RiverGanga Foundation

Letters of Confirmation

We receive letters from people all over the world, telling us about their experience with the vichara. We are always moved and encouraged to see the actual results of this simple method and the way in which people really benefit from this practice.

Here a few of these letters that speak directly to the effect of the practice on people's lives. 

 

2010

I feel like speaking very personally...

I am writing this letter in order to corroborate...

I just wanted to thank you so much.

You are right...

In regards to what I said...

I think I see what you mean.

I just felt like writing again.

Thanks again for the phone conversation...

Breakthrough

I write a lot of simple verse to amuse myself...

It was so wonderful to see the both of you again!

I know you prefer to deal with people's problems...

Vichara has not been working for me...

I have been trying your vichara...

I've been listening to you...

Now I am back from India...

It's been a few months now...

Thank you for your simple but powerful pointer....

I have a feeling that the question I asked you...

I feel the vichara growing...

Thanks for answering my email in your last podcast.

I just finished listening...

Some days ago two little dogs...

2009

Thank you Carla and John

Firstly, a big thank you...

I want to acknowledge to you this...

I may have finally found something...

I am almost a new person today...

It has been a while since I wrote to you...

Still this goes on...

When is your book coming out?

I came to you across the Internet.

Wanted to say hello and thank you.

You began yesterday by saying...

I am returning my name back to my birth name...

A metaphor for my spiritual search...

The moments with vichara

It's all coming to be — as promised.

On CD#2 of the March 22 Ojai workshop...

I wanted to report to you...

I called in to you on the show yesterday.

Recently I listened...

When I was in my teens I resolved...

I saw your name mentioned...

Thank you for dedicating your lives...

I have had some ongoing illness...

Something you said

I find myself "looking" intermittently...

I reckon I'm borrowing my body and this life.

I was really bamboozled by your latest podcast...

 

 

2008

 

I want to thank you for the online intensive last week.

I met you last year at Carefree...

I am practicing the vichara...

I find it hard to express how much the enquiry has changed my life.

As always, many thanks for the online meeting...

I had to laugh...

I am a bit overwhelmed ...

In an interview you said...

I am listening to a podcast of yours...

Thank you so much for your lectures...

Something has happened I'm compelled to share.

I'm writing this after the world wide meeting...

Seeing through the trick

It is with a recognition of peace in me...

It has been so wonderful...

I just wanted to share with you...

I just read only one article of yours...

Thank you so much for your effort

 

2007

 

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed ...

Thank you for your meeting.

I have to tell you how wonderful ...

I had to take antibiotics...

Your sharing the experience of being John Sherman...

First of all I must say...

Long time listener, first time writer.

I cannot thank you very much...

Six months ago, like so many others worldwide...

Oh John, great and growing gratitude here

I just wanted to express my gratitude for your teaching.

Thank you so much for speaking it like it is without the spiritual overtones.

I know you are busy these days...

I'm so grateful to have come across you...

I really appreciate the clarity and simplicity with which you communicate.

I have been on the spiritual path for about two and a half years now.

Hello from Russia.

I just wanted to let you know how very grateful I am...

For several years now, I have been busy with Advaita...

I just wanted to thank you both...

Just to say that it was lovely to speak to you

Just a report...

I would like to thank you for making these recordings available...

I hope you will receive this mail...

I want to thank you for making it all so clear to me...

I am forever grateful to you...

I want to express my heartfelt thanks...

I just want to say thank you.

Hello.

Thanks again.

Your words have given me absolutely nothing...

Your podcasts have been tremendously helpful to me...

Bypassing the apparatus.

I had the pleasure of meeting you at the Gangaji Tahoe 2001 retreat...

I was at the online meeting today...

I'd like to THANK YOU so much, John.

I am very excited about the online satsangs!

I write these lines to you who are my true self...

I really want to thank you for last Sunday (Feb. 11) online meeting.

My dear brother John...

Today I realized what you have been trying to convey.

2006

 

I have been blessed with a life...

Just stumbled upon a picture of you on the internet...

Thank you so very, very much for "The Story of How I Met Gangaji, Became Spiritual and So Forth".

I had the pleasure of meeting you...

This magnificent retreat has come to an end...

I just feel like writing you an email...

Thanks for making your meetings available on podcast...

"I'd like to espress my gratitude" sounds a bit formal...

I am sitting here at my glass desk in my apartment in Helsinki, Finland...

On the internet I found your podcast feed ...

I obtained a copy of the book Conversations with Ramana Maharshi...

How can I ever, ever thank you...

I have often started writing to you...

I just spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday with you.

I just listened to your most recent podcast...

You're really paring down your instruction!

Yesterday's phone conversation was something I needed...

I don't have the words...

Simple, ordinary happiness for no reason...

2005

 

There is nothing like the experience of extreme pain...

It is so interesting to notice...

Wow, John. Huge gratitude...

This last week I have been extremely busy...

2003

 

A thousand thank you's for this wonderful retreat!

I want to express my thanks...

 

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2010 Fundraising Progress

Your single donations and monthly pledges make up 91% of all income to the foundation. We need to raise $56,500 to finance and sustain our work over the next twelve months. 

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    Worldwide Online Meeting

    Saturday, September 11 at 4 pm PDT (UTC/GMT -7)

    People all over the world gather together with John for a couple of hours. John is available to listen to your questions, and to help you sort out any difficulties you might experience in your own practice of looking at yourself.

    This is very much like a call-in radio show. If you simply want to listen to the meetings, all you need to do is to install the software and have speakers attached to your computer. If you wish to speak with John, then you will need a headset with microphone. You can also use earbuds and a microphone.

    All our events are always free of charge. Spontaneous donations for the support of our work are always welcome and gratefully accepted.

    All are welcome, with no regard for religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.

     

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    Look At Yourself and Meeting Ramana Maharshi by John Sherman are available as free ebook downloads.
    Featured Letter of the Month
    We receive many, many beautiful and useful letters.  Every month we try to feature one here that seems especially valuable and instructive for one reason or another.
    Podcast

    A Worldwide Meeting - July 10, 2010

    My role in this adventure of trying to bring the simplicity of this work to every human being is not to concoct teachings, ways of looking at things, instructions and practices that are my creation, and then pass them on to you for you to receive gratefully, and try to make sense of. My role here is actually to distill and articulate the product of an ongoing conversation among all of us, over a period of more than ten years now, about the discovery that bringing an end to misery in a human life is actually not only possible but easy and simple, and can be done by anyone. It requires nothing at all to accomplish this except the determination to do one simple, solitary, radical act, and that is to turn the beam of your attention onto the feeling of being you. That's it. In the end, and against all odds and all expectation, this repeated act will bring sanity into your life. It will eliminate the underlying sense that life is treacherous and not to be trusted, and that something desperately needs to be done about it.

    Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on July 10, 2010.

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    Our Work

    First, last, and always, my advice is only to look at the feeling of being you, without the mediation of understanding, the need to resolve paradox, or the requirement that this looking lead to any conclusion. Simply make every effort just to look, and persist in that effort as often as you can. In this effort, understanding is irrelevant, belief is irrelevant, even duration is irrelevant — the briefest look, repeated over time, does all the work.

    A Message from John Sherman, videotaped in Ojai, California on May 15, 2009.

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    Our work is to bring the practice of looking at oneself to all who are interested.

    The only problem anywhere to be found is the false belief that you are at the mercy of your life, and the only solution is the truth, which is everywhere and always present and self-evident. Ridding oneself of the false is as easy as repeatedly tasting the truth of being here, unmovingly, unchangingly here. This repeated looking directly at oneself is the infallible method of the vichara.

    Although our meetings are free of charge, they are certainly not free of cost. The money needed for this work must come entirely from the generosity and compassion of those who, like us, have seen for themselves the immense worth of spreading this good news to all humanity.

    Please help provide financial support for the work of making this method more widely available in the world by making a donation or a monthly pledge in any amount now.

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    RiverGanga Foundation
    PO Box 1566
    Ojai, California 93024-1566
    Phone: (805) 649-1600
    Email: info@riverganga.org

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