I built this to heal, time travel, reverse gravity.
Although sound baths are more grounded in science from Earth, the Karl sisters nonetheless lean into The Integratron’s unique extraterrestrial history, with builder George Van Tassel and his Venusian ET contact beliefs featuring prominently on the official website. The sisters continue to operate the landmark today. Visiting for a meditation and sound bath on a recent afternoon was a diverse crowd. There were crystal-collecting yogis, as well as curious retirees vacationing at nearby Joshua Tree National Park. More
"The Integratron" is a 38-foot-tall (12 m) cupola structure with a diameter of 55 feet (17 m) designed by UFOlogist and space alien contacteeGeorge Van Tassel.
The Integratron, Van Tassel claimed, is capable of human rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel.
The Integratron is a structure built in Southern California (in Landers, near spiritual hotspotJoshua Tree), following instructions that Van Tassel consistently claimed were provided directly to him by extraterrestrial visitors from the planet Venus.
The Integratron machine technology was started in 1957, the structure erected in 1959. It was financed predominantly by donations, including funds from superrich recluse Howard Hughes [1, 2].
After Van Tassel's passing in 1978, the building had a series of owners (and was left in various states of disrepair) before sisters Joanne, Nancy, and Patty Karl bought it in the early 2000s.
The three sisters promote the Integratron as an "acoustically perfect structure" and offer "sound baths" they describe as "meditation-like sessions accompanied by tones from 22 quartzcrystal bowls, creating binaural beats for relaxation and rejuvenation" [1].
The building is now a part of the National Historic Register and continues to be stewarded by the Karl sisters and their adult children. More
Join FREE online gathering to build inner peace as well as world peace with Mandy Kahn, now in its sixth year.
Peace Class is led by activist and poet Mandy Kahn. It is a free weekly gathering for participants around the world to come together to build peace in themselves and therefore world peace as a community.
To attend, simply join this Zoom link at the West Coast start time every Wednesday at 6:00 pm (PT). us02web.zoom.us/j/82150472713
Peace Class is presented by the Philosophical Research Society (prs.org) in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
Peace Class is now in its sixth seventh year. Each class meeting presents a short talk that elucidates some aspect of the true nature of peace. The talk is followed by a journaling-based practice to give each participant the opportunity to develop a set of peace-building tools to use at any time.
Nature is a remedy that brings peace as plants soothe and heal us, communicating via mycelia
Mandy cross under Kahn billboard, LA
Each hour-long session also includes a collective peace meditation (such as metta bhavana or the cultivation of "universal Buddhist loving-kindness," agape or boundless friendliness to all).
Teachings about pioneer peacebuilders like Peace Pilgrim and the opportunity to share participants’ personal peace-building discoveries with the group.
Each Peace Class meeting presents a stand-alone lesson; participants are invited to drop in for any single class or the full class series.
Mandy Kahn and PRS are grateful to be joined by peace advocates and would-be activists from around the world in this supportive online space.
Instructions
Talk, guided meditation, sharing, inspiration
Zoom link at its local start time: every Wednesday night 6:00 pm (Pacific Time). This class is FREE and is open to ALL.
ABOUT: Mandy Kahn is a California poet and peace teacher raised in Los Angeles and educated at UC Berkeley. She’s the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Holy Doors (2023). Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series, have been featured on BBC Radio, and are seen in the nationwide newspaper column American Life in Poetry. She presented a program of her peace-building immersive poems at the Getty Museum in 2019.
She is a frequent feature of Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal with fellow UC Berkeley graduate Editor Dhr. Seven, presenting the text of past Peace Class presentations.
She was also the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn, which is available from IndiePix. In 2021, Kahn presented a two-day peace concert at Meditation Mount in Ojai in conjunction with Dot Maver, director of the National Peace Academy, Fumi Johns Stewart, executive director of May Peace Prevail On Earth International, and Michael Lindfield, Meditation Mount’s board president. Mandy Kahn has been a featured speaker at many peace events, including at Peace Week, World Unity Week, and One Planet Peace Forum. Mandy Kahn serves as the Philosophical Research Society’s contributing writer and previously served two years as PRS' artist-in-residence.
Questions? Please email events@prs.org or phone (323) 663-2167
In meditation, there is no need to control the breath or breathe a special way. But there is a need to breathe (except, strangely, in the absorptions, but no one believes that until it is experienced directly).
And that will be very difficult and derail a practice if the nose is blocked, the nostril collapse, the septum is deviated, the turbinates are swollen or inflamed, or air cannot easily get in or out.
My whole anapanasati (mindfulness of in-and-out breaths) to focus on the breath has been derailed by nasal, sinus, and septum problems. I'm not the only one. Old injuries, obstructions, inflammation, normal aging, it can all add up to snoring, mouth breathing, exhaustion, grogginess, daytime sleepiness, confusion, and an inability to progress with this practice.
So the question "How to breathe?" is crucial and essential for some and nothing at all to worry about for others, who do not know we're suffering from such a basic disability or frustrating obstacle to progress.
This company may have a quick solution. Longer term solutions may involve a medical specialist and a thorough check up. Why keep suffering needlessly? Look at Klein from KROQ's Klein Ally Show.
(Beth Upton) What is the importance of balancing our effort when we meditate. These videos are only made possible by generous donations (bethupton.com/support). Consider supporting this work on Patreon: bethupton. About my work: bethupton.com
Contentment and relaxing?
Upton's teacher Ven. Revata
When I sat a long retreat with Beth Upton (formerly Sayalay Anutara, a very successful student of Ven Revata, a direct disciple of Pa Auk Sayadaw, my teacher), she told me the same thing Ven. Revata told her: "I want you to practice contentment (santosha)."
"But, but," I argued, "if I were 'content,' why would I k*ck a*ss? I'm here to out-sit everyone and get still there faster."
She shook her head. She might have laughed if it weren't so pathetic and common among us Yankees. She's British, so I thought maybe she didn't understand the American will to muscle and speed through everything. Oh, she understood it and dealt with it with many students. I thought she must not believe how much I wanted to succeed. I tried telling her.
"All the more reason for you to slow down, relax, take it easy, enjoy it."
"'Enjoy' watching the breath?!"
"That's right, it should be enjoyable."
"I don't remember anyone ever saying that. I'm here to be an ascetic, to skip meals, get into hard yoga poses and hold them, to sit until my bum is numb or aching, until I can't sit anymore."
"Then take some time off."
We were talking at cross purposes, because everything I said to win her approval was causing her to look sad. "There's piti (joy, bliss, keen enthusiasm), you know?"
No, I didn't know. "Not for me there isn't. This is all about suffering and overcoming suffering."
She smiled and shook her head. She's quite intuitive but doesn't tell you that at first. "Maybe that's the problem. Take this retreat to treat yourself extra nice, remembering that your goal is CONTENTMENT. And when you're content, I think you'll see that this is much easier [effortless] than you've been making it or trying to make it."
Oh, she was so right. We Americans, we just won't listen. A lazy student should probably be told to shape up. But a rigid student, an over-eager one has to be calmed down, way down. Persistence is much, much more valuable (profitable) than valiant effort. More than 99% of people who read about how the wandering ascetic Siddhartha became the Buddha will misunderstand what he did to succeed.
Ask yourself, American. What did he do that finally did the trick? It's right in the story, the allegory of his life. Prince is born rich in a kingdom, living in three seasonal-capital palaces, shielded from all hardships by loving (doting, overly concerned and sheltering) father who wants and needs his son to grow up and take over the family business -- ruling this Kapilvastu.
The prince is raised very delicately, receiving all the pleasures one could want, sees the signs at 29, realizes there is suffering in the world (aging, sickness, death, not getting what we want when we want it, getting what we don't want, and never being able to find satisfaction or fulfillment in anything) for everyone including him. He, too, will grow old, get sick, and pass away. This so shocks him that he renounces the throne, leaves the lap of luxury just on the night of having been told the beautiful spouse he married years earlier just had their first child, whom he is sure to love and be held in bondage (rahula) by on account of his love. This whole family bonds thing is going to ruin his quest for truth, enlightenment, and liberation. He will not, as king, be able to save his people from their real problem in life -- suffering (dukkha, disappointment, ill, all that not-getting-what-we-want coupled with getting-what-we-don't want). So he takes the decision to let go and leave it all behind. He sets off for the East. (He was not in India when this happened, and no one else was either as there was no "India" yet, and he almost certainly wasn't in Nepal either, but try telling anyone that. He was in Gandhara, what today is the northwestern frontier of the future Empire of India under Ashoka). He finds a yoga teacher, trains, learns meditation as this teacher believes it to work, reaches the pinnacle, and asks, "Is that all there is?"
The teacher, so impressed with his progress, offers him co-teaching status, but Siddhartha is a seeker and not interested in that. He needs to find why we suffer, and nothing this teacher (Yogi Alara Kalama) has taught him has led him to that. So he takes off again. He meets another reputable yogi (Yogi Uddaka Ramaputta), who takes him under his wing, teaches him, and he reaches the pinnacle, and asks, "Is that all there is?" He gets the same offer, feels the same dissatisfaction, and leaves. This time he sets off on his own to practice what all great wandering ascetics have practiced: penances and austerities (tapas) to subjugate the "evil" body and liberate the "pure" mind/heart/consciousness/spirit stuck in the prison of the flesh. Five others see how hard he's been working and think to themselves, "If anyone's going to make it, it's this guy." So they follow him deep into the woods -- forest groves and lonely wildernesses to fast, meditate, and practice according to their own intuition or as they have learned to do.
The less he succeeds, the more Siddhartha doubles down. He's been fasting and that hasn't worked, so he fasts even more. He's been mortifying the body and that hasn't worked, so he punishes and mortifies it even more. The others are impressed, until he goes too far, falls on his face, exhausted, and near dies. He gathers himself, goes off alone, finds a better tree. And it is there that two women (Sujata and her servant) feed him. He takes food directly from their hands, and the other guys are disgusted and turn away. "He's given up." They restore him to health, he bathes in the river, and eventually he realizes this whole roughing it and blaming the body just isn't the way. He sets off again, finds a better tree, and starts to reflect, "If this hasn't worked, what have I been doing wrong and what would be more spiritually profitable and bring me to my goal of awakening and finding a solution to the problem of suffering?" It isn't his suffering he's worried about. He's lived so well that he hasn't experienced much suffering. It is the suffering of all his relations and subjects back in his kingdom that he's worried about, so he has to succeed.
Suddenly, he spontaneously remembers something that happened to him when he as 7-years-old. He was left in the shade of a tree during the annual Ploughing Festival as his caretakers went off to join the party. Alone for once, he sat cross legged and fell into a very profound meditative absorption (jhana). It was pleasant, absorbing, and so deep that legend has it, as he sat, a miracle occurred. Even though the sun moved through the sky as usual, the shade stayed still protecting him. He may have levitated a bit as well. (And let's say these two things didn't happen, it almost certainly felt that way, that time lost all meaning, he started in the shade and emerged still in the shade feeling that a lot of time must've elapsed, and he felt so light and elated that it was as if here were floating). So powerful was this memory, that Siddhartha wondered if this weren't the way to awakening. A strong intuitive sense came upon him that it indeed was.
And then he takes to wondering why he hasn't allowed himself this pleasant way. After all, he studied and quickly mastered these stages of absorption under his two yogi teachers (in addition to having practiced them a great deal in many past lives). He realizes that this way is full of pleasure (piti, joy), and he's been fearing pleasure. Having had so much of it in the first part of his life, he knows that didn't do him any good for realizing the ultimate truth about life, the universe, and everything. But why be afraid of supersensual pleasure, he reasons, given that it's not wrapped up in the body or tied to lust or anything to do with the world and worldliness? That's true, he realizes, and starts practicing them.
He gets up, goes to the river, places his alms bowl in the river, testing his intuitive sense that he's on the verge of success. If the bowl goes against the stream (opposite the flow of the current) that will be a sign and good omen of impending success. It goes against the stream. Buoyed by this auspicious sign, he goes and finds a better tree, takes a seat under it, and makes a strong determination that he will not get up until he succeeds in his quest even if "his blood runs dry and his body shrivels up." It is success or bust, supreme enlightenment (maha bodhi) or nothing! And with that strong determination, sure enough, he sits, lets go, goes deep, emerges purified by this profound stillness and is able to see things as they really are, taking up the successive stages of mindfulness (satipatthana), considering the question, "Why is there this present suffering?"
He realizes in successive stages (paticca-samuppada) that on account of this, that came to be, and on account of that, this other thing, and so on through the 12 causal links, tracing back this present suffering to past ignorance that led to karma that led to karmic results that led to so many rebirths that led to this present rebirth, being here now, suffering. And that if it weren't for that unbroken chain of causes-and-conditions this present state would not be arising. That's the answer! Take the lynchpin out of this revolving wheel that leads again and again to suffering!
There is an amazing breakthrough waiting
With this purification and realization, he gains the superknowledges and psychic powers (abhinnas and siddhis), and breaks through to understanding. He recalls his many past lives with their general outline and details, sees how karma has been shaping this all along, sees how this has been happening to all other beings who have for the most part been in the dark about it, and realizes he has answered his question. "Light arose, knowledge arose," and he comes upon the great realization that all states are conditioned and caused, and share three universal characteristics.
They are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. And with that, through the night, he comes to the dawn, and is now the "Awakened One," the Buddha, replete in knowledge and conduct, full of insight and understanding. He remains around that tree that helped him to this realization for seven weeks, sometimes staring at it in admiration and wonders if it would make any sense to try to tell others what he has realized. He decides that it would not because this world, being so enamored of sensual pursuits, has no time for setting that hedonism aside and purifying their hearts/minds to see what Truth he saw and thereby be liberated by that direct knowing-and-seeing because, you know, the Truth sets one free.
Now, we all know that story, more or less. It's an ancient tale, the "Hero's Journey" as Joseph Campbell called it and Hermann Hesse alluded to in Siddhartha(1922). One could go into far more detail, but that's not the point. The question is, how did he do it? What is the KEY turning point in the story that led to his success, American reader?
One need not go back and look through the story. One already knows (or at least imagines that) one knows the answer. Why? It's because of the way we're wired or the way storytellers have been telling it down through the centuries that more than 99% of people will point to the magic line, "He made the strong determination that he wouldn't get up from this seat, even if his blood dried and body shriveled..." But that's completely wrong.
"Well, it can't be completely wrong," people will say, "because it's in the story." But it is completely wrong because he didn't need to say or do that. But he did need to realize and do something else that comes a little earlier in the story. What is it?
He needed to relax, be content, let go, enjoy the ride, stop over-efforting, and remember that the way was through the absorptions (jhanas, another word for which is the "meditations"). Since nearly every American will necessarily try to muscle it, the only people who make quick progress are the ones who don't, the ones who don't know enough to make the mistake of thinking that they know. They practice with beginner's mind, set no goal up for themselves to reach, and allow themselves to just sit rather than scheming and striving, struggling and suffering.
Ah, happiness leads to absorption.
They take the way of the Tao, as spoken of so much outside of Taoism in Zen. They follow the Buddha's actual advice that this is a "gradual training" that leads to the goal of enlightenment (bodhi) and liberation (nirvana). Craving and grasping at a "goal," as we do with worldly things, just doesn't work in this context. It is counter-productive.
So Upton gave me great advice in promoting contentment. I often forget that in practice as I start to tighten and strain and become exhausted by effort and despair. But there's no telling those Americans to take this up with a light touch, with a playful attitude, with confidence that the historical Buddha well understood what he was talking about and talked about it from direct experience.
Again and again in ancient Buddhist texts, including descriptions of the wandering ascetic Siddhartha's own "great awakening" (maha-bodhi), the enlightenment (bodhi) that led him to become the Buddha, "the Awakened One," were the "watches of the night."
These were the natural cycles of sleep (now referred to as polyphasic or biphasic sleep) and waking, which included "first sleep."
Emerging from first sleep, one is calm and in a naturally "meditative" state (calm, samatha) conducive to samadhi (mental coherence, superconsciousness). This samma-samadhi (defined in Buddhism as the eight meditative absorptions or jhanas) are crucial to attaining liberating insight (vipassana).
Calm is the very foundation of heart/mind purification (vissudhi-magga, the "path of purification") that insight-practices (described in the two Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourses) are built on.
The bases for this calm are virtue (sila) and diligent persistence, not loose living and then over-efforting as most of us seem to think is the answer to tackling all things nowadays. Virtue leads naturally to peace of mind leads naturally to insight, not in and of themselves but progressively by consistent practice.
The original translations of sati (Buddhist "mindfulness") were "wakefulness," "attentiveness," "watchfulness," "vigilance," "diligence," "assiduousness," non-absentmindedness, non-drowsiness, non-diffusion, non-scattered attention, and one might add "calm persistence" rather than force or struggle, greedy striving or straining.
These "watches" of the night were not an ancient Indian invention that the Buddha-to-be Siddhartha invented. They are our human birthright as Homo sapien sapiens. We are wired this way, and industrialization took it away for capitalism and Christianity's sake.
The British seem to have coined "watch" of the night, but all Americans used to turn in, wake up, do family things together, including eating together, then go back to sleep. This was natural. This was taken for granted. This is the way it had always been since our caveperson days.
Who took it away and why? It's clear that it was capitalist industrialists weaponizing the West's Christian religion.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, 90, is the first spiritual leader to WIN a Grammy for spoken word performance. Hollywood has honored the CIA asset and spiritual leader (former temporal leader or "pope-king" of Tibet, now China). The Dalai Lama released a spoken wordMeditations album with musical accompaniment.
What is the blissful and inviting rapture of the light of absorption (jhana)? Is it santosha?
Can a Westerner achieve rapture and insight?
Full moon Sunday is the Uposatha (the fasting day of the lunar observance) when some choose to keep the Eight Precepts for one day and night. LA's Mindfulness Meditation Center in Covina (suburban San Gabriel Valley) is conducting its monthly Poya Day celebration in honor of it. This is an excellent time to relax, listen, and practice the path of absorption with the great Ajahn Brahm -- or to read Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties.
The Jhanas (Absorptions) – Seven Steps to Heaven (and One Beyond) by Ajahn Brahm
(The Buddhist Society) Jhāna (meditative absorption, zen) is a bliss better than sex? Mantra: "Relax to the max!" There are two kinds of Buddhist meditation (no, not samatha and vipassana, which are a single system bifurcated by people who misunderstand what's needed for insight. The two types are Second Noble Truth (craving) meditation and Third Noble Truth (letting go) meditation, as explained by accomplished Western meditator Ajahn Brahm.
British Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahathera (known to the world as Ajahn Brahm) was born Peter Betts in London, England (United Kingdom) on August 7, 1951.
He came from a working-class background then won a scholarship to study theoretical physics at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. After graduating from Cambridge, he taught high school for a year before traveling to Northeast Thailand (Isan) to become a Theravada Buddhist monk.
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