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Excerpt from "Global Mind Change" with Edgar Mitchell

Dr. Edgar Mitchell  -- the sixth person to walk on the moon – talks to us about what what it means to be a human and our place in the universe in his series of lectures, “Global Mind Change.”  Following is an excerpt from that series.

I like to suggest that there is a challenge here. Throughout most of human history we have strongly believed ourselves to be very physical beings -- rooted in our physicality, experiencing what we would like to think would be a wonderful life.  But quite often, experiencing a lot of trauma and pain and all of those things that go with being human, that is the opposite of having ups and ups and ups. And the question is why? We are rooted in our physicality and yearning for a spiritual experience and trying to ask ourselves: Why me? What’s this all about? And we particularly ask that question “Why me?” when things turn sour. 

I suggest to you that the way we need to look at it is that we are not really physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  We are in reality eternal creative beings creating a physical experience, and it takes quite a shift in mindset to get yourself around that one.  But tonight we’re going to give it a try.  For those of you who haven’t heard me before, why is this important?  What is it about now, that I would bring this up?  What is it about the contemporary period that we live in that perhaps makes this a vital alternative viewpoint to think about and to look at? I will tell you that in the last year I have seldom spoken with a person who did not think that something very strange was going on, who did not think that the world was in a rather major crisis and it seemed to be deepening.  I will suggest to you that in the last six months it has become almost overwhelming.  I can’t talk to anyone who doesn’t feel that way.  They seek me out and my telephone is ringing off the hook.  Things are happening in ways they haven’t happened before. 

Next, BetterListen! will offer and excerpt from Edgar Mitchell's recording "Science and the Inner Experience".

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

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Excerpt from "Your Universe and You" with Edgar Mitchell

We are pleased to continue to bring you even more from Edgar Mitchell with this excerpt from "Your Universe and You".  

There is a fundamental original design for all of this.  A priori knowledge that the universe was constructed in thought a priori and laid out in all its glory, and we are just following a plan.  That isn’t the evidence either.  The evidence is that we’re in an evolving, creating, self-organizing, learning universe.  And the consciousness that is us is a part of the consciousness that is creating it all along.  And that, instead of being passive participants in this play, we are the major actors and have been all along.  We just forgot who and what we are.  So the ancient question can be rephrased only slightly, to give us a better picture of what it is that we are dealing with.  Virtually all of our systems of the past have talked about our physicality; we’ve expressed ourselves as physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  And if we turn that around and say that the alternative is that we are eternal conscious beings creating a physical experience, I think we have it closer to being right.  The problem is that it is very difficult for us to experience that.  

 

How many have heard Deepak Chopra, Dr. Deepak Chopra?  Quite a few of you. Good. Some haven’t.  Dr. Chopra is an Indian by birth. Not an American Indian -- the real type.  Trained in the west. Family of physicians.  On the staff at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Hospital and at this point dedicated to bringing some of the ancient wisdom of the ayurvedic medical techniques into western medicine.  And he speaks of these subjects, virtually the same as I do, but from the point of view of medical scientist and practitioner.  And he gives a wonderful little analogy that I like so much from his native county and it’s called precognitive commitment.  It is the notion that you take a young elephant and tie them with a small green vine in their youth, and then as they grow up -- I mean you always tether them with a small green vine -- but when they grow up they may be able to break a chain tied around their leg but they can’t break a small green vine. Because they are precognitively committed to that which confines them.  If you take insects and put them in a closed jar, and keep them alive in there for awhile and then take the lid off, very, very few will escape.  They are precognitively committed to their environment.

 

We have become precognitively committed to the idea that we are physical first and spiritual second when it is really the other way around.

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

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Excerpt from "Perfect Just as You Are" with Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron once again brings us her teachings with an excerpt from her recording "Perfect Just as You Are".

So often the question is asked: why are they called limitless? Have you asked that question? Because these four remarkable qualities are, generally speaking, traditionally called the four limitless qualities or the four limitless ones or the four boundless qualities. But boundless or limitless, it’s because we start with what we have, and it’s in a limited form, and that isn’t meant to be a criticism. It’s so valuable to touch in on these qualities as you already experienced them. But it’s limited in the sense that it’s love for one or two people, or four or five people, compassion for one person or three or four, a whole category of people and ability to rejoice in the same way or stay open. Have a sense of equanimity in the same way. It starts limited. I would be surprised if we weren’t all in the limited category. I know I am.

But the good news is you find what’s limited and you connect with it, and you contact it, and its potential is limitless. Which is to say, what starts as a feeling of free-flowing love for Fido, if you give your compassionate attention to this feeling of free-flowing love, and you give your compassionate attention to when it gets blocked, then basically by working with these two aspects of what we already have and where it’s blocked, the capacity to love is limitless. Which is to say a description of enlightenment would be someone who actually loved everyone and had compassion or could feel the pain of everyone, and rejoice in the good fortune of everyone, and didn’t shut their heart or mind to anyone. That makes you realize how far we are away from that. So we say, we mouth the words “all sentient beings”, but we’re not at all yet. All is a little far away from where most of us find ourselves, all sentient beings. And if you doubt that, all you have to do is, you know, just start going through these categories and see if you actually have love for all sentient beings. How about your boss, or your child, or your parent, or your partner, or the difficult people? As long as it isn’t all, then it’s in some way limited. So I would say that you could be a pretty wide-awake realized person and still be in the limited category because limitless means all, everyone. And those of you who choose to take the bodhisattva vow at the end of this course, you actually make an aspiration that you could stay that open to all sentient beings. Recognizing that you’re in the limited category right now, you nevertheless make the strong aspiration to be able to move in the direction of a completely open attitude -- being able to love and feel the pain and rejoice in all.

So I want to say one last thing and then open it up for some questions. This again comes from Ken McCloud’s book. If you ask the question: where does this love come from? Where does this compassion come from? Where does the ability to rejoice or feel joy come from? Where does equinimity come from? You think I have the answer, don’t you? Well, I actually am going to give an answer, but I’m not sure that I have the answer. I haven’t mentioned the “B” word. The bodhichitta word yet. But these four qualities are, if we cultivate these four remarkable, healing qualities, we are cultivating what’s called bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is a -- traditionally -- it’s said it’s the spontaneous wish that there not be suffering in the world and that people not suffer, and the wish to be able to help alleviate that suffering. And it starts limited. That you wish for certain beings not to suffer and you wish to be able to alleviate the suffering of certain beings but it has this limitless capacity so that the bodhisattva is one which is a synonym for the word warrior. Courageous, compassionate warrior. The bodhisattva is one, who in their full-blown mode, has that wish that all beings not suffer. All. 

Click here to check out the Shambhala Audio Complete Collection.

Click here to listen to a preview of this recording.

Noetic Science and The Lost Symbol

Featured in the Dan Brown's best selling The Lost Symbol is the concept of Noetic Science. BetterListen! is indeed proud to have 3 iconic titles by the founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon with the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, became “engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness" during his extraordinary experience.  This inspired him to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which researches the nature of consciousness as it relates to cosmology and causality.  Recently, the Institute of Noetic Sciences is mentioned several times in the new book by Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol, whose female protagonist is described as a “noetic scientist.”  Dr. Mitchell has devoted the last 35 years to studying human consciousness and psychic and paranormal phenomena in the search for a common ground between science and spirit.

More info on our three audio programs can be found at Edgar Mitchell Author Bio .

The Institute of Noetic Sciences is running a tele seminar about the key concepts of Noetic Sciences and The Lost symbol. Click here for more info about IONS and the seminar.

We have wonderful transcriptions of excerpts from our BetterListen! titles with Dr Mitchell that can be found by browsing here

Excerpt from "Way of the Spiritual Warrior" with David Gershon

Join David Gershon as he explores the first quality of the spiritual warrior – courage and bravery – in this excerpt from his recording “Way of the Spiritual Warrior”.

The seven qualities of the spiritual warrior.  First quality is the quality of courage, or bravery. Let me read a quote. “It requires courage to come out, reach out, and effect positive change in ourselves and in the larger institutions we serve. It requires courage to love.  It requires courage to accept that we ourselves can push the universe into higher states of order.” That’s a quote from Jim Channon, Evolutionary Tactics.  Another quote: “For the warrior, the experience of the tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.  Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness; it comes from letting the world into your heart.  You are willing to open up without resistance and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.  Without the tenderness, the bravery is brittle like a china cup.” From Rick O’ Shea, How to Be a Warrior.  And one last quote, before we get into actually talking about courage and bravery: “The warrior’s way is not invulnerability but vulnerability -- to the world, to life, and therefore to the presence”. That’s from a book called, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

So what are the qualities of courage and bravery? First quality that I see of courage and bravery is the willingness to say the difficult things. The willingness to say the difficult things, to be vulnerable.  I found in my life, that to achieve is not that hard. But what really became scary for me was to share what made me vulnerable, which was in fact that I might be thought of as less than in the eyes of the world.  That is my self-esteem; when that was put into play when that was what was really at stake, that’s where I found my vulnerability or where indeed had fear.  The way I came to know about that was through my wife, who is one of my mentors for better or worse.  

David Gershon Bio and Links

Excerpt from "Science and the Inner Experience" with Edgar Mitchell

We continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s talks with this transcription from “Science and the Inner Experience”.

 

Move out now further into space.  See the shape of the earth as a sphere.  Let’s move on out until we see the earth about as we would see it -- the size of a ball, a baseball held at arms length.  Look at that magnificent little planet blue and white, peaceful.   The turmoil that goes on underneath that layer of atmosphere and those clouds is not evident to us here.  We recognize it as a haven of life, our home, our planet. As far as we know for sure, the only haven of life in our galaxy, but as we suspect, probably not the only one.  But a beautiful little planet in the immensity of space and set in the background, billions and billions of points of light. Far more so -- ten times more than we can possibly see from the surface of the earth. Representing stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, billions and billions of such points of light, and our tiny little planet about the size of a ball held at arms length.  A beautiful peaceful haven for life. And in the immensity of the universe all of a sudden you feel connected. 

We are all apart of the same thing.  There is a connection.  There is intelligence.  There is a feeling of oneness, an extension of self.  And it’s a joyous and wonderful experience.  As I experienced it at this point coming back from the moon and looking at the earth, suddenly I recognized that our scientific description of reality of this universe was far from complete. Our model was not yet filled out, and on the other hand our religious descriptions of ourselves, of creation, of the universe --  all of them were somewhat flawed and incomplete as well. In other words, our knowledge of who and what we are.  How we got here.  Where we came from and where we are going is very inadequate at this point in history, and yet there is a feeling of intelligence, of peace, of abundance, of process, that gives one comfort and joy in observing this magnificent universe of which we are a part.  Contemplate that for a moment. See this little planet from that perspective, and see if you experience it as I did.

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

Excerpt from "An Evening with Ram Dass"

BetterListen!’s series of excerpts continues with the following excerpt from the wonderful recording of “An Evening with Ram Dass”.   

I have a friend -- his name is Larry Brilliant and Larry is a doctor.  He used to be known as Dr. America as part of the Hog Farm, which was a hippie commune in Berkeley. It was run by a fellow named Wavy Gravy, who was a clown.  Wavy works with children in leukemia wards as a clown, and among other things he also emcees.  Those of you that saw the movie “Woodstock” remember Wavy offering everybody breakfast in bed, 500,000 people.  Because he gives away food. They would bring the Hog Farm bus and feed people.  Very beautiful man.  Well, Larry was part of that, and he was a hippie doctor, and his wife went to India and met my guru, named Karoli Baba.  She brought Larry to him, and when Larry met my guru, my guru said to Larry, very shortly after meeting him, “U N O doctor”. What Larry heard him saying was “you are no doctor”, which is what his mother had been saying to him for years because he wasn’t earning a living.  But the guru kept repeating “U N O doctor, U N O doctor” ‘till finally it sunk into Larry’s mind that what he was saying was United Nations Organization Doctor. 

UNO doctor.  And there was the  UN World Health Organization project to eradicate small pox that was going on in India.  So Larry went down the bus trip from the mountains down to Delhi, and he went in with his long hair and his beard, and they said, “We don’t want hippie doctors, thank you very much” and he was shown the door.  He came back to the guru,  and the guru said, “U N O doctor. Go”. He went back.  They said, “We don’t want you”.   He came back – and  this is a long bus trip -- and he kept just doing it. It was like seven, eight, nine times. Finally he went into the United Nations and he said, “Look have you got any job at all?  I mean I gotta get this guy off my back.  I’ll take any job you’ve got”. They said, “Well, we don’t have a job as a doctor, but you could be an administration assistant”.  He said, “Fine”.  So he joined the club of a group of people who were getting rid of small pox.