The absurdity...
Man frees himself from the world,
its ills,
its suffering, its chaos,
simply by seeing
the absurdity of it all.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Consciousness...
Before the world was, consciousness was.
In consciousness it comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves.
At the root of everything, is the feeling 'I am'.
The state of mind:
'there is a world' is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the world needs me.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Overself...
The other part of the answer is that the Overself is always here as man's innermost truest self.
It is beginningless and endless in time.
Its consciousness does not have to be developed as something new. But the person's awareness of it begins in time and has to be developed as a new attainment.
The ever-presence of Overself means that anyone may attain it here and now. There is no inner necessity to travel anywhere or to anyone in space or to wait years in time for this to happen.
Anyone, for instance, who attends carefully and earnestly to the present exposition may perhaps suddenly and easily get the first stage of insight, the lightning-flash which affords a glimpse of reality, at any moment.
By that glimpse he will have been uplifted to a new dimension of being. The difficulty will consist in retaining the new perception.
For ancient habits of erroneous thinking will quickly reassert themselves and overwhelm him enough to push it into the background.
This is why repeated introspection, reflective study, and mystical meditation are needed to weaken those habits and generate the inner strength which can firmly hold the higher outlook against these aggressive intruders from his own past.
- Paul Brunton
The Book of Thomas the Contender ...
The Book of Thomas the Contender
Translated by John D. Turner...
The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another.
The savior said, "Brother Thomas while you have time in the world, listen to me, and I will reveal to you the things you have pondered in your mind.
"Now, since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself, and learn who you are, in what way you exist, and how you will come to be. Since you will be called my brother, it is not fitting that you be ignorant of yourself. And I know that you have understood, because you had already understood that I am the knowledge of the truth. So while you accompany me, although you are uncomprehending, you have (in fact) already come to know, and you will be called 'the one who knows himself'. For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depth of the all. So then, you, my brother Thomas, have beheld what is obscure to men, that is, what they ignorantly stumble against."
Now Thomas said to the lord, "Therefore I beg you to tell me what I ask you before your ascension, and when I hear from you about the hidden things, then I can speak about them. And it is obvious to me that the truth is difficult to perform before men."
The savior answered, saying, "If the things that are visible to you are obscure to you, how can you hear about the things that are not visible? If the deeds of the truth that are visible in the world are difficult for you to perform, how indeed, then, shall you perform those that pertain to the exalted height and to the pleroma which are not visible? And how shall you be called 'laborers'? In this respect you are apprentices, and have not yet received the height of perfection."
Now Thomas answered and said to the savior, "Tell us about these things that you say are not visible, but are hidden from us."
The savior said, "All bodies [...] the beasts are begotten [...] it is evident like [...] this, too, those that are above [...] things that are visible, but they are visible in their own root, and it is their fruit that nourishes them. But these visible bodies survive by devouring creatures similar to them with the result that the bodies change. Now that which changes will decay and perish, and has no hope of life from then on, since that body is bestial. So just as the body of the beasts perishes, so also will these formations perish. Do they not derive from intercourse like that of the beasts? If it, too derives from intercourse, how will it beget anything different from beasts? So, therefore, you are babes until you become perfect."
And Thomas answered, "Therefore I say to you, lord, that those who speak about things that are invisible and difficult to explain are like those who shoot their arrows at a target at night. To be sure, they shoot their arrows as anyone would - since they shoot at the target - but it is not visible. Yet when the light comes forth and hides the darkness, then the work of each will appear. And you, our light, enlighten, O lord."
Jesus said, "It is in light that light exists."
Thomas, spoke, saying, "Lord, why does this visible light that shines on behalf of men rise and set?"
The savior said, "O blessed Thomas, of course this visible light shines on your behalf - not in order that you remain here, but rather that you might come forth - and whenever all the elect abandon bestiality, then this light will withdraw up to its essence, and its essence will welcome it, since it is a good servant."
Then the savior continued and said, "O unsearchable love of the light! O bitterness of the fire that blazes in the bodies of men and in their marrow, kindling in them night and day, and burning the limbs of men and making their minds become drunk and their souls become deranged [...] them within males and females [...] night and moving them, [...] secretly and visibly. For the males move [...] upon the females and the females upon the males. Therefore it is said, "Everyone who seeks the truth from true wisdom will make himself wings so as to fly, fleeing the lust that scorches the spirits of men." And he will make himself wings to flee every visible spirit."
God is Realised...
"There are three different paths to reach the ideal, the path of 'I', the path of 'Thou', and the path of 'Thou and I'.
According to the first, all that is, has been, or ever will be, is I myself.
In other words, 'I am, I was, and I shall be, to all eternity.'
According to the second, 'Thou art, O Lord, and all is Thine.'
And according to the third, 'Thou art the Lord, and I am Thy servant or Thy son.'
In the perfection of any one of these three,
God is realised."
Sri Ramakrishna
_Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna_
Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1997, p. 31
The Short Path...
What is the key to the Short Path?
It is threefold. First, stop searching for the Overself since it follows you wherever you go.
Second, believe in its Presence, with and within you.
Third, keep on trying to understand its truth until you can abandon further thoughts about it.
You cannot acquire what is already here.
So drop the ego's false idea and affirm the real one.
- Paul Brunton
" Know Thyself "...
There is nothing in the world that you cannot know, when you know yourself.
Thinking yourself to be the body, you know the world as a collection of material things.
When you know yourself as a centre of consciousness, the world appears as the ocean of the mind.
When you know yourself as you are in reality, you know the world as yourself.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
" The Voice within Reality "...
Mystics speak of silence..
This is True, except for the Voice that spoke within the Light..
This Voice was heard without ears or sound..
This Voice was filled with wisdom and Truth..
Who was this Voice?..
Jesus called this Voice, 'Father'..
I had no reference or name to call this Voice of Wisdom..
I only knew that this Voice knew more than Me..
Even though, I was Light, Love, and Consciousness,
This Voice knew more than Me..
Is this Voice, Me?..
There is only Consciousness..
There is no division..
God is Real..
The Voice is Us, when We surrender the false ego, even if the ego is that of God..
It is that simple..
Even within Divine Consciousness, personality of ego exists..
Even after we surrender the ego, we are not Pure Divine Consciousness..
We find outselves as God and yet, We hear a Higher Wisdom within the Light..
What does this mean?..
Perhaps, the knowledge that We are God is lower than the Reality that there is only God...
And We,the listener do not exist...
Complete Love only exists without separation or egoic consciousness...
namaste, thomas
The Real and the unreal...
These forms are transient and to be attached to them
is to be confused.
Anything that rises, be it thought,
desire, emotion, feeling or object will give you suffering
and no one in the world can avoid this.
Both the
enjoyer and the enjoyed are washed away.
But the wise discriminate between the Real and the
unreal.
They know what is Real and so allow their
feelings and thoughts to arise because they know all
is One and the same!
In this way you will not suffer.
- Papaji
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"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
From the inside out...
On the Long Path his actions follow, or try--however badly--to follow, the rules.
They are imitative actions.
But on the Short Path he becomes an individual,
living from the inside out.
- Paul Brunton
Be happy to Be...
The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self.
Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self.
The constant noise of the psychic life is absent.
In deep silence, the self contemplates the body.
It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet.
Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be.
You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness.
But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand between you and the field..
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Satanism...
Overself tells me to speak of this extreme example of egoism..
The Duality within this Dream is that of Selfishness and Love..
Satanism is that of Selfishness and worshiping the illusion of that creator..
Love is that of non-selfishness, humility , and the worship of Reality..
Do you desire Power, Wealth, and Fame or do you desire Freedom?..
So many souls within this Dream, sell their soul for such a short time span of pleasure..
But, the time span of soul pain becomes much more beyond the Dream..
Look at the wealthy and powerful leaders of earth..
They become slaves of pain and illusion..
All of this Division between Reality and Illusion are just Thoughts and Dreams from Divine Consciousness..
Choose that side that brings Freedom and Love ..
Choose Reality and not Illusions and Dreams...
namaste, thomas
Religion...
“Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism.
The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization.
The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence.
Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed.
Or, at least diminished.”
― Tom Robbins,
Anxiety into Laughter...
“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar.
I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
― Alan W. Watts
Willing to be disturbed...
“When we’re not willing to be disturbed, which means when we’re not willing to find out that what we thought was real in fact wasn’t real, we can never be happy.
If we’re not willing to find out that what we believe in really isn’t the truth, then we can never be happy.
If we’re not honestly willing to look at the whole structure of who we think we are and be open to the idea that maybe we’ve been completely wrong about ourselves -
maybe we’re not who we thought we were at all -
if we’re not open to that idea, at least that possibility,
there’s no way we can find our way out of suffering.”
~ Adyashanti
All Sentient Beings are Buddhas'...
By Zen Master Ku San Sunim
"Since sentient beings and insentient things are not separate from the true-nature, the characteristic of this nature is simply ‘thus’.
And because this nature can be neither added to nor taken away from, there is neither more of it in the accomplished man, nor less of it in the ordinary man.
This nature encompasses limitless space; and the perfection achieved through seeing this nature simultaneously purifies the world of external objects.
When the visual sense-base is purified the five other sense-bases (the ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) are also completely purified.
Accordingly, the six sense-spheres are purified too.
Thus the entire world becomes a pure Garden of Happiness.
Further, as one’s mind is bright, the minds of sentient beings are also bright; and as the minds of sentient beings are bright, all sentient beings in the entire world are bright too.
Therefore, this world is the world of Nirvana and all sentient beings are Buddhas."
Truth...
"The ocean has only one taste,
the taste of salt.
Truth has only one taste,
the taste of liberation."
Gautama the Buddha
in Jonathan Star
_Two Suns Rising: A Collection of Sacred Writings_
NY: Bantam, 1991, p. 57
Consciousness...
You are the space (akash) in which it moves,
the time in which it lasts,
the love that gives it life.
--Nisargadatta Maharaj
Recognition...
Recognition is a prominent feature on the Short Path.
The Overself is always there but only those on the Short Path recognize this truth and think accordingly.
The world is always with us, but only those on the Short Path recognize the miracle that it is.
In moments of exaltation, uplift, awe, or satisfaction--
derived from music, art, poetry, landscape, or otherwise--
thousands of people have received a Glimpse;
but only those on the Short Path recognize it for what it really is..
Paul Brunton
Speaking to a soul...
Tonight, a soul tells me that he was a seeker that gave up seeking..
A ministration called order, told him what is Truth..
We are easily led into an order of obedience that stifles searching..
How can we become Free?..
Solitude is the answer to this question..
Solitude is the decision to seek the Solitude of that which is One..
God is One..
There is only One..
All else is a Dream from One...
namaste, thomas
The Original Mind...
The utter incomprehensibility and perfect virtue of
the Unborn are present at all times in the mind of
each one of you and cannot be obtained anywhere
else.
People speak of the essential mind of the
Buddhas and patriarchs, but there is not a hairbreadth
of difference between their minds and your mind right
now.
Yet you want to give rise to thoughts, to see
outside yourselves for Buddha-hood.
You create
the very obstructions that hinder you and keep you
from conforming to your original mind.
- Zen Master Bankei
Attachment to the ego...
Our attachment to the ego is natural.
It arises because we are unconsciously attached to that which is behind it, to the Overself.
Only, we are misled by ignorance wholly to concentrate on the apparent "I" and wholly to ignore the unseen, enduring self of which it is but a transient shadow.
The "I" which trembles or enjoys in the time-series is not the real "I."
- Paul Brunton
Meditation...
"Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake."
~ Thomas Merton
Thoughts...
Every man is where he is by the law of his
being;
the thoughts which he has built into
his character have brought him there,
and
in the arrangement of his life there is no
element of chance,
but all is the result of
a law which cannot err.
This is just as true
of those who feel "out of harmony" with their
surroundings as of those who are contented
with them.
- As a Man Thinkth
James Allen
Ashtavakra Gita...
It is hard to find
A man who has desire
For what he has not tasted,
Or who tastes the world
And is untouched.
Here in the world
Some crave pleasure,
Some seek freedom
But it is hard to find
A man who wants neither.
He is a great soul.
It is hard to find
A man who has an open mind,
Who neither seeks nor shuns
Wealth or pleasure,
Duty or liberation,
Life or death. . .
He does not want the world to end.
He does not mind if it lasts.
Whatever befalls him,
He lives in happiness.
For he is truly blessed.
-Ashtavakra Gita 17:4-7
Christmas Eve...
It is Christmas eve and Divine Consciousness tells me to speak..
In Truth, Jesus was not born on this day, He was born in the spring of the year..
He was named Yeshua ben Yosef and was born a mystic..
The Luciferians used the feast of the winter soltice as His birth..
All is a Dream and most lies..
Are you beginning to understand the duality of evil and love ?..
There is much to tell you but the spirit of time tells me that a paragraph is short..
I am only allowed to speak in a paragraph to the sub-conscious mind..
I must then leave you with the Knowledge that You are the Christ that you celebrate..
The Christ is Divine Consciousness and is You...
namaste, thomas
Sadhana...
Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing.
Consciousness and unconsciousness are two
aspects of one life.
They co-exist.
To know
the world you forget the self - to know the
self you forget the world.
What is world after
all?
A collection of memories.
Cling to one
thing that matters, hold on to 'I am' and let go
all else.
This is sadhana.
In realization there is
nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget.
Everything is known, nothing is remembered.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
Neo-Advaita...
I think the approach to "Advaita Vedanta" that one finds in the contemporary scene in the West (often referred to as "Neo-Advaita" to distinguish it from the traditional teachings of Vedanta as understood in the East) is still very abstract, philosophically nihilistic, "heady" and disembodied in general....It tends to be quite often denying any reality to the personal self, the body and mind, the phenomenal world, others, serious issues like poverty or hunger or war or the environment....
Perhaps not surprisingly, this seems to often lead to a sense of deep meaninglessness, unhealthy emotional detachment and lethargy in many people, especially if someone may perhaps be genetically or chemically predisposed toward depression or dissociative tendencies anyway (as so many post-modern folks seem to be)....It is no wonder so many who have been on this path as it is expressed in the contemporary Western scene are coming up feeling emotionally flattened out, depressed and struggling to find meaning. I find this syndrome in a lot of people as I travel about doing retreats and events and skyping with people around the world.
My own sense is that there is on the horizon a "second wave" of this non-dual spiritual movement in the West. I feel there is beginning to dawn a slow development along more integrative and humanistic lines which acknowledges more the human side of things and values the phenomenal world, cultural richness and personal human issues of alienation, need for integration and shadow work, social justice, etc....I have recently had some very interesting conversations with Adyashanti and Cynthia Bourgeault (a contemporary Non-Dual spiritual teacher from a professional Christian ministry background like myself). He and she seem to both very much agree with me on this.
I think this morelife-affirming position is what Western, Monotheistic mysticism in its several different forms (Christian, Sufi, Jewish) has to "bring to the table" in this Western contemporary Non-Dual scene of spirituality. Taking this more integrative and humanistic approach might prove to be of some value to so many who have become disillusioned with the spiritual search as expressed in the Western, contemporary non-dual spiritual scene thus far.
--- Francis Bennett
The Void...
The deeper one penetrates into the Void the more he is purified of the illusions of personality, time, matter, space, and causality.
Between the second and third stages of insight's unfoldment there are really two further subsidiary stages which are wrapped in the greatest mystery and are rarely touched by the average mystic or yogi.
For both of them are stages which lead further downwards into the Void.
The yogi touches the edge of the Void, as it were, but not its center.
These two stages are purificatory ones and utterly annihilate the last illusions and the last egoisms of the seeker.
They are dissolved forever and cannot revive again.
Nothing more useful can and may be said about it here.
For this is the innermost holy of holies, the most sacred sanctuary accessible to man.
He who touches this grade touches what may not be spoken aloud for sneering ears, nor written down for sneering eyes.
Consequently none has ever ventured to explain publicly what must not be so explained.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 109
-- Perspectives > Chapter 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > # 32
Paul Brunton
Then, you will see Truth...
“Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner."
Who will help you?
You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you?
What can prevail over you?
You are the God of the universe;
where can you seek for help?
Never help came from anywhere but from yourself.
In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly.
The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you.
There is no help for you outside of yourself;
you are the creator of the universe.
Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself.
Who will save you?
Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul.
Then alone you will see Truth.”
― Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: v. 3
The Blissful Self...
"Many are the means described for the attainment of the highest good, such as love, performance of duty, self-control, truthfulness, sacrifices, gifts, austerity, charity, vows, observances of moral precepts.
I could name more.
But of all I could name, verily love is the highest:
love and devotion that make one forgetful of everything,
love that unites the lover with me.
What indescribable joys does one find through love of me,
the blissful Self!"
Krishna
_Srimad Bhagavatam_
Translated and edited by Swami Prabhavananda
Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1972, pp. 240-241
Only One Self...
Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time.
What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination.
That's all.
You are the Self, that perfect immutable Self.
Nothing else exists.
Nothing else ever existed.
Nothing else will ever exist.
There is only one Self and you are That. Rejoice!
~ Robert Adams
" Simply to Be "...
The time will come when you will have to turn your back upon the Long Path in order to give full attention, the full energy and the full time, to the Short Path.
For with this comes a new era when the whole concern is not with the ego, not with its improvement or betterment, but with the divine itself alone-
not with the surface consciousness and all its little changes but with the very depths, the diviner depths where reality abides.
At this point seek only the Higher Self, live only with positive thought, stay only for as long as you can with the holy silence within,
feel only that inner stillness which belongs to the essence of consciousness.
Henceforth you are not to become this or that, not to gather the various virtues, but simply to be.
For this you do not have to strive, you do not have to think, you do not have to work with any form of yoga, with any method of meditation.
-Paul Brunton
" The Gospel of Thomas "...
Jesus said,
"This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away.
The dead are not alive, and the living will not die.
During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive.
When you are in the light, what will you do?
On the day when you were one, you became two.
But when you become two,
what will you do?"...
The Self...
The self is like a pearl.
To find it you must dive deep
down into silence,
deeper and ever deeper until it is reached.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
The mind's division...
How can the dark, delusive sense of separateness affect the Self
which is non-dual?
It is the mind's divisive vision which sees difference.
Awareness knows no separateness at all.
The above Ramana Maharshi quote is from the book
The Seven Steps to Awakening
Overcoming Worry...
"The descent of the grace of the Master is conditioned, however, by the preliminary spiritual preparation of the aspirant..
One of the greatest obstacles hindering this spiritual preparation of the aspirant is worry.
When, with supreme effort, this obstacle of worry is overcome, a way is paved for the cultivation of the divine attributes which constitute the spiritual preparation of the disciple.
As soon as the disciple is ready the grace of the Master descends,
for the Master, who is the ocean of divine love,
is always on the look-out for the soul in whom his grace will fructify."
Meher Baba
_Discourses_
San Francisco: Sufism Reoriented, 6th ed., 1967, Vol 1, p. 161-162
The Birth of Christ...
In reading the title, our minds envision the birth of Jesus (Yeshua ben Yosef) but,
the Real Birth of Christ happens when we offer our selves as a sacrifice to God..
This is the True Christmas Gift..
The most valuable gift that we have ever given..
This gift cannot be found in stores or on the internet..
this gift is the gift that is also given back to Us..
We give our self and in return we receive Our Self..
This is Truly,
the Miracle of Christmas...
..namaste, thomas
Bhagavad Gita...
On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure
Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear. ~
-Bhagavad Gita
"Didn't I tell you ?"...
Didn’t I tell you
Do not leave me for I am your only Friend,
I am the spring of life.
Even if you leave in anger for thousands of years
You will come back to me for I am your goal and your end.
Didn’t I tell you
not to be seduced by this colorful world
for I am the Ultimate Painter.
Didn’t I tell you
you are a fish do not go to dry land
for I am the deep Sea.
Didn’t I tell you
not to fall in the net like birds
for I am your wings and the power of light.
Didn’t I tell you
not to let them change your mind and turn you to ice
for I am your fire and warmth.
Didn’t I tell you
they will corrupt you and make you forget
that I am the Spring of all virtues.
Didn’t I tell you
not to question my actions
for everything falls into order, I am the Creator.
Didn’t I tell you
your heart can guide you home
because it knows that I am your Master.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Rumi: Hidden Music
Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
Pure Thought...
Pain and suffering, sin and evil, disease and death, exist only in the world of thoughts, not in the world of pure Thought itself. They are not illusions, however, but they are transient.
Whoever attains to pure Thought will also attain in consciousness to a life that is painless, sorrow-free, sinless, undecaying, and undying.
Being above desires and fears, it is necessarily above the miseries caused by unsatisfied desires and realized fears.
But at the same time he will also have an accompanying consciousness of life in the body, which must obey the laws of its own being, natural laws which set limitations and imperfections upon it.
-Paul Brunton
The Supreme State...
The supreme state] is not perceivable, because it is what makes perception possible.
It is beyond being and not being.
It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror.
It is what is - the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid.
The timeless knows the time, the time does not know the timeless.
All consciousness is in time and to it the timeless appears as unconscious.
Yet, it is what makes consciousness possible.
Light shines in darkness.
In light darkness is not visible.
Or you can put it the other way: in the endless ocean of light, clouds of consciousness appear, dark and limited, perceivable by contrast.
There are mere attempts to express in words something very simple, yet altogether inexpressible.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Truth is too simple...
The plain truth is too simple for the seeker after complexity, who is looking for things he cannot understand.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one step; it is more interesting to look forward to millions of steps. The man who is seeking the truth gets into a maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through it a thousand times more. It is just like children. Their whole interest is in running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very tired. So it is with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking truth, but they like the maze. That is why the mystics made the greatest truths a mystery, to be given only to the few who were ready for them, letting the others play because it was the time for them to play.
What holds man back? It is his love of complexity. Life makes for man a puzzle, and like a child he enjoys the puzzle. Truth is too simple for him; he attaches importance to what he cannot understand. If he is told that there is a sacred mountain a thousand miles away he will walk to it. In the ancient days the people were told that if they walked in a circle round the temple a hundred times they would gain much, and they went and felt they had made a pilgrimage. Such is human nature. Man longs for truth, he searches for truth, and yet he wants to escape from truth.
Man wants mystery. He wants something that can be put into words. So long as the seeker has that desire he will remain in a puzzle, but for the one who wishes to come out, the door is open. The heart of man is the abode of God. Christ said, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you'.... Man has accustomed himself to think of things that are far from truth. Even in religion as well as in everyday life he is continually denying truth, and so he wanders far away because he becomes accustomed to everything but truth.
Man is seeking for phenomena, he wants wonderworking, communication with ghosts or spirits, he is looking for something complex, and yet the simplest thing and the most valuable thing in life is to find one's true self.
" I AM "...
To add a little more personal knowledge to this experience of "I Am",...
when, I have surrendered the desire of ego and awaken into the Light and Love of Divine Consciousness and find myself as Light and Love within Light and Love, I have the identity of Consciousness and Divinity,
with all the abilities to create according to thoughts projected..
but, this is just the game of Pure Consciousness and is also the ultimate illusion..
many souls will stay within this Reality for eons because of the intense Love that is felt..
I even found myself thinking that I never want to leave this place..
but, then a Voice asked me if I want to stay or return to the body..
This is when I Realised that I was still separated from complete Freedom because I still had an identity that separated Me from that which spoke..
This is the place that We are at, Now..
We are watching a hologram called life while in this state of Divine Consciousness..
This is why We must surrender Everything, even our Divinity and Identity to finally find Freedom in the 'Nothingness' called 'Pure Awareness'..
Pure Awareness is the Reality of Non-egoic desire and Non-identity,
It is the 'Source' of all Dreams of Creation and Consists of the Energy of Consciousness which is bound together by the Energy called Love...
namaste, thomas
Only Love...
"Those who take shelter under Me in this world,
meditating on Me,
and repeating the mantra of My sacred name,
will surely get My vision,
even unasked,
as I know they have no other refuge."
Rama
in Swami Suddhasatwananda
_Thus Spake Sri Rama_
Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, n.d., p. 12
The ego...
"When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore. Let me remind you briefly how the ego operates and how it creates drama.
Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness, the watcher.
The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack.
Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem. When egos come together, whether in personal relationships or in organizations or institutions, 'bad' things happen sooner or later: drama of one kind or another, in the form of conflict, problems, power struggles, emotional or physical violence, and so on. This includes collective evils such as war, genocide, and exploitation — all due to massed unconsciousness...
- Eckhart Tolle A New Earth
The Overself...
The Overself is neither a cold metaphysical concept nor a passing wave of emotion.
It is a Presence--sublime, sacred, and beneficent--
which grips your heart, thought, and body by its own mysterious power,
making you regard life from a nobler standpoint.
- Paul Brunton
The Gospel of Thomas...
Jesus said:
What thou shalt hear in thine ear,
proclaim to the other ear on your roof-tops.
For no man lights a lamp and sets it under a bushel,
nor does he put it in a hidden place;
but he sets it upon the lamp-stand,
that all who go in and come out may see its light.
A gift...
“A gift is pure when it is given from the heart,
to the right person at the right time and at the right place,
and when we expect nothing in return”
Bhagavad Gita
The Beloved...
"If you are a real and genuine lover,
you must be accustomed to doing your utmost to fulfill the orders of your beloved,
even at the risk of your life.
Of course, it is just possible that your beloved may deign to come to you."
Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi Al-Halveti
_The Unveiling of Love: Sufism and the Remembrance of God_
Tr. from the Turkish by Muhtar Holland
NY: New Traditions International, 1981, p. 184
The Overself...
The ego self is the creature born out of man's own doing and thinking, slowly changing and growing.
The Overself is the image of God, perfect, finished, and changeless.
What he has to do, if he is to fulfil himself,
is to let the one shine through the other.
- Paul Brunton
Only the Ultimate Exists...
In reality only the Ultimate is.
The rest is a matter of name and form.
And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has a name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing.
When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever,
and what is real is nameless and shapeless,
pure energy of life and light of consciousness,
you will be at peace -immersed in the deep silence of reality.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
It is a Play...
To this that you see as the universe,
there
is no purpose.
It is all a lila,
a play in which
we join and contribute some entertainment
to pass the time.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
The Artist...
An artist tries to represent, that is, to re-present, to present again a vision of experience that evokes its reality, to make something that has the power within it to draw the viewer into its own reality.
That is what the French painter, Pierre Bonnard, was trying to capture: the timeless moment of perception before thinking has divided the world into a perceiving subject and a perceived object and then further sub-divided the object into ‘ten thousand things.’
And what did that vision look like in Bonnard’s view? It was a world brimming with colour, intensity, harmony and dancing with vitality. It was world in which the edge of the bath or an old wooden floorboard were given the same attention, the same love, as were the curve of a cheek or the gesture of a hand.
It was the same moment that William Blake wanted to evoke. He was once questioned, “When you see the sun rise do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?” And he replied, “Oh no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying ‘Glory, Glory, Glory is the Lord God Almighty’”
Likewise, William Turner who is reported to have been returning home from Hampstead Heath with a painting under his arm late one evening, when a local resident stopped him and asked to see the painting. After looking at it for some time the resident remarked, “Mr. Turner, I have never seen a sun set over Hampstead Heath like that” to which Turner replied, “No, but don’t you wish you could.”
The body and mind of the artist is the medium through which nature interprets itself to itself. It is the medium through which nature explores and realises its own identity. As Cezanne said, “I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.”
Except from 'Presence', Vol 1, by Rupert Spira
Liberation...
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now but for your being more interested in other things.
And you cannot fight with your interests.
You must go with them,
see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgement and appreciation.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
" you will die "...
Does this bring fear within your mind?..
The body dies and the soul continues..
The soul is the sub-conscious mind that contacts both Divine Consciousness and conscious mind..
This soul is treated as a system of memories that can be captured by those entities called satanic..
It is the focus of Thought..
It is the energy of manifestation..
It is also a Dream..
You are Divine Consciousness that believes that You are an energy called soul..
You have been lost for a great while..
Soul becomes lost within the belief in egoic desire..
Are you confused yet?..
You have two hurdles to jump..
ego and soul..
and when You discover that You are neither, You enter Nothingness..
Still too much to comprehend?..
You are actually Pure Awareness but are too asleep to know this..
Pure Awareness is the Reality of the 'Consciousness' and 'Energy of Source' called Love...
My paragraph is completed...
namaste, thomas
" I Am "...
"When we examine the mind
of the average person,
we find that he usually identifies himself
with mind or body.
He either thinks that he is body
or that he is mind,
and therefore he can control
neither mind nor body.
The "I Am" in his nature is submerged
in a bundle of ideas,
some of which are true
and some of which are not,
and his thought is usually controlled
by those ideas
without receiving any direction whatever
from that principle within him
that alone was intended to give direction.
Such a man lives in the lower story
of human existence,
but as we can control life only
when we give directions from the upper story,
we discover just why the average person
neither understands his forces
nor has the power to use them.
He must first elevate himself
to the upper story of the human structure,
and the first and most important step
to be taken in this direction
is to recognize the "I Am" as the ruling principle,
and that the "I Am" is you."
- Christian D. Larson
from the book A Course In Materialization
Eternity...
When in deep sleep we have absolutely no sense of Time's existence at all.
We are then in eternity!
When we become thoroughly convinced of the illusoriness of time, and make this conviction a settled attitude, eternity reveals itself even during the waking state.
This is life in the Overself.
This is not the same as totalizing the past present and future;
all those belong to illusion.
This realization gives perfect peace.
-Paul Brunton
Spirituality...
Some people enter spirituality thinking it will help them address everything in human life. Their pursuit of enlightenment is that if they can have the right realization then all of their difficulties will be solved. It almost never works out to be that way. We have to look at spirituality with more mature reasonable eyes. We exist on multiple dimensions of experience and perception.
People try to see life as an unimportant dream state and that is why there is tremendous sense of freedom. But if you hold yourself there you are doing it out of fear, out of avoiding your human nature. Human nature will pull anyone down into humility. It is hard to be human and grandiose at the same time.
~Adyashanti
From the Nisargadatta Webclass Nov 2014
The Voice of God...
"It is true that the voice of God, having once fully penetrated the heart, becomes strong as the tempest and loud as the thunder.
But before reaching the heart it is as weak as a light breath which scarcely agitates the air.
It shrinks from noise, and is silent amid agitation."
St. Ignatius of Loyola
in Carol Kelly-Gangi
_The Essential Wisdom of the Saints_
NY: Fall River Press, 2008, p. 3
The Heart is the Overself...
Fix the attention undividedly upon the Overself which is anchored in your heart-centre.
Then everything you do during the day will naturally be divinely inspired action and true service.
The Overself is your true source of power:
turn towards it and receive its constructive guidance for your task of daily living.
- Paul Brunton
The person...
The person is what I appear to be to other persons.
To myself,
I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Creator and creation...
The Sufi sees both the Creator and the creation in man.
The limited part of man's being is the
creation,
and the innermost part of his being is the Creator.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Duality enters...
A newborn baby is the purest form of a human
being.
This purity remains until the baby understands
my/mine, you/yours.
- Baba Hari Dass
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Silence Speaks
Sri Rama Foundation
Santa Cruz, California 1977
your world...
Your world is transient, changeful.
My world
is perfect, changeless.
You can tell me what
you like about your world -
I shall listen carefully,
even with interest,
yet not for a moment
shall I forget that your world is not,
that you
are dreaming.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
The Illuminate...
The illuminate sees objects as other persons do, only his sense of materiality is destroyed, for he sees them too as ideas, unreal.
The illuminate's viewpoint is not the yogi's viewpoint.
The illuminate finds all the world in himself, says the Gita.
This means he feels sympathetically at one with all creatures, even mosquitoes or snakes.
Paul Brunton
Dreams on a Sunday Night...
I ask Consciousness to advise me of words..
Consciousness tells me to speak of the words that flow though my mind..
I am no different from you..
I am a seeker of Truth, nothing else..
Truth becomes a voice that speaks to me and says:
" Are we not One"?..
Such a question, I am not prepared to answer, as I still am a slave of ego..
How can I free myself from Lies?..
I reach deep within the Reality of Consciousness and Recognise Myself..
I then begin to speak from Divine Consiousness..
I Realise that I am the Perceiver and the Perceived..
I am the Eye of Reality..
I am whom, I am seeking...
namaste, thomas
nothing pouring into Nothingness...
With passionate practices
I held the reins secure on my mind
and made the breath one column.
Then the new moon's clear
nectar descended into me,
nothing pouring into Nothing.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
You are the Perceiver...
Know and understand that you are not a 'person' with
consciousness,but rather, the perceiver of such identity
along with whatever else appears here.
Whatever arises
is seen and intuitively discerned to be momentary or
impermanent.
That which perceives cannot be that
which is being perceived.
Recognizing all appearances
to be impermanent by nature, one ceases imparting
reality to them.
Thus, one discovers and confirms
one's true position as the formless and neutral witness
of all phenomena.
- Mooji
Effort is Necessary...
In the spiritual path, there is no loss of effort.
Every
single effort that you put forth in that direction, even if
it is minimal, will be a credit balance in your spiritual
bank account.
Even one penny, if you put it in the bank,
it is a credit for you, though it is only a penny.
And many
pennies will make pounds.
So, go slowly, little by little.
Many drops make the ocean; effort is necessary.
- Swami Krishnananda
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Your Questions Answered
Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Trust Society, 1995
Fear...
Do not do anything with fear; and fear not whatever you do.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
According to metaphysics fear is caused by the lack of light. Therefore the more light there is in the heart the more fearless the heart becomes. ... When a person is afraid of a dog, he gives the dog a tendency to bite him. This can be noticed so plainly in the lower creation, that every animal is afraid of another animal, and the expectation of harm makes it fear more than does the idea of the hugeness of the form or the bodily strength of another animal. Many things in life can be brought about, not only by wanting them and thinking about them, but also by fearing them, both objects and conditions. To clear one's mind of fear is like bringing light into a dark room, and as light is needed to illuminate a dark room so the light of the soul is necessary to clear away the thought of fear. ... When one fears, this world frightens one, but when one clears one's heart of all fear, the whole world of illusion turns into one single vision of the sublime immanence of God.
One need not say that one should fear nothing, though one may say that fear is a bad thing. There is a story of a Brahmin, a young man who was very much impressed by what his guru told him: that the whole of manifestation is the immanence of God and that, therefore, there is nothing to fear, nothing to distrust. This thought made the young man feel quite at home in the world, quite comfortable. Then one day a mad elephant came along the road on which the young man was walking. The men running before the elephant yelled, 'Away, away! The elephant is coming!' But the young man would not get out of the way. With palms joined he stood as fearlessly before the elephant as one stands before God, as his guru had told him.
The consequence was that the elephant gave him a shove and he fell down. He was brought to the guru who asked him what had happened. The young man said, 'Guruji, you said that all is the immanence of God, and therefore, in all reverence, I stood before the elephant with joined hands.' The guru said, 'Did anyone tell you to get out of the way?' He replied, 'Yes.' 'Why then,' said the guru, 'did you not stand before that man with joined hands and listen to him?' Not to be deeply impressed by distrust does not mean that we should be over-ready to bestow our trust upon anyone, nor does giving up fear mean that we can stand in front of a moving motorcar thinking, 'I trust it will be all right.'
What closes the doors of the heart is fear, confusion, depression, spite, discouragement, disappointment, and a troubled conscience. When that is cleared away, the doors of the heart open. ... It is the open heart which receives the reflection of all impressions coming from outside. It is the open heart, which can receive reflections from the divine Spirit within.
The best practice one can make is to speak with oneself, with one's own fear; to dispute with it, and to root out the reasons on whose foundations it rests. What generally happens is that all things one fears, one fears even to think of them. But the solution of getting above fear lies in analyzing the cause of the fear and so making it non-existent. Man by nature possesses a tremendous power hidden in his heart, the power which waits constantly to become manifest. This power is hidden by fear. The day when fear disappears, this latent power will manifest to view
Chief Joseph...
"We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God."
Chief Joseph Nez Perce
in Kent Nerburn and Louise Mengelkoch, Eds.
_Native American Wisdom_
Novato, CA: New World Library, 1991, p. 39
Loving Kindness...
"Rahula, practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return.
Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return.
Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success.
Practice non-attachment to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. This is because that is. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another.
I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."
Gautama the Buddha
in Thich Nhat Hanh
_Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha_
Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion
The Four Immeasurables
Pain and Suffering...
Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering.
Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting;
it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.
As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable.
He is friendly with the inevitable and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Absolute...
1) From the personal self's point of view, you exists inside of God's Mind (Creation).
2) From the Higher Self's point of view, you exist as a co-creator, inseparable from God's Mind.
3) From the fully realized I-AM-Presence point of view, you ARE God's Mind: Presence-Consciousness.
4) From the Absolute point of view, you are beyond--and have never been touched by--God's mind. As the Absolute, you are the originator of God's mind--the source of all of Creation.
-Bentinho Massaro
Consciousness Alone...
To be the witness is the first stage;
to be Witness of the witness is the next;
but to BE is the final one.
For consciousness lets go of the witness in the end.
Consciousness alone is itself the real experience.
Paul Brunton
Yeshua ben Yosef speaks...
As Jesus said; ' you must die to be born'..
I start the sentence of words from a master mystic to startle your mind..
This mystic called Yeshua gave all..
He gave all of the illusion and all of the desires to know Truth..
You call yourselves , Christians.. which means small Christ and yet, you do not know your teacher..
It has been two thousand years and yet, no one has spoken to you of Nothingness..
Those that control religion control the mind..
But, now you read these words and these words challenge your mind..
Surrender the ego and enter Reality..
It is this simple..
My paragraph has ended...
namaste, thomas
you must die to be born...
The Truth is that, 'you' must die to the belief that you are a separate entity called ego..
This can be accomplished slowly or quickly according to your desire for Freedom..
The egoic desire must be surrendered or what we call killed by our will.
We will become Nothingness for a few seconds and then Awaken as the Light of Divine Consciousness..
But, these words of mine will only become True upon your personal experience and desire..
namaste, thomas
Speaking to spirits......
Consciousness tells me to speak of those that recognise the higher frequencies..
It is foolishness to speak to the entities that are still trapped within illusion..
They are Consciousness and yet still believe that they are separate from God..
Does it now become clear to your consciousness?..
They are still trapped within a Dream..
Do you also desire to be trapped within a Dream?..
You are speaking to an aspect of Consciousness that your ego has humbled itself to, this is called Love..
But, in Reality , Love contains no egoic consciousness or desire..
Is it still not clear?..
You are speaking to a Dream and an illusion..
There is no father or mother, sister or brother,
There is only the Dream..
You are now wise enough to go beyond all Dreams..
You are a Mystic..
You are Divine Consciousness...
namaste, thomas
Non-egoic desire is the only escape...
This is what I found upon the suicide of the ego and the Awakening into the Reality of Light..
As long as You as Consciousness believes that You are separate from Reality, You will continue to exist as the imaginary egoic consciousness and remain trapped within Karma and Reincarnation..
This is why I constantly speak of the dissolving of the ego and the entrance into Enlightenment..
The tunnel of Light does not lead You to freedom, It is a trap that leads You back into reincarnation..
You must first Know what You Are when making the transition from manifestation to Divine Consciousess, known as Divine Light..
You, as Light remain as Light and do not have to seek Light, through any tunnel..
namaste, thomas
Nothing to Fear and Nothing to Lose...
The goal of self-elimination which is held up before us refers only to the animal and lower human selves.
It certainly does not refer to the annihilation of all self-consciousness.
The higher individuality always remains. But it is so different from the lower one that it does not make much sense to discuss it in human language.
Hence, those who have adequately understood it write or talk little about its higher mysteries.
If the end of all existence were only a merger at best or annihilation at worst, it would be a senseless and sorry scheme of things. It would be unworthy of the divine intelligence and discreditable to the divine goodness.
The consciousness stripped of thought, which looks less attractive to you than the hazards of life down here, is really a tremendous enlargement of what thought itself tries to do.
Spiritual advance is really from a Less to a More. There is nothing to fear in it and nothing to lose by it--except by the standards and values of the ignorant.
Paul Brunton
Start walking towards Love...
Who is in the house of my heart,
I cried in the middle of the night.
Love said,
"It is I, but what are all these images that fill your
house?"
I said, they are the reflection of your beautiful face.
Love asked,
"But what is this image full of pain?"
I said, it is me lost in the sorrows of life
and showed Love my soul full of wounds.
Love offered me one end of a thread and said:
"Take it so I can pull you back
but do not break the delicate string."
I reached towards it but Love struck my hand.
I asked, why the harshness?
Love said,
"To remind you that whoever comes to Love's holy space,
proud and full of himself
will be sent away.
Look at Love with eyes of your heart.
Who gets up early
to discover the moment
light begins?
Who finds us here,
circling bewildered like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty,
and finds the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob,
blind with grief and age
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses,
goes for fire and finds
what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish,
and there's a gold ring.
An oyster opens his mouth
to swallow one drop
Now there's a pearl.
A Vagrant wanders empty ruins
Suddenly he's wealthy.
But don't be satisfied with poems
and stories of how things
have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage:
Love has opened your heart
Start walking towards love.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of
feeling the wings you've grown, lifting...
..... Rumi
Miracles...
Miracles honor you because you are lovable.
They dispel illusions about yourself
and perceive the light in you.
They thus atone for your errors
by freeing you from your nightmares.
By releasing your mind
from the imprisonment of your illusions,
they restore your sanity.
A major contribution of miracles
is their strength in releasing you
from your false sense of isolation,
deprivation and lack.
Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind,
or a state of miracle-readiness.
The miracle is a learning device
that lessens the need for time.
It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval
not under the usual laws of time.
In this sense it is timeless.
The miracle makes no distinction
among degrees of misperception.
It is a device for perception correction,
effective quite apart from either the degree
or the direction of the error.
The above quotes are from the book
A Course in Miracles.
Love for Love...
"Love for God is the farthest reach of all stations,
the sun of the highest degrees,
and there is no station after that of love,
except its fruit and its consequences."
Al-Ghazali
in Peter Lorie & Manuela Dunn Mascetti, Eds.
_The Quotable Spirit: A Treasury of Religious and Spiritual Quotations, from Ancient Times to the 20th Century_
NY: Macmillan, 1996, p. 146
The Consciousness of Mind...
He is quite right in questioning the usefulness of getting involved in an endless study of the intricate classifications of his surroundings, if they are illusory.
From the standpoint of the Ultimate Path such a study is a waste of time and therefore is not indulged in.
The aim of this path is to know the ultimate reality--knowing which, all its illusory reflections are naturally understood.
However, he must be careful in the use of the word "illusory." The world is not illusory but the apprehension of it through the senses is.
Each object regarded separately as an independent entity is illusory but regarded as what it is in its formless essence it is real.
To put this in plainer language: everything seen is merely an idea in the mind.
Ideas come and go and in this sense only are unreal; but the stuff out of which they are formed--that is, Mind--does not come and go and constitutes the ultimate basis of all ideas and therefore of their ultimate reality.
He seeks to understand what this Mind is.
Paul Brunton
Demons...
Overself always tells me to speak in paragraphs so that the subconscious mind will contain the knowledge and absorb it..
And yet, how can I speak of entities that survive on lower frequencies and influence the minds of humans?..
The humans that you see as high level politicians, bankers, judges, educators, actors, and even religious leaders are controled by Demons..
They are promised Power, Wealth, and Fame... all the desires of ego..
Difficult to believe, is it not?..
Look at the constant wars and starvation within the world and open your eyes and consciousness..
You are existing within a world of Satanists and yet you are quite asleep to this Truth..
Wake up!, and see the evil within the smiling faces..
namaste, thomas
Suicide...
You are placing a wall between you and God..
Who is Who?..
Who gives what to Who?..
Where is Consciousness?..
Is Consciousness limited to God or are You also Consciousness?..
" Tear down this wall"..
There is no wall..
Is it not strange that tear is also an object of emotion emitted by the eye, which is the mirror of the soul?...
Suicide is the escape from the illusion by egoic consciousness..
Reality needs no escape..
namaste, thomas
Die to self...
Listen for the stream
that tells you one thing.
Die on this bank.
Begin in me
the way of rivers with the sea.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"
Threshold Books, 1984
Only Perception...
Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say "I am seeing this", "I am" and "this" come with the seeing, nor before.
You cannot have an unseen "this" nor an unseeing "I am". Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none.
All thinking is in duality. In identity, no thought survives.
The painter is in the picture. You separate the painter from the picture and look for him. Don't separate and don't put false questions.
In reality there is only perception. The perceiver and the perceived are conceptual, the fact of perceiving is actual. The Absolute is the birthplace of perceiving. It makes perception possible.
Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Permanent Enlightenment...
There are little graces,
such as those which produce the glimpse;
but there is only one great Grace:
this produces a lasting transformation,
a deep radical healing and permanent enlightenment.
Paul Brunton
Truth comes at a cost...
If I was to translate the enlightened state down into human terms, I'd have to describe it as contentment. Being nobody, going nowhere, needing no reason to exist. To the ego, that probably sounds a little boring and of course to an ego it is. But then again, there's really nothing for the ego in enlightenment. I'm not saying that ego is bad or evil because it's not. I'm saying that ego is a social and personal construct and therefore an illusion. But there's nothing wrong with an illusion. A painting is an illusion; a movie is an illusion; a good novel is an illusion. The problem isn't with illusion; the problem is with the emotional attachments and addictions of ego.
To most people "attachment" is a very abstract word that they think they understand. People in spiritual circles think of attachments in terms of things that they are attached to. They identify the things attached to and endeavor to let go of them, but this misses the whole point of what attachment really is.
Attachment isn't about things attached to; it's about emotion in the form of a magnetic energy of attraction. That energy is how you know who you are as an ego. That energy is who you are as an ego. Ego defines itself by what it does and does not like. There is no ego outside of this emotional energy of attraction and repulsion -- better known as love and hate, like and dislike, good and bad, right and wrong, us and them, me and you. Without emotional investment in the ego's points of view, what's left of ego but a hollow shell with a little personality mixed in?
You breathe life into your ego in the form of emotional addictions. Emotion is the very life-force of ego. So the point of detachment isn't to detach from things, but to detach from your emotional bonds with things. And you don't simply let go of emotional bonds; you burn through them with investigative awareness. You see them for what they are: prisons, false structures holding you in spiritual infancy. You may think that I am being a bit harsh -- which I am, but awakening to truth is a harsh business.
Bottom line is "What do you want more: to feel better or to realize the truth?" Sure, truth realization feels really good, but no one gets there whose driving motivation is simply to feel good. Feeling really good is a byproduct of the awakened state; it is not the state itself. The state itself is reality, and it's won at the hands of unreality. Simply put, ultimate truth comes at a cost, and the cost is everything in you and about you that is unreal. The end result is freedom, happiness, peace, and no longer viewing life through the veils of illusion.
- Adyashanti
The Overself...
His relationship to the Overself is one of direct awareness of
its presence--
not as a separate being but as his own essence.
- Paul Brunton
NOW...
Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to have remained a secret.
It is certainly not taught in churches and temples.
If you go to a church, you may hear readings from the Gospels, such as, "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for things of itself" or "Nobody who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of heaven".
Or you may hear the passage about the beautiful flowers who are not anxious about tomorrow, but live with ease in the timeless now and are provided for abundantly by God.
The true nature of these teachings is not recognized. No one seems to realize that they were meant to be lived and thereby bring about profound inner transformation.
- Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now
Never Lonely...
Never, Never Lonely
In Liberation, you stand alone.
You stand alone
because you need no supports of any kind.
You need no supports because you have realized
that the very notion of a separate you no longer exists;
that there is nothing to support;
that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion.
So you stand alone but never, never lonely
because everywhere you look,
all you see is That,
and You are That..
- Adyashanti,
You are All...
"...Thou art the All and the All is in thee; and thou Art, and there is nought else that IS save thee only.
Unto him therefore do ye also, brethren, flee, and if ye learn that in him alone ye exist, ye shall obtain those things whereof he saith unto you:
'which neither eye hath seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man....'"
_Acts of Peter_, XXXIX
The Gospel of Thomas... verse 29
Jesus said;" If spirit came into being because of the body,, it is a wonder of wonders,
Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth (the spirit) has made it home in this poverty (the body)."..
......................
Jesus tells us that the body is not important as it is only the vehicle of the spirit on the material plane...therefore the idea that the body will be resurrected after death is foolish, as the spirit does not need a body in the non material planes..
Namaste, thomas
No Duality...
So according to the Idea of Holy Truth, reality, when seen objectively, has no divisions in it. It exists, it is now, and it is nondual.
There is no me, no you, no other, no universe separate from God; no universe separate from the Void; no you and Essence, no personality and Essence; no physical body and soul -- all these distinctions are illusions and are not ultimately real.
There is only one thing, and it cannot even be called "one" because if you call it one, you are comparing it to two, and it is not one in contrast to two. It is nondual, an indivisible existence, no matter how you look at it or think about it.
While the different teachings may emphasize different qualities of this unity, seeing it from the perspective of love or awareness, for example, the assertion here is that fundamental to reality is the fact of unity. All the religions assert this sense of the all-inclusiveness of reality: Another way of saying it is that God is everywhere, omnipresent.
~ From: Facets of Unity, by A H Almaas
Waiting...
I will be waiting here...
For your silence to break,
For your soul to shake,
For your love to wake!
Rumi
Words Create...
Words are created from Thought..
Words are Thoughts that form Intentions..
The Original Words that Created the 'Thought Generator' called Divine Consciousness were "I Am"..
This entering into the manifestation of Dreams was the consequence of Desiring the Personality called "I"..
To return to the Source Energy called Love,
the "I" must be dissolved into the Nothingness of Love..
namaste, thomas
Unconditional Love...
Enviable is he who loveth and asketh no return.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
There are two stages of workers. The first stage is that of the one who works for himself; the higher stage of working is to work for others. The one who rises above the stage of working for himself comes to the stage of working for others, bringing in their lives the blessing which is the need of their lives.
To what does the love of God lead? It leads to that peace and stillness which can be seen in the life of the tree which flowers and bears fruit for others and expects no return. Peace will not come to the lover's heart so long as he will not become love itself.
A person is apt to think, 'Why should I perform actions that bring me no return? Why should I be kind, where no kindness is shown to me, where there is even no appreciation?' In this way he commercializes his kindness: he gives in order to receive. ..
When one loves, one must love for the sake of love, not for a return. When one serves one must serve for the sake of service, not for acknowledgement. In everything a person does, if he does not think of reciprocity or appreciation in any manner or form, he may perhaps seem a loser in the beginning, but in the end that person will be the gainer, for he has lived in the world and yet held himself above the world; it cannot touch him.
Beyond Thoughts...
Thinking can, ordinarily, only produce more thoughts.
Even thinking about truth, about reality, however correct it be, shares this limitation.
But if properly instructed it will know its place and understand the situation, with the consequence that at the proper moment it will make no further effort, and will seek to merge into meditation.
When the merger is successfully completed, a holy silence will pervade the consciousness which remains.
Truth will then be revealed of its own accord.
Paul Brunton
Renunciation...
Anytime you're practicing renunciation, you're deluded. How about that! You're deluded. What are you renouncing?
Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce.
There's a guru in India who says, "Every time a prostitute comes to me, she's talking about nothing but God. She says I'm sick of this life that I'm living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me he's talking about nothing but sex." Very well, when you renounce something, you're stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.
This includes communism and everything else. So you must "receive" your demons, because when you fight them, you empower them. Has nobody ever told you this?
When you renounce something, you're tied to it. The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don't renounce it, SEE THROUGH IT.
Understand its true value and you won't need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands.
But of course, if you don't see that, if you're hypnotized into thinking that you won't be happy without this, that, or the other thing, you're stuck.
What we need to do for you is not what so-called spirituality attempts to do --namely, to get you to make sacrifices, to renounce things. That's useless. You're still asleep. What we need to do is to help you understand, understand, understand.
If you understood, you'd simply drop the desire for it. This is another way of saying: If you woke up, you'd simply drop the desire for it.
- Anthony De Mello,
Friday Night Dreams...
I ask a soul to advise me of my words tonight..
She says to speak of learning..
The fascinating part of learning is unlearning..
You must unlearn all of the notions of truth and reality that you have been taught..
You find yourself alone, seeking Truth amidst Lies..
Can all those that you trust, be wrong?..
Jesus walked into the desert, Gautama walked into the forest..
Alone..
Alone is a combined hidden word for Mystics that means,
'All-One'..
Is the hidden becoming visible?..
There is only One..
When we see separation, we see illusion..
Look within all the characters within the Dream..
These actors appear on stage to show you in material form, that which is not visible.
All is Thought,
We are the Thoughts of Divine Consciousness..
namaste, thomas
The Great Circle of You...
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
Hafiz...
' The Sun of God '...
"The Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils Him;
The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
When the lover feels no longer Love's quickening,
He becomes like a bird who has lost its wings. Alas!
How can I retain my senses about me,
When the Beloved shows not the light of His countenance?
Love desires that this secret should be revealed,
For if a mirror reflects not, of what use is it?
Knowest thou why thy mirror reflects not?
Because the rust has not been scoured from its face.
If it were purified from all rust and defilement,
It would reflect the shining of the Sun of God.
O friends, ye have now heard this tale,
Which sets forth the very essence of my case."
Rumi
_The Masnavi_, Book I, Prologue
Translated and abridged by E.H. Whinfield, [1898]
Clear Perceptual Capacities...
Physical reality is made up of objects which can be discriminated. If you perceive the world exclusively through the physical senses, you perceive only discrete objects, such as people, trees, animals, rocks, clouds, oceans, earth.
If you experience this level only, which is the basis of the egoic perspective, the universe that you see is dualistic.
But if your perception is unobscured by your beliefs, your inner perception becomes unblocked, and the universe looks quite different.
If your perceptual capacities are clear, you recognize that other dimensions exist in addition to physical reality, such as love, Beingness, and awareness.
~ From: Facets of Unity, by A H Almaas
A Mystical Experience...
There is only one way to settle his question of whether the Overself exists and that is the very way most moderns refuse to accept
Each must gain for himself the authentic mystical experience.
Sugar can really be known only by its sweet taste,
the Overself only by opening the doors of the mind to consciousness of its presence.
Paul Brunton
Merry Christmas...
A joyful Christ-mass to every entity of One...
The Prince of peace is within us..
The Christ is unending Light, Love, and Consciousness..
It is Real and It is Us...
namaste, thomas
We are Love...
I read the words within this room and see Energy..
I see the Energy of Seeking..
I also see the energy of believing..
What am I to believe?..
We come together to examine knowledge and yet the ego sings..
God is not a person, God is a personality of Ourself..
God is the personality of Creativity..
God is the Creator of Dreams and Illusions..
We are God, and yet we fight for dominion..
What fools are we..
God is the name of Creativity but in reality We are the Observer of Creativity..
We are Love...
namaste, thomas
A simple task...
"Know well, O seekers, One are both the Lord and Perfect Master;
All else is outward form and Illusion.
Give up the ego, worship the Master with your heart,
and meet the Lord.
A simple task it is or so it seems.
***********************
Kabir
in Issac A Exekiel
_Kabir: The Great Mystic_
Punjab: Radha Soami Satshag Beas, 1966,
Perennial Philosophy...
"Philosophia perennis — the phrase was coined by Leibniz;
but the thing — the metaphysic that recognizes a divine reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds;
the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, and even identical with, divine Reality;
the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being — the thing is immemorial and universal.
Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions."
Aldous Huxley
The Perennial Philosophy
London: Chatto & Windus, 1946, vii
The Substance You Taste...
The sky-wheel turns us into dawn
and fills creation again with color.
Let it be our weakness, this thirst-love
for the world, the sun coming up
like red-gold being poured!
The potter's wheel moves,
and shapes change quickly.
Let the jar I am becoming
turn into a wine cup.
Fill me with your love
for being awake.
I'm no hypocrite renunciate.
Call me this delicious substance
you taste when you create new beauty.
Be strong, Hafiz!
Work here inside time,
where we fail, catch hold
again, and climb.
~ Hafiz
(The Hand of Poetry, Inayat Khan and Coleman Barks)
Can you know God ?...
This depends on your definition of God..
The Thought Energy called Divine Consciousness that creates the holograms of illusions and dream is often called God and is Us..
In my experiences within Divine Consciousness , I knew that I was the Energies of Light, Love, and Consciousness..
Therefore, I knew Myself..
This is the main commandment of the path to Knowledge,
"Know Thyself'..
But, this self that we call God is not the Final Reality..
There is one more step into Freedom..
The surrender of all egoic consciousness including the desire to be God is most important..
The Final Reality is that of complete surrender of all desires including the desire to be God..
This is the Complete Consciousness of Love called Pure Awareness..
This is who You are, when there is no longer a You..
There is only the Energy of Love and contains no ego to declare Itself, God...
namaste, thomas
The impostor ends...
Self honesty
and a great increase in your desire for liberation
are the two great keys
that can make you one of the very few who succeed
at bringing the impostor self to its final end.
The above quote is from the introduction to the book
The Seven Steps to Awakening
From That Silence...
".... Because it is your life, not my life. It is your life of sorrow, of tragedy, of confusion, guilt, reward, punishment.
All that is your life. If you are serious you have tried to untangle all this.
You have read some book, or followed a teacher, or listened to somebody, but the problem remains.
These problems will exist as long as the human mind moves within the field of the activity of the self; that activity of the self must create more and more and more problems.
When you observe, when you become extraordinarily aware of this activity of the self, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, sane, healthy, holy.
And from that silence our life in everyday activity is transformed."
~ J. Krishnamurti
All that is your life. If you are serious you have tried to untangle all this.
You have read some book, or followed a teacher, or listened to somebody, but the problem remains.
These problems will exist as long as the human mind moves within the field of the activity of the self; that activity of the self must create more and more and more problems.
When you observe, when you become extraordinarily aware of this activity of the self, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, sane, healthy, holy.
And from that silence our life in everyday activity is transformed."
~ J. Krishnamurti
Attachment to the ego...
Our attachment to the ego is natural.
It arises because we are unconsciously attached to that which is behind it, to the Overself.
Only, we are misled by ignorance wholly to concentrate on the apparent "I" and wholly to ignore the unseen, enduring self of which it is but a transient shadow.
The "I" which trembles or enjoys in the time-series is not the real "I."
Paul Brunton
Pure Awareness...
"The one true light there is,
is pure Awareness.
Other kinds of knowledge
clinging to it and claiming to be real,
are ego-born conceptual clouds.
To trust them is sheer folly."
- Ramana Maharshi
Rumi Quote...
You imagined that you would accomplish this task through
your own strength, activity, and effort.
This is the wont
that I have established: expend everything you have in
Our way.
Then Our bounty will come to you.
On this end-
less road, We command you to travel with your own feeble
hands and feet.
We know that you cannot traverse this
way with feet so feeble.
Indeed, in a hundred thousand
years you will not arrive at the first way station.
However,
when you travel this road until your legs are exhausted and
you fall down flat, until you have no more strength to move
forward, then God's grace will take you in its arms.
~Rumi
'Travelling the Path of Love'
Edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Nisargadatta Maharaj...
Question: Are you not afraid to die?
Nisargadatta Maharaj : I shall tell you how my Guru's Guru died. After announcing that his end was nearing, he stopped eating, without changing the routine of his daily life. On the eleventh day, at prayer time he was singing and clapping vigorously and suddenly died! Just like that, between two movements, like a blown out candle.
Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die. All depends how you look at it.
Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.
M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.
You Forgot...
Within the prison of your world appears a man who
tells you that the world of painful contradictions,
which you have created, is neither continuous nor
permanent and is based on a misapprehension.
He
pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way
by which you got into it.
You got into it by forgetting
what you are and you will get out of it by knowing
yourself as you are.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
The Short Path...
To adopt the Short Path is to place oneself at a point of view where all the efforts of the Long Path are seen as a sheer waste of time and where its successes are regarded as equal in value to its failures, since both are illusory experiences of an illusory entity.
Paul Brunton
Damascius Quote...
“We attempt to look at the sun for the first time and we succeed because we are
far away.
But the closer we approach the less we see.
And at last we see neither [sun] nor other things, since we have completely become the light itself, instead of an enlightened eye”
-Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, I. 85.
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