The Law of Attention: Nada Yoga and the Way of Inner Vigilance

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Simon and Schuster, Jan 27, 2010 - Body, Mind & Spirit - 384 pages
How to achieve a direct inner experience of your higher nature and the after-death state from which you originate and will return

• Provides techniques for listening to the primordial sound within

• Offers yoga and meditation techniques that are still little known in the West

This book--at once simple and powerful--stands as a monument to the lifelong spiritual struggles of Edward Salim Michael, struggles that he heroically surmounted on his path to enlightenment. Due to the circumstances of his birth, Michael had no education, no mother tongue, and no book learning when he was drafted at the age of 19 into the British Royal Air Force during World War II. After learning to read and write he became an accomplished classical composer in France. In 1949, after seeing a statue of a Buddha for the first time, he experienced a powerful awakening of his innate Buddha Nature, which inspired him to begin a sustained and extremely disciplined meditation practice. Michael abandoned his career as a composer and went to India, the home of his maternal grandmother, where he lived for seven years fully focused on his spiritual awakening.

Michael’s spiritual teachings reveal techniques of yoga and meditation that can open the door to one’s higher nature and to directly experience the after-death state. Nada yoga (meditation on the inner sound) is one of the core techniques for this realization. There is a vast luminous consciousness already within us, but it is obscured by the clouds of our incessant thoughts. With sincerity, moral integrity, and inner vigilance, which, when embodied, implies that we have internalized the basic tenets of the law of attention, we can move beyond the promptings of our lower nature and break through the clouds of our ordinary mind to realize our own divine nature. Emphasizing inner attention and an awareness of attitude, Michael’s practices can help aspirants make direct contact with the divine source each of us unknowingly carries deep within.
 

Contents

The Importance of Cyclic Recurrence in the Universe
Meditation with Slow Walking and Breathing Part One
Meditation with Slow Walking and Breathing Part Two
Meditation with Slow Walking and Breathing Part Three
Chapter 30 Meditation with Slow Walking and Breathing Part Four
The Interaction of Forces in the Universe and Life
The Power of Hidden Influences Emanating from Beings and Things
Actions and Their Consequences in the World

SvaVaniSravana Yoga Yoga of Listening to the Sound of Ones Voice
Efforts and Sincerity
The Mysterious Role of Suffering
Chapter 10 Nada Yoga Yoga of the Inner Sound Part One
Nada Yoga Yoga of the Inner Sound Part Two
Chapter 12 Nada Yoga Yoga of the Inner Sound Part Three
Nada Yoga Yoga of the Inner Sound Part Four
Nada Yoga Yoga of the Inner Sound Part Five
The Practice of Concentration While Walking Outside
Hidden Tendencies and the Meaning of Renunciation
Tapas SelfDenials and Their True Significance
Earthly Existence as Indispensable Means for Transformation
Yoga of the Void
Problems in Meditation and Their Equivalent When Dying
Hatha Yoga Part One
Hatha Yoga Part Two
Hatha Yoga Part Three
Time and Eternity
Meditation and the AfterDeath State
The Trace That Thoughts Words and Deeds Leave
The Human Being Thinks Himself into What He
Accidental Forces and Their Effect on a Persons Being
Seeing and Hearing
Exercise with the Sacred Syllable
Chapter 39 Sadhana and Enlightenment Part One
Sadhana and Enlightenment Part Two
Sadhana and Enlightenment Part Three
The Further Understanding of Right Effort
The Price of Enlightenment
Mother and Child
Man and Woman
Food and the Human Being
The Spectator and the Spectacle
Conclusion and Summary with Some Final Advice
Afterword
Footnotes
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Edward Salim Michael (1921-2006) began transmitting the fruits of his inner experiences and mystical understandings to his pupils in 1974. In addition to The Law of Attention, first published in 1983, he has written 7 other books in French.

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