Standing within the Religious Coronary heart

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An Interview with Laurie Conrad by Diana Souza. Ithaca, New York.

Q Laurie, the primary query I might prefer to ask – I want to know what you imply by the phrases “standing in my coronary heart” and “I seemed inside and located him within the religious coronary heart”. You wrote: “I used to be standing in my Coronary heart. My Coronary heart was throughout me within the room, surrounding me. I might do little greater than look across the room in any respect that was manifesting from my Coronary heart, intrigued and questioning.”

A The passage you simply learn was about my expertise with the sage Paul Brunton, nearly thirty years in the past. After I say “I seemed inside and located him within the religious coronary heart”… There’s the bodily coronary heart that beats and provides us life, and there’s additionally a religious Coronary heart the place clairvoyants typically go to seek out their photos. You may say that it’s the place the soul, the person soul has its mysterious connection to the Divine, to God.

So the divine photos, the photographs which are given to the soul by the Divine, are first obtained by the soul in what I’d name the religious Coronary heart. I’m not the one individual to make use of that time period — I did not give you that vocabulary. The religious Coronary heart is a mystical time period.

When the clairvoyant or mystic is clairvoyantly seeing into different realms or tapping into the long run, or seeing or going to different locations on earth whereas in waking state consciousness or in dream state, they’re typically wanting within the religious Coronary heart to seek out these photos. I consider that many, if not most individuals have these experiences whereas in dream state, they’re simply not conscious of it. However clairvoyants can go there whereas in abnormal waking state consciousness to seek out these photos of different realms or different locations on earth or the long run.

Q The common reader goes to marvel how your coronary heart could possibly be within the room throughout you?

A Nicely, I feel I ponder about that myself. It’s a part of that grand thriller of Life. I’ve had the same expertise with music, the place I’ll all of a sudden be in my coronary heart, standing in that mystical Coronary heart, and the notes to my items might be throughout me. So I suppose that I am going to the same place when I’m deciphering Chopin or writing my music. I do not know that we are able to actually clarify this stuff. While you meditate, if you happen to meditate, I feel it’s simpler to grasp this. The truth is, it is likely to be very tough to elucidate or describe it for individuals who don’t meditate.

The religious Coronary heart is mostly believed to be situated within the seat of the soul. In my expertise, it’s roughly the place the bodily coronary heart is, and extra within the heart of my physique. The soul itself is so past the boundaries and bounds of our bodily physique, we can not even start to think about the grandeur of the soul. So my private self, together with my particular person little thoughts – was sitting in that room with the good sage Paul Brunton. He was close to the tip of his life on earth and he was absolutely enlightened. A Christian would most likely say that he had reached sainthood. Within the Indian traditions, they might say that he was absolutely enlightened. In his presence, I did have this huge mystical expertise, the place I skilled the contents of my coronary heart throughout me within the room – as if I had been in a really deep, superior meditation or contemplation.

I had solely been meditating, I feel, for just a few months once I met him. So it was a really memorable and lucky expertise.

This human physique that we’re in, in comparison with the soul – and the bodily mind in comparison with Consciousness Itself – are minuscule as compared. So, I may need been allowed to expertise my Coronary heart round me, filling the entire room to show me this. I may need been given the expertise in order that I might see and perceive that we’re all a lot greater than we consider ourselves to be, that the Soul is immense. There are different meanings to this incidence as nicely, meanings that we’d not have time for on this interview. It was a mystical expertise. It is not one thing we people can simply discover phrases for.

Q You additionally mentioned that you simply first met the Dalai Lama in your goals, earlier than you even knew who he was. Later you met him in individual. Inform us your impressions of the Dalai Lama. Anecdotes…

A Our Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Nicely, he’s a unprecedented individual. I’ve seen him and met with him in a bunch setting many occasions. One of many first issues that struck me is his unimaginable humorousness – and his great pleasure. The following factor that I observed was his extraordinary earnestness and seriousness at any time when he speaks about prayer. He and his monks are always praying for the world. He’s a really humble and holy man. And I like that juxtaposition of these two attributes of his character, the humor and the holiness. He’s mentioned to be the incarnation of Compassion, and every little thing that he says and does revolves across the greater Compassion.

When he speaks concerning the greater Compassion, it’s all the time mixed with Knowledge – the Larger Knowledge which roughly corresponds to the Knowledge of the Catholics and different religions: that we’re not the physique, that the fabric world just isn’t Final Actuality. This greater Compassion just isn’t the abnormal, sentimental emotion most individuals name compassion; Paul Brunton would name that emotion, or the sentimentality of empathy, the decrease octave of true Compassion. The Dalai Lama would say that true Compassion additionally consists of this greater Knowledge. By making use of Knowledge, we’d have Compassion for each sentient being, each being on earth – simply because they’re within the physique, and due to this fact, endure. That’s the true Compassion. This Compassion would additionally embody the view that you simply cease folks if they’re behaving badly, as a result of of their unhealthy habits they’re hurting themselves and others. So, on this definition of Compassion, Knowledge stands within the background in a loving, indifferent method. The Witness place, for example, of Paul Brunton, after we are capable of clearly see what is actually finest for everybody within the state of affairs. That’s true Compassion.

On the entire, we people come to the world primarily from our private ideas and decrease feelings. The massive Academics, such because the Dalai Lama and the sages, the saints – they’re all attempting to get us to return from a better place, the upper octave of all the private feelings. Brunton speaks about this at size in his Notebooks, and the Dalai Lama additionally has written many volumes of books.

As for anecdotes, I would not even know the place to start. Primarily I bear in mind his laughter, his pleasure. Subsequent the sacredness that he brings with him. The readability of his thoughts. The primary time I used to be in the identical room with him, I clairaudiently heard a really low tone in all places within the room, vibrating the complete room – maybe it was the vitality of his very being, or his mantra, his inside prayers. I had not heard that phenomenon earlier than that day, nor since, not even whereas in his presence.

Q I bear in mind a narrative you informed concerning the Dalai Lama coming and clearing an area the place he was going to talk, with a storm?

A Sure, that was in Boston, when he spoke at Harvard. A good friend and I had been staying at Mataji’s ashram for just a few days. I consider Mataji took over for Ramakrishna. She had an ashram close to Boston, and we had determined to remain there as an alternative of at a lodge in Boston. We had come to listen to the Dalai Lama when he spoke at Harvard.

I do not know what 12 months this was, but it surely was a few years in the past. It was one of many Dalai Lama’s first visits to this nation. Mataji despatched three of us forward, to rearrange a gathering between her and the Dalai Lama simply earlier than the lecture. She had by no means met him. So she despatched us forward to speak to his entourage, and prepare it. I all the time thought this uncommon task was a ruse of some kind – Mataji was absolutely enlightened, she didn’t must ship three younger human seekers to rearrange this assembly with the Dalai Lama. She and the Dalai Lama had been completely capable of prepare it themselves, by means of non-verbal communication, mentally. Because it turned out, the younger lady driving us there had met Paul Brunton in goals all through her childhood – as I had visited with the Dalai Lama first in goals as an grownup. In these goals, Brunton instructed her. She discovered who he was years later, when she noticed his {photograph} in a guide. That was most likely why Mataji despatched us forward collectively, in order that my good friend and I’d meet this younger lady and listen to her story. Additionally that I’d expertise the storm, to sooner or later inform the story on this interview. Mataji, like Paul Brunton, was completely capable of see into the long run.

In any case, the three of us all obtained into a bit automotive, an previous, very crushed down automotive that we hoped would get us there. And we did get there early sufficient to rearrange a gathering between the extraordinary Mataji and the saintly Dalai Lama.

After we had completed talking along with his folks, they readily agreed to the assembly, and we had been very happy and joyful that our mission had been achieved so simply. I made a decision to go exterior on my own to attend for Mataji to reach. It was a good looking, calm, early fall day. The solar was shining and there I used to be, on the attractive Harvard campus; I had by no means been there. College students had been sitting below the bushes finding out, or strolling to or from their courses alongside the paths. I walked out of the lecture constructing door a bit method and fortunately stood there, taking in the fantastic thing about the scene. Out of the blue, an enormous storm got here up; an intense and shocking, stunning wind. College students’ papers had been flying in all places, branches waving in all places, the bushes had been nearly bending. I attempted to take shelter towards an enormous tree close to the door, wind and leaves flying, college students now scurrying alongside the paths, bent over towards the storm, attempting to retrieve their scattered papers. It was fairly one thing. It felt like I had inadvertently stepped right into a vacuum cleaner or a washer.

It most likely lasted for about two or three minutes. Then the storm stopped simply as shortly because it had arisen. I mentioned to myself: “Good Heavens, what was that?”

Then I laughed. I spotted that it was most likely the Dalai Lama purifying the grounds of Harvard earlier than he arrived. And that is nonetheless my view. He is a really highly effective being, the Dalai Lama. He has great energy. But, by way of his teachings, most likely his greatest message to the world is kindness, to be variety to others. And when you’ve got adopted the messages from Our Girl, the Madonna, to the world – She has been showing in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia for nearly twenty years to 6 visionaries – She additionally says to guide a sort, easy life. She says that we must always attempt to sample our lives after St. Therese of Lisieux. And St. Therese of Lisieux by no means even left her convent! She had the only of lives. She had, at most, a bit desk in her convent cell and a mattress. Possibly a chair. At one level she had a vase in her room, however she thought she is likely to be getting too hooked up to it, so she requested them to take away it. She mainly did her day by day work and chores on the convent and was variety to the opposite nuns. And but she turned one of many best Catholic saints. In Medjugorje, Our Girl mentioned mainly: choose your path and lead a sort, easy life.

The Dalai Lama is now a celeb, he’s a really well-known man. He has written books and lectured in lots of international locations. He’s world recognized. And he’s nonetheless probably the most humble and easy of males. They are saying that he has one pair of sneakers and two units of his maroon robes. He stays utterly untouched and unspoiled by the world. He considers himself a monk, but he’s each the temporal and religious chief of his nation. However he lives like a easy monk. So, in that sense alone, I feel he’s an unimaginable and saintly man, and a task mannequin for humanity.

Our interview could not be lengthy sufficient to essentially focus on the Dalai Lama. After I first noticed him in individual, I inwardly informed Our Girl that I felt as if I had met Her Son. I felt as if I had seen Christ on earth, that I had listened to Him converse.

Q Fashionable psychiatric science most likely would not be too pleasant of their analysis of mystical states and the saints and individuals who expertise them. Many trendy psychiatrists may even name what you check with as “inside imaginative and prescient” and “motion pictures in my head” as delusional. How can these mystical, inside visions and flicks be differentiated from a vivid creativeness?

A That could be a very astute query. And I feel, in my case, most likely the largest “proof” that an expertise is not simply creativeness or delusion is that if I inwardly noticed a spot, after which I later noticed that precise place in a guide or journal or in waking state consciousness. Or if I had a imaginative and prescient of the long run, it then occurred simply as I had seen it unfold just a few days or even weeks later, which fortunately it all the time did. If I clairvoyantly noticed a misplaced animal in a specific spot, the animal was discovered there. After I clairaudiently heard Our Girl’s voice chatting with me, my little canine Guinivere heard it additionally – she was nonetheless standing on the road nook, searching for the individual behind the voice although I had already walked on half a block. Most of my experiences have been validated proper right here on the earth aircraft. So if I had an inside imaginative and prescient of any person doing one thing or saying one thing or realizing that they had been in bother – I’d discover out later that sure, that had, in actual fact, occurred precisely as I noticed it. So I truly was very fortunate in that method. Personally, I had numerous validation. In any other case, I most likely would have puzzled myself if my experiences had been simply creativeness or hallucination.

That is an attention-grabbing and vital matter. If you’re having excessive mystical experiences, you might be being thrown into one other, greater consciousness. You might be already most likely extra delicate than most individuals. And if folks let you know that you’re loopy and so they hold telling you that you’re loopy, you may simply start to suppose that you’re. However there are additionally people who find themselves delusional. One simple strategy to decide the reality of their clairvoyance is to see if the predictions come true. The saints had been by no means unsuitable.

Within the Catholic Church, visions and clairvoyance won’t make you a saint. And the Church is extraordinarily cautious about testing and evaluating such talents. First, they have a look at the final habits, advantage and rationality of the individual. Many visions can’t be verified. Among the saints have seen their guardian angel. How can that be verified? Is that this individual rational the remainder of the time? Do they appear to have a hysterical nature? Do they see or predict issues that may be confirmed unsuitable later? The Catholic Church observes that individual fastidiously and analyzes their whole life on earth, which I feel could be very clever.

St. Teresa of Avila, in her books, her Autobiography and in The Inside Fortress, speaks of this stuff. She says that ordinarily she just isn’t an imaginative individual. Due to this fact, it appears unlikely that her visions could be produced by her personal thoughts, by her creativeness. However she additionally says that when we have now visions of any kind, we must always categorically low cost them, simply to be on the secure aspect, simply in case it’s the creativeness or Previous Nick producing them. She additionally says that if it’s a true expertise, you’ll simply realize it. A part of that realizing is one thing intangible that can’t actually be verbalized.

A part of it’s the endurance of the magical expertise. It’s going to stick with you for the remainder of your life, phrase for phrase, picture by picture. That has all the time amazed me. However those that have had mystical experiences agree that that is true.

Simply as on the delivery of Christ, when the angel appeared to the shepherds, a lot of the kids that Our Girl, the Madonna, has appeared to all through historical past are shepherds. As in Medjugorje, in these present visions of Our Girl on earth. (She says they are going to be Her final appearances on earth.) The youngsters in Medjugorje had been on their strategy to maintain the sheep when Our Girl first appeared to them. In Fatima, the kids had been tending the sheep when the angel first appeared to them. And naturally, Christ is named the Shepherd, and we’re His flock. All through historical past, She has primarily appeared to kids shepherds and shepherdesses. In a single occasion, the kids had been very uneducated, they may most likely neither learn nor write. They spoke a neighborhood, rural patois, and Our Girl gave them a really lengthy, difficult message fantastically acknowledged and utilizing phrases they didn’t even know. The youngsters repeated it verbatim afterward, with out altering a syllable, even years later. This once more reveals the facility of true mystical experiences, that they’re indelibly imprinted on our consciousness. That is fairly completely different from our abnormal expertise.

Q How can we see the inside objective of the autumn of a sparrow? You had an accident that almost ended your life. It has partially disabled you. And it even erased for some time your clairvoyant talents. But you say you do not consider in accidents. In view of the destruction and incapacity it introduced into your life, if that accident was Divinely orchestrated, then what attainable objective might it have served to enhance your life and consciousness?

A That’s one other deep query, and never that easy to reply.

Q The autumn of a sparrow?

A Sure. That was from a quote from Christ Himself. He informed His disciples that each hair on our head is numbered and that there’s Windfall within the fall of a sparrow. Now the scientists agree, they name it DNA, the little chart of our life in these strands.

Undoubtedly, I feel my automotive accident was Divinely orchestrated. If there was unfavorable intent, which can also be attainable, actually God allowed it. And in my perception framework, if He allowed it, it might be allowed for the purification of my soul – and/or for the souls of others, or for the sake of the world. Our life on earth, in my thoughts, is only a continuous deepening.

A continuous deepening of being and understanding. Definitely, I’d additionally hope that it’s a deepening of holiness; and there are specific experiences that we’re given to assist deepen knowledge and energy.

It has been greater than fifteen years because the accident, and I actually have had sufficient time to consider why it may need been allowed to occur. Personally, I would want that I both didn’t must be taught these classes or that I used to be capable of be taught them a unique method. However I’m actually not going to query the higher imaginative and prescient that God and the soul possess. Fortunately, the small individual, the individual within the physique, Laurie Conrad on this occasion, was not in cost the day of the accident. Or any day. God and the soul are in cost. We will see the poverty of our personal judgment even inside our personal lifetime on earth: issues that we needed so very badly after we had been younger now appear so undesirable, and even dangerous. Has that ever occurred to you? Nicely, I look again and simply inwardly say: “Thank God you didn’t get what you needed”. As a result of both it was not good for me or one thing significantly better got here alongside. So, even inside the time-frame of our earthly existence, we are able to start to have that overview of occasions and the worth of occasions, whilst they occur. How might we probably second guess the knowledge of the soul and of God? You can’t. If I look inside with complete honesty – which is all the time the easiest way to mirror on occasions – as arduous because it has been for myself and people round me, a few of the greatest classes of my religious life most likely got here because of this accident.

Nicely, I might say, I feel, that once I was flat on my again all these months and years, it was the primary time that I felt union with the Larger Love, the Love from the universe. That the universe, the overall of the Hearts of all of the creatures that populate the universe, actually does maintain this extraordinary Love for every and all of us. And sure, after all, it’s the greater Love, the Divine Love from God expressing Itself by means of all of the souls of all creatures – however it’s also from all these mixed souls and the universe itself. I used to be proven this in a imaginative and prescient of types, and I can nonetheless see it hung in my thoughts’s eye, like a bit film. A cosmic Love. It’s the Divine Love from God, however then there’s additionally a cosmic or common love that I felt pouring into me and round me. It was as if each creature on earth wished me nicely, was sending me love and therapeutic. And that, I feel, in my vocabulary, could be a excessive mystical expertise. To really feel that common Love from all creatures. And it’s there for all of us, each second of day by day. We’re simply not aware of it, conscious of it. And I used to be aware of it as a result of I used to be knocked flat on my again for thus lengthy with a sure kind of damage. I’ve the sensation that anybody who’s that severely injured, or that severely in poor health, is given that chance.

I bear in mind studying, way back, experiences and tales that mentioned folks with polio, in iron lungs, typically skilled an unimaginable peace. I feel it is likely to be just like what I skilled. Despite the horrible difficulties and the horror of it, I additionally felt the deepest peace I had ever felt in my life. Granted, I knew tips on how to meditate, I had been meditating for a few years.

And I primarily meditated whereas I used to be mendacity there half aware and feeling half alive. However, I feel that even when I didn’t know tips on how to meditate, I’d have been thrown into that stunning inside place anyway. And it was a unprecedented peace and love coming in, even on the similar time that the car, the physique was dysfunctional and miswired. I had pretty extreme head accidents. I couldn’t perceive what folks had been saying to me or actually converse for nearly a 12 months. I had amnesia. As , I nonetheless can go right into a semi-coma state if I overload myself with work or concepts, as I did this previous week.

At the moment, after the accident, the physique, the car was completely dysfunctional – however this different place was so huge and so deep, so crammed with Love. And I do not know if I’d have ever skilled it with out that accident.

I feel one other invaluable lesson or advantage I realized after my accident was the distinction between humiliation and humility. Within the monastery they ask for poverty, chastity and obedience, which is one other method of claiming humility. After I was first injured, it was very humiliating. Not for lengthy, as a result of the emotion was too tough for me to bear. I had been an clever, succesful, revered and unbiased individual with a giant profession – and all that modified straight away. Out of the blue, I could not do something, not for myself or others. I could not costume or feed myself. I could not sit up. Medical doctors talked about me as if I used to be not there. I might probably not converse or perceive what folks had been saying. I couldn’t even kind phrases interiorly, which suggests I couldn’t even pray. I had forgotten most of my very own private historical past and once I tried to stroll I fell over. Six years later, I used to be nonetheless crossing the road following grade college kids with little bright-colored again packs slung on their backs as a result of I could not inform the place the automobiles had been. I could not play live shows for seven years.

And so I needed to in a short time discover ways to inwardly stand in one other place, a spot which I’d name humility, being humble. And what I imply by that’s being humble earlier than God – as a result of humiliation solely comes after we evaluate ourselves to different human beings. Evaluating ourselves to others may be neurotic, and it may be harmful. Humiliation is greater than counter-productive, it’s ruinous.

However if you end up actually humble, you might be simply merely kneeling earlier than God. And once I simply humbly knelt earlier than God inwardly and mentioned to myself: “Nicely, I’m terribly injured and God desires this from me”, the Energy of the Divine got here by means of me, the Energy of the universe got here by means of me – and all of a sudden I felt stronger and extra peaceable than I had ever felt.

By way of therapeutic others, after the accident, I now didn’t even must obtain therapeutic requests consciously, to ensure that folks to be solely healed. Earlier than the accident, I typically needed to work fairly diligently and pray a lot to acquire miraculous healings for others. I feel this new, extra automated therapeutic for others started as a result of this greater, divine Love, therapeutic vitality – no matter you wish to name it –

Q Presence.

A The Divine Presence was now coming by means of me. I used to be simply naturally radiating it, as a result of I used to be so crammed with it.

So there have been tangible rewards. I used to be now feeling an extremely deep peace and Love and energy – and others had been being spontaneously and miraculously healed with out my even working at it consciously. That is nonetheless true.

However this distinction between humiliation and humility is, I feel, essential for everybody. And we have now to be taught it, I feel, if we actually wish to stand earlier than God. Or let’s imagine, as a way to stand in your greater self, stand with the soul, in a relentless method. Not simply the magical glimpse right here and there that you simply is likely to be given in meditation.

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Source by Laurie Conrad