The ego has embedded itself in the consciousness of humanity from the beginning of human time. Here is a story about the birth of ego.
It was long ago, the sun had only made one cycle around the Source Star. At that time the one Over Soul was playing with physicality, dreaming pieces of itself into human bodies. It first extended itself and dreamed a human being into the earth-life-system. It started with one human and then dreamed another. This was fun, moving from oneness into individuality. Individual bodies and the experience of individuality were new experiences for the Over Soul.
When one human being would meet another on earth they knew they were the same, just extensions of the same Soul. They greeted one another as themselves. "Hello, me," one would say to the other.
"Hello me," would be the reply.
As the Over Soul was playing with its extensions into physicality an idea was created, "This is so much fun. What new experiences I am having. What if each extension of me pretended not to be me? That would be even more fun!"
Now when each human being greeted one another they pretended they were not from the same source as the other. They greeted one another with, "Hi you who are not me." As this repeated and more human beings were born, pretending to not be from the same source. Soon another entity began to take form. This entity was the ego. It lived on pretension. As the ego grew stronger soon the human beings forgot that they were pretending. Due to the ego, the gift of Individuality turned into the curse of separation......by Toltec
Is Truth Vacant?...
Is Truth at risk of being non-existant.. Do those that fear the Higher Knowledge
keep you from becoming Free.. How strong is the Ego that prevents Knowledge from
being shared.. Do they Fear Religion, Spirituality, or just the Unknown.. Jump
into the Unknown with both feet, do not Fear.. Fear keeps you a Fool.. Become
Wise with Courage............namaste, thomas
keep you from becoming Free.. How strong is the Ego that prevents Knowledge from
being shared.. Do they Fear Religion, Spirituality, or just the Unknown.. Jump
into the Unknown with both feet, do not Fear.. Fear keeps you a Fool.. Become
Wise with Courage............namaste, thomas
The Bhagavad Gita...
Arjuna said,
'Nature and Spirit, the field and the knower of the field,
this I wish to know: knowledge and what is known, Keshava.'
"The blessed Lord said,
'This body, Kaunteya, is called the field;
this one who knows it,
the knowers of that declare the knower of the field.
And also know me as the field knower in all fields, Bharata,
knowledge of the field and the field knower,
which is thought by me to be true knowledge.
"'What that field is and of what kind
and of what modifications and from where
and who this one is and what its power is,
hear that briefly from me.
Chanted many times by the seers in various sacred hymns
and distinctly in God's scriptures,
with undeniable reasons,
the great elements, ego, intuition, and the unmanifest,
the senses ten and one, and the five objects of the senses,
desire, aversion, pleasure, pain,
combination, consciousness, firmness,
this in brief is the field described with modifications.
"'Non-pride, non-deceit, nonviolence, patience, honesty,
service of the teacher, integrity, stability, self-control,
in the objects of sense detached, and non-ego;
insight into the pain and evil
of birth, death, old age, disease;
non-attachment, non-clinging to son, wife, home, et cetera,
and constant equanimity in wanted and unwanted events;
and unswerving love to me by exclusive union,
resorting to a secluded place, dissatisfied in a crowd,
constant oversoul knowledge,
observing the purpose of true knowledge:
this knowledge is explained thus;
ignorance is what is contrary to this.
"'What is to be known that I shall explain,
knowing which, one attains immortality;
this beginningless supreme God
is said to be neither being nor non-being.
Everywhere having hands and feet,
everywhere eyes, heads, faces,
everywhere in the world ears,
this stands all pervading,
the appearance of all sense qualities, freed from all senses,
unattached and yet all supporting,
free of the qualities and enjoyer of the qualities.
"'Outside and inside of beings inanimate and animate,
because of its subtlety this is unknown;
also far away and nearby is this.
Also undivided and as if staying divided in beings,
also supporting beings this is to be known,
the devourer and the creator.
This is even the light of lights,
said to be beyond darkness---
the knowledge to be known, the goal of knowledge
situated in the heart of all.
Thus the field and the knowledge to be known are described.
"'My devotee, understanding this, approaches my essence.
Know nature and Spirit, both also beginningless,
and know the modifications and qualities coming from nature.
Concerning the doer, the doing, and the instrument,
nature is said to be the cause.
Spirit is said to be the cause
in the experiencing of pleasure and pain,
for Spirit situated in nature
experiences the qualities born of nature.
Attachment to the qualities is the instrument
of its birth in good and evil wombs.
"'The supreme Spirit in this body is also said to be
the observer, allower, supporter, experiencer,
the great Lord and the supreme soul.
Whoever thus knows Spirit and nature
together with the qualities,
even in any stage of existence,
this one is not born again.
"'Some perceive the soul through meditation
by the soul in the soul,
others by Sankhya yoga, and others by action yoga;
yet others, not knowing this, worship hearing it from others,
and they also transcend death following the scripture.
Since any being, stable or moving,
is born from the union of the field and the field knower,
know that, Bharata bull.
"'Whoever perceives the same supreme Lord
situated in all beings, not perishing in their perishings,
this one perceives;
for perceiving the same Lord established everywhere,
one does not hurt the soul with the soul.
Then one goes to the supreme goal.
"'And whoever perceives actions
completely performed by nature,
the soul thus the non-doer, this one perceives.
When one discerns various states of being situated in one
and spreading out from that, then one attains God.
"'Because this imperishable supreme soul
dwelling in the body
is beginningless and free of qualities also, Kaunteya,
it does not act nor is it stained.
As omnipresent space from its subtlety is not stained,
so the soul situated in the body is not ever stained.
"'As the one sun illumines this entire world,
so the Lord of the field illumines the entire field, Bharata.
Those who know by the eye of knowledge
this distinction between the field and the field knower
and the liberation of being from nature
go to the supreme.'
'Nature and Spirit, the field and the knower of the field,
this I wish to know: knowledge and what is known, Keshava.'
"The blessed Lord said,
'This body, Kaunteya, is called the field;
this one who knows it,
the knowers of that declare the knower of the field.
And also know me as the field knower in all fields, Bharata,
knowledge of the field and the field knower,
which is thought by me to be true knowledge.
"'What that field is and of what kind
and of what modifications and from where
and who this one is and what its power is,
hear that briefly from me.
Chanted many times by the seers in various sacred hymns
and distinctly in God's scriptures,
with undeniable reasons,
the great elements, ego, intuition, and the unmanifest,
the senses ten and one, and the five objects of the senses,
desire, aversion, pleasure, pain,
combination, consciousness, firmness,
this in brief is the field described with modifications.
"'Non-pride, non-deceit, nonviolence, patience, honesty,
service of the teacher, integrity, stability, self-control,
in the objects of sense detached, and non-ego;
insight into the pain and evil
of birth, death, old age, disease;
non-attachment, non-clinging to son, wife, home, et cetera,
and constant equanimity in wanted and unwanted events;
and unswerving love to me by exclusive union,
resorting to a secluded place, dissatisfied in a crowd,
constant oversoul knowledge,
observing the purpose of true knowledge:
this knowledge is explained thus;
ignorance is what is contrary to this.
"'What is to be known that I shall explain,
knowing which, one attains immortality;
this beginningless supreme God
is said to be neither being nor non-being.
Everywhere having hands and feet,
everywhere eyes, heads, faces,
everywhere in the world ears,
this stands all pervading,
the appearance of all sense qualities, freed from all senses,
unattached and yet all supporting,
free of the qualities and enjoyer of the qualities.
"'Outside and inside of beings inanimate and animate,
because of its subtlety this is unknown;
also far away and nearby is this.
Also undivided and as if staying divided in beings,
also supporting beings this is to be known,
the devourer and the creator.
This is even the light of lights,
said to be beyond darkness---
the knowledge to be known, the goal of knowledge
situated in the heart of all.
Thus the field and the knowledge to be known are described.
"'My devotee, understanding this, approaches my essence.
Know nature and Spirit, both also beginningless,
and know the modifications and qualities coming from nature.
Concerning the doer, the doing, and the instrument,
nature is said to be the cause.
Spirit is said to be the cause
in the experiencing of pleasure and pain,
for Spirit situated in nature
experiences the qualities born of nature.
Attachment to the qualities is the instrument
of its birth in good and evil wombs.
"'The supreme Spirit in this body is also said to be
the observer, allower, supporter, experiencer,
the great Lord and the supreme soul.
Whoever thus knows Spirit and nature
together with the qualities,
even in any stage of existence,
this one is not born again.
"'Some perceive the soul through meditation
by the soul in the soul,
others by Sankhya yoga, and others by action yoga;
yet others, not knowing this, worship hearing it from others,
and they also transcend death following the scripture.
Since any being, stable or moving,
is born from the union of the field and the field knower,
know that, Bharata bull.
"'Whoever perceives the same supreme Lord
situated in all beings, not perishing in their perishings,
this one perceives;
for perceiving the same Lord established everywhere,
one does not hurt the soul with the soul.
Then one goes to the supreme goal.
"'And whoever perceives actions
completely performed by nature,
the soul thus the non-doer, this one perceives.
When one discerns various states of being situated in one
and spreading out from that, then one attains God.
"'Because this imperishable supreme soul
dwelling in the body
is beginningless and free of qualities also, Kaunteya,
it does not act nor is it stained.
As omnipresent space from its subtlety is not stained,
so the soul situated in the body is not ever stained.
"'As the one sun illumines this entire world,
so the Lord of the field illumines the entire field, Bharata.
Those who know by the eye of knowledge
this distinction between the field and the field knower
and the liberation of being from nature
go to the supreme.'
Contemplation...
In order to do the contemplation one has to first still the mind to the point of
peace. Take 7 deep long breaths all the while putting all your focus into the
whole breath. Feel the breath from your nostrils to your lungs. Exhale as slow
as you inhaled. Once these seven deep breaths are done, switch to normal
breathing. Focus the mind on the very tip of your nose. When your focus is
such that all that you are aware of is the very tip of your nose, you are then
ready to switch your focus to a pure concept of GOD........Stephen Boston
peace. Take 7 deep long breaths all the while putting all your focus into the
whole breath. Feel the breath from your nostrils to your lungs. Exhale as slow
as you inhaled. Once these seven deep breaths are done, switch to normal
breathing. Focus the mind on the very tip of your nose. When your focus is
such that all that you are aware of is the very tip of your nose, you are then
ready to switch your focus to a pure concept of GOD........Stephen Boston
The Soul...
This is where the Knowlede of True Self (True Ego) and false self (false ego) is important, as there is only really One Ego, called Consciousness or God.. the ego that we have been constantly told is us, is an illusion of memories and desires.. We are only True Self.. There is Only True Self in All Existence.. What is called the Soul is a part of this True Self that chooses to look at Itself.. To Know Itself better by Knowing what it is Not.. We are the Soul of the True Self that is the experiencer of this Looking and Learning........namaste, thomas
Conviction...
Until there is the conviction in the seeker
that all phenomena, including himself,
are merely appearances without any sub-
stance, there can be no true understanding.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
that all phenomena, including himself,
are merely appearances without any sub-
stance, there can be no true understanding.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
A reader asks:" Who has the Largest Ego?"...
The ego means self..So, you ask, "who has the largest?".. There is only One Ego
that has a length that cannot be measured.. This Self is called Consciousness or
what some call God.. This Consciousness is composed of the energy of Light and
Love.. This is somewhat of a paradox because to know this Ego, you must
surrender the ego that you have spent a lifetime defending.. When you have
finally achieved the courage to commit suicide of the false ego of self-ishness,
then and only then will you Realize that you were never this illusion.. you were
playing "Hide and Seek" with Your Self.. You finally Realize that you were never
Really separated from the only Ego that ever existed.. This Ego is called
Love..........namaste, thomas
that has a length that cannot be measured.. This Self is called Consciousness or
what some call God.. This Consciousness is composed of the energy of Light and
Love.. This is somewhat of a paradox because to know this Ego, you must
surrender the ego that you have spent a lifetime defending.. When you have
finally achieved the courage to commit suicide of the false ego of self-ishness,
then and only then will you Realize that you were never this illusion.. you were
playing "Hide and Seek" with Your Self.. You finally Realize that you were never
Really separated from the only Ego that ever existed.. This Ego is called
Love..........namaste, thomas
Open the Door...
We don't have to follow
the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open
together and leave.
- Rumi
the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open
together and leave.
- Rumi
Solitude...
In the end man will find that no church can give him what he can give himself or do for him what he must do for himself. And that is, to go back to the source of his being and seek communion there within his own mind and his own heart where God is hidden.........Paul Brunton
Time binds Illusion...
I do not negate the world. I see it as appearing in
consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the
immensity of the unknown.
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world
can be said to appear, but not to "be". The appearance may
last very long on some scale of time, and be very short on
another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is
time bound is momentary and has no reality.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the
immensity of the unknown.
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world
can be said to appear, but not to "be". The appearance may
last very long on some scale of time, and be very short on
another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is
time bound is momentary and has no reality.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
All is Self...
My teacher put a lotion on my eyes
that dissolved the cataracts,
and now wherever I look I see
the self, God, inner life
everywhere. Lalla,
this is true!
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
that dissolved the cataracts,
and now wherever I look I see
the self, God, inner life
everywhere. Lalla,
this is true!
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
Patience and Non-Resistence...
Even though scolded by the wicked or insulted, ridiculed, calumniated, beaten, bound, robbed of his living or spat upon or otherwise abominabley treated by the ignorant-being thus variously shaken and placed in dire extremities, the man who desires his well-being should deliver himself by his own effort through patience and non-resistence.
Krishna
Source: Bhagavantam XI:22, 57, 58
Krishna
Source: Bhagavantam XI:22, 57, 58
Life's Journey...
"On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him." .........Gautama the Buddha
Love and Fear...
“Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”....
Merle Shain
Merle Shain
Learning...
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.....
Henry David Thoreau
US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862)
Henry David Thoreau
US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862)
Ego Annihilation...
Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.........
St.Francis of Assisi
St.Francis of Assisi
Real Bliss...
Real bliss is the absence of the wanting of
bliss. The enlightenment state is not wanting
either bliss or anything else.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
bliss. The enlightenment state is not wanting
either bliss or anything else.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
Unselfish Love...
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.........
Euripides
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies............
Aristotle
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed...........
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Love is the beauty of the soul.............
Saint Augustine
Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life.........
Smiley Blanton
Do all things with love..............
Og Mandino
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet............
Plato
Love conquers all...........
Virgil
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same............
Emily Bronte
Take away love and our earth is a tomb............
Robert Browning
Who so loves believes the impossible...........
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life...........
Leo Buscaglia
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.........
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end..........
Benjamin Disraeli
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.........
Henry Drummond
Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction..........
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Where there is love there is life.............
Mohandas Gandhi
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.........
Judy Garland
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.........
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.........
Zora Neale Hurston
Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.........
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Love is my religion - I could die for it...........
John Keats
Who, being loved, is poor? ............
Oscar Wilde
Euripides
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies............
Aristotle
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed...........
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Love is the beauty of the soul.............
Saint Augustine
Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life.........
Smiley Blanton
Do all things with love..............
Og Mandino
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet............
Plato
Love conquers all...........
Virgil
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same............
Emily Bronte
Take away love and our earth is a tomb............
Robert Browning
Who so loves believes the impossible...........
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life...........
Leo Buscaglia
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.........
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end..........
Benjamin Disraeli
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.........
Henry Drummond
Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction..........
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Where there is love there is life.............
Mohandas Gandhi
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.........
Judy Garland
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.........
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.........
Zora Neale Hurston
Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.........
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Love is my religion - I could die for it...........
John Keats
Who, being loved, is poor? ............
Oscar Wilde
Desire...
Desire is the cause of all miseries.. We have desired to become
separate, therefore, we created the false ego....But, Desire is necessary for the
conquering of the illusion because we desire to end the pain that the ego gives
us.. We desire to know the Truth of Existence.. We desire to Know ourselves..
This is the desire for the Realization of Truth and Unity.. Most humans desire
Love, because they feel Happiness with this feeling of non-ego.. The final
desire is for complete Freedom from all desires.. This is the Realization of
Unity of that very Love that you desire.. This is the end of worldly
desires...........namaste, thomas
separate, therefore, we created the false ego....But, Desire is necessary for the
conquering of the illusion because we desire to end the pain that the ego gives
us.. We desire to know the Truth of Existence.. We desire to Know ourselves..
This is the desire for the Realization of Truth and Unity.. Most humans desire
Love, because they feel Happiness with this feeling of non-ego.. The final
desire is for complete Freedom from all desires.. This is the Realization of
Unity of that very Love that you desire.. This is the end of worldly
desires...........namaste, thomas
Identity and Ego...
My
take on identity and ego is that identity is the Real Self or Real Ego and the
False Ego or Ego is the illusion that we believe we are.. False ego is needed in
the beginning of life to show us what God is not, so that we can see what God
IS.. False ego causes pain in its' actions to show us that it is not the Right
Path.. Real Ego brings a state of happiness known as Love.. Love is our True
Identity and is Known as God..........namaste, thomas
take on identity and ego is that identity is the Real Self or Real Ego and the
False Ego or Ego is the illusion that we believe we are.. False ego is needed in
the beginning of life to show us what God is not, so that we can see what God
IS.. False ego causes pain in its' actions to show us that it is not the Right
Path.. Real Ego brings a state of happiness known as Love.. Love is our True
Identity and is Known as God..........namaste, thomas
Truth...
What is sought is the 'Truth',which can never be bound by an object...Truth being imperceptible to the senses,the perceptible object is made use of,to find the ultimate truth...The process adopted is an attempt to eliminate the material parts from the particular object..When they are thus separated,the Truth-which was the background of all that was separated-shines by itself,being self -luminous. Therefore,whether you search for Truth through the individual subject or through a particular object,it is the ultimate Truth that is experienced as the result.......... Atmananda.
Unaware...
We cannot be unaware. The ego mind can be lost in its dreams and seem to be unaware but that is not true Awareness. Awareness canot be anything other than what it is, and it is eternal. When we are just simply aware to the point of not identifying with anything, but just simple seeing, then we are no longer in ego. We are in Awareness, as Awareness. In that state there is poise, joy and creativity with out any need to express.Far from the end of the ego being death, it is Life in It's fullness. Open to Life and find the Freedom you have always been.
Melvyn Wartella
Melvyn Wartella
Why Are We Here?..
We are here to learn how to become Free..through the Knowledge of Mystic Masters
It is the same Truth.. Only translations and languages
differ.. What is freedom?.. It is the end of the illusion that we are a separate
ego.. A self that is separate from each other and from the Creative Energy that
we call God.. What is God?.. God is Universal Consciousness or what we might
think of as Ultimate Thought..This Consciousness is also us.. Consciousness is
ALL.. There is nothing but Consciousness.. But, we have been foolish enough to
actually believe that we are the body and mind because we have such a close
relationship to both.. This was the original purpose of Religion.. Religion was
meant to be a school to teach you that you are living in an illusion called "the
ego", "the self", that which you think is "you".. Because of ego, the Religions
were transformed into businesses.. they became the intermediary between you and
God and became masters of you and your money.. This is your chance to become
Free of these masters of deception and Realize who you are, are you ready for
the ride of your life?.. stay tuned..........namaste, thomas
It is the same Truth.. Only translations and languages
differ.. What is freedom?.. It is the end of the illusion that we are a separate
ego.. A self that is separate from each other and from the Creative Energy that
we call God.. What is God?.. God is Universal Consciousness or what we might
think of as Ultimate Thought..This Consciousness is also us.. Consciousness is
ALL.. There is nothing but Consciousness.. But, we have been foolish enough to
actually believe that we are the body and mind because we have such a close
relationship to both.. This was the original purpose of Religion.. Religion was
meant to be a school to teach you that you are living in an illusion called "the
ego", "the self", that which you think is "you".. Because of ego, the Religions
were transformed into businesses.. they became the intermediary between you and
God and became masters of you and your money.. This is your chance to become
Free of these masters of deception and Realize who you are, are you ready for
the ride of your life?.. stay tuned..........namaste, thomas
Meditations...
Give four exercises of a highly advanced metaphysical character: (a) Meditation on the Void; (b) Meditation on Nonduality; (c) Meditation on Space; (d) Meditation on Ego's non-existence.
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 8: The Void As Contemplative Experience > # 122........Paul Brunton
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 8: The Void As Contemplative Experience > # 122........Paul Brunton
Who Says "I"...
It is more important to find out the truth about one's self, than to find out
the truth of heaven and hell.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
What is it then in man which says 'I' and identifies itself with what it sees?
It is not our head or foot which says 'I' nor is it in the brain. It is
something that we cannot point out which identifies itself with all these
different parts and says 'I' and mine and knows itself to be the person who
sees. This in itself is ignorance, and it is this which the Hindus have called
avidya.
How can you be that which you possess? You cannot be the horse and rider at the
same time. Herein lies the secret of mortality and immortality; it is the mortal
being that, through illusion, claims immortality.
It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the
truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less
importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according
to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something but he
does not know where it leads him. The first sign of realization is tolerance
towards others.
the truth of heaven and hell.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
What is it then in man which says 'I' and identifies itself with what it sees?
It is not our head or foot which says 'I' nor is it in the brain. It is
something that we cannot point out which identifies itself with all these
different parts and says 'I' and mine and knows itself to be the person who
sees. This in itself is ignorance, and it is this which the Hindus have called
avidya.
How can you be that which you possess? You cannot be the horse and rider at the
same time. Herein lies the secret of mortality and immortality; it is the mortal
being that, through illusion, claims immortality.
It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the
truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less
importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according
to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something but he
does not know where it leads him. The first sign of realization is tolerance
towards others.
The Past and Present...
Since you're not blaming the future for the
present, why, then, are you so quick to blame
the past?
The past can only tell you about the past.
The past can't tell you anything about the
present moment.
Paradoxically, though, unless you actively
participate in fully honoring the present moment,
then your so-called future may look a whole lot
like your so-called past.
But here's an important point: Just because the
past is unreal, it doesn't mean that it never
actually happened.
Real or not, though, you still can't change the
past.
You can only change your experience of the past.
But, of course, that change can never happen in
the past.
That change can only happen in the present.
- Chuck Hillig
present, why, then, are you so quick to blame
the past?
The past can only tell you about the past.
The past can't tell you anything about the
present moment.
Paradoxically, though, unless you actively
participate in fully honoring the present moment,
then your so-called future may look a whole lot
like your so-called past.
But here's an important point: Just because the
past is unreal, it doesn't mean that it never
actually happened.
Real or not, though, you still can't change the
past.
You can only change your experience of the past.
But, of course, that change can never happen in
the past.
That change can only happen in the present.
- Chuck Hillig
The Will to Truth...
"When you went to a Zen temple and you wanted to go to a retreat or become a monk or something, they would make you sit at the temple gate, like the gate outside here. Imagine you come to a retreat a Garrison, and they say "No! We don't really want you here, you don't want to be here. You're not serious. Forget about it. Go home. Go back to your life. You don't want this." And 90% of the people would just go, "Well, screw that!' and just go home. And then there's 10% of the people who would kind of just sit at that gate and go 'I really do want to be here.' They go, 'No you don't.' So that's what they used to do. So they would come out occasionally and try to convince you to leave. But another thing, as they were convincing you to leave they would make sure you were well fed. A little breakfast, a little lunch, a little dinner. So they would take care of you, not abusing you, right? They were seeing what you were made of. Seeing if your ego was in control here. If you actually had the will to truth or you had the will to have it your way. And after about a week or so, can you imagine? a week! At the gates! Just to get in to see what's happening! Good Lord! Then they might go, 'Okay come on in. We like you anyway. We were just fooling around.' They'd let you in.
Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently.' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.
The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.
It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but other of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'
So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization?' And he would just say, 'Earnestness.' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there is it. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?
And it's not a once-and-for-all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.
Adyashanti - Garrision Insitiute 2008
Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently.' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.
The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.
It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but other of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'
So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization?' And he would just say, 'Earnestness.' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there is it. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?
And it's not a once-and-for-all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.
Adyashanti - Garrision Insitiute 2008
Losing Oneself in God...
True self-denial is losing one's self in God.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Man, absorbed from morning till evening in his occupations which engage his
every attention to the things of the earth and of self interest, remains
intoxicated. Seldom there are moments in his life, brought about by pain or
suffering, when he experiences a state of mind which can be called soberness.
Hindus call this state of mind sat, which is a state of tranquility. Man then
begins to become conscious of some part of his being which he finds to have
almost covered his eyes. When we look at life from this point of view we find
that an individual who claims to be a living being is not necessarily living a
full life. It is only a realization of inner life which at every moment unveils
the soul, and brings before man another aspect of life in which he finds
fullness, a greater satisfaction, and a rest which gives true peace.
Can he speak about this to his fellow men? And if he does, what can he say? Can
he say, 'I am purer,' or 'more exalted than you' or 'I understand life better
than you?' As life unfolds itself to man the first lesson it teaches is
humility; the first thing that comes to man's vision is his own limitedness. The
vaster God appears to him, the smaller he finds himself. This goes on and on
until the moment comes when he loses himself in the vision of God. In terms of
the Sufis this is called fana, and it is this process that was taught by Christ
under the name of self-denial. Often man interprets this teaching wrongly and
considers renunciation as self-denial. He thinks that the teaching is to
renounce all that is in the world. But although that is a way and an important
step which leads to true self-denial, the self-denial meant is the losing
oneself in God.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Man, absorbed from morning till evening in his occupations which engage his
every attention to the things of the earth and of self interest, remains
intoxicated. Seldom there are moments in his life, brought about by pain or
suffering, when he experiences a state of mind which can be called soberness.
Hindus call this state of mind sat, which is a state of tranquility. Man then
begins to become conscious of some part of his being which he finds to have
almost covered his eyes. When we look at life from this point of view we find
that an individual who claims to be a living being is not necessarily living a
full life. It is only a realization of inner life which at every moment unveils
the soul, and brings before man another aspect of life in which he finds
fullness, a greater satisfaction, and a rest which gives true peace.
Can he speak about this to his fellow men? And if he does, what can he say? Can
he say, 'I am purer,' or 'more exalted than you' or 'I understand life better
than you?' As life unfolds itself to man the first lesson it teaches is
humility; the first thing that comes to man's vision is his own limitedness. The
vaster God appears to him, the smaller he finds himself. This goes on and on
until the moment comes when he loses himself in the vision of God. In terms of
the Sufis this is called fana, and it is this process that was taught by Christ
under the name of self-denial. Often man interprets this teaching wrongly and
considers renunciation as self-denial. He thinks that the teaching is to
renounce all that is in the world. But although that is a way and an important
step which leads to true self-denial, the self-denial meant is the losing
oneself in God.
The Anti-Christ...
Many people write books about the coming Anti-Christ but this is because they do not know what Christ means... Entering Christhood is the final freeing of the illusion of separation and ego and Realizing that you and God are One.. This is our goal.. This is the teaching of Jesus.. Christ Consciousness is living in this State of non-ego and Love.. Christ Consciousness is God Consciousness.. This is why many refer to Jesus as God and many churches worship Him as God.. The Truth is that we are All Christ Consciousness and God, but are living in a illusion that we are not.. We may even become angry with someone for daring to tell us otherwise.. Remember that anger is a product of the ego.. This is the egos' method to keep us Ignorant of our True Nature.. Jesus used the easiest method to eliminate ego in His teachings.. This method is called "Living in a State of Love".. Love is non-ego, Love is God, Love is Us....So, you see, The Anti-Christ has been with us from the beginning of time... It is called "The Ego".......namaste, thomas
Truth...
Truth isn't something we find in relative words or
concepts, simply because these are all arising in
present experiencing, in pure seeing.
Truth isn't something we conceptualize, something
we put together, something we make up or imagine.
Truth is a recognition or revelation of something
that is, something true, something real.
It is simply noticed. Discovered. Seen. It is simply
recognized. Revealed to be already there, already
true, already real.
Truth is wordless, pathless, objectless. Truth is the
fact of being-the-experiencing itself.
The know that You are.
- Randall Friend
concepts, simply because these are all arising in
present experiencing, in pure seeing.
Truth isn't something we conceptualize, something
we put together, something we make up or imagine.
Truth is a recognition or revelation of something
that is, something true, something real.
It is simply noticed. Discovered. Seen. It is simply
recognized. Revealed to be already there, already
true, already real.
Truth is wordless, pathless, objectless. Truth is the
fact of being-the-experiencing itself.
The know that You are.
- Randall Friend
When the shoe fits...
Ch'ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"For" and "against" are forgotten.
No drives no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
~ Chuang Tzu ~
(In the Dark Before Dawn, trans. Thomas Merton)
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"For" and "against" are forgotten.
No drives no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
~ Chuang Tzu ~
(In the Dark Before Dawn, trans. Thomas Merton)
Enlightenment...
Whether enlightenment is reached by steps as an outcome of practice unremittingly done, or that it comes suddenly all at once, it must be a concept-free phenomenon, a dogma-less understanding, and a recognition of what always was, is, and will be.
— Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 54.......Paul Brunton
— Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 54.......Paul Brunton
False Self and Original Nature:...by John R. Mabry
A Buddhist fable is told of a small fish that hears a tale about the ocean, which sounds like a wonderful place, indeed. Immediately, he sets out to find this place. He swims far and wide and cannot find any sign of this thing called "ocean." Finally, he meets a wise old fish who tells him that he is already swimming in the ocean, that he need search no longer. The little fish is overcome, and swims away, enlightened.3 This is a tale of the True Self. We, like the little fish, believe that the Ocean, that Life, that God is somewhere "out there." The truth is that we are swimming in God, and we never even knew it. We are not separate, we are not cut off, we do not need to look for anything.
In Zen teaching, the idea that we are separate creatures is an illusion, and the ego that we have built up for ourselves, this "I" with which we refer to ourselves, is also an illusion. Merton agrees, and says that "when the...identity of the ego is taken to be my deepest and only identity, when I am thought to be nothing but the sum total of all my relationships, when I cling to this self and make it the center around which and for which I live, I then make my empirical identity into the False Self. My own self then becomes the obstacle to realizing my true self."4
In clinging to this illusion, we perpetuate the suffering that plagues us. We know that something is very wrong, and we scramble to fill the void we instinctively feel inside us in the only way we know how. We have been well-trained as consumers, and our addictive rush towards anything that will pacify us, however temporarily, reveals the depths of our individual and cultural bondage. "We live in a shadow existence," writes James Finley, "in which we find ourselves between ourselves and God. As helpless observers, we watch ourselves living out a life we know to be a fragmented tragedy."5 The False Self is itself this fragmentation, the very thing that cuts us off from wholeness.
The Zen practitioner realizes that the ego-self is, in Merton's words, "not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate."6
Of course, once we begin to realize some of this, the ego invariably feels threatened (with good reason!) and switches into survival mode, fighting with everything it has for its continued sovereignty, sometimes causing "spiritual emergencies" and psychotic episodes that are really "spiritual emergences." According to Merton, the False Self "fears and recoils from what is beyond it and above it. It dreads the alluring emptiness and darkness of the interior self."7 Even so, the ego may play along for a while, and allow us our forays into meditation and spirituality, allowing it to be stretched almost to the vanishing point, but so long as it can "snap back" and regain control once the meditation period ends, we are still acting out of the False Self.
"As long as there is an 'I' that is the definite subject of a contemplative experience," writes Merton, "an 'I' that is aware of itself and its contemplation, an 'I' that can possess a certain 'degree of spirituality,' then we have not yet passed over the Red Sea, we have not yet 'gone out of Egypt.' We remain in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness, striving and desire."8
When the False Self begins to realize its unreality, then, according to Finley, "it begins to convince itself that it is what it does. Hence, the more it does, achieves and experiences, the more real it becomes."9 Unfortunately, this is a futile effort, and in its insecurity, in trying to prove its efficacy in the world, the False Self can drive a person to exhaustion or madness. Suzuki says, "If you want to seek the Buddha, you ought to see into your own Nature, which is the Buddha himself. the Buddha is a free man--a man who neither works nor achieves. If, instead...you turn away and seek the Buddha in external things, you will never get at him."10 The great Ch'an master Hui-neng agrees, saying "the deluded mind looks outside itself to seek the Buddha, not yet realizing that its own self-nature is Buddha."11
Eventually, the seeker must realize that "the nothingness he fears is in fact the treasure he longs for."12 Merton says that
The only full and authentic purification is that which turns a man completely inside out, so that he no longer has a self to defend, no longer an intimate heritage to protect against...the full maturity of the spiritual life cannot be reached unless we first pass through the dread, anguish, trouble, and fear that necessarily accompany the inner crisis of "spiritual death" in which we finally abandon our attachment to our exterior self and surrender completely..."13
This is the purpose of Zen practice, then: to bring us to this point. It may seem a lonely and desolate point indeed, but it is only in this sort of death that the True Self may be born in our consciousness. On the eve of writing this paper I had a dream. In it, I had been condemned to death by burning. All of us who were condemned were together in a classroom receiving instruction from a cheery man on how to die. We were told that it would not be painful and that we would have the best seats in the house! What was most curious though was that we would die in neat rows, sitting in a zazen position. I was scared of course, but the instructor was very comforting. Perhaps it would not be so bad, after all, I thought. After I awoke I realized what a meaningful dream it was. Zen is about death. The death of the False Self; the extinguishing of the ego and the birth of our true knowing. As Jesus says, "He who loses his life, shall find it."
In Zen teaching, the idea that we are separate creatures is an illusion, and the ego that we have built up for ourselves, this "I" with which we refer to ourselves, is also an illusion. Merton agrees, and says that "when the...identity of the ego is taken to be my deepest and only identity, when I am thought to be nothing but the sum total of all my relationships, when I cling to this self and make it the center around which and for which I live, I then make my empirical identity into the False Self. My own self then becomes the obstacle to realizing my true self."4
In clinging to this illusion, we perpetuate the suffering that plagues us. We know that something is very wrong, and we scramble to fill the void we instinctively feel inside us in the only way we know how. We have been well-trained as consumers, and our addictive rush towards anything that will pacify us, however temporarily, reveals the depths of our individual and cultural bondage. "We live in a shadow existence," writes James Finley, "in which we find ourselves between ourselves and God. As helpless observers, we watch ourselves living out a life we know to be a fragmented tragedy."5 The False Self is itself this fragmentation, the very thing that cuts us off from wholeness.
The Zen practitioner realizes that the ego-self is, in Merton's words, "not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate."6
Of course, once we begin to realize some of this, the ego invariably feels threatened (with good reason!) and switches into survival mode, fighting with everything it has for its continued sovereignty, sometimes causing "spiritual emergencies" and psychotic episodes that are really "spiritual emergences." According to Merton, the False Self "fears and recoils from what is beyond it and above it. It dreads the alluring emptiness and darkness of the interior self."7 Even so, the ego may play along for a while, and allow us our forays into meditation and spirituality, allowing it to be stretched almost to the vanishing point, but so long as it can "snap back" and regain control once the meditation period ends, we are still acting out of the False Self.
"As long as there is an 'I' that is the definite subject of a contemplative experience," writes Merton, "an 'I' that is aware of itself and its contemplation, an 'I' that can possess a certain 'degree of spirituality,' then we have not yet passed over the Red Sea, we have not yet 'gone out of Egypt.' We remain in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness, striving and desire."8
When the False Self begins to realize its unreality, then, according to Finley, "it begins to convince itself that it is what it does. Hence, the more it does, achieves and experiences, the more real it becomes."9 Unfortunately, this is a futile effort, and in its insecurity, in trying to prove its efficacy in the world, the False Self can drive a person to exhaustion or madness. Suzuki says, "If you want to seek the Buddha, you ought to see into your own Nature, which is the Buddha himself. the Buddha is a free man--a man who neither works nor achieves. If, instead...you turn away and seek the Buddha in external things, you will never get at him."10 The great Ch'an master Hui-neng agrees, saying "the deluded mind looks outside itself to seek the Buddha, not yet realizing that its own self-nature is Buddha."11
Eventually, the seeker must realize that "the nothingness he fears is in fact the treasure he longs for."12 Merton says that
The only full and authentic purification is that which turns a man completely inside out, so that he no longer has a self to defend, no longer an intimate heritage to protect against...the full maturity of the spiritual life cannot be reached unless we first pass through the dread, anguish, trouble, and fear that necessarily accompany the inner crisis of "spiritual death" in which we finally abandon our attachment to our exterior self and surrender completely..."13
This is the purpose of Zen practice, then: to bring us to this point. It may seem a lonely and desolate point indeed, but it is only in this sort of death that the True Self may be born in our consciousness. On the eve of writing this paper I had a dream. In it, I had been condemned to death by burning. All of us who were condemned were together in a classroom receiving instruction from a cheery man on how to die. We were told that it would not be painful and that we would have the best seats in the house! What was most curious though was that we would die in neat rows, sitting in a zazen position. I was scared of course, but the instructor was very comforting. Perhaps it would not be so bad, after all, I thought. After I awoke I realized what a meaningful dream it was. Zen is about death. The death of the False Self; the extinguishing of the ego and the birth of our true knowing. As Jesus says, "He who loses his life, shall find it."
You Are...
Before the beginning you are pure Consciousness.
You are the Fullness of Love in Love
and the Emptiness of Awareness.
You are Existence and the Peace beyond peace.
You are that screen on which all is projected.
You are the Light of Knowledge,
the One who gave the concept of creation to the creator.
Forget what can be forgotten and know yourself
to be that which can never be forgotten.
You are the substratum on which everything moves, let it move.
You are Now, you are Nowness:
what "I" is there which can be out of this Now?
You are Truth and only Truth Is.
- Papaji
You are the Fullness of Love in Love
and the Emptiness of Awareness.
You are Existence and the Peace beyond peace.
You are that screen on which all is projected.
You are the Light of Knowledge,
the One who gave the concept of creation to the creator.
Forget what can be forgotten and know yourself
to be that which can never be forgotten.
You are the substratum on which everything moves, let it move.
You are Now, you are Nowness:
what "I" is there which can be out of this Now?
You are Truth and only Truth Is.
- Papaji
The Person is not "I AM"...
When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons
everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of
memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person
ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is
inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself;
it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the 'I am', which
again is a mode of being.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of
memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person
ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is
inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself;
it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the 'I am', which
again is a mode of being.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Deep Interest Invigorates...
A powerful interest which dominates a man's life
polarizes his mind, which then acts like a magnet
and continually draws out from his stored-up
experience and also from new experiences whatever
is relevant and useful to the end in view. Deep
interest invigorates the mind, awakens its dormant
powers and is the key to super excellence, invention
and discovery.
- Swami Krishnananda
polarizes his mind, which then acts like a magnet
and continually draws out from his stored-up
experience and also from new experiences whatever
is relevant and useful to the end in view. Deep
interest invigorates the mind, awakens its dormant
powers and is the key to super excellence, invention
and discovery.
- Swami Krishnananda
IT...
In the domain
of unconsciousness
you see within and without.
In the pervadedness of Consciousness
there is no within and without;
it's all
It.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
of unconsciousness
you see within and without.
In the pervadedness of Consciousness
there is no within and without;
it's all
It.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
Ego - The False Center...
The first thing to be understood is what ego is. A child is born. A child is born without any knowledge, any consciousness of his own self. And when a child is born the first thing he becomes aware of is not himself; the first thing he becomes aware of is the other. It is natural, because the eyes open outwards, the hands touch others, the ears listen to others, the tongue tastes food and the nose smells the outside. All these senses open outwards.
That is what birth means. Birth means coming into this world, the world of the outside. So when a child is born, he is born into this world. He opens his eyes, sees others. 'Other' means the thou. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other, that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feels the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body.
This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself.
This awareness is a reflected awareness. He is not aware of who he is. He is simply aware of the mother and what she thinks about him. If she smiles, if she appreciates the child, if she says, "You are beautiful," if she hugs and kisses him, the child feels good about himself. Now an ego is born.
Through appreciation, love, care, he feels he is good, he feels he is valuable, he feels he has some significance.
A center is born.
But this center is a reflected center. It is not his real being. He does not know who he is; he simply knows what others think about him. And this is the ego: the reflection, what others think. If nobody thinks that he is of any use, nobody appreciates him, nobody smiles, then too an ego is born: an ill ego; sad, rejected, like a wound; feeling inferior, worthless. This too is the ego. This too is a reflection.
First the mother - and mother means the world in the beginning. Then others will join the mother, and the world goes on growing. And the more the world grows, the more complex the ego becomes, because many others' opinions are reflected.
The ego is an accumulated phenomenon, a by-product of living with others. If a child lives totally alone, he will never come to grow an ego. But that is not going to help. He will remain like an animal. That doesn't mean that he will come to know the real self, no.
The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you.
Ego is a need; it is a social need, it is a social by-product. The society means all that is around you - not you, but all that is around you. All, minus you, is the society. And everybody reflects. You will go to school and the teacher will reflect who you are. You will be in friendship with other children and they will reflect who you are. By and by, everybody is adding to your ego, and everybody is trying to modify it in such a way that you don't become a problem to the society.
They are not concerned with you.
They are concerned with the society.
Society is concerned with itself, and that's how it should be.
They are not concerned that you should become a self-knower. They are concerned that you should become an efficient part in the mechanism of the society. You should fit into the pattern. So they are trying to give you an ego that fits with the society. They teach you morality. Morality means giving you an ego which will fit with the society. If you are immoral, you will always be a misfit somewhere or other. That's why we put criminals in the prisons - not that they have done something wrong, not that by putting them in the prisons we are going to improve them, no. They simply don't fit. They are troublemakers. They have certain types of egos of which the society doesn't approve. If the society approves, everything is good.
One man kills somebody - he is a murderer.
And the same man in wartime kills thousands - he becomes a great hero. The society is not bothered by a murder, but the murder should be commited for the society - then it is okay. The society doesn't bother about morality.
Morality means only that you should fit with the society.
If the society is at war, then the morality changes.
If the society is at peace, then there is a different morality.
Morality is a social politics. It is diplomacy. And each child has to be brought up in such a way that he fits into the society, that's all. Because society is interested in efficient members. Society is not interested that you should attain to self-knowledge.
The society creates an ego because the ego can be controlled and manipulated. The self can never be controlled or manipulated. Nobody has ever heard of the society controlling a self - not possible.
And the child needs a center; the child is completely unaware of his own center. The society gives him a center and the child is by and by convinced that this is his center, the ego that society gives.
A child comes back to his home - if he has come first in his class, the whole family is happy. You hug and kiss him, and you take the child on your shoulders and dance and you say, "What a beautiful child! You are a pride to us." You are giving him an ego, a subtle ego. And if the child comes home dejected, unsuccessful, a failure - he couldn't pass, or he has just been on the back bench - then nobody appreciates him and the child feels rejected. He will try harder next time, because the center feels shaken.
Ego is always shaken, always in search of food, that somebody should appreciate it. That's why you continuously ask for attention.
You get the idea of who you are from others.
It is not a direct experience.
It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it.
You come with it.
You are born with it.
So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are.
The others have given you the idea.
That idea is the ego.
Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self.
And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.
You will simply be confused, a chaos.
Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.
And if you are daring, the period will be small.
If you are afraid, and you again fall back to the ego, and you again start arranging it, then it can be very, very long; many lives can be wasted.
I have heard: One small child was visiting his grandparents. He was just four years old. In the night when the grandmother was putting him to sleep, he suddenly started crying and weeping and said, "I want to go home. I am afraid of darkness." But the grandmother said, "I know well that at home also you sleep in the dark; I have never seen a light on. So why are you afraid here?" The boy said, "Yes, that's right - but that is MY darkness." This darkness is completely unknown.
Even with darkness you feel, "This is MINE."
Outside - an unknown darkness.
With the ego you feel, "This is MY darkness."
It may be troublesome, maybe it creates many miseries, but still mine. Something to hold to, something to cling to, something underneath the feet; you are not in a vacuum, not in an emptiness. You may be miserable, but at least you ARE. Even being miserable gives you a feeling of 'I am'. Moving from it, fear takes over; you start feeling afraid of the unknown darkness and chaos - because society has managed to clear a small part of your being.
It is just like going to a forest. You make a little clearing, you clear a little ground; you make fencing, you make a small hut; you make a small garden, a lawn, and you are okay. Beyond your fence - the forest, the wild. Here everything is okay; you have planned everything. This is how it has happened.
Society has made a little clearing in your consciousness. It has cleaned just a little part completely, fenced it. Everything is okay there. That's what all your universities are doing. The whole culture and conditioning is just to clear a part so that you can feel at home there.
And then you become afraid.
Beyond the fence there is danger.
Beyond the fence you are, as within the fence you are - and your conscious mind is just one part, one-tenth of your whole being. Nine-tenths is waiting in the darkness. And in that nine-tenths, somewhere your real center is hidden.
One has to be daring, courageous.
One has to take a step into the unknown.
For a while all boundaries will be lost.
For a while you will feel dizzy.
For a while, you will feel very afraid and shaken, as if an earthquake has happened. But if you are courageous and you don't go backwards, if you don't fall back to the ego and you go on and on, there is a hidden center within you that you have been carrying for many lives.
That is your soul, the self.
Once you come near it, everything changes, everything settles again. But now this settling is not done by the society. Now everything becomes a cosmos, not a chaos; a new order arises.
But this is no longer the order of the society - it is the very order of existence itself.
It is what Buddha calls Dhamma, Lao Tzu calls Tao, Heraclitus calls Logos. It is not man-made. It is the VERY order of existence itself. Then everything is suddenly beautiful again, and for the first time really beautiful, because man-made things cannot be beautiful. At the most you can hide the ugliness of them, that's all. You can decorate them, but they can never be beautiful.
The difference is just like the difference between a real flower and a plastic or paper flower. The ego is a plastic flower - dead. It just looks like a flower, it is not a flower. You cannot really call it a flower. Even linguistically to call it a flower is wrong, because a flower is something which flowers. And this plastic thing is just a thing, not a flowering. It is dead. There is no life in it.
You have a flowering center within. That's why Hindus call it a lotus - it is a flowering. They call it the one-thousand-petaled-lotus. One thousand means infinite petals. And it goes on flowering, it never stops, it never dies.
But you are satisfied with a plastic ego.
There are some reasons why you are satisfied. With a dead thing, there are many conveniences. One is that a dead thing never dies. It cannot - it was never alive. So you can have plastic flowers, they are good in a way. They are permanent; they are not eternal, but they are permanent.
The real flower outside in the garden is eternal, but not permanent. And the eternal has its own way of being eternal. The way of the eternal is to be born again and again and to die. Through death it refreshes itself, rejuvenates itself.
To us it appears that the flower has died - it never dies.
It simply changes bodies, so it is ever fresh.
It leaves the old body, it enters a new body. It flowers somewhere else; it goes on flowering.
But we cannot see the continuity because the continuity is invisible. We see only one flower, another flower; we never see the continuity.
It is the same flower which flowered yesterday.
It is the same sun, but in a different garb.
The ego has a certain quality - it is dead. It is a plastic thing. And it is very easy to get it, because others give it. You need not seek it, there is no search involved. That's why unless you become a seeker after the unknown, you have not yet become an individual. You are just a part of the crowd. You are just a mob.
When you don't have a real center, how can you be an individual?
The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon - it is society, its not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a hierarchy in the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the self.
And that's why you are so miserable.
With a plastic life, how can you be happy?
With a false life, how can you be ecstatic and blissful? And then this ego creates many miseries, millions of them.
You cannot see, because it is your own darkness. You are attuned to it.
Have you ever noticed that all types of miseries enter through the ego? It cannot make you blissful; it can only make you miserable.
Ego is hell.
Whenever you suffer, just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, somewhere the ego is the cause of it. And the ego goes on finding causes to suffer.
You are an egoist, as everyone is. Some are very gross, just on the surface, and they are not so difficult. Some are very subtle, deep down, and they are the real problems.
This ego comes continuously in conflict with others because every ego is so unconfident about itself. Is has to be - it is a false thing. When you don't have anything in your hand and you just think that something is there, then there will be a problem.
If somebody says, "There is nothing," immediately the fight will start, because you also feel that there is nothing. The other makes you aware of the fact.
Ego is false, it is nothing.
That you also know.
How can you miss knowing it? It is impossible! A conscious being - how can he miss knowing that this ego is just false? And then others say that there is nothing - and whenever the others say that there is nothing they hit a wound, they say a truth - and nothing hits like the truth.
You have to defend, because if you don't defend, if you don't become defensive, then where will you be?
You will be lost.
The identity will be broken.
So you have to defend and fight - that is the clash.
A man who attains to the self is never in any clash. Others may come and clash with him, but he is never in clash with anybody.
It happened that one Zen master was passing through a street. A man came running and hit him hard. The master fell down. Then he got up and started to walk in the same direction in which he was going before, not even looking back.
A disciple was with the master. He was simply shocked. He said, "Who is this man? What is this? If one lives in such a way, then anybody can come and kill you. And you have not even looked at that person, who he is, and why he did it."
The master said, "That is his problem, not mine."
You can clash with an enlightened man, but that is your problem, not his. And if you are hurt in that clash, that too is your own problem. He cannot hurt you. And it is like knocking against a wall - you will be hurt, but the wall has not hurt you.
The ego is always looking for some trouble. Why? Because if nobody pays attention to you, the ego feels hungry.
It lives on attention.
So even if somebody is fighting and angry with you, that too is good because at least the attention is paid. If somebody loves, it is okay. If somebody is not loving you, then even anger will be good. At least the attention will come to you. But if nobody is paying any attention to you, nobody thinks that you are somebody important, significant, then how will you feed your ego?
Other's attention is needed.
In millions of ways you attract the attention of others; you dress in a certain way, you try to look beautiful, you behave, you become very polite, you change. When you feel what type of situation is there, you immediately change so that people pay attention to you.
This is a deep begging.
A real beggar is one who asks for and demands attention. And a real emperor is one who lives in himself; he has a center of his own, he doesn't depend on anybody else.
Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree...if the whole world suddenly disappears, will it make any difference to Buddha? -none. It will not make any difference at all. If the whole world disappears, it will not make any difference because he has attained to the center.
But you, if the wife escapes, divorces you, goes to somebody else, you are completely shattered - because she had been paying attention to you, caring, loving, moving around you, helping you to feel that you were somebody. Your whole empire is lost, you are simply shattered. You start thinking about suicide. Why? Why, if a wife leaves you, should you commit suicide? Why, if a husband leaves you, should you commit suicide? Because you don't have any center of your own. The wife was giving you the center; the husband was giving you the center.
This is how people exist. This is how people become dependent on others. It is a deep slavery. Ego HAS to be a slave. It depends on others. And only a person who has no ego is for the first time a master; he is no longer a slave. Try to understand this.
And start looking for the ego - not in others, that is not your business, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close you eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the false center which has clashed with someone.
You expected something, and it didn't happen.
You expected something, and just the contrary happened - your ego is shaken, you are in misery. Just look, whenever you are miserable, try to find out why.
Causes are not outside you. The basic cause is within you - but you always look outside, you always ask:
Who is making me miserable?
Who is the cause of my anger?
Who is the cause of my anguish?
And if you look outside you will miss.
Just close the eyes and always look within.
The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you, your ego.
And if you find the source, it will be easy to move beyond it. If you can see that it is your own ego that gives you trouble, you will prefer to drop it - because nobody can carry the source of misery if he understands it.
And remember, there is no need to drop the ego.
You cannot drop it.
If you try to drop it, you will attain to a certain subtle ego again which says, "I have become humble."
Don't try to be humble. That's again ego in hiding - but it's not dead.
Don't try to be humble.
Nobody can try humility, and nobody can create humility through any effort of his own - no. When the ego is no more, a humbleness comes to you. It is not a creation. It is a shadow of the real center.
And a really humble man is neither humble nor egoistic.
He is simply simple.
He's not even aware that he is humble.
If you are aware that you are humble, the ego is there.
Look at humble persons.... There are millions who think that they are very humble. They bow down very low, but watch them - they are the subtlest egoists. Now humility is their source of food. They say, "I am humble," and then they look at you and they wait for you to appreciate them.
"You are really humble," they would like you to say. "In fact, you are the most humble man in the world; nobody is as humble as you are." Then see the smile that comes on their faces.
What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness - "Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."
It happened once:
A fakir, a beggar, was praying in a mosque, just early in the morning when it was still dark. It was a certain religious day for Mohammedians, and he was praying, and he was saying, "I am nobody. I am the poorest of the poor, the greatest sinner of sinners."
Suddenly there was one more person who was praying. He was the emperor of that country, and he was not aware that there was somebody else there who was praying - it was dark, and the emperor was also saying:
"I am nobody. I am nothing. I am just empty, a beggar at our door." When he heard that somebody else was saying the same thing, he said, "Stop! Who is trying to overtake me? Who are you? How dare you say before the emperor that you are nobody when he is saying that he is nobody?"
This is how the ego goes. It is so subtle. Its ways are so subtle and cunning; you have to be very, very alert, only then will you see it. Don't try to be humble. Just try to see that all misery, all anguish comes through it.
Just watch! No need to drop it.
You cannot drop it. Who will drop it? Then the DROPPER will become the ego. It always comes back.
Whatsoever you do, stand out of it, and look and watch.
Whatsoever you do - humbleness, humility, simplicity - nothing will help. Only one thing is possible, and that is just to watch and see that it is the source of all misery. Don't say it. Don't repeat it - WATCH. Because if I say it is the source of all misery and you repeat it, then it is useless. YOU have to come to that understanding. Whenever you are miserable, just close the eyes and don't try to find some cause outside. Try to see from where this misery is coming.
It is your own ego.
If you continuously feel and understand, and the understanding that the ego is the cause becomes so deep-rooted, one day you will suddenly see that it has disappeared. Nobody drops it - nobody can drop it. You simply see; it has simply disappeared, because the very understanding that ego causes all misery becomes the dropping. THE VERY UNDERSTANDING IS THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE EGO.
And you are so clever in seeing the ego in others. Anybody can see someone else's ego. When it comes to your own, then the problem arises - because you don't know the territory, you have never traveled on it.
The whole path towards the divine, the ultimate, has to pass through this territory of the ego. The false has to be understood as false. The source of misery has to be understood as the source of misery - then it simply drops.
When you know it is poison, it drops. When you know it is fire, it drops. When you know this is the hell, it drops.
And then you never say, "I have dropped the ego." Then you simply laugh at the whole thing, the joke that you were the creator of all misery.
I was just looking at a few cartoons of Charlie Brown. In one cartoon he is playing with blocks, making a house out of children's blocks. He is sitting in the middle of the blocks building the walls. Then a moment comes when he is enclosed; all around he has made a wall. Then he cries, "Help, help!"
He has done the whole thing! Now he is enclosed, imprisoned. This is childish, but this is all that you have done also. You have made a house all around yourself, and now you are crying, "Help, help!" And the misery becomes a millionfold - because there are helpers who are also in the same boat.
It happened that one very beautiful woman went to see her psychiatrist for the first time. The psychiatrist said, "Come closer please." When she came closer, he simply jumped and hugged and kissed the woman. She was shocked. Then he said, "Now sit down. This takes care of my problem, now what is your problem?"
The problem becomes multifold, because there are helpers who are in the same boat. And they would like to help, because when you help somebody the ego feels very good, very, very good - because you are a great helper, a great guru, a master; you are helping so many people. The greater the crowd of your followers, the better you feel.
But you are in the same boat - you cannot help.
Rather, you will harm.
People who still have their own problems cannot be of much help. Only someone who has no problems of his own can help you. Only then is there the clarity to see, to see through you. A mind that has no problems of its own can see you, you become transparent.
A mind that has no problems of its own can see through itself; that's why it becomes capable of seeing through others.
In the West, there are many schools of psychoanalysis, many schools, and no help is reaching people, but rather, harm. Because the people who are helping others, or trying to help, or posing as helpers, are in the same boat.
...It is difficult to see one's own ego.
It is very easy to see other's egos. But that is not the point, you cannot help them.
Try to see your own ego.
Just watch it.
Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.
It drops just like a dead leaf.
The tree is not doing anything - just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim - nothing.
The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.
When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.
It settles into the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything so you cannot claim that you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.
And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.
It is nameless, so all names are good.
You can give it any name of your own liking.
From Beyond the Frontier of the Mind by Osho
That is what birth means. Birth means coming into this world, the world of the outside. So when a child is born, he is born into this world. He opens his eyes, sees others. 'Other' means the thou. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other, that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feels the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body.
This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself.
This awareness is a reflected awareness. He is not aware of who he is. He is simply aware of the mother and what she thinks about him. If she smiles, if she appreciates the child, if she says, "You are beautiful," if she hugs and kisses him, the child feels good about himself. Now an ego is born.
Through appreciation, love, care, he feels he is good, he feels he is valuable, he feels he has some significance.
A center is born.
But this center is a reflected center. It is not his real being. He does not know who he is; he simply knows what others think about him. And this is the ego: the reflection, what others think. If nobody thinks that he is of any use, nobody appreciates him, nobody smiles, then too an ego is born: an ill ego; sad, rejected, like a wound; feeling inferior, worthless. This too is the ego. This too is a reflection.
First the mother - and mother means the world in the beginning. Then others will join the mother, and the world goes on growing. And the more the world grows, the more complex the ego becomes, because many others' opinions are reflected.
The ego is an accumulated phenomenon, a by-product of living with others. If a child lives totally alone, he will never come to grow an ego. But that is not going to help. He will remain like an animal. That doesn't mean that he will come to know the real self, no.
The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you.
Ego is a need; it is a social need, it is a social by-product. The society means all that is around you - not you, but all that is around you. All, minus you, is the society. And everybody reflects. You will go to school and the teacher will reflect who you are. You will be in friendship with other children and they will reflect who you are. By and by, everybody is adding to your ego, and everybody is trying to modify it in such a way that you don't become a problem to the society.
They are not concerned with you.
They are concerned with the society.
Society is concerned with itself, and that's how it should be.
They are not concerned that you should become a self-knower. They are concerned that you should become an efficient part in the mechanism of the society. You should fit into the pattern. So they are trying to give you an ego that fits with the society. They teach you morality. Morality means giving you an ego which will fit with the society. If you are immoral, you will always be a misfit somewhere or other. That's why we put criminals in the prisons - not that they have done something wrong, not that by putting them in the prisons we are going to improve them, no. They simply don't fit. They are troublemakers. They have certain types of egos of which the society doesn't approve. If the society approves, everything is good.
One man kills somebody - he is a murderer.
And the same man in wartime kills thousands - he becomes a great hero. The society is not bothered by a murder, but the murder should be commited for the society - then it is okay. The society doesn't bother about morality.
Morality means only that you should fit with the society.
If the society is at war, then the morality changes.
If the society is at peace, then there is a different morality.
Morality is a social politics. It is diplomacy. And each child has to be brought up in such a way that he fits into the society, that's all. Because society is interested in efficient members. Society is not interested that you should attain to self-knowledge.
The society creates an ego because the ego can be controlled and manipulated. The self can never be controlled or manipulated. Nobody has ever heard of the society controlling a self - not possible.
And the child needs a center; the child is completely unaware of his own center. The society gives him a center and the child is by and by convinced that this is his center, the ego that society gives.
A child comes back to his home - if he has come first in his class, the whole family is happy. You hug and kiss him, and you take the child on your shoulders and dance and you say, "What a beautiful child! You are a pride to us." You are giving him an ego, a subtle ego. And if the child comes home dejected, unsuccessful, a failure - he couldn't pass, or he has just been on the back bench - then nobody appreciates him and the child feels rejected. He will try harder next time, because the center feels shaken.
Ego is always shaken, always in search of food, that somebody should appreciate it. That's why you continuously ask for attention.
You get the idea of who you are from others.
It is not a direct experience.
It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it.
You come with it.
You are born with it.
So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are.
The others have given you the idea.
That idea is the ego.
Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self.
And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.
You will simply be confused, a chaos.
Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.
And if you are daring, the period will be small.
If you are afraid, and you again fall back to the ego, and you again start arranging it, then it can be very, very long; many lives can be wasted.
I have heard: One small child was visiting his grandparents. He was just four years old. In the night when the grandmother was putting him to sleep, he suddenly started crying and weeping and said, "I want to go home. I am afraid of darkness." But the grandmother said, "I know well that at home also you sleep in the dark; I have never seen a light on. So why are you afraid here?" The boy said, "Yes, that's right - but that is MY darkness." This darkness is completely unknown.
Even with darkness you feel, "This is MINE."
Outside - an unknown darkness.
With the ego you feel, "This is MY darkness."
It may be troublesome, maybe it creates many miseries, but still mine. Something to hold to, something to cling to, something underneath the feet; you are not in a vacuum, not in an emptiness. You may be miserable, but at least you ARE. Even being miserable gives you a feeling of 'I am'. Moving from it, fear takes over; you start feeling afraid of the unknown darkness and chaos - because society has managed to clear a small part of your being.
It is just like going to a forest. You make a little clearing, you clear a little ground; you make fencing, you make a small hut; you make a small garden, a lawn, and you are okay. Beyond your fence - the forest, the wild. Here everything is okay; you have planned everything. This is how it has happened.
Society has made a little clearing in your consciousness. It has cleaned just a little part completely, fenced it. Everything is okay there. That's what all your universities are doing. The whole culture and conditioning is just to clear a part so that you can feel at home there.
And then you become afraid.
Beyond the fence there is danger.
Beyond the fence you are, as within the fence you are - and your conscious mind is just one part, one-tenth of your whole being. Nine-tenths is waiting in the darkness. And in that nine-tenths, somewhere your real center is hidden.
One has to be daring, courageous.
One has to take a step into the unknown.
For a while all boundaries will be lost.
For a while you will feel dizzy.
For a while, you will feel very afraid and shaken, as if an earthquake has happened. But if you are courageous and you don't go backwards, if you don't fall back to the ego and you go on and on, there is a hidden center within you that you have been carrying for many lives.
That is your soul, the self.
Once you come near it, everything changes, everything settles again. But now this settling is not done by the society. Now everything becomes a cosmos, not a chaos; a new order arises.
But this is no longer the order of the society - it is the very order of existence itself.
It is what Buddha calls Dhamma, Lao Tzu calls Tao, Heraclitus calls Logos. It is not man-made. It is the VERY order of existence itself. Then everything is suddenly beautiful again, and for the first time really beautiful, because man-made things cannot be beautiful. At the most you can hide the ugliness of them, that's all. You can decorate them, but they can never be beautiful.
The difference is just like the difference between a real flower and a plastic or paper flower. The ego is a plastic flower - dead. It just looks like a flower, it is not a flower. You cannot really call it a flower. Even linguistically to call it a flower is wrong, because a flower is something which flowers. And this plastic thing is just a thing, not a flowering. It is dead. There is no life in it.
You have a flowering center within. That's why Hindus call it a lotus - it is a flowering. They call it the one-thousand-petaled-lotus. One thousand means infinite petals. And it goes on flowering, it never stops, it never dies.
But you are satisfied with a plastic ego.
There are some reasons why you are satisfied. With a dead thing, there are many conveniences. One is that a dead thing never dies. It cannot - it was never alive. So you can have plastic flowers, they are good in a way. They are permanent; they are not eternal, but they are permanent.
The real flower outside in the garden is eternal, but not permanent. And the eternal has its own way of being eternal. The way of the eternal is to be born again and again and to die. Through death it refreshes itself, rejuvenates itself.
To us it appears that the flower has died - it never dies.
It simply changes bodies, so it is ever fresh.
It leaves the old body, it enters a new body. It flowers somewhere else; it goes on flowering.
But we cannot see the continuity because the continuity is invisible. We see only one flower, another flower; we never see the continuity.
It is the same flower which flowered yesterday.
It is the same sun, but in a different garb.
The ego has a certain quality - it is dead. It is a plastic thing. And it is very easy to get it, because others give it. You need not seek it, there is no search involved. That's why unless you become a seeker after the unknown, you have not yet become an individual. You are just a part of the crowd. You are just a mob.
When you don't have a real center, how can you be an individual?
The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon - it is society, its not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a hierarchy in the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the self.
And that's why you are so miserable.
With a plastic life, how can you be happy?
With a false life, how can you be ecstatic and blissful? And then this ego creates many miseries, millions of them.
You cannot see, because it is your own darkness. You are attuned to it.
Have you ever noticed that all types of miseries enter through the ego? It cannot make you blissful; it can only make you miserable.
Ego is hell.
Whenever you suffer, just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, somewhere the ego is the cause of it. And the ego goes on finding causes to suffer.
You are an egoist, as everyone is. Some are very gross, just on the surface, and they are not so difficult. Some are very subtle, deep down, and they are the real problems.
This ego comes continuously in conflict with others because every ego is so unconfident about itself. Is has to be - it is a false thing. When you don't have anything in your hand and you just think that something is there, then there will be a problem.
If somebody says, "There is nothing," immediately the fight will start, because you also feel that there is nothing. The other makes you aware of the fact.
Ego is false, it is nothing.
That you also know.
How can you miss knowing it? It is impossible! A conscious being - how can he miss knowing that this ego is just false? And then others say that there is nothing - and whenever the others say that there is nothing they hit a wound, they say a truth - and nothing hits like the truth.
You have to defend, because if you don't defend, if you don't become defensive, then where will you be?
You will be lost.
The identity will be broken.
So you have to defend and fight - that is the clash.
A man who attains to the self is never in any clash. Others may come and clash with him, but he is never in clash with anybody.
It happened that one Zen master was passing through a street. A man came running and hit him hard. The master fell down. Then he got up and started to walk in the same direction in which he was going before, not even looking back.
A disciple was with the master. He was simply shocked. He said, "Who is this man? What is this? If one lives in such a way, then anybody can come and kill you. And you have not even looked at that person, who he is, and why he did it."
The master said, "That is his problem, not mine."
You can clash with an enlightened man, but that is your problem, not his. And if you are hurt in that clash, that too is your own problem. He cannot hurt you. And it is like knocking against a wall - you will be hurt, but the wall has not hurt you.
The ego is always looking for some trouble. Why? Because if nobody pays attention to you, the ego feels hungry.
It lives on attention.
So even if somebody is fighting and angry with you, that too is good because at least the attention is paid. If somebody loves, it is okay. If somebody is not loving you, then even anger will be good. At least the attention will come to you. But if nobody is paying any attention to you, nobody thinks that you are somebody important, significant, then how will you feed your ego?
Other's attention is needed.
In millions of ways you attract the attention of others; you dress in a certain way, you try to look beautiful, you behave, you become very polite, you change. When you feel what type of situation is there, you immediately change so that people pay attention to you.
This is a deep begging.
A real beggar is one who asks for and demands attention. And a real emperor is one who lives in himself; he has a center of his own, he doesn't depend on anybody else.
Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree...if the whole world suddenly disappears, will it make any difference to Buddha? -none. It will not make any difference at all. If the whole world disappears, it will not make any difference because he has attained to the center.
But you, if the wife escapes, divorces you, goes to somebody else, you are completely shattered - because she had been paying attention to you, caring, loving, moving around you, helping you to feel that you were somebody. Your whole empire is lost, you are simply shattered. You start thinking about suicide. Why? Why, if a wife leaves you, should you commit suicide? Why, if a husband leaves you, should you commit suicide? Because you don't have any center of your own. The wife was giving you the center; the husband was giving you the center.
This is how people exist. This is how people become dependent on others. It is a deep slavery. Ego HAS to be a slave. It depends on others. And only a person who has no ego is for the first time a master; he is no longer a slave. Try to understand this.
And start looking for the ego - not in others, that is not your business, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close you eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the false center which has clashed with someone.
You expected something, and it didn't happen.
You expected something, and just the contrary happened - your ego is shaken, you are in misery. Just look, whenever you are miserable, try to find out why.
Causes are not outside you. The basic cause is within you - but you always look outside, you always ask:
Who is making me miserable?
Who is the cause of my anger?
Who is the cause of my anguish?
And if you look outside you will miss.
Just close the eyes and always look within.
The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you, your ego.
And if you find the source, it will be easy to move beyond it. If you can see that it is your own ego that gives you trouble, you will prefer to drop it - because nobody can carry the source of misery if he understands it.
And remember, there is no need to drop the ego.
You cannot drop it.
If you try to drop it, you will attain to a certain subtle ego again which says, "I have become humble."
Don't try to be humble. That's again ego in hiding - but it's not dead.
Don't try to be humble.
Nobody can try humility, and nobody can create humility through any effort of his own - no. When the ego is no more, a humbleness comes to you. It is not a creation. It is a shadow of the real center.
And a really humble man is neither humble nor egoistic.
He is simply simple.
He's not even aware that he is humble.
If you are aware that you are humble, the ego is there.
Look at humble persons.... There are millions who think that they are very humble. They bow down very low, but watch them - they are the subtlest egoists. Now humility is their source of food. They say, "I am humble," and then they look at you and they wait for you to appreciate them.
"You are really humble," they would like you to say. "In fact, you are the most humble man in the world; nobody is as humble as you are." Then see the smile that comes on their faces.
What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness - "Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."
It happened once:
A fakir, a beggar, was praying in a mosque, just early in the morning when it was still dark. It was a certain religious day for Mohammedians, and he was praying, and he was saying, "I am nobody. I am the poorest of the poor, the greatest sinner of sinners."
Suddenly there was one more person who was praying. He was the emperor of that country, and he was not aware that there was somebody else there who was praying - it was dark, and the emperor was also saying:
"I am nobody. I am nothing. I am just empty, a beggar at our door." When he heard that somebody else was saying the same thing, he said, "Stop! Who is trying to overtake me? Who are you? How dare you say before the emperor that you are nobody when he is saying that he is nobody?"
This is how the ego goes. It is so subtle. Its ways are so subtle and cunning; you have to be very, very alert, only then will you see it. Don't try to be humble. Just try to see that all misery, all anguish comes through it.
Just watch! No need to drop it.
You cannot drop it. Who will drop it? Then the DROPPER will become the ego. It always comes back.
Whatsoever you do, stand out of it, and look and watch.
Whatsoever you do - humbleness, humility, simplicity - nothing will help. Only one thing is possible, and that is just to watch and see that it is the source of all misery. Don't say it. Don't repeat it - WATCH. Because if I say it is the source of all misery and you repeat it, then it is useless. YOU have to come to that understanding. Whenever you are miserable, just close the eyes and don't try to find some cause outside. Try to see from where this misery is coming.
It is your own ego.
If you continuously feel and understand, and the understanding that the ego is the cause becomes so deep-rooted, one day you will suddenly see that it has disappeared. Nobody drops it - nobody can drop it. You simply see; it has simply disappeared, because the very understanding that ego causes all misery becomes the dropping. THE VERY UNDERSTANDING IS THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE EGO.
And you are so clever in seeing the ego in others. Anybody can see someone else's ego. When it comes to your own, then the problem arises - because you don't know the territory, you have never traveled on it.
The whole path towards the divine, the ultimate, has to pass through this territory of the ego. The false has to be understood as false. The source of misery has to be understood as the source of misery - then it simply drops.
When you know it is poison, it drops. When you know it is fire, it drops. When you know this is the hell, it drops.
And then you never say, "I have dropped the ego." Then you simply laugh at the whole thing, the joke that you were the creator of all misery.
I was just looking at a few cartoons of Charlie Brown. In one cartoon he is playing with blocks, making a house out of children's blocks. He is sitting in the middle of the blocks building the walls. Then a moment comes when he is enclosed; all around he has made a wall. Then he cries, "Help, help!"
He has done the whole thing! Now he is enclosed, imprisoned. This is childish, but this is all that you have done also. You have made a house all around yourself, and now you are crying, "Help, help!" And the misery becomes a millionfold - because there are helpers who are also in the same boat.
It happened that one very beautiful woman went to see her psychiatrist for the first time. The psychiatrist said, "Come closer please." When she came closer, he simply jumped and hugged and kissed the woman. She was shocked. Then he said, "Now sit down. This takes care of my problem, now what is your problem?"
The problem becomes multifold, because there are helpers who are in the same boat. And they would like to help, because when you help somebody the ego feels very good, very, very good - because you are a great helper, a great guru, a master; you are helping so many people. The greater the crowd of your followers, the better you feel.
But you are in the same boat - you cannot help.
Rather, you will harm.
People who still have their own problems cannot be of much help. Only someone who has no problems of his own can help you. Only then is there the clarity to see, to see through you. A mind that has no problems of its own can see you, you become transparent.
A mind that has no problems of its own can see through itself; that's why it becomes capable of seeing through others.
In the West, there are many schools of psychoanalysis, many schools, and no help is reaching people, but rather, harm. Because the people who are helping others, or trying to help, or posing as helpers, are in the same boat.
...It is difficult to see one's own ego.
It is very easy to see other's egos. But that is not the point, you cannot help them.
Try to see your own ego.
Just watch it.
Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.
It drops just like a dead leaf.
The tree is not doing anything - just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim - nothing.
The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.
When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.
It settles into the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything so you cannot claim that you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.
And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.
It is nameless, so all names are good.
You can give it any name of your own liking.
From Beyond the Frontier of the Mind by Osho
Ego and Superego...
When I
use the word "ego" or what I usually term "false ego", I am referring to the notion
of what we consider to be us..It is a collection of memories and desires from this
life and previous lives.. It is simply that and is not a Reality.. We are the
"Real Ego", or what is called Divine Consciousness.. The false ego concept is
the only wall that prevents us from Knowing this Truth.. Once this wall of false
ego is removed, we automatically return to Reality, which is Divine
Consciousness.. What is called the superego is really just "Karma", reaping what
you sow.. All thoughts and actions results in an outcome.. this outcome is
either pain or pleasure, according to the amount of Love that you contain and
project.. Love is Non-Ego..If you contemplate upon this Truth, you will also
Realize that Love exists only when ego is not present........namaste,
thomas
use the word "ego" or what I usually term "false ego", I am referring to the notion
of what we consider to be us..It is a collection of memories and desires from this
life and previous lives.. It is simply that and is not a Reality.. We are the
"Real Ego", or what is called Divine Consciousness.. The false ego concept is
the only wall that prevents us from Knowing this Truth.. Once this wall of false
ego is removed, we automatically return to Reality, which is Divine
Consciousness.. What is called the superego is really just "Karma", reaping what
you sow.. All thoughts and actions results in an outcome.. this outcome is
either pain or pleasure, according to the amount of Love that you contain and
project.. Love is Non-Ego..If you contemplate upon this Truth, you will also
Realize that Love exists only when ego is not present........namaste,
thomas
Divine Consciousness...
When Jesus said that only God is Good , He was speaking of the fact that people
were calling the entity called Jesus Good.. But, Jesus knew that they should be
praising Divine Consciousness instead of Him, because all miracles were
performed by Divine Consciousness and not the entity called Jesus... When Jesus
was able to dissolve all ego, He then declared that ;" I and the Father are
One"........namaste, thomas
were calling the entity called Jesus Good.. But, Jesus knew that they should be
praising Divine Consciousness instead of Him, because all miracles were
performed by Divine Consciousness and not the entity called Jesus... When Jesus
was able to dissolve all ego, He then declared that ;" I and the Father are
One"........namaste, thomas
Illness...
Whatever we identify ourselves with, we tend to become. Whatever we think about gradually becomes a subconscious pattern, always tending to manifest itself in our experience. Therefore, we should endeavor to identify our spiritual bodies with the spiritual reality which is the very substance and essence of the physical being. We do not deny the physical body, but rather affirm that every organ and action and function of the body is radiant with the perfection of God. There is an inner life of complete perfection which exists at the center of everything; otherwise, nothing could be. We should identify ourselves with this pattern of our being, claiming its reality in our experience, and continuously know that we are animated by the living Spirit.
~ Ernest Holmes
~ Ernest Holmes
The False Ego...
The
ego is very difficult to completely disolve.. the sufis' even believe that you
must try to reform this illusion to attain Reality.. But, I have found that the
only way to achieve Complete Unity with Divine Consciousness is to completely
disolve the ego.. the ego is also called "self-ishness", It is a self imposed
barrier to Unselfish Love (God).. Any time that you say "I" and do not mean the
"I" of Divine Consciousness, then, you are speaking from the false ego of
anti-love.. When the false ego tells you that you must keep at least part of
itself, then, you are witnessing the lies of the false ego.. It can only exist
as long as you believe that it is needed.. Once, you find out that it is only a
lie and an illusion of memories and desires, you have begun the journey to
Freedom........namaste, thomas
ego is very difficult to completely disolve.. the sufis' even believe that you
must try to reform this illusion to attain Reality.. But, I have found that the
only way to achieve Complete Unity with Divine Consciousness is to completely
disolve the ego.. the ego is also called "self-ishness", It is a self imposed
barrier to Unselfish Love (God).. Any time that you say "I" and do not mean the
"I" of Divine Consciousness, then, you are speaking from the false ego of
anti-love.. When the false ego tells you that you must keep at least part of
itself, then, you are witnessing the lies of the false ego.. It can only exist
as long as you believe that it is needed.. Once, you find out that it is only a
lie and an illusion of memories and desires, you have begun the journey to
Freedom........namaste, thomas
Prayer...
' God (Divine Consciousness) answers all your thoughts.. Manifestation and
Mental Change occurs according to the thoughts that you hold in your mind.. you
create your future and your present according to your thoughts.. Hold the vision
of your desire within your mind and it will come into fruition.. If you hold the
vision of failure of this happening , then, this failure will be
created........namaste, thomas
Mental Change occurs according to the thoughts that you hold in your mind.. you
create your future and your present according to your thoughts.. Hold the vision
of your desire within your mind and it will come into fruition.. If you hold the
vision of failure of this happening , then, this failure will be
created........namaste, thomas
CHRIST SPEAKS HIS TRUTH .......LETTER 7
You have been taught by `Christian' churches that you who have been created by
`God' must
`worship and please God' by keeping his Laws.
But this is not truth. `Worshipping `god' is a pagan ritual. When people
`worship `god' they set
`god' apart and above them - `unreachable and to be feared - for who knows what
evil he might
send on earth if people did not act according to his will'.
But that was not the message I brought to earth. I spoke of the `Father' which
supplied all
needs, which answered when called, which healed when requested to do so, which
was both
transcendant to people and also `within them', meaning that the Creator was
universal.
The Jewish religion taught that only the Chief Priests could approach the `Holy
of Holies' and
make supplication for the people. The populace could approach Jehovah only
through the priests
by bringing birds and animals to be offered as burnt sacrifices to appease
Jehovah for the
people's `sins'. By these means, the Jews obtained `forgiveness of sins'.
I repeatedly taught the people that they would receive the `Father's'
forgiveness of sins
according to people's willingness to forgive others - for it would be done to
them according to
their own `sowing'. I also taught the people to approach the `Father' directly
and pray in simple
terms, asking for what they needed in life, and assured them that they would be
heard and their
prayers answered, providing they prayed with total faith - with no doubt in
their minds. You must
understand that everything I taught the Jews was in direct conflict and
opposition to what their
Religious Elders taught them, which was why the Priests hated - and crucified
me, since I was
robbing them of their exalted positions as `personal henchmen' of the
`Almighty'.
Because, for fear of reprisals after my death, the disciples did not break
entirely free from the
Old Testament, much of the Old Testament thought was carried forward into the
`Christian'
religion.
Instead of animals, the body and blood of `Jesus' were substituted to be the
sacrifice offered by
priests upon the altar. After many years and the entry of Rome as protector of
the `Christian'
religion, like the Jewish priests before them, the `Roman' priests dressed
themselves in costly
vestments and used silver and gold appurtanences for religious ceremonies.
In the time of Paul, this would have been unthinkable. His was a simple message
of `salvation by
my death on the cross' which was not the message I brought to my countrymen in
Palestine. He
was perpetuating a Jewish tradition of `sacrificing another to pay for one's own
sinning'. What
shameful cowardice! Yet, Paul also performed a great service to humanity, since
he set in
motion a movement which would be the means of blessing all races equally. He
outlined a mode
of thought and daily conduct which would bring harmony into the lives of those
who tried to live
according to his teachings.
In all probability, some Jewish traditionalists will vociferously reject my
words again, the second
time of coming, they will resent my constant allusion to the ancient Jewish
practice of sacrificing
animals and birds in the Temple to please God and obtain forgiveness of sins,
but no matter what
their objections may be, the historical fact remains that the Temple was a place
for offering burnt
sacrifices and the smell thereof hung over Jerusalem. And all the while I knew
that the whole
edifice of the Temple was dedicated to a myth, a figment of man's imagination, a
rationalisation
of what men's minds could not comprehend spiritually.
I was there! I felt the hot stones under my sandalled feet and the sun on my
head. I argued
with the Pharisees, bore their mockery and sneers with some amusement and
watched them as
they dogmatically taught a burdensome way of life of continual obedience to a
worthless tradition
concerning eating and drinking which was entirely unnecessary!
I was there! At times, my amusement ignited a spark of mischief in my mind and I
handed out
to the Pharisees the same kind of analytical mockery of their personal habits,
their ostentatious
clothing and their laws, as they applied to me and my teachings.
`He is a fool!', they said, and loudly ridiculed my statement `The Kingdom of
God is within you'.
`Tell us - how could `God' be within a person?' they shouted derisively.
Using a barrage of contemptuous arguments, they called on the prophets and
compared their
concepts of the Almighty Jehovah with my descriptions of the simple `Father'
`who even had
thought for the birds'. How could this be, they demanded, when birds were
regularly sacrificed
in the Temple for payment of men's sinning? Would Moses have instituted such a
holy practice
of burnt sacrifices if birds and beasts were of any consequence in the eyes of
the Almighty?
I remained unmoved as they launched their verbal attacks at me. They only had
the conviction of
Jewish tradition to support their statements - whilst my mind had been imbued
with the true
knowledge of existence itself during my illumined experiences in the desert. I
had been given
understanding of the universality and creative GOODWILL of the `Father' which
enabled me to
perceive and do things which no Chief Priest or Pharisee or Sadduccee or scribe
could ever do.
Because I understood the nature of our SOURCE of BEING, I could, with
confidence, put my
hands upon a crippled man and raise him up to wholeness again. Who could measure
this
knowledge against the ridiculous traditional laws of the Priests? The Priests
and Pharisees and all
the rest of the religious hocus-pocus knew that none of them could do such
things - and for this
reason, they hated me for challenging their authority, they loathed me for my
strength in the face
of their opposition, and they reviled me for drawing crowds of people when a
healing was done
which no one could deny.
There it was, done in the open, for all to see - an act of love which the
Priests averred only God
could do and therefore I must be a child of Satan! Furthermore, they did not see
the healing as an
act of love but rather as an inexplicable blasphemous usurpation of the role of
`God' - they
accused me of `showing off' my magical powers but could not tell me how I came
by such
magical powers, therefore they decided I must be a son of Beelzelbub.
Now that I have explained the situation, it should now be as clear to you who
read these words -
as it was so very clear to me at that time in Palestine - that the whole
hierarchy of Judaism was
composed of self-centred, self-important, mixed up men who lived only by rules
and laws. When
challenged to use their minds, their brains, they could not cope but fell into
highly emotional
spasms of vitriolic outrage. Was it any wonder that, when brought before their
council, I held my
peace and refused to communicate with such obtuse minds?
Yes, I was truly there in Palestine, 2000 years ago. I lived amongst the
ordinary men and women
who had been taught to fear Jehovah in a very real way, who were obsessed with
paying for burnt
sacrifices to ward off punishment for their sins. I was raised, indoctrinated in
the fear of Jehovah
- but I had been born to bring the Jews out of their long slumber of myth and
fallacies - to set
them free of a burdensome history of wars and bloodshed, brawling and arguments,
of
demanding a head for the loss of an eye, of hidden and secret sinning which
counted for nothing
if a man was not found out. If he was, then the whole weight of the Mosaic Law
descended on his
head without compassion or mercy or even a hesitant thought as to the true
circumstances
surrounding the transgression.
Because I had been born with a mission to open up the minds and hearts of the
Jews to the
Reality which had given them life and being, even from an early age I rejected
the Jewish
teachings. Some secret depth of spiritual instinct rebelled against the age-old
Jewish intention to
let some other living thing carry responsibility and `pay the price' for their
own waywardness
and sinning. Even more than this, I could not accept that a `God' who was
supposed to have
created such a wonderful world would rejoice in burnt sacrifices of his own
creation for which he
had provided abundantly.
`God' must
`worship and please God' by keeping his Laws.
But this is not truth. `Worshipping `god' is a pagan ritual. When people
`worship `god' they set
`god' apart and above them - `unreachable and to be feared - for who knows what
evil he might
send on earth if people did not act according to his will'.
But that was not the message I brought to earth. I spoke of the `Father' which
supplied all
needs, which answered when called, which healed when requested to do so, which
was both
transcendant to people and also `within them', meaning that the Creator was
universal.
The Jewish religion taught that only the Chief Priests could approach the `Holy
of Holies' and
make supplication for the people. The populace could approach Jehovah only
through the priests
by bringing birds and animals to be offered as burnt sacrifices to appease
Jehovah for the
people's `sins'. By these means, the Jews obtained `forgiveness of sins'.
I repeatedly taught the people that they would receive the `Father's'
forgiveness of sins
according to people's willingness to forgive others - for it would be done to
them according to
their own `sowing'. I also taught the people to approach the `Father' directly
and pray in simple
terms, asking for what they needed in life, and assured them that they would be
heard and their
prayers answered, providing they prayed with total faith - with no doubt in
their minds. You must
understand that everything I taught the Jews was in direct conflict and
opposition to what their
Religious Elders taught them, which was why the Priests hated - and crucified
me, since I was
robbing them of their exalted positions as `personal henchmen' of the
`Almighty'.
Because, for fear of reprisals after my death, the disciples did not break
entirely free from the
Old Testament, much of the Old Testament thought was carried forward into the
`Christian'
religion.
Instead of animals, the body and blood of `Jesus' were substituted to be the
sacrifice offered by
priests upon the altar. After many years and the entry of Rome as protector of
the `Christian'
religion, like the Jewish priests before them, the `Roman' priests dressed
themselves in costly
vestments and used silver and gold appurtanences for religious ceremonies.
In the time of Paul, this would have been unthinkable. His was a simple message
of `salvation by
my death on the cross' which was not the message I brought to my countrymen in
Palestine. He
was perpetuating a Jewish tradition of `sacrificing another to pay for one's own
sinning'. What
shameful cowardice! Yet, Paul also performed a great service to humanity, since
he set in
motion a movement which would be the means of blessing all races equally. He
outlined a mode
of thought and daily conduct which would bring harmony into the lives of those
who tried to live
according to his teachings.
In all probability, some Jewish traditionalists will vociferously reject my
words again, the second
time of coming, they will resent my constant allusion to the ancient Jewish
practice of sacrificing
animals and birds in the Temple to please God and obtain forgiveness of sins,
but no matter what
their objections may be, the historical fact remains that the Temple was a place
for offering burnt
sacrifices and the smell thereof hung over Jerusalem. And all the while I knew
that the whole
edifice of the Temple was dedicated to a myth, a figment of man's imagination, a
rationalisation
of what men's minds could not comprehend spiritually.
I was there! I felt the hot stones under my sandalled feet and the sun on my
head. I argued
with the Pharisees, bore their mockery and sneers with some amusement and
watched them as
they dogmatically taught a burdensome way of life of continual obedience to a
worthless tradition
concerning eating and drinking which was entirely unnecessary!
I was there! At times, my amusement ignited a spark of mischief in my mind and I
handed out
to the Pharisees the same kind of analytical mockery of their personal habits,
their ostentatious
clothing and their laws, as they applied to me and my teachings.
`He is a fool!', they said, and loudly ridiculed my statement `The Kingdom of
God is within you'.
`Tell us - how could `God' be within a person?' they shouted derisively.
Using a barrage of contemptuous arguments, they called on the prophets and
compared their
concepts of the Almighty Jehovah with my descriptions of the simple `Father'
`who even had
thought for the birds'. How could this be, they demanded, when birds were
regularly sacrificed
in the Temple for payment of men's sinning? Would Moses have instituted such a
holy practice
of burnt sacrifices if birds and beasts were of any consequence in the eyes of
the Almighty?
I remained unmoved as they launched their verbal attacks at me. They only had
the conviction of
Jewish tradition to support their statements - whilst my mind had been imbued
with the true
knowledge of existence itself during my illumined experiences in the desert. I
had been given
understanding of the universality and creative GOODWILL of the `Father' which
enabled me to
perceive and do things which no Chief Priest or Pharisee or Sadduccee or scribe
could ever do.
Because I understood the nature of our SOURCE of BEING, I could, with
confidence, put my
hands upon a crippled man and raise him up to wholeness again. Who could measure
this
knowledge against the ridiculous traditional laws of the Priests? The Priests
and Pharisees and all
the rest of the religious hocus-pocus knew that none of them could do such
things - and for this
reason, they hated me for challenging their authority, they loathed me for my
strength in the face
of their opposition, and they reviled me for drawing crowds of people when a
healing was done
which no one could deny.
There it was, done in the open, for all to see - an act of love which the
Priests averred only God
could do and therefore I must be a child of Satan! Furthermore, they did not see
the healing as an
act of love but rather as an inexplicable blasphemous usurpation of the role of
`God' - they
accused me of `showing off' my magical powers but could not tell me how I came
by such
magical powers, therefore they decided I must be a son of Beelzelbub.
Now that I have explained the situation, it should now be as clear to you who
read these words -
as it was so very clear to me at that time in Palestine - that the whole
hierarchy of Judaism was
composed of self-centred, self-important, mixed up men who lived only by rules
and laws. When
challenged to use their minds, their brains, they could not cope but fell into
highly emotional
spasms of vitriolic outrage. Was it any wonder that, when brought before their
council, I held my
peace and refused to communicate with such obtuse minds?
Yes, I was truly there in Palestine, 2000 years ago. I lived amongst the
ordinary men and women
who had been taught to fear Jehovah in a very real way, who were obsessed with
paying for burnt
sacrifices to ward off punishment for their sins. I was raised, indoctrinated in
the fear of Jehovah
- but I had been born to bring the Jews out of their long slumber of myth and
fallacies - to set
them free of a burdensome history of wars and bloodshed, brawling and arguments,
of
demanding a head for the loss of an eye, of hidden and secret sinning which
counted for nothing
if a man was not found out. If he was, then the whole weight of the Mosaic Law
descended on his
head without compassion or mercy or even a hesitant thought as to the true
circumstances
surrounding the transgression.
Because I had been born with a mission to open up the minds and hearts of the
Jews to the
Reality which had given them life and being, even from an early age I rejected
the Jewish
teachings. Some secret depth of spiritual instinct rebelled against the age-old
Jewish intention to
let some other living thing carry responsibility and `pay the price' for their
own waywardness
and sinning. Even more than this, I could not accept that a `God' who was
supposed to have
created such a wonderful world would rejoice in burnt sacrifices of his own
creation for which he
had provided abundantly.
Ego...
Ego says it matters,
the Supreme says that it does not.
Even the power of decision is not from ego.
All is the Supreme Power, do not attribute it to anything else
because this only reinforces the ghosts.
Face the One.
- Papaji
the Supreme says that it does not.
Even the power of decision is not from ego.
All is the Supreme Power, do not attribute it to anything else
because this only reinforces the ghosts.
Face the One.
- Papaji
Responsibility and Guilt...
Responsibility and guilt are imaginary concepts
based on the mistaken notion that a sentient
being has independent existence, autonomy and
choice of action. But to think that any individual
being can act independently is itself the basic
mistake. Although sentient beings appear to
act and react, all functioning really happens only
in Consciousness.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
based on the mistaken notion that a sentient
being has independent existence, autonomy and
choice of action. But to think that any individual
being can act independently is itself the basic
mistake. Although sentient beings appear to
act and react, all functioning really happens only
in Consciousness.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
Timeless Awareness...
You must realize first of all that you are the proof
of everything, including yourself. None can prove
your existence, because his existence must be con-
firmed by you first. Your being and knowing you owe
nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own.
You do not come from somewhere, you do not go
anywhere. You are timeless being and awareness.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
of everything, including yourself. None can prove
your existence, because his existence must be con-
firmed by you first. Your being and knowing you owe
nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own.
You do not come from somewhere, you do not go
anywhere. You are timeless being and awareness.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Reality...
Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the
ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is
no entity it will automatically vanish and reality
will shine forth by itself.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is
no entity it will automatically vanish and reality
will shine forth by itself.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
Clearing Doubts...
A doubt arises and is cleared. Another arises
and that is cleared, making way for yet another;
and so it goes on. So there is no possibility of
clearing away all doubts. See to whom the doubts
arise. Go to their source and abide in it. Then
they cease to arise. That is how doubts are to be
cleared.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
and that is cleared, making way for yet another;
and so it goes on. So there is no possibility of
clearing away all doubts. See to whom the doubts
arise. Go to their source and abide in it. Then
they cease to arise. That is how doubts are to be
cleared.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
CHRIST SPEAKS HIS TRUTH LETTER 6...
I have come to you again to speak of:
THE TRUE NATURE OF EXISTENCE
The TRUTH OF BEING is this: YOU who believe only in the material world, live entirely
in the earthly, finite world. You live within a dimension of the manifestation of your beliefs.
Those whose spiritual perceptions and lives have been raised in frequencies of vibrations to
merge with the spiritual frequencies of vibration of the spiritual dimension can perceive that they
live in two dimensions. They are fully aware of this truth. And they live according to this truth,
and evolve into ever higher frequencies of being.
They are no longer bound by human belief but live within the realisation that they live within
infinity in which are no limitations. The higher their vibrational frequencies of consciousness,
the more aware they are that they live within infinity and that only they themselves set the limits
on what they can aspire to.
Those whose perceptions have been heightened in this way whilst still in their bodies, have seen
that there is only one dimension of actual ‘individual being’ and this dimension is ‘Divine
Consciousness Activity’.
They may also come to fully realise there is the further dimension of Universal Consciousness
in which the Universal resides in perfect equilibrium and may be penetrated by none, because
within this dimension any individuality would be immediately drawn into the Unity of Being.
When a soul reaches, in understanding and realisation, the topmost level of the frequencies of
vibrations of consciousness,- Christ Consciousness - the soul can look down and review the
levels of vibrations ascending and descending to those of humanity on earth and know, with love
and compassion, humanity is trapped in the lower vibrations of Divine Consciousness hidden
within the Ego-drive, wholly unaware of the Truth of Being, the soul’s true identity and the
earthly truth of the ego. Neither does it have the slightest awareness of the immense purpose
behind its existence and the eventual mission it must embark upon.
The task of the newborn soul is to experience, through means of its sheath the Psyche, all that
these lower frequencies have to offer and grow as a result of the mental/emotional events and
experiences arising out of their thoughts and feelings. The soul must learn, through trial and
error, the state of consciousness which makes it immensely happy or burdened with grief and
sorrow which initiate various physical limitations.
The purpose of life on earth is not to discover a means to experience undeviating joy and
bliss, although this is what each soul longs for.
Such bliss and joy would hinder the soul’s progress into the higher spiritual vibrations of
consciousness.
Eventually after many lifetimes of ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of comfort and sorrow, the psyche will
wake up to the truth of its being and will realise that it has within itself the potential to draw on
Divine Consciousness for insight, understanding and knowledge and to raise its spiritual
consciousness vibrations to those of health, wellbeing, protection, inner growth, spiritual
nutrition and to radiate to others the nature of Divine Consciousness Itself.
As I have said before CONSCIOUSNESS is LIFE and LIFE is CONSCIOUSNESS.
Where there is LIFE - there is CONSCIOUSNESS. Where there is CONSCIOUSNESS
there is LIFE.
EVERYTHING in existence is defined by vibrational frequencies of consciousness.
THE TRUE NATURE OF EXISTENCE
The TRUTH OF BEING is this: YOU who believe only in the material world, live entirely
in the earthly, finite world. You live within a dimension of the manifestation of your beliefs.
Those whose spiritual perceptions and lives have been raised in frequencies of vibrations to
merge with the spiritual frequencies of vibration of the spiritual dimension can perceive that they
live in two dimensions. They are fully aware of this truth. And they live according to this truth,
and evolve into ever higher frequencies of being.
They are no longer bound by human belief but live within the realisation that they live within
infinity in which are no limitations. The higher their vibrational frequencies of consciousness,
the more aware they are that they live within infinity and that only they themselves set the limits
on what they can aspire to.
Those whose perceptions have been heightened in this way whilst still in their bodies, have seen
that there is only one dimension of actual ‘individual being’ and this dimension is ‘Divine
Consciousness Activity’.
They may also come to fully realise there is the further dimension of Universal Consciousness
in which the Universal resides in perfect equilibrium and may be penetrated by none, because
within this dimension any individuality would be immediately drawn into the Unity of Being.
When a soul reaches, in understanding and realisation, the topmost level of the frequencies of
vibrations of consciousness,- Christ Consciousness - the soul can look down and review the
levels of vibrations ascending and descending to those of humanity on earth and know, with love
and compassion, humanity is trapped in the lower vibrations of Divine Consciousness hidden
within the Ego-drive, wholly unaware of the Truth of Being, the soul’s true identity and the
earthly truth of the ego. Neither does it have the slightest awareness of the immense purpose
behind its existence and the eventual mission it must embark upon.
The task of the newborn soul is to experience, through means of its sheath the Psyche, all that
these lower frequencies have to offer and grow as a result of the mental/emotional events and
experiences arising out of their thoughts and feelings. The soul must learn, through trial and
error, the state of consciousness which makes it immensely happy or burdened with grief and
sorrow which initiate various physical limitations.
The purpose of life on earth is not to discover a means to experience undeviating joy and
bliss, although this is what each soul longs for.
Such bliss and joy would hinder the soul’s progress into the higher spiritual vibrations of
consciousness.
Eventually after many lifetimes of ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of comfort and sorrow, the psyche will
wake up to the truth of its being and will realise that it has within itself the potential to draw on
Divine Consciousness for insight, understanding and knowledge and to raise its spiritual
consciousness vibrations to those of health, wellbeing, protection, inner growth, spiritual
nutrition and to radiate to others the nature of Divine Consciousness Itself.
As I have said before CONSCIOUSNESS is LIFE and LIFE is CONSCIOUSNESS.
Where there is LIFE - there is CONSCIOUSNESS. Where there is CONSCIOUSNESS
there is LIFE.
EVERYTHING in existence is defined by vibrational frequencies of consciousness.
Love is the Healing Energy...
Love itself is the healing power and the remedy for all pain.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
There is no greater power than love. All strength comes with the awakening of
love in the heart. ... If there is any protecting influence in the world, it is
no other than love. In all aspects of life, wherever we find protection, its
motive is always love, and no one can have trust in any protection, however
great, except the protection that love offers. If a giant were to frighten a
child, the child would say, 'I will tell my mother.' The strength and power of
any man is too small in comparison with love's protection which the mother
affords her child. Love can heal better than anything in the world.
Behind all this world of various names and forms there is one life, there is one
spirit. This spirit which is the soul of all beings is attracted towards unity,
and it is the absence of this spirit which keeps the world unhappy. To a person
who has just had some unpleasantness with his brother or sister, his food is
tasteless, the night without sleep, the heart restless, the soul under a cloud.
This shows that we do not necessarily live on food; our soul lives on love, the
love that we receive and the love that we give. The absence of this is our
unhappiness, and the presence of it is all we need.
True life cannot be ours until unity is achieved. It is the work of religion to
promote the spirit of unity, in the knowledge and love of God to whom all
devotion belongs. Man often seeks for psychic, occult, and magnetic powers. This
is not the purpose of religion; these developments come of themselves. Where
there is life and love, there is magnetism; love itself is the healing power and
the remedy for all pain.
The dark clouds brought romance between Thee, my Beloved, and me.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
There is no greater power than love. All strength comes with the awakening of
love in the heart. ... If there is any protecting influence in the world, it is
no other than love. In all aspects of life, wherever we find protection, its
motive is always love, and no one can have trust in any protection, however
great, except the protection that love offers. If a giant were to frighten a
child, the child would say, 'I will tell my mother.' The strength and power of
any man is too small in comparison with love's protection which the mother
affords her child. Love can heal better than anything in the world.
Behind all this world of various names and forms there is one life, there is one
spirit. This spirit which is the soul of all beings is attracted towards unity,
and it is the absence of this spirit which keeps the world unhappy. To a person
who has just had some unpleasantness with his brother or sister, his food is
tasteless, the night without sleep, the heart restless, the soul under a cloud.
This shows that we do not necessarily live on food; our soul lives on love, the
love that we receive and the love that we give. The absence of this is our
unhappiness, and the presence of it is all we need.
True life cannot be ours until unity is achieved. It is the work of religion to
promote the spirit of unity, in the knowledge and love of God to whom all
devotion belongs. Man often seeks for psychic, occult, and magnetic powers. This
is not the purpose of religion; these developments come of themselves. Where
there is life and love, there is magnetism; love itself is the healing power and
the remedy for all pain.
The dark clouds brought romance between Thee, my Beloved, and me.
The Entire World is God...
When the mirror of my consciousness became clear,
I saw that my family and others I
love are the same as me.
The "you" and "I" thought
does not occur.
The entire world is God.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
I saw that my family and others I
love are the same as me.
The "you" and "I" thought
does not occur.
The entire world is God.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
Live by Truth Alone...
"Learn to live without self concern. For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone".
"Just realise you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love all or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done".
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:
"Just realise you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love all or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done".
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:
Eckhart Tolle Quote...
You are not what happens; you are the space in which it happens. You are not your thoughts; they come and go. You are the vastness in which these thoughts appear and disappear because underneath all your thinking there is the stillness of pure being,... pure consciousness, the timeless dimension of yourself.
Pure-Minded...
A man who has gone through all experiences and has held his spirit high, not
allowing it to be stained, such a man may be said to be pure-minded. The person
who could be called pure because he had no knowledge of either good or evil
would in reality be merely a simpleton. To go
through all that takes away the original purity and yet to rise above everything
that seeks to overwhelm it and drag it down, that is spirituality; the light of
the spirit held high and burning clear and pure.
From the Teachinngs of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
allowing it to be stained, such a man may be said to be pure-minded. The person
who could be called pure because he had no knowledge of either good or evil
would in reality be merely a simpleton. To go
through all that takes away the original purity and yet to rise above everything
that seeks to overwhelm it and drag it down, that is spirituality; the light of
the spirit held high and burning clear and pure.
From the Teachinngs of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
The No-Path...
"All paths are mine, and all lead eventually to me. But the shortest way to me
is the no-path of self-annihilative love."
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
_Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba_
is the no-path of self-annihilative love."
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
_Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba_
The Death of Jesus and the Forgiveness of Sin...
The idea of sacrifice to attain loss of sin is correct but the people were confused about what is needed to sacrifice.. The True Sacrifice is the sacrifice of your false ego, or the self that you believe you are.. the word sin really means that you are still controlled by the illusion of the false ego.. from this illusion of ego power , all actions and thoughts are selfish and anti-God, or what is called anti-consciousness.. Jesus had already sacrificed his self while He was in the desert achieving Enlightenment..This is when He and the Father became One.. Although, we are already One with God, this Realization through Enlightenment is the moment when you can Truly say that you and the Father are One...Can someone sacrifice the ego for you?,, No,, only you can sacrifice the ego.. only you can achieve Freedom.. This is the Free Choice that you have been given.. Jesus can show you the Door to Freedom, but, only you can walk through this Door.............namaste, thomas
For Freedom...
This question has often been asked for thousands of years. So in reply to one king, who had left his kingdom and become a hermit, one sage came near him and asked this question to help him: “Who are you?”
The king said, “I am a king. I left my kingdom, my queen, ministers.”
“What for?”
“For freedom.”
The king was living in a thatched hut, and instead of a royal robe he had opted to have a sack around him. This has got nothing to do with freedom.
And the sage said: “I will give you enlightenment or freedom here and now. Freedom can be attained here and now. There is no need of any tapas, penance, austerities, sadhanas, practices. Wisdom can be attained here and now. Even if you practice, you have a certain notion to attain something finally, and it is the notion, your notion, that will be fulfilled. It is your desire that will be fulfilled in the end. So when you have to entertain a notion to have something else, why don’t you entertain the notion for the first intent, to have knowledge, to be free?”
How, can this freedom be won? Close association with a saint is quite enough; you will resolve your doubts and your mind will be purified to receive. If your mind is not pure, even if God gives you instruction, you will not be able to get it. You have first to purify your mind. Your mind must be purified. Not in one janma, many janmas, you have to be born, reborn, and then the mind will be purified. So in the last janma, in the last incarnation, there will be the desire to be free and this is going to work. You will be asking, you will be wanting the company of a holy person. Somehow you will be led to him, you will be led to him, somehow you will reach him and stay with him. That is on your part, you have fulfilled your part. The rest depends upon your teacher.
***
The knowledge is supreme, and if you cannot assimilate it, you cannot get it, then you have to take up your austerities for a long time, not for one age, many incarnations you will have to take, you see, to fulfill your austerities and purify your mind and get ready to receive knowledge. As all rivers enter the ocean, so all the austerities, practices, will lead you to knowledge. That’s how it’s described in the sutras. So those who follow the knowledge or understand the freedom, its not for the first time that they have been successful, because we see some people who say, “We came here this morning and we have finished our job with you. We go back to our home.” It’s not for this. Some people take a week, and some a month. They don’t see their roots. So whatever time we are spending here, it will not go waste. Surely you will be rewarded by this thing. So best of all is going to be to remove your impediments, hindrances. Only you are going to remove your hindrances and not to achieve freedom-- freedom is already there. Freedom is already there.
***
Only you have to remove what stands between you and the freedom in front of you. Some veil is in front of you and that veil is ego. Ego. If you remove the ego by your own self, or someone who can do it, surrender to that person and he will do it. Only you have to remove this ego. When ego is gone, then the mind is gone and when the mind goes, you are placed in a state of no-mind, and this no-mind is very close to freedom, very close to freedom.
****
So this is what has been told and what has been done previously by all those people who got enlightened. No need of leaving the kingdoms and going to the forest now. Again and again we speak of this thing: only get rid of your impediments, and simply stay quiet, that’s all. With the very burning desire, like somebody who is burning, and will run to a well, or a river, or a stream, only for water. Someone who is burning must go to the water; he will not go anywhere else. Like this, if you have the burning desire, “I want to be free, in this life, before the end of this life”, this must be a longing always in your mind, then you will be successful. You will have won the game and you will be very happy always because freedom and happiness and bliss go together. All kinds of other pleasures that we seek fade away immediately with their contact itself. As soon as you contact any touch, any pleasure, it will bite like a serpent. Any pleasure, any rose that you pick, you will have a thorn underneath the rose. That’s how it is described by one Persian poet: when you pick up a rose you’ll have a thorn also near the rose. Like this, when you enjoy any sense pleasure it will bite you, you see. Therefore we have to search for very pure freedom, where there is no unhappiness. Otherwise in the world there is sometimes happiness, sometimes unhappiness. They go on alternating and this is called the world, and this is the experience of the ignorant ones. When there is unhappiness, they don’t like it; when there is happiness they like it. So in the case of wisdom, there will be only serenity. There will be no unhappiness, and no happiness either, you see. There will be total peace. Peace is something else. It has got nothing to do with pleasures and displeasures that belong to the contact of the senses. Bliss has got nothing to do with the senses or the mind or the intellect or even the personality, or the jiva or individual soul. This is a very transcendental, fourth state. Not waking, not dreaming, not sleeping. That fourth state is called Turiya in yoga terminology. This state is always available to everyone, you see.
***
You know that you sleep, you know that you dream, you know that this is the waking state, so when these states are projected in front of you, you must be somewhere other then these states, witnessing these states, you see. If we give thought to this, we are experiencing, we are seeing this is the waking state. We see it, we witness the waking state. Dream also. We had a dream last night: it means we had witnessed the dream. When we are in deep sleep, we enjoy the bliss of deep sleep. All these three sates we witness, projected in front of us. We do not question who has been witnessing all these three states, who must be out of these three states. Who is it, that was out of these three states and has projected these three states in front of him? So if he turns his head to this state he will be in the transcendental position and he is in the fourth state. So this is to reject the three states. This fourth state is called the fourth state because there is no name for it, yet it is connected with the three states, so it is called the fourth.
***
So to win complete, perfect freedom is yet beyond it, you see. That has no name. Witness these states, that I am not these three states. I am the enjoyer of all these three states, but I am not the three states. So staying here for a long time, you will find yourself that you are the absolute substratum. Absolute essence. And you will see that you have been before the creation of the creator itself. And that’s called peace, quietness, emptiness, from where everything rises like ripples, like waves, all silence you see. That is where we all will have to return -- not return, we are there. But we are otherwise engaged. Therefore we do not know who we are. Who we are in reality, who we had been -- due to some reason we forgot. So this is the matter. This satsang is association -- all of us belonging to the same thought, the same longing, is only for this, just to remind ourselves that we all are living in that peaceful, in that blissful, in that conscious, empty state, which cannot be described by anyone so far. None has ever reached there. None has ever described it.
----Papaji
Satsang in Lucknow
The king said, “I am a king. I left my kingdom, my queen, ministers.”
“What for?”
“For freedom.”
The king was living in a thatched hut, and instead of a royal robe he had opted to have a sack around him. This has got nothing to do with freedom.
And the sage said: “I will give you enlightenment or freedom here and now. Freedom can be attained here and now. There is no need of any tapas, penance, austerities, sadhanas, practices. Wisdom can be attained here and now. Even if you practice, you have a certain notion to attain something finally, and it is the notion, your notion, that will be fulfilled. It is your desire that will be fulfilled in the end. So when you have to entertain a notion to have something else, why don’t you entertain the notion for the first intent, to have knowledge, to be free?”
How, can this freedom be won? Close association with a saint is quite enough; you will resolve your doubts and your mind will be purified to receive. If your mind is not pure, even if God gives you instruction, you will not be able to get it. You have first to purify your mind. Your mind must be purified. Not in one janma, many janmas, you have to be born, reborn, and then the mind will be purified. So in the last janma, in the last incarnation, there will be the desire to be free and this is going to work. You will be asking, you will be wanting the company of a holy person. Somehow you will be led to him, you will be led to him, somehow you will reach him and stay with him. That is on your part, you have fulfilled your part. The rest depends upon your teacher.
***
The knowledge is supreme, and if you cannot assimilate it, you cannot get it, then you have to take up your austerities for a long time, not for one age, many incarnations you will have to take, you see, to fulfill your austerities and purify your mind and get ready to receive knowledge. As all rivers enter the ocean, so all the austerities, practices, will lead you to knowledge. That’s how it’s described in the sutras. So those who follow the knowledge or understand the freedom, its not for the first time that they have been successful, because we see some people who say, “We came here this morning and we have finished our job with you. We go back to our home.” It’s not for this. Some people take a week, and some a month. They don’t see their roots. So whatever time we are spending here, it will not go waste. Surely you will be rewarded by this thing. So best of all is going to be to remove your impediments, hindrances. Only you are going to remove your hindrances and not to achieve freedom-- freedom is already there. Freedom is already there.
***
Only you have to remove what stands between you and the freedom in front of you. Some veil is in front of you and that veil is ego. Ego. If you remove the ego by your own self, or someone who can do it, surrender to that person and he will do it. Only you have to remove this ego. When ego is gone, then the mind is gone and when the mind goes, you are placed in a state of no-mind, and this no-mind is very close to freedom, very close to freedom.
****
So this is what has been told and what has been done previously by all those people who got enlightened. No need of leaving the kingdoms and going to the forest now. Again and again we speak of this thing: only get rid of your impediments, and simply stay quiet, that’s all. With the very burning desire, like somebody who is burning, and will run to a well, or a river, or a stream, only for water. Someone who is burning must go to the water; he will not go anywhere else. Like this, if you have the burning desire, “I want to be free, in this life, before the end of this life”, this must be a longing always in your mind, then you will be successful. You will have won the game and you will be very happy always because freedom and happiness and bliss go together. All kinds of other pleasures that we seek fade away immediately with their contact itself. As soon as you contact any touch, any pleasure, it will bite like a serpent. Any pleasure, any rose that you pick, you will have a thorn underneath the rose. That’s how it is described by one Persian poet: when you pick up a rose you’ll have a thorn also near the rose. Like this, when you enjoy any sense pleasure it will bite you, you see. Therefore we have to search for very pure freedom, where there is no unhappiness. Otherwise in the world there is sometimes happiness, sometimes unhappiness. They go on alternating and this is called the world, and this is the experience of the ignorant ones. When there is unhappiness, they don’t like it; when there is happiness they like it. So in the case of wisdom, there will be only serenity. There will be no unhappiness, and no happiness either, you see. There will be total peace. Peace is something else. It has got nothing to do with pleasures and displeasures that belong to the contact of the senses. Bliss has got nothing to do with the senses or the mind or the intellect or even the personality, or the jiva or individual soul. This is a very transcendental, fourth state. Not waking, not dreaming, not sleeping. That fourth state is called Turiya in yoga terminology. This state is always available to everyone, you see.
***
You know that you sleep, you know that you dream, you know that this is the waking state, so when these states are projected in front of you, you must be somewhere other then these states, witnessing these states, you see. If we give thought to this, we are experiencing, we are seeing this is the waking state. We see it, we witness the waking state. Dream also. We had a dream last night: it means we had witnessed the dream. When we are in deep sleep, we enjoy the bliss of deep sleep. All these three sates we witness, projected in front of us. We do not question who has been witnessing all these three states, who must be out of these three states. Who is it, that was out of these three states and has projected these three states in front of him? So if he turns his head to this state he will be in the transcendental position and he is in the fourth state. So this is to reject the three states. This fourth state is called the fourth state because there is no name for it, yet it is connected with the three states, so it is called the fourth.
***
So to win complete, perfect freedom is yet beyond it, you see. That has no name. Witness these states, that I am not these three states. I am the enjoyer of all these three states, but I am not the three states. So staying here for a long time, you will find yourself that you are the absolute substratum. Absolute essence. And you will see that you have been before the creation of the creator itself. And that’s called peace, quietness, emptiness, from where everything rises like ripples, like waves, all silence you see. That is where we all will have to return -- not return, we are there. But we are otherwise engaged. Therefore we do not know who we are. Who we are in reality, who we had been -- due to some reason we forgot. So this is the matter. This satsang is association -- all of us belonging to the same thought, the same longing, is only for this, just to remind ourselves that we all are living in that peaceful, in that blissful, in that conscious, empty state, which cannot be described by anyone so far. None has ever reached there. None has ever described it.
----Papaji
Satsang in Lucknow
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