RiverGanga Foundation
Wanted to say hello and thank you.

Hey John,

Wanted to say hello and thank you. The vichara has been such a gift. Your encouragement to do it has been of significant value. I definitely have found inspiration to continue the simple movement of my attention by listening regularly to you. It is so simple to do yet so impossible to say what to look at or how to do it. It really doesn't seem like it will do any good to the mind but it does. You do an outstanding job with your discourses at making this looking seem worthwhile. Your evolving explanation of the vichara, the desirable and unpredictable effects on the life, and your talking of how it will change my relationship with my life over time has been of tremendous benefit. I do not think without you I would be at such a mature place with myself and my understanding. You see, I was primed to be #1 and let everyone know I got something they didn't and I can bestow this gift unto them (for a small fee or some special praise.)

Anyway, I live now with my partner in Chapel Hill, NC. I am looking to get a part time job at the local Trader Joe's and then start a master's program at the university next June. I plan to teach science to high school students. I really hope this will prove to be satisfying and fun for me. I do hope to one day help students set up experiments that have them look at themselves and then come up with conclusions. I may do better in the system to focus on academics and order in the classroom first. Anyway, I am excited about and very at home in my life.

Thanks so much with my best to you and Carla,

J.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina
August 25, 2009

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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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  • next event
    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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    free ebooks
    Look At Yourself and Meeting Ramana Maharshi by John Sherman are available as free ebook downloads.
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    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.

    All gifts to the RiverGanga Foundation are fully tax-deductible as charitable donations.

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

    RiverGanga Foundation is a not-for-profit, 509(a)(2) public charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code.

    Our Internal Revenue Service Employer ID Number is 77-0561647. All donations are tax deductible for US residents as charitable contributions.

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