' It is only a Dream '...
It is only a Dream and matters, briefly..
This road to Happiness that you all seek..
Are children, the answer ?..
This search for Happiness, of course contains the desire for Love..
This 'Desire' is imbred within Consciousness and all Holograms..
There must always be a map, to return Home..
But, you still walk in unison to spend one third of your time..
Therefore, how passionate are you ?..
This passion is often spoken of within Saints..
What are passions but that which is True ?..
It is Time to think and to Dream...
-thomas
' Three things to teach '...
I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.
- Lao Tzu
' Waking Up '...
All of you!
If you want to return to your homes,
simply wake up to your true nature.
This mind nature
is the original source of all Buddhas.
It is the
names of all the sutras.
Sometimes it is referred to
as the Unique and Wonderful Dharma, sometimes as
Perfect Awakening, sometimes as the Void, sometimes as
the World, sometimes as the Pure Land.
All of these
names simply point to the One Mind.
Though there are
ten thousand different names, there are not even two
dharma realities.
- Mud and Water
- A Collection of Talks by the Zen Master Bassui
' Hiding the Still Center '...
Mentalism says that most of one's misery is inflicted on oneself by accepting and holding negative thoughts.
They cover and hide the still center of one's being, which is infinite happiness.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 4: In Thoughts, Feelings, Violent Passions > # 37
-- Perspectives > Chapter 11: The Negatives > # 41 Paul Brunton
' With the Friend '...
"The journey of the pilgrim is two steps and no more:
One is passing out of selfhood,
and one toward mystical union with the Friend."
-Shabistari
The Secret Rose Garden
in John Baldock
The Essence of Sufism
Edison, NJ: Chartwell, 2004, p. 195
' Trace the 'I' to it's source '...
If he will try to perceive the mind by which he perceives the world,
he will be practising the shortest,
most direct technique of discovering the Overself.
This is what Ramana Maharshi meant when he taught,
"Trace the `I' to its source."
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself >
Chapter 5: Preparing for Glimpses > # 6
Paul Brunton
' Ultimate Causation in Dzogchen '...
In basic Buddhism, including Madhyamaka, all phenomena are dependent on earlier and co-existing conditions and circumstances. All objects and persons are dependent on other and previous objects and persons. So causation is a dependent origination.
In Prasangika Madhyamaka an even more subtle distinction is made: all phenomena are dependent on being conceptually designated. Phenomena have no inherent characteristics other than what the observer (mind) designates. Causation is only conceptual construction in Prasangika.
Dzogchen doesn't deny the first two processes but goes further to say those chains of causation are themselves dependent solely upon a type of causative agent called Rigpa or Buddha Mind. Early Dzogchen symbolized this ultimate cause by calling it the "supreme source", Kunje Gyalpo, "the All-Creating King". Each person is this "All Creating King" that creates everything through its energetic power called "tsal".
It creates the "outside" world by generating 3D holograms of tsal and gives them meaning through its generating names and labels. That projected "outside" world only appears within its "inside" world as the changeless, Empty Space of Pure Awareness (Dharmakaya).
-Jackson Peterson
'Higher Power is the Doer '...
The present difficulty is that man thinks
he is the doer.
But it is a mistake.
It is the
higher power which does everything, and
man is only a tool.
If he accepts that position
he is free from troubles, otherwise he courts
them.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Be As You Are"
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
edited by David Godman
Arkana, 1985
' Forgetful one '...
Forgetful one, get up!
It's dawn, time to start searching.
Open your wings and lift.
Give like the blacksmith
even breath to the bellows.
Tend the fire that changes
the shape of metal.
Alchemical work begins at dawn,
as you walk out to meet the Friend.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
' A feeling of immortality '...
"When you catch on to your awakening, the world does not change.
You just see it differently, that's all.
You acquire a feeling of immortality.
A feeling of divine bliss,
so to speak, when things no longer have the power to affect you."
-Robert Adams
' Personal Identity and Nirvana '...
Its interesting to compare our dream state subjective identity with our waking state subjective identity.
In our dreams at night we may have some task or goal we are trying accomplish. In the dream it feels and seems like our identity has some latitude of autonomy and free will to act. Yet we know that each thought, intention, sensation, perception and characteristic of identity, is programmed 100% by the subconscious. There is no pre-existing entity there at all. It's all creative fiction, including the characters and scenery.
Let's say we see a church bell swing and then hear the dong sound in our dream. We now know the "bell" never made the sound we heard. No sound entered our ears. The mind just created the dong sound from no mechanical cause that generated the sound. All the thoughts, intentions and sense of identity are created in the same way because there is no self-entity there besides the one the mind generated.
The completely fictional nature of this dream self is recognized upon awakening. The strong feeling-sense of "me-ness" as an autonomous person or entity was part of the subconscious projection. It was just subjective scenery like the church and swinging bell were objective scenery. No church, no bell, no "me" ever actually existed outside of the mind's projection.
Sometimes we notice in the dream that we are "dreaming" and then we wake up. We sense our waking self suddenly appeared in the dream and realized "Oh, this is a dream!" and we then wake up. But instead consider the subconscious created a "me" self that "noticed it was dreaming" as its creative content. It's not that the "real" waking self appeared in the dream. But yet there seems to be a lingering sense of the continuity of this self when afterwards we reflect upon this dream in which the dream character realized it was dreaming.
It's like my "real self" was the real one in the dream all along and somehow managed to notice its dreaming situation and woke up.
What is not noticed is something really profound: the "waking real self" is also just another subconscious projection. All of its personality characteristics, sense of personal identity, thoughts and intentions are programmed into and as the "me" self-entity by the subconscious, and that there is no "real me" self there at all!
The self-identity as a "me" is simply a subconscious projection created out of previous conditioning, memories and imagination. Especially confusing is the particular subconscious element or content that gives the convincing certainty of being a valid and "real" me. That "self-certainty" is just part of the subconscious content. Its a necessary ingredient to making the self illusion so enduring. The sense of "autonomy" is also a projected mental characteristic.
So a "seeker" is not an autonomous identity or person that is choosing to seek, but is actually a projection of subconscious "seeking" characteristics.
Likewise there is not a real "me" or self that experiences suffering, but rather the subconscious is projecting a "suffering me" character. The "me" and the suffering are one piece. This is like when in our night dream when we experience fear. It's not that there is a "me" that has a separate emotion of fear occur to it, but rather at that moment the subconscious is projecting a "fearful me" as one piece.
The greatest and most important illusion is that there is an actual continuing "me" self that exists over time having various experiences occurring to "it". That "me" self is 100% subconscious fabrication with no real "me" self there at all.
When we were born there was no "me" sense at all. It takes almost two years before the subconscious really gets the "me" fabrication up and running in consciousness.
What's really interesting is that the subconscious can suddenly cease creating a "me" identity in consciousness. Then we have conscious awareness without a self-identity story being fabricated.
This moment is described as "liberation". Its a funny kind of liberation because in this liberation no one, no self and no "me" was liberated. It just ceased to occur.
"Where did "I" go in such a case?"one might ask. I would suggest "To the same place a whirl pool goes when its ceases whirling... and that's not to say that the location and substance of the whirlpool; the ocean, ceased as well.
In this case the "ocean" is the unestablished, unfabricated awake state of nirvana.
-Jackson Peterson
' Grace '...
Grace is the benign effluence of the Overself, the kindly radiation from it, ever-present in us.
The theological use of this term to mean particular help given by God to man to enable him to endure temptation and act rightly is a serious and arbitrary narrowing down of its original meaning.
It may mean this sometimes, but it also means the loving mercy God shows to man, which appears variously as enlightenment of the mind or relief of the heart, as change of outward physical conditions or a dynamic revolution-working energy acting on the aspirant or on his life.
-- Notebooks Category 18: The Reverential Life >
Chapter 5: Grace > # 4 Paul Brunton
' A Gaping Void '...
“In the lives of most human beings, everything is about an avoidance of the truth.
The truth that we are avoiding is the Truth or emptiness. We don’t want to see that we are nothing. We don’t want to see that everything we believe is wrong. We don’t want to see that our viewpoint is wrong and that there is no right viewpoint.
We don’t want to see that everything we think about God is what God is not. We don’t want to see what the Buddha meant when he said there is no self.
We would rather quickly insert a positive statement. So instead of seeing that there is no self and that everything the mind holds as true is ultimately empty, our minds will quickly insert something positive like, ‘I am consciousness,’ or ‘All is bliss,’ or ‘God is love.’
We do not want to see that there is a gaping void at the center of our existence.”
~ Adyashanti
' From Divine Consciousness to Pure Awareness '...
This is a subject that few write about because it is only meant for the few..
Jumping over the many dimensions of Thought and the entering of Light is enough for any soul..
Continuing the journey into Pure Awareness requires total surrender of will..
To become Nothing is to return to Complete thought..
This is often feared because Light does not exist within Complete Thought..
" Let there be Light!",
said this Voice...
You have now come to the understanding that Thought exists without a lamp..
You become the Lamp of God through Dreams..
This idea of 'you' has always been a butt of jokes..
You have slept long enough,
welcome Home...
-thomas
' Letting alone '...
"You govern a kingdom by normal rules;
You win a war by exceptional moves.
But you win the world by letting alone.
How do I know this is so?
By what is in me."
-Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching, 57
Translated by John C. H. Wu
NY: Barnes & Noble, 1997 (1961), p. 117
Reply
' The One Mind '...
The One Mind is experiencing itself in us,
less in the ego-shadow and fully in the Overself,
hardly aware in that shadow and self-realized in the light that casts it.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 1: Absolute Mind > # 24
-- Perspectives > Chapter 28: The Alone > # 45 Paul Brunton
' Truth is a pathless land '...
“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land,
and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever,
by any religion, by any sect.
The moment you follow someone,
you cease to follow Truth.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti
' Burn completely to ashes '...
Be on fire for truth.
Burn completely to ashes.
For the ashes of God are greater
than the rubies of this world.
- Mooji
' Who is to see what ? '...
"There is no such state as seeing the real.
Who is to see what?
You can only be the real--which you are, anyhow.
The problem is only mental.
Abandon false ideas, that is all.
There is no need of true ideas.
There aren't any."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The welfare of others '...
One fruit of the change will be that just as the old idea was to watch out selfishly for his own interests, so the new idea will be not to separate them from the interests of others.
If it be asked, "How can anyone who is attuned to such impersonality be also benevolent?"
the answer is that because he is also attuned to the real Giver of all things, he need not struggle against anyone nor possess anything.
Hence he can afford to be generous as the selfish cannot. And because the Overself's very nature is harmony and love, he seeks the welfare of others alongside of his own.
-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics >
Chapter 1: Uplift Character > # 387 Paul Brunton
' Truth conceptualized '...
Truth conceptualized and vocalized is no longer Truth.
Only where the perception has become entirely non-relational to objects has true awakening occurred.
The essence of Truth cannot in any way be conceived but lies strictly in the experiencing of it.
The whole point of life is to live NOW in this present moment, always.
If one makes a fetish of improving conditions in the future, one lives neither in the apparent present nor in the illusory future.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' A double spell '...
It is all like a gigantic dream, with every human inserting his own private dream inside the public one.
A double spell has to be broken before reality can be glimpsed--the spell which the world lays upon us and that which self lays upon us.
The man who has completely awakened from this spell is the man who has gained complete insight. This faculty is nothing other than such full wakefulness.
It is immensely difficult to attain, which is why so few of the dreamers ever wake up at all and why so many will not even listen to the revelations of the awakened ones.
However, Nature teaches us here as elsewhere not to let patience break down. There is plenty of time in her bag.
Life is an evolutionary process.
Men will begin to stir in their sleep erratically but increasingly.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? >
Chapter 4: Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 194
Paul Brunton
' My Secret Is Silence '...
"There is no one who is aware. Awareness itself is itself.
You are now no longer the thought, nor the thinker, nor someone who is aware.
Only awareness remains, as itself. Then, within awareness, thought moves.
Within the changeless, change happens. Now awareness expresses itself.
Awareness is always expressing itself: as life, as change, as thought, feelings, bodies, humans, plants, trees, cars, etc.
Awareness yields to itself, to its inherent creativity, to its expression in form, in order to experience itself.
The changeless in changing. The eternal is living and dying. The formless is form. The form is formless. This is nothing the mind could have ever imagined."
~ Adyashanti
' Dzogchen Thogal and the Mind of Clear Light '...
Thogal means "a leap over the crest or skull". This really means a quantum leap where no traverse from one point to another occurs. While remaining in place you suddenly arrive.
Our current state of consciousness as ordinary mind "suddenly" reveals itself to be the Mind of Clear Light. This is like a cube of ice suddenly revealing itself to be transparent water vapor.
Our samsaric mind is a contracted state of Clear Light radiance called tsal; it is a densification of the radiance (tsal) of the Mind of Clear Light.
Thogal focuses on the Clear Light itself as its sole method. It is the highest and most direct approach. We use the Clear Light to en-lighten itself with no other reliance.
It's best to first deactivate the karmic mind by having it realize the emptiness of all subjective and objective projections that reify a personal psychological self and an illusory "objective" world. We do this through the emptiness teachings primarily.*
If we miss this step, thogal can cause problems as the projections of light can mistakenly be grasped as though "real", as well as the imagined observer becoming afraid of their own projections.
Our true nature is always the Mind of Clear Light. It's a matrix of radiant wisdom light that continuously expresses its potentials in an infinite number of holographic displays (radiant tsal) as your inner and outer worlds.
Closest to the pure Mind of Clear Light, is a secondary, derivative consciousness as mind. It is this consciousness that is re-absorbed back into the Mind of Clear Light. We call these wisdom moments of re-absorption, moments of "Rigpa". The "rigpa" moment is the wisdom aspect of the Mind of Clear Light manifesting in lieu of and in absence of ordinary consciousness or karmic mind.
What we call "seeing" is the clear light. At an ordinary level a moment of "seeing" is actually a moment of colors. But more precisely, a moment of "seeing" is a moment of Clear Light. We never see with our eyes, eyes can't see. The world we see is a hologram of Clear Light radiance as projected and experienced within the Mind of Clear Light.
The holograms are 3D expressions (radiant tsal) of wisdom (information) rendered geometrically. This is true also of our daydreams and night dreams.
Thogal, especially the exposure of the eyes to light, causes the holograms of mind, brain and body to convert back into their highest frequency of Clear Light. There is only the Clear Light appearing in various wavelengths and densities (tsal).
The greater the "karma" the more solid the density. Karma is reified thoughts and mental constructions (tsal); hence first having the mind see the emptiness of all its subjective and objective reifications. A reification is merely a densification of the Clear Light radiance due to a contracting fictional belief collapsed around the conceit of an "I" or self construction.
The fundamental contraction of the Clear Light radiance is the fictional belief in a personal "me" or self. The karmic mind then projects holograms (tsal) of this imaginary self as who you seem to be in daydreams, night dreams and within consciousness as your self image and body identity.
In Dzogchen we call this reversal or conversion back into the Mind of Clear Light; "rulog".
One perfectly fine and workable method is called trekchod, or "cutting through all rigidities" through insight and total relaxation expressed as the "four chozhag" or "let be's". This is like letting the ice cube of Clear Light relax into its own wisdom transparency (zangthal).
For those more energetic we have thogal, which is light years faster and immediate. Immediate meaning "without leaving, your suddenly there".
There is no point in following either approach before twofold emptiness has dawned within the mind*. However thogal will also greatly deepen the emptiness insights as I described in my thogal "quick start" instruction pinned up on my Dzogchen Thogal group.
*Mipham Rinpoche composed a brief text called The Beacon of Certainty, in which he states:
"In order to have perfect certainty in Dzogchen kadag, one must have perfect understanding of the view of the Madhyamaka Prasangika. Kadag, or original, primordial purity, is the view of Dzogchen, and in order to perfect that view, one must perfect one’s understanding of the Middle Way Prasangika view. What this implies is that the view of Dzogchen kadag and the view of the Prasangika school are the same."
-Jackson Peterson
' The enemy '...
"There is something that you do not realize and by the end of this
talk, I want you to have made a start into realizing this major
vital fact - something is being done against you of which you have
no awareness.
You do not know the forces, the enemies, that are working in the
dark to make you as shaky and uncertain as you are. The enemies
exist for that very purpose, to be your enemy, to prevent you from
escaping them and finding what you can find during your journey
here on earth, which is universal truth.
The enemy that is harming you without your knowledge or permission
is both inside you and outside you. The enemy outside is able to
operate so effectively because you have not become acquainted with
the enemy inside. And let me tell you this, even if you caught a
fairly small glimpse of what has been hurting you, been done against
you in the past and what is doing it presently, this is an extremely
important point for you to understand because it will arouse right
feeling, right reactions."
from a talk given 3/1/1989
Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 26, talk 642, track 13
' Personal Identity '...
Personal identity is nothing more than an identification
between the mind and the image which it has about itself,
an image which is really an abstract of memories of events
in the past.
Indeed, it is this censored and edited imaginary
abstract that is considered to be an individual!
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' The Key to 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.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 1: Entering the Short Path > # 92
-- Perspectives > Chapter 23: Advanced Contemplation > # 6 Paul Brunton
' How close to Truth, we are '...
It is Saturday night'
imagine, both day and night used in the same sentence..
This night of frivolity,
The soul searches the eyes of others,
for understanding of existence..
Music pushes the mind to connection..
How much can you speak without fear ?..
Truth is hidden because of the fear of the ego..
Truth makes the ego, disappear..
Death is the great fear of all existence..
And yet, the death of the character within the Play is the only escape..
How close to Truth, we are...
-thomas
' An Enlightened Dream Character '...
During a dream in sleep at night, it seems you are a real character and a self. You have a body, a mind with thoughts and you perform various activities. Does it make sense to think that your dream self has the capacity to become enlightened and to continue to exist as a Buddha doing what Buddhas do?
I hope all would agree that the dreamed "self" is just a momentary projection of mind with no innate capacity or possibility to morph into a real enlightened Buddha. It doesn't matter how many high level
meditations and practices the dreamed self engaged in; it will never morph into being a Buddha. Rather it just vanishes when we wake up in the morning.
But in the morning when we wake up, we notice that we seem to have a body and a mind too. We feel like we are a self with an identity and memories to prove it. However it can be discovered upon investigation that our self identity is also just a projection of mind established by the same subconscious mechanism that produces our dreamed self; both are mere thought-forms that have no independent life of their own.
Sometimes in a very profound state of clarity, the pseudo-self of imagined personal identity, vanishes. In this moment it's known that there is no personal self that could ever become enlightened no matter how much meditation or effort in practice is exerted. It's seen there is no self that could become enlightened because that self is no more than a bunch of thoughts arising from the subconscious.
How does a bunch of thoughts become a Buddha? That would mean that your thoughts about marmalade could morph into fully functional Buddhas! Thoughts about marmalade are no more a self than thoughts that describe a "me".
There is no self to become enlightened! There is no self that is born, lives and dies anymore than your dreamed self is born, lives and dies.
So when people say that "they" are followers of a gradual or a sudden path to enlightenment, please try to contain your laughter.
When the mind ceases generating the "me" self identity, what remains is the eternal Buddha Mind that has no personal identity, and that has never been born or could die or that could become a Buddha again.
So the next thought would be "ok, I get it, now what do "I" do to actualize this insight?"
Ha, ha, ha ... (laughing out loud) sorry, couldn't contain the laughter! What does "who" do??? (more laughter)...
-Jackson Peterson:
' A warm living presence '...
He is not sacrificing so much that is dear to the world for the sake of an empty abstraction,
nor trampling on inborn egotism for the sake of a cold intellectual conception.
He is doing this for something that has become a warm living presence in his life--for the Overself.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 2: Its Choice > # 243 Paul Brunton
' Psychic health '...
"A person is in psychic health when he is one with himself, when he
is his own friend.
Perhaps you know people who are separated from
themselves by frantic desires, fearful imaginations, sour attitudes,
by regrets of the past and demands upon the future."
-Secrets for Higher Success, p. 71
Vernon Howard
' Emerge and Disappear '...
"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."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The interruption '...
"When you awaken from a dream at night do you awaken because you have cleansed all of your karma?
More likely you awoke because something interrupted your dream.
Consider me your interruption."
~ Adyashanti
' Compassion '...
Make it a matter of habit, until it becomes a matter of inclination, to be kind, gentle, forgiving, and compassionate.
What can you lose?
A few things now and then, a little money here and there, an occasional hour or an argument?
But see what you can gain!
More release from the personal ego, more right to the Overself's grace, more loveliness in the world inside us, and more friends in the world outside us.
-- Notebooks Category 2: Overview of Practices Involved >
Chapter 5: Balance the Psyche > # 12 Paul Brunton
' If the soul was stripped '...
"If the soul were stripped of all her sheaths,
God would be discovered all naked to her view and would give himself to her,
withholding nothing.
As long as the soul has not thrown off all her veils,
however thin, she is unable to see God."
Meister Eckhart
in Franz Pfeiffer
Meister Eckhart
Translated by C. de B Evans
Leipzig, 1857, vol. 1, p. 114
' Inner stillness '...
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.
When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness.
This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
- Eckhart Tolle, from Stillness Speaks
' The ego as servant '...
Nothing can annihilate the ego during the body's lifetime,
but its function can be reduced to one of mere subservience to the Overself.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego >
Chapter 1: What Am I? > # 185
Paul Brunton
' Why does humanity suffer '...
Man suffers only because he takes seriously
what the gods made for fun.
- Alan Watts
' An epiphenomenon '...
" Pragmatist Sam Johnson said that he had only to kick a stone to prove how material is matter. Much as one is tempted to kick Dr. Johnson for failing to see that his sense of kicking a stone takes place entirely within his own consciousness, it's tangibility being but one aspect of that mental sense, we should be big enough to relegate Dr. Johnson to his rightful place in this realm of Consciousness, along with that stone and leave him in peace."
The die ~hard materialist claims consciousness is no more than a deceptive epiphenomenon, the side effect of neural structure and activity, giving the illusion of mind.
But the materialist contention is no more than an unverifiable theory. He cannot get outside his own consciousness to prove the physical existence of an objective universe .The only basic reality of which he can be absolutely sure is his own consciously being. Everything else he may think he knows is necessarily based upon inference".
-Richard Taylor
' Practicing Consciousness '...
The ability to keep established in the Consciousness while engaged in the world's affairs is acquired by practice.
It is a form of skilfulness acquired as bicycle-riding is acquired.
-- Notebooks Category 24: The Peace within You >
Chapter 3: Practise Detachment > # 302
Paul Brunton
' The still point '...
Spontaneity is the essence of all natural action.
In natural action the focus of interest remains neither in the past nor in the future but in the
present moment, the still point of the turning world.
Once thinking as an individual has ceased, objectivization also ceases, and neither ignorance nor enlightenment has any significance.
One who knows does not say,
"I think I know."
He Knows.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' To be, is to suffer '...
"To be, is to suffer.
The narrower the circle of my self-identification,
the more acute the suffering caused by desire and fear."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The Emptiness of Thought '...
Many Dzogchen and Tibetan Buddhist teachers have mentioned that Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Madhyamaka all offer a complete means to actualizing Buddhahood.
Madhyamaka means "middle way". It's a middle way because it is free of the errors of espousing extremes views that favor either the imagined permanent nature of things and persons or their complete imagined non-existence.
In both cases the error would be embodied as a belief. Those fictional beliefs are what support all the suffering as experienced as samsara.
All beliefs are mere conceptual constructions fabricated within a mind. All conceptual constructions are thoughts.
Thoughts are dependently originated from prior thoughts, information as memory and experiences. Any thought is embedded within a vast milieu of associative meanings of which all are also only thoughts.
We therefore discover that samsara is itself comprised only of believed thoughts.
Madhyamaka teachings recognize the unique role that believed thoughts and concepts play in establishing our personal suffering. Samsara has only one cause: believed thoughts.
Madhyamaka doesn't recommend suppressing, denying or ignoring thoughts as a workable solution to our root cause of suffering.
Rather, Madhyamaka recommends seeing the "empty" nature of thought. It's like someone in the dark believing their thought "snake" while only perceiving a coiled rope. In this case the thought "snake" is empty of any reality concerning the current perceptions.
We discover that all thoughts suffer from the same error to only a lesser or greater degree.
This error is usually towards the extreme of reifying and assigning a valid existential status to a perception or conceptual construct. This is like children believing the stories about Santa Claus are true and that Santa Claus actually exists. We also can't say that Santa Claus has absolutely no existence or else we would deny our imaginary thoughts as having ever happened. Santa Claus does have a status as being at least an imaginary character existing in someone's mind. And so, we can conventionally have discussions about an imaginary Santa Claus.
Even though all thoughts only exist as imaginary conceptual constructs that claim to represent perfectly an underlying reality that they attempt to describe; we can indeed have conventional discussions regarding our conceptual descriptions.
Through our thoughts we actually live in our make-believe world of conceptually constructed descriptions as though the names and labels actually represent solidly existing realities exactly as conceptually described. We call this world "conventional reality".
The greatest Madhyamaka master, Nagarjuna, wrote:
"The Ultimate truth is emptiness, the conventional truth is fiction. (prapañca)"
The ultimate reality is simply how it really is without our fictional descriptions applied to perceptions and mental phenomena. Empty means empty of all fiction.
Every thought is a fiction because it's can never be more than a mental portrait or mental description regarding some sensory or mental event. The thought can never accurately be what it's pointing to. As Korzybski famously stated; "the map is not the territory".
In conventional conversation we discuss our word-maps as though they were representing real landscapes accurately. Our thoughts are never more than representations that may be completely or partially flawed.
Using our thought maps as reliable guides in life, most humans find themselves quite lost and all too often quite deeply lost in the thickets of major anxiety, depression and suicidal angst. Fortunately the Buddha has discovered and offered a path out from our self-imposed thought delusions and their resulting sufferings.
Nirvana is simply a mind free of all fictional descriptions about self and reality. Such a mind would be free of all believed thoughts regarding appearances and experiences.
Examining thoughts individually we discover they are all hollow with no core or center. They are no more real than momentary clouds in the sky. The mind could focus on a single cloud and believe the sky is only this particular cloud or that the cloud is permanent and has an independent existence all of its own. Whatever the case, a thought is never more than a mental wisp of energetic prana carrying a small message or bit of conditioned and imagined meaning.
We don't have to suppress or deny or push away our thoughts; just see their intrinsically empty nature. All thoughts are equally empty fictional descriptions with no enduring status. They all release upon the arising like the single chirp of a bird.
My personal "self" is such a fictional, empty thought. Other "selves" are also empty fictional thoughts. The thought "mine" is also a fictional thought. Every thought that occurs in your mind is intrinsically empty, fictional and self-releasing.
Seeing the empty nature of all thoughts is what Madhyamaka actualizes. So Madhyamaka is not just the "middle way" but regarding freedom from the mind's self-generating samsara, it would seem to be the "only way".
Liberation is the mind seeing its own content as empty and fictional in nature. Seeing this, it's obvious no one existed to be liberated in the first place, except just as another empty and fictional thought.
-Jackson Peterson
' Do what you believe in '...
"Do what you believe in and believe in what you do.
All else is a waste of energy and time."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Just do your work '...
The first dip into enlightenment, what we call awakening to our true nature, that experience is like starting a chemical reaction.
Without your participation it re-makes the whole being for years to come.
At some point all the unprocessed emotions, attachments, identifications will come to the surface.
This is very advanced stage on the path, don't be fooled by your ideas and anyone who expect you to be saintly.
Those who done with this stage, see clearly where you are.
They have much respect and compassion for your journey and offer unconditional acceptance.
Those who don’t accept where you are at the moment, not ready for this work themselves yet, or cowardly.
Leave those behind, let them be, and you be as you are.
You know exactly what you are and what is your work at this moment.
Just do your work.
-Elena Nezhinsky
' The Overself is unlimited '...
For several reasons he is not a joiner.
Most sects have only partial and limited views, most mix some error with their truth, and most develop ugly dogmatic tyrannies.
Furthermore, their adherents, believing that they alone possess the truth, generally exclude all others from the warmer temperatures of their goodwill--if they do not openly dislike them.
But the largest reason for his refusal is that the Overself is unlimited, unconfined; he wants to express this freedom.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 3: Independent Path > # 152
Paul Brunton
' Said the seeker '...
We do not see faces and yet we feel emotions and truth..
The idea of feminine or masculine are just thoughts of division..
The Ying and Yang keep spining ..
The balance of the Dream must be maintained according to Desire..
Freedom is a word that keeps appearing..
Does God need Freedom ?..
We keep finding ourselves within a drama of egos',
we find our minds within the Dream..
We look above the waves and see Light..
" I and the Father are One,
said the seeker "...
-thomas
' Where is the heart ? '...
"The heart is the innermost man or spirit.
Here are located self-awareness, the conscience, the idea of God and of one's complete dependence on Him, and all the eternal treasures of the spiritual life....
Where is the heart?
Where sadness, joy, anger, and other emotions are felt, here is the heart.
stand there with attention....
Stand in the heart, with the faith that God is also there, but how He is there do not speculate.
Pray and entreat that in due time love for God may stir within you by His grace."
St. Theophan the Recluse
in George A. Maloney, S.J.
Prayer of the Heart
Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1981, p. 25
' The threshold of liberation '...
What you need will come to you, if you do not ask
for what you do not need.
Yet only few people reach
this state of complete dispassion and detachment.
It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' We are disturbed '...
We are disturbed not by what happens to us,
but by
our thoughts about what happens.
- Epictetus
' The biggest fool '...
A man once made this bequest to his son: "Take these hundred gold
pieces, my son. You are to give them to the biggest fool you meet."
The man died, and the son set out to discharge his father's bequest.
Whenever he saw somebody acting stupidly, he would approach him to
check whether he had found a fool.
In the course of his search, he came one day to a palace, in
front of which a crowd had gathered. A bystander explained to
him, "The Grand Vizier has displeased the Emperor. The executioner
is going to behead him now, then the new Grand Vizier will be made to
step over the dead body of his predecessor before being installed in
his office." When asked the reason for this, he was told, "As an
admonition to the incoming minister."
A moment later, they brought out a man in handcuffs. Ignoring
his moans and groans, they forced him to his knees and cut off his
head. The new minister witnessed this scene, then trod on the corpse
of his executed predecessor to mount the Grand Vizier's throne of
office. Everyone started congratulating the new minister. The young
man mingled with the well-wishers.
When he came in front of the
Grand Vizier, he handed him the purse containing the gold
pieces. "What is your motive in giving me this money?" "Please take
it," said the youth. "It is a bequest of my late father's. Allow me
to discharge my duty." The minister then asked, "Do you mean to tell
me that your father's bequest was to give a hundred gold pieces to
the Grand Vizier?" "No," replied the young man, "not to the Grand
Vizier or minister.
My father's bequest was to give money to a great
fool. I have search high and low, but--forgive me saying so--I have
not come across a greater fool than you." "How do you know I am a
fool?" the minister asked, angrily. The young man explained: "I
witnessed this ceremony with my own eyes.
Your predecessor was
beheaded just a short time ago and you stepped over his body to mount
this throne of office. The very same calamity could befall you
tomorrow. One who saw this, yet took no warning from it, is not just
any old fool; he is The Fool himself. Praise be to Allah, the
bequest is fulfilled."
-Sheikh Muzaffer
as collected by James Fadiman & Robert Frager
' When there is no fear '...
When there is no other, there is no fear, and when there is no fear, there is freedom.
Understand that there really is no doer and continue to act in life as if you are the doer;
then the appropriate attitude of compassion gets developed.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Pleasure is a distraction '...
"...pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance,
for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have and do things to be happy,
when in reality it is just the opposite."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The Universal Mind '...
It is true that the subject in consciousness cannot make an object of itself, cannot perceive itself, but there is in man another self which knows the subject, is aware of the subject although the subject is not aware of it.
But there is an important difference to be noted here.
First, the transcendental self does not know in the same way that the thinking self knows (by thinking self I mean the subject) for its knowledge is immediate, swifter than the swiftest computing machine.
Secondly, it is part of the universal mind, the World Mind, yet mysteriously connected with a limited human mind.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 1: Their Meeting and Interchange > # 159
Paul Brunton
' An inner emptiness '...
A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves.
They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political.
Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.
- Vernon Howard
' Modern life '...
Modern life is becoming very unsatisfactory. It does not give you happiness. There are too many things, too many desires.
More nice cars and dresses and entertainments—and more worries! Free yourself from these so-called "necessities"...
There is no security anywhere in this world; at any time your consciousness may be forced to give up the body by disease or misfortune...
In these days of struggle, it is very hard to attain God, for your days are spent in restless activities and business pursuits — which mean nothing in the end but loss of time, and unhappiness.
- Yogananda
' The Physician-sage '...
An ailing king summoned a physician-sage to treat his illness. The
sage refused to come. The king had his soldiers seize the physician
and bring him to the palace.
The king said, "I have brought you here because I am suffering
from a strange paralysis. If you cure me, I will reward you. If not,
I will kill you."
The physician said, "In order to treat you, I need complete
privacy." So the king sent everyone out of the room. Then the
physician took out a knife and said, "Now I shall take my revenge for
your threatening me." He advanced on the king. Terrified, the king
jumped up and ran around the room, forgetting his paralysis in his need
to escape the seemingly crazed physician.
The sage fled the palace one step ahead of the guards. The king
never realized that he had been cured by the only method that could
have been effective.
-traditonal as collected by Fadiman & Frager
' To have courage '...
"To have courage for everything that comes in life — everything lies in that."
Saint Teresa of Avila
in Diane Mariechild
Open Mind: Women's Daily Inspiration for Becoming Mindful
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, 7/17
' Pain cannot be escaped '...
Pain cannot be escaped - yet even greater pain lies in the effort to get away from it.
You will try to escape from pain or insecurity so long as the 'me' keeps itself separate from experience.
The desire to achieve (which is also the fear of failure) is what makes the mind lose its fluidity through the rigidity induced by inhibition.
This then gets translated into faulty execution of all our actions and compounds our induced conflict and neurotic tension.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' When the mind is quiet '...
"The world is but the surface of the mind, and the mind is infinite.
What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind.
When the mind is quiet, it reflects reality.
When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains.
This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even a diamond is soft like butter.
This overwhelming actuality makes the world dream-like."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Meditation '...
Meditation must be restored to its rightful place in the human program.
Only those who have tasted its wonder know how bare, how poor, is a life from which it is always absent.
Only those who have become expert in the art know the major pleasure of lying back on its velvet couch and letting their burdens fall from them.
The benefits of meditation apply both to mundane life and to spiritual seeking.
Think what it means to be able to give our mental apparatus a complete rest, to be able to stop all thoughts at will, and to experience the profound relief of relaxing the entire being--body, nerves, breath, emotions, and thoughts!
Those whose nerves cannot endure the extreme tension of modern existence will find ample healing by resorting to mental quiet.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 3:
Relax and Retreat > # 15
Paul Brunton
' the Breath of Source '...
After years of books and breathe watching, you decide to leap from the ledge..
The thought of Knowing resounds within the desire of holograms..
To Know Truth is the goal of every Lover..
The world will teach you lies,
but Truth will teach you Freedom..
This is why Truth and Love are One and the same..
This Happiness that is called Love and Truth are only gained by humility..
It is only the 'Offering' of 'All' that admits You into Reality..
The 'Breath' that you did not count, that has freed and awakened You..
This 'Breath' called Grace...
-thomas
' The Creator of all effects '...
In reality, He is the Creator of all effects,
but the People of Skin see nothing but
secondary causes.
A kernel that has not left
its shell behind has no escape from doctors
and diseases.
When man is born for the
second time, he plants his foot upon the head
of all secondary causes.
- Rumi
Translation by William C. Chittick
From "The Sufi Path of Love"
UNY Press, Albany, 1983
' The years are passing '...
Everyone wants to live. Few want to know how to live.
If people permit work to take up so much of their time that they have none left for their devotional prayer or mystical meditation or metaphysical study, they will be as culpable for this wastage of life as they will be if they permit transient pleasures to do so.
Those who have no higher ideal than to chase after amusement and to seek after pleasure may look upon religious devotion as senseless, metaphysical studies as boring, mystical meditations as time-wasting, moral disciplines as repulsive.
Those who have no such inner life of prayer and meditation, study and reflection, will necessarily pay, in emergencies or crises, the high price of their hopeless extroversion.
The needs of external life are entitled to be satisfied in their place, but they are not entitled to dominate a man's whole attention. The neglected and unnoticed needs of internal life must also receive their due.
It is quite true that man must eat, find shelter, wear clothes, and amuse himself. And it is also true that if a fortunate fate has not relieved him of the necessity, he must work, trade, scheme, or gamble to get the money for these things.
But all this is insufficient grounds for him to pass through life with no other thoughts in his head than those of bodily needs or financial strivings. There is still room there for another kind of thought, for those concerning the mysterious elusive and subtle thing that is his divine soul.
The years are passing and he cannot afford such a wastage of time, cannot afford the luxury of being so extroverted at the cost of having lost touch with the inner life.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 3:
Relax and Retreat > # 15
Paul Brunton
' A True Sage '...
"If you come across a true sage who has realized his true nature,
you will not be required to do anything in the way of spiritual disciplines.
This is because through his teachings,
he will reveal your true nature,
as by placing a mirror before you."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' It's True Nature '...
"As long as the sense of Being or the consciousness dwelling in the body does not realize its true nature,
it is bound to identify with the body and all its actions by claiming doership.
But as a result of this claim,
it is subjected to intense suffering when the body goes into disintegration and approaches death."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' busy with this and that '...
How many of us find ourselves worn out by the physical anxieties, the frequent nerve-tensions, and the jittery tumultuousness of our period!
We tend to get entrapped in our own activities, to multiply them by the dozen, to be everlastingly busy with this and that.
We are, in a sense, the unwitting victims of our surface-life, the unconscious slaves of its activities and desires, the dancing marionettes of its interests and possessions.
There is no real free movement of our wills, only an apparent one.
We have only to look at the faces of the men and women in our big cities to realize how desolate of spiritual repose most of them are.
We have become so extroverted that it has become unnatural to turn the mind upon itself, artificial to direct the attention inwards for a while.
All this causes us to miss the most important values, keeps us on the plane of being merely higher thinking and mating animals and little more.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 3:
Relax and Retreat > # 15
Paul Brunton
' In Unicity '...
Love, not as an expression of separateness
based on emotion, but as compassion,
is
that which holds the world together in
Unicity.
In Unicity we do not love others,
we ARE them.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' Without arrogance '...
Keep in tune with the source and all your actions will be
correct.
If you don’t there will be trouble no matter what you do.
With arrogrance of ego there is no skillfulness and without
arrogance everything is skillful.
- Papaji
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
' It fulfills Itself '...
Why should the waves of life-entities take this spiral-like two-way course?
Why do they not go along a direct single one?
The answer is that they have to gather experience to grow; if this experience includes totally opposed conditions, all the parts of each entity can grow, all its latent qualities can be stirred into unfoldment.
In the oppositions of birth and death, growth and decay, in-breathing and exhaling, youth and age, joy and suffering, introversion and extroversion, spirit-form and body-form, it fulfills itself.
-- Notebooks Category 26: World-Idea > Chapter 3: Polarities,
Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > # 143
Paul Brunton
' Love your enemies '...
But I say to you,
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven;
for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
- Jesus the Christ
' The present moment '...
Do not dwell in the past,
do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment.
- Gautama the Buddha
' A jnani '...
"A jnani consumes time continuously,
while all others are being devoured by it.
A jnani is beyond time,
the five elements, attributes and emotions."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' No Knower or Known '...
In the deepest trance state we enter by introversion into the pure Void.
There are then no forms to witness, no visions to behold, no emotions to thrill, no duality of knower and known.
The experiencer of the world and the world itself vanish because the first as ego is idea and the second is also idea; both merge into their Source, the Mind.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation >
Chapter 8: The Void As Contemplative Experience > # 78
Paul Brunton
' One stream of Truth '...
"As water in a fountain flows as one stream,
but falls in many drops divided by time and space,
so are the revelations of the one stream of truth."
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
Bowl of Saki, 1-1
' the state of freedom '...
True happiness cannot arise until the identification with the body-mind apparatus is demolished.
The state of freedom comes about when the split-mind gives up the impossible task of controlling itself and surrenders to the realization of the futility of perpetually thinking and acting and thinking about the action all at the same time.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Introversion and extroversion '...
The philosopher will fall neither into the cold unfeeling indifference of the recluse nor into the frothy effervescing fussiness of the sentimentalist.
He knows that the first attitude is generated by excessive introversion, the second by excessive extroversion.
His ideal being the balance between them, he will attend properly to his own self-development but, side by side with it, work helpfully for mankind.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? >
Chapter 4: Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 213
Paul Brunton
' Laughing at the word, Two '...
Only,
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the Word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
- Hafiz
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Gift"
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
Penguin/Arkana, 1999
' You pierce the needle '...
"When you realize yourself as less than a point in space and time,
something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed,
then, and then only, all fear goes.
When you are smaller than the point of a needle,
then the needle cannot pierce you--you pierce the needle!"
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Mysticism '...
Mysticism, when psychologically comprehended and correctly practised, can certainly give man--weak-willed, passion-driven, and earthward-bent, as he often is--definite disciplinary, emotional, and ethical benefits. But so far as it shuts him up to lounge in his inner recesses and enjoy their peace alone, or so far as it persuades him to cast society permanently aside and withdraw like a tortoise into his own shell, it does not directly advantage others.
The mystic wants to be left alone to meditate without external distractions. His peace is precious to him and he is unwilling to disturb it by sacrificing any part of his personal life for the benefit of others. The serious yogi-in-training usually spends most of a lifetime in segregation from his fellows, untrammeled by family burdens and unperturbed by social responsibility, because he is seeking something whose attainment the presence of others hinders and disturbs.
He is naturally wrapped up by his discipline in a cloak of self-centeredness. Every manual of yoga which recommends the novice to turn hermit and forsake cities in moderation at the proper time in the proper place and for a limited duration, is a perfectly justifiable rule. He needs solitude and silence for the practice of his meditations. It is difficult to get these things in society so he quite properly avoids society. The very essence of all genuinely mystical exercises is the process of introversion. But carried to the point of excess, as it usually is when the practitioner is ignorant of the fact that mystic discipline is a means and not an end, it is likely to finish in callous self-centeredness.
When he does not realize that asceticism is but a temporary discipline, a jumping-off ground, whence to arrive at the higher and permanent condition of internal disentanglement, he is likely to fall into the trap of making such external disentanglement the goal of life and even become callously indifferent to the well-being of others--not deliberately, of course, but as a consequence of his unbalanced introversion.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 2:
Phases of Mystical Development > # 120 Paul Brunton
' The Observer '...
In my experience of entering the Light of Reality,
there is a wind of Love that knocks you to the ground..
This wind might be called Holy Spirit.
Upon falling into the darkness of non-existence,
Light suddenly appears and You are part of that Light..
The energies of Love and Wisdom flow from and though Your consciousness..
A Voice suddenly begins speaking to You..
Questions are asked and answers are given..
What is this reality of Light and Love ?..
Many call this 'the Observer'..
I call it Happiness...
-thomas
' What belongs to You '...
“Kabir said a wise thing. This morning when I was strolling here, I asked Eruch to write it down.” Eruch, and then Adi, repeated the verse in Hindi.
Eruch said, “Kabir was a Perfect Master. All over India, people revere him and love him. He said this to his own Master. I will give you the English translation; Baba translated it this morning:
‘Nothing that I have belongs to me.
All that I have belongs to you.
What will I lose if I surrender to you?
What belongs to you!’ ”
-Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
1st. ed., Vol. 14, p. 5026
Revised Online Edition, p. 4038
' The here and now '...
"The "here" is everywhere, and the "now" always.
Go beyond the "I-am-body" idea, and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time.
Once you have understood this, the main obstacle to realization is removed."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Psychoanalysis '...
Psychoanalysis has harmed patients by its stirring-up of muddy waters that would have been better cleared of their dirt; by its pose as a strict science when it is only a fanciful pseudoscience; and by its narrow biased and misleading explanation of religion, which substitutes worship of the body's sex instinct for worship of the universe's higher power.
Even the introversion which it so greatly excoriates as bad, is so only when it is unwilling and unable to fasten its interest on anything outside the small circle of its petty ego.
Otherwise, it unfolds the capacity to intuit directly, to think metaphysically, and to meditate spiritually.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 4:
Healers of The Body and Mind > # 84 Paul Brunton
' The picture of Self '...
We have been here awhile..
Therefore, higher consciousness will be involved..
I can speak of desire or lust,
but Truth is more important than manifestations..
You are Consciousness, but You still perform in a play..
" The world is a play and we are just actors "
said Shakespeare..
You have chosen the character according to family and friends..
When will You choose to be Free ?...
I only poke you in the chest..
You are the conductor of your train of thought...
-thomas
' The sense of identity '...
"As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable.
Only when you know yourself as entirely alien to and different from the body,
will you find respite from the mixture of fear and craving inseparable from the "I-am-the body" idea."
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Introversion '...
There are varying and deepening degrees of introversion, ranging from slight inattention to full absorption or trance, which is therefore only one degree or kind of introversion.
-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 1: Preparatory > # 202
Trance is often a confusing word to use to describe the deepest condition of meditation. It could lead to misunderstanding. Safer words would be "dynamic reverie" or "constructive introversion." The idea of reverie promotes some kind of background awareness continuing through, either from one's surroundings or from oneself, and is therefore truer.
-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 1: Preparatory > # 448
Paul Brunton
' It is the day of Independence '...
The Zen Masters speak of the space of Pure Light..
This is the Independence of Consciousness..
You keep feeling the pain of existence..
This is because You believe that You are of the Dream..
This Hologram of experience is just another Dream that lasts minutes within Consciousness..
These minutes mean much to the desire for existence..
But, existence requires the Truth of oblivion..
This Character that You play is for entertainment..
Nothingness is silence, but plays within frequencies..
These frequencies of sixteen and twenty thousand hertz control your world of sound..
These sensors of the hologram are fascinating, but are still within the Dream..
-thomas
' Roger Castillo satsang - Reincarnation from the non-Dual perspective'...
Q: Do you believe in reincarnation of the soul reincarnating to another birth or do you think it's the end of it, every birth is over.
Roger: I think that there is no soul. There is just impersonal consciousness that is functioning through each human being and when the body dies then that particular incarnation, which is the result of impersonal consciousness functioning through a body and creating the personal consciousness which we can say is the incarnation, the personal incarnation. Once the body dies then there's no question of a carry-over of a soul. There is the same impersonal consciousness which was functioning through that body which will then function through another body and create another experience and what is evident is that within a particular experience of life, let's say Rogers experience of life there arises memories of what seem like past lives and so when those memories arise in this experience of life the conclusion is, 'Oh, then there is a soul and I lived a previous life but to me I see a memory of a past life that arise in this moment and it is part of the experience in this moment. It is maybe going to demonstrate why there are certain behaviors in this moment that previously were not understood, the rationale of why certain behaviors existed in our life were not understood so the memory can be the explanation of that so it still doesn't prove that there was a previous life that some entity here has lived. It simply means that in this moment the experience includes a memory of a previous life. So Roger can have an experience of a previous life that's a memory of being Mary or John but that is just a memory of John or Mary's life. It doesn't mean that its Roger that lived John or Mary's life previously.
Q: Why I am asking is normally people talk about reincarnation here in India but a mystic of the stature of Osho has also written in his biography written by somebody else that 700 years ago he was born an certain thing happened. When a mystic talks about it I mean, it's very difficult to, I know it's unusual opinion but it's very difficult to wish it away. I just wanted to tell you this.
Roger: If there is a memory of say being a soldier in a past life I don't dismiss the memory and I don't dismiss the memory is there possibly because a past life was actually lived but it doesn't then conclude that I was that. So when Osho says he was born 700 years prior, who is he talking about when he says 'I was born 700 years prior?'
Q: Not only Osho but alot of people talk about it. They say that the combination of the ego plus the mind, the thoughts and desires, they keep incarnating though different lives till they get enlightenment.
Roger: That's right. The thing is that the ego is simply a set of beliefs and so what I suggest is a description for people who are wanting to understand past lives is that, I suggest that when a human incarnation comes to an end the story of life dissolves the body but what it doesn't dissolve is some unfulfilled desires, some unresolved fears, some unexpressed talents and so the body dies and yet there is an energy of these as yet unresolved, unfulfilled and unexpressed talents, fears and desires and that blueprint which you could call the sense of personal doership, that blueprint is stored and then redistribute. Because it's a blueprint it actually just a set of beliefs, of attachments. It's not an individual and if so they then get redistributed into a new birth, it's basically just data being distributed into a new birth. Its conditioning, that birth can come into life with but the new birth that has this conditioning is not actually an entity that lived a previous life. It's a new birth but with some conditioning from a previous life. That conditioning is simply the unresolved desires, fears and talent and so that life will then unfold with those unresolved fears, unfulfilled desires functioning, until such time as there is a realization of the falseness of those attachments, etc. The dissolving of them and that is my description of what you just described. There is a carry-over and there is a working through of what is carried over until there is nothing to carry-over any more but what is carried over is the remnants of a previous life and not necessarily my previous life.
' The ego invents duties '...
The ego ceaselessly invents one "duty" after another to keep him so involved in activities,
often trivial, that he is never still enough to attend to the Overself's presence and voice within.
Even many so-called spiritual duties are its invention:
they are not asked of him by the Overself.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 3: Relax and Retreat > # 17
Paul Brunton
' Ideations '...
"Think of yourself by all means.
Only do not bring the idea of a body into the picture.
There is only a stream of sensations, perceptions, memories and ideations."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' It's self-evident '...
Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop trying to change reality.
That's crazy!
Stop trying to change the other person.
We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else.
We don't have to change anything.
Negative feelings are in you.
No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy.
There is no event, condition, situation, or person.
Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite.
That's why you're in the mess that you're in right now.
That is why you're asleep.
They never told you this.
But it's self-evident.
- Anthony de Mello
' Now-ness '...
The Overself can become very real to him when feeling its ever-presence in all his experience,
when awake to its now-ness.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself >
Chapter 3: The Overself's Presence > # 87 Paul Brunton
' Liberation '...
"Liberation is not the result of some means skillfully applied, nor of circumstances.
It is beyond the causal process.
Nothing can compel it,
nothing can prevent it."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Silence is not lonely '...
Ah listen, for silence is not lonely!
Imitate the magnificent trees
That speak no word of their rapture,
but only
Breathe largely the luminous breeze.
-D.H. Lawrence
' The Source '...
It is my long-sustained and well-tested belief that I have had certain revelations from a higher source.
The revelations are mixed, some dealing with the world's fortunes and misfortunes but others dealing purely with the Overself's wisdom and workings.
The source is beyond me and met only in the profundity of meditation.
I cannot name it or describe it, so others may call it what they like, yet I am directly aware of it.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections >
Chapter 3: Encounter With Destiny > # 30
Paul Brunton
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