Dharanas: The Direct Route to Divine Consciousness

By David Long

If you dont visit heaven as a general rule, you may be surprised how easy it is!

This anthology of contemplations, mental exercises, and uplifting sayings has been gathered from ancient and modern scriptures and from Eastern and Western gurus.

As you practice these contemplations for as little as ten minutes a day (following the helpful How to Use This Book guidelines ), you will find your mind becomes stronger and able to focus quickly and accurately and to hold focus. But much more than this, these dharanas give you the experience of divine consciousness, i.e., of heaven itself!

As you practice, your mind and spirit will love the divine nourishment offered and will seek out more and more of the good and delightful in life and shun the unhelpful and misleading.

Most of the dharanas come from the standpoint of nondualism, i.e., roughly, All Is One or Everything Is Consciousness. You will enjoy this book if you are happy interchanging terms like God, spirit, presence, being, consciousness, and soul. If you are not, just stay with it and use your own concept and name for the Supreme Being.

Most of the dharanas in this book ask you to contemplate a proposition about life. It could be religious or philosophical. You wont agree with every single one of them! But just keep your heart wide open and follow the How to Use This Book guidelines!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504308748

David Long

David Long, BEng (Hons), MSc, CEng, MIPEM, is a Clinical Engineer registered in the UK as a Clinical Scientist with the Health and Care Professions Council. He has over 20 years multi-disciplinary NHS experience in the field of rehabilitation engineering, specialising in the provision of postural management and custom contoured seating. Being a Chartered Engineer as well as a qualified clinician, Dave is particularly able to apply biomechanical principles to the assessment process, and to advise and assist with the more technical aspects of the required equipment. He is employed by AJM Healthcare who deliver a number of wheelchair services on behalf of the NHS. He also retains a contract with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust where he teaches on the Oxford Brookes University accredited Postgraduate Certificate in Posture Management for People with Complex Disabilities.

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Copyright © 2017 David Long.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-0873-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0874-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/26/2017

Contents

Introduction

About The Author

Chapter 1: How To Use This Book

Chapter 2: How This Book Came To Be Written

Chapter 3: The Dharanas

Chapter 4: Notes On The Dharanas

Chapter 5: The Checks

Chapter 6: Main Sources And Source – People

Chapter 7: Afterwords

Chapter 8: Glossary

Chapter 9: Further Dharanas

The core of this book is in Chapters One, Two, Three and Four. These chapters are very concise and to the point.

The Introduction is more conversational in tone and gives some background to the book and subject matter and some information about the author.

Afterwords (Chapter Seven) is also conversational in tone and teases out some lessons and life prescriptions from the dharanas and encourages the reader to examine closely what he can take away from the book and put into practice.

N.B.

The reader who is very keen to get straight into the practice of dharana can go straight to Chapter One, if desired, and perhaps read The Introduction later.

INTRODUCTION

Dharana is a Sanskrit word meaning concentration. It could be concentration on an object, a body-point, or an idea. Here we mainly use little gems of life-wisdom to contemplate upon, but also do some enlivening body-focus and mental exercises.

As you proceed, new light will be shed on many of your habits and assumptions and on just how you manage your own awareness. For example, do you focus too much and too often? Do you go into resting mode when you can? Do you let your awareness go wherever it wants to, or do you have a strategy for what sort of things are deserving of your attention? Who is the boss here?

You may also get new light on your personal psychology. Are you a compulsive thinker? Do you usually turn what is presented in your awareness into something negative, and see it as a problem, or into something positive? Do you give your mind too much freedom, more than it can handle? How is your self – talk, positive or negative?

You may also get new light in the area of ethics and religion. What do you honour? What is ‘the good’ for you? What is worshipable, adorable to you?

And, moving into philosophy, where is the ‘you’ located? In the body, brain, or in the ether, in the mind of God, or everywhere? Could the world even be inside you??

All this is done in a non-threatening way. The dharanas are all positive or neutral, but leading to positivity. Some do stretch us to the limits of our thinking, but we resume in the everyday world feeling bigger, lighter and more refreshed.

This is not a book intended only for mystics, yogis and the religious, though I hope they will enjoy and thrive on its breezy and direct presentation of early morning dharana practice. Anyone curious enough to get this far will get