se mai putea, căci venise aia, moartea. Moartea nu vine să‑i faci o cafea. Vă daţi seama ce spaimă era, că erau suflete trezite acum, înainte de moarte, şi intrau într‑un necunoscut şi începeau să apară toate aşa cum ni se arată în Scripturile divine. Spune aşa un Sfânt Părinte: „Aş vrea să înţelegeţi: dacă chinurile iadului sunt la nivelul chinurilor din ziua morţii, este destul”. Este groaznic. Şi uite, toţi doreau să mai trăiască o zi. Şi zicem noi, care ne scăldăm în ani: „Ce faci într‑o zi?” Nu într‑o zi, într‑o clipă! Poţi să faci mult! Că Dumnezeu n‑are nevoie de cuvintele noastre, are nevoie de inima noastră. Şi putem să I‑o dăm într‑o clipă."

[Bdi]

Spun Mantuitorul si Maica Domnului: „Eu sunt cu voi si nimeni impotriva voastra. Nu va temeti !”

 

„Taiati lemne, Eu sunt acolo. Ridicati o piatra si Ma veti gasi acolo.” (Ev. Toma)

 

[Bdi]

http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

http://www.esnips.com/web/CarlosCastanedaEN/

[Bdi]

Una dintre cele mai bune "Carti-Poarta" (din toate timpurile) despre Dumnezeu:

Sri Ramakrishna: "Toate religiile sunt cai care duc la Acelasi Dumnezeu, dar (religiile) nu sunt Dumnezeu."

http://www.albin-michel.fr/L-Enseignement-de-Ramakrishna-EAN=9782226159069

 

http://www.ramakrishna.eu/LesLivres.html

Din prezentarea cartii:
Sri Ramakrishna nu a pretins niciodata ca ar fi adus ceva nou. Putem regasi toate învataturile sale la predecesorii sai si în toate textele sacre la care el s-a raportat constant. Ceea ce determina însa valoarea mesajului sau este dovada incontestabila oferita de întreaga sa viata ca toate aceste învataturi au ramas valabile si utilizabile practic de catre orice fiinta umana plina de aspiratie. Gandhi spunea despre el: "Viata sa ne permite sa-L vedem pe Dumnezeu în fata."

Unele din afirmatiile lui Sri Ramakrishna care au frapat cel mai mult Occidentul, dar i-au surprins mai putin pe hindusi, de altfel si lucrul asupra caruia el insista constant si asupra caruia aducea o marturie convingatoare prin experienta sa personala, a fost ca fiecare cale spirituala, daca este urmata ea singura cu suficienta ardoare si perseverenta, permite atingerea scopului ultim pe care si-1 propun toate religiile, si anume cunoasterea lui Dumnezeu. Dupa ce a experimentat practic, într-un ritm extraordinar, cele 64 de sadhana-e tantrice, el a urmat timp de sase luni, în 1866, experienta monismului absolut (advaita vedanta), dar aceasta nu l-a împiedicat sa s

[Bdi]

sa se dedice cu tot atâta deschidere, cu aceeasi intensitate si totusi separat, cultului lui Rama si Krishna (1864), al lui Kali si al altor zeitati fundamentale din panteonul hindus. El a ajuns la o cunoastere profunda în islamism (1866) si în crestinism, conformându-se de fiecare data în mod strict regulilor si ritualurilor religiilor respective, chiar daca existau contradictii fata de riguroasele prescriptii ale hinduismului. De fiecare data, ducând experienta pâna la Realizarea Ultima, el afirma plin de fericire ca "si aceasta cale conduce la Dumnezeu".
Sri Ramakrishna a murit pe data de 11 decembrie 1885, după ce suferise de cancer la gât.


El personal nu a scris nimic, dar discipolii săi au adunat realizat o colecţie numită Învăţăturile lui Ramakrishna, din care se poate desprinde traseul spiritual al unuia dintre marii mistici ai ultimelor secole.
Amintim, în final, unul dintre aforismele sale :
„Dumnezeu este în toţi oamenii, dar nu toţi oamenii sunt în Dumnezeu. Acesta este motivul suferinţei lor.“

http://autori.citatepedia.ro/de.php?a=Ramakrishna

 

 

Cititi cartea aici:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/VisuSNE?id=oai_numilog.com_9782226205254&r=Ramakrishna&lang=EN

 

sau similar aici:

[Bdi]

sau similar aici:

http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/

 

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rls/index.htm

 

http://www.archive.org/stream/rmakrishnahisl00mliala#page/98/mode/2up

 

http://www.ramakrishna.org/rmk.htm

 

http://www.yogaesoteric.net/content.aspx?lang=RO&item=1959

 

si... recomandarea BOR (sic !):

http://www.ziarullumina.ro/articole;1024;1;28363;0;Traditia-Ramakrishna-o-experienta-crestina-hindusa.html

 

 

In lb romana:

[Bdi]

In lb romana:

http://www.librariaeminescu.ro/isbn/973-85041-6-3/Autor-colectiv__Invataturile-marelui-yoghin-Ramakrishna

http://www.eusunt.ro/index.php?act=prod&p_cod=esb452e97839870d

 

 Desi e site neserios, traducerea e ok:

http://www.yogaesoteric.net/content.aspx?item=2372&lang=RO

 

[Bdi]

"Citirea" spuselor lui Sri Ramakrishna ne-ar putea face sa intelegem mult mai bine multe aspecte din ortodoxie. Ptca Sri Ramakrishna era-este mai crestin ortodox decat multi dintre noi. Fiind un jivanmukta = "cineva-noncineva" care-L vede direct pe Dumnezeu, cum te vad eu pe tine si tu pe mine. Deci stie ce zice din experienta directa si nemijlocita. O astfel de fiinta trebuie ascultata daca ai intalnit-o [chiar si numai printr-o astfel de carte = o poarta a Puterii Divine].

http://www.exosapiens.fr/2009/08/17/ramakrishna-pensees-et-aphorismes/

 

"Toutes les religions sont des chemins qui conduisent à Dieu,

mais les chemins ne sont pas Dieu."

 

http://www.descopera.ro/dnews/7819041-istoria-religiilor-in-90-de-secunde-cum-s-au-raspandit-religiile-in-lume