Wailua University of Contemplative Arts is formed. Gurudeva responds to a number of things: God is love, not fear. Man's search to find peace of mind, to go within himself. Gurudeva comes forth with the Shum language to pinpoint exact states of mind during meditation. Breath controls the thought force. Kalibasa. Shumbisi time, quarterly, intensify meditation. Shum language. Get at peace with yourself, internal schooling. Wailua-sacred river waters. Shum, shumnuhm' inner space inner experiences. Shumif perspective. Moving awareness within states of mind. Q and A. Contemplative arts. :

Unedited Transcript:

[Gurudeva]

I'm developing a tape library for Wailua University and in it we'll have all of my tapes since 1957. I'll be categorizing, it's going to be a lending library for a group of students.

This is a September 24th, 19..., 26th, 1970 and I'm in San Francisco.

The... We start with your question Nancy.

The Wailua University of Contemplative Arts drew together a lot of our activities that have been developing with various groups of people and students on different levels of study over 15 years. So last year or the first of this year rather we had a series of meetings to find out how we could best expand and be of service to more people interested in meditation and stabilizing their whole mind force in the arts of meditation so that they could live better constructive lives in whatever line of practice or profession that they were in.

So, I founded the Wailua University of Contemplative Arts which has nine schools. And each school takes care of a certain phase of training. This year, our first school, school of extension studies, will have one year of training. Day by day training, all the laws of the inner life, how to govern and handle the mind while one is meditating all on tape recordings, whereas, in previous years it's all been printed material.

But basically the university structure takes care of the people flow so that the new students have all of the attention that is due to them as well as the students who have been studying for a number of years have activities and attention too. And provides us with new challenges in training our teachers for the expanding work and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of people, right across United States now, interested in the arts of meditation. And very seriously so from all walks of life.

This is an age and in America especially when man has everything that he wants right at his fingertips and as much of it as he wants to have. And living under conditions such as we do.

Subtopic: Wailua University of Contemplative Arts is formed.: 0:3:31

Then the big question comes up: 'Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going.' How to find peace of mind is the next thing that we want. When we travel to India, each one that we met with, they told us, "Well, Indian people don't necessarily want peace of mind, they want food, and they want material things now." They have become extroverts. But oddly enough, America is the only country in the world where we have a mass movement literally in meditation and a desire to know. It first started with Christian Science. That was the first breakthrough for meditation. And prior to that we had 'The New Thought Movement' that came along. And that broke the traditional ways of looking at religion. But Christian Science taught a revolutionary teaching; they had the healing of the body through the mind. But, more than that, they taught God is love. Prior to Christian Science man was taught to fear God. This was a tremendous breakthrough and out of, and after Christian Science sprung up many different small religious groups that have since grown into very large ones. 'The Science of Religion,' 'Science of Mind' and all of the branches of Metaphysics as well as psychology and psychiatry today. All basically have their roots in man's search to find peace of mind, to stabilize his entire being and to go within himself.

Subtopic: God is love, not fear. Man's search to find peace of mind, to go within himself. : 0:5:34

Well the University of Contemplative Arts is dedicated to give a continued flow teaching along these lines as well as the practical 'How to's.' When I was your age and your age Tom, growing up, I had my first introduction into the metaphysical world and into yoga and read all the books that you've all read and studied with quite a few teachers and attended lectures and I thought that the teaching was just marvelous and dedicated my life to go further and further into it. However, there was no 'How to.' There were a lot of shoulds but no how to. And, because there was no how to they say: "You should meditate." But there were only just a few individual people that could teach you how to meditate; and so it is today. But now today we have a few schools that can actually teach you how to meditate which bypasses all the advice of what we should do. We were told in earlier days: You must control your mind and control your thoughts and control your feelings. Now we can know how to control out thoughts and how to control our emotions and how to control our feelings. We were told you must sit down and be still within yourself. Now we have absolutely positive techniques of if you do sit down and you're not still within yourself exactly what to do. And then you do it and you do get quiet and still within yourself and have peace of mind.

So, this is a basically a 'How to school' and does not limit itself to any religious faith or background and as long as someone has an upright spine and is willing to accept a challenge he meets his first challenge the Wailua University and that's himself. And he can approach this challenge in one of two ways. He can be afraid of it afraid of himself or he can stick out his chin and get to know himself.

Many of you have read my book "Cognizantability" in which outlines all the basic teachings and structure of the mind. Which is more or less traditional however, there's some new approaches in it. But, two years ago, in finding a great need for more words to explain, especially to new students, and to communicate with our older students, about the inner states of mind found in meditation, I came forth with the Shum Language which gives this vast vocabulary of words pinpointing very exact states one finds when he's meditating. In the English language we have many words to name certain parts of our inner life and today magazines and in movies we hear about the inner life more and more and more. But everybody has an inner life. They do not have to be mystically inclined to have an inner life. If we think over a letter that we've just read, that's our inner life, our private thoughts our private feelings. That is all of our inner life. If we are feeling very happy on the inside, that of course is our inner life. If we're feeling very sad, jealous angry, hateful, resentful, joyous, pleased, elated, it all happens within us and that is our inner life.

But just beyond and deeper within are mechanisms of the inner part of the mind which produce joy and sorrow and hate and jealousy and fear and love; these are the energies working through the nerve system that allows us to feel these emotions. But we have names in the English language for all of these emotions. But we don't have names for these energies in the English language at all. The Shum language provides these names. In the Sanskrit language there are names for these inner currents that flow through man and but, with the Shum language we have the names for all these inner currents that can be experienced when one is meditating, when he becomes sensitive to how he lives his inner life. For instance, if we eat food and then study within our own mind and emotion, how that food digests and flows through the nerve system and into the blood stream. There are adequate words in the Shum language that you can describe very minutely each of your experiences as that happens. When we move into states of meditation its unlike anything that we do on the Earth except move in an airplane off the surface of the Earth. We don't avoid our problems or get away from our problems. Problems remain right where they are and the challenges of our everyday life does too. But in meditation we are like in an airplane, flying over the city, looking down at the city and getting a new perspective of the city which I'm liking to our external area of the mind. So that when we arrive back in the city we can find our way around much better by having always that overall view in mind.

Subtopic: Gurudeva comes forth with the Shum language to pinpoint exact states of mind during mediation. : 0:12:29

One who meditates may be facing in his personal life many pressures and challenges of the world. But in a half an hour of meditation he can withdraw his awareness far enough within himself so that he can look back on his whole life structure and pattern that he's been going through maybe for a period of a week and come out with intuitive solutions of how to face more courageously his challenges in his daily life and more creatively too. This then are some of the benefits for living a meditative life. But one has to have a very strong willpower in order to do that because generally, as soon as we sit quietly all sorts of unbidden thoughts come rushing into our minds. How many have experienced that? Really? My goodness. And these unbidden thoughts just rush through our mind like a herd of cattle.

What to do about it? Breath controls the thought force. As we control our breath we control our life force and therefore we control the thought force. So the fight is not with the thoughts, "I don't want to think about this and I can't bear to think about that, been thinking about this for two days now, I want to meditate on something else and here these thoughts are again." We can't have an inner battle because then our emotions become involved. And when emotions become involved, therefore, we have thought racing through our mind and emotion racing through our nerve system and we might just as well get up and do something of a different nature. But breath, the control of breath, the control of the life-force which retroactively controls the thought-force, so we sit and we breathe; we don't pay any attention to the thoughts rushing through our mind. And we do kalibasa: That's nine counts in breathing in, hold one, nine counts out. And after a little while only one thought at a time will come into the mind. And then finally, we're able to hook on to anything we wish to think about and it'll stay in the mind, no thoughts will interrupt as long as our breathing is slow, regular and diaphragmatic.

Subtopic: Breath controls the thought force. Kalibasa. : 0:15:15

Then for instance, if you're a student and you have to pass examination, you simply put all that subject matter into your mind. Meditate on it; come out with good creative answers. And a fine positive approach to your challenges in school. Some of the students who study are working in science as scientists. They put in their, their laboratory experiments right into that, that vacuum area they've created through controlling the breath, and perceptively work with it. And come out with breakthroughs. Students who are mathematicians and use meditation beautifully. Students that are religiously inclined can then perceive the answers to the questions: "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" And avoid intellectually grappling with them.

And this is just man, confronting man himself, in a very positive way. Then of course times in our life go by and we forget to meditate. That's the time when the Wailua University comes in handy in sending something through the mail or providing some activity which tells you: For the next nine days we're going to intensify our meditation and if we've been kind of lax we can catch up with it now. That's called our shumbisi time, four times a year, first in each quarter for nine days. We have one coming up the first of October for nine days when we're really going to all pitch in and make up for all of our inner life that possibly we've been neglecting for a three month period and get off to a brand new start.

Subtopic: Shumbisi time, quarterly, intensify meditation. : 0:17:38

The language Shum provides us with another challenge too because you have to learn the language. Learning a language is difficult. But the entire lifestyle, and all the religious principles as well as the all the 'how to's' are woven into the structure of the language. So as you learn the language you're building in the needed knowledge for gaining control of subtle areas of the mind while you're meditating. So learning the Shum language provides us with the first step, attention, the second step concentration which precede any state of meditation. Because only when we can hold in our mind one thing and think about it, can meditation really start. And we're quiet enough, we're within enough and we're content within our self satisfactory enough so that the mind doesn't wander, doesn't disturb the emotional system.

So therefore, one who meditates has fairly good emotional control, maybe not perfect. One who meditates has an inner knowledge of how his nerve system works and can govern himself accordingly. And he actually then completes his education. Education is not complete until man becomes acquainted with himself. So first we go through all of the external schooling and then you have to get totally at peace with yourself and that's the internal schooling. That's where the Wailua University comes in. Wailua means sacred river or sacred waters and it's a river in, on the Island of Kauai, on the Hawaiian Island Chain. And flows right past my ashram there.

Subtopic: Shum language. Get at peace with yourself, internal schooling. Wailua-sacred river waters. : 0:19:46

This is a Mambashum. It's a meditation of the week. And it's a guideline for meditation. It gets one started; there are fifty-two of them and one appears up there every week, put up every Sunday and the students all have them in their homes as well. And this tells us that if we practice meditation by withdrawing energy from the physical body into the emotion and the energy from the emotion into the source of energy itself there's a point, basinaka, where the external energies merge with the life force itself and that's called basinaka.

Subtopic: Basinaka: 0:20:45

After that time you are into yourself far enough to chase out, that you can look out and see the various colors that emanate from the physical body such as in the human aura, the colors of thought themselves. And then you can see and feel the life force running though the spine itself, simshumbisi. So you see that gives a lot of food for meditation. That is meditated on four times a day: 6 o'clock in the morning, 12 noon, 6 o'clock at night and 12 midnight. The 6 o'clock meditations begin with chanting and the 12 o;clock meditations begin with someone calling these particular words and each one's working within themselves to find where they actually exist within the inner realm of the mind.

The language provides several thousand words for all types of inner space inner experiences, techniques of meditation and so forth. But more important is our perspective of looking at life. In each language we have a perspective. In the English, French and German languages man sees himself outside the physical body. That's where his awareness is. Looking at the world and saying: "my body." So his individual ego, in order to speak the language the way other people speak it, he has to put his individual ego out into the world. Then he says: "I have to go into my inner self." And he looks into his inner self as if he's looking through a keyhole. And it can be very scary with a perspective like that. So then he has to use to use the term 'higher consciousness' is up and lower consciousness is down because his perspective is far away even from his physical body. Then and our perspective is how we relate to the world and how we handle our reactions to our experiences.

Subtopic: Shum, shumnuhm' inner space inner experiences.: 0:23:20

In the Shum language as in some of the oriental languages the perspective is placed right within in the body itself and then approaches the world by holding his own center and looking at people and his own emotional reactions to people and people and their things by having his perspective centered right within the energy within his own body. That's what he calls himself, the individual ego. And in doing that he doesn't see a higher consciousness and a lower consciousness; he sees himself like a pure, a pure light which flows through all parts of the mind not getting soiled by any part of the mind. With this perspective, it's called shumif, he sees the entire mind like the space man sees the entire Earth as one complete unit. And as the traveler can travel into one country as an individual and then move to another country, so can the one who has this Shum perspective, it's called, move from one state of mind or emotion to another state of mind or emotion simply by moving his awareness and not identifying into, in any state.

Subtopic: Shumif perspective. : 0:24:57

Suppose he's unhappy. Then he says, he doesn't say: I am unhappy, therefore, I have to stay unhappy until something happens to make me happy again. He says: "My goodness, I'm in an unhappy state of mind; I'll have to remove my awareness to the happy state of mind." So then how does he do this? He sits down, he breathes. He see himself as untouched by the unhappiness, really. And he realizes the causes for it and goes then to a happy state of mind very quickly, at will. Of course this is a practice and like everyone who practices the piano doesn't play it too well, so does the meditator not do this too well. But as he meditates more and more and more he has more control over awareness. His own individual awareness. Up to the point where he can be in deep inner states of consciousness as well as in external states of consciousness and handle his everyday problems, duties and responsibilities in a very mature way while not disturbing very much his emotional nature. Now this doesn't make him cold, this makes him very warm, very human, very constant in his emotions. And this all and all a well rounded person as he goes through his inner unfoldments.

So we look at man like a flower. He opens up and meditation helps and allow him, allows him to open up just beautifully.

Subtopic: Moving awareness within states of mind. : 0:26:49

Do you have any questions? Talk back and forth just a little.

[Questioner--inaudible]

It's not too good to meditate if you're tired. Meditation takes a lot of energy. To have a very good meditation for fifteen minutes will take as much energy to, as it would to run around the block three times. So, it's best to go to bed and go to sleep and then wake up and meditate.

Uh hmm! Meditation isn't just sitting there as you know, it's just really working with yourself in a very positive way. And everybody, whether they meditate or not, they live an inner life and they work with themselves. "Oh, I wish I didn't feel this way," you know. You've gone through that yourself. "Oh, I wish I didn't feel this way." Well, one who knows how to meditate, he says: "I wish I didn't feel this way and I'm not going to." And he sits down, he works with himself and he moves into a different area of his own mind within a matter of an hour or two. So, but that's hard to do if you're tired, start out with.

Any more questions?

It's a very simple thing and if we realize that learning, meditates very simple. That we don't want to make it intellectually too difficult because it's very very simple. It just takes a very strong determination.

Yeah?

[Questioner--inaudible]

Well, I run through a few of the contemplative arts. They're basically things that, that keep you in a good mood. For instance fasting is a contemplative art which brings us health and allows us to study. All the workings of the body, when you refrain from eating for a few days, you're fasting.

Another one is music. A fine contemplative art as well as dance, as well as anything you can do with your hands such as making pottery or any kind of creative artwork. Some of the students are doing embroidery especially the girls of the Shum Mambashum, making tapestries. Anything that quiets your nerve system that you can do with your hands and helps you to express yourself and enjoy yourself creatively.

Let's see what are some the other ones of those nine?

Being a self -starter is a contemplative art. There are three types of people, one who can really be, have a lot of initiative and start himself and keep himself going until the project is done. Another kind who just can't do that. He has to be told and prodded. And there's another kind who can be a self-starter if there's something in it for him, for his own personal ego. But the one who can just push a project, be creative for the sake of being creative, that's a contemplative art because it has to come from the within of him. Makes him a better person too because of it.

Weaving is a fine contemplative art as well as meditation and, and there are many many contemplative arts within the realm of meditation itself. And learning Shum is a contemplative art or learning Sanskrit. Any of the deeper languages. And there's a lot more. You'll be getting those in the mail too.

Subtopic: Q and A. Contemplative arts. : 0:31:27

Any more questions?