I’ve been perusing through a Fire in the Heart, a documentary by Kyriacos Markides of Cyprot mystic Daskalos. It is interesting, though obviously reminiscent of Carlos Canteneda’s Don Juan series. Below, I splice together what I believe to be a very powerful passage from Daskalos’ teaching (pp. 211ff):
‘I would like to hear more on what it means to experience the second death and what type of awareness one has there.’
‘You may reach a point during the second death,’ Daskalos explained,’ whereby emotion, and a very mase emotion at that, is no longer the dominant force within you but thought.’
‘How can we distinguish that from intellectuality?” I asked. ‘When you say ‘thought’, do you mean the absence of the sentiment of love?’
‘Love is not a sentiment. It is the very nature of the Absolute. We must distinguish love from Love. We mush distinguish the candle, the burning wood from the sun. The world of ordinary human sentiments, even those considered most noble, appear from a higher level of awareness as nothing more than burning wood providing us with very dim luminosity. You cannot compare a bonfire with the sun.’
…
‘What am I driving at now?’ Daskalos asked. ‘Today’s sentiment, which is nothing more than the satisfaction of an overdeveloped egotism, must be replaced with a true expression of love. With this you are sacrifising nothing. Rather, you have much to gain. … Yes, sentiment as it is expressed today has absolutely no value. Water and earth that are mixed in a way that generates noxious smells have no value. Purify them and realize that both water and earth are good and benign. Use a higher agent, that of fire, to bring about their separation and purification. Become yourself Mind, purified Mind.’
‘You mean thought?’
No, not thought. Mind. To provide a rough analogy, let us assume that mind is the light that hits an object. Then an image of that object is placed on our eye and becomes an irritation upon the optical nerve that transfers the image to your brain and then you say ‘I see this object.’ This, let us say, is ordinary thought. Then a sentiment develops. Do I like it or do I not? Do I want it or do I not? In this situation you have the ‘I’ which observes and the object out there being observed by the ‘I’. And then you judge accordingly. But what I am talking about is something else. I am not waiting for the light as an outside condition to offer me this or that situation that I can observe, I the observer as something outside the thing I observe. No. I dress myself with Mind Itself because I discover that me as ‘I’ has mind as its very essence, which is the essence of the Absolute Itself. It is a different condition than using Mind as an external reality to myself that I utilize to construct noetic images in order to observe objects outside of myself. Rather, I fuse my consciousness with the object outside myself and become one with it. And when I become that I do not need to understand it. I know it. I become it.’
He offers a meditation technique (pp. 102ff):
“Be calm and tranquil. remove from your mind everything that preoccupies your present personality. Begin by repeating for awhile the word Love. Do that many times and with a tempo that is most suitable to you. Love…, Love…, Love… Feel and loosen every muscle in your body. Prevent any other thoughts from entering your mind. By repeating the word Love you are invoking complete coordination with the Love of the Absolute. You now reach a state of complete peace and serenity. Nothing occupies your thoughts any more. You reach a point now of real peace and tranquility.
“Now begin to visualize yourself glowing within al all-white irradiance and begin to feel that you are within every particle and every cell of your material existence. You can feel completely the confinement of your form and shape. You reach a point now that you feel yourself breathing from every cell and every particle of your material existence. You are breathing from each particle and from each cell. Energize this particular form of breathing. Fill yourself with living etheric energy from every cell and every particle of your body.
“With each breath you become whiter and whiter. Visualize it. Your are becoming whiter and whiter. Feel it. Each time you exhale you breathe out every impurity that tends to stain your whiteness.
“Offer your gratitude to the Holy Spirit which builds and maintains your material body. Wish good health to reign within your bodies. With for calmness and tranquility within your present personality. Wish for good judgment, wisdom; wish for the right use of the divine gift of thought. That will be all This exercise can fill you with energy every time you feel drained.
There are several more complex exercises described in the book as well, which I shall have to discuss at a later time…
