Universal Truth
Dialogue II: Your Path is the Way [1],[2]
“The right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.” — Oprah Winfrey
James A. Cusumano, PhD; Chairman Chateau Mcely s.r.o. Prague, Czech Republic
In Dialogue I,[3] we met 16-year old Peter, who, during a hike in the woods behind his home in the village of Nebusice, a suburb of Prague, encountered Boda, a strange, but likeable mystic, who claims to be from Mesopotamia. Peter is mystified, yet captivated, by this charming man and his powers. He is unaware that Boda is an Avatar – a divine teacher in bodily form (Figure 1).
Peter is a bright and inquisitive student, who loves science and math and hopes to attend Harvard. He’s not your typical myopically-focused science geek, but is a bit of philosopher, who ponders the great questions – How did the universe come into existence? Why am I here? Where did I come from? What’s my purpose? He enjoys hiking the forest to think about these questions, hoping for answers.
During one of his hikes, he was moved by some “force” to take a steep, overgrown path, which appeared to have not been taken by anyone for a very long time – “The road less travelled and it made all the difference.”
When we left Peter, Boda was telling him of the great power of ‘being’ and not always focusing on ‘doing.’ “After all,” said Boda, “You are a human being and not a human doing.”
To demonstrate this point, he taught Peter a simple meditation and asked him to go home and try to solve a math problem that he had previously been unable to solve. After no success, he was to do the mediation to quiet his mind to a state of ‘being’ and afterwards try the problem once again.
After dinner, Peter went to his room and opened his advanced calculus book, the math course he had just completed during the second semester of his junior year at the International School of Prague in Nebusice. He had earned an A. The problems at the end of each chapter were conveniently divided into three categories – green, blue and black. Green problems were not exactly easy, but certainly solvable by capable diligent students taking the course. The blue ones were difficult. Every now and then Peter was able to solve a few of them. But the black ones were a different story. They were very difficult – seemingly impossible and were never assigned by his teacher for any of the exercises or exams.
Peter turned to the back of chapter 11, entitled Vector Analysis and arbitrarily chose the third problem in the black section. He tried to solve it for about thirty minutes when it became apparent, he had no idea for a strategy to get to the answer provided in the answers section at the end of the book.
He dimmed the light in his room and sat lotus style on the floor next to his bed and began to follow the instructions for meditation provided by Boda. Ten minutes later, he was in another world, the world of spirit, flooded with endorphins and feeling effects not unlike a “runner’s high”. (Figure 2) After 30 minutes, he slowly emerged from his meditation. Peter felt rested, calm and very much at peace – sensations he hadn’t recalled feeling for a long time. He thought, I should be doing this meditation thing every day. Then awareness took over – okay, now for that math problem.
He reread problem number three and focused on the specific question it asked. Suddenly, and for no reason he could fathom, it seemed that one of the theorems he had read in the text might be applicable to solving this problem. He rapidly paged back to it, studied the theorem and in a flash had an idea using it to set up a calculation strategy that might head in the right direction. He followed through and in less than ten minutes he had an answer. He turned to the answers section in the back of the book. His result was perfectly correct. How in the world?
That evening, Peter barely slept. He couldn’t wait to meet with Boda in the morning to tell him what had happened. Not only did he solve problem number three, but he chose to try problem number five in the black section to be sure what happened wasn’t just a fluke. The same result – he could not solve it, but in less than ten minutes after a second crack at meditation, he had the correct answer. This wasn’t just too good to be true. It was amazing! In the morning Peter left for the forest at 7:30 a.m. to meet with Boda. It was pouring rain. Even with his hoodie rain parka, he was getting soaked. He sloshed up the mountain as quickly as he could, his boots slipping precariously through the mud and the mini- rivulets rushing circuitously down the path. He nearly fell several times, but he managed to keep his balance and was determined to make his way to the top.
Finally, he was there but Boda was not. Because of the rain, he was probably staying dry in one of the hunting blinds, but which one? There were two to the right on top of the hill and one to the left. He decided on the left. It was closer.
When he got to the blind he called out from below.
Peter
“Boda, are you up there?” No answer. He turned and was just about to leave for the other two blinds when he heard in a very high-pitched voice.
Boda
“Yes, I’m here. I was napping. Glad you woke me up. Come on up the ladder and out of this rain.” Peter rapidly ascended the blind and jumped in under the roof for shelter from the downpour. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Boda
“My goodness Peter, you’re soaked.”
Peter
“Yeah, well it was quite a wet trek getting up here. But boy, do I have some interesting news for you!”
Boda
“Really? Well that’s wonderful, but first, please relax for a few minutes. I have a thermos of masala tea and two cups. Let me pour you some so you can warm up a bit.”
Boda poured a full cup of tea for both Peter and him. Peter drank his quickly, perhaps to warm his innards, but more probably because he was anxious to finish and tell Boda what had happened the evening before.
Boda
Continuing to sip on his tea, “So, Peter, tell me why all the excitement?” Of course, Boda knew the answer.
Peter
“Well, I did exactly what you asked me to do last evening with the difficult math problem and I solved it in no time at all. In fact, I did it twice – two impossible problems – solved in less than ten minutes for each one. It was amazing!”
Boda
“I realize you think it was amazing, but it certainly is not to me.”
Peter
“I don’t understand. These were two incredibly difficult problems. I could never have solved them at my level of training, even though I’m pretty darn good in math. Could that meditation thing make that much of a difference?”
Boda
“Finish your tea, Peter and then we’ll talk about what happened.”
Peter gulped down the rest of his steaming tea. He couldn’t wait to hear what Boda had to say. He again asked Boda.
Peter
“Could meditation really make that much of a difference in my ability to solve a difficult math problem?”
Boda
“Actually, it made all the difference. As you say, you have excellent skills in mathematics; otherwise, you wouldn’t be taking such an advanced course in high school. But, in order to solve challenging problems, even clever people need a glimpse of creative insight, something that connects pieces of what they already know, in a way that is not obvious. Like someone once said, ‘Looking at the same thing as everyone else, but thinking something different.’ Albert Einstein was a genius at this. His thought experiments often provided the insight he needed to choose a path that would lead to the answer he was looking for.”
Peter
“Is that how he developed the theory of relativity?”
Boda
“In part, yes. Since he’s one of your heroes, you may have read that in his research, he imagined what a ray of light would look like if he was on a train moving at close to the speed of light and in the same direction that the ray was moving. The real question is, ‘where did his idea to think like that come from?’”
Peter
“Where did it come from?”
Boda
“Einstein was a very contemplative, I would say, ‘meditative,’ man. It was those moments of contemplations and meditations – just being – that enabled him to connect his astute capabilities in physics and mathematics with a strategy or path to get to the correct answer and develop a theory that would hold up under scientific scrutiny – just like you did last evening – you connected your sharp capabilities in mathematics with the right path – a mathematician would say a ‘strategy’ – to get the correct answer to those two difficult problems. Said another way, to get the right answer to a challenging problem, it’s important to ask the right questions.”
Peter
“I don’t get it. Why should meditation do something as powerful as that?”
Boda
“Ah – now that’s the right question!”
The rain stopped and the sun started to peek from behind the clouds. Boda and Peter decided to walk along the ridge for a while. Because they were at the high point of the mountain, it was drier and less muddy than the descending paths. Peter removed his rain parka so that his shirt and jeans could dry. To avoid splashing mud on the bottom of his tunic, Boda hiked it up about twenty centimeters and fixed it there by tightening his rope belt. They walked slowly across the ridge, gazing periodically into the verdant valley below.
Boda
“So, Peter, I will answer your question. What I am going to tell you is true, tested and reliably correct. It’s been known for eons, but because of its ancient history and simplicity, most people have regarded it as a fable or a myth. However, there are some who have put what I will tell you into practice and it has made all the difference in their lives.”
Peter
Pushing away any pessimism and trying to be optimistic. “Great! I’m all ears.”
Boda
“We need to go back in time, more than three thousand years, to the Indian continent. At that time there were a handful of wisdom seekers, spiritualists, you might say, who had lots of time on their hands because they weren’t distracted by the chaos and noise that you face in your day-to-day modern world. They were interested in the answers to many of those ‘big’ questions that concern you. Some of them spent long periods of time in meditation contemplating those questions. This enabled them to significantly raise their level of consciousness. Something happened when they got to a certain high level.”
Peter
“Like what?”
Boda
“They began to get creative insights as you did last evening. They found that the longer and deeper they meditated–simply ‘being’– the more they could extract answers and novel concepts or ideas that would never have occurred to them.”
Peter
“I can relate to that. For both problems I solved last evening, immediately after meditation, I somehow had a thought about a theorem I hadn’t ever considered before and probably would not have done so without the meditation. In both cases, that was the magic bullet that led to the solution.”
Boda
“It wasn’t magic, Peter. That, I can assure you.”
Peter
“So then, what happened?”
Boda
“Well, to go back to those wisdom seekers. They found that all people come into this world with a conscious awareness which they called Personal Consciousness. And for reasons they didn’t understand at the time, accessibility or connectivity to Personal Consciousness varies from person to person. For those few seekers with high accessibility, even a modest level of meditation enabled them to readily and successfully address or solve difficult problems. For those with less accessibility, it required more time and deeper meditation”.
Peter
Not sure he was buying this. “This was three thousand years ago–come on, really?”
Boda
“Yes, really. But here’s the thing. Those few seekers with very high accessibility – meaning a high level of consciousness – made a profound discovery. They determined by actual experiments with meditation that there exists in another dimension, a nonmaterial plane which contains a record of every thought, word, deed or event that has ever occurred or will occur in the future. For example, they could predict future events with near-perfect accuracy. They called it the Akashic Record (Figure 3). Today, some philosophers and scientists refer to it as the Akashic Field.[4] Akasha is a Sanskrit word which means the ‘fifth element’ – beyond the primary four of alchemy – air, fire, water, and earth. Loosely speaking, the Akashic Record can be considered the Mind of Cosmic Consciousness, some might say, as Einstein once did, the ‘mind of God’.[5] I’ll come back to Cosmic Consciousness in a future discussion.”
Peter
“That’s crazy, Boda! Is it true? Do you really believe it?”
Boda
“Yes, it’s true and yes, I not only believe it, I know it! In fact, whether you believe it or not, that’s what enabled you to solve those two math problems. You tuned into the Akashic Record. It contains an infinite level of knowledge and wisdom and if you are able to connect to it, even to a modest degree, you have the ability to deal intelligently and successfully with very difficult issues.”
Peter
“If that’s correct, I think I’m going to start a daily meditation practice. Next year, I have my Scholastic Aptitude Test, a requirement
for college entry, and I am required to write essays for all my college prospects, especially Harvard. What you’re telling me might be just what I need.”
Boda
“I know, for a fact, it would help. But believe me, as we will discuss at another time, it can do more than that, much more. However, for now, I can tell you this. To tap deeper into the Akashic Record for access to greater knowledge and wisdom requires deeper meditation, or perhaps more accurately, higher levels of consciousness. You’re obviously good at the process, but to go deeper you will have to practice.”
“In this practice, you first must have an earnest intention as to what you seek. The ancient wisdom seekers said to do this you should clear your mind of all thoughts for eleven seconds. Don’t ask about the number eleven; that’s another story and not necessary for now. Next you must put your attention on a specific point, for example, a mantra. This you must do for eleven times eleven or 121 seconds, about two minutes. This will increase your level of awareness or mindfulness. Then comes the hard part – you must focus on a single point with no thoughts for eleven times eleven times eleven seconds, or about twenty minutes. At that point you are truly in deep mediation and your consciousness will move to a state where there is no space or time. It will have entered the realm of the great nothingness, where nothing exists but infinite possibilities and potential. From here you can choose the one you wish to manifest into your life.”
Peter
“Wow – that sounds incredibly complicated and difficult but seeing what I was able to do with a couple of difficult math problems, I am willing to give it a try and work at it. But for now, I have another question. What about the consciousness aspect of what you mentioned? Can you tell me more?”
Boda
“Yes, a great question, but that’s also for another day.”
With that Peter headed across the mountain and downhill to his home. He had lots to think about.
–To be continued.
Sat, Chit, Ananda!
Enjoy your journey, make a difference!
[1] EDITOR’S COMMENT—This is the second article in a new series by the author, based on his forthcoming book, “The Dialogue—A Journey To Universal Truth,”a conversation between a bright young boy and an Avatar, concerning the most challenging questions of all times.
[2] The author may be reached at Jim@ChateauMcely.Com.
[3] CZECH & SLOVAK LEADERS Magazine, Volume III, 2019.
[4] One of the best and clearest descriptions of the Akashic Field is presented by modern day philosopher and scientist, Irvin Laszlo in his book, Science and the Akashic Field, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2007.
[5] Einstein said, “I want to know the mind of God. Everything else is just details.”
Peter was intrigued with Boda, a mystical, humorous man with what appeared to him to be magical powers
An effective meditation practice can not only reduce stress and increase your state of wellbeing, but can also release feelings not unlike a “runner’s high”.
The Akashic Record is an infinite and eternal record of every word, thought and event that has ever happened or will happen in the future. It exists in an ethereal plane separate from but connected to our three-dimensional world