saint guru chod (1900-1988)

[Note: For most recent edition see pdf file saint guru chod (1900-1988).]

1. We assume the publication of "The Nederland," apparently an on-board complimentary guidebook alluded to in the Master's own notes. I have found the ca. 1920 publication of Travel guide of the Nederland Royal Mail Line. Route Amsterdam to Batavia. Two volumes. Amsterdam, Bound. 56 + 68 p. Ills. With 25 double pages colored, drawings in text by Willy Sluiter, 16 blank pages at end for passenger's notes.

2. Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972).

3. Ten years earlier Martin Secker Ltd. had brought out the English translation of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, a book which the officer was currently reading. There was a passage he found to be particularly enthralling and which he avidly read and reread many times:

The delusion rests simply upon a false analogy. As a body everyone is single, as a soul never… In literature too, even in its most sophisticated achievement we find this customary concern with apparently whole and single personalities. Of all literature up to our days the drama has been the most highly prized by writers and critics, and rightly, since it offers (or might offer) the greatest possibilities of representing the ego as a manifold entity, but for the optical illusion which makes us believe that the characters of the play are one-fold entities by lodging each one in an undeniable body, singly, separately and once and for all.

5. There is a something in Guru Chod's rediscovered tantra (teaching) that is strongly redolent of royal Egypt; cobras conferring kingship and that sort of thing. In ancient Egyptian religion the creator of all things was either Re, Amun, Ptah, Khnum or Aten, depending on which version of the myth was currently in use. Re, the sun god, took on many forms, and transcended most of the borders that contained the other gods. The actual shape of the sun, the disk (or, aten), was deified into another god, Aten. For a Indo-European cultural comparativistic scrutiny of this early human conception compare Pāli attan and ātta (Vedic, ātman) – not from Greek/Latin animus, but "steam" – and Egyptian aten, universal spirit, god, Old High German atum and Modern German, atem: breath. Compare also tuma (n), most likely the apostrophe form of Pāli atuma = atta: Sanskrit: ātman, higher "self." See Appendix: Bhucha Phra-Athit present work.

6. Autobiography of Swami Sivananda (1983), 14.

7. Swami Krishnananda, "Sivananda: The Fire of Sannyasa" (1992).

8. Ibid., pp. 24-3.

9. Or "Sumeru" as the Buddhist tradition knows it.

10. Hiranya means "gold," garba means "womb." According to legendary tradition, the philosophy of yoga was first communicated by Hiranyagarbha in his equine (vājin) form to the semi-legendary sage Yājñavalkya (ca. 700-300 BCE). In turn, Yājñavalkya is said to have imparted the teachings to King Janaka of Videha (present-day Janakpur, Nepal). King Janaka, by the way, is the legendary father of Sītā (or Janaki) who was wed to the Hindu god Rāma of Ayodhyā as described in the epic poem Rāmāyana. Yājñavalkya is also believed to be the author of the "White" Yajur Vedā. There are actually two different Yajur Vedā collections (samhitā). Both contain the same material but are differently arranged. The Taittirīya Samhitā is the older of the two. It is also called the "Black" Yajur Vedā because of its dour inscrutability. The second Yajur Vedā, called Vājasaneyī Samhitā, is arranged in a way that brings order, method and light to the teaching and is therefore called the "White."

11. See "Anuloma Viloma Pranayama (Alternate Nostril Breathing)",in Five Verbatim Teachings of Saint Guru Chod http://fiveverbatimteachings.blogspot.com/ 2006.

12. Theos Bernard, Land of a Thousand Buddhas (1940).

13. Ken Winkler, A Thousand Journeys: A Biography of Lama Anāgārika Govinda (1990).

14. Theos Bernard, Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience (1944).