Da Vinci Code In Paris

Yesterday we saw the Da Vinci Code. The movie is fabulously well done and is guaranteed to educate about historical facts the Vatican has attempted to keep hidden for centuries in order to protect its authority. The threat to the Vatican has to be understood. If the information in the Da Vinci Code is true, the authority of the patriarchal power structure is tremendously threatened. Actually the Da Vinci Code was not the first book that suggested that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, and that this child was at the beginning of the bloodline of the Merowingian royalty. These books have existed for years.

The other day we went to Notre Dame again and the changes there are very interesting: The chapelle of Mary Magdalene, accessible and illumined by lights only a few weeks ago, now was closed, covered in heavy black curtains and all lights switched off. Most churches here in France are full of ancients symbols. For myself I can say that I often do not know what I am looking at when I stand before paintings, windows and sculptures. Raylene continues to astound me in the way she looks at the intricate art work and symbols and connects the dots to where understanding dawns.

After the Da Vinci Code movie was released, what symbols are to be found at the chapelle of Mary Magdalene that now have to be hidden by a black curtain?

And there also high up in Notre Dame we saw a very intricate wooden relief, depicting Christ and the 12 apostles. Raylene pointed out to me the figure right next to him was a woman, placing her head on his chest in what clearly seemed to be a very affectionate gesture. There are so many expressions that indicate the existence of great affection between Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that Christ kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth and that Peter was jealous and upset about that. If Mary Magdalene was Christ's Beloved and most favorite, how could the Catholic church continue to justify its all-male leadership?

No doubt, the Da Vinci Code is going to create a great awakening by directing the attention of many people to where it should have been directed a long time ago.

4-Day Workshop

We just completed a 4-day workshop. The theme was healing sexual woundings and creating the sacred couple. It was the longest and also one of the best workshops so far here in Paris. We had mostly people who attended a second or third time, therefore the workshop took place on a foundation of previous work. It was the Ascension holiday here, which in France is a 4-day weekend.

Because of the length we were able to provide a platform for very intense experiences. Raylene ran sessions that blew people's minds, if I am permitted the expression. But since the experience of No-Mind (Transcending mind activity) is the actual goal of the essential spiritual quest, we seem to be on the right track...

We feel immensely far away from life in California. The group participants surprised us by bringing food for lunch. But the food they brought was so amazing, it blew our minds into a transcendantal experience. It was so delicious and refined, I don't see how we can return to American food ever again. That alone is enough reason to stay here. Every day we clearly eat all the wrong foods here and I have lost more weight than I have in many years. Go figure. But we find ourselves walking a lot here in Paris, too. Most Parisians do walk a lot, using the Metro and walking the distances in between the Metro stations and their destinations.

Wisdom For The Day

Boldly step into life and put a smile on someone's face. Do it again tomorrow.

Samadhi: Awakening beyond all identifications

The publisher of the Lotus Guide, a magazine that comes out bi-monthly in Chico, California, just sent me the latest issue. Thanks, Rahasya. It contains the altered version of an article that I wrote for the Magical Blend Magazine last year. I paste it below as printed, including my shameless plug of Raylene's book. Be sure to buy it on www.amazon.com. Title: Between the Visions by Raylene Abbott.



Samadhi: Awakening beyond all identifications
Much is being written about awakening (Sanskrit: Samadhi) these days and often I find it described as an experience that constitutes a type of enhancement for the spiritual seeker once s/he has found Samadhi. The seeker becomes a special edition. A seeker+ model. A model with turbo charge.


Nothing could be further from the truth. The experience of Samadhi is inseparably intertwined with the annihilation of the seeker. The arising of Samadhi is equal to the cessation of the seeker. Samadhi is the suspension of the mind-self structure.


The mind exists in its never-ending function as an entity that hijacks identifications. It does so relentlessly, without ceasing. When it says, "I am hungry", it identifies with a sensation in the stomach. When it says, "I am angry", it identifies with an emotion. And the list goes on forever. Each time the mind expresses an identity notion it perpetuates an existential lie. We all know how this looks like in a worldly context when we encounter notions of "I am rich and famous" and the resulting modalities of arrogance and self-absorbedness.


It is interesting to observe that these exact same mind dynamics are transferred straight into the realm of the spiritual. The mind-self continues the usual modalities without so much as a blink. It rolls with the flow. Now the identities have morphed into "I am a powerful meditator." Now we are somebody who can say, "I channel God, Mother Mary or St. Germain." Now our new ID is "I am close to God" ( and you better listen to what I tell you). With the continuation of such notions, arrogance and self-absorbedness simply remain alive and well even though working in different disguise.


The very fist line of Pantanjali's Yoga Sutras is "Yoga Chittam Vritti Nirodha." Yoga is achieved when all motions of the mind have ceased. In other words, when the mind's capacity for hijacking identifications comes to a full stop.


Samadhi is the experience of the opening of one's inner space. In that opening of the inner space the mind-self simply disappears. In that disappearance all processes of identification evaporate.


Samadhi is the presence of a silence so vast, the mind-self does not survive the arising of this presence. In the reality of this presence, the mind must be absent. Therefore, Samadhi and mind-self do not exist simultaneously. They cannot. If the mind-self is, Samadhi is not. If Samadhi is, the mind-self is not.


In India there exists a spiritual tool that is designed to navigate the meditator to the final goal, the ultimate Here Now, which is Samadhi. This tool is called "Neti Neti". It means "Neither this nor that." Each time the meditator detects an identity arising inside, s/he is advised to reflect "I am not this." The next identity arises, again s/he reflects, "I am not that." This technique is part of the practice of Gyan Yoga, the Yoga of the intellect, since it utilizes the intellect to actually go beyond the intellect. It guides the meditator to experience freedom from all identifications: Samadhi.


In Samadhi the seeker disappears. What remains is the stream of experiencing. All separation between object and subject has disappeared. All nouns have vanished, what remains is the verb. What is left is the process of experiencing in the electrifying acuteness of THIS VERY MOMENT.


The event of Samadhi is very shocking. No amount of creative imagination will prepare for this experience. The first time it happened, I was 21 years old, after three years of intense yogic training. I sat in meditation and focused on a spot two inches above my head, visualizing a flame. Then I visualized entering the core of the flame.


All of a sudden, from the core of the flame, space began to open rapidly and an incredible vastness unfolded in which my self and any thought activity disappeared completely. The shock penetrated my system to the marrow. Samadhi is like a death, since it erases life and our perception as we know it. Depending on the power and depth of the Samadhi, it can take months or even years to integrate the event. Samadhi also creates a contrast in the sense that for the first time there is awakening and in that awakening there arises the recognition that life prior to that immense opening was a life of deep sleep.


Yogic scriptures differentiate between Sarbij and Nirbij Samadhi. The former means "with seed" and the latter means "without seed." What this means in actuality is that the mind-ego structure does return after the event of Sarbij Samadhi. Not only does it return, but in most cases the mind–ego structure hijacks and claims the event, if not prevented by an awareness capable of witnessing the dynamics at play.
Existentially speaking, this is very humorous: the mind is claiming no-mind. Words are claiming Silence. The very second that mind is claiming the experience of no-mind corruption has been activated.


While the mind-ego structure returns after Sarbij Samadhi, after Nirbij Samadhi it does not. Thus Nirbij Samadhi is the experience of Enlightenment and Sarbij Samadhi is not; it is a glimpse of enlightenment. There are people who have had Sarbij Samadhi experiences and mistake this for enlightenment. And immediately they go out and give Satsang to others, proclaiming their lofty state. Enlightenment is not the case. Hundreds or thousands of Sarbij Samadhis can take place prior to the event of the Samadhi of No Return.


I wish to emphasize that the experience of Samadhi does not create infallibility. Even those rare beings that are fully anchored in Samadhi retain the human capacity for committing mistakes on various levels. Learning continues. The universe evolves forever and so do we.


How to access Samadhi?
There are many different kinds of meditation techniques: Whether they work simply depends on you and the technique being compatible. There is focus on the Hara, the heart chakra, the third eye, and the top of your head. There is Kriya meditation. Samadhis that arise from working with each of those gates are notably different from each other. Samadhis that arise from the Hara have a very powerful earthy, grounded quality. Heart Samadhis come with an inexpressible sweetness and ecstasy. Third eye Samadhis are cool and luminous. Top chakra Samadhis can be immensely shocking.


It may be interesting to note that Samadhi experiences take place in high-intensity sports, during sex, and in the arts, such as dancing, music, painting, etc. However, since these contexts are utterly devoid of direct training, people may experience great confusion in response to the event. If Samadhi happens in the context of a genuine mystery school, at least there is conscious training to prepare.


A human being who has experienced Samadhi will be altered forever. The experience represents an oceanic freedom beyond anything that could be described and for that reason it is a haunting event that can only propel us to seek out situations and conditions where Samadhi happens again. And again and again. Until one day the seeker has disappeared forever and returns no more.


Andreas Mamet entered the journey of meditation over 30 years ago. In the 70s he lived in India for 5 years to deepen his practice. In the early 80s he taught meditation in Japan and Germany. He now lives in Mount Shasta, California, and spends his time teaching in Paris and Tokyo.

His Book recommendation of the Moment: Between the Visions by Raylene Abbott, available at www.amazon.com as a 5 Star book.
He can be contacted at: amamet1000@yahoo.com.

Alleviation of Suffering

The other day I stood in front of a group of people and I found myself saying that sometimes we are in the middle of a difficult situation that causes us much suffering and no matter how we turn, there does not seem to be a solution in sight. I said if that is the case, perhaps the best thing to do is to go and help somebody else. In the end we discover that by helping somebody else, we help ourselves. To me the wish to want to be part of the process that brings alleviation of suffering and upliftment is simply the signature of an older soul and how the soul goes about doing this is another signature.

The Bodhisattvas of ancient times often vowed to alleviate suffering and committed themselves to supporting this process in radical ways. There is a reason why they did this: Through powerful longterm spiritual effort, graced by massive experiences of awakening, they discovered that they are deeply connected to all other sentient beings. Their experience was akin to seeing other beings merely as different limbs and organs of their own body. This experience was existentially very real for them and stood in sharp contrast to the New Ager's We Are All One Declaration that is merely a form of intellectual concept surfing, not supported by the awe-inspiring depth of the Bodisattva's direct experience of the Universal Reality.

The Da Vinci Code In Marseille

On our way back from the Cannes area we stopped in Marseille for the day. Raylene with her usual ability to find amazing places discovered the Church of St. Victor. We visited the church and found that there was a crypt beneath the building. The name of the crypt was the Crypt of the Innocent Saints. As we descended into the crypt, we were enveloped by a cool calmness that was instantly soothing to the soul. Then we approached the center of the crypt. There, chiseled into the rock wall was a woman, who, to my surprise was clearly pregnant. Stepping back a few yards, Raylene looked up and she discovered the sign of the cross chiseled into the ceiling above. The cross was surrounded by a circle and inside the circle there were the initials M M. I was utterly amazed. Raylene said that this was as far as the artists of the time dared go to indicate that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene. They spoke in the language of symbolism and only the very keen eye of the beholder could experience the arising of understanding, presumed it knew how and where to look.

That is part of the message of the Da Vinci Code movie. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and he had children with her. A serious blow to the Vatican's patriarchal, power obsessed system.

Alvin Toffler, a futurist and counselor to the last 6 US presidents, said that we have now entered into the era of the Information Revolution and that we are going to see information spreading at increasing speed around the planet. He indicated that many things that have been kept secret will be revealed, simply because of the fact that the information can travel around the globe in 3 seconds.

I feel this speed of communication will break the grip of old power structures that could only maintain their control over people by keeping them ignorant. This may explain why the Vatican is losing its influence in the West and many of its faithful live in poor third world countries.

The Da Vinci Code in Cannes

When we drove through Cannes, the entire town was preparing for the film festival. This was no small feat: The town is actually quite small, only 70,000 people. They were getting ready to absorb a total of 130,000 expected guests. The town is beautiful.

The most prominent and noticeable feature of the preparations was the massive presence of giant posters advertising the movie The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks, which is currently in process of breaking box office records. The Catholic Church was immensely helpful, contributing to the success of the movie by telling its faithful to avoid seeing the movie since it was offensive to the Catholic religion. The faithful took the cue and bought every single advance ticket they could get, especially in countries like Spain, Italy and Mexico, guaranteeing that the movie was not just a smashing success, but rather a stellar success in the countries dominated by the Vatican. If I would have been involved in the making of the movie, I would have sent flowers and Thank You notes to the vatican.

Tokyo in Nice

We just returned from 4 days in in the Nice/Cannes area. To our great surprise we had an individual session with a beautiful woman from Tokyo, living near Cannes and married to a Frenchman, also a very beautiful being whom we had met two days earlier. It made us feel like we were working in the middle of Tokyo. Her name was Aya and on top of that our personal connection with her was instantly deep and heart-felt. It reminded me also that I missed Japan.

The situation in Nice turned out entirely different than one could have thought. The center through which our work was advertised had scheduled other workshops simultaneously with our weekend group. And even though we gave an introduction to about 35 people on Friday evening, the result was that not enough people signed up for our weekend. And even though I was personally perplexed and asked myself what they were thinking, serendipity struck in wonderful and magical ways.

We linked up with Monique, a very beautiful person who had participated in our workshops in Paris in November. She invited us to her house, directly at the yacht harbor in Mandelieu, 10 minutes from Cannes.

As it happened, she wanted to turn her house into a spiritual center, which we began doing on the spot during the time we spent at her house.

Magic was in the air and we had a wonderful time that was fruitful in unforeseen ways.

Popping Metaphysical Illusions

After living the spiritual journey for over 30 years, it is safe and appropriate to acknowledge that I myself have indulged in many metaphysical illusions. Ultimately I was never allowed to remain under the influence too long. Sooner or later a situation arose that forced me to wake up and and let go of a respective illusion and correct the error of my perceptions. This recognition of an illusion in one's life is never pleasant and is in direct confrontation with the common ego modality of "being always right and the 'other' always wrong."

Having undergone many surgeries of that illusion-popping kind in my life, I now find myself quite often in the position of popping illusions as we are teaching, in Paris and also in Tokyo.

Generally these illusions relate to some seekers' desire to uphold the image of spiritual perfection that supposedly is obtained in or after the event of spiritual awakening. At other times there does not even exist a desire for awakening (even a wrong motivation for awakening is better than none). Rather, the individual is bent upon the acquisition of psychic or magical powers to erase the feeling of helplessness and lack of control in the face of a universe that is seemingly overwhelming and at times brutally hostile.

Therefore, the acquisitions of power or various psychic abilities has become quite a dominant reality in various spiritual domains and those type of quests are rampant in the world of New Age spirituality.

Therefore it is helpful to stop for a moment and ask "What is the theme of my spiritual quest?" To clarify and verbalize this to oneself seems important to me.

It is because of this corruption of the spiritual quest that the number of sincere seekers, in my opinions, is actually not that high. There may be a lot of spiritual posturing, but without substantial degree of realization based on solid practice.

The good news, however, can be found in this very elating fact: as a human being evolves and genuine awakening experiences take place as a result of the meeting of powerful personal effort and the descending of grace, s/he, by virtue of a growing illumination and expansion of the soul, becomes capable of balancing the negativity of a growing number of people. Meaning, for example, that a Buddha or a Christ ultimately neutralizes the negativity of tens of millions of people.

This summarizes the good news for the day!

Power Tools For The Soul

The Mantra Session that Raylene mentioned in her "Reporting From Paris" was definitely one of the most amazing and powerful mantra sessions I have ever participated in. It was off the chart in intensity and how fast it developed. Two participants actually taped it and are playing it at home or in their cars.

Some time ago I said to Raylene that I felt that the techniques we are presenting are of such impact and substance that I foresee a kind of exponential growth in the participation of the workshops and weekly classes. Raylene's first women's group had five participants, the second Monday group showed 14 people. The techniques speak for themselves.

Raylene Reporting From Paris

Our friend Keiko in Tokyo asked Raylene to write a monthly report from Paris to maintain the connection alive. After reading it I thought it fit perfectly into this blog.

So, the report below is a hello from Raylene to our friends and all the people we have grown to love ... in Tokyo and wherever we have met.



Reporting from Paris

By Raylene Abbott

The Goddess is alive and well and living in Paris. You can see her image gracing the Parisian gardens all the way to the latest fashion show where she is walking down the runway.

Andreas and I have been very busy leading not only weekend workshops, but we have now started teaching two weekly classes: The Thursday class is about healing and creating inner transformation in your life. The Monday class is a Goddess Group which is a healing circle only for women. These classes take place in a big apartment on the 4th floor of a beautiful building with a great view of the Park of Luxembourg (Jardin de Luxembourg). The salon we do our classes in is an old-style Parisian apartment. It has soft rose pink walls and flowers on the ceiling.

Since we have been here for one month now we are witnessing the transformation that is taking place in people’s lives. Several of the people who have been attending our workshops regularly are now becoming healers themselves and are working alongside us in the hands-on-healing sessions.

One of the high points we have had in our groups was working with the Lakshmi Mantra “Om Gum Shreem Maha Lakshmiyei Svaha.” We realized that many people in our workshops wanted to manifest more abundance in their lives. So we created a circle of about 25 people and everyone placed their wallet in the center of the circle. I placed my new golden slippers next to a flower vase in the center. We all started to chant the mantra together. As we chanted the mantra faster and faster, I was moved by spirit to get up and dance around the altar. I then took the hands of two other women in the circle and we began to dance faster and faster around the altar as the chant became more powerful by the second. It was so immensely spirited that the whole group truly felt the Presence of Goddess Lakshmi. Right there as we danced at the altar I had a vision of Lakshmi, showering abundance upon everyone in the circle.

Create an altar in your home in the abundance corner. When you come in the front door, this would be the left back corner of the room. On the altar place objects that are symbols of abundance: a golden altar cloth, a basket of fresh fruits, gold or yellow color candles, and coins, jewels or sparkle stones. Be sure to keep the flowers and fruits fresh on your altar at all times. Then repeat the Lakshmi mantra for 3 months, at the very least 108 times per day. Usually I practice it about 300 times per day.

Keep your altar tended daily and watch the Goddess come into your life with unexpected blessings.