Rama, a Living Buddha

Modular Mysticism: Dress for Power

There are two primary aspects of your being. This is in the framework, of course, of mysticism. We use different languages to discuss self-discovery; it’s important not to become stuck in a particular language. To learn to be fluent in many languages is the best, or to know one very, very well. Either will do, it depends upon one’s personal needs.

But in the language of mysticism, we say that there are two sides to a person’s being, the superconscious and the conscious. These have reverberations in the popular works of Carlos Castaneda, in the don Juan terminology of the tonal and the nagual.

One’s progression along the spiritual path is a very, very intricate matter.

This evening I’d like to talk to you a little bit

about the structure of your being

and how this process actually works,

with specific recommendations as to

what you can do

to radically alter

your current state of knowledge

and awareness.

ॐ

In essence, then, this is a technique-oriented presentation, but I’d like to begin with a consideration of the dynamics of this process.

To begin with, the process of self-discovery normally involves—in mysticism—a teacher and a student.

In some forms of mysticism, there are two teachers for a student. One is referred to as the teacher, one is the benefactor.

The idea is that the teacher prepares the tonal being—the conscious being—whereas the benefactor prepares the superconscious side of one’s being—or the nagual.

In your case, you have one teacher who does both. There are teachers who teach both sides. Some only teach one.

The job of the teacher is to first, in some way, demonstrate to the individual the eternality of reality.

This is normally done in the first encounter—occasionally before—through dreaming. If it’s before, the teacher will reach out in his dreaming body and appear to the student and give the student information, a particular experience in dreaming.

The student may or may not remember these encounters. Very often the student won’t remember that the teacher came in the body of dreaming for many, many years.

After a student has studied with a teacher for many years, suddenly he or she may remember that years before—even before they had physically met—the teacher came in the body of dreaming.

But whether it was in the body of dreaming, or in the first or subsequent encounters, the teacher does two things:

one, the teacher has to demonstrate to the awareness of the individual

that they’re dealing with something which is outside of their normal description of reality;

and two, the teacher is looking for a specific sign

as to whether or not they should work with an individual on a close level.

Naturally, there are many different types of students.

Some teachers have a small group of students—in mysticism, maybe ten or 12 or 15—whom they work with very closely, or perhaps 100. The teacher may have no more students.

Other teachers have hundreds of students, of which there’s a smaller group they work closely with, and a larger group they work with as a pool.

They’re trying to constantly bring the members of the pool closer so they can be one of the students whom they work with more closely—but they’re not ready yet, otherwise they’d be working closely with them.

So on the one hand, they’re doing a type of basic education where they’re trying to raise the consciousness of many people so they can work more closely, and at the same time they’re working with their graduate students at a closer level.

There is no exclusion for size. It’s not as if there’s a certain number of people whom the teacher will work with on a close basis. The teacher will work with as many as are ready—the more the better.

But for the closer students, a teacher has to look for an indication:

a sign, an omen.

The superconscious will point out to the teacher

that this person should be in their field of attention

on a closer basis.

In the initial contact, either through the body of dreaming or in a physical meeting, the teacher will, in some way, touch the superconscious aspect, or what we would call the nagual, of the other individual.

When I met all of you, this is what I did.

When you came to a talk, a meditation, however it was that we met, at that moment, I used the superconscious and I slid through it, you might say, and I touched you in a certain way.

I opened up a doorway

for a brief moment,

to show you

another side of reality.

There may have been hundreds of people in the room, but perhaps for only 40 or 50 or ten or one, on that particular evening, I slid through the superconscious—it’s like going down a big slide—and opened a doorway for that person and brought them into a very different field of attention, different even than the field of attention of all those who were there who were obviously being brought into a different field of attention through meditating.

What I’m suggesting is that a teacher has the ability—if they’re a teacher of knowledge, if they’re fully developed—to be in a room with hundreds of people and affect them all individually.

They can only do this through the body of dreaming, which does not exist in linear time. In linear time, one can’t do that. We can only do so many things and so many operations in a given time frame.

But if we step outside of linear time with the body of dreaming, then it’s entirely possible to do millions of things in a moment because the moment does not exist.

We go out of time and come back into it.

So initially, I touched each one of you in a specific way, which is why you’re here.

And I presented a possibility to you.

Now, it’s necessary in this process to do several things—again, we’re in the language of mysticism tonight, which is the language of power and apprehension.

It’s necessary first

to show you the limitations of your world,

to posit an alternative which is acceptable to your intellect

and to gradually lead you down the path of that alternative

until you become strong enough so that you can fully deal with the superconscious.

At the same time,

it’s necessary to approach your superconscious side—

that which you were not yet aware of—

and have discussions with it, you might say.

We’re dealing, then, with two sides of your being.

At this time you’re only aware, consciously, of my addresses to your conscious being.

But at the same time—since I happen to play both roles—through the body of dreaming I’m addressing another side of your being and have, either since we met or before that time, which is why you’re actually here.

It really was not a conscious choice on your part.

Rather, your superconscious side made a decision and fed that information to your conscious mind, and your conscious mind now believes that it made the decision.

What I’m suggesting is that

the deeper side of the study occurs on levels of attention

that your conscious mind is not aware of,

but that your superconscious mind is.

What, again, don Juan calls the nagual, although I’ll be using superconscious and conscious instead of nagual and tonal.

ॐ

Once I’ve touched you through the body of dreaming — through the superconscious — and made you realize you were dealing with an unfathomable power, I must then placate your reason with positive reasons as to why you should undertake this study.

In other words, even though it was sufficient for us to meet and meditate for a moment and have an inner experience, and your inner being, you might say, already made the decision, in order to avoid frustration and confusion, it’s necessary to address the outer self—that which we can discuss, that part of your being—and give it reasons.

To do that, we posit an alternative, and that alternative is what in mysticism they call the “warrior’s way.”

It’s a way of life that brings

happiness,

freedom and

abandonment

in the face of all odds,

which is something that

almost no one in this world has.

Each one of you is journeying, then.

You’re journeying

into the unknown,

into the superconscious,

into the beyond.

But the journey is from this side of the coin.

It’s from the top of the coin, not from the bottom, at least at this stage.

And your ability to grow and develop into the infiniteness of your impeccable spirit

is bound

by the orderliness

of your outer being.

While I can address your being inwardly, you are only capable of integrating a specific amount of that information, and that’s dependent upon the receptivity of your outer being.

Why is it that when we go to the desert or sit here and meditate as we did a little while ago,

why is it that one person will go much further than another will,

when theoretically there’s enough energy (you might say), or

the doorway has opened sufficiently,

so each one of you

could have walked entirely

into the beyond?

It’s because

one person

has taken the time

to order their conscious being and has

followed the suggestions that the study lays out and

employed them (or at least some of them) in their life and

tightened up their life.

No matter how much light comes into your being, if your being has a lot of holes in it, it all passes out, in a way of speaking.

Also, as one goes deeper into the study and the encounters with eternity become stronger and stronger, it’s necessary to have a very strong being.

If you don’t, then the problem is that you’ll be filled with fear, you’ll become distraught, you will reject the study.

Nothing can happen to your being in a negative sense; that is to say, there are no scars. There are no repercussions from these encounters with the superconscious because you’re dealing with light so no harm can come to you.

But what can happen is you’ll be, in effect, turned off to the study, to your own self-development—if you have experiences that you are not properly prepared for.

The teacher, then, on the one hand, gives you a direct encounter with power, with eternity, with a land which is unfathomable and unthinkable to you at this point, where your description of the world falls away and you see things that don’t fit in your description of the world.

We go to the desert and you see me dissolve in front of your eyes, or if it happens here, if I do many of the different things that you see me do when I move into those realms, your description—which was handed to you since you were a child, by the world, of a world in which those things don’t happen—obviously must fall away.

Because you will see that these are not tricks of your eyes or the imagination, but obviously you’re sitting there rubbing your eyes and still seeing it, which means it’s happening, which means that the description that was given to you of the world is not correct and accurate in all respects.

Therefore, that means there’s something else.

When I touch you with the body of dreaming — which I do constantly — I open up the doorways of perception for you to a deeper view of existence.

But I know that you will only go a certain distance, and

that distance is limited by the

tightness and fitness of

your outer being.

ॐ

Tonight, then, what I will be addressing is not the superconscious side of your being—that will wait for some time, although I’m certainly addressing the superconscious of your being at this moment and many other moments.

But in words tonight, I wish to

address the conscious side of your being and

explain to you

exactly what you can do.

When you have implemented these suggestions in your life,

the human form you now have

will go away.

The direct encounters with the superconscious change your structure.

Each one of us is an aggregate of awarenesses.¹¹ We’re a conglomerate.

We are a portion of eternity in this finite form.

Just as the DNA is a structure of double helical bonds, so

your being is a structure of elements—not physical elements, but

awarenesses that have come together

in a ring of power.

They are bound together by the threads,

the luminous threads of life.

At death these threads dissolve

and return to the superconscious.

The awarenesses separate.

They come together in another life,

in a different order.

When we meditate together, when we go to the desert, when we meditate and we’re not physically together—and you’ll be sitting there and suddenly I’ve come to you from a distance as your benefactor through the body of dreaming, and the room will light up and these different things happen, or in the body of dreaming when you’re asleep—

at that time I’m opening a doorway to you and saying,

“Come, play with me in the other world, where none of these rules apply, where one is always free and life is quite perfect.”

I know you can only journey a certain distance, but I continue to expose your being to that energy because it changes its structure.

But no matter how much I expose you,

you can’t change unless you want to.

That’s the rule.

The rule is—though I open the door to eternity for you, as a doorperson—

you must decide,

and you alone,

how far you wish to walk through it.

No one is ever forced through.

It goes against the very essence of the teaching.

But you will only walk through

as far as your outer being permits.

There you will stop.

So then, while the superconscious awaits and is ready, and while in this study I am constantly exposing you to it and it’s causing major structural changes in your being,

your outer being is actually controlling the situation,

and everything I do is subject to its approval

although certainly

there are interactions on other levels

that far transcend the awareness of your outer being.

But still, it’s your outer being who controls your life, at this point.

An interesting concept is presented in Tales of Power, and that’s

“sweeping the island of the tonal.”

I like the language that Castaneda uses; the greatest gift that Castaneda has given us is the language to discuss things, and it’s very easy and accommodating for most people.

His teacher and benefactor suggest that what is necessary is to tighten one’s life, that most people have very loose lives, they’re all over the place.

I agree. This is my perception also.

It’s necessary then, to bring about—and this is where my language would differ a little from theirs, although I’m saying the same thing—a tremendous refinement in your being.

That refinement begins from the ground up, and it is the focus of the daylight hours of your study, if I can use that as a metaphor.

The night hours are the study of the superconscious, metaphorically, and the daylight hours are the study of the conscious. At night I address your superconscious, not in hours in the day but in hours of eternity.

But today, it’s day—even though it’s night, it’s day. And in the day, we begin at the ground. We begin with the physical.

ॐ

It is necessary for you

to focus your attention upon your physical being—

your body and its strength,

upon your mind and its clarity,

upon the place you live,

the manner in which you live,

the way you dress,

the way you walk,

the way you speak,

the way you laugh,

the way you think,

the concerns that you have,

the depth and level of your emotions,

your attachments,

your career,

your interactions with those around you,

how and where you spend your time—

all of the subjects of your daily life,

be that in the waking hours

or ultimately in the dreamtime,

but for now in the waking hours.

Let us begin with clothing.

It doesn’t really matter where we start because the rule will apply to everything we discuss. We could discuss the orderliness of your room or your house, your career.

But let us begin with clothing

because once you understand the principle,

you can apply it to any aspect of your life.

The way you dress is extremely important.

If you don’t think it’s important, then you’re failing to see that everything matters along the warrior’s way. It’s very important because it demonstrates the impeccability of your spirit.

It’s the guise through which the world evaluates and views you, and the way people treat you—

in a world in which

the description of clothing

is essentially more important

than what a person is

—is correlated.

You have to, in other words, realize that the way you dress determines the way that people treat you.

It’s a statement that you make—quite loudly—and

every person who sees you physically

evaluates you and

projects energy towards you,

based upon

the way you’ve dressed,

the way you wear your hair,

your posture and

your language.

In other words, all the visible sensory details determine how they see you and how they react to you.

In the path of mysticism we do not believe in wasting energy.

We learn to

conserve power,

store it and

increase it,

and we learn to see where we’re wasting power.

We learn to become efficient.

And as we increase our personal power,

we’re able to go deeper and deeper

into that mysterious land of the superconscious,

where we become complete

and perfect.

Naturally, it’s necessary to dress in such a way as to project your warrior spirit.

Of course you have to conform, to a certain extent, to the dictates of a society, of a particular career and a particular situation. For example, a person who doesn’t dress well, who doesn’t spend time and attention with their physical being, has a very loose being.

The conscious being is very loose—if they’re sloppy—and that looseness will catch up with them. It’s a reflection.

The same is true of

how you keep your house,

how you run your career,

how you treat your friends and the people you love.

But it’s easier, sometimes, to see it with clothing. The other issues are sometimes a little more complex.

When you dress in such a way, unless that’s your particular role—if you’re an entertainer, obviously you would dress in a certain way—but on a daily basis, if you dress in such a way as to attract attention to yourself, that’s exactly what you’ll do.

You’ll pick up a variety of different energies from others.

So it’s very important not to be too flashy.

At the same time, you don’t want to dress down too much because that attracts attention in another way.

The rule of thumb for the warrior is

to be conservative …

in outer appearance,

to find a very clean image and

to use that image as a gateway into another world.

It’s not a sense of conformity.

Most people dress to conform. They see an ad on TV for a certain type of Levi’s that everybody is wearing—you see everybody now, the women are wearing legwarmers because the girl in Flashdance wears them and Jane Fonda does. So now that’s the fashion.

That’s conformity.

What I’m not suggesting is conformity at all,

but rather realizing

that there’s power in how you dress,

and that many of the interactions that occur to you throughout the day would go in an entirely different way

if you paid more attention to the way you dressed,

if you became more impeccable, …

that you can radically alter your life by the way you dress, and many other things, of course, all of which we won’t discuss now, but

if you can get the principle here,

you’ll apply it everywhere.

It’s important to pick a form that the world can understand.

People have value systems—in the description of the world that they now have—that evaluate YOU. [Rama spoken emphasis.]

So you have to fit into one of those value systems—not to conform—but to accomplish effectively that which you want to do.

One example would be a spiritual center.

When you come to meditate, it’s very important to dress in a very, very refined fashion.

You will find that the time and attention you spend in selecting the clothing that you wear to see your teacher is a reflection of your warrior spirit, and

if you don’t spend any time with it and give it any care,

then that’s a reflection of the current state of your spirit;

your spirit is ill,

it’s in need of help.

If you spend a great deal of time carefully selecting each item that you wear—whether it’s for color or vibration or whatever it may be—

the selection is not as important as the feeling behind it.

That night, when you come to meditate, you will have a much deeper meditation because you spent five minutes caring about the selection of what you wore.

You will raise your entire energy.

Clothing is very, very powerful.

People don’t realize it. It’s your presentation to the world.

To be unaware of this and simply wear what’s around, in a society which is obviously very concerned with these matters,

is to be unconscious—

but nevertheless,

to feel the effects and the vibrations of others

that are projected towards you by this type of behavior.

It’s very important

to be conservative in dress and

to pick an image that people can relate to in a specific way, and

to start to consider your clothing.

My recommendation for most people would be to throw out almost everything they have and start over with a new wardrobe, and in the act of shopping for those clothes, to be very, very picky.

When you go shopping for clothes, you just don’t go in and buy what’s on sale. Better to have a few things that have the right vibration. The colors should be clear—they reflect your spirit.

The way that you manage your finances is a reflection of the tightness of your being.

If you have enough personal power,

money will not be a problem.

If money is a problem, it’s because you’re not using the personal power that you already have, properly. You’re wasting it.

It’s necessary to devote a certain amount of time and energy to analyzing your career situation, and if you see yourself in a career that is not doing what you need economically, to change it.

Not to rush into it, but to analyze and consider.

You’re leading a way of life that was handed to you by others which may be inadequate and now it’s time to pick and choose your own way, but very carefully.

A spiritual warrior deliberates every choice very carefully before accepting it. It has to feel just right.

The condition of the place you live is very important.

Where you live is a place of power.

All day long you draw power from where you live.

Whether you’re there or not, you’re drawing energy from that place.

There shouldn’t be one drawer in one bureau which is not in perfect order.

There shouldn’t be one piece of furniture, one painting, one piece of notepaper in a scrapbook that you don’t need, that is there.

In other words, you should eliminate anything that does not have a very strong value.

People clutter their lives with

people,

relationships,

furniture,

ideas and

emotions

to the point where

they choke themselves.

You should go through every aspect of your life and

you should do this about every six months or every year

because as you progress along the path of knowledge,

you will change and

your structure of evaluation will increase,

so that as you examine the things you have and your lifestyle and your dress and your career and so on,

and you’re at a new level of attention,

you may see it all in a new way.

But the two always correlate.

Your development in the superconscious

will correlate

to your level of physical togetherness.

What I’m suggesting is that until the physical togetherness increases, your development in the inner worlds will not increase.

The two always go together because you simply can’t handle more power, because your life isn’t tight enough.

You must consciously work.

When you can come to me and say,

“My life is in complete order,

my career is in complete order,

my relationships are in order,

my physical body is in order and strong”—

which is absolutely necessary to deal with the superconscious.

The kundalini is so strong, you must have a strong physical body.

You have to exercise,

even if it’s just walking.

There has to be a sense of a strong physical.

When every aspect of your life is impeccable,

then you will find that

there’s no limit to

your journeys into the infinite.

Cleanliness and plants are very important.

It’s very important to try and be clean—whenever possible—because water, of course, washes away the negative energy.

We live in a world with a lot of lower energy.

The auras of people are very muddy, and as you go out in the world, they rub off on you, particularly if you work in a situation where you’re around a lot of people.

By taking two or three showers a day, you’ll find it

will make a tremendous difference in your field of attention.

Water always neutralizes negative energy … of a certain type.

Your relationships with others have to be exacting and precise.

Whenever you have any dealings with anyone, you should only bring them your best.

Don’t bring them wilted flowers.

You should gradually try and undo all of your attachments.

Make a list of all those you are attached to, and learn to love but without attachment because each attachment you have ties you to this world.

The reason you can’t fly in the superconscious yet?

You’ve tied yourself to the world with attachments.

When you came into the world and were born,

you had no attachments,

but gradually you’ve developed them.

You’re attached to friends, family, career, many things.

You don’t need to give these things up,

but you have to

give up

the attachment.

If you’re in school, you should be an impeccable student within the structure of the time that you have.

At your place of work you should be impeccable.

You should be the best employee.

What they pay you is irrelevant.

While you’re there you’re paying yourself,

you’re paying yourself by

the amount of impeccability

you bring into what you do.

It doesn’t matter if others notice or not.

That won’t change its effect.

When you go to work and you give everything and you do your very best, when you leave work that day,

you’ve increased your impeccability.

You’ve made a donation to the bank of your warrior spirit,

which you can draw on later and will—

when you move into the unknown,

when you move into deep meditation.

Why is it when you start to meditate that you stop at a certain point?

These are the reasons—

because you’re tied to the world,

because you have holes in your being,

because you haven’t learned to lead an efficient life yet,

which is filled with love.

When you find a negative emotion moving into your being,

you have to push it away.

If you find yourself hating, being afraid, whatever it may be,

you’re simply allowing it

to rape you.

You have to push it away and simply say,

“This is not of me.

This is an outside emotion that is

not indicative of my true nature,”

and simply push it away.

Your ability to do that is correlated to the plants you have in your house. It’s very important to have a good relationship with plants. If there were no plants, you’d all be dead. No oxygen.

Plants affect people more than they realize, on other levels.

You can judge a civilization by its level of agreement with the green world. When people respect nature, it’s a sign of a healthy situation.

When they denigrate nature, it’s a sign of an unhealthy civilization which will soon perish.

In the inner world, plants can help you. They have a very strong vibrational force.

If you’ve made friends with several of them, they will come and aid you when you’ve reached that critical moment and you’re at a crossroads of knowledge.

I’m not speaking metaphorically,

I’m actually seriously saying that plants have very strong tonal beings

and that the plants that you have in your house,

or if you’ve ever made friends with a tree somewhere or whatever it may be—

that there is a moment that these beings can aid you, can assist you.

When you come to that point where you’re out in the desert and the power is getting stronger and just at that moment you check out, you run away from it,

if you had a good relationship with a plant,

it would come to your aid.

It’s very important to respect the plants that you have and to develop a relationship with them—to take care of them—

because as you assist them,

they will assist you.

ॐ

In other words—what I’m suggesting is—we’ve lost touch with our lives. We’ve lost touch with what matters in this world, in this civilization.

We’ve taken the mystery of life and tried to explain it away with reason.

And in doing so,

we have lost touch with our essential power,

with our power as magical beings.

Each one of us is a magical being.

But we’ve killed our magical side

with reason and with science.

Science is important and reason is important,

but it cannot possibly

explain existence.

From this little island we call the Earth we cannot possibly have the frame of reference to understand Eternity.

We must move into Eternity itself to understand it.

And as long as we want to stand in the framework of the conceptual mind we cannot leap forward.

My suggestion to you, then, is

to take your life and

begin to take it in your own hands

and shape it,

as one takes a piece of wood

that one carves

and shapes it,

and to begin to consider the way you dress as a starting point.

You must have a starting point on any journey.

Gradually get rid of all the clothing you now have—

if it’s clothing from some time ago.

Economically at this time, you may not be able to go out and get a whole new wardrobe, fine. Perhaps once every week or two weeks, once a paycheck, get something new and throw out something old.

When you go home,

eliminate old clothing,

because you’re associating it

with a self that no longer exists.

Go through every closet in your house in every room.

Consider the way you speak, and your use of language.

It’s a reflection of your warrior spirit.

Consider the music you listen to, or the music that you play.

Consider your relationships.

Go through every aspect of your outer life.

And when you have taken

every aspect

of your outer life —

your career,

your economic situation,

the cleanliness of your car,

of your relationships—

when you have done everything perfectly,

when you only dress impeccably,

be it for the desert,

for a center meeting,

for your job,

then and then alone

can I take you fully into the beyond,

as the teacher of your other side.

So tonight, as the teacher of the physical, I’m suggesting that

the way of life that you have

is out of touch

with nature and the world

and with power.

I’m positing an alternative for you.

That alternative is not something that you will accomplish in one day, nor need you.

But it’s something that you need to make steady progress at.

I think you should start with clothing and go forward from there. And start with your home and your job and your career, or your schoolwork and your relationships.

These are the places where most people lose power.

Look at yourself in the mirror and see what you see.

Ask yourself,

“Is this the image of the impeccable warrior that I want to present?”

When you can dress perfectly, it will suggest to me that your spirit is perfect.

Do you understand?

I could have taken this with any reference point in your being, but we’re using clothing.

It suggests the health of your spirit and its well-being.

When

your home is perfect,

every plant is in place,

every piece of furniture is impeccable,

each one suits the space completely,

and you’ve taken hours to look it over again and again,

even if it’s only a tiny apartment, and

each thing is perfect,

[then] you’ve completed a task.

When

your career is perfect,

when each relationship is in order,

when your physical body is strong and healthy,

when each aspect and nuance of your life bespeaks refinement and completion,

when your language is impeccable—

then your life will be sufficiently tight

so that I

can throw you through that doorway

and you’ll bounce back.

Otherwise your life is too loose and you will only walk to the same point again and again.

People say, “Well, why don’t I go further?”

It’s because your life is not impeccable.

It’s not tight yet.

So start on clothing and your home and your relationships and your career.

And we’ll see how you do.

11. Rama emphasizes the plural.