EVA' S THOUGHTS

FREE WILL:

Don't you ever set out to be kind to someone and end up insulting them?

Oh, yes, I know, you're provoked into it. But where is your free will, then?

Aren't you influenced from the moment you open your eyes in the morning?

Because it's raining? Because it's too hot? Because of what your read in the newspapers?

Because you broke your favorite china-or burned the lunch you were cooking-or missed the bus, or your train?

What about your thoughts and opinions? Are they your own?

Are you sure you didn't read that somewhere? Or was it something somebody said on the radio the other day?

Oh, but you are a free man, are you? Didn't you mean to read that book last night but instead you got glued to the television?

When you go into a shop, what do you buy? Are you certain it was you who wanted that coat or was it the advertisement in the paper that caught your eye? Or was it the shop employee who talked you into it? Was it your free will that made you wear that dress or was it some man in Paris who can only exist as long as you have no free will?

But console yourself, because he who influences millions of people has no free will of his own either, because he is influenced by your lack of free choice. He who has to cater to you, tell you what to do, who to vote for, what to read, what to wear, he has no choice either.

We are all in the same boat.... Only some of us realize it and some of us don't...

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PARABLE OF TODAY'S MAN:

We are now in the position of a man who has a large house and many servants. He hired these servants originally to help him run his home and estates. But gradually those servants got out of control and instead of helping him, as they were meant to, it is they now who give the orders making the owner run around in circles. They have taken over the whole house. It is they who now live on the lofty upper floors and inhabit the best rooms. The master is pushed out of his rightful place and is living in the basement in a dark cellar without light and fresh air. To make things worse, the servants are able to make him believe that he IS living in his proper place. He doesn't even suspect that he is living in a dark hole, that he is a prisoner. There is no need to chain him, for he is bound firmly, hands and feet, by his own illusion of freedom.

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POSESSIONS:

It is certainly not wrong to own material things. But we only imagine we own them. In reality, they own us. More possesions, more possessed by them we become. There are thousands of examples. But let's take the one that has the strongest power today: money.

Is there anything more soul destroying than the pursuit of the kind of success that is measured in currency? Certainly money is necessary. But to be driven to mental confusion and breakdown, to ruin our health and even die in the process of attaining it, is the height of absurdity. Material things and forces are beneficial in themselves, but they have to be put back into their proper place where they belong.

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RELIGION:

Mankind is in confusion and the world is in chaos. The moral values of the past are of no help any longer. For man does not, and cannot live by the rules and laws he has made, much less can he live by the Commandments of God.

In my humble opinion, Christ was betrayed and His teachings mocked, the moment the first drop of blood was shed in His Name.

The moment violence was used to convert people to His teaching of love and peace. The wisdom and tolerance in Prophet Mohammed's message, was degraded into so-called "jihad" or holy wars, and the gentle Buddha's disciples negated his guidance in the bloody battles they fought with the followers of Islam.

If religions had been effective, there would not have been wars throughout history, no concentration camps in the 20th Century,

no poverty, no subhuman conditions, no racial hatred. The Arab Muslims and the people of the Old Testament would be able to settle their differences in peace. Obviously, the religious teachings, old and new, are not wrong...only they are not followed.

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SELF:

All the "experiments" (at Coombe Springs) were carried out in everyday life. One did not retire like a monk; the whole idea was that man had to carry on with whatever responsibilities life had put on his shoulders and yet try not to be swallowed up completely.

The theme of the work was simple: it is not enough to read; one must act. Therefore, life conditions are necessary.

In life you are active, you have a job, you don't merely sit and contemplate. The work is rather painful to the personality, which fancies itself to be all sorts of things it is not. The main thing is to try to realize what one IS NOT...

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SUBUD

At the present time man no longer believes in words. The time for words have passed. People today want proof, want facts.

And this higher force is a fact. Its work within us is a reality. And you cannot have reality by talking about it or listening to someone else who may have already experienced it. (Isn't it a wonderful thing that you don't have to take anyone's word for its existence?)

This higher force that has the power to take us out of the darkness, the confusion, is there for anyone who asks for it. The beginning of this process of transformation has simplicity and beauty. To start out on this great and wonderous inner adventure, all we have to do is to ask. Ask, and there has to be someone to open that inner door that has been locked for so long... That inner door that is between our inner selves and the action of this power of higher life force... Someone who has that door already open within him or her.

That is all. I know it sounds almost too easy, and although it is easy to start, it may not be so easy to continue. For once the door is opened

it is the beginning of a process, the process of transformation, the process of the growing up of the innermost self of man. And growing up is often painful. Birth and growing is not free of pain. Nevertheless, the time has come for mankind to grow up.

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WOMEN'S LIB:

No one knows what came first. Men losing strength, becoming weaker and weaker, or is it woman who started becoming stronger? Competition between the sexes started probably a long, long time ago. What we are experiencing now is the result of men AND woman not living according to their inner nature, their being enslaved more and more by forces that have gotten out of control. Unfortunately in this, man and woman have equality.

One cannot talk about the problem of woman today without being constantly reminded of the problem that is man's. Man and woman are interdependent on each other. In reality neither is higher or lower. It is only that their nature, their function in life is different. Therefore, the liberation of woman cannot possibly come about without the liberation of man. In a world where men are enslaved, there can be no freedom for woman either.

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