Uniteing with Overself...
"Not one is so unprepared, unlearned, or uncouth that he could not become one with God.
If he is ready to unite his will purely and unreservedly with the will of God,
all he has to do is say,
'Lord, show me Thy will and grant me the strength to fulfill it.'
and God does so with abundance."
Meister Eckhart
in Jonathan Star
_Two Suns Rising: A Collection of Sacred Writings_
NY: Bantam, 1991, p. 159
Ram Tzu Speaks...
Ram Tzu knows this…
There is a hole
Inside you that
You try desperately
To fill up.
You pour in
Various satisfactions
To make yourself
Feel alright.
Sometimes,
If you can get enough,
The hole fills to the brim
And there is a
Blissful moment of evenness.
But your hole is open
At the bottom.
Its contents always leak through
Leaving you empty
Again
And desperate
For more.
Ram Tzu know what must be done…
You must be thrown in the hole.
- Ram Tzu
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
No Way for the Spiritually "Advanced"
Ram Tzu
Advaita Press, 1990
Supreme Enlightenment...
Just as a person who doesn't wake from a dream doesn't realize he's dreaming, a person who hasn't opened the Eye finds it difficult to understand that he is blind.
Chuang-tzu once said that it takes a great awakening to realize that you have been having a big dream.
This world of delusion is one big dream. And even a Bodhisattva who has achieved Universal Enlightenment should realize that he is still dreaming. Only when all remaining elements of ignorance in the Alayavijnana are swept away does one awaken from this dream.
Then, and only then, do you see your true Buddha nature.
You are not an awakened person, you are not a free-flowing person before this Supreme Enlightenment. The freedom that people talk about is freedom in a dream; but only a fully enlightened person is truly free. How can you call freedom in a dream true freedom? There is a great difference between dream and reality. An enlightened being, a Buddha, a free being is one who has fully awakened, one who has experienced No Mind. one who has seen the great brilliance. Only such a being is truly free-flowing.
And once a person becomes that free-flowing being, he has no need for the Buddha, no need for the predecessors, no need for the Tripitaka. Terms like "Buddha" and "predecessors" are merely medicine to help you wake from your dream.
Our disease is this dreaming, and once we are cured we have no need for medicine. Medicine is for the ill, not for the cured.
"You have your own way to go, so why do you follow others?" This one sentence illustrates the true freedom of Buddhism.
Tong Songchol (1912~1993), one of the great Zen masters in the last century was also called the Living Buddha of Korea.
Thoughts on a wednesday night...
Overself will not let me rest until I speak from the Heart..
The ego interupts and declares that it is the voice of this hologram..
The Heart gently reminds the ego, that it is only a dream from Consciousness..
The ego steps back into the shadows and Heart speaks..
" these quotation marks bring ego within the dream"..
Therefore, I will speak without quotations..
I am the quest that you are seeking..
I am the end of suffering..
I am the god that you offer to..
I am the Light that makes this hologram possible..
I am You...
namaste, thomas
Enlightenment...
When the wall between his little ego and the infinite Being collapses,
he is said by some Orientals to have entered Nirvana,
the Void,
and by
others to have joined his soul to God.
— Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2:
Enlightenment Which Stays > # 245...
- Paul Brunton
Intuition...
"Intuition or direct knowledge does not depend on any data from the senses. That is why the intuitive faculty is often called the 'sixth sense.'
Everyone has this sixth sense, but most people do not develop it. However, almost everyone has had some intuitional experience, perhaps a 'feeling' that a particular thing is going to happen, when there is no sensory evidence to indicate it.
"It is important to develop intuition, or direct soul knowledge, for he who is God-conscious is sure of himself. He knows, and he knows that he knows...."
Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda
_Man's Eternal Quest_
New Delhi: Yogoda Satsanga/SRF, 1975, 1982, p. 15
Who you are...
Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't
matter,
and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr. Seuss
The essence of the world...
Philosophy does not advocate belief in the orthodox Christian theory that the universe was created from nothing, nor its related notion of a sudden first creation, which is an equally untenable assumption.
There is no moment when the universe has not existed, either latently or actively, and consequently there will be no moment when it will not continue to exist, either latently or actively.
This is so because the world does not arise by a sudden act of creation but by a gradual process of manifestation.
Since there is no particular moment in the universe's long history when it could be said to have been first created, it has never had a beginning and consequently will never have an end.
It has never been started so it can never be finished. It is eternal and self-sustaining because it is the body of God, who is eternal and self-sustaining.
Creation begins and ends nowhere and nowhen. The conception of the universe which presumes to assign a date to creation is a nebulous one and will vary with the mere caprice of the "dater."
He will hatch out a creation theory to suit himself, depending therefore on human temperament and taste. Philosophy repudiates the mentalistic theory as generally interpreted, for external Nature is not regarded as unreal.
It is a fact that our experience of the world's appearance is ephemeral but our experience of the world's existence is essentially real.
It follows therefore that those who would turn the world into an illusion to which no value should be attached are compelled to recognize its presence and evolve their theory to account for it.
The truth is that the cosmos is truly a self-revelation of the World-Mind. It is spun out of God's very self. Thus instead of an absentee God, we have an everywhere-present one who is the very essence of the world.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 1: The Cosmos of Change > # 56
Paul Brunton
Rumi speaks...
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
The Self is the Master...
Who is a master? He is the Self after all.
According
to the stages of development of the mind the Self
manifests as the master externally.
The famous
ancient saint Dattatreya said that he had more than
twenty-four masters.
The master is one from who
one learns anything. The Guru may be sometimes
inanimate also, as in the case of Dattatreya.
God,
Guru and the Self are identical.
A spiritually-minded man thinks that God is all-
pervading and takes God for his Guru.
Later, God
brings him in contact with a personal Guru and the
man recognises him as all in all.
Lastly the same man
is made by the grace of the master to feel that his Self
is the master.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"Be As You Are"
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
edited by David Godman
Arkana, 1985
Morning...
Do not say ‘It is morning,’
and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Thinking and Experience...
A clear distinction has to be made between thinking about God and the experience of God.
Each has its place.
Thinking and evaluating take place on the intellectual level;
one should not limit oneself to that but should try to arrive at the inner stillness, the experience of the Overself during meditation.
There should be a clear sense of the difference between these two.
The piling up of thoughts, however reasonable they are, acts only as a signal; they point out which way to go, but at the end drop them.
-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation >
Chapter 4: Meditative Thinking > # 4
Paul Brunton
Ignorance...
Ignorance is ignorance of the Self,
and to remove it Self-Awareness is required.
When you come to an awareness of the Self,
ignorance vanishes.
If you don't lose contact with the Self,
ignorance can never arise.
- Annamalai Swami
Brahman...
"Once a dispute arose in the court of the Maharajah of Burdwan among the learned men there, as to who was the greater Deity, Siva or Vishnu. Some gave preference to Siva, others to Vishnu.
When the dispute grew hot, a wise pandit remarked, addressing the Raja, 'Sire, I have neither met Siva nor seen Vishnu; how can I say who is the greater of the two?' At this the dispute stopped, for none of the disputants really had seen the Deities.
Similarly none should compare one Deity with another. When a man has really seen a Deity, he comes to know that all the Deities are manifestations of one and the same Brahman."
Sri Ramakrishna
in F. Max Müller, Trans.
Ramakrishna: His Life And Sayings
From The Collected Edition Of Prof. Max Müller's Works,
New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898, p. 130-131
The physical body...
As long as the spirit is interested in the physical body it holds it, permeates it, and embraces it.
But as soon as it feels that it no longer has any use for the body, it drops it.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
The root of all phenomena...
The root of all phenomena is your mind.
If unexamined, it rushes after experiences, ingenious in the games of deception.
If you look right into it, it is free of any ground or origin,
In essence free of any coming, staying or going.
- JAMYANG KHYENTSE CHÖKYI LODRÖ
Black Elk speaks...
"Our prayer will really be the prayer of all things,
for all are really one;
all this I have seen in my vision."
Black Elk (as told to Joseph Epes Brown)
The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account Of The Seven Rites Of The Oglala Sioux
Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1989, p. 70
The world...
The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real because you think of
it all the time;
cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin
mist.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
The opening of soul...
Intelligence exercised constantly in musing upon the nature of life,
the movements of the universe,
the psychology of man,
and the mystery of God--
if exercised in calmness, intuitive balance, and depth--
leads to the opening up of the soul.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 5: Self-Development > # 421
Paul Brunton
Thoughts on a saturday night...
I spent time with those that share liquids, as Jesus did wine..
The table was long and the 'Last Supper' appeared within my mind..
The talk of Philosophy was not present but the unity of consciousness was..
The ego within a few, would feel unacknowledged..
The ego always demands attention, as it is necessary for the survival of this illusion..
But Love won the day..
The egoic desire within the souls, left this space, within the captive body..
So who is left?..
The Lovers are left..
Those souls of humility that share the wonder of Love..
Do they still feel the pain of ego ?..
Yes, of course,
But, they know the Reality of Love...
namaste, thomas
The Witness...
You do not consist of any of the elements -- earth, water, fire, air,
or even ether.
To be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the
witness of these.
If only you will remain resting in consciousness,
seeing yourself as
distinct from the body,
then even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds.
-- Oneness in Christ
www.mysticalprinciples.com
Unity...
The aim of the mystic is to keep near to the idea of unity, and to find out where we unite.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
When people say that they distinguish between right and wrong by their results, even then they cannot be sure if in the punishment there was not a reward, or in the reward a punishment. What does this show us? It shows us that life is a puzzle of duality. The pairs of opposites keep us in an illusion and make us think, 'This is this, and that is that'. At the same time by throwing a greater light upon things we shall find in the end that they are quite different from what we had thought.
Seeing the nature and character of life the Sufi says that it is not very important to distinguish between two opposites. What is most important is to recognize that One which is hiding behind it all. Naturally after realizing life the Sufi climbs the ladder which leads him to unity, to the idea of unity which comes through the synthesis of life, by seeing One in all things, in all beings.
Whatever a man desires, that desire informs us of the state of mind he is in, and those who understand the mind well, know the mind of another simply by studying the desires and tendencies of his life. Love of a rose, a lily, a jasmine, of sweet, sour, salt, or savory things, expresses the particular tendency of a person's mind, the mood he is in. Modern education omits the study of the truth which teaches us that unity comes from nature's variety, whereas the sole aim of the mystic is to keep near to the idea of unity and to find out where we unite.
There is an Arabic saying, 'If you wish to know God, you must know yourself.' How little man knows while he is in the intoxication of individualism! He thinks, 'I am a separate being; you are another; there is no connection between you and me, and we all have our own joys and free will.' Did man but know it, his life is dependent not only on the objects and things that keep the body alive, but also on the activity of a thousand minds in a day. ...
Who then can say, 'I am an individual, independent and free, I can think as I wish, and I can do what I wish? ... We are connected with one another. Our lives are tied together, and there is a link in which we can see one current running through all. There are many globes and lamps, and yet one current is running through all. The mystic seeks to realize this constantly and to impress it on his mind in whatever he may see. What, for him, are the waves of the sea? Are they not the sea itself?
Inwardly empty...
A shortcut into the path is to be inwardly empty and outwardly quiet,
like water that is clear and still,
myriad images reflecting in it,
neither sinking nor floating,
all things spontaneously so.
- Fu-jung
The Quest...
When a man is thoroughly awakened to the reality of the philosophic goal, he will soon or late hear its summons to him.
When that happens he embarks upon the Quest.
For example, he starts an activity of conscious self-discipline and deliberate restraint, a process of re-educating the mind, the feelings, and the will.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 2: Its Choice > # 216
Paul Brunton
Ghosts...
A friend named Jim, asked me about spirits or ghosts..
We have entered the third dimension of lower frequencies..
We have entered the compression of Light, which is called atoms..
There are many more dimensions of different frequencies that exist within this same space..
This space is just another manifestation of Thought..
You are this 'Thought' but you have fallen asleep..
When we sleep within this manifestation, we become Nothingness..
Our thoughts in dreams are just Thoughts that desire to exist..
These ghosts desire to exist..
They do not know that they are the Nothingness of Light..
They stay around the only thoughts that they have,
which is existence..
They are sometimes called 'souls' , but they are the Thoughts of Creation...
namaste, thomas
The labor of mind...
"To enjoy the nature of knowledge,
you must labor in the field of thought"..
This is what is required to find meaning within this dream..
Be it meditation or contemplation,
you must become friends with the mind..
The interesting finding within this labor,
is that you must travel beyond the mind...
namaste, thomas
The tricky nature of ego...
"Before 'Real Seeing' is revealed, one gets many experiences on the Path.
If not rightly valued, these experiences prove very alluring and deceptive.
If one starts feeling proud about one's flight in a dream, how much pride will the experiences on the Path nourish?
One has to be very watchful of the tricky nature of the ego, which tries to maintain its separateness more and more.
"One thing is certain -- the more importance and attention you pay to such experiences, the more you get bound.
Don't run after experiences, but remain steadfast in your love for God."
Meher Baba
_Darshan Hours_
Edited by Eruch Jessawalla and Rick Chapman
Berkeley: Beguine Library, 1971, p. 4
The witness attitude...
Develop the witness attitude and you will
find in your own experience that detachment
brings control.
The state of witnessing is
full of power,
there is nothing passive about it.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
The world of 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.
This much can be said to be the
element of truth contained in some theoretical doctrines of Vedantic
Advaita and Christian Science...
...by Paul Brunton
The Supreme Being...
"In the beginning was He alone, sufficient unto Himself:
the formless, colourless, and unconditioned Being.
Then was there neither beginning, middle, nor end;
Then were no eyes, no darkness, no light;
Then were no ground, air, nor sky; no fire, water, nor earth;
no rivers like the Ganges and the Jumna,
no seas, oceans, and waves.
Then was neither vice nor virtue;
scriptures there were not, as the Vedas and Puranas, nor as the Koran.
Kabir ponders in his mind and says,
"Then was there no activity:
the Supreme Being remained merged in the unknown depths of His own self."
The Guru neither eats nor drinks, neither lives nor dies:
Neither has He form, line, colour, nor vesture.
He who has neither caste nor clan nor anything else --
How may I describe His glory?
He has neither form nor formlessness,
He has no name,
He has neither colour nor colourlessness,
He has no dwelling-place."
Kabir
in _Songs of Kabir_, LXXXI
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915, p. 127-128
Self-enquiry...
Self-enquiry is the direct path to Self-realization
or enlightenment.
The only way to make the mind
cease its outward activities is to turn it inward.
By
steady and continuous investigation into the nature
of the mind, the mind itself gets transformed into
That to which it owes its own existence.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
Spirit and matter...
The difference between spirit and matter is like the difference between water and ice: frozen water is ice, and melted ice is water.
It is spirit in its denseness that we call matter; it is matter in its fineness that may be called spirit.
If there is water and ice, water will run, the ice will stay where it is. It does not mean that ice will not return to its original condition: it will, but its time has not yet come.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Thoughts on a wednesday night...
Overself tells me to speak of my day..
I endured surgery today and yet still speak within the characters of words..
Why ?..
Perhaps, words are the path to the door of Reality..
Words are the thoughts of heart and mind..
My eyes see the words of those that inspire me..
I do not see their faces and yet words let me enter their hearts..
Words are our link to each other..
This is why egoic consciousness does not want us to be educated..
Words are vibrations of unseen voices..
Words are the body of every book..
As a soul once said;
" Say the 'word' and my servant will be healed"..
"In the beginning was the 'word' and the 'word' was with God,
and the 'word' was God". (Genesis 1.1)
Contemplate upon the 'word'...
namaste, thomas
Know Thyself...
At the end of his long life of selfless teaching, the Buddha said that you must strive on the path yourself—the Awakened Ones only point the way.
Like the Buddha, all genuine mystics will tell you that the ultimate authority and touchstone of truth is not any scriptures or dogmas or teachers, but your own deepest experience.
“Don’t take my word for it,” they will say, “find out for yourself!” Just as a scientist tests hypotheses using experiments, so you should test the teachings in the laboratory of your life using spiritual practices.
It makes sense that you should be your own ultimate authority, because it is your own true nature that you must discover and know. As the oracle at Delphi commands: “know thyself.” And as Jesus instructs: “examine yourself, and learn who you are, how you exist, and what will become of you” (Jesus, Book of Thomas).
The reason the genuine mystic directs your attention inward to seek your own true nature is because, as Jesus says, “He who has not known himself does not know anything, but he who has known himself has also known the depth of all” (Jesus, Book of Thomas).
And Rumi tells you: “It’s you yourself that hide your own treasure” (Rumi, Mathnawi). So the genuine mystic will always point you to yourself, to discover the depths of your own true nature.
The mystical injunction to know yourself and look to yourself as your own ultimate authority, however, does not mean that teachers and teachings have no value in the mystical path.
The point is that they only show the way, as the Buddha says. If you invest a particular teaching or teacher with ultimate truth, you will be implicitly separating yourself from the truth, and you will fail to realize the truth of your own nature.
In the end, however, when you realize that the teachings and teachers—and indeed the entire world—is not separate from you, then you will see that your entire life is the truth of your own deepest being revealing itself to itself.
Thus, to see truth in nothing reveals the truth in everything...
- Thomas J. McFarlane
The Integral Way...
"What good is it to spend your life accumulating material things? It isn't in keeping with the Tao.
What benefit in conforming your life to someone else's conventions? It violates your nature and dissipates your energy.
Why separate your spiritual life from your practical life? In an integral being there is no such distinction.
Live simply and virtuously, true to your nature, drawing no line between what is spiritual and what is not.
Ignore time. Relinquish ideas and concepts. Embrace the Oneness.
This is the Integral Way."
Lao Tzu
_Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu_, 50
Translated by Brian Browne Walker
NY: HarperCollins, 1992, p. 62
Our main business...
Our main business is not to see what lies
dimly at a distance,
but to do what lies
clearly at hand.
- Carlyle
The work of Cupid...
The work of the spiritual teacher is like the
work of Cupid.
The work of Cupid is to bring
two souls together;
and so is the work of the
spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and
God.
But what is taught to the one who seeks
after truth?
Nothing is taught.
He is only shown
how he should learn from God.
For no man
can ever teach spirituality;
it is God alone who
teaches it.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Mastery Through Accomplishment
Omega Press, 1978
Ram Tzu Speaks...
Ram Tzu knows this…
God doesn't care
What you had for lunch.
He created tofu and sausage
With the same thought.
Yet you advanced ones
Swell with pride
Convinced your special diet
Is a shortcut to heaven.
Clever you.
Who would have ever thought
To look there.
The fools go on eating poison
In blissful ignorance.
Too stupid and unspiritual
Not to enjoy their
Ice cream, French fries, and red meat.
Ram Tzu says…
Far better to die a single death
Than a thousand little daily ones.
- Ram Tzu
Become nothing...
“Knock, And He'll open the door.
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun.
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing,
And He'll turn you into everything.”
~ Rumi (13th century Sufi mystic)
Detachment...
"Perfect is he who,
by practice and meditation,
lifts his soul to its real abode,
freeing it from all bonds,
both internal and external and thus detaches his mind from the world and its phenomena."
~ Shiv Dayal Singh, "Sar Bachan"
meditation...
Before his mind can understand truth, attain the Real, and enjoy happiness, it must reach a quiet state.
No disturbances, no agitations, and no resistances must get in the way.
To make such a state possible, it must first be reached spasmodically during special periods each day, that is, during meditation periods.
As it becomes more and more accustomed to the silencing of its negative activities in this way, it will eventually become more and more settled in the state by habit during the rest of the day.
Finally the habit becomes a trait of character, permanent and unbroken. Here is the further reason why the practice of meditation exercises is a necessity, indispensable to a complete quest.
-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation >
Chapter 1: Preparatory > # 97
Paul Brunton
Awakening...
You go to work each day and observe the other humans walking and talking within a hypnosis..
They speak of the illusions of manifestation and the emotions of actors within politics and theater..
The mesmerized are the actors that sell their souls for pennies..
But, You are Awake and feel strange within these puppets..
You see from above the body and realise that something is wrong..
You search for other humans that teach wisdom and knowledge..
But, You are the final Teacher..
We can only point to Reality..
You must experience It..
This is where you are now..
You are searching for Truth..
My advice to you is that Truth is not found within egoic desire..
It is only found within Love...
namaste, thomas
The State of Consciousness...
Questioner:
But is it enough to be aware of the awareness?
Annamalai Swami:
You are repeating the question, so I will repeat the answer.
If you remain in the state of consciousness, there will be nothing apart from it.
No problems, no misery, no questions.
Surrending completely...
"There are only two ways to conquer destiny or to be independent of it.
One is to enquire whose this destiny is and to discover that only the ego is bound by it and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent.
The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, realising one's helplessness and saying all the time: `Not I, but Thou, oh Lord!', giving up all sense of `I' and `mine' and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you.
Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord.
True surrender is the love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation.
In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti-marga."
Sri Ramana Maharshi
_Day by Day with Bhagavan_
From the Diary of A. Devaraja Mudaliar
Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, p 266
The One Reality...
Don't talk of different religions.
The one reality is everywhere,
not just in a Hindu, or a Muslim,
or anywhere else!
Realize:
your awareness is
the truth about God.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
The scent of Love...
God is playing 'Hide and seek'..
There is Eternity to 'Play'..
But, the greatest shock is that there is no 'you'..
There is only the 'Observer'..
The 'Observer' has no name or identity,
But, is known by the scent of Love..
namaste, thomas
Rest within Contemplation...
Consciousness tells me to speak of Jesus..
Jesus is an old and dear teacher of mine..
Although most souls do not know, Jesus taught Buddhism..
He studied in India and Tibet..
The only difference is that He taught souls to seek the 'First Reality' called 'Divine Consciousness' and Gautama taught of the 'Final Reality' called 'Pure Awareness'..
I usually advise souls to first reach the Realisation of 'First Reality' before they seek the 'Final Reality' as it is the simpler way..
A few advanced Mystics might be able to bypass the egoic desire of Creator God and return to the Non-ego of Pure Awareness, but few have this ability..
There is no difference between you and Jesus..
As long as you see something above yourself, you remain trapped within the illusion of manifestation..
You are that which You are seeking..
Rest within Contemplation...
namaste, thomas
selfishness...
"Selfishness may be sweet for oneself,
but no harmony of the whole can come from it."
- Osashizu
in Andrew Wilson
_World Scripture: An Anthology of Sacred Texts_
NY: International Religious Foundation, 1991, p. 289
All became Buddha...
"When Shakyamuni attained enlightenment,
all the myriad dharmas [natures] within buddha's mind,
that is, mountains, rivers, grass, and trees, all became buddha [awakened].
All are aspects of buddha.
In this sense,
each and every one of us has been enlightened by Shakyamuni Buddha."
Dogen
The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's "Bendowa"
With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi
Translated by Shohaku Okamura and Taigen Daniel Leighton
Boston: Tuttle, 1997, p. 103
The spiritual first...
When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have
ever walked among us,
you discover one thread that winds through them
all.
They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only
then with their physical selves.
- Albert Einstein
The same Spirit...
If it is the very same spirit that we breathe from space that makes man capable of thinking and feeling,
the same spirit that gives him the power of perception and conception and develops in him that feeling that one calls ego,
if this is the phenomenon that the spirit shows by being absorbed by the material body,
how much more capable of perception and conception, of thought and feeling, must the spirit be in itself.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Unbroken Self-awareness...
Unbroken Self-awareness is the true, bright path of devotion or love.
Knowledge of our inherent nature as indivisible Bliss supreme wells up as love.
The Self, our Being, is Awareness.
- Ramana Maharshi
Love alone...
"It is by love alone that we turn to God, are transformed into His likeness, and are united with Him,
so that we become one spirit with Him,
and receive by and from Him all our happiness, here in grace, hereafter in glory.
Love can find no rest till she rests in the full and perfect possession of the Beloved."
Albert the Great
_On Union with God_
NY: Continuum, 2000, p. 70
originally published:
London: Burnes Oates & Washbourne, 1911
The flute of the Infinite...
The flute of the Infinite is played without
ceasing, and its sound is love:
When love renounces all limits, it reaches
truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads! It has
no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright like a
million suns: incomparably sounds the
vina, the vina of the notes of truth.
- Kabir
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Songs of Kabir
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Samuel Weisner, Inc.
York Beach, Maine, 1988
The Spirit...
The spirit distinguishes everything except itself,
just as the eyes cannot see themselves.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Gautama speaks...
“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’
When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.
- Gautama the Buddha
The Charm of God...
The Charm of God is the feeling of Love..
This is the quest of your life..
Why else would you gladly surrender your life,
so that another could live ?..
This Truth is to show you what also must be accomplished to enter Reality..
you must surrender this obsession for separation that you call yourself or ego..
From the desire of this 'Charm of God',
you must give your life..
This does not mean the death of the body,
It means the death of the desire for a separate self..
This must be a daily occurance and a final occurance into Enlightenment..
As the 'Nazarene' once said; " you must die, to be born"...
namaste, thomas
The mind of Now...
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past,
nor to worry about the future,
but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
― Gautama the Buddha
In the morning...
" In the morning,
I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal
philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita,
in comparison with which our modern world and
its literature seen puny and trivial"..
- Henry David Thoreau
The Unity Within...
It's sheer illusion
to try to separate
the phenomena
from the Reality,
and then try
to love phenomena first.
It just doesn't happen that way.
Naturally
we end in failure.
You don't have to try
to achieve
unity with others.
It is fallacious thinking
and doing.
Realize the unity
of everything
and everyone
within you
first.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
The Buddha Nature...
In essence, the mind is insubstantial and omnipresent.
(It) is without beginning or end, in both space and time.
… you will discover that it (the Buddha nature) has always been near you and will always be with you.
This is the truest friendship you can ever cultivate.
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Now...
Eternity is hidden in every moment;
that which historically was and shall be is screened by the Now,
which is infinitely timeless and timelessly infinite.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 4: Time, Space, Causality > # 128
Paul Brunton
Emptiness that is Everything...
To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are.
That's all!
And then you realize, "I'm here."
Here is where thoughts
aren't believed.
Every time you come here, you are nothing.
Radiantly
nothing.
Absolutely and eternally zero.
Emptiness that is awake.
Emptiness that is full.
Emptiness that is everything.
-Adyashanti
Awareness...
That we know this awareness exists means only that we have an idea of awareness.
We do not see that awareness as itself an object, nor can we ever do so.
If we are to know the awareness by itself, first we would have to drop knowing its objects, its reflections in thought, including the ego-thought, and then be it, not see it.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism >
Chapter 5: The Key To the Spiritual World > # 168
Paul Brunton
Being Nothing...
“Questioner: If I have no image of myself, then I am nothing.
Krishnamurti: But are you anything anyhow?
Please don't laugh, this is much too serious.
Are you anything in yourself? Strip yourself of your name, title, money, position, your little capacity to write a book and be flattered and what are you?
So, why not realize and be that?
You see, we have an image of what it is to be nothing, and we don't like that image; but the actual fact of being nothing, when you have no image, may be entirely different. And it is entirely different.
It is not a state that can be realized in terms of being nothing or of being something.
It is entirely different when there is no image of yourself. And to have no image of yourself demands tremendous attention, tremendous seriousness. It is only the attentive, the serious, that live, not the people who have images of themselves.”
- Krishnamurti
Dreams on a wednesday night...
The Heart tells me to speak and yet Overself remains silent..
I wonder at this change..
The Heart replies, I am the Voice of Overself..
I am now closer to you than that which looks upon you..
I am your guide to Reality..
I am the Light that Awakens You..
Follow Me, for I am the Consciousness of Love..
I follow this Voice of Heart,
and the ego can find no more words to speak...
namaste, thomas
A zen monk...
I was a Zen monk who didn't know Zen,
so I chose the woods for the years I had left.
a robe made of patches over my body,
a belt of bamboo around my waist.
mountains and streams explain the Patriarch's meaning,
flowers smile and bird songs reveal the hidden key.
sometimes I sit on a flat-topped rock,
late cloudless nights once a month..
translated by RED PINE
The ego...
The fall guy of spirituality is the ego. Since there is really no one to blame for everything that happens in our lives, we manufacture this idea called the ego to take the blame.
This causes a great deal of confusion because the ego doesn't really exist. It is simply an idea, a label for a movement to which we have attached our sense of self.
When we consider that the ego is just an idea that doesn't really exist, we can see that many spiritual people are blaming it unfairly for all the things they believe they should get rid of. They misunderstand that something arising inside of them -- perhaps a thought, feeling, predisposition, or moment of suffering -- is proof of an ego, thinking that just because it arose, ego exists.
They think they have an ego because of all these things that point to it. All we ever find is this proof or evidence that ego exists, but we can never find the thing itself.
~ From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti.
Predetermination...
The centuries-old debate between those who believe that all happenings are predetermined and those who believe they are the mere play of chance, can be resolved only by understanding that both predetermination and chance take their rise out of the divine Void.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth >
Chapter 3: Laws and Patterns of Experience > # 142
Paul Brunton
The Unawakened Man...
There is a peculiar feature of the mind which we must understand..
The conditioned mind cannot possibly value esoteric knowledge..
It simply does not exist for the person living from his false self..
A small child is more attracted to a shiny stone that to an unpolished diamond, because he does not know the diamonds value..
So it is with the unawakened man..
He scorns or ignores cosmic facts..
He does not know that he does not know..
Receptivity is something entirely different,,It is an inner process that changes your values and uplifts your spirits..
It is a state of mind that is beginning to love fact more than falsehood..
It is total acceptance of yourself exactly as you are at the present moment.
It is a secret process and one of delightful charm..
By its fruits will you know receptivity..
You will know by what it does to you and for you..
" And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free"...
...Vernon Howard
The Overself...
A man's attitude toward the question of free will changes after he has surrendered to the Overself. It has to change. For henceforth he is to be loyal not to the ego's desires but to the Overself's injunctions.
If the two coincide, it is well and pleasant for him. If not, and he obeys his higher self as he must, then it can no longer be said that he has full freedom of will. But neither can it be said that he has not.
For the Overself is in him, not outside, not something alien and apart; it is indeed himself at his best and highest level.
Because the Overself is under no other law than that of its own being, which it always obeys, both freedom and fate are harmoniously united in it.
Hence, the truly wise man will reconcile and unite the tenet of karma and the tenet of free will. He knows that only a limited vision will range them against each other.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth >
Chapter 4: Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > # 140
Paul Brunton
Incarnation of Divinity...
Being separate and being an individual is not the same thing.....as is so often assumed in circles of non-dual spirituality........You are not separate at all AND there is certainly an individual with a particular body, mind, personality and personal history. There is no need to utterly die to that individual, deny it, or attempt somehow to destroy or obliterate it.. You just need to see that this individual personality, body and mind is not who you are EXCLUSIVELY. But it is who you are on the surface of appearance. It is how you appear in the phenomenal world of form. You are not limited to name and form, but name and form is INCLUDED in who and what you are.
You need to wake up to the eternal dimension of Spirit, which is who you are essentially at the very core of being itself.....But that does not mean the utter destruction of the individual body and mind. The individual body and mind called by your name is a vehicle, a container, a "tabernacle" of the One Spirit.
It is an incarnation of divinity itself and so, is holy, divine, and to be treated with reverence and dignity. Taken separately it is not real and does not exist as a separate entity apart from God, but taken as the vehicle, the container of divinity....it is fully included as divine itself, as a particular, beautiful and unique individual expression of God/Divinity/Consciousness. This is true for each of us as it is true for each snowflake, each ant, each diamond, each leaf on a tree.
Each one is an entirely unique expression of divinity never seen before and never to be seen again. How amazing! How gorgeous! Wow!
Francis Bennett responds to Joseph T. McMahon, you say there is no 'entity" that exists in and of itself, and I would say yes, I totally agree (but even to use the word "itself" implies an individual, which as I say is not the same thing as "a separate individual")....Nothing exists "in and of itself" as a separate discreet entity that is separate somehow from consciousness/presence/all of life/God/Brahman........But there is a difference between saying that there is nothing that has any SEPARATE independent existence, and saying that it is non-existent altogether and is completely "illusory". It is not absolutely real or ultimately real...but that is not to say that it has no relative existence or reality at all.
Precisely what I am saying here is that contingent existence is not the same as saying no existence AT ALL. Yes, there is no separate entity called a person, but as an expression of consciousness, there IS a person and a giraffe and a tree and a cat and a dog...and all these forms are particular and individual without being at all "separate entities". My sense is that this is precisely what Shankara is getting at when he states 1) The world is illusory (when seen as made up of separate discreet entities) 2) Only Brahman is real.(as that formless essence that is innate and at the core of every individual thing) 3) The world IS BRAHMAN (When it is seen as flowing from and being an expression in form of the formless divinity/Brahman)
- Francis Bennett
What is born ?...
This is the present condition:
Birth is the entry to phenomenality.
Death is the exit from phenomenality.
All that requires insight is:
Who is born and who dies?
Or better stated:
What is born and what dies?
~ Wu Hsin
Thoughts on a monday night...
" Give to Caesar, what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's", said Jesus the Nazarene..
It is tax season and the powers of earth demand money for your existence..
Give them the money that they demand and laugh at their greed..
You are living a dream of mortality and greed,
think beyond this dream..
You are the observer of this nonsense,
You are not the victim..
You are not trapped within this greed and ego..
You are not that which changes..
Life is short, do not worry about life..
The dream ends quickly..
Keep within the Reality of Pure Awareness..
You are the Eye on the Pyramid and not Lucifer..
Do not be deceived by lies...
namaste, thomas
Love and become God...
"So, the only thing God wants is not ceremonies, not yogas, not prayers; he wants love –
the love that makes you forget yourself in Him.
All 'isms' are the same.
Love and become God, not by practice of ceremonies, but by dying for God.
Baba has no creed at all. Societies, groups, mean nothing.
Baba is above all these creeds, ceremonies and 'isms.' Everyone in India knows that I have no 'ism' at all and am not attached to any.
I have reoriented Sufism, Vedanta, Buddhism, so that Truth in them is kept alive. The marrow should be taken in, the bones thrown off."
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
_Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba_
Manifestation, 1997, 1st ed., vol, 11, p. 3822
Mind creates world...
How can the mind which has itself created the world
accept it as unreal?
That is the significance of the
comparison made between the world of the waking
state and the dream world.
Both are creations of the
mind and, so long as the mind is engrossed in either,
it finds itself unable to deny their reality.
It cannot deny
the reality of the dream world while it is dreaming and
it cannot deny the reality of the waking world while it
is awake.
If, on the contrary, you withdraw your mind
completely from the world and turn it within and abide
there, that is, if you keep awake always to the Self
which is the substratum of all experiences,
you will
find the world of which you are now aware is just as
unreal as the world in which you lived your dream.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"Be As You Are"
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
Edited by David Godman
Arkana, 1985
Thoughts within Emptiness...
The incarnation is nothing more than a thought. A thousand incarnations are but a thousand thoughts.
And this amazing miracle of a mirage we call the world reappears as it was before, but now you know. That’s why you usually have a good laugh, because you realize that all your struggles were made up.
You conjured them up out of nothing—with a thought that was linked to another thought, that was then believed, that linked to another thought that was then believed. But never could it have been true, not for a second could it have actually existed.
Not ever could you have actually suffered for a reason that was true, only through an imagination, good, bad, indifferent. The intricacies of spiritual philosophy and theologies are just a thought within Emptiness.
- Adyashanti
Ashtavakra...
"Why talk of wisdom,
the three ends of life,
or oneness?
Why talk of those?
Now I live in my heart!"
Ashtavakra
in Thomas Byron, Tr.
_The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Astavakra Gita_
Boston: Shambhala, 2001, p. 73
Pure Awareness...
If you refrain from looking at this or that
or any other object
then by that overpowering look into absolute Being
you become yourself the boundless space
of pure Awareness which alone is real Being.
-Ramana Maharshi
Sincerity...
It does not matter in what way a person offers his respect and his reverence to the deity he worships; it matters only how sincere he is in his offering.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The forms of worship of all the different religions are necessarily different. It depends upon what one is accustomed to, what is akin to one's nature. One cannot make a common rule and say that this form is wrong and that form is right. One person will perhaps feel more exaltation in a form of worship which includes some art. It stimulates his emotional nature. Music, pictures, perfumes, colors, and light, all these have an effect upon such a person. Another can concentrate better if there is nothing in the place of worship to catch his attention. It is all a matter of temperament. It is not wrong to prefer the one or the other. The Sufi sees the variety of forms as different ideals. He does not attach importance to the outer expression. If there is a sincere spirit behind it, if a person has a feeling for worship, it does not matter what form of worship it is.
In what manner prayer be offered matters little if only the sentiment be right. The orthodox world has fought with each other, each claiming that, "Our manner of prayer is the best. Our church is the best. Our temple is the best. Our sermon is the best. The others are astray;" not knowing that in the house of God it is not asked, "To which church do you belong? To which temple do you belong?" but it is asked, "How sincere were you in your prayer?"
Nature teaches every soul to worship God in some way or other, and often provides that which is suitable for each. Those who want one law to govern all have lost sight of the spirit of their own religion. And it is in people who have not yet learned their own religion that such ideas are commonly found. Did they but know their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free from any grudge against the religion of others!
So it is too with the manner of worship. It does not matter in what way a person offers his respect and his reverence to the deity he worships. It only matters how sincere he is in his offering. In one house of God we find that people do not wear hats; in Hindustan, Persia, and Arabia they put on turbans to go to the mosque. That is their custom. It makes no difference whether one person prays standing, another sitting, another kneeling, another prostrating himself, another in company with other people and another alone. All that matters is that the heart of the worshipper is pure, that the mind is connected with God, that there is sincerity and earnestness.
Thoughts on a saturday night...
Humans meet in groups and attempt to share the secret of life..
They are not aware of this secret and yet the heart pushes them forward..
The secret is of course, Love..
Love is humility and sharing..
Love gives and ego takes..
They try to dissolve the ego with the drug of alcohol..
The conscious mind falls asleep and the sub-conscious mind takes control..
The sub-conscious mind is formed by the thoughts that occur within every minute of every day..
It is called your 'soul'..
This is the consciousness that they seek through alcohol..
The consciousness of non-ego and love..
This is the closest to spirituality that they come to..
But Love always wins because Only Love is Real,
all else is a dream filled with egoic desire...
namaste, thomas
Jackson Peterson - Transparent Being.
The Perceiver and Receiver.
The world and universe are experienced and known with certainty to exist only within your own mind, as your rigpa projection. Instead of being the receiver and perceiver of perceptions, thoughts and experiences, you as Dharmakaya rigpa are sourcing them, in every case.
That consciousness that "perceives" and "receives" experience and perception is the projected consciousness in Buddhism, known as the fifth skandha: vijnana or nampar shespa.
This is also the projected self you appear to be in your dreams and the self-identity you appear to be in daytime "waking" state. Its always on the receiving end, never as a causative agent. Its projected along with the perceptual display, but with a micro-second time delay that makes it seem to be perceiving something that is "already" there.
Be desireless...
Don't occupy yourself with things or thoughts,
not even with the search for inner experiences,
but be quiet and desireless.
-- Notebooks Category 24: The Peace within You
> Chapter 3: Practise Detachment > # 204
Paul Brunton
The material world...
The more awake one is to the material world,
the more one is asleep to spirit.
When our soul is asleep to God,
other wakefulness closes the door of Divine grace.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight"
Threshold Books, 1994
All an illusion...
The man of understanding who has lost
his identity as a separate individual,
remains identified with pure, infinite
Consciousness while he continues to live out
his life as an ordinary person in the world,
knowing full well, however, that it is all
an illusion.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
“A Net of Jewels”
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
The Feeling on Awakening...
In our human dreams, we are in our bed at night at rest. Once we fall asleep, from seemingly out of nothing there appears a reality that, though we know it is only an illusion, sure feels real to all our senses and emotions.
Dramas involving the deepest expression of love or fear, with all their accompanying sidekicks, are lived and played out. People often get hurt, tortured, and even slaughtered at will. You, as a gentle, evolved soul in your waking life, do things in dreams that are unspeakable.
When you wake up from a nightmare, was anybody really hurt, really killed, really raped or abused? No, it was all an illusion!
When you were stuck in a nightmare where vicious dogs were at your throat, your feet were stuck in mud, and your voice couldn't call for help, weren't you relieved and excited when you suddenly awoke in a cold sweat and found that this was just a dream and you are not limited like that? It felt good to hug your pillow then, for the intensity of the nightmare added to the freedom and safety you felt in your secure little bed.
~ Satyam Nadeen, in:From Onions to Pearls,
Thoughts on a Thursday Night...
I read Paul Brunton's words about Grace and remember when Grace was given to me..
I did not know about the experience of Grace and still much of it remains a mystery to me..
What is Grace ?..
What I found upon my first experience into Enlightenment was that Grace was a 'Wave of Love' that opened a door for Nothingness to enter..
After the surrender of all desires and especially the suicide of the ego consciousness, Grace appeared..
Grace knocked the body to the ground and took Consciousness to meet Itself..
I became Light, Love, and Consciousness and knew instantly that life was a Dream..
I and the Father were One..
The Father is Light and I was Light and We conversed..
This duality within Divine Consciousness concerned Me..
I asked the Father if this was the 'Final Reality'..
For the first time, He would not answer..
I came back into the Dream and body to find the answer..
I found the answer..
The answer is found within these nine thousand writings..
Search within...
- namaste, thomas
Enlightenment...
[Enlightenment is] “the annihilation of the ego-conception,
freedom from
subjectivity,
insight into the essence of Suchness,
the recognition of the oneness
of existence.”
- Ashvaghosha
Grace...
Noises and sights may be still present in the background of consciousness but the pull and fascination of the inner being will be strong enough to hold him and they will not be able to move his attention away from it.
This, of course, is an advanced state; but once mastered and familiar, it must yield to the next one.
Here, as if passing from this waking world to a dream one, there is a slip-over into universal space, incredibly vast and totally empty.
Consciousness is there but, as he discovers later, this too is only a phase through which it passes.
Where, and when, will it all end?
When Consciousness is led--by Grace--to itself, beyond its states, phases, and conditions where man, at last, is fit to meet God.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation >
Chapter 7: Contemplative Stillness > # 85
Paul Brunton
The mystic death...
The truth of your own nature, the mystics all testify, is that you are nothing, which reveals that you are everything.
In your deepest essence, you are identical with God or ultimate reality.
Your real Life is the birthless and deathless Life of God, and the Life of God embraces the whole of creation.
But as long as your identity is centered in the limited life of the ego, you cannot live in full consciousness of this Life.
Thus, you must die to your self-centered life in order to awaken into the Life of God.
As Rumi says, “You want Reality unmasked? Choose death!
Not the death that drags you to the tomb—the death that is a transmutation, so you at last change into the Light” (Rumi, Odes).
Or, as Jesus says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 16:25-26).
Thus, the genuine mystic lives in and as God only insofar as the life in and as the ego is dead.
It is the ego’s delusion of grandeur that imagines you can escape suffering and attain immortality, when in fact your life centered in the ego must be completely sacrificed in the mystical death.
Any teacher or teaching that is not clear about this just feeds the ego’s propensity for megalomania and self-deception.
The genuine mystical path involves the perpetual surrender and sacrifice of all self-centered egoistic activity, up to and including the complete sacrifice of ego-centered life itself.
Thus all genuine mysticism teaches the cultivation of selflessness, love, and compassion...
-from integralscience.org
True religion...
“True religion consists in developing that attitude of mind, which would ultimately result in seeing one Infinite Existence prevailing throughout the universe;
when one could live in the world and yet be not of it, and at the same time, be in harmony with everyone and everything;
when one could attend to all worldly duties and affairs, and yet feel completely detached from all their results;
when one could see the same divinity in art and science, and experience the highest consciousness and indivisible bliss in everyday life.”
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher, 1st. ed., Vol. 5, pp. 1553 – 1554
Revised Online Edition. p. 1370
Marcus Aurelius...
Life on the world scene was likened by Marcus Aurelius not only to a dream, but even to a delirium!
Yet he was a man of much practical experience, a victorious soldier and a Roman emperor.
And where the Greek poet Pindar and the Greek playwright Aristophanes used dream only as a metaphor to describe this physical life of ours, Plotinus used it as an actuality.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3:
The Individual and World Mind > # 27
Paul Brunton
One Whole Heart...
Lovers in their brief delight
gamble both worlds away,
a century's worth of work
for one chance to surrender.
Many slow growth-stages build
to quick bursts of blossom.
A thousand half-loves
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Coleman Barks
"Birdsong"
Maypop, 1993
Purity of heart...
"By purity of heart alone is the holy Eternal obtained."
Guru Nanak
_Adi Granth_, Japuji 20, M.1, p 472.
in Andrew Wilson, Ed.
_World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts_
St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 1995, p. 519
surrender and acceptance...
Seeing that nothing is "wrong" is not at all incompatible with taking action in order to improve a situation.
In fact, the most skillful and effective action always arises out of absolute surrender and acceptance.
- Francis Bennett
Overself control...
At such a stage the ego becomes a mere instrument,
put down or picked up at any and every moment by the Overself.
No longer are its own thoughts, emotions, desires, or lusts in control;
instead, they are fully controlled by the higher power.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego >
Chapter 1: What Am I? > # 211
Paul Brunton
Thoughts on a monday night...
The most hated day of the week and yet Consciousness tells me to speak..
By now, we mystics know what and who We Are..
The challenge now is to live this Knowledge..
This life to be lived is spoken of by humans like Jesus and Gautama..
It is seeing from above the hologram, above the body..
It is seeing without egoic desire..
To see without a character, without an identity..
It is to see from the Eternal..
To see from that which is called God..
This is who and what You Are..
You are the Observer..
Can You feel this within the Heart ?..
You are watching a Dream..
And yet, because You identify with this Dream, You become trapped within it..
Awareness is your Friend and Your Nature..
Pure Awareness is Your Home...
namaste, thomas
Focus the mind...
Understand one thing well, and you have arrived.
What prevents you from knowing is not the lack
of opportunity, but the lack of ability to focus
in your mind what you want to understand.
If you
could but keep in mind what you do not know, it
would reveal to you its secrets.
But if you are
shallow and impatient, not earnest enough to look
and wait, you are like a child crying for the moon.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
Nothingness...
Among the great things which are to be found among us,
the Being of
Nothingness is the greatest.
- Leonardo Da Vinci
Being Tranquillity...
Become acquainted with the "feeling" of Peace. Understand that it is the only legitimate sensation. This "feeling" itself is one's identification, not the body-ego which appears to be experiencing it. Proclaim Tranquillity and insist on being this one only "Round" is "round," forever being itself. Exactly so, Identity does not change; it forever remains itself; nothing changes it; nothing prevails against it!
If one finds him or herself disturbed and untranquil, suffering fear, loneliness, grief or any contrary emotion whatever, he or she need only make the conscious "return" to Identity to re-mind "him or herself" that unchanging Tranquillity is who he or she is -- not grief, not loneliness, not any wayward thing!
No misery can turn Perfection into imperfection; no experience can change Tranquillity-I into grief-I or loneliness-I. We Need Only Insist On Being Tranquillity To Feel Tranquillity! Try for yourself and discover that this is so.
~ From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel
Infinite Intelligence...
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
And one of them shalt not fall on the ground without your Father" (Matthew 10:29)
puts simply that an infinite intelligence controls this entire universe,
and that it is as present in the smallest event as in the greatest.
-- Notebooks Category 27: World-Mind >
Chapter 2: Nature of World-Mind > # 4
Paul Brunton
The separation of Reality...
I present you with a song that tells you to serve somebody,
and yet I know that there is no 'I' to serve..
There is only the 'somebody' that dreams..
But, the serving is to remind you to dissolve the egoic consciousness..
That is Reality..
This body to serve has no body..
It is the Pure Awareness of Love..
It sees and yet does not condemn..
It has no name or identification..
And yet, It thinks..
You are this thinker, when You finally Awake without a You...
- namaste, thomas
Rig Veda...
"The ONE is Lord of all that moves and is fixed,
of what walks and what flies -- this multiform creation."
_Rig Veda_, III.54.8
in Anivash Chandra Bose, Comp.
_Thus Spake the Vedas_
Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, n.d., p. 8
Without the body...
Once a person has realized how he can exist without the physical body,
it produces a faith that gives an ultimate conviction that nothing can change.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
The Overself...
Without the Overself,
no human creature could be what it is--conscious, living, and intelligent.
- Paul Brunton
The absence of thought...
Dzogchen master, Tenzin Wangyal:
"Any thought can manifest in the mind. But when the mind stops thinking and instead turns inward and nakedly observes itself, observing the observer, mind liberates into its own nature like clouds dissolving into the sky or waves dissolving into the ocean.
The nature of mind is rigpa, pure nondual awareness. It is the absence of thought.
It is neither virtuous nor nonvirtuous, substantial nor insubstantial. It has unlimited potential to manifest. Its essence is one with the essence of all that exists. Rigpa is sometimes likened to a mirror: just as reflections come and go without leaving the slightest trace on the mirror’s surface, so do all experiences, memories, emotions, and mental images arise and dissolve in our mind without leaving a trace in the nature of mind."
Wisdom grows...
So you've cut up your hide and stretched it,
pegged it down to dry with definite,
sharp-pointed desires,
but have you planted any fruit trees
for the next generation?
Wisdom offered you is like a ball
thrown at a boundary post,
useless as molasses fed to a tawny bull
to help it give more milk!
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop, 1992
A product of Mind...
There are strange uncommon moments when we seems to be lifted out of ourselves,
when the whole of the past and present existences seems but a picture in a fitful dream and when the entire stuff of the universe seems nothing other than momentary thought.
At such moments we may understand by an act of intuition rather than of reflection that the world is a product of Mind, not of Matter.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5:
The Key To the Spiritual World > # 99
Paul Brunton
God-consciousness...
“The universal religion has no location in time or space.
Its area is infinite, like
the God it preaches.
Krishna, Christ, Buddha, and Moses all have honored places
in it.
Its sun shines upon all spiritual seekers: Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, or
Muslim.
There is no room in it for persecution or intolerance.
Recognizing the
potential divinity of all men and women it devotes its entire force to aiding them
to realize their true divine nature.
The real universal religion is not a creed or
doctrine; it is an experience.
It is God-consciousness.”
- Swami Nikhilananda
weeds and refuse...
"Cast away your existence entirely,
for it is nothing but weeds and refuse.
Go, clear out your heart's chamber;
arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
When you go forth, He will come in,
and to you, with self discarded,
He will unveil His beauty."
Mahmud Shabistari (1250? - 1340)
from _The Secret Rose Garden_
Translated by Florence Lederer / Edited by David Fideler
Existence and Reality...
Just because something exists, however, it
doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s real.
Reality is that which persists in all states;
waking life, dream life and in dreamless sleep.
If this is true, then, anything that fundamentally
changes can’t actually be considered as
“real.”
That doesn’t mean, of course, that it doesn’t appear
to exist!
- Chuck Hillig
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003
The Self always shines clear...
All the benefit to be obtained by inner enquiry is only the destruction of the deceptive ‘I’-sense [the ego]. It would be too much to say that it is to attain Self, which always shines clear and ever-attained.
Sadhu Om: in Maharshi’s Gospel, Book One, chapter six, page 30, Sri Bhagavan says, “to make room, it is enough that the cramping be removed; room is not brought in from elsewhere.
“Guru Vachaka Kova (The Collection of Guru’s Sayings)”
by Sri Muruganari, Page 276
Thoughts on a thursday night...
It is thursday night and many are afraid and others are asleep..
They fear the war that oligarchs will start and they fear death..
Both are from the ego and both are dreams or perhaps nightmares..
The war between Russia and the U.S. is being pushed forward by those that worship death..
Those that worship death, worship the prince of destruction called satan..
The 'golden calf' is a strong influence among these souls..
They are promised lies and wealth, wealth they gather but the lies of individual gods are a ploy..
These poor souls are trapped within the egoic consciousness that declares itself, 'Power'..
In Reality, the soul has no power, It is Emptiness..
The soul is the sub-conscious mind that creates and forms the ego, or Divinity..
But, you have read the Truth and Know the Truth..
If we all die, We return to Reality without any desires for power..
We reunite with Reality, We reunite with Love..
Death is only a construct of the mind, It does not exist within the First Reality..
The death of individual desire only exists within Pure Awareness..
First enter Divine Consciousness then strive forwards into the Nothingness of Pure Love..
Those that have eyes to see, will...
namaste, thomas
Vakkali Sutta...
"For a long time, Lord, I have wanted to come and set eyes on the Blessed One, but I had not the strength in this body to come and see the Blessed One."
"Enough, Vakkali! What is there to see in this vile body? He who sees Dhamma, Vakkali, sees me; he who sees me sees Dhamma. Truly seeing Dhamma, one sees me; seeing me one sees Dhamma."
Gautama the Buddha
Vakkali Sutta, SN 22.87 PTS: S iii 119 CDB i 938
translated from the Pali by
Maurice O'Connell Walshe
Pure Mystery...
~What's Ultimately Behind This Set of Eyes?~
Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought.
Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can't really look at the mystery because you are only capable of looking from the mystery.
There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that's what is seeing through your eyes at this moment.
That's what is hearing through your ears at this moment.
Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is impossible, I suggest you ask,
"What's ultimately behind this set of eyes?" Turn around to see what is looking.
Encounter pure mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you are.
~Adyashanti
The search for Overself...
It is objected, why search at all if one really is the Overself?
Yes, there comes a time when the deliberate purposeful search for the Overself has to be abandoned for this reason.
Paradoxically, it is given up many times, whenever he has a Glimpse, for at such moments he knows that he always was, is, and will be the Real, that there is nothing new to be gained or searched for.
Who should search for what?
But the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every Glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again.
While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Overself, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages.
No! through the understanding of the Short Path he searches knowingly, not wanting another experience since both wanting and experiencing put him out of the essential Self.
He thinks and acts as if he is that Self, which puts him back into It. It is a liberation from time-bound thinking, a realization of timeless fact.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 6: Advanced Meditation > # 110
-- Perspectives > Chapter 23: Advanced Contemplation > # 26
Paul Brunton
Transcending dualities...
He alone who has realized the self in the heart has
known the Truth.
Having transcended the dualities,
he is never perplexed.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
Truth Liberates...
It is always the false that makes you suffer,
the false desires and fears,
the false values and ideas,
the false relationships between people.
Abandon the false and you are free of pain;
truth makes happy, truth liberates.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Life in the Overself...
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.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 4: Time, Space, Causality > # 84
Paul Brunton
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