Who Was in ItAt the back3 min
Where this came from
The practice underneath this book is Raja Yoga as taught by the Brahma Kumaris, followed by the author for more than ten years.
They did not write this. They have not seen it. It is one person's reading of what he was taught, put to a use nobody asked him to put it to, and where it is wrong, the fault is his and not theirs. It is not an official publication of the Brahma Kumaris and should not be taken for one.
What was taken
The eight powers are theirs. Withdraw, pack up, tolerate, adjust, discriminate, judge, face and co-operate — the list, the order and the idea that they are capacities rather than moods. Chapters 2, 4, 8 and 9 are those eight, a pair at a time, with the names translated and the numbering left alone.
The tortoise is theirs, in chapter 2, and it is the oldest thing in the book.
The seven virtues are theirs, where chapter 9 touches them.
The shape of the daily routine is theirs, in chapter 10: something early and quiet, something brief at intervals through the working day, and a clearing of the day's accounts before sleep. They are a great deal more specific about all three than this book is, and they get up a good deal earlier.
And the direction of attention is theirs — the whole idea that a person can turn attention inward on purpose, and that doing so is a skill rather than a mood, which is what chapters 3 and 6 are about.
What is mine, and should not be laid at their door
The physics. Entropy, gravity, density, time dilation — every one of those is a borrowed language, chosen because it describes the practice without asking anyone to believe anything. They do not teach in those terms and would not recognise the vocabulary.
The time framing. Chapters 1 and 12 are mine entirely: the calendar, the recovery gap, and the idea that what an afternoon costs you afterwards is the number to watch. That measure is not in their teaching. It is a test I wanted for my own sake, because a practice you cannot check is a practice you will eventually put down while still agreeing with it.
What was left out, and it is not a small thing
They hold a great deal more than is in this book: that the traveller is older than the life, that it runs in a cycle, and that the whole of it is longer and stranger than a working week. None of that is here.
That is a rule rather than a doubt. Every chapter in this book was built so you could find out whether it was true without believing anybody — do it, then look at the hour afterwards. The cycle cannot be put to a fortnight like that, and a reader who tried and felt nothing would have no way of telling whether the claim was false or he had simply not got there. That is the shape of the exact promise this book was written not to make.
So the scale was left where it was found, and what is here is the part you can check this week.
There is no address for the tradition anywhere in this book: no centre, nothing to send off for and no next step. If you want to look into it, you are perfectly capable of doing that without help from here.
Om Shanti.
It is how the people who taught him say hello, and goodbye. What they mean by it is I am a peaceful soul — that peace is not somewhere a person gets to, but what is there underneath when nothing has been added.