From the Author

Surendra James Conti

As an avid observer of life in all of its manifestations – familiar, peculiar, and inscrutable – I invite you to join me in these books on a journey into the wilds of what I have seen. My experience, although unique, is collectively ours. The hopes and fears we share, the joys and woes we have known, are surely much the same.

Born in 1943, I was raised in the heady years of post-war renewal, a great time to be a kid. It wasn’t until twenty years later, November 22, 1963, that the world changed for me and my generation. It happened in barely an instant. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy took the innocence out of our sails.

As I look back now, my journey has meandered through many careers and occupations, all of which have served to inform the writer that I have become. Above all, it is my spiritual path, however – a universal blend of “original Christianity” and the Vedic wisdom of India – that has led me to who I am, why I am here, and what this human life is all about. For that blessed perspective, I am most deeply indebted to my guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda.

Paramhansa Yogananda Swami Kriyananda

About the Books

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Crystal Clarity

Let Me Remember This

Observations and Thoughts On the Path to Higher Awareness

Surendra James Conti

Practical in its wisdom, provocative in its perspective, and generously infused with humor and heart, Let Me Remember This is a journey of self-discovery for the writer and reader alike. It’s a journey into the consciousness of all that we are and all that is.

Although each of us is unique, our quest is the same: to realize our highest potential, which is not of this earth. These essays invite us to see our way to that summit. Ultimately, it is less about learning anything new and more about remembering what we’ve forgotten: that we are beings of light, divinely endowed. Joy awaits within.

Some would say the opposite of reason is madness, and yet madness has often been the result of what we reason to do.

Truth is all that really counts. It is at our peril that we ignore or distort it, for it alone will have the final say.

If you would be here now, you must take off your “expectacles” and own the moment as it is.

… And remember: You must be present to win.

Let Me Remember This is a book of essays and commentaries. In it you will meet my heroes, encounter my peeves, hopefully enjoy the humor that underlies most of our fears and frustrations, and hopefully too, find a wealth of ideas that could be applied to make this world a happier, healthier place for one and all.

EXCERPTS

Preface

My life has not been one of extremes, nor of exceptional drama. But in the course of my years, I have seen changes in the world that have far exceeded the science fiction of my youth. The age of atomic energy, which exploded into existence when I was a child of two, has since given way to a dozen successors, the latest of which is the age of virtual reality. What next? We have landed men on the moon, mapped and demystified the wonders of the human brain; and now, in our startling output of innovation, it seems we have come to the brink of wonder’s demise. Who is surprised by anything anymore?

I have been journaling my thoughts and observations since the 1970s. This book of essays, reflections, and poems has been culled from that volume of work, ranging widely in content, with an emphasis on my inward journey. It’s a compilation of reminders, to me in particular, to live the teachings that I have been blessed to receive and put into words.

As I wrote on the book’s title page, “Memory fades over time like a photograph left in a window that catches the light. Most of what is missing doesn’t matter. But let me remember this.”

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If asked to defend his infamous deeds, Al Capone would surely have claimed to be a daring crusader—a freedom fighter of sorts—regrettably misunderstood by the less courageous. Like any ambitious entrepreneur, and not unlike the rest of us either, he believed in his goals and in what was needed to reach them.

Al, like everyone else, was in pursuit of happiness. He simply misunderstood where it resides, and so, apart from piling up karmic debt, he was never able to achieve his objective for more than a fleeting span of time. He may have appeared powerful—among the “fittest” according to the clout he wielded—but in truth he was terribly weak, especially in moral character, higher awareness, and thus in potential to survive.

The fittest in every way are those who value people over things; who seek to cooperate, not compete; who adhere to a spiritual, not material perspective; and who practice non-attachment to gain or loss. It is they who know that happiness grows as “What is in it for me?” is replaced by “What is right to do?”

Page 56

Everyone takes delivery of the unwanted. You don’t have to sign for it; it arrives in your inbox, in your hand or in your face, unbidden except as a consequence of some previous karmic mistake. The trick is to find within it the hidden message of love and opportunity it carries, knowing that nothing is not as it needs to be, and to meet its challenge with willingness and corrective action.

What makes this difficult, of course, is our conditioned resistance to everything we dislike and seemingly did not invite. Required is a change of attitude, which starts with acceptance of change itself, and with letting go of thinking that we deserve better than what we received.

The undesirable arrives, by degrees, as a creeping inevitability or sudden ambush. It may be what we have feared and postponed, or a karmic detonation without warning. Worst cases come with chaos and confusion.

To find the hidden message in the unwanted, we have to approach it calmly. Only then will it allow its guidance to be gathered. Chaos and confusion are not pathology. They are part of the path, to be calmly encountered, resolved and left behind. You must give disturbance a home before you can evict it.

To meet the dawn, we must endure the night. And if we endure it rightly, we will find it not so dark as tales tell. It is but a length of time that is certain to pass, faster as we lose your fear of the noises it makes. Take heart and see it through. Even in the deep of it, there are stars.

Page 62

What we have here is a treasure hunt, and most people don’t even know what the treasure is. They think it is something outside themselves that involves the correct application of clever thinking. They rely largely on their emotions to tell them what they want, and if they manage to get it, they soon discover that its flavor doesn’t last, so they start the whole exhausting process again. . . and again and again and again.

Years ago, there was a popular TV show called Mission Impossible. It has since inspired a series of truly impossible Tom Cruise movies. But in the earlier TV version, before the advent of computerized special effects, the stories were almost believable, and the opening scene was always much the same. A phone would ring in a telephone booth in some remote location, and special agent Jim Phelps would be there to pick it up and receive his assignment. A voice on the other end of the line would say, “Your mission, Jim, if you choose to accept it, is to…” well, to do whatever was needed in the next 60 minutes—between commercials—to save the world from some fiendish plot. It was all very cool and suspenseful.

But in our daily reality, the assignment for us is not so easily scripted. We have to answer that phone every morning, and here is the instruction we receive: “Your mission, dear one, is to figure out what the treasure is, where it is, and how to secure it. It is highly probable that since you are now seeking truth instead of people’s approval, many of them will be trying to shoot you down. Oh, and by the way, there is no option here. This is your assignment, like it or not. You can put it off as long as you choose, but as you will find at the end of your life, death is not an escape hatch. Until you make that treasure your own, you will have to return again and again until you finish the job.”

Page 109

In today’s competitive America, money is the mouse that roars. We have been sold on its power to secure the future. Never mind the transparent myth that supports this misconception, it tones like a mantra in every commercial setting we encounter. Is it any surprise that principle and faith tend to suffer greatly at the altar of financial gain?

Consistent with money’s preeminent place in society, making more of it is often a person’s first order of business. Gotta get that raise! To many, this is their validation of worth, not to mention the means to exercise more expensive desires. But at the end of the day, what are we left with? Little by little, we ravage ourselves to earn those extra dollars, to win the next promotion, to get ahead of everyone we can.

Yet, the highest potential raise of all is the one we pray to forestall. Thanks to our conditioning and its skewed priorities, leaving this physical life tops the list of what we dread. Someday you and I will be lifted from this burden of flesh into the lightness of being, and we fear the event like a terrible curse. Death, poor fellow, has been cast in black to play the villain’s role, his merciful nature despised. How easily a truth is inverted to serve a material wish, an emotional attachment, a selective blindness!

“Life is a vagrant,” said Paramhansa Yogananda, “appearing and disappearing like a river in the desert of time.” We cannot suspend its passage to suit our personal dreams. But damned if we don’t make the effort for as long as breath allows. Why are we bent on regarding death as a loss? To the wise, there is no end as we perceive it. Death, for even the weakest and most profane, is a ticket to understanding beyond all earthly scope. Furthermore, for those who strive to put love ahead of material possibilities, death is a liberation from limiting dreams altogether.

In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, with rapier-tipped irony, the Duke rails in earnest at the craziness of our ways: “Merely, thou art death’s fool, for him thou labor’st by thy flight to shun, and runn’st toward him still. Happy thou art not, for what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get, and what thou hast forget’st. . . If thou art rich, thou’rt poor, for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. . . Yet death we fear, that makes these odds all even.”

Page 111

In his book Rays of the One Light, commentaries on the Bible and Bhagavad Gita, Swami Kriyananda opens each essay with these deeply meaningful words: “Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.” That is to say, truth emanates from experience, inner experience. “Within” is the one and only path to clarity that endures, the path of saints, for it far surpasses in verity the intelligence we claim from all external sources. It is by introspection and meditation that truth is truly discovered, that wisdom truly accrues. Fame and fortune for personal gain are as useful to the journey as a pair of cement shoes.

Page 120

Tragic events occur at times from far out of the blue, destined to turn our lives upside down or extinguish them altogether. Natural disasters and the ones we create ourselves are features of the landscape into which we are born. Who can know exactly why?

We tend to think of karma as a personal matter, but it can be collective as well. Nations and tribes accumulate karma, as do smaller and even seemingly random groupings of people. Members of these collectives are seldom conscious of the karmic connections they share. Perhaps the ties are other lifetimes old, and in view of this, we wonder: Was there a karmic relationship, for example, that encompassed all 230,000 people who were swept away on Christmas Eve by the massive Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004?

For the answer to questions such as this, I look to the East: to the ancient wisdom of avatars and sages; and to the light that shines in the spiritual eye of a deep meditation. But sometimes, nonetheless, we are left with mysteries we cannot fully solve. Just as a cup cannot hold the contents of a much larger vessel, we cannot know if or how our past-lives connections may be at play in this one. The volume in the vessel that contains them is greater than that of our capacity to receive it.

Still, the message delivered in sudden misfortune is ever the same: Be ready to accept with equanimity all possibilities. Bad things happen to good and bad people alike. So, what is the good of denial, anger, or regret? What is the point of wishfully dwelling on a different outcome that did not occur instead? Help where you can. Pray to heal where it hurts. Feel, but do not lose yourself in emotion.

Calmness in time of sorrow or crisis is not easily won. We have been conditioned to worry and fear, to react and blame, to believe that suffering is cleansing. Truly, we have much to unlearn, and it is this reverse learning process that is the essential learning curve before us.

Page 132

How is one to make sense of this life? It’s a moving target that never seems to change, and yet changes all the time: all the time and everywhere, from cell to shining sea.

Duality is the governor that life on earth obeys. There is no other law that can challenge it for consistency of command. Up and down we go, unaware from day to day that “zero” will be the final result of our merely mortal ventures. Duality ordains it so.

Still, we persist in our sense-making endeavors. We string together the episodes of our lives, reviewing the failures, successes, and juxtapositions, striving by mighty mental computation to understand the various parts and the whole. But life does not yield its secrets to sense-making endeavors. Experience of a higher nature is the key that unlocks the vault wherein this knowledge resides. The mind itself cannot do it.

If you would make sense of this life, study the lives of saints, and then take what you learn into your inner sanctuary of silence, where duality no longer presides, where secrets are revealed.

Page 157

There’s a funny one-liner that bemoans the effects of aging: “Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” Thank goodness for humor. It softens the blow.

Uhh. . . Let’s see now. . . Where was I going with that? . . . Oh, yes. . . As some of us know already, seniors are forced to deal with a hitch that gets hitchier as years go by. Suddenly, at the darnedest times, our Random Access Memory begins to flash “Access Denied.”

Actually, though, the real problem lies in the other direction. Losing our mind is all too rare an event. Doggedly, it clings to us like a magnet made of chatter. As Eckhart Tolle has written in The Power of Now, the inability to stop thinking has become “a dreadful affliction,” but since almost everyone suffers from it, we take it as normal.

The truth is, nothing comes between us like our very own mental activity. Restlessly, it denies us the experience of oneness with all that is. From moment to moment, wherever we turn, our senses recognize this and that as unrelated to me. Thus, believing that separation exists, we have managed to turn this Garden of Eden into a kind of Marx Brothers asylum.

Page 173

As someone who remembers combing through dusty library stacks and pouring through pages of piled-high books for term-paper material, today’s instant finger-touch access to every obscure fact under the sun is beyond astonishing. What Google and other search-engine wizards have accomplished is almost inconceivable. Now we have Wikipedia too, and countless other online resources for becoming conversant on every subject imaginable.

Thanks to such innovation, however, we’ve become a world of incurable “informaniacs,” certain that we are smarter than any culture has ever been. But maybe not. A head full of information is not necessarily, and not even likely, an indication of knowing what needs to be known.

Information adds to the mind’s encyclopedic storage. Knowledge and wisdom, however, have more to do with subtraction than addition. They increase as the mind is emptied of mere information, making room for discernment and discrimination. Though the wise are seldom uninformed about worldly matters and essential “how to” approaches to problem-solving in general, they are also acutely aware of the limits that factual data are finally sure to reach. Because information offers no experiential component, it cannot provide the “extra mile” of understanding that is needed to grasp it fully.

Information maps the long way home, circumventing the heart and its arterial route to Spirit. Beware how much you take in.

Page 195

It is the writer’s nature to wish that what he has written might have been written better. And so he revisits, revises, and revises again, until he happily strikes the note he was seeking or simply wearies of the battle, allowing his final version to represent the measure of his skill. In coming upon a piece in later years, he will sometimes find himself pleasantly surprised at how well it reads, but often he will be reminded that he should have revised it again.

Yet, as a writer, I am also humbly aware that language cannot reveal or express the depth or fullness of life. It arrives on the scene after the doing is done. Although it may embellish what has occurred, it remains a generation removed. Language is to experience as rumor is to truth. Even when it is right, it is just a reporter.

Page 210

It is fascinating to observe how we age. The mind, persistently in denial, continues to think of itself in the prime of youth, even as its acuity slips below its youthful performance. We remember how fast we could run, how agile we were, how long we could last in a test of endurance, and we don’t quite get the disconnect between memory and today’s reality. Meanwhile, the flesh wrinkles, joints creak and ache, physical strength weakens, and stamina wanes. It’s a humbling experience that for many induces frustration and resentment.

I am one of the fortunate ones, and I am sincerely grateful for the health and vigor I have been blessed to maintain. But for over twenty years now, people have called me mister and sir, failing to see me as I see myself, and when women flirt with me, they are no longer serious about it. Ouch!

It’s not that I am unused to these titles and gestures of respect, or that I do not appreciate them. But I miss being mistaken for a man who is not of my vintage. Like iodine on an open cut, the politeness stings a little.

Yet, I have memories of an era that younger generations will never know as richly as I who lived them. I grew up in a special time and place, in years that were simpler and sweeter than any I have known since. There is treasure in that, and I would not trade it for the attributes that I can no longer claim. It is more than just nostalgia, it is melody and joy.

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Crystal Clarity

And This Too

More of What This Life Is About

Surendra James Conti

Things change. Even within the illusion of time, every moment, and every atom within it, is different than in the moment before. The universe, by nature, is relentlessly in flux. It is God’s dream, and God dreams in motion.

Things change, and as they do, we get on with getting on or off. The whole of life is a dance, and although the tune is not always ours to call, we can give it our best. It’s not about skill or style. It’s about committing to live in joy.

This book, And This Too, is who I am, a further account of my thoughts as the shuffle of tunes has played around and within me, sometimes sweetly and sometimes not. Perhaps you will find this something of your book too.

The reason we are here, in this dream of body and mind, is because we have yet to become who we truly are.

The difference between a writer and one who isn’t, is that writing for the writer takes far more time and fewer words to finish.

We may accidently make a foolish mistake, but we do not accidentally make it again. It becomes a choice.

Everything passes away, moving by the moment in route to Eternity’s edge. We are losing ground even as we seem to gain it. This frightens us, but why? Why do we forget to sing of that which does not die?

What is it for, this passing away, if not to wake us to the life that is forever, to the song of our immortality and the bliss that our mortal living has resisted?

EXCERPTS

Preface

What can we know of this decade, these challenging twenties? Only that we will be tested, perhaps more severely than in any decade before. We can know that its time and space will compress, that everything about it will happen faster, demanding of us the resilience and stamina to adapt.

Will today’s winds be whipped into storms? Who would dare to think not? It is time to prepare, as it always is, for the chance of typhoon forces to surge against us. Like the tree that has weathered the worst of these, we must focus on strengthening our roots, anchored in readiness for gusts that are likely to come with little warning. No terrible blow can break the one who has learned how to bend.

We can know of this decade only that we must meet whatever it brings, and that each meeting will offer a chance to find the gem within it. Love it, and it will serve you well.

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Surfaces and Seems

In the Shallows and Fictions of Life, We and the World Go Awry

Surendra James Conti

From the moment of birth, the hourglass of our life is losing sand. Here is where everything ceaselessly moves, en route to eternity’s edge. We are giving up ground even as we seem to gain it, heading from form to formless, slowly passing away. This frightens us, but why? What is it for, this passing away, if not to wake us to the song of our immortality and the bliss that our mortal living has resisted? (page 134)

Each of us carries a different karmic load, yet the road for all is the same.

Your signature is written not with a pen, but with your ways of being.

Mind is a fickle guide to understanding. You must look and live beyond it.

Nothing ends that is not a new beginning.

Kerouac called it the machine, the force that drives our thinking. He wrote of reaching a point where he just wanted to stop it, and to ‘lie in the grass and look at the clouds.’

I, too, long for a pastoral reprieve when wrestling with that machine, with thoughts that lead only to wishes and where I would rather be. Meditation is meant to be that connection, but when the machine is running me a bit ragged, meditation gropes for the shut-off switch, often fails to find it, and I can do little more than write about. it. (page 234)

EXCERPTS

Introduction. Page 17

George Mallory, when asked a century ago why he wanted to scale to the summit of Mt. Everest, answered in four words: “Because it is there.” As a writer, my answer would be the same if asked why I am drawn to study the world within and around me.

George Mallory died on an Everest slope before fulfilling his quest, and I will surely die before my fascination with the world and its ways has run its irresistible course. Yet, each of us—seven billion and counting—will leave behind stories and aspirations that, for a time, will serve as teachings to others. Poet, thief, parent, savant, sociopath and everyone in between has come here not only to learn, but to teach.

The problem is, what we know is next to nothing; and what we think we know can be dangerous and often is. For the explorer and the scribe, the world is fascinating and irresistible indeed.

Page 20

We awake each morning with places to go. The list may be long and varied, but mostly it is familiar and largely routine: job, meetings, market, home, couch, and back to bed before rising again for another installment. Our days are about destinations, and we check them off as we move from one to the next.

What if we turned this list into a dance card instead? Dance is not about destination, it’s about the moment. As a free-form expression, it isn’t linear or logical, it isn’t calculating or self-conscious. We say that life is a dance, but we forget to dance our way through it. Imagine the difference if our days became a flow from place to place. Getting things done would be about the doing: spontaneous, inventive, adventurous. Life was not designed for destinations. Make it a dance.

Page 45

I believe we have misunderstood original sin. Was it really that Adam and Eve, against the Lord’s instruction, ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge? We are a curious species, which is well known to the Lord, and each of us errs, whether ignorantly, inadvertently or on purpose.

Adam and Eve took shame upon themselves and tried to hide—that, to me, was the real sin—instead of running to God, contrite and sincerely seeking His forgiveness, having realized the pain it brought upon them. Would the Lord have turned them away? Seeing them as His children, would He not have welcomed them back as the father in the parable of the prodigal son?

As the Lord says to his beloved devotee in the Bhagavad Gita, “But even if in this thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure.” Shame is the sin that sticks to us far more than our transgressions, for it denies our divine nature, the paradise into which we were born and must, at the end of our egoic misdemeanors, shameless again return.

Page 70

Where do you live? In a house, a penthouse apartment, under a bridge?

Where do you go? To an office, a favorite café, a place to shop?

What do you do? Run a business, drive a truck, walk in the woods?

You live in your mind. You go where you go in your mind. You do what you do in your mind. All is thought and projection. Where, what, how, why, and the very world itself, exist only in the thoughts your mind receives and emits. When you teach your thoughts that all is of God alone, you will live, go, and do where the mind can only follow.

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Until you are grounded, how can you hope to soar? Flight is not flighty. One may ascend in a hot-air balloon, for a time in defiance of gravity’s pull, but ascension from earthly ties is not an airy escape. It is grounded in wisdom’s ways. Mind and body are gravity-bound, lifted temporarily by means of imagination, the use of talents and skills, or sensory stimulation. As mind and body, we are drawn to flights of fancy and the unsustainable high. Yet, wings of a different sort are needed to rise above pleasure to bliss, beyond the limits of time and earthly tether to the far reaches of freedom. Those wings are won of inner work, grounded in simple living, in self-offering, in stillness.

Page 216

The universe is a verse of one, the poetic sum of its far-flung parts, in which we, among its parts, have not only been enfolded, but are also possessed of its sum. For billions of years, it has brought forth, modified and rewritten its elegant canto according to a divine code of rhythm and equation, not once in violation of its mandate. Unlike we, who take license with our instructions, the universe is entirely lawful.

Yet, even as we take license with our directives, as we try to bend and breach the truth, all is absorbed into the sum of that verse. The drop does not disturb the sea, nor the crashing wave, yet each is of the whole. So, too, chaos and death among us, whether localized or global, are part of the cosmic rhyme, and balance remains throughout.

Page 238

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In Search of Where We Are Going

The Clues Are Many, As Are the Clueless Fighting to Lead the Way

Surendra James Conti

In a world being shaped by the politics of exclusion, the unbridled pursuit of selfish gains, and perilous disregard for the precious living organism that is our planet, how are we to move forward with faith in the future of our personal and global welfare? Like a bridge over troubled waters, this book shows the way to inner peace and joy, no matter the trials that surround us or may lie ahead. Alive with the language of experience, and generously laced with humor, here is another collection of the author’s essays and wit, honed to a keenly perceptive point of wisdom and practicality.

There is no worse than not growing. If I slip over uncertainty’s edge and fall hard below, getting back up will be growing, and I will be more than I was. I don’t see how I can lose except by settling into a life of ease.

Strive to love what comes your way and give it the best you can. Then, no matter what, there is nothing to regret.

In the absence of discrimination between fact and fiction, and especially in the willful practice of accepting fiction as fact, only fiction exists.

North, south, east and west are the cardinal points of our navigational system, which we designate as directions. Yet we, on this human journey, have but two directions from which to choose: toward or away from what is right and true. Every thought we think and every move we make, knowingly or not, takes us closer or farther away from where we want to be. By degrees we may advance or retreat, but onward and upward or backward and down are the only true measures of where, in every moment, we are going.

EXCERPTS

Preface

Whether or not we’re aware of it, we are all on a spiritual path. Yup, even the atheist, thief and serial killer, no less than the saintly among us. That’s because, when all is said and done, there is only one true goal in life. We are here to achieve our soul’s release from the wheel of reincarnation, no matter how many lifetimes it takes.

But along the way – that very long way – we have plainly landed again on this peculiar little planet, whose inhabitants, namely us, have instituted ideas and desires that distract us from our mission. The details are seemingly endless, and the devil is definitely in them.

In Search of Where We Are Going thus has double meaning: where, as human beings, we might wind up tomorrow; and where, as spiritual beings, we might wind up when our tomorrows run out. These searches are not in Google’s catalog of destinations, and although all of us came from the same Source, none of us has a real cosmic memory of what it was like.

As events unfold, the search goes on. Yet, of far greater importance is how we conduct our mortal lives in the process, for that, above all, will affect where we go next when we pass from this delusion-centric experience with only our soul and remaining karma in tow.

Be of good cheer. We are destined at the end of a lifetime ahead to reunite with our soul’s Creator in divine communion. It’s just a matter of when, and that is up to us.

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Where do you live?

Mostly at the edge of uncertainty.

Sounds risky. Why there?

It is where we grow.

Why not look for a place that’s familiar and safe?

Because that’s where we don’t.

Why do you want to grow when the risk could make everything worse?

There is no worse than not growing. If I slip over uncertainty’s edge and fall hard below, getting back up will be growing, and I will be more than I was. I don’t see how I can lose except by settling into a life of ease.

But everyone likes some ease in their life. It can be very calming.

So is growth.

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River gets lazy as it nears the sea. From its youthful frolic and tumble, it flattens out and begins to meander sideways, looping and stalling for time, trying to avoid its riverness-no-more. It’s as if the river has an ego of its own, afraid like ours to let go. Little does it know until the merge is made that its riverness was but a long and sometimes stormy dream, remembered fondly and yet without desire to be a river again. As the sea is met, communion with the Great One leaves no glory unfulfilled.

Page 103

In Samuel Coleridge’s epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner, hoary with age and of long grey beard, recounts the tale of his hellish act when, as a sailor young, he shot and killed an albatross that, like “a Christian soul,” had proved an omen that saved his ship from an icy Antarctic impasse.

As the ship was led to safe passage, it was the albatross that “made the breeze to blow,” guiding the vessel to warm seas where, in an onset of doldrums, and in the throes of seafaring superstition, the mariner shot and killed the bird with his crossbow. Then, for breezeless days on end, the vessel idled amidst “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Said the mariner of his shame, “instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung.”

Long years later, spared of death, the mariner “hath penance done, and penance more will do.” Redeemed at last, he understands that “he prayeth best who loveth best all things great and small, for the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

It is we, in this modern age of hellish acts, who have since taken aim at the albatross, symbol of goodwill and divine guidance. Superstitious in our belief that we can do as we please, carelessly killing our planet and its things great and small, and having yet to offer penance or loving remedial sacrifice of our avarice, it is we who, about our necks, the albatross must now hang.

Page 155

Was it your goal to be as you are and to live as you do?

Most of us land in surroundings and situations that we did not anticipate when earlier setting our sights on the years to come. Among the many twists and turns we experience, some work out well and others not. Life has a way of taking the lead when we least expect it, offering choices or making demands that were not on the docket of our fancies.

We are told that having goals is good, but one goal needs to be the one for all, the one that underwrites every twist and turn with contentment. Strive to love what comes your way and give it the best you can. Then, no matter what, there is nothing to regret.

Page 181

Do we just get tired of things going well and want to see what it’s like when they don’t? Is that why otherwise intelligent people, often en masse as a nation or culture, choose to unravel what they have achieved?

Carl Jung, in his psychological study of the rise and fall of cultures, concluded this to be oddly the case, and the senseless allure of it makes a strange sort of inexplicable sense: that sooner or later, we tend to shift into reverse. “Thus, the rational attitude of culture necessarily goes over to its opposite, the irrational devastation of culture.”

Welcome to America’s current infatuation with the opposite of its foundational standards of liberty, justice, generosity and basic intelligence. It’s like having reality explained in a language we do not speak.

Page 222

That which is both a disease and a crime cannot be cured by treating it as a crime.

* * * * *

In the absence of discrimination between fact and fiction, and especially in the willful practice of accepting fiction as fact, only fiction exists.

* * * * *

It is not the strong we need to fear, it is the weak. They are of the downward pull, empty of spirit, who attack the noble idea and those who embrace it.

Buy on Amazon

Aging Into Ageless

Winding Down on the Way to Winding Up

Surendra James Conti

A writer for over fifty years, Surendra is an avid observer of the human scene, exploring the many facets of who we are, why we do what we do, and why truth is the only way forward. His writings are of self-discovery, shared as points of interest for our collective journey.

As an author now in his eighties, Surendra offers a perspective on aging — and on living fully at any age — that is wise, encouraging and deeply insightful in view of the many challenges we are certain to face.

The path illuminates as you give yourself to it.

Regret, like worry, is not only withering, it serves no useful purpose. We are happening here and now. What other focus is there, what other version to work on, than who, what and where we presently are?

As stewards of the earth, we are meant to serve as architects of a wise and healthy future; thus, to live in concert with nature’s laws.

Surendra writes in a language that is spare and direct, yet carefully honed to a rhythmic flow. Like a craftsman of fine furniture, he focuses on the essentials of form and function, but always with a sensitivity to the art and aesthetics of his compositions. The thoughts and observations that populate the pages of his books are, above all, provocative, insightful and poignant, offered in a style that makes reading an illuminating pleasure.

EXCERPTS

Page 55

It’s dark in there. I’m afraid to go in.

You said you were looking for enlightenment. Where did you think you would find it?

Where there’s light, of course. Where else would it be?

This is where it begins.

How will I find my way to it?

The path illuminates as you give yourself to it.

How can I be sure?

When that is your question, you can be sure that it won’t.

I think I need to think this over.

That’s what most people do. It tends to be a lifelong contemplation, then another one after that.

Page 67

Page 108

People much younger than I might think that coming of age before the Internet was comparatively semi-primitive. Technology has dramatically altered the experience of youth. Having only the radio, a few TV channels, books, the great outdoors and each other as our primary sources of our goodtime stimulation… I wouldn’t change a day of it for the norm today.

Let’s just say the world is different now, because it certainly is. But are people any smarter, more relaxed, happier and safer? Not in the least, and arguably much less. Living in a higher age of technological innovation does not necessarily equate to living well. Nor to being well. People’s retreat into virtual worlds is often as alienating as it is progressive, as dispiriting and depressing as Wow-inducing.

Today’s supercharged achievements have given rise to an air of expectation that amounts to an overpromise of better days ahead. Better than what? Toys that save us more time to fill with more toys are hardly the answer to making our lives richer.

Page 125

Page 130

What do you regret? I suspect we could each make quite a list: things we wish we had done and wish we hadn’t; friends we wish we had made; skills and careers we wish we had pursued; places we wanted to go and never did. But where is the value in regretting even the least of our unsought, unfulfilled or misdirected dreams?

The problem is not who, what or where we might have been. The problem is regret itself. Who is to say that any alternate version of ourselves would have been better anyway? Regret, like worry, is not only withering, it serves no useful purpose. We are happening here and now. What other focus is there, what other version to work on, than who, what and where we presently are? Making the best of that is the antidote to wishing for anything else.

Page 172

Who, in witnessing death, would suppose it to be alive? Life and death are easily distinguished, one from the other. Yet, beyond what we are able to perceive, they are not separate states of being. Both are of the one Light that mortality cannot extinguish. Death is but life removed from our sight to a higher plane of existence, where it needs no physical form or sensory confirmation to reveal its animate nature. Like the sun that only appears to set, ever to return from the other side of its journey, we return from ours.

Page 185

Page 205

As stewards of the earth, we are meant to serve as architects of a wise and healthy future; thus, to live in concert with nature’s laws. The trouble is, we invest in politicians instead of sages to lead us forward, who lead as if oblivious to nature’s ways. And so we become the victims of our poor choices and their architectural mistakes.

The revolution we need is not of left or right, not of diplomacy or insurrection, not of winner-take-all. It must be a revolution of higher consciousness, born of an apolitical orientation. Anything short of that will fall on its own sword, as every previous uprising has. Until the ego is decommissioned as architect-in-chief, what we build will be of cards.

Page 216

Beasts of the field seek only to satisfy their instinctive needs of the moment: food, water, sleep, safety, sexual interaction, etc. There is no thinking ahead of anything more. Consequences are confronted of necessity as they arise, related mainly to survival, and survival is not always the outcome.

We are beyond the limitations of instinct alone. We can forecast what a plan might entail, analyze its pros and cons, choose a path of implementation based on empirical calculations of risk and opportunity, and predict the result within a narrow range of probability.

Oddly, though, this process tends to go sideways when applied to making political decisions about candidates, policies and the future. Voters become beasts of the field again, focused on what looks good in the moment, driven by their appetite for hyped up happy endings that almost never prove more than folklore and folly. And survival is not always the outcome.

Page 258

There is much between the covers of this book, and between the covers of the others I have written, that is critical of what we have made of our world. It seems we are driven by our lesser nature to repeatedly crash and burn while within us, divinely provided, is the power to soar.

But what I would leave you with here is none of that. The beauty and qualities we cherish are ever present, needing us only to notice. Above all, through every tribulation and trial, through every darkness in search of its hidden light, I am one who profoundly and gratefully loves this life. I have been blessed to live it, and I hope that between those lines of critical remarks, that love is never in question. What a joy this journey has been!

Book Reviews

“Reading Let Me Remember This is like having a conversation with a close, trusted friend. As a writer myself, I recognize a kindred spirit in Surendra who loves the beauty of words and the subtlety they can convey. As a seeker of truth, I see through his writings a soul who is on the same quest for the meaning behind life’s experiences. And as someone who has met truly wise people in my life, I acknowledge the deep wisdom he has gained. Poet, seeker, sage: Surendra is all of these, and his book is a gift to cherish for years to come.”

Nayaswami DeviAuthor, lecturer, and Spiritual Co-Director of Ananda Sangha Worldwide

“Let Me Remember This is a gem of a book that scintillates with warmth and wisdom. Gleaned from decades on the spiritual path, Surendra offers reflections, philosophical musings, life stories, dreams and insights to amuse, edify, and awaken us. His keen awareness, depth of heart and twinkle of humor make for thoroughly enjoyable reading while imparting important life lessons. Let Me Remember This will be a warmly welcomed companion to any seeker’s library.”

Dana Lynne AndersenFounder and Director, Awakening Arts Academy

“Surendra James Conti’s book, Let Me Remember This, is filled with inspiration and insights, garnered from many years of introspection while following the spiritual path laid out by Paramhansa Yogananda, the great Indian master and author of the classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Walk along with him as he takes you on a delightful journey from one beautiful thought-vista to the next, each insight directed toward the highest goal of Self-realization.”

Richard Dayanand SalvaAuthor, The Yoga of Abraham Lincoln and numerous other books

“Reading Surendra’s Let Me Remember This feels like engaging in an inspiring and captivating conversation with a close friend in my own living room… like he’s holding up a mirror for me to see and experience my true, higher self in a number of different ways. Highly recommended reading.”

Bill GradyAuthor, Beacons of Light

“In this beautifully written book, Surendra shares his journey, filled with very human experiences, insights, struggles, and devotion to the guidance of his beloved guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and that of his spiritual teacher Swami Kriyananda. These pages are of his quest to move beyond egoic consciousness and remember the bliss and depth of the True Self. May we all, with the support of whatever path or wisdom tradition we follow, remember this.”

Manohar CrokeAuthor, Energy Psychology Using Light and Color

“Reading this book is like having an interesting conversation with a wise friend. Surendra has the gift of putting into words, the questions, and many of the answers, that intrigue all sincere truth seekers. Open the book anywhere. It will lighten your heart and give you something interesting to think about for the rest of the day. Highly recommended.”

Asha PraverAuthor, Ask Asha, Loved and Protected and Swami Kriyananda: As We Have Known Him

And This Too gives us spiritual inspiration, laugh-out-loud humor, a lifetime’s wisdom, personal vulnerability, musings on history and the craft of writing, and profound insight, carefully woven into creative poetry and elegant prose. Reading the book is like having a long conversation with a wise friend, as much self-reflective as offering answers to the eternal questions. A good book to read if you want to be nudged into your own process of introspection.

Joseph Selbieauthor of The Physics of God

And This Too is a book with the perfect subtitle: “More of What This Life Is About.” True wisdom awaits our perception, through an increasing willingness to shine more light on our inner, superconscious selves. Surendra reveals his sincere inner dialogues and light-filled inspirations, by the not-always-easy process of writing them down, clarifying them, and then sharing them freely with his readers.

Savitri SimpsonAuthor of The Treta Yuga Trilogy of spiritual novels

The author is a deep, subtle thinker, well outside the box. Daily life with a spiritual focus. The writing is excellent — interesting, nicely challenging our preconceptions, but in a kind, often amusing way. Open the book anywhere and you’ll gain a deeper understanding of something you really need to know.

Asha NayaswamiAuthor of Swami Kriyananda, Lightbearer

A lovingly-crafted book. Both timely and timeless, deep and light-hearted, these pages offer sophisticated questions with easy-to-understand instructions on how to find inner peace. Written with humor and grace, And This Too is a gift for all to treasure that assists in remembrance of our true nature.

Elizabeth KennedyArtist, EAKennedyArts.com